Fresh Mint with Lemon Page 4

  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 som
ething 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 c
an 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.