VanCleef & Arpels on the summer night

Nonna Ananieva

VanCleef & Arpels on the summer night

To Theo

Disparage not the faith thou dost not know…

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by W. Shakespeare

1

I was driving back from work in the evening at about nine, around the Ring. I kept changing lanes, but there were so many cars that this didn’t make much of a difference. It was drizzling. In the subway under Tverskaya Street two SUVs had collided – a Lexus and a Mercedes (I hate that Mercedes model; it always reminds me of a bier), blocking one of the lanes. The car crash wasn’t at all serious, but neither party would drive away. They were waiting for militiamen. Their lights twinkled beautifully, like a couple of figure-skaters at the European Championship. I thought of Beloussova and Protopopov. I had been a little girl when they were real celebrities; they had stayed in Western Europe and were nearly killed in a car accident. Sometimes the strangest associations occur to you.

I had to pop into Stockmann, but I was reluctant to use the underground parking. I looked for some space nearby, and found a vacant place near the Bulgarian restaurant. The restaurant is the only building in Smolenskaya Square which has not been restored, and in my opinion, it’s beyond repair. The building is miserable, lopsided, and oblique, with dirty windows and horrible grocery stores that haven’t changed since the Perestroika period. Once I forced myself to visit this particular restaurant, in order to properly remember a period in my past. The visit allowed me to reassure myself that I did everything right back then. And now, the place no longer holds any attraction for me.

In Stockmann, I picked up a little bit of everything, as usual – including washing powder – and queued up with my cart for the cash counter. There was a longish queue at the other cash counter, too. I recognized my old lover standing in it.

He was not really old, of course – but he belongs, in my mind, to a time many years ago, to which I have never returned. I looked at his familiar hand, now bearing a wedding ring, and at his fashionable clothes and his full cart – and I turned my head away, to indicate that I wasn’t going to acknowledge him. Nothing remained between us. The essence of our relationship was exhausted, dried up. It was like a shrivelled leaf, blowing in the wind. He happened to be in Stockman at the same time as me, for whatever reason. It was none of my business. But all the same, I couldn’t resist giving him a second, surreptitious glance. He was in front of the stand of English books, looking for something, turning over the first few pages of some of the books. He didn’t look as though he was about to leave.

I began to take out my groceries and put them on the conveyor belt.

Your permanent buyer’s card, your parking license – jabbered the cashier.

I took out my buyer’s card and my credit card as well.

No parking license, – I replied, glancing over at him again.

He was paying. After all that, he had bought a book with a red cover. And now, Sergey, you may leave the store, I whispered to him. I walked past the cash counter and began to pack everything into plastic bags, never turning my head.

Give me your passport and your driving license, please, – the cashier girl said, continuing our conversation.

I took out my driving license.

Thank you, – The girl responded correctly, just as she’d been taught.

I had three full bags. One of them was quite heavy – with water and a pineapple in it – the other two were lighter, but still big.

– Sign, please, – she gave me a check and a pen.

I signed nervously and picked up my bags, never looking back, and headed up towards the exit. Nobody was following me. At the exit I straightened my back and looked round. There was nobody behind me. He spoiled that whole shopping trip for me, I thought to myself.

In reality, he probably had no intention of greeting me at all, but I couldn’t help thinking that if he didn’t mean to say hello, then he wouldn’t have spent so much time hanging about that bookstand. Romance – that’s what he wanted. A new one. He chose it right before my eyes. He couldn’t have failed to notice me. He always took note of any female within a ten-kilometer radius. Maybe he disliked me so much he didn’t even want to say hi…? This horrible thought made me raise my eyebrows in spite of all the botox injections. But I soon calmed down – plenty of even better looking men pay me attention. Then I saw the Mercury Pavillion and remembered about the galuchat bracelets. I had to have a look. I turned round. Still no-one behind me. I didn’t want to carry my shopping bags to the jewelry shop. I turned round again. The security guards were clearly having fun watching my indecision – they can find something to ridicule even in the smallest events. I headed for my car.

I should say now that I have not seen him since this day.

I barely managed to carry all the bags to the boot of the car. Women aren’t built for grocery shopping. I was sitting in front of the steering wheel when my mobile phone rang. It was my girlfriend calling, the one who can’t get through an evening alone. She feels bored. Me, for example, I can easily be alone. Not in a forest, obviously, or on some ranch, but in the city I’m happy to be alone. This loneliness is entirely voluntary – I have been married twice and I’m in no hurry to tie the knot for a third time. Although there is a candidate – a decent, forty-five year old guy. He has blue eyes. They’re probably the best thing about his very masculine character. All men are so similar! But that doesn’t really matter. The most important thing is for a man to have appeal for some inexplicable reason, to surprise you – in a good way, of course – and to not get boring. Apartments, money, securities… those are indispensable components of attraction, but also secondary ones – though they do speak strongly to your taste, and resonate with fundamental aspects of the evolutionary process. If you can manage to work with all this a little bit, then good things quite easily happen – at any age. Incidentally, I dislike thirty-year-old men most of all: the cheeky, self-assured, sporty males. Inheritors of the family business. Worthy sons. Unfaithful, hungry, handsome, with sharp tongues. Dreaming only about toys. You can’t get through to them. By the age of forty, or maybe just after forty, men like this sometimes find another version of themselves. Some invisible shell, like an eggshell, comes off their hearts all of a sudden and they begin to really notice the world and women. Speaking frankly, I can’t take the opposite sex seriously at all. With men, you can’t plan anything – it’s a question of chance, and nothing more. When two people separate, even if they try to postpone the separation or pretend it’s not happening – because they don’t want to lose all the benefits, because they feel bad for their children – it’s still a separation. Whether the experience is painful and acrimonious or smooth, they still do it for the sake of love – for themselves, for him, for her, for their futures. They might sacrifice their health, career, friends, or simply a lot of money for their separation, but if they have strong personalities, they will always come out on top. Here again the supernatural is at work. And there is only one governing law – the law of love. Life is granted to everyone simply to fulfill this law – to the ballet-dancer, the mathematician, the banker, the doctor, the musician, the spy, the photographer, the teacher, the fireman, the clergyman, even the president. There are so many different couples out there: pretty ones, uninteresting ones, plain ones, weird ones, absurd and dangerous ones.… I often lose myself in thoughts like these. But I hardly ever tell anybody about them.

My mind is always clearest in the morning. I am not simply a morning person – I’m five morning people all rolled into one. This, however, isn’t quite to everyone’s taste. I think we early risers are definitely in a minority. In the morning I like to delve into my thoughts about life and make decisions about the day ahead. In the daytime and evening I fulfill those plans. But the evening of that trip to Stockmann was a dark one; the day was already over. I wanted to get back to my warm apartment, to squeeze into my soft slippers and read for a while – so that was what I told the friend who called me, that I was completely knackered and not in the mood to go anywhere. I ignored the hints she was dropping in an attempt to get me to invite her to come over for a cup of tea, although I do always have a bottle of good wine or champagne close at hand. I knew that she’d have wanted to stay the night afterwards. We would have had to share a bed, albeit a comfortable and spacious one. I have no other bed to sleep in. In the hall, or in the guestroom (I’m not quite sure what to call my most spacious room, which I use as a hall, a kitchen, a dining room, where I keep my bookshelves and my dishes), there are a couple of armchairs and a round sofa, but the sofa’s not very comfortable to lie on. So anyone wanting to stay over has to sleep in my bed with me. Quite understandably, I’m not always in the mood to share. But the real reason I didn’t want to see my friend is that I didn’t want to listen to her depressive talk (so unfamiliar to my way of thinking), to stories of her martyrdom in the quest for new sources of gratuitous material aid from male acquaintances, who never succeed in satisfying her legitimate female needs and who inevitably disappear, hardly having appeared in the first place. It is always not the right thing. I never give much thought to her stories and nothing she tells me comes as a surprise. This is because she basically imagines most of the things, and her deep suffering is in proportion to the bright, interesting image she creates. Nevertheless, she does manage free of charge (that is, at somebody else’s expense) to travel all over the world, living in expensive hotels and buying fashionable clothes, sometimes even securing some nice cushy job. Fluent English, French and Italian – knowledge acquired thanks to this very martyrdom – these are marketable products in this country nowadays, especially if combined in the same person. And especially if this person is a female, and a well groomed one. I won’t go into detail about her figure. The paradox is that my friend has never really wanted to work, unlike some of the power women of my generation, who are sometimes even prepared to stay overnight at work. Though it’s probably not even a paradox, but a kind of personal philosophy that occasionally produces the desired results. To cut a long story short, we speak different languages, distorting in our own way the truth of the male figure facing us. She’s no fool; she knows exactly what’s expected of her. And ultimately, everyone gets their own slice of cake.

I said goodbye to her and switched off the phone. It had begun to drizzle again. I’m always losing my umbrellas and gloves. When I was a little girl I would also lose my handkerchiefs. This would make my grandmother angry. What an idiot; here I am again without an umbrella. I was angry with myself. Things were worse than usual because that afternoon I’d paid a fair amount for a new hairdo, and wasn’t eager to expose my head to the drizzling rain. I got out of the car, hurried over the piazza to Smolenskaya passage, which slightly resembles Paris’s Rue de Rivoli, and headed towards a new umbrella.

Sergey was on my mind all the while. Time had played its game with him, but he had managed to remain a handsome man. I remembered him ankle-deep in water with his jeans rolled up on the beach in the evening in Tunisia. I remembered him chasing me – I was in my early twenties at that time – along the sea edge. I thought then, that I would burst, I was so full of new impressions… summer in the middle of winter, Carthage looming in the distance, my own irresistible beauty. I am not really sure what Sergey was thinking about. He was two years older than me. It was in the early eighties; we were Soviet students doing our practical training in an Arab country.

Various thorny negotiations at Camp David between the USA, Israel and Egypt over the problem of another Middle East peace process prevented me from going to Cairo University, because the principled Soviet state decided to temporarily interrupt its diplomatic relationship with Egypt. As a result I found myself in quite a different country, with a different dialect of Arabic and French as a second language instead of English – which had been like a native tongue for me since my school years. But having come to Africa, I found that I was quite happy.

A lot of things happened for the first time: a whole year spent far from home without my parents in a capitalist country, where everything is prohibited and those things which are not prohibited should not be used – because the price is not worth it. The whole year tightly scheduled, the vigilant eyes of others on me – people with influential acquaintances in Moscow. This first trip really was a major test of my trustworthiness and survival capacity; dealing with my first harsh criticism and its consequences, quarrels, pettiness, naive impulses of the heart nipped in the bud, and, after all, kindness, cooperation, interesting acquaintances, trips, the discovery of a new reality, a new world and Arabic in particular. And then, of course, the return.

– Did she really live abroad for a year? – such a question at that time had great import. I had had the chance to form an objective impression of our country. The conclusions I came to during that year in Tunisia drastically changed my life. I failed the trial and became disillusioned with the Soviet way of life. It was not Tunisia which overwhelmed me. I was overwhelmed by our people there. Their actions, sometimes violent, were inherently abominable. The way they treated us…. I was ashamed by the behavior of our teachers, doctors, and engineers; by the horrible conditions in which they lived; by the miserable money they were paid; by the dreams for which they suffered all that.

Now it seems quite natural – to have one’s own opinion, to say the things you think are right, to disagree with the crowd, to educate your children privately, to travel to Milan to buy some clothes. We have begun to forget a lot, to embellish things. Of course there were things which were good: it was a superpower, with a great number of scientific research centers, low prices for household essentials (for understandable reasons). But I perceive life in from the viewpoint of an individual person – my own self. I would not want to read releases of Meeting ХХХ issued by the only party, uncontrollably experimenting with social modeling. I would far rather be reading the new Russian Vogue than waiting for a bus at the bus stop, or queuing up in a shop to buy Polish lipstick.

It was New Year’s Eve, 1984. We left the ambassadorial club, where they were spouting official political toasts over tables spread with Olivier salad and Danish canned ham, to the sound of plastic corks popping from bottles of semi-sweet Soviet champagne. When the high-ranking officials of the Embassy had duly expressed their wishes and left for their apartments to celebrate with their nearest and dearest, and the music was turned on, we escaped, climbed over the fence and hurried to the sea. It was quite a distance from there to the sea, however, and some peasant in a shabby van gave us a lift. My companion, whom I was to encounter at the cash counter in Stockmann all those years later, squeezed a couple of dinars into his hand and wished him a happy New Year.

There were plenty of umbrellas, both expensive and cheap ones. I chose up a green one like usual, so it would match the car.

Before going home, I looked through the biography of a foreign woman, who had been invited to deliver some lectures on the perception of jewelry to potential Eastern European clients. Her thesis, written in Cambridge, was devoted to jewelry in the portraits done by Florentine masters of the Renaissance. I felt a melancholy somewhat similar to the feelings of a second rate actor, seeing Hamlets, Khlestakovs, Jourdains and the like, cursing his tray with a glass of water which he must carry out at the right moment with a simple “dinner is served”. That was the way things were. World universities had been inaccessible for us. Our conception of jewelry was limited to the State Diamond Fund at most, and local production didn’t warrant such theses. We had many other experiences instead, of course, but that’s not what I’m driving at. This visiting speaker was an Italian woman who had no doubt been surrounded by Florentine masters since her early childhood. I felt melancholy because in my twenties I had not been able to recognize my inner abilities and wishes. I didn’t really discover this world until the age of forty, after much strolling to and fro, even traveling between countries….

I paid several hundred to hear her lecture Perception of Jewelry. It put me in mind of a description aimed at savages, detailing how to serve a table full of white people. How could she have known that such terms as carat, guilloche, pave were second nature to us, that we had all handled pearls, that her audience would be decked out in jewelry from the latest collections of Cartier, Bvlgari, and VanCleef & Arpels»? She was going through her usual routine for the natives, smiling condescendingly and glancing at her watch. Almost all women base their opinion on details that they arrange after an event into some final composition of their own. She must have been annoyed by our Moscow habits, drastically different from those of her well-to-do fellow Italians, and she probably assumed we were the fashionable wives of New Russians who had made a fortune playing foul games. By the end of the third hour my right-hand neighbor put her beautifully coiffed head on the table and succumbed to sleep. I wasn’t going to disturb her. And it was only at this moment that the Italian lady became animated. Maybe she was thinking about tomatoes thrown at the mediocre tenor; at any rate, she began to look tentatively into our faces. But it was far too late. Later on we had tea and they handed out diplomas to us, certifying that we had listened to her lecture. In a word, it was just rubbish. Well, perhaps there were a few interesting examples, and a story of how they had found fake pearls among the belongings of Wallace Simpson, which had been auctioned as the genuine article. In fact a lot of famous women added fakes to their jewelry collections: it is impossible always to speak only the truth and to abstain from gentle dalliance with men we oughtn’t to flirt with. “Out of the question!” Restrictions pursue us from our babyhood nappies, or as we should say now, our pampers, till the day we die. Sometimes restrictions can have a positive effect, as they force us to think smarter and jump higher to reach the forbidden fruit of our illusions.

By the sea back then everything was forbidden to us. Even solitude. We chatted a little bit about local scenery, the route, Carthage, which will outlive us all, about the Tunisians, who should have cared more about it, about the marvelously tasty sea air (for four whole months I had been without a sore throat, so I no longer wore my scarf as I usually do during the Moscow winter), about palms, about scorpions, and about his waiting for this night since the first day when we had landed…

I walked back to my car, reminiscing. Echoes of that period had not come to me for a long time. To begin with I didn’t let myself lapse into memories, and then later I got used to looking ahead. But now, I automatically switched off to the spring rain tapping on my new purchase, to the forthcoming trip to Geneva for the annual fair of exquisite watches and clocks, to the new raincoat in the car trunk and to the blue eyes of my close distant friend.

2

The Bolshoi Theater, new stage, auditorium. I won’t go into detail about the beauty and originality of the interior decoration. Well – I should probably mention the ceiling, at least, with the chandelier right in the center. I saw something like it in Moscow, in Slava Cinema when I was a schoolgirl. At first sight the comparison is not absolutely exact, but so what? The thought struck me anyway. A folding seat in the orchestra stalls. All of a sudden I began to long for The Nutcracker, for the excited and eternally tragic music of Tchaikovsky. I opened the program booklet: “It seems that in the 20th century no choreographer – from the great traditional George Balanchine right up to the super-avant-guarde choreographer Mark Morris – has resisted the temptation of plunging into the languor of the sounds of Tchaikovsky… As his music could not be kept within the framework of a nice, simple fairy-tale for schoolchildren, it erupted into the space of tragic philosophical generalizations».

I was six when my mother took me to see The Nutcracker. “Bravo Vasiliev! Bravo Maksimova!” chanted the audience. I’ll never forget that couple. But I couldn’t call that ballet a fairytale. For two months after that, I had a dream that I went to the children’s New Year party with Kostik Sokolov, a boy from my kindergarten who I didn’t really care for in real life – we never even played together. However, like me he loathed tea with milk and that strange soup the Russians make with pickled cucumbers. After that visit to the Bolshoi I began notice grown-up music, and to develop an affection for the ballet.

That excellent performance lingered in my mind for a long time; it inspired me, helped to dispel feelings of despair, to overcome disappointment in other people more easily, to cope with our inability to change the certain difficult circumstances, to put the insignificant to one side, to see through to the essence of things. It’s a life source, a miracle of human sensitivity. But I never dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer or even of attending dancing classes. I preserved the ballet for myself just like that – viewed from the perspective of the audience. I had no specialist knowledge of it and never intended to acquire any. This is how we delighted in contemplating a castle when we have no idea about architectural drawings, construction problems, all the research the designer had to do…. Nevertheless, I do sometimes muse on the creativity of choreographer, and on the lives of the people in the ballet profession.

After the Nutcracker life went back to normal: boutiques, sales, customers, orders, reports from the office. In the office almost everyone’s trying to be the boss, pretending to formulate brilliant strategic solutions, spinning intrigues, sucking up to overseas directors, putting on airs around us, while those down behind the shop counters seek favoritism, scrambling to get closer to the powers-that-be. This is the place where you can take real advantage of what’s on offer: power, trips, cars, and money are all at your disposal, and you get paid for nothing but pretending to work, and for feeling tired at the end of the day. Of course it’s tiring, nobody denies that! You should keep the boss interested, surprise him wherever possible; colleagues should be made fools of as often as possible; you should plagiarize other people’s ideas; make sure you look like a million dollars thanks to beauty salons and fashionable clothes; and implicitly understand what the boss appreciates and how he likes things done. Add to that constant pressure because of your ever-present competitors. The most important thing is to keep everything under control, squashing any parvenus in good time; to be ready to produce tears at any moment and bewail your childhood spent in poverty in a distant Soviet town; and to be able to squeeze as much out of your boss as possible as when the opportunity arises. In-between all this, you can also temporarily marry someone as a tactical move, or simply live with someone, depending on how things work out – crucially, don’t loll in front of the TV by yourself on Sundays or be seen going to the cinema with a girlfriend. And then the boss will be jealous; he’ll appreciate you and think that he’s not the only man who wants you. He’s male, after all.

I am quite sure that the foreigners who risked so much to come to this unknown and enticing Russia in the early nineties to set up their multimillion businesses here will have plenty of memories to entertain them in their old age. They could not in their wildest dreams have anticipated the vigour with which they were attacked by girls from the provinces looking for a new life. The newcomers certainly had the opportunity to enjoy the time they spent here. They could paint themselves as whatever they wanted: as hereditary aristocrats, children of millionaires, scientists, internationally renowned philanthropists… they could invent anything about their past life. They could describe things they’d read in books, things they’d seen in films – the girls would believe it all, take it all seriously. Later on they came to believe their own fantasies of adventurous youth. Their contemporaries were all telling the same lies. Everyone was doing their best to pursue their own goals. And these poor miserable childhoods, although faked, seemed to be the fuel needed to launch their jets into the sky of promise. Well, I consider myself quite a tolerant person. If you want to improve the world, start by improving yourself. Why should anybody tell these girls about the damage caused by smoking, about the dangers of dubious sexual relations and obsession with material possessions? Sometimes your wealth becomes your insomnia, your punishment, sapping away at your life. It’s better to strive not to be poor and to find another basis for your relationships with other people. But the only person to whom I could give this very sound advice was me myself. That was what I did.

I got a call from the office about sales. In this trade, sales are unquestionably the major index. We were doing our best. We offered jewelry of the very highest quality, really top rate. It was VanCleef & Arpels Boutique. That’s one of the most popular and respected names of the world jewelry. Not everything worked out the way we wanted it to: insufficient PR, not enough advertisement, shipping delays for new items… and as there was no showcase in the street, the majority of our potential customers didn’t even visit us. Nevertheless, with each new year we were gradually developing.

After working with Cartier sales, the pace felt very different to me, but then so did the jewelry and the clients. Cartier’s motif is aggression – you must; it’s aimed at the majority market. They advertise in practically every newspaper, with no expense spared: images of Monica, cats, giraffes, tanks, red bags. The motif of VanCleef & Arpels, by contrast, is the lady, the woman, with whom you dream to escape to wonderful distant places; who takes you by the arm and you find you no longer care where in the world you are; with whom the evening instantaneously becomes surprising and marvelous, and you dance and sing. This beauty is not to be offered to everyone – and this is the key point.

I skimmed the morning papers. Everything seemed fine. I asked the office cleaner to wipe down the glasses of the showcases once again. I opened one and took out a ruby ring, called Forest. It was star-shaped – that is, the rubies were laid in a star shape. They were bright red, burning. The stones were set in an invisible frame, perfectly aligned with one another. It was made using the unbeatable VanCleef & Arpels technique, patented in the beginning of the 1930ies. To set one ruby in this way takes the master jeweler from one to two and a half hours. There are only two master jewelers with such skills in the company, and they are the only two in the whole world. It’s a real gem. Why Forest? They spend a lot of time thinking up the names. Is this gem meant to be a star in the forest? Or is it a red autumn leaf, shining in the evening rays of the Northern sun? Shine, shine, my star – as the Russian song goes – there won’t ever be any other like you. Anyway, it’s better that the star carries some personal significance for whoever beholds it. And there’s no need to be reminded about that.

– The call is for you – Helen handed over the receiver to me.

– Hello!

– If we want things to stay the same, things will have to change[1] – a baritone voice said, melodic, familiar, perfect in each sigh.

– Sometimes one changes unrecognizably – I replied. So he had noticed me in Stockmann after all.

– How could I have failed to recognize you?

– Or pretended that you didn’t…

– I was trying to suppress emotional shock, dear.

– And who won eventually, you or emotional shock?

– Could I invite you to the theater? – he paused – Are you still fond of ballet?

– As you are, if I remember correctly?

– Yes, in my own way – Sergey laughed.

I thought for a while, and consented. I stood up to place the ring back in the showcase. Lena, the salesgirl, shook the hair away from her forehead and gave me a wink.

– Yesterday you got a perfect haircut – I said to her, winking back.

– Dima left, so I have to ask the others.

– You mean to do your hair?

– You want your hair cut as well?

– I do. Why has Lenia disappeared? – I didn’t like this news at all. Who could I trust with my image now? I felt kind of upset. We had been going to Dima for several years; he was a master and a creator. He was Lena’s own discovery.

– He left for Guinea – she responded.

– To work there? As a hairdresser? – Naturally, this surprised me.

– No, to pay a visit to his grandmother, – Lena joked. – He started working as a gold digger – she continued.

– Searching for diamonds? Are you for real?!

– As far as I know he went over with an acquaintance from Bauman’s University as a programmer. They found something. Everybody finds something out there. Oh, and rubies too. Neither of them has come back.

I took out my appointment book. There was a political map of the World. I opened it at Africa and found Guinea. Then I remembered from my courses that there were no kimberlite deposits in Guinea, although something else like lamproite was found there, but I couldn’t be sure that was quite correct. Within these deposits of the second type other precious stones could be found, like rubies or sapphire, which basically belong to the same corund. And sure there were also colored diamonds, such as the brown ones.

– Just think about it! – I was still surprised.

– In the salon they told me that he isn’t likely to come back to work. Last time someone heard from him was an email he sent to one of his colleagues from Goa. He was spending his holiday there.

– Well, I hope he hasn’t lost his scissors so he won’t starve.

– Lenia? Starve?

– Well, take it easy, I guess. Life’s an unpredictable thing; only the sun doesn’t struggle to rise. What do you reckon, is he gay?

– Hard to say… in all probability, though, yes. His favorite dream was to visit San Francisco at Halloween and to go for a walk through Haight-Ashbury.

– That’s a typical gay dream. And a handful of rubies would definitely help him to fulfill it.

– A handful of rubies would be very helpful for many things, – sighed Lena.

– He must have been bored in the salon, in spite of his talent and all his exquisite customers. He was dreaming of things.

– Of what things?

– I think that if he has money to spare now, you’ll need to find another hairdresser.

– Do you think he’ll actually set off for California?

– Dreams are a serious thing, birdie – I told Lena, who was quite young and pretty. Incidentally, so are all the other girls in our boutique.

3

Sergey invited me to a Balanchine evening at the Bolshoi Theatre. Bach’s Concerto Barocco was being played, along with a pas-de-deux from Tchaikovsky’s Lebedinoye Ozero (Swan Lake), Agon by Stravinsky, and Bizet’s Symphony in C-major.

What did I know about Balanchine, about his life and works? I knew that he had been Jacqueline Kennedy’s guest of honour at the White House in winter of 1961. Once, a long time ago, I had read about this visit in a book by Bernard Taper. She had invited Balanchine to the White House to ask his advice on how best to promote the development of Arts in the U.S. Balanchine was no exception to the rule; he came away charmed, like so many others lucky enough to spend time with her.

A little bit later, speaking along with other celebrities in a media discussion on the topic of ‘If I were president…’, he stated that he would agree to become the president on the condition that Jacqueline Kennedy remained the first lady, and that with her help he would do everything in his power to bring beauty into the lives of others.

She was pale, and looked a little tired during their meeting, but her pearl necklace, fixed on the left with two narrow diamond pins, rendered this pallor gentle and mysterious, so that Balanchine remarked ‘I don’t know who designed that marvelous bijou, but it really is made for you’. He felt as if he were D’Artagnan in front of the Queen. He felt as if he could swim across the English Channel or do something impossible for her. He didn’t remember much of the plot of The Three Musketeers, but the wonderful readiness for the selfless folly remained.

– It’s VanCleef & Arpels, – Jacqueline smiled at him.

Later on he sent her a letter, which was unusual for him. In it he wrote (also according to Taper) that her husband was busy with serious international problems, and that nobody could reasonably expect him to pay the same kind of attention to arts and culture. But the woman, he wrote, always remains the source of inspiration. The male half of humanity mostly takes care of material issues, while the female half takes care of the soul. The woman is the world, in which the man lives, and she makes a home of this world for him. Inspiration in art is born thanks to the woman. God creates, the woman inspires, and the man unites these two factors. He also wrote that the woman is the prime source of beauty in life, and that the man should be subservient to this… or something like that.

She responded in a polite and official way.

He responded to her reply with his new works, which might, to some extent, have been inspired by her image….

– Have you been busy with jewelry for a long time? – asked Sergey. The performance was going to begin in five minutes. Our seats were good ones, in the box number 11, near the imperial box. It was the perfect place to watch the ballet from. The Hall gradually filled up with people.

– Almost eight years have passed. So long and yet so short a time. – I was looking at people in the orchestra stalls. You could tell that they had dressed up to come to the theatre.

– Nothing’s ever enough for you. – He semi-reproached me in his own meaningful way.

– Is that pleasant remark actually referring to anything in particular? – I asked.

– No. It is not.

He kept absolutely quiet, as though he and I often went to the theatre together, or at least saw each other occasionally. Nevertheless, he did look at me surreptitiously every now and then. I pretended not to notice. I had the intuition that he wanted something from me. Somehow I could not take his sentimental feelings for real. Well, I suppose I probably flattered my feminine vanity with his attentions a little bit.

– Who are you married to now? – I asked all of a sudden, wanting to know.

– Let Balanchine be the third in our company today. He patted my right knee lightly. – Don’t get distracted. I will always have plenty of time to answer all your questions.

– Are you trying to reassure me? Beware of getting no answers yourself, – I tried to tease him.

The imperial box was occupied by two ladies in Channel suits and some pompous men, with the former Minister of Culture in the front line. All of them were quite conceited, and one of them was looking around attentively, reminding me of the way the frontiersmen stood on patrol in accordance with military regulations during the Soviet period, protecting the sacred territory and studying each branch and blade of grass. He was not even speaking. All of a sudden he met my eyes and I decided to greet him, just for a joke. He nodded back to me, showing off even in the theatre. I turned back.

In Tunis they nicknamed me Sardine. Sergey reminded me of this now: ‘Get ready for the Art, Sardine, tune in for the music and the ballet’. I did so.

The lights went out. The orchestra began playing. The curtains swept back.… With every minute the performance became more and more intriguing. It was quite another kind of ballet. The dance was depicting the music; it was not quite clear what was accompanying what. Plot was rendered totally unnecessary. It was kind of symbiosis of light and ballet and music. First it seemed a bit weird, as though I was waiting for a prince who was never going to come. The most important thing was that it was not showcasing some kind of artful technique or elegant sequence of movements: it was another vision entirely, the same kind of beauty presented in a different way – the beauty of the human body and of musicality. It soon became clear to me that even costumes and decorations were superfluous. Each ballerina was her own self: young, airy, light, like a morning dream of a better world to come. ‘Ballet is the most innocent, the most ethical of all the arts. If it were not so, why should people always take their children to the theatre?’ This was what Tchaikovsky told his friend Herman Laroche on reading in some newspaper that the ballet exists just to excite the faded desires of old men. I read about it in Passion for Tchaikovsky by Solomon Volkov. A lot was also written about plot in that book, about how Peter Ilyich actually had no serious interest in plot – and indeed, how can anybody take the plot of Lebedinoye Ozero (Swan Lake) seriously? It’s not like Richard III, for example, in which there’s absolutely no need for dance. Dance cannot represent people’s intrigues and fratricide on stage nearly as well as words can. Mood and sense, however, can be depicted by the ballet. Is it really more powerful? When the brilliant union of a composer and a choreographer takes place, then yes, it can be much more powerful. And everybody is free to their own artistic preferences, their own modes of self-expression, according to their soul’s needs at different moments in their lives. The only thing that strikes me as undeniable is that it is very difficult for a person without art – it is almost impossible to develop, to acquire a full knowledge of life, to be kind and loving. Well, the actor just recites phrases learnt by heart, the musician reads the music, the ballet-dancer knows exactly how to move on the stage. And would it have been better if she had not learnt her part? If she hadn’t rehearsed till exhaustion? Plot is not the main thing. When Balanchine toured the USSR at the beginning of sixties, he had been accused of formalism, of dances without a plot. And here I was, watching his chorographical creations in the Bolshoi, performed by the Theatre’s own troop of dancers. I liked it.

During the interval we went out to walk around a bit.

– I have to say, you don’t seem overjoyed to see me, – remarked my elegant companion.

– Sergey Filimonovich, you are too harsh. – Once, we had been in the habit of inventing different patronymics for one another. Quite often ‘Filimonovich’ was the only second name I used for him – it sounded so African in style, as though it were derived from the word lemon… lemon like the one growing near the kitchen window in Tunis, from which we picked gigantic yellow fruit all the year round for salads and, of course, for tea…. – I am very happy to see you after all these years. You look great. I am just waiting for an explanation as to why you’ve decided to rake up all these old ashes and do a thing like this. I’m guessing that our chance meeting in that shop was simply a useful pretext. Yes, somehow I think that’s right. – I looked him straight in the eye.

– You’re talking rubbish, Sofia Pavlovna! You want me to find you a mirror? How very modest you are! – he joked – Or do you think evolution has entirely passed me by? I’ve long since had my fill of long legs and Ukrainian accents.

– Oh, you’ve had enough already? How interesting! It must mean that you have tasted a lot of that sort of thing. You lived in the States for quite long a time, didn’t you? For about ten years? I heard a little but paid no attention to it. It all seemed so far away.

– You would have been better to have paid attention to it.

– Look what beautiful women are here tonight! – I looked in the direction of a beauty standing nearby, wearing long above the knee boots in blue suede.

– She is a real tamer. Sometimes you should listen to what you’re being told, Sofia Pavlovna, and not lash out with some inferiority complex.

– You’re wrong. – I got offended. We went back to our seats. My anonymous acquaintance from the imperial box had not left his seat and was still on the alert. All of a sudden he cried out:

– Hallo, Mihal Mihalich!

Sergey and I, surprised, looked at each other.

– He has done it at last! – grinned Sergey.

– Where there’s a will there’s a way. He’s not wasting his time sitting there! He must be imagining that he is a grand prince, or a marshal or maybe even the Tsar. Perhaps he thought the woman next to him was the tsarina. Should we write him a note – asking not to yell like that and make a fool of himself? – I enquired.

– I would send him flowers. He introduced himself quite spectacularly, – suggested Sergey.

– Some exotic flowers, decorated with a bow, – I agreed. – And a teddy bear as well.

I hadn’t noticed that the lights had gone out. Agon resumed.

– It’s a very powerful performance, Sonia, – Sergey whispered in my ear. – Feel the rhythm. – And he gently kissed me on my cheek. – In America I dreamed of watching it with you. – And he kissed me one more time.

Suzanne Farrell staged Agon in Moscow in 1999. I had seen her film – about her and her relationship with the master. She had been his last love and his Muse. That means that she had been the last Muse, whom he had loved and for whom he had created, and to whom he had devoted his ballets. She had been a very beautiful woman and a ballet-dancer. I remembered that my grandmother had always said: “Women become beauties, they are not born like that”. The film had been produced after his death, but real passion could be felt in it, as well as attachment to him, pride for his selectness. Although she had tried to escape from him by marrying another man and working with Bejart, she had come back. Here in Moscow she described Agon as “a jump from the rock into the water”, intended for those wanting to make that leap and acquire self-confidence. She wanted to do everything in the proper way, and to remain marvelous.

* * *

– Do you know that Balanchine also wrote the ballet called Jewels? And I think he actually staged it with Arpels in New York? – We were leaving the theatre. Sergey was holding me by the arm. Then he put my arm into his, which was more convenient. Slight wooden twinges from his perfume reached my senses.

– Yes… It’s rather far away… Are you by any chance suggesting a trip to Saint Petersburg? – I recalled that this ballet was also being performed in the Mariinsky Theatre.

– There are so many propositions I would love to make to you, Sofia Pavlovna, the divine. What a wonderful evening we have spent together! I am overwhelmed with both my own delight and other people’s, – with applause, with your deep eyes, with our reminiscences. Let’s go to ‘Pushkin’ for supper!

– And here is our transport! – I exclaimed. Karandash[2], Sergey’s driver, drove up to us in his silver limousine.

– Doesn’t he have a name? – I had asked before the performance. – Should I call him as Karandash? It sounds like some kind of nickname…

– Well, you can call him ‘Pencil’, if you want to use the translation of that nickname.

– And what is written in his passport? – I insisted.

– How on earth should I know… – Sergey shrugged his shoulders.

– He might be called Briefcase rather than Pencil. You should check – I pressed on.

– I trust people, Sofia, my dear, I trust them. There are plenty of decent, disciplined people around.

– You are right. Good, kind people do surround us. – I insisted no more.

The restaurant was full of people, but they found a table on the second floor in the Library for us.

– I am so hungry. And it’s your fault, – Sergey reproached me.

A tall, handsome waiter in a long white apron brought the menu.

– You are welcome, Madam, – he addressed me in an old-fashioned way.

– A while ago you served venison meat with baked pear. That’s what I want, – said Sergey to the waiter, not looking at the menu. – Do you want to try it too? – he addressed me.

– Thank you, but I don’t eat meat. I want a double portion of strawberries with a touch of cream. And a cup of green tea to go with it. – Recently, I have developed a taste for strawberries. Before that, I ate only apples.

– Do you remember Pekarsky? – inquired Sergey.

I grew suspicious. Ilya had been with us in Africa. To be more precise, he had been there at the same time, working as an assistant to the consul. He was a few years older than us, and in his spare time he had often escaped from the ‘old folks’ to join us. I had liked him. Quiet jokes that he would murmur as though to himself, tinned food and other edible goods from the consulate shop, the French and sometimes even American magazines which he brought us, a privately owned automobile, a well-groomed appearance and a readiness to help the lazy students… these were the merits that made Ilya so welcome. Living abroad at that time it was easy to see a potential informant in nearly everyone, but Ilya had managed to gain our confidence. In fact, we – the four girls and the three guys from different universities – had never even trusted each other much. This was the usual state of affairs. I knew who sneaked, and I suspected everyone else. And what of it – should we have stopped living? It was Ilya who reminded us of Papanov’s words from the Russian movie Byelorussian Terminal: “The commander of our regiment once said, ‘each wrinkle on your blanket is a loophole for the agents of Imperialism’”. As far as I remembered, Ilya had become friends with Sergey. But I didn’t know what had happened afterwards. I lost touch with both of them.

– Does Ilya Petrovich want to meet up with me as well? Let’s ask him to join us in Petersburg.

– I always suspected the pair of you. I remember that during the May Day meeting he accompanied you and Makarova from the glade to the cottage of the Attache of Culture, whose wife had gone to Moscow to give birth. There was some composer hanging around as his guest.

– Oh yes… You cannot hide a grand piano in the bushes… – I drawled.

– Well, he was always hanging around you dressed in white Lacoste trousers that I could only dream of, chirping: “Sardine, you won’t regret it! Think, piano music for four hands! We’ll drink cold champagne! Leave this miserable shashlik alone! Off we go! Follow me!”

– These memories really haven’t faded for you, have they? It’s great!

– On your way there you smashed the ambassadorial BMW, knocked down some fellah on his old banger and damaged the fence on your way into the residence. Krishkin had a narrow escape that time. The rumors reached his wife.

– Well, wasn’t a problem for us…. Krishkin always envied Pekarsky. As far as I remember, when they sat down with that composer to play Beatles music for four hands, Makarova asked them to play “Hey Jude”, – Krishkin blushed, he was standing there, obviously hating it in spite of the cognac he had already drunk.

– And what else happened? – Sergey seemed nervous.

They brought us the strawberries and the venison with baked pear.

– Bon appetit, Filimonich, – I said.

– And what comes next? – asked Sergey again.

– You and I quarreled with you then, as you probably remember, because of the lecture notes. You spilled tomato juice on my workbook and claimed that the half of the notes were missing. And you yourself had no notes on syntax at all – not a single line. Makarova told you to pay her 20 dinars just for the last three lectures. Have you forgotten it? And later on she also complained that you stayed the night with us, and that you spoke to Americans at the Institute. It was prohibited to talk to anyone, as you remember.

– You’ll make fun of me for this, but I met up Pete from our Grammar group later on.

– Where did you see him? In the States?

– We met in Kyoto. And later on, in New York. By the way, he’s in jewelry business, just like you.

– You don’t say?! Fat old Pete! In the jewelry business! Jesus Christ, that’s incredible! – I almost choked on my berries.

– He even asked about you a couple of times, – Sergey continued calmly.

– And what did he ask about?

– Well, about practically everything…

– Are you joking?! – This was the last thing I expected to hear – And what did you tell him about me?

– I told him that I didn’t know anything. They sent me abroad “to establish friendly relations” after I had graduated from the University. You married some guy again…

– Yes, that’s the only news worth telling about a woman, – I retorted.

And then I remembered. Once, in the winter after the New Year, Filimonich and I, Peter and Alicia (another American from our group), had opted to go to the city market (the locals called it “suk”). Sergey invited Ilya to go with him, for safety’s sake. We met at one of the entrances to these endless labyrinths of Arabian folk craftwork mixed Indian, Turkish and Italian styles, as well as some other odds and ends. As far as I remember we had been assigned to write a composition entitled ‘My perception of the City of Tunis’ or something like that, and we decided to use this chance to stroll to the market. We agreed with the Americans that we would pretend to have met by chance – and in that case, why should we flee from each other as if we were hounds of ideology? The story also went that we had likewise met Pekarsky all of a sudden, while he was choosing a little handicraft carpet for himself, depicting a white house against a blue background, and a clay plate with a similar design. All of us, young, turbulent and eager as we were, craved normal communication, chat about the USA and the USSR – we liked to ask one another tricky questions and to argue over which country was worse to live in. Alicia was no fool – she was an active career woman, dreaming of becoming a diplomat and setting the flag of victory on another peak of American feminism. She didn’t like to have any courtesies addressed to her that might emphasize her femininity. Thus nobody would give their hand to her, nobody would let her walk through a door first, and nobody ever carried her heavy bags. And she liked it this way… Even Pekarsky played her game; when we sat down at a coffee table with one stool too few, he told her: “There’s a vacant stool over there, so go and get it”. Alicia went and fetched it quite obediently. She used to wear unisex clothes, and she didn’t wear make up or nail varnish – but she did pluck her eyebrows. I was definitely not mistaken about that!

– What does she usually do for personal hygiene during her period? – Pekarsky inquired.

– You can find out. Make some allusion to your primitive Soviet morals, apologize. And come and tell us what you know. – Filimonich advised him.

But all the same it was fun to be with Alicia, and Pete was certainly no fool for having befriended her.

– I’m not sleeping with her, – he was always finding excuses for himself.

– Well, nobody thinks you are – replied Sergey. – She will have everything her way.

And Alicia was casting glances at Ilya. She was even helping him to look for his plate with a house on it.

– Il, – she asked him, – What if there’s a camel near the house, like on this one?

– Impossible, – replied Pekarsky. – It should be just a white house and a blue sea.

Without realising it, we had drifted towards the jewellers’ stalls. Everything was bright and shining there, smelling of fragrances. The sellers touted in every language. They had no idea that we could understand Arabic, all five of us. I was looking at the gold necklaces in surprise, as they were so enormous that their weight looked as though it could damage the wearer’s neck vertebrae. And at that point, Pete and I became the focus of attention. It was clear that the others were not on the same wavelength as us.

First he asked me to try on ring earrings with pendants, and then he chose some coral beads. Oh my God! What wonderful beads they were! It can happen like that at the market, when everything has become just a general mess of sparkles and multicolor, when your legs feel tired, when you do not want anything because you’ve almost stopped seeing the things around you – you are overwhelmed by something magnificently beautiful!

– Pete, how did you know to choose these beads? – I exclaimed.

– I’ve been aware of things like that since my childhood, Sophie. You know, my mother would take me to boutiques all over the world with her, starting from when I was six. I have seen a lot of things. You can find wonderful red corals here in Tunis, and at a very reasonable price. Look at the mirror! – He turned the mirror to me. – Now pull up your hair, in this way. Alicia won’t listen to me. Your neck… You have got an ideal neck for the necklace. And little ears, too.

For a split second my imagination transported me, an ordinary Soviet girl, who had never seen any decent shop in her life and never been to a Western country, to some mythical shop decorated with pink velour, mahogany and crystal. Then I thought of Adriano Celentano and Anthony Quinn in the “Bluff: storia di truffe e di imbroglioni” movie. Yes, that was it. In that movie they were swindling someone at the jewelry shop. What was it called? ‘Van Cleef and…’ something…

– Do you watch European movies, Pete? – Overwhelmed, I just wanted to get on with the conversation.

– Sometimes I do. My mother’s of Italian origin, you know.

– Oh really? – I was surprised. It was impossible to think of him as half Italian. Or so I’d thought till then. At that moment, I looked at him with new eyes. He was a little bit plump on the plump side. But his face was pleasant, and he was well dressed. He was wearing some medallion on a black string. I had seen it earlier but not really given it much thought.

– What are you doing here? I’ve been looking for you everywhere, – Sergey, coming into the shop, was happy to see us.

– Have you found the damned still life for Pekarsky? – I changed the topic.

– You should ask Alicia about that. I lost you all. I’ve had enough shopping. It’s high time we went to write that composition.

We did not go into any of the other shops in the market after that. Everybody was tired, so we said good-bye to one another and went home.

If you understand the status quo of the eighties, you will know that ours were no harmless pranks. The things we did on that day could have resulted in highly undesirable consequences. All of us could receive reprimands from the representatives of the Komsomol organization, and Pekarsky could receive a reprimand from the representatives of the Soviet Communist Party. They could even prevent us from traveling abroad. It was really dangerous to enter into direct contact with Americans. But nobody informed any officials about our movements. The three of us began to trust one another more, and naturally we didn’t stick to the rules. Especially because my compatriots were mostly reluctant to go to the Institute, and obviously everything feels rather different when there are no witnesses about.

There was a shabby little cafe at the Institute. You could buy snacks there during breaks – a can of coke or a cup of coffee, buns, pizzas with tomato paste and olives. I remember that there always were sunflower seed husks on the floor. Lots of the students would munch on them because they were so cheap, and because the fact you had to crack them made them last a long time. They were sold in little paper-bags; it was very nice. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never eaten better sunflower seeds or potatoes than the ones I ate in Tunis. But we would only eat sunflower seeds at home in the kitchen, and after the scholarship we also bought almonds and hazel-nuts.

Pete was always hanging about, drinking coffee and chatting with Tunisians. Sometimes he even spoke Italian.

– Privet, Sophie, – he addressed me in Russian. – How are you doing?

Filimonich had taught him that. He also could say “I love you” (‘Ya tebya lyublyu”), “don’t love” (“ne lyublyu”), “A girl” (“devushka”) and “A booty” (“popa”). He couldn’t remember the word for ‘a kiss’ (“potseluy”). “What the hell?! How can such an important word be so long and complicated?” – he protested. He also hated the words for “Hello” (“zdravstvuyte”) and “nothing” (“nichego”).

– Hi, Pete! What a wonderful sweater that is!

After our trip to the market I began to pay attention to his clothes and to intuitively understand that he was dressed expensively and well. At that time we didn’t know much about style and fashion, but we were beginning to get a feeling for such things.

– Mum sent me a parcel. This one’s supposed to be for Alicia. But you know what she’s like: how could she possibly go to the Institute wearing cashmere? In fact, it’s actually a little bit tight on her. Let me give it to you, take it. – He handed over a black paper packet with a silk bow on it. – The package is Tunisian – couldn’t find anything better.

It was a silly situation. I didn’t know what to do. He was an American, and it was all very awkward. Just nonsense.

He saw that I was hesitating.

– And what present should I give you, Pete?

– How should I know? Just think of something. It’s not like I’m giving you panties or a saucepan.

At that moment it dawned on me: It was Saint Valentine’s Day today! Goodness gracious, I thought. What shall I say to Sergey? And how shall I explain it to the girls? Shall I tell them I bought it for myself, with, I don’t know, six scholarships or something? And what on earth is in this parcel? I’m snookered!

– Do you think before you do things? – I asked. But I didn’t want to offend him.

– You’re the reason I’m still studying at this sodding Institute. I want you to know that… that you have more strength and willpower than these uncombed feminists. Just be a real woman, the only one. Everyone has their own mission. The main thing is to realize that in time.

I blushed. The parcel was hot in my hands.

– Would you like a cup of coffee? It’s kind of awkward standing here like this.

There was a sweater in it, better than any garment I’d ever touched, and the coral beads from the market.

Later I learnt, that Pete came from a family of very prosperous bankers. He had studied political science at Yale University, and he had come to Tunis to visit an acquaintance of his father, who was the US ambassador. He had stayed by mere chance – for the sake of improving his health and in order to overcome some traumatic experience of his own. He was living for his soul and was paying for it: life is never a fairytale, whether you’re living in Manhattan or in Sokolniky. He had studied Arabic at some time in his childhood, in Jordan, where his family had lived for about three years. There he was, the oldest son of a billionaire, and he was interested in me. He was the kind of man you dreamt about! But I didn’t think of him in this way. Anyway, we were afraid of our supervisors. And he certainly was one of their chief targets, making me a target by association. You couldn’t get off without show downs, which was exactly what happened next.

– Do you really think, my dear, that we will let you flirt with Americans? – Comrade Alabyan asked me, having called me to his office on the first floor of our Embassy.

I felt dizzy, as though I were on the carousel in Gorky park.

– He will try to hire you, and as soon as you come to your senses, you will jump off the cliff near the walls of Carthage. You are not only a fool, but you are also ready to endanger all of your relatives.

I saw black dots. His dumb-witted speech registered in waves in my mind, like Ayvazovsky’s pictures.

– Well, tell me, then. I’m not joking. – He made a strict and haughty face which made my tongue feel numb.

– What should I tell you, Alexander Eduardovich? Are your asking me about Peter Kent? – I whispered.

– Is there also some John? – asked the secretary of the Party Organization.

– He studies in our group in Grammar. Alicia is also in the group. She is an American too. Nobody is hiring me, nobody has asked me any suspicious questions, – I said in a horrible, hoarse voice.

– You should not be making contact! – retorted comrade Alabyan. – This is your final warning! Next time, you will be arrested and flown back to Moscow. You should not even borrow a pen from them! Is that clear? You’d be better to write with your fingers! The less you hang about at the university, the more soundly you can sleep. We’ve spoilt you anyway – you have made a bordello out of your apartment. I should also deal with that other guy of yours, Pekarsky. You have got totally out of hand! Come here!

– Where? – I stammered, almost fainting.

– Come here!

I came up to the table, at which he was sitting.

– Come nearer!

My legs were numb, made from foam, plastic, wood – or whatever material they turn to on such occasions. I remember that he unzipped his fly, and then I finally fainted for real.

I choked with water and coughed.

– What’s the matter, Sonia? – asked Sergey, frightened.

– I just choked, sorry. Nothing serious… everything’s ok.

There were even more people in the restaurant by then. All the tables were occupied. It was noisy, the dishes were clinking. This place, ‘Pushkin’, is really interesting. It’s a crazy restaurant! Probably one of the best in Moscow. And it’s as busy as a beehive, even at 1 am.

A waiter wearing an apron came in with a tray, on which was a bottle of French champagne and a bouquet of white roses.

– Our guests have sent these to you. Welcome! I will put the flowers in a vase and bring them back to the table, if you like.

I stared at Sergey in astonishment. He was smiling.

– Did you do this?

– No, not me, – answered Sergey, still smiling.

– Which guests? – I asked the waiter.

– At that table over there. – He indicated a table at the far end of the hall.

I turned round. What a day it was! An older, slimmer Pete was approaching me. He was followed by Pekarsky, who had hardly changed at all (he wasn’t even bald), dressed in a yellow American-style tie.

“There are so many of them, and I am alone”, – The thought crossed my overwhelmed mind.

4

Using his status in Tunis Pekarsky got acquainted with the local bourgeoisie and political elite, two groups which are generally very closely connected in such countries. A family-member’s political success entailed immediate business success for all his relatives, however distant, and greatly contributed to the prosperity of his friends and acquaintances. It is quite easy to guess at the motives of Ilya’s actions, but whether or not his strategy was successful I cannot say for sure. Notwithstanding his relative youth, he had some authority among the Consulate representatives, and they allowed him to do a lot of things which were prohibited for others. They were surely taking into account his father’s contacts and long-term diplomatic activity in Western Europe, and in my opinion, also the connections of his maternal uncle, who was a professor of physics. And what wonderful son he was! Prince of the dreams of fellow Komsomol students and young teachers. At that time he was the embodiment of a member of a high-ranking family of Soviet princes and naturally, he knew it well enough.

I remember that he had become close friends with Suad, a business woman in her fifties and the wife of some minister of education or of agriculture – I am not sure which. She was very fond of her two sons, handsome, lazy guys who made active use of the family finances. Her husband was a politician busy with his career; they saw each other rarely, and had not held any special attraction for each other for many years. She was the owner of a villa in Sousse, which was occasionally occupied by her children: one of the sons sometimes stayed there with his Moroccan wife and his little son, the other, the most handsome man of the whole family, would entertain there his numerous French girlfriends. At that time a man could catch a lot of French girls, especially in spring. They came there to get jobs in the hotels or tourist agencies, or simply to look for opportunity; sometimes, actors and singers also came to live with him. Russian and Ukrainian women were not yet able to travel about with the ease of these French girls, and so a similar field of activity for our mademoiselles was practically uncultivated.

At the beginning of June, Suad decided to celebrate her birthday and invited Pekarsky to the private Swiss club on Karkana Island. Ilya said that he would come with friends, and invited me and Sergey to go with him. They were probably both leading me on – for all I know, Sergey might have been in cahoots with Pekarsky – but it certainly wasn’t chance that led them to ask me to join them. Refusal was out of the question; I was sick and tired of the limits imposed on our contact with others, and of being confined to certain rooms and places. It was even forbidden to go to the cinema or to the beach. Sometimes they organized trips to the seaside in the old UAZ cars, packed with people and without any air conditioning. Having made this trip once, squashed into the car along with wives of the officials of the second delegation, listening to their artless talk about sales and the latest knitting pattern (in Tunis they sold cheap mohair, and these women diligently knitted clothes for their children and husbands to wear during the long and frosty Russian winters), I had firmly resolved not to waste any more of my spare time like that. You couldn’t even spread out a towel more than two meters from the party, or to plunge into the water without having told your worried neighbors where you were going. On top of this you had to answer questions such as ‘Do you still miss your Motherland?’, and on the way back, sing ‘Katiusha’ in unison (I have never had anything against the military songs – at Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s concert devoted to V-day, at which he had performed only military songs, I had felt tears standing in my eyes along with many other people present). The whole consulate staff liked the song about ‘Gena the Crocodile’, and the Russian song ‘A beauty from Moldova’. And if you do not like it, ask yourself what’s the matter and try to make yourself believe that you still enjoy it. I had always thought cordially about my city – my mother, my father, the Institute, my childhood friends were all there, and in your twenties you still have a lot of illusions and a lot of angst, not fully expressed and experienced. Why should your irresistible wish to see the world be considered a crime and why should you surround yourself with people, who drink vodka in order to be patriotic – is that really a humane approach? In such an environment a trip to some private Swiss club on some island was as good as a winning lucky lottery ticket. And I didn’t care, whether that would tell on the rest of my life. One month was left until our return to Moscow.

Примечания

1

“If we want things to stay the same, things wi1l have to constantly improve” – the maxim of Italian writer Tomazi di Lampeduza (1896-1957).

2

Karandash (Карандаш) – a Russian word which means “pencil”.

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