Free The Life of an Unknown Man by Andreï Makine Page A

speak to her staff, to her husband, to this tall, dark, handsome man. She leads several lives at once and it is clear that this excites her. She stands there before her lover, considerably shorter than him, and her whole body betrays the demeanor of a woman giving herself. Shutov feels like an actor who has just missed his cue.
    The man brushes Yana’s cheek with his lips, takes his leave. She sits down, directs a look of radiant blindness at Shutov. They drink coffee without speaking to one another… As he escorts her to her car, Shutov is tempted to warn her to go carefully, as she seems so absent. But she quickly pulls herself together; she has to “dash off to a shareholders’ meeting” and advises Shutov to return on foot, “you take the main alley through the park and then turn left, remember.” She drives off as he embarks on an observation about how vividly he recalls those pathways amid the autumn foliage…
    Emerging from the trees he encounters the Brazilian dancers. They are changing in a small van. Shutov recognizes the one who was running along earlier, clearing the way for the fool. She has taken off her plumage, washed away the mascara, her face is very young and her look a little melancholy, as before. Shutov perceives a tenderness in it, possibly intended, strangely enough, for him…
    As he opens the door to Yana’s new apartment he hears Vlad’s voice: “Listen. It’s quite simple. We need two topless girls for the back cover. Then you call the editorial team. If they won’t include it in the article, we withdraw our ad and that’s that…” Intrigued, Shutov walks toward the voice. As he passes the little bedroom where the old man lodges he catches sight of that same green blanket, a hand holding a book.

E ach title includes a woman’s name: Tatyana, or the Fire Tamer; Deborah and the Chemistry of Pleasure; Bella, a Woman with No Taboos… Vlad is showing Shutov the new series launched by his publishing house. They lifted the idea from Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, he concedes. But Nabokov himself borrowed it from women’s romantic fiction… The young man talks a language Shutov has never heard in Russia. “Market analysis,” “book promotion,” “boosting sales”… For the new series what they needed was a clear definition of the “generational niche,” which, happily, is quite broad: female readers between the ages of thirty and fifty who are “not very intellectual” (coming from Vlad, this is a compliment) and a small minority of men who “have a bit of a problem with sex” and will read these books on the quiet.
    Seeing Shutov’s perplexed expression, Vlad hastens to add, “Fine, we also have more serious brands!” and he mentions various series of historical novels, family sagas, political fiction… But it is the word “brand” that disconcerts Shutov. Vlad translates: “They’re… how do you say it in Russian? Well… Yes. Makes, labels. You see, all these Bellas and Tatyanas, we have to bring them out at regular intervals. That’s how you create reading habits, you know, get people addicted. The problem is that each of these books runs to five hundred pages. No writer can keep pace with that. Unless he’s what my grandfather used to call a Stakhanovite. And so, several of them write under one name, preferably an American one. That’s a brand…”
    Vlad notices that this explanation plunges Shutov even deeper in thought. He leans over, picks up several volumes that are lying there on the wall-to-wall carpet. “Look, there’s some heavyweight stuff as well.” Shutov scans the titles. Secrets of the Kremlin; Stalin, Between God and the Devil; Nicholas II, the Innocence of a Martyr…
    “Are you sure he was really innocent?” asks Shutov, trying to rouse himself from his bemusement.
    “Of course. They’ve just made him a saint!”
    “For having led Russia into revolution…”
    “No, hold on. The revolution was a plot hatched abroad. Look, this book