Her exegesis delighted us. So in their ignorance, what the little apparatchiks were studying was a vile surrogate for Belmondo's language! And it was, furthermore, entirely replaceable by a series of primitive gestures and interjections. Utkin was the one who derived the greatest satisfaction from this explanation. The Americans were his pet hate. He could not forgive them for the extermination of the Indians. In his perception the North American Indians were none other than our distant Siberian ancestors who had long ago crossed the Bering Strait and settled all over the great prairies of America. "They are our very close brothers," he would often say He envisaged a military alliance with the Indians against the Americans. And when the fighting was over, New York must be razed to the ground and the lands annexed by the whites returned to the bison and the Indians…
Belmondo departed. The great portrait of him beside the Red October cinema disappeared, making way for various glum faces from a film about the civil war. But the West was still there among us. We sensed its presence in the spring air; in the transparency of the wind, in which we sometimes detected the piquant tang of the ocean; in people's relaxed expressions.
And while the three of us, in love with the West, sought out its secret essence in books and in the music of its language, there were other devotees, who discovered it in more tangible portents. The stunning coup de théâtre pulled off by the school headmistress, for example.
This was the woman who, according to rumors as persistent as they were improbable, indulged in sexual orgies on narrow berths in the cabins of the big trucks that transported vast cargoes of timber. A woman who was forever muffled up in a shawl; who wore a jacket and a skirt of very thick wool, as stiff and as solid as that used for carpets; her feet shod in great fur boots that revealed only a couple of inches of her calves, which were further protected by knitted leggings. A woman, in a word, whose body was inaccessible, unimaginable, nonexistent. And whose face was the face of a faded woman, reminiscent of a padlocked door that no one would ever have wanted to open in any case… And, suddenly, this coup de theatre!
On that day in May we saw an extraordinary car pull up in an alleyway that ran beside the school building in Nerlug. A foreign make such as we would come across only in films about the horrors of capitalism in its death throes. And in those of Belmondo, of course… We already knew that by means of astute bartering it was possible to get yourself one of these cars in the Far East from the Japanese. But it was the first time we had seen one "in the flesh."
It was certainly not new. It must have been sprayed and resprayed, repaired several times, tampered with, perhaps. Its license plate looked like that of any old truck. But what did we care? What counted was its noble profile, its streamlined silhouette, its unfamiliarity. In a word, its Western air.
It all happened very quickly. The passersby and we students did not even have time to crowd around the beautiful stranger. Its door slammed; and a tall, well-built man, wearing the uniform of an officer in the merchant marine, emerged and took a few steps, while keeping his eye on the school gate. Everyone followed his gaze.
A woman came down the flight of steps. The headmistress! Yes, it was she… We instantly forgot about the car. For the woman who walked over to the captain was very beautiful. We saw her legs revealed up to the knee, long, svelte, the light shining off her black stockings. We could even see her knees, which were elongated, elegant and delicate. And furthermore she had breasts and hips. Her breasts were slightly uplifted by the fine lace that framed the very modest décolletage of her dress. Her hips filled the fine material with their rhythmic movement. She was quite simply a beautiful woman, confident in her gestures, smiling as she went to meet the man waiting for her. Her swept-up hair revealed the pretty curve of her neck; on her ears sparkled pendants decorated with amber. And her face, in its fresh and open candor, was like a bouquet of wildflowers.
At the moment of their meeting, of course, all we saw was this bouquet. The other features of the transfigured headmistress were imprinted in our eyes but examined only later, with the aid of our collective memory. The coup de theatre was too rapid.
She crossed the spring street. The captain took several steps toward her, with a somewhat mysterious smile hovering on his face. Then, with the flourish of a conjurer, he removed his fine blue nautical cap and bowed to the woman who stood in front of him. The crowd held its breath… The captain kissed the headmistress on the cheek…
So they did know how to do all that! She to dress elegantly, groom her hair, be lively, desirable; he to master that handsome machine, open the door for a lady with a courteous remark. And, above all, to take off Belmondo style!
Yes, he did it for us, driving through the red light, defying the gray uniforms, chewing up the streets of Nerlug with his four fearsome wheels. The roar of the beautiful stranger deafened us; its speed distorted all normal perspectives – trees and houses seemed to be hurtling toward us. And the car, with squealing tires, was already turning into Lenin Avenue. At the open window we saw a flash of our headmistress's pink scarf fluttering in the wind. Like a gesture of farewell.
A week later the city discovered the key to the mystery… On the day of the last snowstorm the headmistress had decided to go and see this film, at the very first showing of the day. So as to be sure of not being surprised there by her pupils. Everyone had been talking about this Belmondo for months. But she had not cared to stoop to that type of mass culture. However, the temptation was great. The headmistress must have sensed a wind of change blowing in the streets of Nerlug…
The day after the storm, hardly had the snowplows cleared the principal thoroughfares of the city than she went to the cinema. Armored in her carapace of thick wool, she noted with satisfaction that she was practically alone in the auditorium…
The captain arrived only after the newsreel. A disciplined man, he found his row and his seat and sat down beside her. He wore the expression he had on bad days – days when he needed to leave the ship and plunge into the bustle of everyday life, become a man like other men. He was on his way to Novosibirsk: his train had been blocked at Nerlug by winter's rearguard action; its departure was not forecast for another twenty-four hours. Exasperated by the futile wait, badly shaved, peevish, the captain ended up in the cold auditorium of the Red October cinema, next to a woman of whom he thought, with disgust: So this is a woman of Nerlug… Heavens above! How can a woman get herself up like this? My sailors could do better. A pretty face, but that expression! She looks like a nun in the middle of Lent…
The lights went out. Colors filled the screen. A legendary city arose from the azure sea. With its palaces, and its towers reflected in the water… And the captain immediately forgot Nerlug and his train and the Red October; and as he recognized the silhouette from the air, he murmured: "Venetsia. "
The headmistress's long lashes trembled…
Belmondo arose, concentrating within his gaze all the magnificence of the sky, the sea, and the city, and sped off along the canals in his crazy boat.
"I have reserved the royal suite for tonight," he declared, crash-landing in the hotel lobby at the wheel of his launch.
A gentle echo vibrated in the hearts of the two solitary spectators: "The royal suite… For tonight…"
And in the suite in question a kind of bacchante, on stiletto heels and wearing very little else, snatched off the tablecloth and invited the hero to a wild orgy: "You're going to have me on this table right now."
The headmistress stiffened, feeling the hairs on her temples grow tense. The captain coughed.