Samurai was stunned. So one must picture the bold "bar-budos," their automatic rifles in their hands, waiting in line to get a new pair of socks!
When Belmondo arrived, Samurai was sixteen. All the wretched questions provoked by his disillusioned love were in the process of turning into a trauma that prevented him from seeing, breathing, smiling. He had become strong, but the evil that he set out to combat renewed itself like the heads of the Hydra. With the arrival of a new team of loggers; with a new drunken brawl on the steps of the liquor store. At the very most, all he had managed to conquer was a narrow zone of security around his own person. Life did not change. And the fair companion in arms, in her khaki pants and her combat jacket with rolled-up sleeves, had not yet shown up.
While the Yankee blue jeans that had made their appearance on the chubby legs of a local apparatchik's son were wreaking havoc among the hearts of the local Siberian maidens…
So should he go on breaking branches with the edge of his hand? Crossing the river while holding an iron bar above his head, a substitute for a future automatic rifle? Rebuking drunken loggers? Cutting off the Hydra's heads and doubling the evil? Living as if on a blockaded island? Defending weak people, who then hurl their perfidious mockery at your back?
It was then that Samurai encountered Belmondo. He witnessed his pointless feats, his fight for fight's sake. He discovered that to take up arms could be beautiful. That landing a blow could have its elegance. That the gesture was often worth more than the effort's objective. That what counted was panache.
Samurai was discovering the bitter aesthetic of the desperate struggle against evil. He saw it as the only way out of the labyrinth of awkward questions. Yes, to take up arms, thinking only of the beauty of the combat! To hurl oneself as a single trooper into the action sequence of war. And to quit the field of battle before the grateful weak can come and praise you to the skies or reproach you for any excesses. Yes, to fight, knowing that victory would be short-lived. Like in the film… Though the publisher was vanquished, turned into a laughingstock, and lost his wig, he would soon return to his inaccessible office. But the beauty of those last few moments would be the hero's best reward. Embracing his lovely neighbor – now won back – he leans over the balcony and hurls the pages of his manuscript at the retreating publisher and his clique. What madness, but what a gesture!
A week after the first showing Samurai had a fight with two drunken truckers in the workers' canteen. All the conventions were respected in this classic barroom scenario. The strident shrieking of the canteen woman; the silence of the human herd gripped both by fear and by the reflex "It's got nothing to do with me." And the young male lead who rises to his feet at the end of the room and walks toward the two aggressors. The truckers were newcomers; they did not know that this young man's hand broke thick branches at the first blow. Two or three lunges from his hand-sword sufficed to evict them. But Samurai could no longer be content for the scene to end like that. He went back into the canteen. Watched by the diners, rigid in front of their plates, he put down a crumpled ruble note in front of the cashier, as she cowered behind her counter, and remarked: "Those miserable wretches forgot to pay for their soup."
Then he strode out into the icy wind, accompanied by a buzz of admiration…
Back home, he sat down in front of a mirror and stared at himself for a long time. A lock of dark hair fell across his brow; his nose was slightly squashed – the relic of some unequal combat; his lips were tensed in a determined Une; a heavy lower jaw was accustomed to taking cannonball blows from the weighty fists of men. He gave a friendly wink at the face looking back at him out of the mirror. He had recognized him. He had recognized himself… Never had our fabled Western World seemed so close!
11
The sun was rising as we came out of the taiga, heading for the valley of the Olyei. As if we were leaving the night behind us deep inside that sleeping kingdom of pine trees, where the great owl glided through the silvery shadows, seeking a refuge for the daylight hours.
The red disk appeared from behind a cold veil and slowly replaced the gray and blue tones with shades of pink. Shaking off our nocturnal torpor, we began to talk, to exchange impressions of the last performance. But above all, to the point of exhaustion and of losing our voices, to imitate Belmondo…
This time, on our sixteenth trip to see the film, Samurai went ahead of us a little, striking out with long strides over the plain, whose smooth mauve surface was so inviting. I stopped to wait for Utkin. As he left the shadows of the forest and emerged onto this great, luminous space, he swung around the tip of a small pine tree buried under the snow and came to join me.
His gaze always used to make me feel a bit uneasy. The mixture of jealousy, despair, and resignation with which he surveyed my face…
This time there was none of it. Dragging his injured leg, he came up to me, his right shoulder pointing toward the sky, and smiled. He looked at me squarely like an equal, with neither bitterness nor jealousy. His duckling's gait seemed no longer to preoccupy him. I was struck by the serenity of his face. As I set off again, I told myself that I had been seeing these calm and somehow wiser eyes for some time now. I slowed my speed somewhat, allowing myself to be overtaken. Replying absentmindedly to the remarks of my companions, I began to think about the mystery surrounding Utkin.
For he, too, saw the six-thirty performance as much more than a simple burlesque comedy…
On that spring day long ago when his body had been crushed by the ice floes in the thaw, his child's eyes had undergone a change of vision. In that instant Utkin had acquired a particular view of things such as only extreme pain or pleasure can bestow. At these moments we can observe ourselves – from a distance – as a stranger. A stranger unrecognizable in his overwhelming pain or in the spasms of extreme pleasure. For a few seconds we sustain this division into two…
Utkin had seen himself that way. Against the pale wall of a hospital room. His suffering was so great that he was on the brink of asking himself: "But who is he, this thin little fellow, moaning and shivering in his plaster shell?" Yes, it was very early, at the age of eleven, that he experienced this perception. The maimed body crying out, suffering; and alongside it, it's hard to know exactly where, the detached, calm scrutiny. A bitter and serene presence. Like a bright autumn day, with the penetrating smell of dead leaves. Utkin knew this presence was also himself: a part of him. Perhaps the most important part. In any case, the most free. He could not have expressed the significance to himself of this division into two. But intuitively he perceived within him the tonality of that imaginary autumn moment…
It was enough to close your eyes, put yourself in tune with the low sun gleaming in the yellow leaves; with the pure scent of the forest; with the limpid air… and you could pose the question, calm, disinterested: "But who is he, that little fellow dragging his lame leg along, pointing one shoulder toward the sky?"
Utkin loved to enter into that day which he had never seen, to dwell there amid the unknown trees with broad indented leaves, yellow and red, such as were not to be found in the taiga. To peer through this sun-drenched foliage at the little fellow as he limped along, his head bowed under the snow squalls…
The mystery of Utkin… The crux of it was that the huge triangle of ice that had suddenly become detached from the banks of the mighty river had left him enough time to realize what was happening. He had time to be aware of the gawking crowd, which drew back when they detected the ominous creaking; time to hear their shouts. And to be afraid. And to understand that he was afraid. And to try to save himself without making the human herd laugh at him as he jumped. And to realize that it was stupid to care about the laughter of the others. And to think: This is me, yes, this really is me; I am alone on this ice, which is breaking up, overturning into the flood; this is me; that's the sun; it is spring; I'm afraid.