"It makes a change from the rain in Paris, doesn't it? And those anemic Europeans. I remember one day on a beach somewhere near… La Rochelle, was it? I'm probably getting mixed up. It was so depressing, all those appalling bodies, it looked like a museum of degeneration. Especially the women. And here, you can see, these young ones are bursting with health. And even the not so young, they're in good shape. And the air. Just smell it! Not an atom of nicotine. No one smokes. After two days in Europe I'm coughing and spluttering like an old man. And in Eastern Europe, forget it. It's worse than Chernobyl… She's not bad, that one. No, the other one, under the shower. Yes, maybe a bit too much, you're right. But the women here are all very athletic. Very healthy. In fact, you know that new man our propaganda promised us: here's where he's in the process of being born. Stalin thought he could forge him through a schizophrenic mix of terror and heroism. Hitler, via biological mes-sianism. But here they don't need brainwashing. Everyone understands that, as one of my friends says, it's better to be healthy, tanned, and rich than a Russian research scientist in Moscow."
When he spoke of America Vinner sometimes said "they," sometimes "we." I interrupted him two or three times to ask, " 'We' is who? The Russians or the Americans?" I did it from annoyance but also to avoid confusion between the "we" who were "putting a little order into this whorehouse of a world" and the "we" who "are only good at begging for handouts from the West, instead of getting on with the job." Smiling, he accepted the correction and, for several minutes, paid careful attention to his use of pronouns. The good "we" were fulfilling their onerous mission, as masters of the world, by punishing the guilty and defending the righteous, but above all by demonstrating, through their example, that the formula for universal happiness had been found and that it was within everyone's reach. A moment later the confusion returned and the bad "we" had embarked on "drinking, behaving hysterically like something straight out of Dostoyevsky, begging for dollars."
There were, it is true, many beautiful bodies on the beach's extremely pale sands. Both their youth and the relaxed insolence of their movements swept aside any attempt at criticism. The happiness was too evident, it was on their skin, in their muscles, in the stream of cars coming from the north to spill out these tanned bodies onto the sand and the terraces, or to carry them on toward other pleasures. Their exuberant vitality seemed to be saying: "Go ahead and grumble as much as you like. But we're the ones who are right!"
In any case, what Vinner was saying was more or less his regular recruitment test number, a well-worn speech for sounding out the opinions of research scientists he enlisted in Eastern Europe. He knew that you learn more about a man, not by letting him talk, but by talking to him and observing his reactions. Instead of objecting to it, I was trying to imagine the objections of previous listeners. What could they have said, faced with Vinner's guided tour of this paradise? Some of them, no doubt, nodded their heads for fear of displeasing their benefactor. Others, remembering their post-war Soviet childhood, would have embarked, with the aid of nostalgia, on a defense of poverty, which, it appears, promotes loftiness of thought. Yet others, the most ungrateful and generally the most independent, thanks to their scientific clout, would have dared to remind him that this oasis of the American Dream had its price and, with typically Russian exaggeration, would have begun talking about slavery, Hiroshima, napalm in Vietnam, and sometimes, in a fit of rage (what Vinner called "hysteria straight out of Dostoyevsky") rebelled, crying out, "Yes, of course you're the richest and the strongest! But that's because you pillage the whole world. Your damned America is draining our lifeblood! Do you think you can buy everything with your dollars?" At such moments Vinner would remain silent. He knew only too well the explosive but forgetful temperament of his former compatriots. But above all he was convinced that one really could buy everything. And that the hysteria was only a passing symptom on the part of a person he was in the process of buying.
It struck me that a further objection could be added to all of these: the wars started in order to test new weapons and those ended in order to lower the price of a barrel of crude oil. And a good many other negative aspects of things besides. But I let Vinner finish his performance, as one lets a guide complete the tour of a site of no interest. He did not have a coffee but some extremely frothy milk drink. And his concluding comments (he was speaking of the success of the "melting pot": "In the sun all cats are brown, isn't that so?") were accompanied by rhythmic gurgling and sucking noises. I reflected that the only counterargument in harmony with the genial tone of our meeting would have been to criticize the obesity of some of the vacationers around us. Vinner looked at his watch and hastened to bring matters to a close.
"I'll see what I can do. I can't make any promises. You know, we have plenty of doctors here and then some. But I have a friend who may be interested in your experience as a doctor in Chechnya. I should get a reply within-um-let's say four or five days."
That was the story I had quickly concocted with Shakh: an army doctor on the run from the Caucasus via Turkey, who had landed in America. Very sketchy, it had the advantage of corresponding to my former profession and being relevant to Vinner's. "Four or five days," that is to say not before the return of his colleague from China. I had an urge not to wait, to tell him who I was and why I had come. The obese woman next to us stood up and, as in a gag on television, almost walked away with the plastic armchair stuck to her backside. Vinner threw me a wink while noisily inhaling the rest of the froth from the bottom of his glass.
I needed words that would have eclipsed the sun, obliterated the whiteness of the sand, stilled the shouts and the peals of laughter. Words that would have been night, the dark, damp granite of cobbled streets, solitude. I realized that I had never left that night and that Vinner's seaside paradise was a future age into which I had strayed by mistake, and that in four or five days I would have to go back into my night.
"He forgot the sugar. I'll go and ask him for it."
I got up and went to the bar at the other end of the terrace. I had to wait for the barman to emerge from a cupboard where he was noisily stacking empty bottles. The ornamental pillar that extended upward from the counter to the ceiling was covered in small pieces of mirrored glass. One of the fragments gave a view of the table I had just left, as well as the one behind it, occupied by a young man reading a newspaper. Throughout our lunch I had been aware of the rustling of pages. Now, reflected in the mirror, I could see his face clearly. He had lowered the newspaper and was talking, without seeming to address anyone in particular. Vinner was turned slightly toward this mouth talking into thin air. A few seconds later he gave a little nod of his head. The man reading the newspaper picked up a bag placed under the table and left. His face, reflected on the pillar, jumped from one square of mirror to the next.