Free The Life of an Unknown Man by Andreï Makine

fragile by the passage of so many years, are too frail to cut through the noise. “Do you remember that evening at Peterhof,” he would like to say, “the golden haze over the Gulf of Finland…” He also learns what he had not known: the hotel chain where Yana works belongs to her! Well, not to her in person, but to the mysterious “us” she refers to when talking about her life. Her partner and her? Their family business? More than the music it is this language barrier that makes comprehension hard.
    Suddenly the din stops. An amazed silence, one can hear the rustling of the leaves… And the cell phones ring, as if the calls had all been waiting for this pause. No, it was simply that people could not hear them before. They all respond at the same time, delighted at having recovered the power of speech.
    Yana is telephoned as well, and Shutov can already manage to identify the person she is speaking to from the tone she adopts. That slightly irritated voice is reserved for the staff of one of “her” hotels. The sulky, simpering tones for a man whose bad temper has to be soothed and who seems to be a part of this vague but powerful “us.” Her partner, no doubt. Or else a husband from whom she must conceal this lover of thirty years ago? No, that would be too stupid…
    She puts the telephone aside and he hopes that at last he will be able to tell her the purpose of his visit. “We’re having a housewarming party, tomorrow,” she says. “Just a glass of champagne—it’s still a building site, as you saw. There aren’t even any tables. And in the evening we’re inviting everyone to our country place… Some of the key people in Saint Petersburg. I don’t know if you’d be interested. You won’t know anyone… The mayor should be coming…” This is someone Shutov does know: the beheaded man whose Gucci tie was cut short…
    A couple come over to greet Yana. Rapid glances of appraisal at Shutov: Who is he? A Russian? But not dressed smartly enough for this spot. A foreigner? But lacking the ease of manner that can be sensed on encountering people from the West. Shutov reads this judgment in their looks. The embarrassment he had detected in Yana becomes clear to him: he is unclassifiable, difficult to introduce to friends, he has a poor social profile. When the couple move away he tries to assume the relaxed air of a former fellow student: “So this dacha, where did you build it? Yes, I’d like to drop by.” Yana hesitates, as if she regrets having issued the invitation: “It’s an old izba. The plot is a bit constricted for us, less than eight acres. On the Gulf of Finland…”
    A man stops in front of Yana, begins talking to her. “The golden haze over the Gulf of Finland…,” Shutov recalls.
    The man is handsome, young (under forty, or at least at that smooth and tanned age that people with the means know how to fix). “Tall, dark, and asinine,” Shutov thinks. (It was something Léa used to say and they would both laugh…) The malice of it makes him feel guilty. This handsome man can, in fact, be graded by American norms of virility, in such cases the French speak of B-movie heroes… An impeccably cut lightweight suit, the manner of a seducer indulgent toward his victims’ weakness. Yana adopts a voice that is new to Shutov, an assumed nonchalance, slipping into frail tones of fond helplessness. Her face, in particular, expresses this, her eyes, as she gazes up at the man: the concerned look of a woman who has lost a loved one in the middle of a crowd. The music starts again, she stands up, draws closer to the man, and this tender anxiety is even more visible when their words can no longer be heard.
    “This must be her lover…” The brutality of the observation irritates him but he no longer has any wish to delude himself. “The golden haze over the Gulf of Finland…” It was idiotic to think that she would still remember it. He calls to mind the different voices Yana employs to