The Woman Who Waited by Andreï Makine

windowsill and rolled under a curtain; the blaze was spectacular. The hysterical yell of “Fire!” came in response to this first impression of an inferno. Panic contributed to it. Orders issued and countermanded, half-naked bodies rushing this way and that, smoke. But already the guilty curtain lay upon the ground, furiously trampled on by several pairs of feet. Finally, sighs of relief all around, a moment of stasis after extreme frenzy, then astonishment: the electricity had come back on again!
    We stood there, blinking, staring at one another upon this amorous battlefield, over which filaments of soot floated. Smeared makeup, pale masculine chests, but one thing, above all!
    Laughter suddenly erupted, swelled, and at its peak reached the pitch that brings it close to tears: the history teacher, the librarian, and the nurse were all wearing completely identical underwear, the only type available in the only department store in the district capital, as displayed by the unique female mannequin in the shop window. The art teacher was laughing more than the rest. She still had her clothes on, having been unable to find a partner, and was exacting her revenge for an unrewarding evening. And the cassette player, coming back to life, struck up in hoarse, mellow tones: “… When the birdlings wake and cry, I love you
    The laughter continued, in little bursts, increasingly forced. We were trying to postpone the ending of this merriment, aware sadness was imminent. A rude awakening in a cold house in a room that smelled of canned fish, stale bodies, and the bitter reek of a fire nipped in the bud. The day was about to dawn. Then someone noticed Otar’s absence; that saved the situation. There was a flood of jokes about the sexual appetites of Georgians. Real men who refuse to be disturbed in the act, even by a house catching fire! A bottle was uncorked, the lights were turned off, people wandered about indecisively in the hope that the night, and their dampened desires, might gain a new lease on life.
    I saw Otar when I went out. Contrary to our malicious gossip, he was perched outside on the handrail to the front steps, smoking. The broad brim of his fedora was dripping with rain. “Shall we go?” he said, as if we had planned to leave together. “The only thing is, I don’t have my truck anymore. I gave it back.” He gave a wry smile and added: “In exchange for my freedom.”
    At this moment the door opened, and the master of the house presented me with a long cape of tent canvas and two bottles of liquor. I was still enjoying some privileges thanks to my standing as a Leningrad intellectual.
    In two hours’ time, Otar was due to catch the train for Moscow, the one I had waited for the previous evening. He went with me to the edge of the town, to the highway where, early in the morning, one could get a ride on one of the vast trucks carrying pine tree trunks. When we heard the throbbing of the vehicle, he quickly took a brown paper envelope out of his bag, thrust it into my hands, and growled, at once embarrassed and commanding: “There. Put that in the mailbox. You know the one. At the crossroads. Its for her….”Then he clapped me heavily on the shoulder, scratched my cheek with his beard, and went to place himself in the roadway to stop the truck.
    From time to time, chatting with the driver in the smoke-filled cab, I fingered the rough thickness of the envelope beneath the canvas of my cape.
    The rectangle slid into the box, which reverberated with an empty sound. So many hopes linked to this hollow piece of ironmongery! Ah, those hopes … It all came back to me now: the man getting off the Moscow train yesterday and his eau de cologne, a dinner, a high bed, a woman moaning with pleasure. So Otar was just as gullible as me. “An artist who needs beauty and tenderness
    The rain abated; I turned back the hood of my cape and inhaled as if emerging into the open air. The morning resembled a bleak, icy dusk, the