Though the patrol car had been moving briskly along, Mark managed to get a good look at the policeman’s face. Sitting in the front passenger seat, the officer had even seemed to turn slightly so as to look in Mark’s direction.
He’d been tempted to yell after him: Mind your own business, big boy! He hated people turning around to look at him. In this instance, he disliked it even more than usual, since he’d realized that each time he ran into the officer in the café, the man looked at him with an ever more inquisitorial eye. Not all that long ago, of course, he thought with a sliver of a smile, he, like everyone else, would have been utterly distraught at the very idea that he might have inadvertently said something that could be taken two ways, even if it wasn’t something actually forbidden. Nowadays, strangely, he would almost like to feel he was being watched, at least a little…. But it was late, far too late, for that, as for so many other things.
When a second vehicle — an ambulance, this time — went hurtling past in the same direction as the patrol car, Mark was convinced that something really unusual had happened.
As long as they’re not rushing about like that on account of the snake! He dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had occurred to him.
As he arrived at the building where he had his studio, his mind wandered back to the strange story that Zef had told him: a girl engaged to a snake, then the wedding feast, the heartrending old tunes, the first night…. Whenever he remembered this part of the story, he could rarely refrain from taking a deep sigh.
Before he opened his front double door, his attention was caught by the right-hand leaf. It looked as if something had struck it quite hard. Then he remembered: it was the same dent he’d noticed a week before. He’d thought then that someone must have tried to break in.
The windows of his studio hadn’t been cleaned for quite some time, but there was still plenty of light in the main room, maybe even more than needed. He turned toward the easel, with its unfinished nude, then cast his eyes at the other paintings he had hung willy-nilly here and there. There were some stacked on the floor, mostly facing the wall. Though they had been stored here for some time now, Mark knew by heart where to find every one of his unhung works: The Delegate, The Festival of the Loaves, Highland Spring, Miner with Lamp….
He went back to his usual position at the easel, inspected his brushes to see which he would use, and lightly touched the unfinished painting between the legs, where he had barely begun to brush in the shading of the delta. I just hope she hasn’t had the bright idea of shaving her pubic hair again, he said to himself as he glanced at his wristwatch. She should be here any minute. They’d recently had a slight argument about her pubic hair. He’d done his best to try and explain that it was not only a question of his own personal taste as a male, but it was above all a question of art: he simply could not put into his painting the kind of sanitized pubis that you see in porno movies or fashion parades. She had not been easy to persuade.
He checked the time once again. As always after they had been apart for a while, he was eager to spot little changes in her physical appearance. But as she was coming back from the capital on this occasion, he felt not just curiosity but the sharp pangs of a quite specific desire.
To get her off his mind, he puttered about the easel, put his brushes in order, looked at his paint tubes, pressed a couple with his fingers. For no particular reason, he wondered if he had been spied on these last few years. Many other people had also been asking that same question recently. It was said there had been quite a few stool pigeons, especially among writers and artists.
His eyes came to rest on the blotches of color on the canvas that stood on his easel. Venetian red. Van Gogh yellow. Prison blue. Ah, yes. That was the color that had got his old friend Gentian into the camp at Spaç.
He picked up a brush and started to mix colors on a blank corner of the canvas, the way he usually did to warm up, or when his nerves were on edge. He took two steps back to inspect the blotch. He’d once heard someone say — or had he read it in an old history book? unless he’d actually thought it up himself, under the influence of the conversation or the old book — that before the great fire of Voskopoja, intimation of disaster had appeared on painters’ canvases. A disturbing shade of red that had never been seen before began cropping up here and there.
He almost smiled to himself. So what color would be the right one for the times they were going through? It was often called a “period of transition.” In other words, hermaphroditic, or, in the old language of the people, “a bitch and a dog.” He looked at the patch of color he’d mixed to divine the times, and curled his lip. It was a dull and murky gray. One of the two — Time, or he himself, who had created the shade to express it — was dead to the other. At least that’s the way it seemed.
Then he heard his girlfriend coming up the stairs, almost running. She’d had her hair done in a new style, and it suited her; when he kissed her, he smelled a new perfume.
She poured forth news and gossip from the capital as she took off her clothes. There were more disturbances among the student population. What was more, the BBC had broadcast a speech by the pretender to the throne, apparently giving new hope to the monarchists, who had reestablished a political party.
Mark had the impression that her words became clearer and clearer as more clothes fell from her body…. There was a rumor that the state was going to be parceled out, shared by the people … in other words, all the assets of the nation, the fruit of forty-five years of socialism….
He found a special thrill in watching her get undressed in this way, with both of them pretending not to know why she was stripping — to pose for the portrait, or to make love. It was a convenient ritual, especially on days when they were angry with each other. A. minor quarrel could stop him from kissing her, could make her reject the merest caress of her hair, but taking off her clothes could be seen as having absolutely nothing to do with their squabble. Her gestures simply fulfilled her role as an artist’s model, even if every movement she made to remove her clothes also increased Mark’s desire.
There was a story circulating that the ministry of justice had legalized gay and lesbian associations, even if the names of the organizers were still being kept secret. A publishing house specializing in works by celebrities had just been founded.
“Well, well,” he said as he looked under her armpits. “You ve removed it all?”
“Yes,” she replied, “but, as promised, I’ve not touched anything down below.”
“Did you have any particular reason for the armpits?” he muttered.
“Same as everyone else,” she said, articulating every word separately. “In Tirana, everybody does it.”
She took off her panties, and Mark observed that her pubic mane was intact.
An Association of Young Idealists had also been established, she went on. And another group with a rather surprising name: the Post-Pessimist Association. The latest buzzword for insulting someone: “Megabugger!” As for the students from a certain university, they were allegedly planning another demonstration under the slogan “Down with the people!”
She laughed a pink laugh between each of her pieces of gossip; her cheeks were turning crimson, and her eyelashes seemed heavy enough to crush any tears beneath.
“So you don’t want me to sit?” she teased, as he pulled her toward the bed.
“Afterward, my darling … It’s Sunday,” he added a moment later, “the offices downstairs are empty, so you can yell all you want.”