Radiant Terminus

by Antoine Volodine

  • Myriam Umarik bumps around heavily across one of the beasts of burden, wrists and ankles shackled, she is set like a sack among the bags of clothes and salvaged tools that are the merchants’ stock in trade. When they discovered that her beautiful hair was actually a wig, they felt like they had been hoodwinked, and the youngest one had been so overcome with rage that he had unsheathed a knife to cut her throat. The others had restrained him at the last moment. Don’t forget that she can, if we bring her with us, spread her legs for us every day, and then, if we’ve had enough of her, we can cut her up, drain her dry, and turn her into pemmican. And that is how she left her husband Barguzin: as a sex slave and as a future basic ingredient in an energy-giving preparation.

  She is sick, her gut is swollen and painful. Her abductors treat her badly, they are full of horrible contemptuous gestures and they insult her when they throw her on the ground to penetrate her. She alternates between nausea, feverish sleep, and prostration. When they rape her, she is now so inert that they no longer need to have two of them holding her down while the third twitches and lets loose in her.

  For a week the landscape barely changes. Myriam Umarik doesn’t go to the trouble of opening her eyes to make sure. Black pines, larches, sometimes birch trees. The sort-of yak carrying her on its back brushes past mossy trunks, every so often bushes studded with berries, stalks that are flexible and full of sap. It is not fall yet. Myriam Umarik is smacked by the mutant plants and, her face filthy with mud, remnants of sperm, and various juices, she suffocates under the emanations the skin, grease, and wool of her mount produce. She is semiconscious, in a state close to stupor.

  But it’s a stupor filled with visions and repetitive dreams, and, among these dreams, a bird rises to examine the world in her place, and gives her the impression that she is still alive.

  • Left, left, the bird crows silently, commenting on the clicking of its wings. Right. You’re lying across the first beast. Right, right. You’re going past a birch tree, mutant plants that nobody has named yet are growing under the trees. I’ll do so. Redfruit ballerinas, brokenheads, susmanción peppers, birdcatchers’ crons, spinelesses. Left, left, right. The silent forest. Only the footsteps of the brigands and their beasts, their breaths. There’s nothing useful on your beast. Clothes, bags filled with jewels, kitchen utensils, unloaded weapons. On the beast behind there are pyramids of objects. Left. Left, left. Right, right, left. A computer. Interest: none. Saws. Much more useful. Tools for butchering. A debarker right at your fingertips. You’ll use that. At the right moment you’ll use it to kill them. I’ll tell you. Right, left. When they stop. They’re tired. Left, left. They won’t fall on you. Not right away and not together. I’ll guide you.

  • At night they tie the beasts, light a fire in the distance, and share a handful of pemmican. They have put down Myriam Umarik, thrown her on the earth, and for now they’re not busy with her. She takes the opportunity to crawl as best as she can toward the beast carrying the butchery tools. Once she’s lying close to the beast, she stays calm. A bird talks to her in her head, black and powerful, in the surrounding darkness. The beasts, normally unflappable, seem a bit nervous and pound their hooves against the ground, the rotting leaves. It’s a sign. The moment is coming, the bird will guide her to her revenge.

  The youngest one leaves the fire and comes to find her. She detests him more than the others because now that the rapes have taken on a less communal nature, sometimes instead of immediately penetrating her vagina he squats over her head, hits her and rubs her face with his vile cock, and inserts this cock between her lips while grunting insane obscenities. But, that evening, after having unfettered her ankles, and doubtless because he obeys a telepathic suggestion from the bird, he begins, while telling her what he wishes, untying the rope binding her wrists. He insults her and, at the same time, he begs her crudely to rut energetically, for a change. Not like an inert mass. More like a girl who likes sex.

  To the right, just above, says the bird.

  She’d had no reaction at all until then, only breathing as little as possible so as not to inhale the young rapist’s appalling breath. She groans a sort of approbation, a half-uttered word that the rapist interprets as thick approbation, and she slowly gets up, giving the impression that she is thinking of some way to satisfy him, and, once she stands in front of him, she waits for the bird to give her orders.

  Rise your arm as if to begin an embrace, the bird advises.

  Intoxicated by the demand he has made, the rapist doesn’t suspect anything. The bird persuades him to relax, and even to close his eyes in anticipation of the surprise in store. In any case, the shadows are thick, and the campfire’s flames only barely, barely illuminate the scene.

  The handle of the debarker, the bird repeats to Myriam Umarik. A little further to the right.

  Myriam Umarik feels around for a second.

  Now, the bird says.

  Myriam Umarik takes the debarker from its storage spot, immediately at hand and held by nothing, and she drives the blade horizontally between the rapist’s shoulders, at the base of the neck. Right beneath the larynx, as she had been told.

  • She does this with a steady, light hand, guided by an image that the bird has projected within her fingers. The man’s veins and arteries are spared, but his windpipe doesn’t resist, it’s cut between two rings of cartilage. And that’s all.

  The value of a cut of this sort is that the adversary is immediately deprived of a voice. Gurgles don’t go more than five meters. Shocked and irremediably wounded, he falls down while thinking of his stupidity and his life now empty of air, rapes, and long-term prospects. First he’s on his knees, his hands gripping his throat with the idea of possibly repairing his essential pipe, then crouching on the ground, his legs kicking softly in the darkness. He’s not dead. Myriam Umarik doesn’t squint in the darkness to see him. The bird takes him by the arms, keeps him from wriggling, and throws him aside. It sets him down behind several trees. An inexplicable wheeze can be heard.

  • Then Myriam Umarik is lying on the ground again, two paces away from the beast that provided her with the necessary materials. The beast shakes a little, without ever kicking or breaking its leash out of nervousness. Maybe, in its obtuse animal sleep, it’s a victim of disagreeable visions.

  Myriam Umarik waits.

  The rumble of the ruminants respirating.

  An inexplicable gurgle behind a stand of birches.

  It is very dark.

  • The second merchant comes and doesn’t need anything specific from her, he unzips his fly as he mumbles several lewd obscenities. She waits for him to lean over her to slice his throat. Although guided every quarter of a second by the bird, she presses too hard on the neck when she plunges the blade. The bandit collapses, he doesn’t scream, but at the same time as the windpipe she has opened several blood vessels that spurt scalding-hot blood on her. The other one rears back. He is straddling her, he noses upward and a fountain of blood escapes from him. She twists to avoid the heavy man’s fall, and, when he falls forward, she pulls away quickly. The bird comes out of darkness and drags the merchant next to the first one.

  The beast, right next to her, drops a cowpat that will disappear into its disgusting fur.

  No more noise.

  For a minute, no more noise. Then a log crackling on the fire. Then the third man comes toward Myriam Umarik. He doesn’t worry about the other two being absent. He probably should, but the cock’s language bawls its desires within him and overpowers his better judgment, defers his better judgment to later. He gets down to see where he’ll stick in his penis. But at the moment he begins to undo his belt, which requires both hands, Myriam Umarik receives a new order and she caresses the bottom of his chin with the debarker. The gesture works perfectly again, the third rapist is incapacitated, instantaneously sentenced to silence and the fear of possibly having to breathe for several minutes in unbearable agony, without losing his blood too quickly, among confused thought
s where the cock’s language now only plays a secondary and parasitical role.

  • Left. Further left. A little bit more.

  The bird encourages Myriam Umarik to continue retaliating against the three men lying at the foot of the birches. She obeys it. A little further to the left again. A little more to the left in this hodgepodge.

  She rummages through the items the second beast carries on its stinking back. They’re packed haphazardly in baskets, boxes, bundles. The debarker was easy to reach. The other butchery tools, not so much. In the darkness she has to follow the bird’s directions alone. Now, to the right. More to the left. A little to the left. Below.

  Finally her hand lands on an ax and she extricates it from the jumble. Holding it, she thinks of Solovyei, of the hatchet he often carried on his belt. Then she forgets him. Solovyei is far away, lost among the past’s abysses, beyond reach for centuries, vanished.

  Tottering, she goes back to the men. She goes back with the ax. She threw away the debarker after the third throat-slicing. She feels like she has no more strength left. She walks toward the three men in the darkness, without really knowing what she will do. It depends on her, but mostly on the bird.

  When she comes to the foot of the birches, she waits a minute.

  The three merchants are lying next to each other, legs splayed. All have their hands around their throats. Two utter a fleshy, almost regular groan, they’ve managed to find the way to hold their windpipe in the black night, to breathe and survive. A provisional way, but still a way. The third one, in the middle, is dead.

  On the other side of the trees, Myriam Umarik hears the fire crackling, the beasts dropping cowpats. The air is warm. It’s a pleasant summer night, but the sky is completely black, and, besides, the branches obscure it. It’s a pleasant summer night in the taiga and there aren’t even flies to ruin it.

  Myriam Umarik raises her ax. She obeys the bird.

  Left, middle, right, orders the bird.

  Between the legs, orders the bird. Left, middle, right.

  41

  • —And now? Myriam Umarik whispered. Now what do I do?

  —It’s best if you keep going, the bird said.

  Dawn broke. They were both sitting in front of the campfire’s ashes. The embers had stopped reddening, and they stayed there in silence, meditating on things of the world or equivalent subjects. And now a bluish light hung between the trunks and the forest, which until then had been made only of noises and silence, became an image.

  Myriam Umarik didn’t turn her head toward the beasts. A little farther off, beyond the tufts of redfruit ballerinas whose colors couldn’t be seen, was the little esplanade where she had carried out justice. Justice had been rendered without long tragic tirades, or even an attempt at a short speech. Deep in the shadows, she had brought her ax down three times and she had left the place without waiting for anything else. Three ax blows to the pelvis, to her torturers’ crotches, to finish off two who were living and one who was dead.

  —I could return to Barguzin, Myriam Umarik whispered. I don’t know if I’ll find the way back, but I can try.

  —Sure, the bird said. The forest is a labyrinth. You’ll get lost. Better that you go forward.

  —Where to? Myriam Umarik asked quietly.

  —In any case, Barguzin is deceased, the bird declared pompously, then cawed.

  It was hard to determine whether it was a human with wings, or a bird endowed with reason and a voice, or if it was a magical creature, or a corpse. What was clear, though, was that it was cawing.

  They were both silent until the day rose. The summer’s warmth snaked toward them, with its smells of dry leaves, mushrooms and blueberries, blackberries, susmanción peppers. Thirty meters away, one of the beasts shook its huge, woolly head and dropped a pat. The other did so as well, setting off a clinking of utensils that were now disorganized on his back, then it calmed down. Everything was quiet.

  • They didn’t talk about what had happened the previous night, or the horrible week that had preceded it. She was covered with stains and blood, but she didn’t want that discussed out loud, even with her own voice. When the opportunity arose, she would immerse herself in a stream, a lake, and she would wash herself. For now, she had to forget or pretend to forget the filth, the crimes endured and the crimes committed in revenge.

  —Once, back where I was living, there was Solovyei, she said suddenly. Did you know him?

  —Never heard of it, the bird lied, then indicated that it would leave.

  It waved its wings. They were extraordinarily black.

  • —And the beasts? Myriam Umarik asked.

  —If I were you, I’d make pemmican out of them, the bird advised.

  42

  • Not far from there, if several thousand kilometers aren’t taken into consideration and, indeed, if a gap of several hundred years can be overlooked, a new black sea formed in the taiga, along a peat bog already overflowing with slimy water and naphtha.

  Aldolay Schulhoff was leaning against a pine trunk and he watched the dinky puddle surging. He watched it appear, well up, grow, and stop increasing. The entirety of the process hadn’t required more than eleven months and, when all was done, Aldolay Schulhoff sighed.

  —It all came up from the buried villages, he said.

  Next to him, leaning against another pine, Kronauer grumbled in agreement. He felt exhausted. He hadn’t wanted to talk, but he made an attempt to strike up a conversation with his companion.

  —It’s like the memories, he stuttered with effort.

  His ideas, like his voice, were mushy.

  —It’s like the memories, he said. It’s black oil. It comes up from the buried lives.

  —Sure, Aldolay Schulhoff said.

  • They had met in an earlier spring. They each, like the other, had been attracted like magnets to the remains of a train car that they had seen through the trees. They had headed toward this unexpected shape and, after walking around it, they had literally bumped into each other. Their relationship had taken time to settle, because of the difficulty they had communicating in a language they both knew. After decades or centuries of solitary walking, their vocabulary had diminished and was slow to return. But it had come back, at last. A gruff rapport had been established between the two men, and, in any case, neither was aggressive toward the other. In these times when humanity no longer existed, calling this friendship wasn’t excessive.

  The train car had sunk partway and its roof was broken open. When fall came, Aldolay Schulhoff had spent a long while talking at Kronauer about the possibility of climbing up the wagon’s side, up to the hold, and falling into the opening in order to have shelter for the winter, but, after a discussion that had lasted until the first snowfall, they had rejected this bold expedition, feeling, perhaps rightly, that once they were shut away in the car’s darkness they would have difficulty extracting themselves. So they had spent the winter as they usually did, shivering as they shifted around the pine trunks according to the direction of the wind, and, sometimes, they managed to light a fire and warm themselves by it while saying a few sentences.

  —I don’t know why, but I feel like I’ve already seen this train car, Kronauer said after a tedious silence.

  —These rails, though, Aldolay Schulhoff said. The tracks led somewhere.

  —There must have been a camp at the end of the line, Kronauer added.

  —Sure, Aldolay Schulhoff said weakly. A camp at the end of the line. That would make sense.

  —If it wasn’t this train car, it was another one like it, Kronauer mused.

  They were quiet for a minute. The twilight surrounded them and didn’t change. For a long time already there hadn’t been day or night. Seasons, sure, but days and nights, no. They stayed that way for a minute, as if they had fallen asleep.

  —The locomotive must be down below, Aldolay Schulhoff said.

  —Who knows how far down, Kronauer said.

  • Aldolay Schulhoff only had t
he skin on his bones, if you can call it that, but he compensated for his thinness with a uniform of ragged clothes that filled out his figure until he looked like a normal trespasser. For a whole period, in the past, he had worn ribbons and rags left on trees or under rocks by shamans. But in the centuries that had followed the disappearance of the shamans and their devotees, he had made do with what he pulled off carcasses of the dead or their like, from dead birds or animal corpses or soldiers. It was an outfit that evolved at the mercy of his discoveries, which were still extremely rare. It wasn’t elegant, this outfit, but in the chill, the wind, and the darkness, it performed the function Aldolay Schulhoff expected of it.

  Kronauer, clothes-wise, now barely differed from Aldolay Schulhoff, but all the same he continued to resemble a prisoner who had once been a militiaman, perhaps because he wore a shapka he replaced every so often, whenever he found one on a dead watchman or on officers out of harm’s way, regularly and in any case at least once a century, the red star that confirmed its connection to the Second Soviet Union. The rest of his uniform was less stereotypical and more like what the beggars collected perfunctorily in the dumps, back when there were still beggars and dumps.