That year France enveloped me in deep and studious isolation. At the end of the summer I had returned from Saranza, like a young explorer with a thousand and one discoveries in my luggage – from Proust's bunch of grapes to the plaque bearing witness to the tragic death of the duc d'Orleans. In the autumn and particularly during the winter I turned myself into a fanatic of erudition, an archivist obsessively gleaning all possible information about the country whose mystery he had only managed to scratch the surface on his summer excursion.
I read everything of interest about France that our school library possessed. I immersed myself in the much vaster shelves of our city library. I sought to complement the broad outlines of Charlotte's impressionistic stories with a systematic study, progressing from one century to another, from one Louis to the next, from one novelist to his colleagues, disciples, or imitators.
These long days spent in dusty book-lined labyrinths doubtless corresponded to a monkish inclination that everyone feels at that age. One seeks escape before being caught up in the toils of adult life. One remains alone in order to enjoy fantasies about amorous adventures to come. This waiting, this reclusive life, soon becomes painful. Hence the swarming, tribal collectivism of adolescents – a feverish attempt to act out all the scenarios of adult society in advance. Rare are those who at the age of thirteen or fourteen know how to resist the role-playing that is imposed on the loners and the dreamers, with all the cruelty and intolerance of those who were but children yesterday.
It was thanks to my French quest that I managed to preserve my own attentive isolation as an adolescent.
Sometimes the society in miniature of my schoolfellows displayed a careless condescension toward me (I was 'not mature,' I did not smoke, and I did not tell salacious stories in which the male and female genital organs became characters in their own right); sometimes an aggressiveness, whose collective violence left me stunned. I did not feel I was very different from the others; I did not feel I merited so much hostility. It is true that I did not go into raptures about the films that their mini-society discussed during breaks, and I could not tell apart the football teams of which they were passionate supporters. My ignorance offended them. They perceived it as a challenge. They attacked me with their taunts and with their fists. It was during that winter that I became aware of a disconcerting truth: to harbor this distant past within oneself, to let one's soul live in this legendary Atlantis, was not guiltless. No, it was well and truly a challenge, a provocation in the eyes of those who lived in the present. One day, worn out with the bullying, I pretended to take an interest in the latest match score; I joined in their conversation and mentioned several players' names, learned the previous day. But everyone smelled the imposture. The discussion broke off. The mini-society dispersed. I earned several almost pitying looks. I felt even more undervalued.
After this pathetic attempt I plunged even deeper into my research and my reading. Fleeting glimpses of Atlantis over the years were not enough for me. Henceforth I aspired to know the intimate details of its history. Wandering through the caverns of our ancient library, I sought to throw light on the reasons for that extravagant marriage between Henri I and the Russian princess Anna. I wanted to know what on earth her father, the celebrated Yaroslav the Wise, could have sent as a dowry. And how he managed to transport herds of horses from Kiev to his French son-in-law when he was attacked by the warlike Normans. And how Anna Yaroslavna spent her days in the somber medieval castles, where she so lamented the absence of Russian baths… I was no longer content with the tragic story depicting the death of the duc d'Orleans beneath the windows of the fair Isabeau. No, I now set off in pursuit of his murderer, this Jean sans Peur, whose lineage had to be traced; military exploits verified; dress and weapons reconstructed; landholdings located… I learned by how much marechal Grouchy's divisions were delayed, those few extra hours more, fatal for Napoleon at Waterloo…
Of course the library, a hostage of ideology, was very unevenly stocked. I only found a single book there on the period of Louis XIV, whereas the shelves next door offered a score of volumes devoted to the Paris Commune and a dozen on the birth of the French Communist Party. But, hungry for knowledge, I contrived to thwart this manipulation of history. I turned to literature. The great French classics were there and, with the exception of a few famous proscribed authors, like Retif de la Bretonne, or Sade, or Gide, they had in the main escaped censorship.
My youth and my inexperience made a fetishist of me: rather than grasping history's features, I was a collector. And in particular I sought anecdotes, like those recounted to tourists by guides at ancient monuments. In my collection were Theophile Gautier's red waistcoat, worn at the first night of
Strangely enough, it was somebody who knew nothing of France, who had never read a single French author – someone who could not, I am sure, have located that country on the map of the world – he was the one who involuntarily helped me to get away from collecting anecdotes by steering my quest into quite a new direction. It was the dunce who had one day told me that if Lenin had no children, it was because he did not know how to make love…
The mini-society of our class treated him with just as much scorn as it did me, but for quite different reasons. They detested him because he presented them with a very unattractive image of adulthood. Two years older than us, and thus at that age the freedoms of which my fellow pupils looked forward to, and yet my friend the dunce scarcely profited from them at all. Pashka, as everyone called him, led the life of those strange muzhiks who cling until their death to an element of childishness that contrasts strongly with their wild and virile physique. They obstinately avoid the city, society, and comfort; they merge into the forest and often end their days there, as hunters or vagabonds.
Pashka brought into the classroom the smells of fish, of snow, and, at the time of the thaw, of clay. He spent whole days squelching about on the banks of the Volga. And if he came to school it was only so as not to upset his mother. Always late, oblivious of the scornful glances of the future adults, he crossed the classroom and slid behind his desk, right at the back. The pupils sniffed pointedly as he passed; the mistress raised her eyes heavenwards, with a sigh. The smell of snow and wet earth slowly filled the room.
Our status as pariahs in the society of our class ended by uniting us. Without becoming friends, properly speaking, we took note of both our solitudes and saw in them, as it were, a sign of recognition. From now on I often found myself accompanying Pashka in his fishing expeditions on the snow- covered shores of the Volga. He bored a hole in the ice with the aid of a powerful brace and bit, cast his line into the hole, and remained motionless above this round opening, which revealed the green thickness of the ice. I would imagine a fish at the far end of this narrow tunnel, sometimes a meter deep, cautiously approaching the bait… Perch with striped backs, speckled pike, roach with bright red tails, all rose up through the bore hole, were released from the hook, and fell onto the snow. After several somersaults their bodies stiffened, frozen by the icy wind. Their dorsal spines became covered in crystals, like fantastic diadems. We spoke little. The great calm of the snowy plains, the silvery sky, and the deep slumber of the great river rendered words useless.
Sometimes Pashka, in his search for a spot with more fish, drew dangerously close to the long slabs of dark ice, humid, undermined by springs… Hearing a crack, I would turn and see my comrade struggling in the water, digging with splayed-out fingers into the grainy snow. Running toward him, a few meters away from the breach, I would lie flat on my stomach and throw him the end of my scarf. Generally Pashka managed to escape before I could help him. Like a porpoise, he hurled himself out of the water and fell with his chest on the ice, then crawled away, leaving a long wet trail. But occasionally, probably just to please me, no doubt, he caught hold of my scarf and allowed himself to be rescued.
After a ducking like this we would go to one of the carcasses of old boats that
