Radiant Terminus

by Antoine Volodine

  Ultimately, nothing of her existence in the Levanidovo had really changed.

  Technical small-scale changes. Ordinary details to go over again. Less cozy comforts. And then this body that obeyed her less and less, these organs abdicating their responsibilities. But, ultimately, nothing of her existence had changed.

  • For example, now, when she pined for Solovyei and his abstruse, possibly counterrevolutionary poems, she had to go through much more complex operations than back when it was enough to crank the phonograph handle and insert a cylinder.

  Only the horn remained of Solovyei’s famous machine. The Gramma Udgul set it on the rim of the well, to take advantage of the vibrations the well’s walls provided. She stripped her arms to the shoulders, squeezed her armpit to make a funnel for the horn, pushed down on the lower cap with the shriveled skin covering her ribcage or what remained of it. Her body played the role of the membrane, she turned the cylinder with her left hand, and she scratched the grooves with a nail on her right hand. The result was mediocre.

  When Solovyei appeared during these difficult sessions, he became furious with her. He was gently furious, but, still, he reproached her for ravaging his admirable bass-tenor voice, for making his poems inaudible.

  —You can’t hear a word, he said. It’s not music or even speech. It’s like someone’s shaking gravel in a pig bladder.

  He waved his magic hand over the Gramma Udgul’s neck, he caressed her back, and while he scolded her, he soothed her. He still felt a tenderness for her that the years hadn’t eroded.

  —It’s a problem with the membrane, the Gramma Udgul said. The needle, that still works, but the membrane’s ruined. My skin’s too dry.

  She tried to talk distinctly, to no avail.

  —What? Solovyei asked.

  The Gramma Udgul tried to repeat her scientific explanation.

  —I just don’t understand what you’re mumbling, Solovyei said jokingly.

  The Gramma Udgul became furious in turn. She knew her speech was difficult to follow, but she accused Solovyei of ill will.

  —It’s the skin’s resonance. And then this phonograph, it wasn’t the best quality to begin with.

  —I don’t understand you at all, Solovyei repeated. You’re as clear as a Buddhist rattle being shaken in a bucket of oil.

  • —I already told you that you’d do best to throw them into the well, Solovyei says.

  —What?

  —The cylinders. They’re no good for anything. Nobody’s listening to them anyway. Throw them to the core.

  —I’ll do what I like, the Gramma Udgul says.

  The president of the kolkhoz resumes.

  —They’ve done their time, he says.

  —What are you talking about? the Gramma Udgul asks.

  Solovyei shrugs.

  The snow has begun to fall again. The twilight has invaded what remains of the former warehouse, several filthy piles of scrap metal, rubble covered with moss, lichens, wild grasses like flying grains, aboufians, döldjinetts, agazilles, torturess violets.

  —I’m the one I should throw into the core, the Gramma Udgul suddenly says. I’m the one who’s done my time.

  —I don’t understand you at all, Solovyei says.

  45

  • The idea of tumbling into the pit and, after a two-kilometer fall, being swallowed and digested by the core, began to obsess the Gramma Udgul that winter. She had had enough of immortality and felt more and more impotent and socially useless. The liquidation jobs had been successful in the area, there were no longer suspect elements that needed to be alerted to authorities in charge of proletarian morality, and the authorities in turn had dissolved along with the rest of the human species they were supposed to lead into the future, or, at least, toward communism. The Gramma Udgul’s existence had consequently lost most of its savor. Moreover, nature had evolved under the effects of constant nuclear radiation. The spectrum of living species had diminished, and, after a short period of mutations when baroque and spectacular apparitions could be seen, sterility had reigned, and the planet had returned to an essentially vegetal state. Contrary to scholars’ predictions, which as usual were contradicted by chance, spiders and arachnids in general hadn’t filled the spaces opened up by the decline of the animals. For eighty-one decades and then some, flies had looked like they would be a dominant species, and then, in turn, they had been extinguished without leaving any kin. Several survivors in the taiga with feathers or fur eked out a living, but their numbers were negligible, and, in short, the Gramma Udgul was one of the last earthly creatures endowed with a brain and several appendages. If she had been one thousand nine hundred seventy-seven years younger, maybe she would have set out to start, on a small scale, a Third Soviet Union, but now age played its evil stifling role and she no longer had the strength.

  • She began to think about suicide and she talked to the core every night, leaning over the edge and grumbling downward. The fact that her fall would end in an apotheosis within fissile material appealed to her more than ever. She had always spoken to the core affectionately, both out of respect for great human inventions, even though everything indicated that the meltdown was complete, and because the atoms’ fury had given her exceptional longevity. She had resisted everything and she felt indebted to the wrecked reactors, the flow of corium, the lands sprinkled with plutonium, and, in short, to all that had accelerated the extinction of humanity, of our best comrades as well as our enemies, and of animals in general.

  She rambled over the pile about numerous stories concerning her, or she discussed points of Marxism-Leninism barely explored before then, such as reality’s persistence within dreams, perpetual wandering within worlds after death, pemmican production, the phonograph’s defective functioning, post-exotic poetry. The core didn’t respond. The well was filled with poisonous winds and its darkness sometimes seemed permeated with blacker-than-black flames, and sometimes a violent heat escaped as well, but the core remained silent, and no dialogue developed.

  • The Gramma Udgul could have easily stepped over the well’s edge and fallen as she waited for her future to come to a close. But she hesitated, because she thought of Solovyei and she hoped that he would commit suicide with her. She wanted him to jump with her into the void and they would both sink, hand in hand, in enduring love.

  —You have nothing left to do in this world, the Gramma Udgul argued. You only have to go with me. It will be an end like we’ve dreamed of for a thousand years.

  —What? Solovyei asked, taking her in his arms. I don’t understand a word of what you’re jabbering.

  —We’re not Romeo and Juliet, the Gramma Udgul protested. But it would still be beautiful to end the way they did. Together. And besides, socialism’s construction is over.

  —What? Solovyei said while stroking her scalp, her shoulder blades.

  —Damn it, the Gramma Udgul said. Let’s go. We’re too old. Nothing interesting left here.

  —Stop talking like that, Solovyei said. You’re sputtering nonsense. Like a dead owl jabbering in the tar.

  • While the Gramma Udgul was in the doldrums, Solovyei persisted in his comings and goings through the dark or fiery tunnels of dreams, of magical worlds, and of death. But he did also feel less interested now in the events and futures of those he had animated, reanimated, manipulated, or possessed and entered through their memories, through their unconscious, through their after-deaths. There were no longer enough surprises in his theater.

  • And so, that evening, they sat down as usual on the edge. From the depths came a slightly nauseating warmth, the core’s breath as it was regaining its strength now that the fuel from the plant situated beneath the Soviet had joined it.

  Shadows reigned on the Levanidovo. The forest was close, fall warned of winter. A permanent mushy twilight enveloped all the things of the world. Generally, the illumination wasn’t the sort to bring joy to the hearts of any survivors.

  The Gramma Udgul drank half a kettleful of cold
tea and filled a cup for Solovyei.

  —It’s a white-Tatar decoction, she said when he had begun to drink the liquid she had given him.

  —What? Solovyei asked. You’re talking worse than ever. I can’t understand a single syllable.

  —White Tatar, the Gramma Udgul repeated. It’ll loosen us up. I couldn’t find another poison. It’ll relax us before we jump.

  Solovyei grimaced in indication that he had given up on trying to understand what his companion was mumbling. Then he reached for the kettle and poured himself some more.

  —What is this? He asked. This tastes as good as hell. I hope it’s not poison.

  —It’s white Tatar, the Gramma Udgul said. It’s so we’ll be drunk before we throw ourselves into the well.

  —It’s good, Solovyei said. It smells like red currants from long ago, smorodina we used to gather in the old forest. Remember that?

  The Gramma Udgul didn’t reply and they were quiet for several minutes. Then the Gramma Udgul shifted her position on the edge. Now her legs hung over the void. A small thrust with her butt, what remained of her butt after a century, and she would slip right into the abyss.

  —Give me your hand, she said. Jump with me.

  —Be careful, Solovyei said.

  He took her hand. With the other he rubbed her back. The Gramma Udgul’s clothes were nothing more than dusty fibers, and, beneath them, the skin wasn’t much more.

  —Be careful, Solovyei said again. You could fall.

  He leaned toward the shadowy pit. Several meters of earthen walls could be seen, and then nothing. Two thousand meters further down, a magma burned, tarry and terrible, ready to engulf all that reached it from the surface, whether an object, a dead or living animal, or an old immortal creature.

  —It would make me happy if we did this together, the Gramma Udgul said.

  Then, seeing no reason to drag things out, she pushed with her butt and her left hand, and she tumbled forward.

  Solovyei immediately let go. He opened his eyes wide to follow the first twenty meters of her fall. She resembled a small, emaciated animal. Then, without any noise, she disappeared.

  • Solovyei was stupefied. He had never believed the Gramma Udgul’s jokes about suicide and, in the preceding moments, he had been sincere in his repetitions that he neither understood her words, nor her intentions. He couldn’t accept the idea that, right before his eyes, the Gramma Udgul had thrown herself to the mercy of the core. But that was what had happened, and there was no return. All the magic of the dream world was useless to bring a suicide back to the surface. Once the Gramma Udgul came into contact with what rumbled at the bottom of the well, she would be extinguished.

  Leaning over the edge, Solovyei considered diving in turn toward the earth’s entrails, feeling for one minute the sensation of free fall and, at the bottom, instantaneously dying.

  He began to think passionately about the Gramma Udgul. The end of everything, irrevocable extinction, tempted him.

  Still, maybe due to the effects of the white-Tatar decoction, he let the minute when his actions could have corresponded to a loving union with the Gramma Udgul pass, and, little by little, he recovered his spirits.

  • Night fell over the hangar’s ruins, the night or what served for it, a sort of lowering of ambient light, moonless, starless, stripped of anything more or less than the permanent grayness of day.

  Solovyei got up and stretched.

  —No, he said out loud.

  His herculean silhouette could barely be seen. It was hard to determine whether he was a mutant bird, a gigantic sorcerer, or a rich farmer from Soviet or Tolstoyan times.

  —No, he repeated. I’m not joining her today.

  He cawed over the well, without hunching. His scream crossed the well, the ruins, and disappeared into the silent taiga.

  —After all, I’m going to frolic a little more, he said.

  And, once again, he cawed.

  46

  • He threw into the well the half-dozen cylinders that the Gramma Udgul had spared and, for good measure, he added the kettle and the phonograph horn. If there had been witnesses, they would have reported that his face was soaked in tears but that he didn’t seem particularly crestfallen, and on the contrary he seemed full of energy, gesticulating exaggeratedly like a fairground huckster in front of a crowd. In reality, his heart was bleeding. His beloved had flown away forever, nothing interested him anymore, and every part of him was suffering. But he insisted loudly that he could keep on living. Him or me, doesn’t matter.

  Now he took a breath to recite a poem without any mechanical intermediary.

  He leaned over the edge so his voice would be amplified.

  This would be the final declamation sung toward the core, because he intended to leave early in the morning, to keep frolicking for an indefinite period—several moments or several centuries—and, whatever happened, never to set foot again in the Levanidovo.

  • Then he spread his most painful wing and, when it was completely extended, he spread it even further, and when the largest pinion’s tip touched the sky, blackness was complete, and almost immediately he called his dead henchmen to his aid, knowing that nearby there would always be several dead ready to pledge their allegiance, too happy, whatever the often atrocious contractual conditions of slavery that would allow them to regain a little existence, to keep alive darkness and know once again the joys of the tar, and, indeed, several men and women responded to his war cry, and right away they lit as best as they could a candle, a fire, a brush fire, scrub fire, forest fire, so that the world of their master would seem filled with and augmented by lights and, while they were also manifested by songs or animalistic groans, some of whom had forgotten the most rudimentary gestures to be made in front of the flames or some of whom, weakened, could no longer easily adjust the wigs that served as their bodily envelopes, grew fiery and once these who had been clumsy were transformed into torches he listed them, sometimes pronouncing their names hurriedly, like when reading lists during police inspections in front of the barracks, sometimes naming them slowly and respectfully, like when remembering those who lost their lives in battle against the enemy, or in fratricidal war, or fighting against general human stupidity, and, having paid homage to his servants, who left for the ashes, he waited with infinite patience for all that still shone, every ember, to go dark, and once he had become familiar again with darkness, first with the same stentorian voice he had used for the call, then with a wailing and magical voice like the wind, he bemoaned the absence of the world, and the absence of the present, and the absence of his daughters and his wives, all creatures that he had spent his existence confusing for they were so numerous and so similar in what he had done with them, then suddenly, as a chill akin to interstellar ice had slowed his tongue, he went to warm himself in a nearby inn, which he had pulled out of a dream from the previous night, and there, clicking his beak, wrapped in a coat that hid his scarcely respectable shapes, he made a great uproar, claiming to be a prince of thugs traveling between two realities, and to whom every descendant of the great apes, deceased or not, owed fealty, then, as nobody reacted to his palaver, whether nobody had been born or died in the area for millennia, or those present were indifferent to his bragging, or maybe belonged to a dream where he wasn’t at his best, he paused in the smoky room, teetered back and forth while pulling down lanterns and lamps, yanking on the chains of several trapdoors that opened onto nothing, and in a terrible mood and, rather than change worlds, he went out into the inn’s yard and he made his way to a shack where the engineers had built a small countryside nuclear plant for the needs of the innkeepers and the possible backpackers, truck drivers, or gentlemen whom they welcomed for the night, and probably to rob them and roast them, and, having inhaled the scent of a gust of radioactive materials, he grew delighted at the prospect of once again making contact with the black flames of fuel rods and he didn’t take long to discover a way in, and soon he was hunched beyond the concrete,
there where he knew began the tunnels that led to unexplored universes, and after having embraced the core for a long while, he turned the page of his aberrant narrative constructions, holding back from setting the torrent of his morganatic, adulterous, or incestuous loves deep within his monologue, and instead of reciting them again in detail to console himself before extinction, he just interminably whispered lists of feminine pronouns, lists of grasses, lists of comrades, and lists of the unspoken, then, already numb, already drowsy, he stopped murmuring.

  47

  • Throughout the centuries, Hannko Vogulian’s feelings toward written things had wholly changed and, after having long considered her responsibilities limited to reproducing as best as possible the books she had read, from Marxist-Leninist classics to classics of feminist or post-exotic prose, she had decided to keep a much more thorough diary, and, little by little, she had come to take pleasure in inventing stories and in depicting ordinary and extraordinary people, which she set as she wished in strange or desperate situations, which she made die if she felt like it and wander eternally through bardic worlds which no death allowed them to really leave, and in any case never forever. She had created her literary world, which at first was influenced by what she had once known in the kolkhoz, in the peaceful albeit incestuous post-nuclear hell of the Levanidovo, but which had then gone in unexpected directions, which she had the greatest trouble justifying logically or empirically. Setting aside the laborious mental copying of novels and brochures that she had ultimately forgotten, constantly trying not to ape her father’s abstruse poems, she had begun by listening to the voices guiding her for reality to turn into a dough where the forms obeyed her, and she had ended up magically overpowering her inspiration to write books of her own. Her spelling was now a catastrophe, she wasn’t very good with syntax, ink and paper were missing, but she wrote books. In the period of interest to us, and when humanity had long since ceased to show any sign of life, she was the only survivor to go to this trouble, which is why we will forgive the mistakes, absurdities, and impasses in her narrative flow, as well as the longueurs, and sometimes, on the contrary, the inexplicable shortcuts or the refusal to exploit or enrich scenes that could have been, or interruptions in the recitative. If we try to connect her to a genre, her writing has to be included in the class of works with strong oneiric content, with, in terms of politics, a disillusioned relationship to the Second Soviet Union. Originally, which is to say in her first personal works, traces of her own background certainly could be detected, but after that these traces were so diluted that we would have to be sharp critics to find them, prove them, and make some sort of unreadable or malevolent commentary.