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Authors: Andreï Makine
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even have time to leave the church â the young bride was robed in black and unable to raise her eyes, which were weighed down with tears. The change was so rapid it seemed as if she had already been alone as she left the church, and dressed in full mourning, hiding her reddened eyes from the sun. The two days merged into one, colored by a radiant sky and enlivened by the church bells and the summer breeze, which seemed to accelerate the coming and going of the guests even more. And what the warm breeze pressed against the face of the young woman was a white bridal veil one moment and a widowâs black veil the next.
Later this eerie time resumed its regular pace and was punctuated with sleepless nights and a long procession of mutilated bodies. The passing hours now echoed with the resonance of the big classrooms in the school at Neuilly, converted into a hospital. Her first knowledge of a manâs body was the sight of male flesh, torn and bloody⦠. And the nocturnal sky of those years would be forever overhung with the pallid monstrosity of two German zeppelins among the luminous stalagmites of the searchlights.
Finally there came a day, on July 14, 1919, when countless columns of soldiers came marching through Neuilly, heading for the capital. Spick and span, with brave looks and well-polished armyboots: war was resuming the guise of a parade. Was he among them, that warrior who was to slip a little brown pebble into Charlotteâs hand, that shell splinter covered in rust? Were they lovers? Engaged?
This encounter did not alter Charlotteâs decision, made several years earlier. At the first opportunity that came along, a miraculous opportunity, she left for Russia. There was still no communication with that country ravaged by civil war. It was 1921. A Red Cross mission was preparing to travel to the Volga region, where famine had claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. Charlotte was taken on as a nurse. Her application had been quickly accepted: volunteers for the expedition were rare. But above all, she spoke Russian.
Once over there she believed that she had come to know hell. In the distance it looked like peaceful Russian villages â izbas, wells, hedges â swathed in the mists of the great river. Close to, it froze into shots taken by the mission photographer in those somber days: a group of male and female peasants in lambskin greatcoats, transfixed before a heap of human carcasses, dismembered bodies, unrecognizable fragments of flesh. Then this naked child in the snow with long, tangled hair, an old manâs piercing stare, and the body of an insect. Finally, on an icy road â that head, alone, with open eyes, glassy. Worst of all, these pictures did not remain fixed. The photographer folded up his tripod, and the peasants left, stopping outside the frame of the photo â that terrifying photo of the cannibals â and resumed the daily round of their lives with all its disconcerting simplicity. Yes, they continued living! A woman bent over the child and recognized him as her son. And she did not know what to do with this old-man-insect, she who for weeks had fed on human flesh. Then what could be heard arising from her throat was the howl of a wolf. No photo could capture that cry⦠. A peasant looked into the eyes of the head thrown down onto the road and sighed. Then he leaned over and with a clumsy hand thrust it into a great homespun sack. âIâll bury it,â he muttered. âAfter all, weâre not Tartars⦠.â
And you had to go into the izbas of this tranquil hell to discover that the old woman watching the street through the window was themummified corpse of a girl who had died several weeks previously, seated at that window in the vain hope of rescue.
Once back in Moscow Charlotte left the mission. Walking out of the hotel, she plunged into the motley throng on the square and disappeared. At Sukharevka market, where barter was
Later this eerie time resumed its regular pace and was punctuated with sleepless nights and a long procession of mutilated bodies. The passing hours now echoed with the resonance of the big classrooms in the school at Neuilly, converted into a hospital. Her first knowledge of a manâs body was the sight of male flesh, torn and bloody⦠. And the nocturnal sky of those years would be forever overhung with the pallid monstrosity of two German zeppelins among the luminous stalagmites of the searchlights.
Finally there came a day, on July 14, 1919, when countless columns of soldiers came marching through Neuilly, heading for the capital. Spick and span, with brave looks and well-polished armyboots: war was resuming the guise of a parade. Was he among them, that warrior who was to slip a little brown pebble into Charlotteâs hand, that shell splinter covered in rust? Were they lovers? Engaged?
This encounter did not alter Charlotteâs decision, made several years earlier. At the first opportunity that came along, a miraculous opportunity, she left for Russia. There was still no communication with that country ravaged by civil war. It was 1921. A Red Cross mission was preparing to travel to the Volga region, where famine had claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. Charlotte was taken on as a nurse. Her application had been quickly accepted: volunteers for the expedition were rare. But above all, she spoke Russian.
Once over there she believed that she had come to know hell. In the distance it looked like peaceful Russian villages â izbas, wells, hedges â swathed in the mists of the great river. Close to, it froze into shots taken by the mission photographer in those somber days: a group of male and female peasants in lambskin greatcoats, transfixed before a heap of human carcasses, dismembered bodies, unrecognizable fragments of flesh. Then this naked child in the snow with long, tangled hair, an old manâs piercing stare, and the body of an insect. Finally, on an icy road â that head, alone, with open eyes, glassy. Worst of all, these pictures did not remain fixed. The photographer folded up his tripod, and the peasants left, stopping outside the frame of the photo â that terrifying photo of the cannibals â and resumed the daily round of their lives with all its disconcerting simplicity. Yes, they continued living! A woman bent over the child and recognized him as her son. And she did not know what to do with this old-man-insect, she who for weeks had fed on human flesh. Then what could be heard arising from her throat was the howl of a wolf. No photo could capture that cry⦠. A peasant looked into the eyes of the head thrown down onto the road and sighed. Then he leaned over and with a clumsy hand thrust it into a great homespun sack. âIâll bury it,â he muttered. âAfter all, weâre not Tartars⦠.â
And you had to go into the izbas of this tranquil hell to discover that the old woman watching the street through the window was themummified corpse of a girl who had died several weeks previously, seated at that window in the vain hope of rescue.
Once back in Moscow Charlotte left the mission. Walking out of the hotel, she plunged into the motley throng on the square and disappeared. At Sukharevka market, where barter was
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