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 about that one of these days.
—Well, I’ll say this, if a committee stumbled upon this, you’d be good for fifteen or twenty more years of rigorous imprisonment. At least.
—You think? Solovyei said. Even with you as president, with all your medals and a team of easily swayed good little Komsomols?
—If I were president, you wouldn’t escape a firing squad, the Gramma Udgul laughed lightly.
Then she began humming as he caressed the back of her head.
Their tenderness was palpable.
• They lay together in the hangar for several minutes. Barguzin hadn’t appeared, they knew they were alone, and they weren’t embarrassed to coo at each other.
The Gramma Udgul was in a good mood again. Under Solovyei’s affectionate hand, she daydreamed once more about the joy of the waltz, the accordion, and the ideal worker who had turned her head at sunrise. Solovyei relaxed. The morning was just starting, the day was bright, the warehouse thrummed agreeably under the combined effect of the radiation and the sun’s heat, and so Solovyei slipped into an almost unmoving dance with his old friend. The dance was magical, like all dances of love, but it didn’t carry any real sexual freight, and he didn’t feel any frustration in the least. He let himself fall little by little into romanticism and he went into an image instead of unleashing his body. Even though he had plenty of other experiences and even though he felt that he was in the prime of his years and far from the end of his hardy masculine life, he accepted this barely sexual relationship. He accepted it because it was actually very deep and very beautiful.
—What if we listened to one? he asked suddenly.
The Gramma Udgul came out of her reverie.
—One
