Grandfather reappeared in the room, grasping the neck of a bottle of champagne with his great knotty fingers. My eyes opened wide. Samurai uttered a resounding "Aha!" And Utkin emerged from his epileptic fit and summed up all our emotions in a single exclamation, still talking about the film: "Well, that's the West for you!
Grandfather put three chipped china cups and a thick glass tumbler on the table.
"I've been saving this bottle for a friend," he explained, liberating the cork from the wire top. "But he, poor fellow, had the odd idea of dying in the meantime. He was a friend from the front…"
We hardly heard his explanations. The cork leaped out with a joyful crack, there was a moment of cheerful urgency – abundant froth, fierce popping of bubbles, a white surge spilling onto the tablecloth. And finally the first mouthful of champagne, the very first in our lives…
It was only years later, thanks to that bitter clarification of the past that comes with age, that we would remember the friend from the front… But on that evening of the thaw long ago there was only this icy tickling inside our scorched throats, which caused tears of joy to well up. A happy weariness like that of actors after a first night. And Utkin's summary, still ringing in our ears: "Well, that's the West for you!"
Yes, the Western World was born in the sparkle of Crimean champagne, in the middle of a big izba buried in the snow after a French film several years old.
It was the Western World at its most authentic, because engendered in vitro. In that thick glass tumbler that had been washed by whole waves of vodka. And also in our virgin imaginations. In the crystalline purity of the air of the taiga.
It was there, the West. And that night we dreamed of it with open eyes in the bluish darkness of the izba… And three shadowy figures appeared on that southern promenade, whom the summer visitors certainly will not have noticed. These three figures walked around a telephone booth, strolled past a café terrace, and, with their timid gaze, followed two young creatures with beautiful tanned legs…
Our first steps in the Western World.
We were flying through the taiga, stretched out along the trunks of cedar trees on the trailer of a powerful tractor, like those that carried rockets in the army. The rough bark under our backs, the sky sparkling above our eyes, the silvery shadows of the forest on either side of the road. The sunny air inflated our sheepskin coats like sails and shot us through with the smell of resin.
It was strictly forbidden to transport people on trailers, especially when loaded. But the driver had accepted us with cheerful nonchalance. It was the first sign of the changes brought into our existence by Belmondo…
The window of the cabin was lowered, so soft did the air seem that morning. And all along the road we could hear the driver telling the story of the film to his passenger, the foreman of the loggers. Lying flat out on the trees, we followed his narration, delivered with exclamations, oaths, and broad gestures, as his hands perilously left the steering wheel.
From time to time he uttered a particularly ringing cry. "He's got his first tooth, my boy! Ha ha ha! You know what I mean? That's it. My wife wrote to me…"
And he resumed his narrative: "So then he pulls on the chains with all his strength, like that… Sure thing, you could hear his bones cracking. Wow! And bingo! he chucks them in the air. And the other one, with his blade, was just a couple of steps away from the girl. And she – I can't tell you what a great pair of tits she's got. And this bastard wants to cut one of them off. You know what I mean? So the guy goes in right under him and ker-pow! No, no, don't worry. I'm holding the wheel."
And again he interrupted his story to proclaim his fatherly pride: "Hey, the little rascal! His first tooth… Milka writes: 'I can't feed him anymore – he bites my breast till it bleeds' Ha ha ha! He's just like his dad."
The world seemed wonderfully transfigured. All we needed was a miracle to be finally convinced of it. And the miracle came. It was close to the Devil's Bend, even more dangerous under the drifts from the snowstorm. At the place where we should have been moving cautiously, making a slow descent to the bank of the Olyei. But the story was reaching its culmination…
The tractor with its heavy trailer hurtled down the slope, without even slowing down, and plunged out over the thin ice undermined by warm springs…
There was a yell, quickly stifled, from inside the cabin; an oath uttered by Samurai. And then several apocalyptic and interminable seconds, filled with the creaking of the ice giving way under the wheels…
We came to ourselves a hundred yards farther along, already on the other bank. The driver stopped the engine and jumped out into the snow. His passenger followed him. The white surface of the river was incised by two black tracks that were slowly filling with water…
In the absolute silence, nothing could be heard but a faint whistling coming from the engine. The sky had quite a new sparkle to it.
Later, no doubt, the driver and the foreman would talk about a crazy stroke of luck. Or about the speed of the tractor, which had been flying along, scarcely touching the ground. But without their admitting it to themselves, the ruins of the church on the highest part of the riverbank would come into their minds. And without knowing how to think about it, let alone talk about it, they would muse on that remote childish presence (the first tooth!). Maybe this had mysteriously sustained the heavy machine as it crossed the fragile ice…
But we preferred to believe in a simple miracle; from now on this would be so natural in our lives.
On my return, everything in our izba seemed strange to me. It was the strangeness of familiar objects staring at me with curiosity; they seemed to be waiting for my first move. The day before yesterday I had left that room in the morning, to go to school. Since then there had been the switch operator's shanty; the station waiting room; the snowstorm; the house of the red-haired woman; the bridge; the truckdriver… I shook my head, overcome with a singular dizziness. Yes, then my return across the snow-filled valley, the rusty nails of the hanged men…
My aunt came in, carrying the big kettle.
"I've made some pancakes, but some of them are burned; you can leave those," she said in her most normal voice, putting on the table a plate with a pile of golden pancakes.
I looked at this woman in perplexity. There she was entering the room, and she was coming from quite a different era. From before the snowstorm… Suddenly I remembered that there had been the sunny promenade beside the sea, the shark, the underground chamber with the chained beauty… I felt myself reeling. Without explaining anything to my aunt, I left the room and pushed open the front door.
The evening sun was drowsing behind the castellated skyline of the taiga, caught in the watchtowers' invisible trap. Thanks to the purplish haze from the mild spell, you could stare at the coppery disk without screwing up your eyes. And the disk, I was sure, was swaying slightly above the barbed wire…
Next day when Samurai knocked on our door and said to me with a wink: "Let's go!" there was no mistaking what he proposed.
We put on our snowshoes, collected Utkin close by his izba, and left Svetlaya…
The city, twenty-three miles by road, was nineteen if you cut through the taiga. Eight hours on the march, plus a couple of stops to have a bite to eat and especially to give Utkin a breather. An entire day's journey. At the end of it: a sunset and the mists of the city that lay between two arms of the taiga, where it opened out gradually. And closer and closer came the hour, which each time became more magicaclass="underline" six-thirty P.M. The evening performance. Belmondo's.
Already the dense taiga was opening out; our snowy road was leading us straight to that promenade beside the sea and into the midst of that tanned crowd of extraterrestrials in the Western World…