THE LENINGRAD COLLEGE
OF CINEMA TECHNICIANS IS
OPENING ITS RECRUITMENT OF
STUDENTS FORTHE FOLLOWING
SPECIALTIES: ELECTRICIAN,
EDITOR, SOUND ENGINEER,
CAMERAMAN…
My aunt came back into the room. With a rapid gesture, I hid the newspaper, as if she could have guessed the grand project that was setting me alight. It was no longer a simple desire to escape but a precise objective. Leningrad, a misty city at the other end of the world, was becoming a great step in the direction of Belmondo. A springboard that would project me – I was sure of it – into a meeting with him.
Toward the end of the month of August, on a very bright evening, which already smelled of autumnal freshness, my aunt called me into the kitchen in a voice that struck me as strange. She was sitting, very upright, at the table, wearing a dress she put on only for holidays, when her friends were coming. Her big hands, with their firm, bony fingers, were absently rubbing the corner of the tablecloth. She was silent.
Finally, taking the plunge, she spoke without looking at me: "It's like this, Mitya. I must tell you… Verbin and I, we have thought about this for a long time and… and we're going to get married next week. We're old, it will make people laugh, maybe. But that's the way it is…"
Her voice broke off. She coughed, put her hand to her mouth, and added: "Wait a moment. He should be coming. He wanted to meet you…"
But we know each other very well! I was on the point of exclaiming. But I held my peace, realizing that it was more a question of a ritual than of a simple introduction…
The ferryman appeared almost at once. He must have been waiting in the courtyard. He had put on a light-colored shirt, with a collar that was very wide for his wrinkled neck. He came in with an awkward gait and gave me an embarrassed smile as he held out his only hand to me. I shook it with a lot of warmth. I really wanted to say something encouraging, something friendly, to them, but the words would not come. Verbin, still with his awkward gait, went up to my aunt and placed himself beside her, as if standing to attention rather indecisively.
"There you are," he said, moving his arm slightly, as if to say: What's done is done.
And when I saw them like that, one next to the other, those two lives so different but so close in their long and calm suffering, when I recognized on their simple and anxious faces the outward show of that timid tenderness that had brought them together, I ran out of the room. I felt a salt lump constricting my throat. I went down the steps outside our izba, removed the plank at the bottom, which was overgrown with wild plants, and took out a tin box. I went back into the room, and before the amazed eyes of my aunt and Verbin, I emptied out the contents of the box. The gold shone. Some sand, some tiny nuggets, and even some small yellow pebbles. All that I had accumulated over the years. Without a word, I turned and fled outside.
I walked along beside the Olyei; then, when I came to the ferry, I sat down on the thick planks of the raft…
What had just happened only convinced me more: I had to leave. These people, who were, I now understood, so dear to me, had their own destiny. The destiny of that enormous empire that had crushed them, mutilated them, bruised them. Only at the end of their lives were they managing to make a new start. They had come to realize that the war was well and truly over. That their memories no longer interested anyone. That the snow crystals that landed on the sleeves of their sheepskin coats still had the same sparkling delicacy. That the spring wind still brought the perfumed exhalation of the steppes… And at that very moment they had seen a remarkable, radiant smile appearing at the end of Lenin Avenue. A smile that seemed to warm the frozen air within a radius of a hundred yards. And they felt this breath of warmth. In the spring they rediscovered the veiled beauty of the first leaves. They learned to hear again the rustling of those transparent canopies, to notice the flowers, to breathe. Their destiny, like an enormous wound, was healing at last…
But I had no place in this life of convalescence. I had to leave.
18
The day I left, in September, was a real autumn day. The ferry carrying me across to the other shore was empty. Unhurried, Verbin pulled on the cable with his paddle. I helped him. The surface of the water shivered with gray wavelets. The timbers of the ferry glistened, soaked by the drizzle…
"One week more and I'll put it to bed," said Verbin, smiling, when the ferry came to a standstill beside the small wooden landing stage.
I picked up my little suitcase and stepped out onto the sand. Verbin followed me, lit a cigarette, and offered me one as well.
We talked about this and that. Already like two close relatives. He did not notice my emotion. Everyone thought I was going to Nerlug to sign on as an apprentice mechanic with a truck company.
It sounded very plausible. A typical career for a young fellow in our part of the world. But I was experiencing a strange emptiness beneath my heart, as I looked at the village, hidden behind a curtain of rain. I did not yet know that it was for the last time…
Suddenly a female silhouette appeared in the hazy distance. A woman dressed in a long waterproof coat was walking on the beach at the edge of the water.
Verbin sighed. We exchanged looks.
"She still waits for him," he said softly, as if afraid that the woman on the opposite bank might hear him. "I saw him last winter, her husband. At Nerlug… Everyone knows he's alive. And she still hopes I'm going to bring him back to her one day on my ferry…"
The ferryman was silent, his eyes fixed on the fragile silhouette, blurred by the rain. Then he gave me a look filled with a somewhat desperate jauntiness and spoke louder, in almost cheerful tones: "But you know, Dmitri, I sometimes tell myself that maybe she's happier than lots of others… I've seen him, her man: fat, pompous. He looks like a Japanese oil magnate; he can't open his eyes, he's so bulging with fat… But she's waiting for someone else, her young, lean soldier boy, with a shaven head and a faded tunic. That's what we were all like in the spring of '45… Your aunt speaks the truth. It's why Vera doesn't grow old. Her hair's quite gray; you've seen her. But she's still got the face of a young girl. And she's still waiting for him, her soldier…"
The few, rare passengers began to gather around the ferry. I shook Verbin's hand and set off along the rain-drenched road… At the corner, when I had to leave the valley of the Olyei and enter the taiga, I glanced behind me. The ferry, a little square on the gray expanse of the waters, was already in the middle of the river.
I arrived in Leningrad after sixteen long days of traveling. Always in third class. Often without a ticket. Sleeping on luggage racks, dodging ticket inspectors, eating the free bread at station buffets. I crossed the empire from one end to the other – twelve thousand leagues. I crossed its giant rivers, the Lena, the Yenisey, the Ob, the Kama, the Volga… I traveled through the Urals. I saw Novosibirsk, which seemed to me like Nerlug, only much bigger. I discovered Moscow, crushing, cyclopean, endless. But overall an Oriental city, and thus very close to my profoundly Asiatic nature.
Finally there was Leningrad, the only truly Western city in the empire… I emerged onto the great square by the station. My eyes were heavy with sleep, but they opened wide. The apartment buildings had quite a different style here: packed close together, svelte and arrogant, overloaded with cornices, moldings, and pilasters, they formed long rows. This European rectitude, but above all the smell – a little acid, fresh, stimulating – fascinated me. I walked with a sleepwalker's tread across the square and suddenly uttered an "Oh!" which made all the passersby turn their heads…