Rock, Paper, Scissors

by Maxim Osipov

  I love you, I love you, I love you . . . Lora almost whispers the last “I love you,” looking directly at him. Or is he imagining it?

  He hurries home, picks up the first vase he sees, along with the cloth on which it’s standing, and heads to the corner flower shop: “White, red, doesn’t matter—just not yellow. That’s bad luck.”

  Where can he find the performer? “In the dressing room. Down there and up the stairs.” He doesn’t know how it is with them—artists, musicians—but it’s probably like any other business: If you need something, go and take it. Before the others snap it up.

  He might have overdone it with the flowers. Lora, now dressed casually (sweater and jeans), seems more surprised than pleased.

  “Merci.” Lora’s speaking voice is not at all like her singing voice. It’s somewhat low, almost hoarse. And her mouth, it seems to him, is too small for a singer.

  “Do I get a thank you, Lora?” the smoking brunette crows from the corner of the dressing room. “Haven’t I snagged you a nice little oligarch?”

  In his circle, people don’t make light of material wealth; but in their circle, things must be different.

  “You’re tired, aren’t you?” he sympathizes with Lora. Her face, despite her youth, already shows signs of aging. Wrinkles around the eyes, little lines. A person’s true age is determined by minor indications of this sort. How old is she? Twenty-eight, maybe thirty.

  The brunette examines the vase and shouts, as if he weren’t there: “Lora, it’s Hermès!”

  “Only the cloth. The Hermès company specializes in textiles. They don’t produce vases,” he explains. “And it’s pronounced Ermé. The company is French.”

  “Well, well, well—live and learn . . .” The brunette feigns amazement. And what’s his company called? What do they specialize in? She wants to know the status of the man to whom she has entrusted Lora’s care.

  They certainly get straight to the point! His firm is called Trinity.

  “Trinity!” the brunette exclaims. “You hear that, Lora? Trinity!”

  “See, there were three of us in the beginning. And we specialize in . . .”

  “Contract killings?” The brunette.

  Lora: he must forgive her friend, she’s had some wine. He can simply ignore her.

  An older fellow pops in with kisses and congratulations.

  “You’re alive? No? Then may I venerate your relics?” He hugs Lora—a bit too tightly, it seems.

  A gangly young guy shuffles in and tells her, in a very lively manner, about his latest messy breakup. Then the others leave, one by one, all of them. He and Lora are finally alone. An interesting bunch, generally speaking—he’s never come across their kind before. Would she allow him to accompany her home? By car. He’s parked just around the corner. “Yes, thank you, you’re so kind.” She hasn’t quite emerged from her role.

  She sits with her eyes closed, her hair flowing down the sides of the beige leather headrest. The car doesn’t impress Lora—she doesn’t say a word about it.

  “Tired?” he asks again.

  Yes, of course—the stage, nerves. Graduate students hardly ever get a solo evening.

  “Are performers always nervous before concerts?”

  “Of course. What a question!” Lora is genuinely taken aback.

  “Why be nervous? Pilots, surgeons—they don’t get that anxious before doing their work. And in their cases, it’s a matter of life and death, while in yours . . .” He feels he’s figured it out: “In yours—it’s a matter of fame. Is that why?”

  Lora laughs: “No.”

  No, answers Lora—if she had sung poorly tonight, no one would have died . . . But it would have meant that she wasn’t really a singer. Does that make sense? Yes, in the other cases, it’s life and death, but in hers, it concerns the meaning of life, its content. Does he understand?

  “To be honest, not really. . .”

  “Right there, thank you.”

  She lives here? What is it?

  “The conservatory’s dormitory.”

  So Lora isn’t married?

  “As they say: it’s complicated.”

  He would love to continue their conversation . . .

  “About how complicated it is?”

  “No, about the content, the meaning.” He’s confused, embarrassed.

  “How was I tonight?” He hasn’t said a word about the concert.

  To be honest, it’s hard for him to judge. This being his first concert.

  “An honest confession,” says Lora, “has never lightened anyone’s sentence.”

  How can she be so confident?

  •

  Lora’s skin is exceptionally white. As he understood it, she shouldn’t spend too much time in the sun. So he doesn’t whisk her off to the Promised Land, or to Greece, or to Italy. How about Norway?

  “That would be nice,” she says, somewhat evasively.

  A little Georgian restaurant, a walk by the Novodevichy Convent. He brings her something expensive each time, something Hermèsian, prompted by the brunette. A pure gesture—he expects nothing in return. What’s wrong with simple kindness? They talk: What, exactly, is so complicated? She won’t tell him the details. But basically, the complication is a pianist, conductor, composer, author of philosophical books—a creative type. The one who accompanied her as she sang Poulenc—does he remember? It’s better that he doesn’t. “Philosophical . . . Imagine that . . .” Yes, philosophical, musicological, and, in the deepest sense, erotic—does he understand? The creative type is writing an opera about the tsar’s family. Lora will be the ballet dancer Matilda Kshesinskaya, Nicholas’s mistress. He’s already completed two acts. “And does the creative type have a family of his own, by any chance?” More than one. That’s where things get really complicated. Why ask? It’s not her secret—not hers alone. He’ll have to get a sense of this guy, he thinks without hatred. Jealousy is a foolish emotion. Foolish and insulting. We always want to possess someone else. It’s like Yevgeny Lvovich says, every human being is an end in itself.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Lora pleads. “What do you do at your ‘Trinity’?” Whatever it is, she knows, isn’t holy.

  Why isn’t it holy? They tread the line, like everyone else, but lean strongly to the “right” side. It’s an investment firm. They look for weak spots. The market decides everything, of course—it’s all about the market—but the market can always use a hand, in part through their search for weak spots. He hopes he’s made himself clear, that she’s aware of the primacy of economic relations. It’s shameful to be poor: If you’re poor, then you’re either lazy or no one needs your talent—and everyone has a talent. On the contrary, if you earn well, you improve the lives of hundreds, of thousands of people all around you. He’s been learning a lot from her, but he would like for her to see a few matters from his perspective.

  “Oh,” says Lora, “no problem.”

  He wants to tell her about Robert: “When they put Robert away. . .” Her face shows sympathy. “We didn’t share enough with the Russian Trio, as the musicians say.” Rafael had taught him that. She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t understand. She wasn’t even listening. Rather, she wasn’t listening to his words—she has little interest in the content of speech.

  Lora’s purring something softly.

  “Is it nice, having music in your head all the time?”

  Hard to say. She doesn’t know what it would feel like not to have music in her head. It turns out she loves folk songs.

  “What’s there to like?” Miserable stuff, he thinks.

  “It’s like when you were a kid, and you’d dream you were falling, falling and falling, plummeting down, and you’d be so scared you couldn’t breathe, and you’d never reach the bottom,” Lora explains, gracefully moving her hand through the air. That may have been the last time she really spoke to him, giving as much as he gave.

  He’s got a piano now, and he’s got Rafael. Will he manage to learn to play? />
  “I can’t really say no,” Lora tells him.

  •

  Easily, rather too easily, she winds up in his bed—but why shouldn’t these things happen easily between young, liberated, physically attractive people? Oh, is it important to him? Well, then, let’s go. And what about her? Yes, sure, it’s important to her too. No need to go into motives. In some respects, women are more complicated than men; he knows that from experience, not books on psychology.

  “May I take you to Norway?”

  “Perhaps . . .” She slowly runs her finger from his chin down—all the way down to his solar plexus. “Perhaps not . . .” Her mind is elsewhere.

  Lora rises from the bed, wraps a sheet around herself, and goes into the living room, to the piano. She touches the keys and tries her voice. An empty office below, nothing but the sky above: You can play all you want. Play and sing.

  “Why do you have a piano?”

  He’s been studying music. Doesn’t she remember?

  “Not a word, my dear friend, not a si-i-gh, we’re together in silence . . .”10

  “Why such a sad song, Lorochka? Lora?”

  Now her singing is intended for him alone. She stops. “Not a si-igh,” she sings, a bit differently, and then a third time, with another variation. A fine time to practice.

  Why don’t they go to Norway?

  “Fjords, the water’s so still, so smooth . . .” He strokes the piano. Maybe a white one would have been nicer. White, like Lora’s skin. Or maybe red, like her hair? He strokes the piano, strokes Lora. He loves smooth surfaces.

  It’s a fine piano, says Lora, a very fine piano. The creative type is forced to settle for a less luxurious instrument. What’s there to say? All he can do is shrug. Lora, apparently, considers it unfair that the creative type lacks something he possesses. The piano is just an object—one shouldn’t personify objects. Fortunately, she needs no instrument. She herself is a marvelous instrument.

  So, Norway. . . What else does he want?

  “Oh, lots of things. To learn to play the piano as quickly as possible, and to bone up on the Old Testament. Every cultured person should know a thing or two about that.”

  Now it’s her turn. He expects the usual, elegantly evasive answer, but she puts it plainly: She needs to master the art of singing.

  “That I know.”

  And also . . . Also a sense of fullness . . .

  “Fullness? I don’t understand.”

  The fullness of relations, of everything . . . She wants to build a real life. She can’t explain it any more clearly. What does his life consist of?

  “Same as everyone’s,” he says. “Work and leisure.” He works a great deal, a very great deal.

  But he understands, of course—she needs a husband, children . . . Well, he might as well warn her: He has no interest in children. That may change down the road, but for now. . .

  When talking about children, fear flashes through his eyes, and he sees that this flash doesn’t escape Lora’s attention. Oh, but he’s got nothing to worry about, not now, not at this moment—there won’t be any irreparable damage. Why so squeamish? They’re liberated people.

  In the morning, almost fully dressed, Lora watches him make the bed. Neatly, very neatly, leaving no wrinkles. Where did he learn to do that, in the army?

  “Why the army?” He’s always liked it this way.

  He’s in the shower: it would be nice to step out to an empty apartment. Lora does take a lot out of him. He knows just what he’d do: fall back onto the freshly made bed and recall the events of the night. Much to his surprise, this desire passes; when he steps out of the shower, Lora is gone. Not a word, my dear friend . . . Not to worry, she’ll be back. He’s an excellent lover, objectively speaking. She’ll be back. And yet, as it turns out, that night remains unique in the course of their relationship.

  •

  And now, in early December, he’s standing at the window, contemplating his failures. There are no more crows.

  Once he simply asked her if her small mouth interfered with her singing. He had always assumed that singers needed to have big mouths, like pianists needed big hands. So what was wrong with that? He just wanted to know.

  Another time he’d asked her about the brick.

  “Do you think all singers are morons?” was all he got out of her.

  But how much does the brick weigh? Even his assistant, a former flatfoot, had solved it.

  “So make out with your assistant!” She never did tell him how much the brick weighed.

  Sad state of affairs. He kept pestering her with questions about the creative type, about whether the man was a good lover or not, and one time Lora lost it and said: “He suits me.”

  Since the end of November, he had been trying to break the habit of Lora, like people quit smoking. Apart from a few setbacks—of the “I hope he calls me” variety, only in reverse—the process was going smoothly; they hadn’t spoken in two weeks. The wound was now covered by soft, delicate tissue, but today, after Rafael had gone downstairs and he had almost managed to reach an agreement with the bank—Victor had nicknamed the intransigent bastards “Masturbank”—just then, when he was about to summon Yevgeny Lvovich, Lora called, and everything grew complicated again.

  She needs to see him. Khaki-colored tone. An actress. And instead of saying that he never wants to see her again, nor speak to her, he says, as calmly as possible: “Saturday at eleven, at our spot, near Novodevichy?”

  And still he comes off as pitiful, ingratiating. Should he pick her up?

  “What? No.”

  Will she be coming from the dormitory? Not a word, my dear friend . . . Retreat.

  Half an hour later, he remembers about the teacher. Not good. Yevgeny Lvovich will be compensated for the wasted time. He summons Brick.

  “Was he offended?”

  “Why should he be offended? Yevgeny Lvovich respects you.”

  Where did Brick get that? He himself isn’t sure about anyone any longer.

  “You know what they call you?”

  “What do they call me?” he tries to sound casual, uninterested.

  “Renaissance man. And also—patron.”

  Nothing so bad about that, it seems. And yet—it doesn’t feel right. It means they talk about him down there.

  He recalls: when Rafael first laid eyes on the piano, the look on his face said, “That enema ain’t going up that ass.” Or maybe Rafael doesn’t know the expression? He knows it. He knows everything—he’s a man of learning, an encyclopedist.

  “What else do they say?”

  “The music business is over my head,” Brick tells him, “but Yevgeny Lvovich says a lot of interesting things.”

  What sorts of things? Brick can’t lie. Out with it, construction man! “About Nicholas II, about the fact that he also . . .” Ah, yes. He also—shot crows? Well, the emperor shot not only crows, but cats and roosters too. He’s afraid to look at Brick. As for the teachers, he had thought more of them. After all, he was paying them.

  •

  Saturday morning. The snow that had fallen throughout the night was now dirty slush. It was still late autumn in Moscow. How carelessly people drive . . . Why can’t they stay in their lanes? Why can’t they sit still at traffic lights?

  Why did she call him? She must need something. To rent a hall, maybe. She’s hopeless with money. One can’t have a calm, measured attitude towards money; one can be profligate, greedy, or, like Lora, excessively contemptuous. He’ll find out why she called soon enough.

  He drives up to the Novodevichy Convent. It’s eleven. Lora has never shown up early, or even on time. He walks down to the pond and looks around.

  The convent’s wall is covered with inscriptions. He had seen them before, but had never bothered to read them. What do people ask for? Nothing original, in most cases. They ask a certain Sophia, or sometimes—simply, intimately—Sofushka.

  “Saint Sophia, help me get back on my feet and give me strength to
overcome these trials.” It would be good to find out who this Sophia is. He certainly doesn’t believe in such nonsense. But then he thinks: it’s worth a try. No, absolutely not.

  Lora hasn’t shown up. A few more inscriptions of the same type: restore my vision and health, grant me happiness in life. “Sofushka, dear mother, help me find a cheap apartment, already renovated. With all the proper paperwork.”

  If he were a believer, he’d be a Protestant. Life in Protestant countries is both more orderly and more humane. And they don’t have any of these saints, either, as far as he knows.

  He seems to be standing in some woman’s way. He snaps a few quick photos with his phone. Now he’ll take a seat on the bench—their bench—and read.

  “Help me find my son Sergey,” some woman has written. Poor lady. But then a funny one: “Let my income afford me the car of my dreams. Rostik.” Lora will appreciate that. When she gets here.

  He scrolls through the photos he’s taken. “Restore Anna’s health and bring her back to me.” Of course, she’s no use to you if she’s sick. What about him? Would he have any use for Lora should she fall ill? He feels he would. Depending on the illness, of course.

  It’s been a half hour now. He should give her a call. Come on, answer . . .

  “Saint Sophia, grant me wisdom and peace.” Finally, a change of pace. Not another plea for children. As if children were born by request.

  “Saint Sophia, I wish to become a highly paid professional in the field of design and photography.” Very specific. And below: “I want to be happy. Help me forget Vlad.” If only: A snap of the fingers, and Lora’s forgotten. No more Lora.

  He keeps an eye on the convent’s wall. One after another, women come up and leave new inscriptions. He runs through the countries he’s visited and ranks them according to quality of life: Protestant, Catholic, and, in last place, here. Lora, incidentally, is Orthodox—despite the name Sher. She wears a cross around her neck—of a slightly lighter color than her hair.

  It’s ten to noon. She isn’t picking up the phone—which he had given her—and hasn’t called him herself. There’s nothing to worry about; he’s sure she’s fine. But he’s not fine. He rises from the bench and sees that there’s a dirty pink piece of gum stuck to his pant leg. Why hadn’t he noticed the gum when he was about to sit down? He’d gotten carried away with all this drivel . . . Disgusting—someone else’s saliva, someone else’s filth—and he’ll never get it off . . . Makes him sick.