You walk in the dark. You cannot see the stars or the moon; the sky must be clouded over. You observe some distant lightning, a far-off peal of thunder keeps you company. Going along the path that leads over the fields, you stumble against roots and stones, but you avoid the main road: you don’t want to see or hear the speed and the noise of the traffic. The last peal of thunder sounded pretty close. You feel like seeing what’s in the box. That’s not a very smart idea: any second it might start raining and the rain could damage the fruit, the box, and the sketches in the envelope. But you can’t resist; you find a tree you like and lean against its trunk. Now, sitting on a stone, you get ready to open the box. You feel a round, rough object. Another peal of thunder. You smell the dry grass and the figs you are carrying in the basket. And something else, maybe the humid air, charged with electricity … A round, rough object. There’s a slit, an opening. A ceramic piggy bank! It is a handmade piece by a craftsman from some village here on the coast. You admired it in Patricia’s house, it looks like a human head. In fact, it’s not that it looks like one, but you’ve always imagined it as the head of an African goddess; the goddess of fertility.
The atmosphere is charged with electricity, you can feel it with every pore of your skin. You walk on, increasing your pace. There is more and more lightning, and a strong wind is blowing. Gusts shake the branches of the olive trees and the carob trees with so much force that the trees roar like a forest of tall pines in a storm, far away, in the north, where you come from. But you walk lightly, the stones you tread on don’t bother you. You have a gift from Patricia! You suddenly feel that life has given you all that it has to give. You would like to surround yourself with all the objects that Patricia has given you, to sit once more under a tree, on a stone. Yes, on a stone, as if you were in an armchair, and hold the piggy bank—the apple—in one hand, and in the other, what would you hold instead of the scepter? A blade of grass, yes. And like that, you would turn into the king of the universe!
You run up to the boardinghouse as the first drops splash on the pavement, like little frogs that someone has poured out of the sky. You sit on the bed and impatiently unwrap the piggy bank: it’s painted! Patricia has shared your fantasy and has painted, with black strokes, two great almonds—the eyes, with curling eyelashes—and a little mouth around the fine opening for the coins; and there are tiny ears and some hair: small circles. Then it strikes you: why did you take a step back when she put her fingers on your head? Why did you step back, like you were about to run from her? Immediately you saw that she got frightened and took her hand away. Why? Because … because that, that gesture, was exactly the one you have always wanted her to make. That she should feel your head. And, when the moment finally came, the sensation was so strong that you couldn’t bear it.
What a coincidence … you saw the piggy bank at Patricia’s place, above the fireplace, and you saw it as an African goddess … Did Patricia see it through your eyes, then? Today Patricia read in your eyes that you didn’t betray her. You don’t feel like thinking about what happened earlier, about the person who told her certain things about you or what things she said; you just want to do nothing, to give yourself up to the sweetness of the sensation without thinking about it. And that’s all. Patricia is a sorceress. On the shelf and on the table, you place the head of the African woman and the sheets of paper with the drawings, respectively. You stretch out on the bed and, slowly, with pleasure, you fill your mouth with the honey-sweet pulp of the figs.
Slowly, you fall asleep, but you wake up a little later, in the middle of the night. You put on the light to admire your treasures. Yes, they’re here, no doubt about it! It wasn’t a dream. You eat a fig and look at the sketches. You ignore their erotic elements, you concentrate only on the tender expression of the women, one in particular. She looks like a muse. A smile is trembling on her lips, or rather the illusion of a smile. With a single line, Patricia has managed to draw a mysterious half-smile better than anything Raphael did with all the colors of his palette. Ah, enthusiasm! You fill your eyes with the movement of this beautiful woman’s lips and you go back to sleep, but half an hour later you wake up again, and then a third time. This excess of inner energy, which you feel each time you visit the house with the cypresses, prevents you from sleeping, today more than ever. This excess of energy that is called bliss.
In the morning a few drops are still falling, but soon the sky is clear. The sun is different today than on other days: bright as ever, certainly, but yellow. You make out each little wave on the sea, each grain of sand on the beach, everything is visible as if seen through a microscope or painted by the precise brush of a Sunday painter. You have breakfast at your usual café and then walk along the shallow edge of the sea, close to the beach; on your walk, you pick up the stones that catch your eye and imagine them decorating Patricia’s studio … where you haven’t yet been, even once. You don’t walk: you skip and hop, you play and throw yourself at the waves, and if the beach wasn’t full of people, you would shout for joy. And, afterward, you emerge from the waves like Venus transformed into a monkey. You grip the basket full of stones and an irresistible force attracts you to Olivella. You whistle a rhythmical tune, you swing the basket to the beat, the stones rise and fall and you feel like Little Red Riding Hood taking a basket of food to her grandmother. It doesn’t occur to you to phone Olivella; Why! You don’t call first when you’re going to your own home, do you?
* * *
“Patricia isn’t in!” Radhika announced victoriously, her belly naked. “What are you carrying in the basket?” she asked, and approached Vadim, swaying her hips voluptuously, like a rocking chair. “With that basket, you look like Little Red Riding Hood!” she crooned.
And, disgusted, Radhika took the stones that Vadim—in a state of ecstasy, without thinking about Radhika for even a moment, picked up that morning—out of the basket. Each stone was a little sculpture, Vadim thought, imagining Patricia’s dark, wide-open eyes; in his mind’s eye, he saw the painter taking stone after stone and looking closely at the veins on each one.
“Empty the basket here, next to the dog house,” Radhika said with a yawn, turning her back to him, “I’ll throw them at the stray cats, to keep them at bay.”
So Vadim emptied the contents of the basket onto the ground, because he was ashamed to confess the real reason for bringing those little colored stones. But one of them, the green one, he hid in his pocket. As a souvenir.
“I know you haven’t come to see me,” the woman said in a voice full of malice, still swinging her hips.
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s written right here!” she grabbed Vadim’s nose with two fingers.
A bird made a sound in the garden. Also a kind of yawn. It must be sitting on a branch of the mulberry tree, Vadim supposed.
Radhika invited Vadim to sit at a stone table in front of the house. They chose a place in the shade. Although, in fact, there was very little shade. Radhika sat down right next to him. And the woman started where they had left off a few days ago: she rested a hand on his knee.
“No, I know you haven’t come to see me. But it won’t be easy with Patricia. You’ve made a bad choice!”
And she went off dancing to the pear tree. She picked a pear and bit into it.
“You want one?”
“Don’t pick it, I just want to smell it.”
“But pears don’t have a smell. Maybe in Russia they do, who knows. You know, with Patricia … You’re trying to conquer an impenetrable fortress.”
“But I’m not trying to conquer anything. I just knock on the door, very gently. I don’t expect anything.”
“Pat and men … is another chapter. Or a whole novel.”
Vadim ran his fingers over the surface of the pear, which was more green than yellow, with a pink spot on one side, and a few brown speckles.
Radhika bit into her pear.
“I’ll tell you a story. The story of a little girl,” Radhika said, while still taking little bites out of the pear. “A kind of fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a little girl with sunflower-colored hair, who was the apple of her parents’ eye. Well, this little girl was ill for a very long time and when she finally got better, she refused to go back to school. She even refused to get on the school bus. No, no, she cried furiously, swinging her little fists all around her. So her mother, who was rich and elegant, took her to school by car. The little blonde girl, drenched in tears, hid her face in her mother’s skirt. There was no way she could be made to go to school. Her parents organized a party for her birthday and invited many of the neighborhood kids so that the little girl could amuse herself and have fun, so that she could go back to being the charming little girl she was before the illness. But the child locked herself in her bedroom, and only after her parents begged her over and over again, she decided to open the door. The little girl slipped through her parents’ hands and got some cake and a glass of lemonade and immediately locked herself into her room again, this time with three or four of her girlfriends. These little girls whispered and laughed, the way little girls do. One of them came out of the room to fetch her little brother. She shouldn’t have done that! The little blonde girl, the daughter of the house, nearly broke the little boy’s hand when she slammed the door shut to stop the little boy from coming in. The little girls got frightened and gradually, one by one, started to leave the room: they felt more at home with the other children.
“Thinking that the little girl was suffering from some strange illness, her parents called different doctors to cure her, as well as child psychiatrists, but the girl looked at them all with disdain and aversion and didn’t say a word. She twisted her long blonde locks with her fingers so that her hair fell like bunches of grapes over her shoulders, and she didn’t pay any attention to the doctors; it was as if they weren’t there.
“Until one day the cleaning lady hired by the little girl’s parents, a Japanese woman, brought along her son, a little Japanese boy, to keep her company in that sad house. The boy sat on the sofa and watched TV while his mother went to work, and … a miracle! … soon the little girl came in. The very same one who couldn’t stand the presence of any boy or grown man! The girl sat on the carpet in front of the boy and stared at him. The boy, who was older than she was, invited her with a wave of his arm to come and sit next to him and watch the movie they were showing on TV. The girl shook her curls: no! So Miku—that was the boy’s name—didn’t feel like paying any more attention to her. After a while, the little girl got some sheets of paper and crayons and drew an airplane; she showed the drawing to the boy. He looked at it without understanding. Then, she drew the sky and some stars and without saying a word handed the sheet of paper to the boy. He tapped his forehead, as if to say that she’d gone crazy. Apparently, she didn’t understand him, and ran into her room to show him more drawings.
“There were cities and trees, the yellow onions of Russian churches and American farms standing on the plains of Illinois—the little girl lived in a wealthy residential district of Chicago; the boy came from a less affluent neighborhood, which is why his mother had to supplement the family income by working as a cleaning lady. There were also drawings of flowers, wild and exotic, of autumn leaves, because in the state of Illinois, autumn turns nature into a symphony of reddish colors … Anyhow, there was everything that you could imagine, including kings and princesses, ships and ports, cops and robbers.
The boy realized that these drawings had been done by more than one person; that there were two artists, in fact. The drawings had the feel of a conversation to them: a question and then an answer. A family in their Sunday best, meant: What are you going to do this Sunday? The onions of an orthodox church meant: We’re going to attend a Russian mass. And you? A farm between two trees: I’m going to the farm. Yes, this was a dialogue, a conversation. Those two artists went everywhere together, with Indian canoes and medieval ships, they sat on thrones and robbed banks. And, suddenly, Miku remembered something: his brother Aki often drew things that he immediately hid, then he folded the sheets in the middle, put them in an envelope, and sent them to someone. His brother was deaf and dumb, so that was how he communicated with his friends! And that was how Aki communicated with the little blonde girl who was now in front of him, his brother!
“The little girl stroked his head and took a hold of a lock of his smooth black hair. She smiled. And he knew that she thought he was Aki, who was younger, certainly, but who looked very much like him. So he said to the little girl: ‘I’m not Aki! I’m Miku! Aki is …’ He didn’t want to tell her that Aki was dead, that he’d been run over by a car. The girl got frightened when Miku started to talk and before the boy had time to finish the sentence—which in fact he had no intention of finishing—she once again showed him the drawings of the plane and the starry sky.
“‘Has Aki gone on a trip to the sky?’ That was the question she was asking him. Miku nodded yes, yes, yes. The little girl felt so relieved that she burst out laughing and crying at the same time; with her face bathed in tears, she kissed Miku on the cheeks, gratefully; the two children laughed together. At that moment the little girl’s mother entered the room; the girl got frightened and started running, to escape, but, just as she got to the doorway, she came back to get the pile of drawings, pressed them against her chest, and carried them off as if they were some kind of treasure.
“Patricia takes these drawings with her wherever she goes, even here. I’ve seen them in her bedroom. By now Vadim, you must have realized that the little girl in question is our hostess, right? This story, the one about Miku and Aki, was told to me by Patricia’s mother. She told me that, ever since childhood, Aki was the little girl’s only friend. Patricia didn’t want to play with anyone else.
“One day, long before she met Miku, Pat and Aki were playing together in the street, tickling each other, elbowing each other, and pushing each other around for fun; they were waiting for the traffic light to turn green so they could cross the road. At that moment, a car came by. Aki, excited from playing, crossed the road skipping, without looking. The car didn’t have time to brake and ran him over. They took him to hospital at once, but Aki never recovered consciousness. Patricia was convinced that it had been she who had pushed him into the middle of the road. And that’s why she fell ill. When Miku, Aki’s brother, persuaded her that Aki had gone on a trip to the stars, the girl calmed down and went back to school. But she wasn’t a normal little girl, no, she never would be. She spoke very little and couldn’t stand the other children. She only wanted Aki, and Aki wasn’t there.
“Since then, she neither wants nor is able to express herself through any means other than painting and drawing. That’s why she paints almost exclusively in the Japanese style. That’s also how she communicates with the people she loves, by painting. She and I painted a few pictures together, flowers mainly, tulips and petunias. I did pencil drawings, she made a fair copy of them and filled them in with colors. With you, she’s trying to communicate in the same way: she draws and asks you to invent the poems and titles. Yes, she’s trying to communicate with you, but you’re not like Aki: you’re a piece of wood, hard and insensitive.”
Radhika gave a quick laugh and bit into her pear.
“The rest of the story was told to me by Patricia herself,” she went on with her mouth full, “and part of it, I have lived through with her. Patricia was horrified by the fact that she wasn’t normal. She wanted to be like everyone else, no matter what, to wipe out all traces of her special childhood, and she didn’t want to admit that men disgusted her. When she was a teenager, the trend in America was for young, muscular men to be tough and rough, and most men followed this trend. Pat couldn’t stand it but she forced herself to play the role of a weak girl with no beliefs of her own. In college, she met Mark, a law student. Yes, at the University of Chicago. The campus, which belongs to one of the most prestigious universities in America, is located in the middle of a ‘rough’ neighborhood, meaning an outlying suburb in which African Americans live. Blacks, you say? Don’t ever use that word in front of me! I might have known you were a racist! Well, with the excuse that he was protecting her, Mark went everywhere with Pat. Pat, who felt that her childhood had banished her from the community of so-called normal people, hoped that through Mark, she might enter the realm of the normal and usual. The couple spent their weekends walking by Lake Michigan. During the time of long hair, hippies, and communes, Pat and Mark went about well-groomed, in elegant, ironed clothes; Pat, because she wanted to get rid of the fact that she was ‘abnormal’ and identify herself with the ‘normal’ middle class, and Mark … well, Mark is Mark.”
Radhika added a gesture to her narrative that was so eloquent that any further comment about Mark would have been superfluous.
“Some people applauded the couple, others envied them—depending on each person’s character. Patricia and Mark, slim and refined, perfect, as if they had stepped out of an American guide to etiquette. They got married when they were still students and they soon had children. Mark was a lawyer, they bought a house in a wealthy residential neighborhood, Lake Bluff. In the summer, they travelled to Europe, where they visited art galleries and museums. They adored the Renaissance.
“In the ’70s, a large sculpture by Picasso was installed in the center of Chicago. Do you know the one I mean? I don’t know if you remember the controversy that blew up over that particular work of art … no, no, you couldn’t remember, you were just a kid then. Russia at the time was hermetically sealed and Western ideas and controversies only filtered through with difficulty? Maybe. Yes, yes, it’s true. There was the Cold War. But that was such a long time ago, who remembers it now?
“At that time, Mark agreed with the people who wanted to demolish the statue; Pat, on the other hand, admired it. She adored it. For her it was a whole discovery, a kind of miracle. She went to see the statue, she drew it and she took photos of it from different angles, she walked around it like someone going to church to pray to their special saint. In the beginning, Pat and Mark argued jokingly, but they soon found that their difference of opinion regarding contemporary art meant that they also held different attitudes toward life in general. Boy, am I going on! Do you get what I’m saying? In the end, Mark was a conservative man, and Pat was open to everything new. They had more and more arguments: about mutual friends, about the places they had to visit, about their children’s education.
“Mark was in favor of the Vietnam War, Pat couldn’t be in favor of a war. On the college campus, she took part in the demonstrations against American foreign policy. And the day came when she didn’t know what it meant to be normal anymore. Be like the others? Sure, but who are the others? She didn’t know. But she knew that American soldiers were dying in Vietnam.”
“Americans?” Vadim asked.
“Of course!” Radhika said, amazed.
“Weren’t the Vietnamese dying there too?”
“The Vietnamese? What about them?”
Radhika didn’t understand what Vadim was getting at with his questions. She thought perhaps it was a language problem, that Vadim, whose English was by no means perfect, had misunderstood something.
“But far more Vietnamese died than Americans, and it was America who started the war in the first place!” Vadim said, and now it was his turn to be amazed.
Radhika clearly hadn’t thought about the matter like this before. For her, until now, the Vietnamese had never existed. The war in Vietnam was reprehensible, of course, because many Americans died in it, not because the enemy also lost lives. Logically, the enemy has to die. But … what if your enemy is the enemy of a conservative government, which is also your enemy? No, better to leave it, it was too complicated! “You talk like the Communist press in your country,” Radhika said brusquely, as the conversation was beginning to unsettle her. “We’re a democratic country.”
“We?”
“Yes, we, America. We have the most perfect democracy in the world. We’ve never started a worldwide conflict; on the contrary, if it wasn’t for us, there’d still be a war in Europe.”
“The world war?”
“Yes, the world war. And all the little ones: the one in Bosnia, and the ones in a whole bunch of little countries with strange names.”
Vadim observed his knee closely and brushed some dust off it. “It’s true that in Europe and Russia we shed blood for ideological reasons. But, what would a world without ideals be like? Bad. The problem is that ideals get turned into ideologies and people kill for them. So,” Vadim smiled gently, “I prefer to sit under a mulberry tree and feed myself with figs.”
Radhika pinched his cheek.
“Come to think of it, you Russians have also wreaked havoc, with your violent invasions.”
“Are you talking about the Prague spring?” asked Vadim, in a low voice.
“Yes, and Hungary, and Poland, and Afghanistan … you guys have been around!”
“I know there’s no excuse,” Vadim whispered, so that Radhika couldn’t hear him. He went on in a slightly louder voice, “You know, in Prague a Russian soldier killed himself. He felt guilty for having destroyed the Czechs’ dream. And there were others who—”
“Suicide is a form of destruction.” Radhika cut him off firmly. She was like almighty God. And the avenging angel, the exterminating angel, sword in hand. “We Americans only value what is positive and constructive and people who fight for what they believe in. We don’t value destruction.”
Vadim understood her. He sighed. Yes, that’s just how his teacher of Marxist-Leninism used to speak. And, during the old regime, that was exactly what the slogans written in yellow letters on a red background, hanging on the streets and next to the roads, proclaimed. And the Marxist-Leninism teacher, just like Radhika now, was convinced that what he said was the truth. Like the people who had invented those slogans. And what did all that lead to?
Vadim remembered the human wreck stumbling through the shadows …
“What else happened to Patricia?” he asked in the end, in a sad, quiet voice.
“Pat went on living with Mark, reluctantly.” Radhika continued her story, calmly, with interest. “She said that it was important to keep the family together so that the kids didn’t lose their mental balance, but I think that what frightened her most was becoming ‘abnormal’ again. She believed that everything that wasn’t normal had a stigma attached to it.
“She had her first successes with her paintings. She liked travelling alone to the American cities where they organized the exhibitions. Her self-respect increased. On the other hand, Mark, who at first thought that his wife had a hobby that didn’t affect him, because Pat painted at home, got the shock of his life. It was if he had been struck in the head with a hammer. You thought that this kind of man didn’t exist in America? Don’t idealize American society. And the day came when he slapped Patricia in the face. And, after the first time, it happened again and again. Pat wanted, and also didn’t want, to leave him. She didn’t want to because of the children, and also because she felt a strange pity for him. When Mark got angry, he was capable of breaking a vase or a few plates, he was beside himself. And, afterward, he cried and begged her to forgive him. Poor guy, you say? Men always take the side of other men. And what about Pat? It was during this period that I met her. She was seeking medical help for her husband and she couldn’t ask her friends, because Mark was a well-known lawyer. So she went to a women’s support group that I run. I advised her to leave her husband. The psychiatrist that we found for Mark was unable to change anything. The cause of Mark’s unhappiness had to be removed, and that cause had a lot to do with Patricia.”
Radhika bit into the pear. “I guess you’re aware that the twentieth century was the century for women and their liberation.”
Vadim shook his head. “I don’t agree. It was the century for wars, persecution, and dictatorships.”
“There have always been dictatorships. On the other hand … Look at Patricia, the evolution of a delicate little flower from a well-off family to a woman who is successful in a man’s world. There’s an example of my conviction that the twentieth century was the century for women.”
“The concentration camps and the gulag had a lot more influence on the twentieth century as a whole, on its society, on its history,” Vadim explained, feverishly. He was mixing his tenses and his English pronunciation was dreadful. But there were so many things he wanted to say! He went on.“In the nineteenth century, in Russia, they freed the serfs. And now? Look at my father, my uncle, my grandfather, my mother, my grandmother. The ones who haven’t died are scarred for life. It’s like a plague. The feeling of guilt haunts the parents. The children inherit this feeling and are no good for anything.”
“Well, maybe that’s the case in Russia,” Radhika said, pronouncing each syllable as if she were giving an English lesson for beginners and explaining her opinion as if addressing a group of small children, “But Russia is a very small part of the world. Look at everything from a global perspective. You’ll see that women have made a great leap forward and that’s why they have had a decisive influence on society and history.”
“Russia is a very small part of the world?” Vadim was trembling as if he had a fever. “And all of central Europe, and China? In all these countries, people ask themselves, what did we do in the twentieth century? Our wars and dictatorships killed millions of people, razed whole cities to the ground, destroyed so much culture. In the name of humanism, we have destroyed the construction of humanism, which had been going on since the Renaissance.”
“Women haven’t destroyed anything,” Radhika answered, calmly, in the tone of a person convinced that she is in the right. “Death and destruction, all of that has been caused by men. Women have continued to build humanism, as you say.”
Vadim sighed; he knew that they were talking about different things. They each had their own experiences, their own point of view. They were unable to understand each other.
Radhika sighed. She felt that Vadim’s world, so difficult to understand, was as distant to her as civilization on Mars. And she didn’t feel like embarking on a journey to Mars. What she wanted was to sit in an American university library and write articles about the women’s movement, designed for specialist magazines.
Radhika sighed again and went on talking, in a monotonous fashion, without her earlier interest. “So Mark got more and more of a complex about having a successful wife and started to spend time with young girls who could admire him without criticizing him.”
Radhika started to whisper and to talk faster, because footsteps could be heard.
“Pat knew about it. The two of them were living in absolute hell. When her children left home, she abandoned her husband. She was fifty years old. She came to live here, she wanted a change of atmosphere. But she’s afraid of men. No, it’s worse than that. She has a phobia of them. No, it’s not that either. Men disgust her. And nobody can get rid of that disgust. Not even you.”
Radhika went on whispering because she heard footsteps and the voices of several people approaching. Vadim noticed a marked element of malice in her whispering that he hadn’t sensed at the beginning of her long narrative.
The footsteps and calm voices came closer and closer.
“Not even you, Vadim!” Radhika repeated, and quickly placed her right foot on top of his thigh. Vadim was surprised by this, but didn’t try to remove her foot so as not to offend her.
“Ali Baba and the forty thieves have come to get you!” said Patricia, laughing, radiating light. She opened the garden gate; she came from the fields. Behind her, a tanned man Vadim’s age was limping in a way that was barely perceptible.
Patricia’s eyes settled on Radhika’s foot, which was now resting on the inner part of Vadim’s thigh.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your tête à tête!” she said, suddenly irritated, and turned to her swarthy companion, “Come on, let’s go to my studio!”
“Come and keep us company, Pat. Have a pear, come on! Calm down, Pat!” Radhika said with a voice full of sensuality as she rubbed Vadim’s thigh, moving her foot higher and higher.
Vadim got up to leave.
“Stay where you are. I’m the one who’s leaving,” Patricia said, without looking at him. Then she turned to Radhika. “We’ve got work to do.”
And, from the doorway of the house, she added, “I don’t want to be in the way.”
And she disappeared.
Radhika handed a pear to Vadim.
“We won’t let anyone get in our way, right? If they go off together to her studio to be on their own, to have some privacy, we’ll do the same. Right?” She sat down on the bench in such a way that her sarong fell open, revealing her brown thighs right up to her white lace panties.
It was an attractive image, Vadim had to admit, even though he was thinking about something else. He had never been in Patricia’s studio, not once! He had come such a long way to see her with the aim of writing a book about her, and she hadn’t let him, even once, into the very place he longed to be.
In the deeper waters of his unconscious, Vadim recalled that once Patricia had invited him to go into her studio with her, but in the end the visit never took place. But now he didn’t want to admit this fact, he didn’t want to think about it … he wanted to calmly savor the bitter sweetness of self-pity.
He grabbed his backpack and said goodbye to Radhika. Or rather, he said goodbye to Radhika’s legs, because, distracted as he was, he never took his eyes off them, even though he might have not even seen them.
“Vadim, I’ll get you for this!” Radhika said and moved; the sarong opened a little bit more, exposing the little lace panties, which were completely transparent.
But Vadim had already headed out to the path.
* * *
You were looking at her legs and her transparent panties, yes, your eyes alighted there time and time again, but they saw something different: a sunflower woman who shows her paintings, one by one, smiling, to a tanned young man. In your pocket you feel the stone from this morning and you raise your hand to throw it as far as you can. But then you put it back in your pocket, because you realize it will be the only souvenir from your Mediterranean August, because you will never go back to the white house where those two women live. Never again. And when you are almost asleep, you recall the image of the white lace panties.
“Ali Baba and the forty thieves!” you murmur, sleepily.
The following morning, you switch on the computer, you are waiting for an e-mail from Boris. On the screen you see the bold letters of a new e-mail. No, it isn’t Boris, it’s … patricia.pavloff@yahoo.com. For a moment, you taste this miracle with your eyes, you can hardly believe your luck, even though the name is clear enough. Quickly, you click twice on those black words, and the letters on the screen obey your order … and turn into sentences before your eyes, and you read them starting at the end … “Radhika and I would like to see you again. Best wishes, Patricia.” You don’t read the beginning of the message and answer immediately: “I’ll be right there! Best wishes, Vadim” and you send the message. Fantastic, she has your answer. And it is only now, seated comfortably on your little cloud of happiness, that you read the whole message.
“Dear Vadim, why did you run off yesterday? I wanted to introduce you to the representative of the Tà pies Foundation in Barcelona. Maybe Ali Baba disturbed you with his sudden arrival? The stones you left next to the dog house are magnificent. Indeed, they are sculptures. When shall we start on your portrait? I’m tied up all week, but maybe on Sunday I could take a day off. Would you like to come this Sunday, then? In the afternoon, between four and five. What do you think? We’ll have a mint tea with lemon, cold, with ice, of course.” And then the ending that you already read. You’ve been too hasty, they’ve asked you to come on Sunday. “Why did you run off yesterday?” you repeat to yourself again and again as you take your sandals off and put on sports shoes with thick soles, which will be good for your daily pilgrimage to the sacred place. She’s seen the stones. “They’re magnificent, indeed, they’re sculptures.” She understands you without words, that Ali Baba!