Dreams Of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine

Author:Andrei Makine [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: prose_contemporary

11

That autumn there were only a few days between the time when, ashamed to admit it to myself, I was rejoicing at my mother's absence – she had gone into hospital, "just for tests" she told us – and the afternoon when, coming out of school, I learned of her death.

The day after she left for the hospital an agreeable lack of constraint became established in our apartment. My father stayed in front of the television till one o'clock in the morning. And I, savoring this prelude to adult freedom, sought to delay my return to the house each day a little longer: nine o'clock, half past nine, then ten o'clock…

I spent these evenings at a crossroads that, in the autumn dusk and with a slight effort of the imagination, created a surprising illusion: that of a rainy evening in a metropolis in the West. It was a unique spot amidst the monotonous broad avenues of our city. The streets that met here branched out like the radii of a circle, leaving the front of each apartment block truncated in the form of a trapezium. I had learned that Napoleon ordered this configuration where streets met in Paris to avoid collisions between carriages…

The denser the darkness, the more complete my illusion became. Knowing that one of these buildings housed the local museum of atheism and the walls of others concealed overcrowded communal apartments – all this hardly troubled me at all. I contemplated the yellow and blue watercolor sketch of windows in the rain, the reflections of the street lamps on the oily asphalt, the silhouettes of the bare trees. I was alone, free. I was happy. Whispering, I talked to myself in French. In front of these trapezium-shaped facades the sound of that language seemed to me very natural. Would the magic I had discovered that summer materialize in some encounter? Each woman who came toward me seemed to want to talk to me. Each extra half hour of night that I gained gave my French mirage more substance. I no longer belonged either to my time or to my country. On this little nocturnal circus I felt wonderfully foreign to myself.

Now the sun wearied me, daytime became a useless waiting period before my true life, the evening…

However, it was in broad daylight, blinded by the glitter of the first hoarfrost, that I learned the news. As I walked past the cheerful crowd of pupils, who still displayed the same disdainful hostility toward me, a voice rang out.

"Have you heard? His mother's dead."

I intercepted several inquisitive glances. I recognized the one who had spoken – the son of one of our neighbors…

It was the lack of concern in the remark that gave me time to grasp the inconceivable situation: my mother was dead. All the events of the past days suddenly fitted together into a coherent picture: my father's frequent absences, his silence, the arrival, two days before, of my sister (although it was not the university vacation time, I now realized)…

It was Charlotte who opened the door to me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.