The Brooklyn Rail

The colors that come to mind when reading Antoine Volodine, both here in The Monroe Girls and in his excellent 2017 novel Radiant Terminus, approach those of Francis Bacon: I see phthalo greens, cadmium red spikes, and the possibly-carcinogenic purples derived from coal tar. As in the work of Bacon, Volodine's fundamental materials seem to carry some kind of psychic weight. Can one describe hell in a non-pejorative sense, as a blurring between the living and the dead, as a matter-of-fact erasure of stability itself with the background hum of electricity and an ever-present urge to howl? If so, this seems to be the territory Volodine is mapping, which I recommend following closely.

*

Breton had just suggested I leave the window and that we return to our chess match. I was about to move when, at the spot where the roof of the house we were watching had been slashed, a hand appeared, followed by an arm. Then the first half of the body of the girl. She began by carefully groping around to gauge the resistance of the edges of the opening. It had been caused by a partial collapse of the framework, and it also resembled a hole made by a missile. In any event, the girl was exploring the tears. Above her, slates were coming off fluidly, six, seven, perhaps eight, and they slid off slowly before plunging into the void. The girl let them drop, then managed to extract herself from the eaves and climb over the gutter, obviously with the help of a rope she had attached to a sturdy beam. From this distance, the rope was invisible, but she could not have reached the façade solely by means of her sense of balance and her grip. She was carrying communications equipment, a heavy, antediluvian radio, bags, and a small rifle the barrel of which barely extended beyond her shoulder. She crossed the level of the gutter, descended three meters along the wall at lightning speed, then stopped dead between the fourth and third floors. She must have been caught on a cement or stone relief.

Stuck between the fourth and third floors.

The rain was falling in wide vertical sheets and it blurred the image. It also blurred the sound. It was impossible to know if the girl was screaming, if she was calling for help, or if she remained silent. The water streamed torrentially in the shadows, along the dark, vertical, mildly decrepit walls, onto the flooded sidewalk, along the slats in the blinds, on the darkened windows of all the houses in the street. Farther away there were plane trees with branches raised, indifferent to the deluge. No tram tracks, no cables weaving a bizarre network above the ground. It was not rue Dellwo. The girl remained motionless, neither trying to climb back up nor slide farther down, as though she had given up on everything. At present she was wrapped in a cloak that gave her a spherical shape, extremely disagreeable to look at because it was difficult to discern a human form there.

Next to me, Breton fidgeted. On his nose he wore bulging eyeglasses and, to prevent his breath from fogging them up, he wore a surgical mask that hid the bottom of his face. The top of his shirt was weighed down by the magic scrap metal, the cowbell necklace, and the leather amulets that we had decided a week ago to add to our observers’ panoply. It had been my idea. I tended to think that openly shamanic material could not harm our undertaking, in which a portion of oneirism and magic was already at work, if only in the Hirsch glasses, which were far from using solely optical means.

Between sky and earth, the girl was making tiny movements under her tarp.

“She wants to establish communication,” Breton declared in a strained voice.

“She hasn’t touched her radio equipment,” I objected.

Breton began to wobble next to me. He steadied himself on my shoulder and moved away. He was breathing chaotically, no longer gazing at what we’d been examining since nightfall. He removed his surgical mask and placed it hurriedly on the chessboard amid the pieces, some of which fell and rolled on the floor: a black bishop, the white queen, two pawns. Then he leaned against the wall, slumped down and, a few seconds later, was squatting on the floor. A yellowish trickle slid from his half-open mouth.

“She’s attempting a telepathic call,” he whispered.

He’d continued to hold the semi-spherical lenses of the Hirsch glasses in front of his eyes. I glanced one last time toward the street. I don’t know the camp well enough to identify or name with any certainty all the nooks and crannies, but it seemed to me that the spot was real, a little street situated in the Baltimore sector. It was not rue Dellwo. It was real and, despite my poor memory, I think I’d already wandered around there at least two or three times over the last decades. But perhaps I was wrong. The night was frighteningly dark, the downpour had doubled in intensity, it was hard to make out any details.

The girl was still hanging onto a relief in the façade, then she dropped. Now she was out of sight.

Breton had ended up sitting on the floor. He refrained from groaning. Sweat and tears were dripping on the metal parts of his enormous glasses. A yellow liquid was escaping between his lips, dribbling onto his chin. Receiving a message telepathically causes excruciating pain, or a discomfort so incapacitating that it can be mistaken for pain. Anyone who has experienced this knows what I’m talking about. The military doctors know too, which explains why their guinea pigs for oneiric voyages are not soldiers but simply subhumans and freaks.

“I’ve got the communication,” Breton murmured.

“Relax,” I said.

Breton stretched out his arms for an instant, as if he were seeking support in the void. Then he clenched his ankles with his hands.

“She’s speaking in short sentences,” he said. “I hear her name. She’s exhausted. Her name is Lola. Lola Schnittke.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Breton. “Schnittke. She’s whispering her name again. She just fell to us. She thinks she’s already dead. She thinks she’s leaving the world of the dead to enter into our free-floating world.”

Breton’s teeth were chattering. Strong jolts of electricity were coursing through him.

Afraid of forgetting the girl’s name, I went to spit on the condensation on the window and immediately wrote it as best I could with the nail of my right index finger. Then I went back to Breton. His glasses, much more impressive than aviator glasses, made him look like a blind foot soldier fighting the abominations of the world. All the shamanic gris-gris, the cowbells, and the tufts of magic fur he had pinned to his hospital jacket shivered along with him.

I placed a hand on his shoulder. Through the fabric, I could feel that his flesh was on fire.

“I still hear her,” he said. “I think she’s dead. She’s maintaining contact. She’s speaking from her death. She doesn’t know she’s already entered our free-floating world.”

“What’s she saying?” I asked.

“Nothing,” panted Breton. “She’s content just to talk.”