The Last of the Vostyachs (13 page)

‘Your national fixation with nudity turns out to be rather enjoyable!' she giggled, breaking into a gale of silvery laughter.

Seeing Jarmo come into the room, she had turned over on to her stomach and was waving the firwood branch that Jarmo had broken off for her from a tree.

‘So, what are you waiting for? Surely you're not expecting me to whip myself?' She was pulling the green branch over her own back, and her voice sounded slurred. The shape of the bench had imprinted itself on her big buttocks, and she was peering at him from over her shoulder. Aurtova said nothing. He sat down as far away from her as he could, then put his elbows on his knees and scratched his chest.

‘It's true, people take themselves less seriously when they see each other naked. Now I can see the white hairs on your groin, and that spare tyre, I'm much less in awe of you,' she added, coughing rather than laughing. She reached up, took the glass from the shelf and drank from it, eyeing her host's stomach with swollen, wine-befuddled eyes.

Suddenly embarrassed by his nakedness, Aurtova lowered his gaze. Olga was ready, impatient even; but she did not know how far Jarmo intended to push that particular game. The supper, the wine and then the sauna were all a build-up to something which was by now inevitable, but which Jarmo was postponing. Perhaps he was performing some propitiatory rite of seduction of his own making, some rigmarole which had to be rigorously respected in order for everything down there to proceed as it should. Presumably, for the experienced seducer, pleasure was to be approached by twists and turns. Perhaps the sauna was somehow a sacred place, and Olga would be able to enjoy her host's favours only when stretched out on the bed. Or perhaps, seeing her naked, Jarmo had quite simply had second thoughts, his curiosity about the wizened spinster doused by the sight of her sagging flesh. Olga did not know which of these possibilities was the more likely, but she was sated with pleasure as it was. She turned towards her old colleague, forcing him to look at her. That was her way of possessing him. One day, she liked to think, embracing one of the lovely women with whom he habitually surrounded himself, Jarmo would remember her own drooping breasts, her yielding flesh. Then the perfect body he was enclasping would slowly decay before his very eyes, would become shapeless and swollen until it became her own, that of the ill-favoured Olga Pavlovna.

‘This too is a language, my dear Jarmo. Not one pronounced using the larynx, or the palate. Not one you write, or read, or need to learn, yet spoken the world over.' She raised a foot, finished off the vodka and continued:

‘Indeed, maybe you Finns invented the sauna for this very purpose. Because, when all is said and done, it's only in a sauna that you can start to relax, to speak. With your bodies, not with words. A language like yours, which has so few liquids and occlusives and not one single palatal-fricative, does not exactly send the senses reeling; it does not put fire in your bellies.'

Wearily, Aurtova sought the right words to rebut this claim. That was how it had been throughout the evening – linguistic bickering. They'd been incapable of broaching any other topic.

‘No, Olga, that's not true. For the Finns, the sauna is a place of utter chastity. Besides, we're not like you Russians, who hurl yourselves at anything that moves!' said the professor distantly, sipping his cold water.

At those words, casting all modesty to the winds, Olga looked up and adopted a less than decorous pose. The professor tried to avert his gaze from the crease that was all too visible between her wobbling thighs, but some malign force was keeping his gaze trained masochistically in that direction.

‘For us, seduction means being able to talk to one another. For us, emotion is paramount; and nothing can stir our emotions more powerfully than well-chosen words. For Russians, don't forget, God is a verb,' warned Olga solemnly.

Aurtova was having trouble breathing. The heat was taking his breath away, draining him of all emotion. He had thought that he would be able to put the finishing touches to his plan with an unbearably hot sauna, but now it was he himself who was suffering. Defiantly, he threw a bucket of water on to the brazier, unleashing a burst of sizzling steam.

‘We on the other hand are a people of few words. But our words have remained permanently frozen, like the arctic ice. Perhaps that is why we've managed to stand up to you, why we have never been drowned out by the Slavic tide: by using our sounds sparingly, transmitting them intact from generation to generation, honed by use. Your sounds on the other hand are blunted and round, like stones in a river. They have become shapeless, and your mouths skitter over them, unsure as to how they should be pronounced!' exclaimed Aurtova, waving a finger as though making some ex-cathedra pronouncement.

‘Your language has never known the dizzying heights of universality. No one studies it, and all you can do is to repeat it among yourselves, because it tells of a tiny country no one knows. To communicate with the rest of the world you have to learn another one, you have to venture out among words which are not your own, which you have borrowed from others. Like second-hand clothes, they are not tailormade for you. They are too loose, or too tight, faded from use; they turn you into perpetual refugees. Whereas our language can tell of the whole world, and we can speak it from here to the Pacific. Thousands of foreigners study it, and in doing so they become steeped in our thought; the sounds of our language stamp the mark of our minds on theirs, conquering them as they do so. Our language is translated into a hundred others. A hundred other peoples want to understand us, and invent words in their own language which express our truths.'

Waving her arms around in her enthusiasm, Olga's face had turned scarlet. Aurtova was staring in disgust at the black bumps that were her nipples, at her sweat-streaked skin, at the locks of hair now sticking to her neck. He breathed in as deeply as he could, swallowing a mouthful of that moist, lifeless air, drenched with her cloying scent and sweat.

‘Translation causes a language to become soiled; like blood in a transfusion, which is gradually tainted by impurities. Your language is a phial of blood on a hospital shelf, a curdled mass of random droppings. Ours on the other hand is a young vein, full of life, the fruit of a single body. By being translated, a language picks up meanings which are not its own, which infect it and poison it, and against which it has no defences. It is like the native Americans, who were wiped out by European diseases. Today they are almost all dead, their languages so many unpronounceable relics, tangled heaps of sound which no alphabet could ever unpick.'

Olga raised her eyebrows in displeasure. Aurtova could make out the damp white blotch in front of him increasingly dimly in the cloudy air, and this at least afforded him some relief.

‘Easy now! Think twice before insulting the Indo-American languages: it might turn out that you're related. Did I tell you that my Vostyach barbecues beavers without skinning them? Just as the now vanished Potowatomi used to do in Canada! As to your beloved Finnish, aren't you forgetting that it is one of the few languages in the world without a future tense? And where can you hope to go without a future? Little by little, you'll die out. Because one fine day you won't even be able to tell each other what you're doing tomorrow.'

Aurtova wiped away the sweat that was trickling down his forehead and returned to the matter in hand.

‘It is you who have no future! Just look at you, weary of yourselves and of the world, almost complacent about the rancid smell you give off. Too much history has worn you out. Tomorrow I shall prove that your Vostyach is just a mentally handicapped member of the Nganasan group with problems of articulation,' he said, wagging a finger threateningly in Olga's direction.

‘The force of his words will be my Vostyach's most powerful defence. Did you know, in Vostyach
powakaluta
means “something grey glimpsed vaguely running in the snow”. That may strike you as funny, indeed it seems scarcely credible that a language should have a word for such a concept. We don't even know what this grey thing is. But, when the Vostyach language disappears,
powakaluta
will vanish with it. Or rather, there will still be something grey glimpsed vaguely running in the snow in the Siberian tundra, but the word to describe it will no longer exist. And that is terrible, and certainly has something to do with God!' said Olga forcefully, raising her eyes; and when she raised her arms as well, her breasts wobbled like jellies, then slapped back stickily on to her stomach.

Aurtova was panting with the heat. Now his whole body was beginning to feel inexplicably itchy, so that he had to tie himself in knots to scratch himself. He looked at the red blotches which had suddenly bloomed on his chest and stomach: all manner of hideous diseases came to mind. This waiting was beginning to take its toll. He felt a grim desire to hurl himself at Olga and pummel her into silence. But he managed to restrain himself, forced himself to relax and protested mildly:

‘Come on now, Olga, enough of these ramblings. When we came in here this evening we made a non-aggression pact, but you refuse to bury the hatchet. So don't try telling me that
I'm
the Indian! Surely the idea was to move on from linguistics and talk about ourselves?'

Olga burst into genuine laughter. She pressed her knees together, took hold of the fir branch as though it were a bunch of flowers and settled herself comfortably, giving Aurtova an appeasing look.

‘You've always been extremely likeable, Jarmo. Handsome and likeable. That's why everyone always forgives you for your loutish behaviour. Yes, you're right: let's talk about us! Tell me where your wife's gone off to. This business about a relative in Sweden just won't wash. Tell me why you brought me here this evening, why you wined and dined me and got me to take my clothes off,' she said, with a sudden tenderness. But Aurtova was quick to change the subject.

‘First let's see whether you are up to a roll in the snow. Come on, I'll race you to the shore and back. The winner will get another glass of vodka.' Even as he proffered the challenge, Aurtova was still clinging to the dwindling hope that her timely collapse would spare him the evening's by now inevitable conclusion.

‘You've got yourself a bet!' said Olga, heaving her massive body down from the bench.

Outside, it was pitch black. The distant lights of the city were almost lost beneath the heavy, louring sky. Out to sea, the waves were taking on the ghostly forms of a vast cavern, bristling with stalagmites, strewn with craters and crests as black as lava, concealing measureless chasms. Intending to lose this absurd race, Aurtova allowed himself to be overtaken, running clumsily out of the trees and, reaching the beach, pretending to stumble in the snow. He could just make out the mass of her gummy white body in the faint starlight as she overtook him. When he went back into the cottage, his body was aching and steaming with cold. When he caught sight of his puny white frame reflected in the glass of the veranda, he felt a sudden pang of weakness. Panting, he followed Olga's damp footsteps into the changing room, then went into the sauna to warm up. Hunched up against the stove, he realised he had a fever: he was trembling all over, and his teeth were chattering. A stab of pain shot through his forehead. He thrashed his back and chest with the branch of firwood, hoping that would get his circulation going. The sauna was cooling down, he would have to get more wood, but was too weak to move. He felt his temples throbbing furiously. Behind them, an overburdened vein was beating wildly, sending blue flashes across his eyes. His limbs felt sluggish and he could scarcely breathe. He fell to his knees, and in the hazy distance saw the wild horde of Pecheneg horsemen coming at him again, urging on their horses with short plaited whips and dragging bloody corpses through the dust, bouncing along like so many sacks. Soon they would be upon him. He could already see their gleaming leg-guards, their spiked helmets, the whites of their glaring eyes, he could hear their animal howls, the whinnying of their terror-stricken horses. He threw himself under the bench, covering his head with his hands, hearing the dull thud of the hooves on the ground. When he recovered consciousness, the room was in darkness, except for a feeble glow coming from the changing room. He did not know how much time had gone by, whether he had slept or fainted. He had pins and needles in his legs, his feet were frozen and his head run through by a thousand needles. He sat up, gathering his strength; propping himself up against the wall, he managed with one last desperate effort to get to his feet.

Stretched out on the bed, Olga drew the sheets up around her, excited by slight wafts of aftershave. Then she discovered the warm nest they came from, the silk pyjamas Aurtova had laid out on the pillow, and sunk her nose into them, rubbing the material so that it would release its scent. Without undoing it, she pulled the jacket over her bare flesh, pressing the soft pillows against her breasts. Suddenly she felt unable to breathe, her limbs seized up in a spasm which shot through her like cramp, as draining as a fit of retching, but more lasting longer. She was panting now, digging her nails into the foam rubber, when she saw a pinkish glow passing in front of the door and heard Jarmo's steps approaching. She kicked off the covers, pushed away the pillows, stretched out her arms and spread her still trembling thighs over the empty mattress. She waited to feel the candlelight warm upon her stomach, to have Jarmo's weight at last upon her, the smell of the living man there in her nostrils. But now she felt a new weakness slowly creep over her body, causing the spasm to melt away. Her breasts slackened, her knees buckled, her jaw relaxed, giving her lips back their usual expression of gentle sadness. Olga realised that she was sinking into unconsciousness, but by now nothing could matter less. Jarmo had been hers. In that bed. She had possessed him. No one would be able ever to deny it.