The Life of an Unknown Man by Andreï Makine Page A

Fleming is singing Tatyana in Eugene Onegin…
    The mask wavers and at once closes up again, retreats into its solitude. The show goes on. The ladies in crinolines pass through the galleries at the Hermitage. Fireworks at the Peterhof. Putin shakes Paul McCartney’s hand after a performance in Moscow on Red Square. “Your songs, Paul, have always been a breath of freedom for us…”
    Absurdity has reached its limits, thinks Shutov. He again hits upon the program about the lives of the new rich and no longer takes the trouble to switch channels. The two presenters are visiting a model house on an estate under construction close to Saint Petersburg. “High security,” “luxury homes,” “top-quality materials”… Language evocative of this grotesque social climbing, higher, ever higher, toward the best place in the sun.
    Shutov begins to doze off. This paradise from which simple mortals are excluded is less outrageous than dogs lapping up caviar. Villas crammed with electronics, but, after all, the rich have to live somewhere. Each dwelling will have a name, there will be an “Excelsior,” a “Capitol”… The two presenters emerge from “Buckingham” and set about describing the beauties of gardens in the English style… “And in the greenhouses, you’ll be harvesting pineapples and guavas…”
    “That’s exactly the place where we were fighting to the death. For the motherland, as we used to say in those days…”
    Shutov gives a start, the remark is too unusual to have come from the mouth of one of the presenters. Besides, they are still singing the praises of the gardens. He looks at the old man. The same mask, the same calm eyes. Suddenly his lips move: “Yes, there. That river, the Lukhta. They had to cross it under heavy fire…”
    Shutov is speechless, turning over in his mind what he has just heard: “We were fighting… for the motherland.” The words came out with no rhetorical flourish, there was even an ironic hesitation, acknowledging the naïveté of the time-honored expression. But that last remark, which he saw forming on the old man’s lips, was neutral, the name of a river, a topographical fact. Shutov clears his throat and speaks as if he were the one recovering the power of speech: “Forgive me… I… I thought… Well, in fact, they told me you couldn’t…” The old man turns his head, changes his position to look at Shutov. “Yes, they told me that you were… That you had lost… er… the power of speech.”
    The old man smiles.
    “You can see that’s not so.”
    “But, then, why… have you never spoken to anyone?”
    “Spoken about what?”
    “I don’t know… Life… Yes, this new life.”
    And this, too!
    On the screen a kennel can be seen adjoining the model house, the presenter is explaining about the air-conditioning system, as a large white greyhound rubs against his leg.
    “Well, what’s to be said about it? Everything’s clear these days.”
    He falls silent and Shutov is gripped by an irrational fear: what if the old man should relapse into terminal mutism! The program shows workmen felling a tree: the shrill whine of the trunk being sawn, the crash of the branches.
    “Yes. That’s where we were fighting. And with no help from any icons either… Let me introduce myself. The name’s Volsky, Georgy Lvovich.”

III

O n June 21, 1941, at the Nord Café, which was very popular with the people of Leningrad, Volsky lived through the last hours of his old life, the last day of peace, without knowing it. A moment of bliss, epitomized by the taste of a cup of hot chocolate.
    A young woman with dark-brown hair had joined this group of friends who, like him, were students at the Conservatory. She was eating a pastry, a trace of cream remained on her lips, a mustache that made everyone laugh… Volsky spoke to her, their conversation became detached from the hubbub in the room. He lived in the same district as she and it pleased him greatly to remark,