Fresh Mint with Lemon

by Monika Zgustova

  “Well, maybe that’s the case in Russia,” Radhika said, pronouncing each syllable as if she were giving an English lesson for beginners and explaining her opinion as if addressing a group of small children, “But Russia is a very small part of the world. Look at everything from a global perspective. You’ll see that women have made a great leap forward and that’s why they have had a decisive influence on society and history.”

  “Russia is a very small part of the world?” Vadim was trembling as if he had a fever. “And all of central Europe, and China? In all these countries, people ask themselves, what did we do in the twentieth century? Our wars and dictatorships killed millions of people, razed whole cities to the ground, destroyed so much culture. In the name of humanism, we have destroyed the construction of humanism, which had been going on since the Renaissance.”

  “Women haven’t destroyed anything,” Radhika answered, calmly, in the tone of a person convinced that she is in the right. “Death and destruction, all of that has been caused by men. Women have continued to build humanism, as you say.”

  Vadim sighed; he knew that they were talking about different things. They each had their own experiences, their own point of view. They were unable to understand each other.

  Radhika sighed. She felt that Vadim’s world, so difficult to understand, was as distant to her as civilization on Mars. And she didn’t feel like embarking on a journey to Mars. What she wanted was to sit in an American university library and write articles about the women’s movement, designed for specialist magazines.

  Radhika sighed again and went on talking, in a monotonous fashion, without her earlier interest. “So Mark got more and more of a complex about having a successful wife and started to spend time with young girls who could admire him without criticizing him.”

  Radhika started to whisper and to talk faster, because footsteps could be heard.

  “Pat knew about it. The two of them were living in absolute hell. When her children left home, she abandoned her husband. She was fifty years old. She came to live here, she wanted a change of atmosphere. But she’s afraid of men. No, it’s worse than that. She has a phobia of them. No, it’s not that either. Men disgust her. And nobody can get rid of that disgust. Not even you.”

  Radhika went on whispering because she heard footsteps and the voices of several people approaching. Vadim noticed a marked element of malice in her whispering that he hadn’t sensed at the beginning of her long narrative.

  The footsteps and calm voices came closer and closer.

  “Not even you, Vadim!” Radhika repeated, and quickly placed her right foot on top of his thigh. Vadim was surprised by this, but didn’t try to remove her foot so as not to offend her.

  “Ali Baba and the forty thieves have come to get you!” said Patricia, laughing, radiating light. She opened the garden gate; she came from the fields. Behind her, a tanned man Vadim’s age was limping in a way that was barely perceptible.

  Patricia’s eyes settled on Radhika’s foot, which was now resting on the inner part of Vadim’s thigh.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt your tête à tête!” she said, suddenly irritated, and turned to her swarthy companion, “Come on, let’s go to my studio!”

  “Come and keep us company, Pat. Have a pear, come on! Calm down, Pat!” Radhika said with a voice full of sensuality as she rubbed Vadim’s thigh, moving her foot higher and higher.

  Vadim got up to leave.

  “Stay where you are. I’m the one who’s leaving,” Patricia said, without looking at him. Then she turned to Radhika. “We’ve got work to do.”

  And, from the doorway of the house, she added, “I don’t want to be in the way.”

  And she disappeared.

  Radhika handed a pear to Vadim.

  “We won’t let anyone get in our way, right? If they go off together to her studio to be on their own, to have some privacy, we’ll do the same. Right?” She sat down on the bench in such a way that her sarong fell open, revealing her brown thighs right up to her white lace panties.

  It was an attractive image, Vadim had to admit, even though he was thinking about something else. He had never been in Patricia’s studio, not once! He had come such a long way to see her with the aim of writing a book about her, and she hadn’t let him, even once, into the very place he longed to be.

  In the deeper waters of his unconscious, Vadim recalled that once Patricia had invited him to go into her studio with her, but in the end the visit never took place. But now he didn’t want to admit this fact, he didn’t want to think about it … he wanted to calmly savor the bitter sweetness of self-pity.

  He grabbed his backpack and said goodbye to Radhika. Or rather, he said goodbye to Radhika’s legs, because, distracted as he was, he never took his eyes off them, even though he might have not even seen them.

  “Vadim, I’ll get you for this!” Radhika said and moved; the sarong opened a little bit more, exposing the little lace panties, which were completely transparent.

  But Vadim had already headed out to the path.

  * * *

  You were looking at her legs and her transparent panties, yes, your eyes alighted there time and time again, but they saw something different: a sunflower woman who shows her paintings, one by one, smiling, to a tanned young man. In your pocket you feel the stone from this morning and you raise your hand to throw it as far as you can. But then you put it back in your pocket, because you realize it will be the only souvenir from your Mediterranean August, because you will never go back to the white house where those two women live. Never again. And when you are almost asleep, you recall the image of the white lace panties.

  “Ali Baba and the forty thieves!” you murmur, sleepily.

  The following morning, you switch on the computer, you are waiting for an e-mail from Boris. On the screen you see the bold letters of a new e-mail. No, it isn’t Boris, it’s … patricia.pavloff@yahoo.com. For a moment, you taste this miracle with your eyes, you can hardly believe your luck, even though the name is clear enough. Quickly, you click twice on those black words, and the letters on the screen obey your order … and turn into sentences before your eyes, and you read them starting at the end … “Radhika and I would like to see you again. Best wishes, Patricia.” You don’t read the beginning of the message and answer immediately: “I’ll be right there! Best wishes, Vadim” and you send the message. Fantastic, she has your answer. And it is only now, seated comfortably on your little cloud of happiness, that you read the whole message.

  “Dear Vadim, why did you run off yesterday? I wanted to introduce you to the representative of the Tà pies Foundation in Barcelona. Maybe Ali Baba disturbed you with his sudden arrival? The stones you left next to the dog house are magnificent. Indeed, they are sculptures. When shall we start on your portrait? I’m tied up all week, but maybe on Sunday I could take a day off. Would you like to come this Sunday, then? In the afternoon, between four and five. What do you think? We’ll have a mint tea with lemon, cold, with ice, of course.” And then the ending that you already read. You’ve been too hasty, they’ve asked you to come on Sunday. “Why did you run off yesterday?” you repeat to yourself again and again as you take your sandals off and put on sports shoes with thick soles, which will be good for your daily pilgrimage to the sacred place. She’s seen the stones. “They’re magnificent, indeed, they’re sculptures.” She understands you without words, that Ali Baba!

  THE DRAGONFLY AND THE BLADE OF GRASS

  “Good morning, is it Sunday already?” Patricia asked from the doorway, smiling ironically, adding, “But it’s not me you’ve come to see, is it?” She turned away a little too brusquely and said, “Radhika’s gone … I don’t know where. She’s gone someplace.”

  And she smiled in a melancholy fashion, as if it bothered her that she knew very little of what others were up to, of the activity of the others.

  She opened the garden gate to let him through. Vadim came in and thought: the same bird on the mulberry tree! A
nd her hair, like a sandstorm! He observed the painter out of the corner of his eye: the wind spreads her hair wide. Patricia looked at him quizzically; she ushered him into the house, then led him down the stairs, which creaked, and to the left … and, there they were, in her studio. The windows, tall and close to the ceiling, barely allowed one to imagine that one was in the middle of nature. It was like …

  “… like the Café Idiot!” he exclaimed.

  “What café?”

  “The Idiot.”

  “From Dostoevsky?”

  “Yes, the café in Saint Petersburg that is named after the novel. That’s where I saw you for the first time.”

  “Me? Are you sure? I don’t remember.”

  “The café is also located in the basement, and its windows are close to the street.”

  “Ah, yes! And there’s a trio of musicians that plays there!”

  “No, that’s the Literary Café.”

  “Ah, I’ve got it. You must mean that dark little café, which looks like it has a permanent layer of dust over it; it’s lit with candles, as if it was from the nineteenth century … it’s on the Moika canal! Do you go there? There’s an odd atmosphere … as if you can only go there if you want to contemplate the meaning of life and death, if you need to murder someone or commit suicide. I can see why you like going there. You … oh, yes, for sure!”

  The painter smiled at him, and then looked down at his lips. Then looked … here and there … Like a bee, Vadim thought, although he wasn’t exactly sure why a bee.

  “In Petersburg, you know …,” Patricia said without knowing what she was saying. Quickly she looked back to where she was looking before, into his eyes. Then she stopped herself. “But you must be getting bored!”

  Vadim didn’t know where to look first. The pictures on the walls, hanging next to each other, the sculptures, the books, the paintings … Get bored? Impossible! Ah, here, on this shelf, she has placed his stones, the ones he picked up yesterday on the beach! They looked different in her studio than when they were being washed by the waves. They had been transformed into works of art, as if Patricia’s hand had shaped them. Vadim picked up a stone, and felt that it was no longer just a stone that he had picked up on the beach the day before and left next to the dog house. It was a valuable object, a work by Patricia, carrying her signature.

  “You’re getting bored … Radhika isn’t here …,” she said.

  He looked at her. She appeared to be saying it seriously.

  “Why do you think I come here several times a week, what do you make of that? Why do I want to write a book about your paintings? Why do I read haikus and write the poems I like the most in a notebook?”

  He turned to the painting of white petunias with a red edge to hide his excitement.

  “You don’t come to see Radhika?”

  She came closer to see his face. Was she going to examine his eyes again?

  Patricia added, “So why do you come and see us?”

  “Think for a moment. Or read it in my eyes, like you did the other day!” Vadim smiled.

  “I know. You want to speak in Russian, and with me you can do that.”

  “And your pictures, do you think they mean nothing to me? Don’t you know that I want to write a book about you?”

  She looked confused. Maybe she didn’t believe him.

  Vadim looked at the fire of her hair. Why was he talking about her pictures, now him too? He felt like touching her hair, he felt an irresistible desire to caress it with his fingers. Right then. To embrace her. There, in her studio. In her chapel. Embrace her, and then let whatever had to happen, happen. Then, imperceptibly, a silence imposed itself between them once again. But today it was different … The silence was … like a companion. Like a conspirator.

  Now is the moment. Let’s not break the silence.

  Now!

  “This is my latest picture. I started work on it a week ago.”

  The picture: a man and a woman. They were not part of the erotic series. A large picture. Vadim couldn’t see the woman’s face, she was turning toward the man; he was looking at the wall. On the wall, there was a photograph of a woman with long earrings.

  With difficulty, as she looked at the picture, Patricia said, “Do you think that love is important? That it is essential in life?”

  Now! Embrace her! But, instead of doing that, he realized with horror that he was moving away from her, one step, two, and now he had separated himself from her entirely and was looking at some books on a shelf.

  Patricia said in a thin voice, “Come, yes, come to me …”

  “You have Dostoevsky’s The Idiot,” Vadim said as if he hadn’t heard her voice, although there was nothing he wanted more than to be with her.

  Patricia said in an even lower voice, “Just for a moment, just because …”

  Bam!

  They were interrupted by the slamming of a door, at the entrance. Patricia didn’t finish her sentence. Instead of doing so, in a loud voice and with a forced jollity, she said, “Well, as you can see, your Radhika is back. You’ll be happy now, right?”

  Vadim turned completely around to face her, with an expression of desire on his face. He took a step toward her, and another.

  She didn’t understand him. She said, also with false joy, “Yes, that is how I should paint you!”

  Painting! Always painting and nothing else! Could she really not think about anything else?”

  And there was Radhika, standing in the doorway; her white, shapeless dress hung on her like a sack.

  “Hi there!” she said, in her nasal voice. He looked at her; those long lashes, as if in that moment her baggy, unfeminine dress had fallen from her shoulders and hips. The wild cat stretched herself.

  “I’ve been to the Vilanova jail. There’s a case there … An alcoholic girl who’s on drugs, and she’s a kleptomaniac. They picked her up in a drugstore when she was putting some perfumed soap in her pocket. Then, in her bag, they found a load of little objects that hadn’t been paid for. They’ve put her in jail, heaven only knows when she’s going to be tried … Later, she’ll spend a few months in prison, and then they’ll let her go and then they’ll arrest her again … I’m trying to get her out of there so I can look after her and have her in my association for abused women. But what am I talking about! Neither of you are interested one little bit in any of this,” she looked at Vadim with undisguised animosity. “You move about in your world of little flowers and butterflies and birdies and dreams … Life is elsewhere!”

  Then, with lightning in her eyes, she went away.

  They could hear the shower being turned on.

  Vadim examined a canvas that depicted a blade of grass. Just a blade of grass in July and the white, burning sky. He looked at the blade and imagined Radhika in the shower; standing up, in the bathtub, with her white, transparent panties, checking if the water is cold enough. Now she looks at herself in the mirror and feels her breasts, then feels sad and takes off her white panties. She hangs them on a little hook on the wall, stands under the jet of cold water and turns her face up to the ceiling, like the nomads in the desert when they find an oasis and give thanks to Allah.

  But that was just a moment of excitement. The white panties and the cocoa-colored body left Vadim cold, once again.

  They were still there, certainly, but only tucked away in a corner of his imagination. His mind was concentrated now on a blade of grass.

  Vadim realized that two processes were taking place inside him at the same time and he told himself, perhaps with a certain lack of logic, that the ancient Chinese had a single word that referred as much to thought as to feeling. And they were right, he thought: it’s one and the same thing, one is part of the other.

  “The blade isn’t finished yet,” Patricia’s voice interrupted his reverie, “I started it … well, in fact a very short time ago. What do you think of it?”

  “What do I think of it?” he said. “This:

  A dragonfly

>   wishes to rest

  on a blade of grass.

  The blade, however,

  does not let him.”

  “Are you talking about this blade of grass? So where’s the dragonfly?”

  “You are the blade.”

  “A dragonfly wishes to rest on a blade of grass. I don’t understand. Which dragonfly won’t I allow to rest, if I’m the blade?”

  “Me.”

  This time it was Vadim’s voice that seemed as thin as a cobweb. No, as a blade … he thought. Patricia’s, on the other hand, echoed sonorously, like a ship’s siren, like the toll of a bell, like the voice of a priest in the church when he pronounces his verdict to the bride and groom, “Till death do you part.”

  In her mind’s eye, she saw, once again, the image of the tea and of the cups on the living-room table: Vadim summons her to tea, picks up a green fig and raises it to her lips. No, the fig is blue; and it is so sweet … mmmm … now Patricia was smiling, too.

  Now or never, Vadim ordered himself; but instead of action, from his mouth, once more, came only words, words, words.

  “Why did you paint a blade of grass, precisely?”

  “It’s the most delicate thing I’ve found in nature. After this, the only thing left would be to paint a cobweb, which is even more fragile.”

  “And a dragonfly. A dragonfly and a blade of grass; could there be anything finer?” Vadim said, and he insisted to himself: Now’s the time! Take her by the shoulders, and then …

  What is it that stops me going up to her? The admiration I feel for her as a painter?

  Nonsense! he answered himself.

  The story of the dragonfly and the blade of grass … went through Patricia’s mind … wasn’t it the other way around? Wasn’t she the dragonfly and he the blade that wouldn’t accept her? Suddenly, she felt rejected and scorned, precisely now, when she had the feeling that the aversion she felt for men was falling away from her like leaves off a maple tree in autumn. How unlucky you are, Patricia thought, full of self-pity. Then she spoke quickly to Vadim, to make him understand that if she was interested in him, it was for professional reasons only, “I invited you to my studio because I wanted to paint your face. I was interested in the expression you had just a moment ago. But now I don’t find it so interesting. Shall we go up and see Radhika? Anyhow, soon a Dutchman from Maastricht is coming to see me to talk about a new exhibition.”