The Crime of Olga Arbyelina

Author:Andreï Makine [Makine, Andrei]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61145-517-5
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Published: 2011-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

In the late autumn of 1946 her house seemed even more remote than usual from both the Caravanserai and the town; alien to the world. The rains isolated it, transforming the track that led around the wall into a dotted line of tufts of grass. Then came the cold that began to blanket this ephemeral pathway in hoarfrost. The power cuts announced regularly by the newspapers became no more unusual than the flickering of candles at the dark windows of the Caravanserai.

The thoughts and fears that had so tortured her during the preceding months had now been transmuted into a silent dialogue imagined between herself and Li. She confided to her friend, who was very understanding, as our partners in these imaginary conversations always are, that when young she felt she was living not for the sake of living but to prove to somebody that she was free to change the course of her life on a simple whim. Whim! Yes, her whole youth had been corroded by this restlessness, this posturing frenzy, this lust for defiance, for provocation, for negation. A life mistaken, spoiled, led astray, badly begun … No doubt Li would find the right word for it.

These silent dialogues were nothing other than brief interludes within the fabric—at once dense and transparent—through which she viewed everything in this world: the life of her son. She finally accepted him in the guise of the adolescent who had appeared to her one September evening, so composed, so discreet he hardly seemed to be there. Sometimes the tissue of her thoughts, from which the boy was never absent, grew denser and she felt stifled: this was on those occasions, often unexpected, when his illness returned.

She had had the same feeling of suffocation during the latest consultation with the doctor. This dry and almost disagreeable man pleased her. With him she had no fear that the worst might be hidden from her…. This time there were discordant notes in the tenor of the rather clumsy words of encouragement he addressed to the boy. She thought she could detect the consciously adopted tone designed to restore the confidence of an elderly invalid. A patient, in fact, whose decline is being closely monitored and to whom the physician promises several more years, with the openhandedness of a benefactor.

Next day there was another power cut. She was delighted: in the dim light at the library the traces of anguish left on her face caused by her conversation with the doctor would be harder to discern. The readers departed. She remained for a long moment at the window, and darkness fell as she watched. In the dusk a little point of light advanced slowly across the vast inner courtyard of the Caravanserai. Some elderly resident, for sure, candle in hand, making a visit to a friend who lived in the opposite wing of the building. In the wind an eddy of dead leaves swirled in broad circles along the walls, drawing with it the whirling pages of a newspaper.

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