"So it was to write these that you made use of my love stories?"
Utkin looks sheepish. He pours us some vodka.
"Yes. But what could I do? You had so much experience. And I had to invent a new one every day!"
I turn over the very last pages of his book. I come upon a series of images that strike me as strangely familiar.
Utkin guesses what scene I have just discovered. He blushes, holds out his hand, and snatches the book from me, knocking over my glass. But I have time to take in the final sequence: the woman spread-eagled over the top of the grand piano, the man splitting her body in two and emitting roars in bubbles, like puffs of steam from a locomotive in a film cartoon…
We mop up the vodka. Utkin stammers excuses. The waiter brings us borscht and sets a vessel of piping-hot buckwheat kasha beside our plates.
"So you see, I've sunk pretty low," says my childhood friend, with an embarrassed smile.
"Not at all. In any case, as you probably guessed, my princess was pure invention. I lied to you, Utkin. That whole story. It wasn't the Côte d'Azur: it was the Crimea, a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. I no longer remember. And she wasn't wearing an evening gown the way she is in your pictures, just a faded satin sundress… Her body smelled of rocks baked in the hot sun. And as for the candelabra on the piano, I guess no one had lit the candles in them since the Revolution…"
We fall silent and stir fresh cream into our borscht.
"It's stupid. I should never have shown you my masterpiece," he says finally.
"Of course you should… Besides, the pictures are really good."
Utkin lowers his eyes. I see that my compliment has touched him.
"Thanks… It's my wife who did those pictures."
"You're married? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Well, I did tell you about her once… But we got married a month and a half ago. She's an American Indian… And she's a bit like me… That is to say – er – she's… she's a bit hunchbacked. She fell off a horse when she was little… But she's very beautiful."
I nod my head with conviction, in a hurry to say something: "So you've found your Eurasian roots?"
"Yes… Look, I think we're doing less harm with these comic strips than the people who sell all that kitsch that passes for literature in the States… And what's more, if you noticed, in my strips the bodies are always beautiful. My wife wants them to be like that…"
Utkin opens the book again above his plate and starts showing me the pictures.
"But the most important thing, you see, is that in each sequence there's a bit of horizon, a space, a panel of sky…"
I can't help laughing. "Do you really think your readers have time to notice that bit of sky?"
Utkin is silent. The waiter removes our plates and sets the shashlik before us. We drink our vodka. Sunk in thought, my friend raises his eyebrows, his gaze lost in the bottom of his glass. Suddenly he proclaims: "You know, Juan, the Americans often remind me of monkeys playing with a clockwork toy. They press a button, the spring functions, the little plastic man starts turning somersaults. The object is achieved… And it's the same in their culture. They construct a new genius and inflate him through TV, and nobody gives a shit about his books so long as the machine keeps working. Button – spring – and the little plastic man jumps around. Everyone's happy. It's very reassuring to be able to construct geniuses. With the help of the word… They juggle with ideas as old as the world, put them together in endless combinations, and sacrifice their own lives. Words, words, words…"
Utkin waves the empty bottle, signaling to the waiter.
"That's right. The life has gone, but the machine keeps working!" he adds, fixing me with his tipsy prophet's eyes. "And it's a great division of labor, you see! The masses get sustenance from products like my comics and the elite from unreadable word puzzles. And you've seen how solemnly they hand out their literary prizes! It's like Brezhnev pinning a new gold star on some decrepit member of the Politburo. Everybody knows who's going to get the prize and why, but they go on playing at Politburos. It's the deathly ivy closing in on the West. The ivy of words that has killed life."
At this moment I see the musicians appearing in the mirror behind Utkin's head. The violin utters a light experimental groan; the guitar emits a long guttural sigh; the accordion fills its lungs, whispering melodiously. Finally, still in the smoky reflection of the mirror, I see her… her.
In her black dress, she looks like a long bird's feather. Her face is pale, without a touch of makeup put on for local color.
Now, this machine, I think to myself, is really working well. Sasha knows just the right moment to serve up the Slavic charm… Their faces are softened by the abundance of food, their eyes misting over, their hearts melting…
But the song which arises does not seem to be playing Sasha's game. At first it is a very soft note, which immediately tempers the bravura of the musicians. A sound that seems to come from very far away and does not succeed in dominating the noise from the diners' tables. And if this frail voice imposes itself a few moments later, it is because everyone, despite drunkenness and a full stomach, can sense those distant snows unfolding, beyond the walls hung with red velvet and the paper icons. The voice is slightly raised; now the diners cannot take their eyes off the pale face, with its gaze lost in the mists of those days evoked by the song. In the illusory depths of the mirror I can probably see her better than the others. Her body a long black plume; her face without makeup, defenseless. She sings as if for herself; for that cold April night; for someone invisible. The way a woman sang one evening in front of the fire in a snowbound izba… Everyone knows the words by heart. Yet we find our way into that distant night, lost in a snowstorm, not by deciphering the words but by staring at the candle flame until it starts to grow bigger, letting you enter its transparent aura. And the music becomes the cool air of the izba, which smells of a snow squall; the radiant warmth of the fire; the scent of burning cedar; the limpid silence of solitude…
"That song," murmurs Utkin, "reminds me oddly of a story Samurai once told me. He was angry with himself for talking to me about the prisoners raped at the camp, and all that filth, even though I already knew about it. To him I was a child, and anyway, you know what Samurai was like… When the militiamen had gone off with the frozen prisoner and left us alone, Samurai pointed to his nose. You remember that boxer's nose he had? He told me how it happened."
That day, a thousand years ago, Samurai had gone to sleep on the roof of an abandoned barn near Kazhdai. The ground was still white, but the roof, under the spring sun, was shedding its last patches of melting snow. It was a woman's voice coming up from below that woke him. He looked down from the roof and saw three men setting upon a woman. She was struggling, but feebly – in our part of the world, as she well knew, slipping a knife between someone's ribs is easily done. From their shouts Samurai understood that it was not exactly a rape: the men simply did not want to pay. Otherwise she would have had nothing against it. In a word, she resigned herself… Samurai, tensed like a dog watching its prey observed them. The men uncovered only the parts of her body they were going to use: they bared her belly, uncovered her breasts, seized her chin, her mouth – they were going to need that. And all this in a hurry, panting, with dirty little laughs. Up there on the roof, nine feet above them, he was seeing for the first time in his life how a woman's body is prepared for "that."