they’d come from—a Red Star dormitory, an isolated izba in the forest, a cupboard in one of the Radiant Terminus farms? She rummaged through her memories for five or six seconds, but nothing came. Who knew what sleeper had sweated there, she thought. Then she went back to Barguzin and his laziness.
—Or maybe he’s sucked up too many becquerels and died, she said.
She was there, in the middle of the path between two mounds of radioactive scrap metal, grumbling once again.
—Wouldn’t be the first time, she grumbled. He’s from the new generation, they just die off whenever they can.
• Barguzin actually was often a victim of what conventional wisdom would term death. He no longer breathed, his body had started to adopt a cadaverous pose, and in particular his heart and his brain refused to work. Beneath his eyelids, his gaze was lifeless, his pupils didn’t respond to anything. His skin was becoming unappetizingly waxy. The Gramma Udgul had to shake him over and over, put him in the sunlight when there was sun or in moonlight when the moon shone, and she rubbed his forehead with heavy-heavy water, then with deathly-deathly water, then she poured lively-lively water between his eyes, as in the tales the bards had sung. Barguzin responded to this treatment and regained normal color. He got back up, thanked her, and went back to work in the kolkhoz repair shop. He, too, had a body that had gone wrong in a useful way when it came to radiation; he, too, turned out to be resistant to radionuclides, but his resistance wasn’t the same sort as that which allowed the Gramma Udgul and Solovyei to stand at the doors of immortality. Barguzin remained fragile and always close to death. Without the Gramma Udgul and her urgent care, he would long since have been turned into mere residue fit for throwing into the well, along with other toxic matter and agricultural objects.
• After a bit of toilet, the Gramma Udgul went back to sitting down in her favorite armchair. She had a collection of newspapers beside her that had been put together by Solovyei, to try to make sense of what had happened in terms of the world revolution during his time in the work camps. Because that was where he had ended up after leaving Akaban, for forty-five years straight starting, after a disorganized life, with periods of conditional freedom, of banishment to inhospitable regions, which alternated with new arrests, new transfers to special zones, not to mention gallivanting across the taiga with bands of mystic thieves, shamans, escaped convicts, and highwaymen. He made no effort to settle down and regularly ended up back behind bars and even in front of the execution squad, whether for serious disagreements with the powers that be or for various trifles connected to his shady character, such as brawling with a superior or inappropriately mugging bureaucrats.
She took the gazette at the top of the pile and fumbled through the headlines. The newspaper was from the previous century, but the news was encouraging.
The revolution made headway on all fronts and the number of battles increased. At that point, the Second Soviet Union covered most of the globe. There were still several distant continents with pockets of aggressive capitalists, and there was no denying that the domestic nuclear disasters had made the survival of the world population rather problematic, but the situation had improved, at least under the military plan.
—Good, she said. As planned, we’re headed toward total victory, just have to be a bit patient. Just a matter of time.
Satisfied, she gave up the headlines and dipped into the pages inside. She looked for the weather report to compare the printed information with the reality of the sky above Radiant Terminus, and came once again to the conclusion that the press was full of nonsense.
• Solovyei came into the hangar by a side door and weaved between the mounds of trash that impeded all movement in a straight line. Without being a maze, the place gave the impression of having been put together to prevent direct access to the well that constituted its center. Solovyei let his eyes wander over the various piles, noticed several milking machines, dairy vats, industrial churners, old manual churners, cheese racks, zinc mixers. Everything seemed to be in good shape. Everything was clean and in good shape, but showering the immediate vicinity with a storm of deadly particles.
He thought of the cows that had flourished in the region and which were now an extinct species, and of the kolkhozniks who had spent a major part of their life standing alongside these enormous ruminants, their cowpats and flies, their mooing and swollen udders, and who had now gone extinct as well. He wondered if the cows had had an existence worthy of consideration and if the men and women who had taken care of them had died heroes or not. He wondered this without any sarcasm, but without any emotion, because this question really didn’t trouble him in the least. He had built his own existence around values beside heroism and, since he was president of the kolkhoz, he gave priority to black magic, to incursions into the world of dreams and parallel universes filled with zombies, wonderful daughters, animals, and fires. Heroism and cows barely had any place there.
Then he kept on walking. Not far from the decontamination tarp that hid the toilet, the Gramma Udgul was sitting in her favorite armchair and smoking a pipe while reading under her breath a newspaper describing the news eighty years ago. Solovyei had a heavy tread that couldn’t go unnoticed, the surroundings shook around him like he was a knight from the Middle Ages, but the Gramma Udgul acted as if she didn’t hear him.
She didn’t even raise an eye when he walked up to her.
—What are you doing, reading that newspaper? the kolkhoz director asked in mock indignation. I thought you’d started organizing my complete works. Have you already gotten discouraged?
The Gramma Udgul’s collarbone shook as she sighed, and then she set the newspaper on the pile. The paper disintegrated as soon as it was touched. Specks of pulp dusted her black dress. She brushed them off before talking.
—Your texts are too hard for me, she said as she looked down. No clue how to get started. They’re ravings. They don’t even have dates on them. I can’t organize that muck.
—Well, reading old gazettes won’t help move things along, Solovyei said.
—Guess not, the Gramma Udgul said.
Solovyei came closer and tenderly stroked the base of her neck, as he might with a person he had shared his daily life with for years, in a time of elation and courage, and then lost for nearly a hundred years.
She looked up and smiled. Her gray eyes were covered with leukomas that had grown opaque over the iris, but in their center, they sparkled.
—Maybe if you started with the cylinders, Solovyei suggested. They’re spoken words. Can’t put a strain on your eyes. They’re spoken words from my trances, when I walked into the fire or after I went through the doors of reality or death. I recorded them in the hereafter. Not so hard to organize.
—I’ve been listening to those old cylinders for a while, the Gramma Udgul shot back. They’re unbelievable rantings uttered by a madman. I don’t like them. They should all be thrown away. If the Party stumbled upon them, they’d put you right back in the camps or some place for schizophrenics.
—Yes, that’s exactly right, Solovyei said.
—When I’ve heard them all, I’ll put them with everything that has to get thrown into the core, the Gramma Udgul replied.
—Don’t destroy those, Solovyei said. I spoke those words during my trances. It’s never been translated into any earthly language. They’re valuable accounts. Could be useful later.
—Who would they be useful for? the Gramma Udgul said.
—That depends on who’s still on earth, Solovyei said.
—We didn’t start a revolution to listen to these insane words, the Gramma Udgul said. Nobody’s going to understand that. It’s ideological sabotage and so on. I’ll number them, your cylinders, but then they’re going into the pit. The core can make whatever it wants of it.
—It might like them, Solovyei laughed. They were also composed for readers like it.
The Gramma Udgul angrily muttered something indiscernible. He takes everything as a joke, except for his daughters. I’ll have to talk to the core