Radiant Terminus. Antoine Volodine
with harsh rural life.
Solovyei frowned. He sheathed his knife behind his back.
—I haven’t, either, I haven’t eaten anything for a week, Kronauer said.
—Tell me, soldier, Solovyei suddenly asked, are you alive?
—Of course, said Kronauer.
—Then what are you complaining about? Solovyei asked. Being alive isn’t something everyone in the world gets.
They were now talking without looking at each other, like two people who hate each other but who, in waiting for darkness to come and witnesses to go, had decided not to tear each other apart yet.
• Solovyei looked at his daughter who was turning onto the main road. She wasn’t going straight, her pace was slow. She looked groggy.
—Samiya Schmidt looks groggy, Solovyei said.
—She’s sick, Kronauer said.
—Oh, you’re a doctor? Solovyei said sharply, furrowing his brow. I didn’t know that.
Kronauer shrugged and took a step back to keep his balance. This conversation was draining the last of his strength. Behind his eyes, the earth’s rotation seemed to be more and more perceptible. Glimmering stars whirled in his head. He knew he was going to lose consciousness.
—If you’ve hurt Samiya Schmidt in any way, Solovyei warned, I wouldn’t keep up any hopes for your bones.
Kronauer wanted to object. He looked up toward the president of the kolkhoz. Solovyei towered, backed by the sky; he seemed surrounded by blinding light. Stars of exhaustion burst like bubbles around Kronauer’s consciousness; they spattered against the images his retinas received, they flew around Solovyei’s hair. Without stopping on any particular spot, Kronauer saw Solovyei’s silhouette tilt forward, come closer, stretch out, sway. Solovyei was enormous and now he took up most of the visible universe. He seemed to be floating colossally on clouds and meteors. From time to time, he set his hand on his ax, as if he was trying to decide exactly when to take it out of his belt to split the skull of the soldier still in front of him. And every so often he opened his mouth to say words that Kronauer couldn’t hear anymore. His teeth could be seen and, instead of a tongue, there seemed to be flames.
Then the image resolved. The flames swallowed him up, diminished, they began to come back together in his center. Quickly, everything that had been outside them turned black and shadowy.
Only this deep vermilion smudge was still visible, and emptiness gaped all around.
That remained for five or six seconds.
Then the black increased, the red diminished, and there was nothing else.
• Later, hours later, Kronauer comes out of his blackout. First he sees a ceiling that has recently been whitewashed, a perfect ceiling, without any cracks or spiderwebs. The room he finds himself in is painted white. The door, the walls, the frame of the double window, all are bright snow or ivory. Under such an onslaught of whiteness, Kronauer has trouble opening his eyes. His retinas hurt as they try to adapt to daylight.
He has been set on a mattress with his clothes still on. As he gets up on his elbow to look around, he is suddenly hit with the full stench of the rags stuck to his skin. The smell of lost wars, of nights spent on damp earth, and atop all that the acridity of grime diluted a hundredfold by sweat and thickened again a hundredfold. His muddy boots haven’t been taken off and he is there, ridiculous and fetid in this monastic room.
He turns, sets his feet on the ground, and stands while holding onto the head of the bed. The room quickly tilts to one side, and then the other. Beneath his legs, the pinewood floor shifts. He sits back down heavily, then he curses his weakness.
You’re already reeking like a boar, how long are you going to sit around acting like a weakling? Don’t tell me you’ve having another one of your girly faints! Go up to the window and open it, Kronauer! So at least a little of your stench gets out of the room!
He gets back up and he walks toward the double window. Through the glass he can see the Soviet’s colonnade, several wood façades, the gray-blue sky above the main road of the Levanidovo. The ground slides beneath him, the floor splits. He moves his hand toward the handle of the window latch. He begins fighting with the mechanism without any success. Something is holding it in place. He hunches over the latch, he sees that he needs a square key to unlock it. The outer window doesn’t have a handle, and what he had originally thought was a tulle veil is actually a mesh screen. Did they put me in a prison or what? he wonders.
The room swims. Aside from the bed and a chair, it is empty.
He stumbles and catches himself on the wall. His mind floods with unanswered questions.
What is this, a cell? How long have I been here? What’re they accusing me of? Is this a kolkhoz or a penal colony?
• —Ah, he’s awake now, a feminine voice said in the next room.
A minute later, two women inserted a key in the lock and came into the room, each of them causing the floor’s tiles to creak. They were both about the same height and, in the doorframe, they seemed at first like two kolkhozniks from long ago, dressed for the fall, with long brown wool skirts and, under their half-buttoned vests, high-necked blouses embroidered with patterns of birds and flowers on one, and spirals of forget-me-nots and daisies on the other. Neither of them wore jewelry. Kronauer immediately noticed their beauty, but he was so weak that his thoughts were hazy, distant, and wholly disconnected from any erotic sentiment.
They were without a question taller than their little sister, and also more feminine. Next to them, Samiya Schmidt would have looked childish. Although they all had Solovyei as a father, since their mothers were completely different and unknown, they barely resembled each other. They still shared something owing to their father’s attraction to Siberian women, whether from central Asia or the Far East. Their mothers had given them their own grace, cheekbones, beautiful curling eyebrows, and the eyelids they had lowered the night and the moment Solovyei had seduced or raped them. Samiya Schmidt had the physiognomy of a sweet but withdrawn Chinese girl, a light complexion, fairly typical Han traits, but the fact remained that Kronauer had met her on an unfavorable day, in poor lighting, in the forest’s shadows, such that he’d mistaken her for a corpse at first. The second daughter, Myriam Umarik, had deeply Altaic features, fleshy cheekbones, narrow eyes, a mouth with thick lips, a large and deliciously oval face. Her skin had a leathery complexion like a Native American, nearly orange in the room’s white light. Her physiological proximity to Samiya Schmidt was practically nil, and certainly nobody would have mistaken her for someone Chinese. Just as Samiya Schmidt seemed mistrustful, timid, even inhibited, so Myriam Umarik seemed resplendent, with long flowing chestnut hair that came down to her chest, and even if she kept her back straight while walking, she had a sensual way of moving her legs, her hips. Her eyes shone. She knew that her movements could bother men, especially Kronauer, but she wasn’t embarrassed at all.
As for Hannko Vogulian, the oldest daughter, she bore characteristics that, without being physical flaws, caused people to step back at a first glance. Her eyes had no white at all and were very dissimilar. The left one had the same red-blooded, rapacious color as her father Solovyei’s irises; the right one was a large piece of obsidian in the middle of which no pupil could be seen. This gave her the appearance of a strange mutant. That aside, the rest of her body had a great Asiatic perfection. Her face was lighter than Myriam Umarik’s, with smaller eyelids, a narrower mouth, eyes that were slightly angled toward the top of her temples. She had an elegant posture and the olive skin of a Yakut princess, and she was clearly proud and reticent, but perhaps that was because she knew the impression her strange pupils would have on Kronauer, and because she preferred to make it clear immediately that she didn’t care about his opinions. In short, if Myriam Umarik didn’t care about looking alluring, Hannko Vogulian didn’t care about looking like a fantastical creature. She had pulled her long black hair behind her shoulders and separated it to make a thin braid that went around her head like an iron diadem.
• The two women walked toward Kronauer. He was still