Fresh Mint with Lemon Read online

  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.

  IN THE JUNGLE OF ORANGE LEAVES

  When you leave Patricia’s house, you feel as if you’ve entered a baker’s burning oven. Trees and bushes are being cooked instead of bread. Everything makes you happy. Even the fierce heat of the oven. Your steps are light, the way back is downhill, and, what is more, your awareness of the fact that you have spent the afternoon with an internationally known celebrity makes you fly. Just an internationally known celebrity? No, also a woman admired by everybody. Anything else? A pleasant person. Well, it’s time you were a bit more honest with yourself, even if not completely. In your backpack, you are carrying a drawing that she made and dedicated to you, only to you … and when you think about that, a light with a yellow shade is switched on inside you, and everything it lights up is transformed into tranquillity, well-being, happiness. You project this light around you, and you transform the olive trees and carob trees and fig trees into a tropical jungle with orange leaves covered in creepers; you would like to grab hold of one of these thick cords and, with a great push, pick up speed and leap into the air and fly over the countryside so as to land on the wide beach of Sitges. But you are already entering the little town. You go straight to the sea to bathe in water so warm it doesn’t refresh you, but at least it gets the sweat and the dust off you, and covers you with a layer of salt that, once out of the water, you lick eagerly like a cat would some drops of milk.

  What are you so happy about? After all, you haven’t yet talked to Patricia about your proposed book, you haven’t even let her know that you have such a project in mind. You are passive and cowardly. You don’t have one iota of that ambition that people born in the West have. What will happen to you? Nothing. Hmm. But … so what? In the end, no one can extinguish the light burning inside you, not even if they blow as hard as a mistral. You’ve spent all afternoon at her place, in the intimacy of her living room, surrounded by her pictures, her music, her … everything, even her woman friend! What kind of relationship exists between the two women? Patricia, the intrepid Diana, is sometimes afraid of her friend, that much is obvious. And Radhika seeks her warmth like a cat … why?

  Forget these questions! Because she does, and that’s that! Radhika … you see her with a light helmet on her head, a militant of her ideology, a militant of seduction. Radhika is the goddess of war. And Patricia? The pistils of the two tulips float through the night air, full of lights and voices. Patricia is the goddess of wisdom, why not? You would like to sit on that sofa and admire this goddess … these goddesses … the fair one and the dark one. With the last sip o
f beer, you promise yourself solemnly that during the week they won’t hear from you. A full calendar week.

  * * *

  Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon. The bus to Olivella? It isn’t running today. So you set off on foot. But a week hasn’t gone by, just two days! What a strange thing time is! Time is flexible, you think, and before your eyes you see the garden of paradise and beyond it the house in which you know just one single room. But there are others, there is Patricia’s studio, and Radhika’s study, full of books that invite mankind to struggle … You walk and walk, and you completely forget that today too you will arrive looking like a dirty, sweaty dog, exhausted and smelly. You walk and with pleasure you notice the monotonous chant of hundreds of cicadas, you recognize the perfume of the vines and you surrender to the tender caresses of the sea breeze. You feel pleasure on this path; the path is your objective. Not the house surrounded by paradise: the path.

  * * *

  “Ms. Pavloff isn’t in,” a voice said through the intercom. Again, the housekeeper hadn’t bothered to come out of the house and talk to him in person.

  “And Ms. Radhika?” Vadim asked.

  “She isn’t in, either.”

  “When can I come back?”

  “Try Monday afternoon,” the woman said between yawns, abruptly bringing the conversation to an end.

  He was about to go when he saw a large, white car approaching the house. I have to hide, he thought. But he immediately repressed this first impulse: the teacher scolded the timid pupil. He stood firmly in front of the garden door; the car had to pass by there. The pupil didn’t stop begging the teacher to let him go, but the latter was unbending. Vadim looked for Patricia’s eyes, those black dots framed by pistils, so independent that they floated in the air without the need for a face to sustain them. Nonsense! What matters is the book. Moreover … two days ago he felt a tremendous need to touch that cocoa-colored back, that of the other woman, like a little boy who, on a muggy day, longs for a chocolate ice cream. The car stopped. This time the teacher had to scold the pupil. Two young couples were sitting inside the car. Was he in love with her? Come off it! Why, Patricia is much older than he is, and isn’t especially attractive. She is a snob. And nouveau riche. Who knows what money she lives off: a house with a large garden, a housekeeper … Vadim thought that he should have stayed in the boardinghouse and read. And, in the afternoon—he reproached himself—he should have strolled along the beach, with a book and a camera. He should have gone to the library, asked for the keys to the roof from the friendly librarian, and from up there he should have watched the frenzied dance of the waves and the swallows. Because here he didn’t know anyone, here he was in the way.

  Two young couples. All dressed in white, and wearing impeccable, expensive, sports shoes. They looked at him. Vadim realized he must have looked like a little dust-covered mouse who had entered a large room in which elegant couples were turning, haughtily, to the rhythm of a waltz. The four young sporting people opened the trunk of the car to take out tennis rackets and golf clubs.

  “Good morning. Allow me to introduce myself. I’ve come to see Ms. …,” Vadim gave Patricia’s name.

  One of the young people smiled upon noticing the admiration and respect with which Vadim had pronounced Patricia’s name, and took a cellphone out of his pocket.

  “Just a moment,” he said, standing to one side.

  For a moment he talked with someone.

  “My mother’s working and can’t see anyone. Come back tomorrow,” he suggested to Vadim; then, for some unknown reason, he blushed.

  So he was a sensitive person. He must have been only a little bit younger than Vadim. But, from his height of at least six feet, from the height of a rich American dressed in clean, ironed sports clothes, he looked at Vadim, who was also tall but not as much, and who was hot and sweaty, like he was an insect. A harmless one, perhaps, but an insect nonetheless.

  Patricia is a snob and has turned her children into spoiled nouveau riche people, he thought. And in some dark place inside him, it occurred to him: I’m doing her an injustice, she doesn’t deserve this. And why do I treat her like this? Because I will never be like them, because I will never live like them.

  And, in an even more hidden corner, he wanted to be a spoiled American son, wearing brand new sneakers and with a mother who lived in a white house in the middle of a garden of cypresses. And he felt a longing to wear a white T-shirt with a sky-blue stripe going across the chest, and a little tennis racket embroidered on the left-hand side.

  And, deep down, where his conscience could not reach, the little schoolboy reproached his teacher, “You see, you should have let me run off!”

  * * *

  On Sunday, Vadim once more stood in front of the door of the white house. Like a royal guardsman who marched there every day at such and such an hour. Or, rather, like a guard dog. He had walked six or seven miles inland under an unbearably hot sun. On Sundays, the bus didn’t run. He felt he had aged, no, that he was old, older than Patricia’s sons and their girlfriends, older than Radhika, older than Patricia. Patricia, forever obsessed with painting, but tender and spring-like. Yes, spring-like, despite her wrinkles. He felt older than his father, whom he only ever saw drunk. How old must his father have been when … Vadim would never forget that day that … First that smell of gas … then, when he opened the kitchen door … No. He had to leave that thought far behind. Get it out of his head. At least, during the day. At night, it was impossible.

  To live. Just to live, in the shade of a fig tree, on the edge of a path, in the middle of these landscapes covered in vines, like high, smooth carpets. Just to live, enjoying the shade and the breeze by day, and, at night, sleeping under the swaying of the powerful and wise branches of the fig tree. To live! To feed on the figs and the grapes, and to dry them for the winter. The path offered him a chance to move, to be in contact with the world. With the world, that is to say, with other, more distant vines. To live according to this ideal: under the tree, on the edge of a path.

  He rang the bell. Nothing. Another time. Today is Sunday. Patricia must be with her sons, of course. Vadim didn’t feel like meeting that well-ironed youth again. He hated the idea of seeing him again.

  The housekeeper’s voice could be heard on the intercom. Today they couldn’t receive him.

  He had imagined that would be the case. However, he was disappointed.

  In the garden he spotted the tall, blonde youth who he had spoken to the day before. The lad was walking with his girlfriend, a stunning blonde, albeit with a common kind of beauty, whose hair hung down to her waist. They wore matching sky-blue T-shirts and white pants. Vadim had the feeling that, even at a distance, he could make out the scent of linen that had just been ironed. And a fresh summer cologne.

  When he set off on the way back, he felt relieved. A long walk was ahead of him, leading through thousands of vine leaves, to the accompaniment of the song of the crickets. The whole of Sunday afternoon was his, to do with as he pleased. He began to sing softly and, without realizing it, walked with greater energy.

  Why had he thought about his father, a moment ago? The image of that flesh and blood man, of that man who had grown old before his time, now became mixed up with the pleasure of the walk and pursued him among the olive trees and the carob trees. The exotic jungle Vadim had been dreaming of was now transformed into a cellar that stank of tobacco, alcohol, and gas.

  * * *

  Click-click-click … three slow stitches on the leather that is to be turned into a purse. Click-click-click … carefully, so as not to disturb the neighbors. Someone could inform on him. Then the police would come and put him in prison. There would be a trial and a verdict and ten years of jail. No, fifteen. Yes they would probably send him down for fifteen years for not having paid back the money he owes. Click-click-click … one stitch after the other, bit by bit, in silence, one purse after another. Sergei sells them at five roubles a piece, and he owes … My God! Half a million!
Why did he do it? Why, at that time, did he pay attention to Mitya, who asked him to be a partner in the business! The two of them on their own, without any experience. It was obvious that things would end up as they had. In a disaster. Almost a jail sentence. In this dark hideaway. In this hole in which he can only work at night. In the shadows. By the light of an oil lamp. In the daytime people might hear his click-click-click … for four years now, click-click-click … one stitch after the other, bit by bit, in silence, one purse after another. Click-click, with his rheumatic knees. And the vodka. Which keeps him alive. When he drinks, he can dream. His wife is not yet sixty years old, but she looks as if she’s seventy. No, older. As if she were his mother. Although he too … click-click. What was it that happened so many years ago?

  He can’t stop seeing the stone in the hand of the child, right in front of him. Now he knows that it was a gesture born of weakness. The movement of somebody who is afraid and wishes to hide the fact with a show of force. In fact, the child was like them, like the Russians. And? Sergei asks himself. What does that mean? That he was like the Russians? Now he wouldn’t know how to answer the question. But he knows by intuition, he guesses, that they had something in common.