I followed them automatically, without even asking where we were going.

After we had been on the move for an hour I saw that Samurai, following an oblique course, was moving away from Kazhdai and heading toward a distant gray cloud that hung above the taiga – toward the city, toward Nerlug.

Another two and a half hours to go, I thought bitterly. Why am I trailing after them? What business do I have in that city?

Now they were walking side by side, chatting. Everything was so luminous, so serene, in the sunny little world that traveled with them. My gaze reached it as if from the depths of a prison cell. From time to time Samurai turned and called out to me cheerfully: "Come on, bear, move your great paws!"

It was no longer jealousy I felt toward them but a sort of malevolent contempt. Especially toward Samurai. I remembered his long discourses at the baths. About women. About love. His endless quotations from that old madwoman Olga. What was it he had said? "Love is harmony." What an idiot! Love, my dear Samurai, is an izba that smells of cold smoke. And the horrible solitude of two naked bodies under a garish yellow lightbulb. And the ice-cold knees of the red-haired prostitute that I brushed against when it was over, when I slid out from her belly, which had shaken me around in the damp hollow of the bed. And the bleary features of her face. And her heavy breasts, stretched by so many callused, blind, hasty hands. Like the hands of my phantom truckdriver – covered with scars, stained with grease. Oh, Samurai, if you had seen him! Before tackling the Devil's Corner he unbuttoned his pants and with his hand took out this huge swollen flesh; it looked like a huge piece of raw, warm, flaccid meat. Don't talk to me about love… And you will be like him, Samurai, in spite of your cigar and all that rubbish Olga tells you. You won't get away from it! Nor will I, or even Utkin. And we shall stay in this district center where the endless brawling stops only when the light goes out in a snowstorm. In our village, where the only memory is of the war thirty years ago that turned the whole of life into a memory. And in this railroad station, where the only woman one could still love waits for the Transsiberian that will never take her anywhere. This world will not let us go… You both are laughing as you hurry along there in your little circle of sunlight. But just wait. I know how to escape from it all. I know…

I stopped for a moment. They were moving on, taking with them their aureole filled with ringing voices. I had a vision of the cedar trees with the big rusty nails. How close at hand it was, that final silence, that escape with no return. How good it was!

"You haven't even asked what we are going to do in the city, Juan!"

Samurai's voice rang out suddenly and roused me from my daydreams.

The seething mass of words I had so far been holding in exploded: "And what could you be doing? Going like feebleminded idiots to the post office to listen to the telephone operators: 'Please, who is the stupid fucker who wants to speak to Novosibirsk? Cabin number two!' Wow! Novosibirsk! You're already drooling at the thought of it, both of you!"

Instead of losing his temper, Samurai burst out laughing.

"Look, Utkin! The bear's waking up. Ha ha ha!"

Then, winking at his companion, he announced: "We are going to see… Belmondo!"

"Bel-mon-do," Utkin corrected him, laughing.

"No, Belmon-do! Shut up, Duckling. You don't know a thing about films."

It must have been the air of the taiga that had intoxicated them. For they began to laugh, to shout this incomprehensible word louder and louder, each one insisting on his own pronunciation. Samurai pushed Utkin and knocked him over, as he went on yelling those three resounding syllables. Utkin retaliated by throwing fistfuls of snow at Samurai's face.

"Belmon-do!"

"Bel-mon-do! In Italian it's Bel-mon-do…"

"Is it a man or a woman?" I asked, dangerously serious, baffled by the neuter "o" ending.

Their laughter became torrential.

"Hey, Samurai! Just listen to him! If it's not a chick, he won't come with us! Ha ha ha!"

"Sure, sure, she's a woman, Juan! With a mustache… And with a… with a big… a big…" Samurai could not get to the end of his sentence.

They were laughing Uke madmen, crawling about on all fours, their feet tied in knots by their snowshoes, which they had not unfastened. The name rang out so strangely in the midst of the taiga…

No doubt they thought their laughter had won me over. I let myself fall into the snow beside them, shaking my head frenetically and guffawing noisily. And it was the laughter that allowed me to weep all my drunkenness away…

Then, when the last groans of our orgy had ceased, when we found ourselves, all three, stretched out across a sunlit clearing, our eyes filled with the sky, Samurai whispered in an enfeebled but vibrant voice: "Belmondo!"

2

8

It was the shark that saved me…

I think if the film had begun differently I would have run out of the cinema and thrown myself under the wheels of the first truck that came by. In the deafening uproar of that brutal engine I would have sought out the blissful silence of the cedar tree…

The film could so easily have begun with a shot of a woman walking through the streets while the credits roll – a woman "walking to meet her destiny." Or with one of a man at the wheel of his car, his impassive face hypnotizing the bemused spectators. Or even with a scenic panorama… But it was a shark.

Well, first we saw a man with a shifty face and a shabby light suit. A man trying to call someone from a telephone booth on the sunny promenade of a southern town. He kept glancing around anxiously, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece. He did not have much time. A helicopter appeared in the azure sky… The machine stopped above the phone booth, lowered enormous claws, picked up the booth, and carried it off into the sky. Inside it the wretched spy was shaking the receiver, trying to pass on his ultrasecret message… But the monstrous claws were already opening. The booth fell, plummeted into the sea, landed on the bottom, and there two frogmen secured it very adroitly to a long cage. Using up his last few mouthfuls of air, the spy turned toward the door of the cage… He even managed to draw his pistol and fire. And produced a ridiculous stream of bubbles…

A splendid shark, which was, we guessed, ravenously hungry, darted into the submerged booth, pointing its snout at the spy's stomach. The water turned red…

A few moments later Belmondo made his appearance. And the man who was evidently his boss was telling him about his colleague's tragic end. "We succeeded in recovering his remains," he said in very solemn tones. And he showed him a can of… shark's fin soup!

It was too silly! Gloriously silly! Completely improbable! Wonderfully crazy!

We had no words to express it. We simply had to accept it and experience it for what it was. Like an existence parallel to our own.

The feature film had been preceded by a newsreel. The three of us were sitting in the front row – the least popular of all, but there were no other seats left when we got there. The voice-over, both ingratiating and hectoring, was pouring out its commentary on the political events of the day. First we saw the imperial splendor of some hall in the Kremlin, where an old man in a dark suit was pinning a medal to the chest of another old man. "In recognition of the merits of Comrade Gromygin toward the fatherland and the people, and his contribution to the cause of international détente, and on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday," declaimed the voice-over in ringing tones. And the assembled dark suits began to applaud.