Now you’re in front of the fence and you don’t dare ring the bell; you consult your watch and find out that it’s five o’clock, the time she told you to be here. You observe the trees in the garden closely, as if noticing which pine tree is white and which one red, or whether the fig tree has borne fruit yet and if the figs are green or already ripe, was going to make a vital difference in some way to your life. And this cypress, straight and rigid as a soldier, nods at you, slightly, so that only you can spot it, and it gives you an idea … You could climb over the fence and jump into the garden, like you did when you were ten years old, in Komarovo, near Petersburg, you clambered up the neighbors’ fences to pick … what was it you picked? It couldn’t have been cherries or any other sweet fruit, because in the sandy soil of that part of the world fruit trees grow with great difficulty. Apples, yes, it was small, sour, bitter apples that you picked.
To climb over Patricia’s fence and climb up the fig tree, hiding yourself in it, sitting comfortably on a branch, in the shade, stuffing yourself with figs and savoring the summer taste of this garden of delights on your tongue … what a dream! And then to climb down from the tree, stretch out underneath it on the grass and sleep sweetly, and then to wake up in the middle of the night and drink in the sight of the stars smiling at you through the branches, and to listen to the rubbing and the ticking of the cicadas. And to sense, merely sense, the whispering of the leaves and guess at the branches as they swing, those feminine branches, as comforting and tender as a woman’s embrace, up and down, now I’m away and now I’m back, coming back to you, like a pendulum, like the wave of Patricia’s hand.
“Good morning, I’ve come to see Patricia Pavloff.”
“She’s not in.”
“I’m, I’m sorry?”
“She’s not at home.”
“She asked me to come at five.”
“Well, she isn’t in.”
He certainly wasn’t expecting that. Vadim looked the woman—probably the housekeeper—in the eye, and tried a different tactic. “I know that Patricia’s at home, because they’ve told me she is.”
“Who told you?” asked the woman, immediately blushing.
In other words, yes, she’s in. He has won the first round.
“Someone in Sitges told me. Someone who saw her here just a short while ago.”
“But nobody’s come! I mean … Ms. Pavloff isn’t in. Come back another day.”
She closed the door in his face.
“I’ll be back in half an hour.”
He went for a stroll by the stream. It was so hot that he had the impression the stones in the ditch were melting and flowing, instead of the water.
After half an hour, he rang the doorbell.
“She’s not in,” said the intercom next to the bell. This time the housekeeper hadn’t even bothered to come out into the garden. She’s not in. And now what? He was about to turn around to go.
Just then, the door of the house opened and the Arab woman who was sitting next to Patricia on the day of the lunch came out. She was wrapped in oriental fabric from the waist down, after the fashion of a sari or sarong. Long silver earrings were swinging from her ears. Vadim felt the last drop of his self-confidence ebb away, because this woman was absolutely stunning. He had to summon all of his willpower to keep his eyes from dwelling on the her cocoa-colored belly, or her curved, shiny shoulders.
“My name is Radhika. Please come in,” she said, but he wasn’t listening to her. He didn’t want to hear her, because her stretched, nasally voice and obvious American accent didn’t suit her.
Radhika turned to the door. He watched her nude back and felt a strong desire to brush his hand over it.
* * *
You are one of those beetles that make little balls of manure; you are dragging your stinking ball over a white tablecloth, laid for a festive summer lunch. You are a cartload of manure that they have mistakenly dumped in the bedroom of the bride who is getting ready for her wedding night. Could it possibly be that you haven’t thought about your sweat, that it hasn’t crossed your mind that, after such a long walk, you would stink of sweat and dust? Your T-shirt is soaked and your hair is clotted in thick locks; your eyes are puffy from the dust and sunlight, and, as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve forgotten to shave this morning.
In the hall, behind Radhika’s back, you look at yourself in the mirror and are horrified by what you see. Now you begin to understand why the housekeeper didn’t want to let you in. Look at you, your knees are covered in dust that looks like dried mud. If only the ground would swallow you up! Get out of there! There’s still time. Yes, get out, before Patricia sees you!
You turn and head for the exit, but it’s locked. So you have no choice but to walk toward a room from which you hear several voices. You have the sensation that you’re made of wood, that you’re a heavy piece of firewood, a wooden doll; a scarecrow that farmers place in the middle of the fields to scare off the birds. A clownish doll, a laughingstock … that’s what you are!
Before going in, with a quick movement, you wipe your sweaty palms on your T-shirt. Next time, you think … But, in the fraction of a second before you go into the room, it strikes you that, after this ridiculous entrance, there won’t be a next time.
* * *
And then … little angels with silver hair gave off a breeze by flapping their golden wings; from the sky they threw white buds and filled the universe with perfumed flowers to the gentle rhythm of a mandolin. That was the effect—oh, that kitsch imagination of his—that the gentle shade, the pleasant aroma, and the soothing melody of classical guitar had on him. That was what the room he had just entered was like: the lowered blinds let in a gentle breeze, on the table stood a chilled bottle in a bowl full of ice cubes.
The first thing that Vadim noticed in the half-light was the paintings of gigantic flowers hanging on the walls. The flowers, many of which were white, were portrayed in the shade, in twilight or the light allowed in by lowered blinds, and they exhaled melancholy and calm.
Patricia was sitting back in a soft armchair, the kind that Vadim would have liked to spend a couple of months in with a good book on his lap and a glass of cool lemonade in one hand.
The shadows made by the blinds had converted Patricia into a figure covered by horizontal lines, a character out of a surrealist dream, a prisoner whose uniform stripes had spread up onto her face.
“Is that you? You? Here?”
He wasn’t expecting that. Had she forgotten him once again? Hadn’t she invited him personally, and not very long ago?
“The day before yesterday, when I called you …,” Vadim could barely articulate the words. He spoke in a feeble voice; but he knew better than to mention that he had called not once, but seven times, at the very least. “The day before yesterday, when I called you, I took your advice, I introduced myself to the lady who picked up the phone and told her I was Japanese. After having had a word with you, the lady replied that I should come today at five. It’s five thirty. I’m sorry I’m late.”
What a joke! What was he doing there? Why had he come?
As soon as she saw his unhappy expression, Patricia remembered her manners and introduced him to the man who was sitting in front of her. Up until now, Vadim hadn’t noticed him: he was the artistic director of a Danish gallery who had come to talk about an exhibition.
Patricia began to laugh. The Dane, a bald man with an athletic build, smiled in the way people do when they don’t know how to react, and soon said goodbye. When he was at the door, he saw that his shoelace had come undone and started to bend down to tie it, but then looked at the faces of the two women and—almost imperceptibly—made a gesture of impatience with his shoulders, and left quickly. Vadim noticed, but didn’t pay particular attention to it. He already had a little farewell speech on the tip of his tongue. The Dane’s taxi stopped in front of the door. Vadim watched the car, wanting to get in … and then he noticed a strange presence that confirmed his impression that the whole thing was nothing more than a dream. Something, or someone, was hanging from the bookshelf, its legs dangling; it was moving backward and forward using its hands. Like a monkey, Vadim thought.
“Meena!” The head of the Dane reappeared through the half-open door. “Come on Meena, we’re off! Let’s go!” the Dane shouted at a brown monkey not much bigger than a small child.
“Is the monkey yours?” Vadim asked, with the expression of someone who doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. An unnecessary question, he corrected himself mentally.
The Dane smiled at Vadim’s surprise. “In Bombay, he followed me everywhere: if I went into a bar, the monkey did too, and climbed straight onto the bar. If I went to have supper in a restaurant, the monkey made itself comfortable in the seat in front of me. If I was walking by the docks, the monkey ran along the railing on four legs. If I went back to the hotel, the monkey tried to slip past the door of my bedroom. So I ended up taking her with me to Europe.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve never …”
“You’ve never seen someone with a monkey?” The Dane laughed with a mouth like an open drawer. “Why a monkey? Everyone asks me that question, as if it wasn’t logical to have one. On the contrary, it’s perfectly logical. Look at man’s handiwork over the last hundred years: wars, dictatorships, gulags, and genocides; all of that was done by people. They invented it all, they encouraged it all, and they took it all to the logical extremes. Monkeys have never done anything like that. I don’t want to have anything to do with people! Maybe we still haven’t reached the evolutionary stage that monkeys have. I have my monkey and that’s it. Meena, come on, we’re off!”
Meanwhile, the monkey had leapt from the bookshelf to the table. It flew over a few chairs and ended up sitting comfortably on its master’s shoulder. The Dane turned round, waved goodbye, and made a noisy exit. His shoelace was still undone.
When he closed the door, a heavy silence reigned in the shady room. Little by little, Vadim’s guts felt the pressure of an ever-increasing anguish.
The doorbell sounded. A moment later, in the entrance, an Asian man was making little bowing gestures in all directions.
“Kenzo Sato,” he introduced himself and continued bending forward like a puppet dressed in black, hanging from strings.
“You understand now, why I laughed?” Patricia murmured to Vadim in Russian, as she got up to welcome the Japanese man.
“Well, no, the truth is that I can’t say I do understand why,” Vadim answered, offended. He couldn’t stop feeling like a piece of firewood. Not even a wooden doll would put up with such cruel scorn! he thought, feeling sorry for himself.
And only then did he realize what Patricia was laughing at. When he, Vadim, had told the housekeeper on the phone that he was Japanese, she thought he meant this gallery owner from Kyoto! That’s why she didn’t want to let him through, because she was expecting a real Japanese man!
Patricia winked at Vadim and he replied in kind; then she introduced him to the gallery owner. “Vadim is Russian, he’s a poet: he writes poems inspired by traditional Japanese poetry, by haikus,” Patricia said, trembling from a laughter she could barely control. Out of courtesy to her, Vadim tried to humor her and spoke with the new guest about different kinds of haiku, and even recited one to him. He wasn’t sure if his memory had retained it properly from his days as a student, or if he’d just made it up on the spot.
The circle of the sun set
behind the garden.
A new shining appeared.
What pleasure.
He recited it timidly, as if he didn’t really want to, laughing, and pointing to Patricia’s hair.
And she applauded like a little girl in a village festival. The Japanese man with a face like a mask joined in.
“I’ve prepared some tea,” the whip of a nasal voice cut through the smooth air. Radhika. She had changed: now she was wearing a white dress. Clanging about noisily, she placed several cups on the table. She looked like Aries, the god of war.
“Cup of tea?”
Vadim didn’t feel like having hot tea, he would have preferred something more refreshing.
“What’s wrong, Radhi?” asked Patricia, always like a girl at a village festival: without wanting to, she had let go of a sky-blue balloon, and that big ball of hot air was flying, unstoppable, up toward the sky.
“You people and your poems! What nonsense!”
“No, they’re not nonsense, Radhi. Tell us another, please.” Patricia addressed this last request to Vadim.
Flowers everywhere,
flowers and birds.
Swallow,
come,
and we’ll fly together!
Vadim recited it very slowly. He meant to say bat, but he couldn’t remember how to say bat in English, or any other similar flying beast, so he substituted it for swallow. The swallow made the image too sugary, but there was nothing he could do!
“They’re nonsense! Don’t tell me you haven’t got anything more useful to think about?”
Radhika didn’t consider anyone worth looking at and her expression was that of someone who had mistakenly trodden on the little ball of manure that the beetle had left on the white tablecloth.
“Now, in the summer,” Patricia said, “we like drinking fresh mint tea. We usually have it cold, with ice and a slice of lemon. My father taught me to make it like that; he brought this recipe from the Balkans, from Turkey or Greece. Radhika prepares this tea with Indian spices.”
Patricia was trying to make up for her friend’s bad mood with this mass of words.
“A beautiful haiku, that one you just recited; I’d say it must be a poem by Basho, right?” warbled the smiling Japanese mask in a friendly way.
“What should we be thinking about?” Vadim asked, and he appeared to be observing the beetle’s little ball, which had been crushed on the white tablecloth.
Yes, Vadim wasn’t at all looking forward to having to swallow a mint tea with lemon and ice. He liked his tea strong, black, with three spoonfuls of sugar, sometimes with cream, but never with lemon. And at that moment he could have killed someone for a beer.
“We live in a period full of injustice,” Radhika went on, singing her song with her nasal whine, “nobody does anything except worry about their material interests. Everybody thinks only about their profits. Even when the world is literally stuffed full of injustice and evil! Just think of the little girls in China, of how many they kill or let die!”
Vadim remembered a television documentary he’d seen; for a time the report had horrified the world; it was about the little girls who the Chinese allowed to die. But Vadim quickly replaced this memory with the image of the woman’s cocoa-colored belly of the woman. He couldn’t really understand this transformation of an exotic, sensual woman into a militant activist.
“At the university, Radhika gives a seminar on women’s studies, and she works for an organization that fights to prevent cruelty against children,” Patricia said, by way of explanation. “Maybe you’ve heard of the organization, it’s called OFBTCH. She’s sponsored several children herself.”
“Nooooo!” Radhika howled, giving Vadim a look of growing aversion. “You shouldn’t have added sugar to the mint tea with lemon, I’ve already put sugar in, and plenty of it.”
* * *
Radhika sits down next to you. Absurdly, it occurs to you that … were she your wife, every evening you would sit like this, next to each other, watching the television and sipping fresh mint tea with lemon, full of ice cubes. And spices.
You would put your hand around her waist, then around her shoulder, you would make her sit on your lap …
Patricia is looking at you with eyes framed by the pistils of a tulip, she is fifty-three years old and has a dense network of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, yet she has the face of a little girl who has just lost a sky-blue balloon. That is what she looks like in the presence of the darker woman … and now you know that you have travelled all this way only for her, for the little girl who has just lost a sky-blue balloon, and that you would travel the same distance again if she gave you permission to do so, and that you would do so again and again. The black pistils come unstuck from the tanned face, framed by the fire-colored hair, now they are floating across the room … yes, you will make this journey again, on foot if necessary.
* * *
Radhika moved a little bit closer to Vadim, and then a bit closer again, so that now she was sitting on top of his hand.
“You like watching television?” she asked, guessing his thoughts.
“It depends,” he murmured.
His hand was hurting.
“You like watching television, observing human suffering? Having supper while seeing children suffer?”
No, they wouldn’t have a TV set. They would sit together on the sofa, certainly, like now—his hand was itching, but he wouldn’t have moved it for anything in the world—but they would listen to Schubert and Shostakovich. Automatically, he raised the cup to his lips to take a sip. The fresh mint tea with lemon was delicious.
“I like the drink you’ve prepared, what exotic spices,” he said, instead of answering her question.
“Radhika is Indian,” Patricia interrupted quickly. “Well, in fact she’s American, but her family comes from India and Radhika goes there often.”
“I go there because I’m writing a book about the fate of Indian women.”
“What is their fate?” asked Vadim, without showing much interest.
Radhika shook her head violently as if she had never seen such an idiot before. “Cruel, terrible!”
“Is this the first time you’ve prepared something for publication?” Vadim asked out of politeness.
“No way! I’ve published an essay in book form about the history of feminism in India. But you didn’t answer my question: Do you like watching human suffering on TV? Eating your supper while seeing children suffer, the way most people do?” Radhika asked, and gently pressed his hand, caught between her buttocks; by then his hand was really hurting.
“Do you know any more haikus?” The Japanese face, whose smile never left it, was taking a bite out of a cookie.
“No, the truth is I don’t like seeing people suffer, be they women or children,” Vadim said thoughtfully, but with emphasis and a slight note of protest.
“You live comfortably in your Russia,” Radhika went on provoking him, “you only think about your country, and the rest of the world doesn’t matter to you. And that’s probably what your father did, and your uncle, and your grandfather … I can see it all!”
Vadim remained lost in thought. Had he heard her?
“My father,” he said, as if he were talking to himself, in a low voice, “suffered a great deal in August of ’68, in Prague, when he realized that the Soviet invasion had put an end to a process of liberation in Czechoslovakia, and that he was one of the people responsible. He suffered all his life because of that. And, twenty years earlier, my grandmother suffered more than I can say when, every day, summer and winter, she waited in line, in front of the prison, after they arrested my grandfather, who was accused of being an enemy of the Soviet Union.”
“For what reason?” asked Radhika, holding her head up.
“For what reason?” Vadim took a sip from his cup and glanced sideways at Radhika, “It’s a long story. Who knows why they arrested people in the second half of the 1930s, during the time of the Stalinist purges. My grandmother was pregnant at the time. And when my father’s brother was born, my grandfather had already been sentenced and sent to the gulag. And then the war came and the siege of Leningrad, in which two million people died. My grandmother didn’t have any milk left to give, there was nothing to eat, of course, so they gave the child a piece of wood from the floor instead of milk. All over the city, there was no bark left on the trees, so that possibility was ruled out.”
Patricia and the Japanese man from Kyoto were silent. Faced with that kind of suffering, they had nothing to say.
But Radhika was not about to let her challenging attitude get side-tracked. “These are old events that belong to history, let’s not mix things up, please. I’m talking about true, palpable horror, about Ethiopia and Chechnya, about the little girls who the peasants in China allow to die, if they don’t actually kill them.”
“I’ll tell you a haiku, if you want,” the gallery owner suggested to Vadim, “I see you like them. I was watching the expression on your face as you recited the last one. I know what you are: a sensitive man. Very sensitive, as much so as a woman.”
“You guys from the Far East always talk like oracles,” Radhika said with a grimace.
“I don’t think women are more sensitive than men,” Vadim said, smiling. “Read Russian literature and you’ll find that out!”
The gallery owner stared him straight in the eyes:
“The cuffs of the sleeves
dark grey
and dirty.
Cold
as
a wall.”
“I imagine that image in the same way as I would a picture,” said Patricia in a low voice. “But it wouldn’t be cold, this painting. I see a warm grey.”
“Sleeves with dark grey, dirty cuffs. … Would that describe your grandmother’s dress as she stood on line?”
The Japanese man was addressing Vadim, but now he looked at the floor. He went on, “Cold as a wall … of the jail in which your grandfather was imprisoned.”
“Grey as the color of the workers when they go off to the factory, at five in the morning.”
That was Radhika’s voice, cold and nasally.
“Workers don’t wear grey anymore.” Vadim decided he’d had enough. He took his hand from under her buttocks. “Do you know anything, about the workers? Well, I do. When I had to stop studying, I went to work in a light bulb factory. Workers, nowadays, wear different colored clothes, especially female workers!”
“What did you study?” asked Patricia, in an interested voice.
“Japanese culture,” Vadim answered.
She looked at him, her eyes wide open; they had an absent air, as if she was trying to put two and two together.
As if he wasn’t worthy of an answer, Radhika moved away from Vadim and began to show immense tenderness toward her friend. She pressed her breasts against Patricia’s back and parted her hair so as to kiss her on the neck. A fickle cat. Patricia closed her eyes, smiled at the gallery owner to excuse herself, with a touch of pride, and gave herself up voluptuously to the pleasure of her friend’s closeness. The little girl has won a teddy bear at the fair and now she’s taking it back home as a trophy, thought Vadim.
The gallery owner bent forward slightly and took a few lithographs out of a folder.
“Shall we talk about your work?” he asked Patricia.
Unexpectedly, Radhika stood up straight.
“Where are you going?” Patricia asked her in a worried voice.
“Where am I going? To work, of course!” and she left, slamming the door behind her.
Patricia shrugged her shoulders to express her perplexity, and to apologize to her guests, and chose four lithographs.
“Will you show me your most recent work?”
“Of course. The ones that are finished. Let’s go to my studio.”
She got up, and with a nod invited the Japanese man to follow her.
* * *
They haven’t invited you. You sit down and stir the mint tea with lemon, although there is nothing to stir; the sugar dissolved a while ago. You let your eyes wander over the walls; you let yourself be absorbed by the portraits of flowers. Psychological portraits of flowers, said one art critic. That’s not true. Flowers don’t have a psychology. Fortunately, they don’t. They only have sensuality, fortunately. What have you written, about her paintings? Who knows. Something about Japanese concepts in the work of Patricia Pavloff. Something inadequate, very inadequate, when compared to the work itself. Criticism and essays are always inadequate before a work of art. Extremely so. They gave you an award for your words and your sentences. You were very pleased, although normally that sort of thing leaves you cold. Why were you so pleased by that, a few months ago? Why? Well, because that gave you an opportunity, so you thought, to show off the award to her. Like that, you would be somebody in her eyes, and not just a shadow. Like that, you thought, she would welcome you to her white palace, time and again, and yet again. Now you can see that that’s a load of nonsense. The only valid thing is what is hanging here, on these walls. The rest is dirty, wasted, useless paper.
Nonetheless, now that Patricia has come back from her studio with the Japanese gallery owner, you are surprised to find yourself offering her a copy of the magazine in which your long analysis of the work of Patricia Pavloff appeared. You write a dedication and accompany it with the words: “It’s nothing really,” and you can’t help feeling ashamed of your false modesty. But she hasn’t understood you. She has found the page where the essay begins, and in an empty space, has drawn a bird with an envelope in its beak. Finally, she signs the drawing and dedicates it to you. She starts off writing it in English but crosses it out and continues in Russian. With the childlike lettering of someone who is not used to using the Cyrillic alphabet. “To Vadim, with tenderness. Patricia.”
* * *
Patricia turned back to the guest from Japan, who was saying:
“You know, your flowers make me think about our haikus, really.” With a broad smile he said, “Allow me to leave one at your feet:
Look at
the chrysanthemum,
yellow,
without a drop
of dust.”
Vadim found it difficult to understand the gallery owner’s English, but, even so, saw before him a yellow star with a thousand points, an exploding firework.
The two listeners applauded the Japanese man enthusiastically.
“I want to paint a yellow chrysanthemum today. Based on your haiku. Is it possible to paint using a haiku as a model?”
Radhika came in, letting out an audible yawn.
“Everything is possible if one wants it enough.” The short man was smiling and trembling at the success of his haiku. “I’d like to show you something.”
He came back with another folder, smaller than the previous one, which he had taken out of his car. All four sat around the folder.
In it were Japanese miniatures with erotic themes. Vadim, a little red-faced, watched the reaction of the two women with interest. They appeared indifferent, although the drawings were somewhat explicit. An aristocratic distance from the subject, Vadim told himself, and thought that in Russia it would be hard to find this kind of reaction in women or in men.
“How dull,” said Radhika, yawning with her mouth wide open, and to show her lack of interest, she began throwing the sofa cushions at the dog, who responded by barking desperately and covering the cushions with saliva. Radhika went on yawning. “How boring you are, with your boudoir scenes … And didn’t Japanese women have lotus feet, that is, bound feet? That was in China? It’s all the same to me, China or Japan. I’m sure they also practice this ‘custom’ in Japan as well, they’ve just never admitted it. You can go and stuff these bedroom scenes of yours, otherwise I’m out of here. Given a choice, I’d prefer to listen to Vadim’s fairy tales about his witch grandmother.”
“My grandmother wasn’t a witch.”
“You said yourself that she ate plants and roots and pieces of wood and bark, to improve her health. I find your stories about your grandmother relaxing, Vadim.”
“These are eighteenth-century miniatures,” said the Japanese man, who didn’t understand what was being said.
Patricia didn’t hear anything, she was in ecstasy. Everyone had ceased to exist as far as she was concerned, although from time to time, she addressed those present.
“Look at how tiny, how fragile everything seems, in these paintings! The breasts of these women are small and elegant, as if sculptured in marble. Everything physical is described down to the last detail, but in such a delicate way that it’s as if you’re looking at engravings of the sea breaking against some rocks, or of fine oriental jewels, full of tiny precious stones that aren’t ostentatious in the least.”
“Why is this necessary? Why do we have to look at a bunch of bedroom scenes? Is that going to do anything for the world?” Radhika repeated her litanies of complaint like a schoolboy repeating something learned in parrot fashion, and, now that her clothes were all rumpled from having thrown the cushions at the dog, she restlessly set about adjusting her loose dress so that not an inch of her skin was showing. Nobody paid any attention to her. No, there was someone paying attention to her! Vadim was aware of her every move, although he was looking at the miniatures and listening to Patricia’s comments with interest. And more and more he found himself thinking that the changes in Radhika’s behavior were an indication of a story of some kind, an unusual story and probably a sad one, too.
“Why is it necessary to paint scenes from private life, you asked?” The gallery owner gave another broad smile. “Because in Japan we believe that man has to live his life in the richest way possible. To the limit, the last limit of pleasure.”
To this, Patricia added, “And nobody criticizes you for doing so, in Japan. Not like they do in Western culture.”
“That’s right.” The Japanese man nodded his head like a pendulum.
“For the Japanese,” Patricia went on, with growing enthusiasm for the distant culture, “it’s important to be able to fully enjoy every experience, whether it’s contemplating a tree covered in snow or two hours of making love with an unknown beauty in an anonymous hotel in a strange city before going to a business dinner. Someone who is capable of savoring voluptuousness is venerated by Japanese society. Quite the opposite, I repeat, from what happens in our culture, which, even today, wants to deny pleasure. The haiku you just recited expresses a tribute to the pleasure one gets from contemplating nature. And a homage to beauty. We often forget about beauty. We look for it in the objects that we buy, and yet it is present everywhere, you only have to stop and observe it.”
“This,” said the Japanese man, pointing to the miniatures, “is also a tribute to the pleasure that nature offers, in this case another kind of nature. This,” he said, turning the picture toward the others, although he continued to look at Patricia, not so much to convince her as to seek her protection against the scepticism of the others, “this is a natural act. And what is natural can only be good—”
“It’s good for men,” Radhika interrupted him sharply. “For women it’s different, for women everything is always different, didn’t you know that women are objects of desire? Pat, say something!”
Patricia didn’t take her eyes off the miniatures. She seemed to be making them her own, not only with her eyes, but with all the pores of her skin.
“I’m sorry?” she asked, and then went on, “Look! The acts in these miniatures take place in a shady interior. What a strange, extraordinary light! How did the painter manage that effect? The light gives the painting an enigmatic atmosphere; it emphasizes the fragility of a moment that won’t be repeated.”
“Yes,” said the gallery owner, “in traditional Japanese art, shade is indispensable. And notice that there is nothing shining. In our aesthetics, brightness is an inconvenience.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Pat,” Radhika said, gesturing emphatically. “Don’t you think that women are merely objects of desire, like in these paintings?”
“Men are as well,” said the gallery owner quickly, and then laughed as if he’d just told a joke. “Men are as well, don’t ever forget it!”
“You’re half right, but only half,” Patricia said, a little restlessly; her eyes flew from her friend to the Japanese man and back again; she was taking care not to offend either of them. “But in Tokyo I met women who have so much freedom that in America we can’t even imagine it. They’re not feminists. They don’t proclaim that they are liberated women. Simply they are free inside their heads and they behave accordingly. But …” She grew thoughtful.
Vadim was watching her with admiration. Patricia saw his look, but paid no attention to it. With her long fingers she caressed the margin of one of the miniatures. Vadim followed her movements with his eyes; with the tips of her fingers she barely brushed the grey margin, and, despite that, her movement was so … sensual, he thought. No, what a banal expression, he corrected himself. Intimate, perhaps. Radhika sat down right beside her; with her ring she pointed something out in one of the miniatures and laughed. Patricia looked at her with absent eyes and continued caressing the margin.
“I would like to …,” she began.
The phone rang. Patricia stood up with such agility and elegance, thought Vadim, as if she practiced jumping every day, and as if the temperature wasn’t thirty-three degrees.
“Don’t forget what you intended to say,” Vadim reminded her in a low voice.
She didn’t hear him.
But, when she picked up the receiver, she smiled at him … like a fellow conspirator. As if they formed part of a two-member clan. She spoke in French; she was organizing a meeting with someone.
* * *
And everyone goes silent. Patricia listens to the voice at the other end of the line, shakes her head, and moves her hands expressively, as if the person listening were able to see her gestures. The Japanese man continues to keep his smiling mask face, and you don’t at all feel like starting up a conversation with Radhika. You feel that she feels you have rejected her, and she’s wrong. Her ideology … You say nothing. Mentally, you count to ten, again and yet again, so as to get through that mute silence. God, when is Patricia going to get off the phone …
You’re not able to get through it. You start to speak. You try to appear nonchalant. In the hand that is resting on your knees, you are holding a teaspoon the way a blind man holds a white cane.
Why do we put ourselves in situations that upset us? And, what’s more, why do we do so of our own free will? Wouldn’t it be better to climb the tree and sit, for example, in the top branches of the fig tree that is growing in the garden, filling your mouth with sweet fruit, contemplating Radhika’s cocoa-colored back with only the mischievous palm trees for company? But … what about Patricia? You feel a sharp stab.
And, while you are thinking all this, on she goes, talking away; and, to your own great surprise, you hear yourself saying things you would never have expected to say …
* * *
“It’s odd,” Vadim said, “that the faces and bodies of the couples and these love triangles express so little passion. It’s as if their happiness was based only on the contemplation of dew on flowers, the mist in the window … like in the haikus you’ve just recited.” He was addressing the Japanese man.
Patricia came back to her chair. “And that is precisely why these paintings are not at all coarse.”
Vadim watched Radhika. Would she agree? Radhika was flicking through a book from a pile that she had brought in and ignoring those present.
“Look at the pearl in this lady’s hair,” said the gallery owner. “In the picture it’s more important than what the subjects are doing. It’s like a fir or pine needle stuck into a wild mushroom:
A perfumed mushroom
on a dish.
Adorned by
the needle
of a fir tree.
This detail is really very interesting. The rest is simply banal.”
“The rest is simply banal,” Patricia repeated, in a whisper.
“The rest is simply banal,” Radhika said, laughing.
Vadim realized that Radhika was following everything, and that her books were just a mask, like the Japanese man’s smile.
“How beautiful! I see the fir needle in front of my eyes,” Patricia said and immediately drew a mushroom with a fir needle on a pad. “I would love to …”
But Radhika wasn’t listening to her. “Do these sexual positions have something to do with a Japanese ritual?”
“Naturally. To the philosophy of joy of life, to the philosophy of health and a long life. They also have to do with another philosophy, but that would lead us to far more complex questions.”
The Japanese man looked at her with unblinking eyes.
“And the philosophy of social equality, that’s one that you don’t cultivate in your feudal Japan. Right?” Radhika fired at him without warning.
Patricia looked guilty. “Radhika’s heart is in the right place. She’d like to change the whole world.”
“We all want to change the woooooorld,” Vadim sang the well-known Beatles song.
Radhika jumped up, gave him a look full of hatred and headed for the door; she walked straight-backed and stiff like a ruler in the hand of a math teacher.
“Don’t forget your books!” Vadim shouted after her. With his words he wanted to hold her back, to make peace. But all he managed to do was make her even more furious. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Patricia: she’d turned into a schoolgirl who’d been given a bad grade.
“The world can’t be changed,” said the Japanese man, without smiling, with emphasis. “The world always stays the same. We can try and change ourselves and so influence the world. But the world itself is unmovable.”
At the door, Radhika turned around and sat back down on the sofa. She served herself a cup of tea, tasted it uneasily and said, “You can’t mean that seriously! On the contrary! A person has to be faithful to his- or herself, be consistent, and it’s the world that has to change! Social reality! Injustice! Social and racial problems!”
The Japanese man smiled again. He shook his head and said yes, yes, yes, when it was quite clear that what he meant was no, no, no. He started to put the miniatures back into the folder.
“You’re right: these drawings are not vulgar or offensive because they are fragile. And the expressions are so neutral, that’s right,” Patricia said, addressing Vadim. “You know what I would love to do? And I’ll do it …”
But the gallery owner was already getting up and getting ready to leave.
Radhika, irritated, said, “Sex is so nothing, Andy Warhol used to say.”
And a victorious smile spread over her face.
Mentally, Vadim tried to translate the sentence. “Sex is so nothing.” “Sex is nothing at all.” “Sex is a nothing.” “Sex is such a small thing.” Later he would have to mull over the hidden meaning of these words. Right then he didn’t have a firm opinion. “Sex is so nothing.” Hmm.
Vadim knew that he should take the opportunity to leave in the gallery owner’s car. But he couldn’t pull himself away from Patricia, now that she was trying to confess something to him. Maybe her projects, maybe a secret … He stayed. He had the feeling he was floating in the shade.
He stayed, yes, but Patricia didn’t go back to the subject.
For a while, they listened to music; later, the housekeeper came to ask them if what she’d prepared for supper was all right for them. They invited him to stay, but he felt they were doing so out of politeness and that they wanted to be alone together. He said goodbye and nobody tried to persuade him to stay.
He left. To get back to Sitges, he would have to walk over five miles. He thought about Patricia, about the exotic Radhika, about her wish to put an end to social injustice in the world … and his thoughts wandered away somewhere else … His grandmother, the endless line in front of the prison. Thousands, no, millions of wasted lives. As if human life was merely a grain of sand that could be trodden on and ignored, because at every step there are hundreds of thousands of more grains of sand, more lives … And the story that took place in Prague, that other life …
* * *
The tank roars like thunder through the streets. A whole column of tanks. People lean out of windows. They look at the tanks with hatred. Old people are weeping. Sergei sees that some people are spitting on the tanks. And on them. There are gobs of spit all over the place. Menacing fists. Menacing shouts. Menacing whistles. Noise and hubbub, uproar and clamor. Exclamations. Faces full of rancor. Of anger, of antagonism. Sergei understands the yells of “Go home!” and “Pigs!” They sound similar to Russian. But up until today he had never heard these words uttered by such high-pitched, hostility-sharpened voices. By pure hatred. There are stones. Children are throwing them, and adults too. With them, they also hurl their condemnation.
There are Czechoslovakian flags in all the windows. Sergei looks behind him. His tank is the last in the column. He can only see tricolor flags. There is a not a single one that is raspberry red, like his flag. Sergei can’t understand a thing. Why are the inhabitants of Prague waving their menacing fists against them, the Soviet soldiers? Why are the girls spitting on them instead of welcoming them with flowers in their hands? After all, they, the Soviet soldiers, are the defenders of the Czech and Slovak people! The messiahs! They have come to defend them against the evil of the bourgeois revolution, the counter-revolution! That is what the officers have explained to them, the rank and file soldiers, and they have come convinced they are here to help a country in grave danger.
Sergei knew the Czechs from their fairy tales: Salt Is Worth More than Gold; The King of the Sun, the King of the Moon, and the King of the Wind; Zlatovlaska—The Girl with Hair of Gold. His grandmother told him these stories when he was little. And now, instead of gratitude, or at least recognition, Sergei finds enmity in the eyes of the Czechs, the same people who created such pretty tales. After the war, in ’45, everything was different. Sergei has seen pictures from that period: the Czech people embraced the Soviet soldiers with tears of gratitude. What is going on, now? Why is everything so different? If, now, they, the Russians, the Soviets, have come to defend this country! To protect this city with its dozens of black bridges and black towers and black statues!
A stone whistles past his ear. Sergei is trembling with rage. Oh, if only he could open fire on this rabble! Now he sees an officer on his tank fire a hail of bullets from his machine gun. Within the blinking of an eye, Sergei’s rage has left him. Why, the ones who are down there, the ones who are throwing the stones, are children! They’re probably doing little more than playing at soldiers. After the hail of gunfire from the machine gun, the children and the grown-ups have gone pale as ghosts. Sergei smiles. To his left, there are three girls with very short skirts. Sergei has never seen such short skirts. The girls are spitting. One gob after another. Their faces full of loathing. Of resentment. The spittle is aimed against his tank. The girls bend forward and their hair sways like a heavy curtain in a wild wind. There are girls everywhere. Dressed in mini-skirts and tight-fitting, short T-shirts. With long hair. Sergei narrows his eyes a little; he cannot stand so much beauty. A black city full of colorful girls. Girls who raise their fists, show their teeth. And shout out threats.
The tanks make their way through the crowds. People move out of their way. At times, they jump away at the last minute. Boys ride motorbikes round the tanks, at incredible speeds. They ride through the spaces between each tank. Sergei closes his eyes again: it seems to him that the boy in the red T-shirt is about to fall over, with his bike, under the metal tracks of his tank. He hasn’t fallen over. At the last minute, he has hurtled to the right, out of the path of the armed and armored vehicle.
Cameras aim at the tanks and click away. Film cameras purr. Sergei can’t hear them because of the roaring of the tank. He sees the eyes of the cameras and imagines the sounds they make. They’re filming him, Sergei. They’re making a film about him. He feels like the lord and master of the street. The master of this city of ancient stones. He feels like the master of these beautiful girls. And of the old people. He is strong, the strongest of them all. He feels like a conqueror. He is on a tank, high above everybody else. A conqueror. He, Sergei, aged twenty-three. He, Sergei, a student. He feels a sweet dizziness. He closes his eyes.
When he opens them again, down below, on the street, he sees a child. He holds a stone in his raised hand. He can throw it at any moment. At them? He’s young. He’s a child, almost a toddler. Who can’t understand why they’ve come. He doesn’t know that they’ve come here to protect them. He doesn’t understand anything. There is no hatred in his eyes. Just excitement. And tension. He has let himself be carried away by the general atmosphere. By the drunkenness of the moment. He is waiting for an adventure. Like him, Sergei. The child is holding a large stone in his hand. He is strong. He raises his hand even higher. In a flash, he will throw the stone. It’s heavy. Too heavy to reach the top of the tank. The child plucks up his courage: he makes a violent grimace. He stretches out his free arm to mark his aim. He gets ready to act. He aims at the upper part of the tank. At him, Sergei. The officer of his tank points his machine gun at the child. To frighten him, to threaten him, thinks Sergei. The child is as straight as a statue. Now he leans his arm an inch further back. He is preparing for the attack. Is he really? Couldn’t it be that his arm has simply slipped back a little? They will withstand his attack. They are strong. They are armed to the teeth. But the tank moves forward and the child doesn’t get out of the way. Out of the way! Sergei wants to shout at him. And at the same time he wants to yell, “Stop the tank! Stop it!” But the words don’t leave his mouth. Too late. He shuts his eyes.
People are in an uproar. About the officer. He is lowering the machine gun into the tank. There is confusion on the street. A commotion. Some people are running away. Others rush forward, all to the same spot. To the spot over which the tank has just passed. To the spot where, just a second ago, there was a child with a stone. There is a body stretched out there, thinks Sergei. The mass of people hides the exact location. Crowds rush forward. With horror. They shout. All together. They scream, terrified. Sergei knows this, although he can’t hear it. He is deafened by the engine of the tank. And by the movement of the metal tracks over the cobblestone. Sergei sees the eyes of the people, wide open with horror. He can’t understand anything. His brain refuses to obey him. Some women are moaning. Others are crying. Men are pulling up cobblestones. Women are also throwing stones. Sergei’s mates are calling out to him. They want him to get inside the tank. Sergei makes out that he can’t hear them. He is paralyzed. He can’t understand anything. He wishes one of the cobblestones would hit him. He needs that, he wishes for it with all his heart. They don’t hit him, not one of them. The column of tanks has moved away from the spot. His tank is the last in line. They leave that place.
* * *
Sergei rubs his eyes. All that happened thirty-three years ago, and yet he can see it as clearly as if it were taking place now. The tricolor flags everywhere. People are waving them … No, they aren’t waving them. They carry them with sadness, like funeral wreaths. And with those blue and white and red flags they cover the dead bodies.
He can’t help but see it all. The eyes of that child. For thirty-three years they have haunted him, looking straight at him.
His wife serves him a cup of tea, and strokes his hair. She says something to him, but he doesn’t hear her. He can’t get the roar of the tank out of his ears, and the thunder of the metal tracks on the cobblestone streets of Prague.
His wife smiles sadly at him, strokes his cheek. She is saying something to him … yes, she is asking him if he has had a nightmare. Sergei can read the question on her lips. He can’t hear her, the tank is making a lot of noise. Sergei looks away, sees two buckets full of water. Ah, his wife must have gone to get water. She shouldn’t have. Buckets of water are heavy. And she is old now. She shouldn’t do it, especially now in autumn, in winter, in fact. The temperature is very low. Sergei feels sorry for her. What a life she has had with him! He met her when he was a student, she was a few years older than him. Joyful, playful as a cat. Eager for life. She held his hand all the way through his studies. She sang while he played the guitar. How they loved to play songs based on poems by Yesenin! Sergei hasn’t even been able to bring his guitar here, to the shack. The neighbors would hear him. And he has to live in silence and in darkness, nobody must know he is here. Click-click-click, little by little the sewing machine starts up again. Slowly, on a piece of black leather, a stitch appears, and then another, and then a third. Click-click-click … He’ll sew another purse, and then he’ll go to bed.