Fresh Mint with Lemon

by Monika Zgustova

  * * *

  Click-click-click. The pedal of the sewing machine moves in waves. Sergei’s eyelids are getting heavy. The last purse, for today. It is starting to get light out. It must be nine o’clock, then. His wife, on the mattress, is breathing regularly. Sergei gets up quickly. He takes advantage of his wife’s deep sleep to help himself to a little glass of vodka. But then he stops himself and sits back down at the sewing machine. Click-click-click. Little by little. He hopes they won’t hear him. All he has to do is pay his debt and he’ll be free. He’ll go to Prague. He wants to solve the puzzle. The mystery of the child with the stone in his hand. What happened that day? Did the tank run him over? What should he, Sergei, have done? Jump on top of the driver? Stop the tank from advancing? Yes, he should have done all of that. Or did the officer shoot at the child from the window of his tank? Sergei saw the machine gun in his hands. Should he have snatched it from him? Yes, of course he should have. But he didn’t do anything, and for years he has regretted it. Like he was the main character in a contemporary version of Crime and Punishment. The person who watches a crime and does nothing to stop it is also a criminal. That occurred to him once and since then he hasn’t stopped repeating it to himself. He is more and more convinced that it is true. He repeats these words over and over to himself, just as he does with the scenes on the streets of Prague. Now he sees different ways of stopping the crime. But that day he closed his eyes. When he pays off his debts, he will go to Prague and live out that story once more. Only then will he be able to live again. Perhaps. He hadn’t stopped a crime. That is why he has a pain in his heart. That is why everything happened … everything that happened later. That was the punishment. Now he has found the justification for his suffering. Punishment.

  Back home, back in Russia, he couldn’t think about anything else. A hand with a stone. This image followed him around by day and, above all, by night. It was there and suddenly it was gone. It was his fault. Like the student, of his own age, who suddenly wasn’t there. He set fire to himself, like the paper soldier in the well-known Russian song. Like the paper soldier who takes on the burden of other people’s guilt. Like Christ.

  When he went back home from Prague, to Petersburg—no, then it was Leningrad!—he looked for anything to do with the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. First, he found the Literaturnaia Gazeta. A small number of Moscow writers spoke of those dramatic days:

  “The writers of Moscow have been observing the events in Czechoslovakia closely, the battle that the counter-revolutionary forces are waging against socialist Czechoslovakia …,” wrote Arkadi Vasiliev.

  “Everyone who loves peace and socialism will understand: they will understand that the Warsaw Pact forces entered Czechoslovakia as true friends and brothers, totally dedicated to the great work that is the building of socialism …,” wrote Ludmila Tatianycheva.

  “The fraternal friendship between Soviet writers and the whole Soviet people, and the Czechoslovak people, has lasted for many years. But in recent months we have been concerned about the news we have been receiving from Czechoslovakia. No one will ever be able to tear Czechoslovakia away from the solidarity of the socialist countries. All of us give our most heartfelt approval to the wise step taken by the allies in order to offer their essential aid to our friends,” wrote Georgy Markov.

  “Reactionaries of all colors dreamed of tearing Czechoslovakia away from the community of socialist nations, and making it dependent on capitalism once more. But these gentlemen have been proven wrong …,” wrote Berdy Kerbabayev.

  And many others said similar things. After having read these articles, Sergei felt relieved. So it was all right to have burst in with tanks and machine guns. But then, immediately, in front of his eyes he saw that weak hand, with the stone. The hand that later disappeared. And Sergei also saw a torch, a student surrounded by flames, as clearly as if he had set light to him himself. And he saw Zlatolavska. Her anger. Her tears. Her mocking. Her strength. Yes, strength. Which came from the conviction that she was in the right. From truth. That is why the Czechs were strong. That is why the Russians were weak. Because they weren’t in the right. They didn’t have the right to do what they were doing.

  They didn’t know it because nobody had told them. But they felt it. And that made them weak. They were apathetic. They didn’t walk with their heads high. The Czechs did.

  Was it like that? After so many years it seemed to him that it was. He couldn’t think about anything else.

  * * *

  His wife wakes up. She comes over to him, half asleep. She puts her hand on his head. And she asks him what he is thinking about. Why did he, Sergei, have to reveal his thoughts to her? Women always ask such questions when they think that their man is hiding something from them. Sergei answers that he isn’t thinking about anything special. And why should he be? Is he an engineer? Or an inventor? Or a writer, or a philosopher? His wife answers that he never stops sighing. His sighs have woken her up. She is worried about him, she says. Sergei calms down. Why does he get so irritated with her? Isn’t his wife the only person he has left? The only person who loves him? His wife understands his thoughts and gently massages the back of his neck. She knows that his neck hurts. Then she drags herself, with her worn-out slippers, over to her chair. She picks up the knitting needles, the ball of wool is on her lap. Sergei watches her. His eyes are starting to close. He too is dozing off. He suggests to his wife that she goes to sleep. Yes, he too will get some rest soon, Sergei assures her.

  * * *

  “The moon and the flowers aren’t there anymore … What did you mean by that, Vadim?” asks Patricia’s voice on the phone.

  You are forever trying to convince yourself that you are over your fascination with Patricia, to persuade yourself that all you feel for her is a friendly indifference. That you’re only interested in writing her biography. And that’s all. But now when you hear her voice on the receiver, you jump for joy. You don’t say much. Your voice is a touch emotional. Her voice, from time to time, trembles like the wings of a butterfly.

  “The moon and the flowers aren’t there anymore. It’s difficult to talk about it over the phone,” you say.

  “Will you explain it to me?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “When?”

  “Today?”

  “Come at three thirty.”

  “Today?”

  “No, tomorrow.”

  “But … aren’t you working?”

  “Recently I haven’t been very inspired,” Patricia says in a subdued voice.

  “You’re not going through a period of tremendous inspiration?”

  “No. No, not at all. I’ve had a few ideas, sure … I’ll tell you about them.”

  “Oh, no? No? Hmmm … OK, then, see you tomorrow.”

  “And don’t forget your verses.”

  You oblige yourself to continue talking so as to lengthen the conversation. Stupid chattering, you tell yourself, happily. Yes, you feel like jumping, like a little boy who’s been given his first ball, simply because you have heard her voice, her voice that, today, for the first time, has come in search of yours.

  THE METAMORPHOSES OF NATURE

  They met again with their faces lit up like Christmas trees. Patricia greeted him with a friendly “Privet” and he would have liked to embrace her. He started to reach his arms out to her, but in the end he let them fall, and just touched her shoulders.

  “Is the visit for me? Has someone come to see me?” The sound of the bell had brought Radhika to the door. “Ah, is that you, Vadim?” From her half-closed eyelids, she shot him a look that said: Traitor! Worse than a traitor! Me, a traitor? Vadim protested, tacitly. Yes, you! replied the woman’s even more closed eyelids. That day, the one before yesterday, you wanted me, I read the fire in your eyes! Mentally, Vadim justified himself: No chance! You’re all body! Yes, I am, the woman frowned and stuck out her chest. Against his will, Vadim’s eyes slid into her cleavage. He let them play there for a mome
nt, just for a second, and then quickly brought them to where they were supposed to be: back on her face. Radhika’s expression said: You see! You’ve lost all this, you idiot, you fool! But there was no triumph in the woman’s eyes; only her face simulated an expression of victory. And, suddenly, Vadim saw that, under the camouflage of her exotic appearance and voluptuousness, Radhika was not an Indian goddess but a woman who would soon be old, and that getting old frightened her. A woman who was getting old and had no tender husband or fiery lover. A woman disappointed by her wasted life. Vadim saw that, after his rejection of her two days before, there were new wrinkles at the corners of the woman’s mouth.

  “You can’t imagine, Pat,” Radhika said to her friend, “the massage that Vadim gave me on the beach the other day. He focused especially on my chest, so much so that I had to stop him. But he didn’t want to stop. I had to fight him off. You can’t imagine how ashamed I felt, with all the people on the beach staring at us in ecstasy; but he didn’t notice anything else. Only my breasts. You know how he does it? At first, very tenderly, with just the tips of his fingers on the nipples, and then with all his strength and the palms of his hands, like an artist moulding a sculpture.”

  “I’m going to make some tea,” said Patricia.

  The painter went off. Her voice was that of a ventriloquist, Vadim thought. He still had time to see Radhika’s triumphant glare before she fled up the stairs, which creaked under her weight; her expression highlighted those new wrinkles that indicated her bitterness. In that moment, Vadim saw clearly what Radhika would look like when she grew old. He wanted to leave.

  But Patricia was already coming in with a tray in her hand. She didn’t look at him. She covered the table with the cups and saucers, the sugar bowl, the teapot, a plate full of canapés, a bowl of fruit, and another one with cookies. Vadim saw that the painter had prepared everything with great care. And now the woman was sitting down, like a statue of humiliation. Or was it indignation? Well, like a statue, anyhow.

  Vadim put his hand on hers, which was resting on her lap like the wing of a sick bird. He felt like a corrupter of minors. He hadn’t done anything, he hadn’t deceived anyone, and yet he felt guilty. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything in his defence. It was all true, and none of it was true. What was more—and this was the worst thing—who was interested in his defence?

  Patricia got up as if she hadn’t seen his hand, and put on some music, a Schubert trio; someone was playing the violin sweetly, but not even the celestial music was able to fill the black space in which both of them were floundering.

  When he couldn’t take it anymore, Vadim said the first thing that came to his mind, which was what he wanted more than anything, “Come on, be happy, like you were before!”

  As if his tone of voice had activated some kind of secret energy in Patricia, the painter started to serve the tea, first to him, and then to herself. She handed out the saucers, the cutlery, and the napkins, and gave a hint of a smile. They talked about painters and came to an agreement about their predilection for Jackson Pollock. As far as contemporary American prose was concerned Vadim was no expert, but both were perfectly familiar with the Russian classics.

  “Who do you prefer, Turgenev or Dostoevsky?” Vadim asked.

  “Turgenev,” Patricia answered seriously, reflectively.

  “Me, Dostoevsky. Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?”

  “Dostoevsky.” But her voice was still tense. It was hiding sadness, some kind of doubt, Vadim thought.

  “Just as well! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have said another word to you, if I found out you were one of those people who can’t stand Dostoevsky.”

  As if she had made a sudden decision, Patricia got up and walked to the window. She invited him to follow her and positioned him so that the greatest amount of light possible fell on his face. She raised the blinds and brought her face close to his. Barely a cup of tea could fit between their faces. Vadim felt her breath on his chin. Patricia stood on tiptoes and with her powerful eyes examined his gaze. She scrutinized it. She searched it openly, without pretending otherwise; she read his eyes. She studied his reaction. This tough examination … an eternity: half a minute, maybe a little longer. Schubert’s music had stopped playing, but they didn’t notice. The silence was full of meaning. Vadim was calm, he looked at her without blinking, he offered himself to her without reservations. He let himself be stripped bare. He had nothing to hide. Finally, Patricia turned her face away. The examination was over.

  “It’s a terrible thing, to think badly of a friend!” she whispered.

  She sat on the sofa, as if the examination had worn her out. She ran her finger around the edge of the cup, two circles, three …

  She jumped up.

  “It’s a terrible thing, to think badly of a friend!” she said in her drawn-out Russian, serious, convinced, as if this was the most important discovery of her life so far.

  She went to the stairs, stopped there, and said in a loud voice, in English, “It’s a terrible thing, to think badly of a friend! How can such a thing happen? It’s terrible!”

  Like a sentinel, Vadim thought, but he quickly banished the image, before smiling. He savored this scene, in which he has been one of the actors. And he felt as if a mountain of tenderness had fallen on top of him; he removed his fingers, hands, and arms from the pile, and held them out to her; he wanted to embrace her now, like a father would a pretty-looking daughter. If before, in a moment of lucidity, he had seen Radhika as a bitter old woman, now he saw Patricia as a curious little girl with a sky-blue dress and a red ribbon on her pony tail.

  Slowly, Patricia savored the little sips of fresh mint with lemon, while her fingers slid over the surface of the edge of the cup. As they had slid over my face the other day, Vadim thought, wishing that he was made of white porcelain. Patricia recited, slowly, accenting every syllable:

  The moon and the flowers

  aren’t there anymore.

  And I sit,

  with a glass in my hand,

  all alone.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Isn’t it clear enough?”

  “Which flowers aren’t there anymore?”

  “I thought I would never see them again.”

  “See what? Which flowers?”

  “These ones.” Vadim indicated their surroundings with a wave of his arm, pointing to the bell-shaped flowers in the paintings.

  A silence settled between them. Patricia felt this tranquillity was smothering her with its heavy weight, that soon she wouldn’t be able to breathe, and she said, quickly, “And the moon?”

  “The moon. You are the moon,” Vadim answered, calmly. But he started to feel like his declaration was too solemn, like Bach’s Tocata and Fugue, and tried to hide this impression with a series of light coughs.

  Silence threatened them once more. Patricia got rid of it for a while. How? With some little laughs, similar to Vadim’s light coughs. Like coins in your hand, thought Vadim, but he immediately realized that someone had been rattling these coins for too long, that the laughter was a touch forced.

  Patricia also felt the laughter freeze on her face and frowned. And the silence, expelled for an instant, again rose between them like a night mist between two mountains.

  “OK, so … hmmm …,” said Patricia, with a smile, but her smile, too, seemed wooden. What could she say, my God … Ah, yes! His writing, of course! Got it! They’d won the battle!

  “Did you bring your verses? We talked about them last time, if you recall.”

  “The haikus to go with your drawings?”

  He too felt relieved. Now they really had something to talk about! Quickly he took a folder with the sketches and some sheets of paper with the verses from his backpack. He gently hummed a tune to prevent the silence from coming between them again. Patricia sat on the sofa, next to him, and bent over the papers.

  “You see this sketch?” Vadim asked.

  Patricia found that looking at the cou
ples embracing in the drawings made her feel uncomfortable. No, it wasn’t just an uncomfortable feeling. She simply couldn’t stand the sight of them. Brusquely, she pushed the sheets of paper to one side. If there had been a fire in the fireplace, she would have happily burned them.

  “I’m curious to hear your verses,” she said.

  “OK, but you have to see the sketches to know what the verses are referring to.”

  Vadim reached for them.

  “No, there’s no need,” Patricia said quickly, preventing him. Yet it was she herself who had drawn it all, and she had done so with the same simple joy with which she painted tree branches and her flowers! Now she would have preferred it if her hand was cut off, the way an Islamic judge would cut off a thief’s, rather than look at those naked couples next to him. “Read me the text that you’ve brought with you.”

  “You have to look at the drawings. Otherwise you won’t have a context.”

  “I’ll be able to guess. And if I can’t, it doesn’t matter.”

  “For example, these verses:

  The nights of June,

  in the bright moonlight,

  hidden …”

  He was unable to go on. He just couldn’t.

  “Well, you’ll read it yourself later. I’ll read you some other verses:

  A light plate

  made from a pumpkin.

  My world is

  like this plate.”

  “The world like half a pumpkin. Yes, everybody’s world should be like that, small, simple, and closed. Did you write it?”

  “It was written by Basho, a seventeenth-century Japanese poet, you probably know of him. He lived in a grass hut, but above all he was a wanderer who liked to contemplate the changes in nature.”

  “Like you.”

  “I’m not a tramp, I’m sorry.”