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I tell myself there is a name for such a mentality. A term I have recently heard on the lips of a friend who listens in secret to Western radio stations. A formula I have on the tip of my tongue, that only fatigue prevents me from calling to mind. I pull myself together, and the phrase, luminous and definitive, bursts forth: "Homo sovieticus!"
The force of it pins down the whole impenetrable collection of lives around me. Homo sovieticus covers this human stagnation, down to its tiniest sigh, down to the clink of a bottle against the edge of a glass, down to the pages of Pravda under the scrawny body of the old man in his threadbare overcoat, pages filled with stories of targets achieved and perfect bliss.
With a childish delight I spend a moment playing with it: this phrase, a veritable key phrase, slips readily into all the keyholes of the country's existence, unlocking the secrets of all lives. Even the secret of love, such as it is lived in this country, with its official puritanism on the one hand, while on the other this prostitute plies her trade – a virtually licensed contraband – a scant few yards away from those great panels with their images of Lenin and their edifying slogans…
Before falling asleep I have time to note that my command of this magic phrase sets me apart from the crowd. I am like them, certainly, but I can put a name to our human condition and therefore escape from it. The frail reed, which knows what it is and therefore… Hah, that old hypocritical device of the intelligentsia, a more lucid voice whispers within me, but the mental comfort afforded me by Homo sovieticus quickly silences this objection.
The music! On this occasion I have enough time to catch the reverberation of the last notes, like a silken thread emerging from a needle's eye. I remain motionless for a few moments, listening for a fresh sound amid the torpor of the sleeping bodies. Now I know I was not dreaming, I have even more or less grasped where the music was coming from. In any case, it was only the brief stirrings of a keyboard, very spaced out, muted by the clutter in the corridors, muffled by the snoring.
I look at my watch: half past three. Even more than the time and place where this music has emerged, what surprises me is its detachment. It renders my philosophical rage of a few minutes ago perfectly futile. Its beauty does not invite one to flee the smell of ca
I get up, cross the waiting room, and climb the old wooden staircase. Feeling my way, I come to the bay window of the restaurant. The darkness is complete. Ru
I withdraw with awkward, hesitant steps, one hand behind my back, feeling for the door. Just as I am close to the exit, my foot catches against a flagpole; it falls, bringing a whole string of portraits on their long staffs toppling down in a noisy chain reaction. The beam from the flashlight sweeps along the wall and dazzles me. The man at once lowers it toward my feet, as if to apologize for having blinded me. A moment's embarrassed silence gives me the chance to notice the deep groove of a scar, whitened with age, across his brow, and his tears.
"I was just looking for a chair," I stammer, glancing away. "It's absolutely packed downstairs."
The man switches off his flashlight, and in the darkness I hear his words and, in particular, a brief rubbing sound that enables me to guess at his gesture: he is swiftly wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his overcoat.
"Oh, well, if it's a chair you're after, there's all you could want up here. Only be careful, most of them have broken legs. I've got a whole sofa to myself, though there are several springs coming through, I have to admit."
I notice that the room is not totally dark. Two windows stand out in the blackness, illuminated by a streetlight and by the unremitting tornadoes of snow whirling about in the beam of light. I see the silhouette of the man as he makes his way around the wardrobes and disappears into a corner from which comes the shrill creak of springs.
"If they should happen to a
And he wishes me a good night. I pull up a chair and settle down amid the scattered portraits, resolved to maintain the pretense to the end, that I had just come in looking for a chair and had not caught sight of his tears.
I pretend so well that I very quickly fall asleep, overcome by that deep slumber of the small hours that follows a sleepless night. It is the pianist who wakes me, his hand on my shoulder, the little flashlight throwing shadows onto the wall cast by tangled chairs, a suitcase, the open lid of the piano.
"They've just a
He's right. It's a mob scene. A mad scramble of faces, with huge suitcases shuttling back and forth, shouting, and the tramp of feet along the trenches excavated through the deep snow on the platforms. In the midst of this jostling I quickly lose sight of the man who has just woken me up. A ticket inspector stops me in my tracks on the steps to a coach where I was about to climb in. "They're completely packed in there like sardines, can't you see?" The door to the next one is locked. Around the third is gathered a crowd from which a hubbub arises, alternately wheedling and menacing. The inspector checks everyone's ticket, now and then allowing some lucky souls to board, according to some criteria it appears even he would find hard to explain. Stumbling in the snow pitted with footprints, I rush down the length of the train. An old woman stuck in a snowdrift is bewailing the fact that she has dropped her glasses. A soldier, on his knees, digs in the snow like a dog. A few yards from there his comrade urinates against a lamppost. The first one fishes out the glasses with a long string of triumphant oaths…