Every New Year’s Eve the Company imported a band to the factory and the men who were lodged in the Barracks had their own dance. The villagers didn’t participate, the Company didn’t encourage them to, and it was for this reason that it was called the Ram’s Run. I crossed the railway line. The music was louder. The furnaces were throbbing as usual. The smoke from the chimney stacks was white in the starlight. Otherwise everything was still and frozen. Not a soul to be seen outside. The ground-floor rooms adjoining the office block were lit up. There were no curtains and the windows were misted over.
I crept up to one and scraped like a mouse with my fingernail. I couldn’t believe my eyes, there was a man who was dancing sitting down on the floor! He had his hands on his hips and he threw out his feet in front of him and his feet came back as fast as they went out, like balls bouncing off a wall. I was so amazed I didn’t notice the approach of the stranger who was now at my side looking down at me.
Good evening, he said. Why don’t you come into the warm?
I shook my head.
You must be hot-blooded, not to mind the cold on a night like this!
It’s only minus fifteen, I said.
Those were the first words I spoke to him. After them there was a silence. The two of us stood there by the light of the window, our breaths steamy and entwining like puffs from the nostrils of the same horse.
What’s your name?
Odile.
Your name in full?
Mademoiselle Odile Blanc.
He stood to attention like a soldier and bowed his head. He must have been two metres tall. His hair was cropped short and he had enormous thumbs, his hands pressed against his thighs, his thumbs were as big as sparrows.
My name is Stepan Pirogov.
Where were you born?
Far away.
In a valley?
Somewhere which is flat, flat, flat.
No rivers?
There’s a river there called the Pripiat.
Ours is called the Giffre.
Blanc? Blanc means white like milk?
Not always — not when you order vin blanc!
White like snow, no?
Not the white of an egg! I shouted.
Give me one more joke, he said and opened the door.
I was standing in the vestibule of the Ram’s ballroom. After the glacial air outside, it felt very warm. There was the noise of men talking — like the sound of the fermentation of fruit in a barrel. There was a strong smell of sour wine, scent, and the red dust that in the end powders every ledge and every flat surface facing upwards in the factory. Along one wall of the vestibule — which was really an anteroom to the offices, where the clerical staff took off their coats and put on their aprons — there was a long table where women whom I’d never seen before were serving drinks to a group of men who had obviously been drinking for a longer time than was good for them. My brother said that the women for the Ram’s Run were hired by the company and brought from far away, somewhere near Lyons, in a bus.
I wanted to get out into the air and I wanted him not to forget me immediately. So I told him a story about my grandmother. It wasn’t strictly my grandmother. It was the woman my grandfather lived with after his wife was dead. When he died, Céline — she was called — Céline continued to live in Grandfather’s house alone. She was old by then. You can’t explain all that to a stranger whom you’ve just met a few minutes before and who has taken you into a bar full of men with the windows steamed up and the floorboards muddy and wet with melted ice. So I told him it was my grandmother.
Grandma always had a billygoat, so the neighbours had the habit of bringing their goats to her when they were in heat. She used to charge a thousand a visit, and if the goat didn’t take they had another visit for nothing. One year, every single neighbour who had come with a goat in heat demanded a second visit. Something was wrong. Grandmother talked about it to Nestor the gravedigger who was married to her niece and bred rabbits whose skins were sold as otter. It’s simple, he said to her, he’s too cold, in your stable all alone, the he-goat must be freezing. Build him a stall where he’ll keep warm! Grandma went home and thought about Nestor’s advice and decided it was too much trouble. Instead, she’d bring the beast into the kitchen — except when the sun was out. The he-goat recovered and all the neighbours’ goats were going to have kids at Eastertime. When Grandma next saw Nestor the gravedigger, she thanked him for his advice. So you built him a stall? he said. Too much trouble, she replied, I brought him into the kitchen. Nestor looked surprised. And the smell? he asked. Grandma shrugged her shoulders. What do you expect with a he-goat, she said, he soon got used to it!
I was glad when he laughed. Then I caught sight of myself in a mirror above a sink. What was I doing here? Quickly I turned away from the mirror. He stood there, towering above me, protective like a tree. And hesitating. Perhaps under the neon light I was a surprise to him. Perhaps outside he had thought I was older. Perhaps he hadn’t seen how ridiculous my clothes were. Despite myself I glanced at the mirror again.
Your feet must be cold, he said.
I looked down at my thick, artificial-fur-lined boots and shook my head.
If we dance, they’ll warm up! And at that moment the band, whom I couldn’t see, started to play. A polka. This man, to whom I’d told the story about the goat, took my arm and delicately guided me towards the Ram’s Run. The band were installed on planks laid on scaffolding. All the other women wore high-heeled shoes. The music sounded strange, for the room, which was normally a storeroom, had no ceiling. Far up, high above, were the iron girders of the same roof which covered the topmost furnace. Most of the women were wearing low-cut dresses and some wore golden bracelets. There were also men dancing with each other. And one woman dancing alone with a gigantic feather.
What’s so surprising about music is that it comes from the outside. It feels as if it comes from the inside. The man who had clicked his heels and announced his name as Stepan Pirogov was dancing with Odile Blanc. Yet inside the music, which was inside me, Odile and Stepan were the same thing. If he had touched me whilst we were dancing like men touch women, I’d have slapped his face. Behind the band there was a heap of shovels, if he had touched me, I would have taken a shovel to him. He knew better. He didn’t interfere with what the music was doing. He tossed back his head at each beat, chin flung up, neck taut, mouth smiling. When the band stopped, he lifted his hand off my shoulder and stared at the players as if surprised that there was no more music, then he nodded and the band started up again. It looked as though he ordered the music with a nod of his head.
For a long while, I don’t know how long, before we had exchanged anything except a silly story about a goat, before anything had been decided between us, when I knew nothing of Stepan Pirogov, the two of us let the music fill us like a single cart drawn uphill by a cantering horse.
Are you thirsty? he eventually asked.
We returned to the vestibule with its neon lights, where he bought me a lemonade. This time I avoided looking in the mirror. His accent was very foreign.
Where is it you live, Odile?
In the house after the shunting line stops.