Two days later I left the apartment. The owner had come round the day before and had agreed on an amicable solution: I left him all the furniture and antique objects I had accumulated over several months… .
I slept little. At four o’clock I was already up. I packed my rucksack, planning to leave that very day for my habitual journey on foot. Before departing I glanced one last time into Charlotte’s room. By the gray light of morning its silence no longer evoked a museum. No longer did it seem uninhabited. I hesitated for a moment, then I seized an old volume laid on the windowsill and went out.
The streets were empty, misted over with sleep. Scenic views seemed to take shape as I walked toward them.
I thought of the Notes I was carrying away in my bag. That evening, or the next day, I told myself, I would add a new fragment that had come to mind that night. It was at Saranza during my last summer at my grandmother’s… . That day, instead of taking the path that led us across the steppe, Charlotte had turned in among the trees of the copse cluttered with weaponry that the locals called “Stalinka.” I had followed her with a wary tread: according to rumor, you could step on a mine in the thickets of the Stalinka… . Charlotte had stopped in the middle of a broad clearing and had murmured, “Look!” I had seen three or four identical plants that reached up to our knees. Great indented leaves, tendrils clinging to the slender canes stuck in the ground. Dwarf maples? Young blackcurrant bushes? I did not understand Charlotte’s mysterious joy.
“It’s a grapevine, a real one,” she told me at last.
“Oh. Good …”
This revelation did not heighten my curiosity. In my head I could not connect this modest plant with the cult dedicated to wine by my grandmother’s homeland. We remained for several minutes in front of Charlotte’s secret plantation at the heart of the Stalinka… .
Recalling that vine now, I experienced almost unbearable grief and at the same time profound joy. A joy that had at first seemed to me shameful. Charlotte was dead, and on the site of the Stalinka, to judge by Alex Bond’s account, they had built a stadium. There could hardly be a more tangible proof of total, final disappearance. But joy carried the day. Its source lay in that moment I had lived at the center of a clearing; in the breeze from the steppes; in the serene silence of this woman standing before four plants, under whose leaves I now detected the young clusters.
As I walked, I looked from time to time at the photo of the woman in a padded jacket. And now I understood what gave her face a distant resemblance to the people in the albums of my adoptive family. It was that slight smile that appeared thanks to Charlotte’s magic formula, “petite pomme”! Yes, the woman photographed beside the camp fence must have pronounced those enigmatic syllables to herself… . I stopped for a moment; I stared at her eyes. Then I said to myself, “I must get used to the idea that this woman, younger than me, is my mother.”
I put away the photo, and went on. And when I thought of Charlotte, her presence in these drowsy streets had the reality, discreet and spontaneous, of life itself.
What I still had to find were the words to tell it with.
Dreams of My Russian Summers
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Questions for Discussion
1. Critics have often compared Dreams of My Russian Summers to Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago. Do you find these books comparable? If so, in what ways do you find Dreams of My Russian Summers similar to Pasternak’s novel?
2. Makine has also been referred to as “the Russian Proust.” What in Makine’s work would bring you to think of Proust? Is it his style? Makine’s juxtaposition of themes? The way the reader profoundly inhabits the protagonist’s mind? Literary references? The author’s subtle play with memory?
3. What role did Charlotte, his French grandmother, play in this young Soviet boy’s life?
4. As Charlotte exposes her grandson to France’s literary history and cultural landscape, and as it gradually makes its way into the young boy’s mind, how and at what point does he begin to distance himself from his own country and look at the Soviet Union “from the outside in”?
5. The Los Angeles Times calls Dreams of My Russian Summers “one of the best autobiographical novels of the century.” Do you agree?
6. Do you sense that this poignant work of fiction might reflect the author’s actual life?
7. When and why does the protagonist — very abruptly, it seems — detach himself from and turn his back on Charlotte, and again embrace Soviet life?
8. How does Makine’s heightened and extremely poetic language contribute to the narrator’s storytelling?
9. As the narrator matures, consider how changes in his relationship with Charlotte affect the relationships he develops with other characters in the novel.
10. Consider Makine’s ability to interweave both French and Russian history throughout the length of the novel while avoiding information overload.
11. When does the narrator begin to see value in the struggle between his two identities?
12. Though a work of fiction, would you consider Dreams of My Russian Summers an ode?
13. The truths Charlotte reveals to her grandson are often harsh and unsettling. Consider how Makine’s use of language allows the novel to remain dreamlike and delicate in nature.
14. The novel’s protagonist, though appealing, is often passive and excessively sensitive. What specific instances in the narrative reaffirm his likability?
15. Does Dreams of My Russian Summers remind you of French literature or Russian literature?
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