The Crime Of Olga Arbyelina

Author:Andrei Makine [Unknown]
Language: ces
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary

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This elation was broken some nights later when once again he remained in her for long, still minutes. It was at that moment that the dilated suspense at the base of her belly trapped her. For a fraction of a second she felt it like a caress and for a moment lost the regularity of breathing she had taught herself. On previous nights this suspense had represented an ordeal that must be passed through in a transient death of all her senses, skimming silently over the void. This time it was a caress, a dense, titillating gust that snaked upward toward her chest and exploded in her throat… Two other nights the same spasm was repeated, the same flaring up of the air she was breathing. Her surprise diminished and during the third night it became a kind of inadmissible anticipation that prepared her breathing and shaped her body… She no longer had to die in order to give herself to him.

By midday the broad halo around the pale sun was already visible-a sign of great frosts. The air rang out with sharp, dry rustling. At nightfall the windows were covered with hoarfrost patterns… That evening she examined the infusion, threw it away, went to her room and stopped for a moment, holding the candle, to contemplate the fragile beauty of the curlicues of ice: chiseled stems, crystalline corollas… That night he got up in such haste that she stiffened, believing she must have unconsciously given herself away. A little light filtered between her lashes. She saw him standing between the door and the window, his body tensely arched, his head and shoulders thrown back, his eyes tightly shut… No longer hiding in sleep, she watched him, her breath held in pity, in distress. He was pounding the base of his belly with his hands; which were closed, as if over a prey, and shook with rapid tremors. Now his uplifted face, with the same grimace of brutal pain, expressed a kind of prayer, a supplication addressed to someone whom only his own closed eyes could see. His mouth, gasping, swallowed air with a rictus that laid bare his teeth. His hands, crossing over one another, tensed more violently, a convulsion and then another ran through his body-he looked like a butterfly beating against a windowpane… But already, slowly, the muscles were relaxing. A clarity of repose softened his features, then, very quickly gave way to bitterness, weariness. With a clumsy gait, as if he needed to learn how to walk all over again, he went to pick up his long overcoat, took out a handkerchief, applied it to his stomach, crumpled it, put it away…

It was as he was going out that he tripped, stumbled, and rocked back on his heels. As he sought to steady himself, he placed the flat of his hand against the window for a moment. This light touch was enough. He straightened himself up and left the room. In the darkness she

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