Fresh Mint with Lemon

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN

Vadim sees her in his mind’s eye: the woman is just about to put on her coat in the cloakroom at the Café Idiot in Saint Petersburg, and, along with her winter coat, the waiters are bringing her so many flowers that she is almost buried under them. This tall, fragile woman exaggerates the weight of the flowers; to amuse her friends, she pretends she is collapsing under the enormous bouquets, like a lady from the past swallowed up by an overly tight corset. Everybody laughs, but in a different way from her … as if they were in a museum, admiring a statue of Buddha that had unexpectedly opened its mouth to tell a joke.

Vadim had noticed her earlier, when she was sitting at the next table with her friends, wearing jeans and a black sweater. She had been talking with the others in such an animated way that her sunflower-colored hair fanned out around her face—as if an invisible hairdresser were fooling around with a hairdryer, Vadim thought. She behaved like a student, though she was clearly older. In the bohemian basement café, nothing distinguished her from the other customers, although her appearance would surely captivate anyone who chose to take notice of her. Why was one brought under such a spell with this woman? As much as Vadim mulled over the question, the only answer he could come up with was a banal one: the aristocratic gesture of the fingers of her right hand. When the waiter helped her put on her coat, Vadim was taken by surprise: How was it that such a great lady didn’t float off toward the exit bundled up in an ermine coat, or a beaver coat for that matter? How come she didn’t have a smooth, shiny fur coat with a hood, the type that most Russian women would like to have in their closet? How come she had wrapped herself in a common, cheap flannel coat, and, with a quick movement, had covered her head with a black beret?

The unknown woman was leaving; she waved goodbye to her friends who were sitting in the café—she moved her hand from one side to the other, ding-dong, like a pendulum—and then she was on the street. Vadim glanced through the little window that was close to the ceiling, and, from below, saw how the unknown woman threw her bouquets of flowers into a huge Mercedes—woosh, woosh, woosh, like she was tossing cushions onto a sofa—and how she then got into the back seat of the magnificent car, decorated with a little American flag and driven by a uniformed chauffeur, who also had a flag on his lapel. They pulled away with a buzz, while the murmur of conversation around the café cheered the atmosphere. It seemed to him that he was the only one who had noticed the departure of this obviously well-known personage.

Who was that? Vadim asked his friend Boris, the owner of a small art gallery and the editor of a magazine Vadim wrote for.

Don’t you know? Didn’t you go to the opening of her show this afternoon? Boris asked, as he toyed with the ashtray.

I spent the whole afternoon here, writing an article. Until you came in just now and saved me. Did I miss anything?

An American woman of Russian extraction …

Yes! Now Vadim remembered that the unknown woman spoke a strange, foreign Russian. Her appearance—long legs, skinny arms, languid movements, posed body—suggested to him that she could be an Estonian from the Gothic city of Tallinn. But a far more distant accent marked the unknown woman’s Russian.

Here, in Petersburg, the American woman wanted to have an exhibition of a very personal nature. Her grandparents were from here, but not from Petersburg. In fact they were from Petrodvorets, but it doesn’t matter, there’s hardly a difference. It was one of those noble families that had to flee after the Revolution. She … maybe you’d get along with her.

Boris raised his eyes from the full ashtray, and went on, This painter is fascinated with Japan, like you. Boris smiled, and then resumed his interest in the cigarette stubs. By the way, when are you thinking of going back to the university to finish your Japanese studies? Or maybe you no longer feel like it? Next to all those twenty-year-olds, you’d look like a grandfather, an eternal student, aged thirty-five. He continued without waiting for Vadim’s answer. The American woman you’ve seen paints in a distinctly Japanese style: still lifes and landscapes, but also portraits, both of individuals and groups. Her paintings are half hidden under a translucent veil of sensuality that is sometimes a little perverse.

You can’t be talking about Patricia … ?

Well, yes, I’m talking about Patricia Pavloff.

* * *

You get the three o’clock bus. In twenty minutes, you’re at the crossroads where the driver has suggested you get off. There are two hours to go before the appointment … But you don’t mind. You’re happy that you’re not going to be late and that you have time to think things over calmly. To prepare yourself for the meeting. To get your thoughts, your questions, in order. To introduce yourself yet again, without forgetting anything important on your mental list. And above all, you have to find her house!

Following instructions, you climb the winding path that weaves through the vines. To the left, there is a unique, solitary tree. What is it, a fig tree? No, if it were a fig tree, it would be bearing fruit. This morning, in the market, you’ve seen masses of figs. You know these knotty branches, like the arms of peasant women who have spent their lives working in the fields, from her paintings. The paintings of the unknown woman. No trees like this grow in your northern Russia. Could it be an almond tree? How charming it must be when it blossoms! A single almond tree among mounds and mounds of vines!

You move forward through the muggy Mediterranean afternoon, making your way through the dense heat, impregnated by the sun and by smells that are unfamiliar to you. Two weeks ago, when you left Petersburg, you couldn’t imagine this desert. Desert! Why, everything you can see is green! That doesn’t matter, it’s a desert, you conclude, une petite Afrique, as your French friends would put it.

You turn off your path to embrace the tree. Trees possess positive energy, you felt it yourself more than once: their roots penetrate the earth, their branches reach to the sky. From the earth and the sky, they extract energy. And then you realize that you’re not bearing a gift for the unknown woman, just a few of your essays about her work and the outline of the book that you intend to write. What will she think when she sees you without a bunch of flowers in your hand!

* * *

The red flames of the tulips, with little specks of black charcoal—the pistils; hazy landscapes, longed-for landscapes; still lifes with white vases, all of them more animated than living people; a cat and a woman, the latter more perfidious than the feline; a black jar in a dark niche; all the objects, all the figures submerged in shadow, just as Vadim knew from the treatises on traditional Japanese art that he had studied for a few years, an art that he had once loved and that he had now somewhat forgotten. Now he had to reintroduce himself into that whole universe from his past, with all its fragrance and longing. Each picture was signed on the left: Pavloff. Every day Vadim went to the gallery, every day he stood back and observed the tulips from the furthest corner of the room and again and again he discovered that he was seeing not flowers but a woman’s eyes, that the black perianth was the eye of the painting’s creator. Every day he observed the burning tulips, he entered them as if entering a chapel, he closed himself within them to escape from the world and immediately let himself be carried away by his imagination.

One day when Vadim was standing, as usual, before the paintings, he had the sensation that someone was looking at him. He glanced around … and saw that in a corner of the gallery was the artist herself. Quickly, both of them averted their eyes, but when, a second later, Vadim looked back in that direction, there was nobody there. He ran his eyes over the two rooms, but saw nothing except two shadows wearing astrakhan hats. The shadows were pointing at a platter full of cherries and a wasp. Listen, can’t you hear the buzzing of the wasp, happy to wander over the cherries? said one shadow to the other. Vadim ran out into the street … just in time to see a black Mercedes turning the corner. But he couldn’t be sure whether it was her car, that is to say, the American embassy’s, or if it was just some nouveau riches who only bought the latest models of the most expensive cars.

* * *

It is too hot, too humid even for the birds and the animals. Nothing moves; nothing, nobody makes a sound, not even a whisper. In extreme heat, as in the extreme cold, nature is dead. You stop to listen to the music of silence … but mainly to tie the laces on your sneakers. The death produced by heat is only apparent; how many insects there are on the ground! You marvel at them as you crouch over your right shoe. Now the curious chant of a cricket has livened the air; afterward, another one starts singing, and yet another; the crickets here are different from those of the meadows of the north; this one, to your left, isn’t singing but is making a rubbing sound, like the fabric of a dress in a dance hall, the one on the right is clearing his throat, gra-gra-gra-gra-gra-gra. What a concert is being produced by this parched landscape, with its dry grass and stony earth! From time to time, you feel the caress of the salty, perfumed sea breeze. How is it possible that you can smell the sea when you’re so far away from it …? How many miles? Maybe five, ten at the most? And after you got off the bus, you covered another couple or so on foot. Here is the bend that she mentioned … and on that little hill there are trees growing, cypresses, yes, a remotely Tuscan landscape, they look like the long, bony fingers of the fanatic Florentine monk, Savonarola. And the garden … you somehow sense it, you wish to find it, and to find it right there, on the incline. Yes, yes, there is a white smudge dancing there, a wall, a house with a palm tree growing next to it, a cheerful house. Can it be hers?

* * *

One day, when he was immersed in the fire of the tulips—although not with the same concentration and enthusiasm as before, now that he couldn’t stop glancing around in search of those eyes framed by fine, black lashes—he realized, thanks to a poster hanging on the wall, that they had just opened an exhibition of Islamic art at the Hermitage and he had promised Boris that he would write an article for the magazine about it before the week was over. And it was already Thursday!

A little later, he went up the ostentatious staircase of the Hermitage with its low steps; unusually low, yes: the architect had probably designed them like that so that the Tsarina and the other ladies didn’t tread on their dresses as they climbed up, and so that the arrival of the Tsar at the ball was a solemn one, so that his stout Majesty didn’t enter the ballroom out of breath, like a horse after a race, Vadim thought, smiling.

He entered the ballroom in which the exhibition had been installed. In the semi-shadows shone golden bowls from Egypt, diadems and jars from India covered in precious stones, Turkish swords, daggers from the Caucasus, plates from Persia, and embroidered hats from Indonesia. The thousand and one nights. But he felt disappointed; for him all of this was no more than scrap iron. Shining, magnificent, yes, but scrap iron all the same. However, he was under an obligation to write his article, so he didn’t waste time and started taking notes.

He was observing an earthenware vase garnished with the sinuous black lines of the Arab alphabet; behind it, they had placed a mirror so that visitors could admire it from all angles. From the depths of the mirror emerged a pair of eyes framed by black twigs. These eyes floated across the surface, separated from the body, from the face, as if they had a life of their own. He knew—he realized it at once—that they were her eyes. He knew that, by means of the mirror, she was staring him right in the eye. But he still hadn’t noticed that she was there beside him, that her elbow was almost touching his. He had the feeling that she had recognized him too.

Good morning, what a coincidence— said Vadim, genuinely pleased.

Sorry? she interrupted him. She lengthened every syllable. It was difficult to imagine more indignation and disdain expressed in just two syllables; she couldn’t have done it better than Cleopatra herself when ordering an impertinent slave to abandon her palace.

Of course, you don’t know me, although I … Ahem, excuse me. Allow me to introduce myself.

Pardon me, but … Her disdain made her curl her lips, and there was a trace of irony trembling in her voice. Vadim felt like a slave who had just been caught tasting wine out of Cleopatra’s golden goblet. He realized that this woman was a queen. And he couldn’t imagine anyone, man or woman, who would be capable of being in an armchair at her side and sitting back comfortably with a cigarette and a glass of beer.

He didn’t know what to say, it was quite clear that the woman wanted to get rid of him. Hesitantly, he looked at the vase … and he heard the woman leaving! He mustn’t let her go! He watched her as she walked and stopped in front of a Moorish-style door that was so skillfully chiseled, it looked like a decorated grille. Vadim hurried over. He stopped at the other side of the door-grille. Now he could see her in fragments, as if in a mosaic: the fair hair, the black sweater, the worn jeans, the black boots covered in mud, of which there was plenty at that time of year in Saint Petersburg. Her eyes, framed by those fine lines, floated in one of the door’s grille-like octagonal holes.

I went to see your exhibition …, he started, timidly. And he added, almost imperceptibly, What I liked most …

You’ve made a mistake, said the woman, mocking him before making as if to move away; but this time he didn’t want to play the role of scolded slave.

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