She headed towards the exit and from there, from the doorway, turning around to face the interior, she showed him on the wall in front of him, at the entrance to the nave, a fresco in muted colours, but with an admirable group of women. The first woman on the right was turned towards the others with a graceful movement, which caused her garment to fall in soothing folds.
“But that’s not all that I like a lot here. Come this way, please, and I’ll show you something truly miraculous.”
She took him by the hand and led him into the centre of the church, next to the altar, from where she showed him the other fresco, of the descent from the cross, on the opposite wall.
“There are a few mistakes of perspective here that I find moving. And look, in the background there’s an old man stroking his beard with a gesture — how would you describe it? — with a familiar everyday gesture… It’s a secular gesture and I’m so astonished to find it on the wall of a church!”
She was speaking with whole-hearted enthusiasm, with passion, although in a whisper, for meanwhile the church was filling with visitors. A tone of conviction and deep emotion, whose existence Paul never would have suspected until now, ran through her words.
It was late, his friends were in a hurry to go to lunch, and, as he would have liked to spend more time talking to her, he apologized for having to leave.
“Stay,” she insisted. “The boat’s coming to pick me up in twenty minutes and I’ll accompany you back to the villa.”
He was compelled to refuse, but he left with a promise that they would see each other again, a polite promise like any other.
They saw each other again, however, a short time later.
Paul came out of the law courts, having wasted a whole day in a small meeting room at a witness hearing in a boring trial. As when he had been at school, the most horrendous days at court were those that took place in the spring. The tender sunlight that flooded the streets, and which for hours at a time he saw through the window of a meeting room, made him ill; he felt ill at seeing the drab, pale faces stirred by the new colours, worn-out people dozing on park benches in an archive-dusty yellow light. He stopped on the street, drowsy with sunlight, and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt dirty, his clothes were too heavy, his collar had wilted, his tie was twisted. He would have liked to shake himself free, as though of soot after a long train trip. The whiff of the archives accompanied him, and on his lips was a taste of yellowed old papers.
He went slowly, with heavy steps, around the back of the courthouse. He felt old, and everyone who passed him seemed young. His briefcase hung heavily, as though made of lead. If he hadn’t been embarrassed to do so, he would have put it down for a moment, like a porter taking a respite from a heavy load.
On Sfinţii Apostoli, past Apolodor, he was surprised to glimpse a completely unexpected event a few steps from him: hanging boyishly from the bars of a wrought-iron door, through which a few tall lilac branches passed, was a girl struggling to break a branch.
Paul stopped on the spot, afraid of startling her, and hid behind a street lamp, from where he could watch without being seen. He might have taken her for a schoolgirl had she not been dressed with the elegance of a lady. She wore a grey suit, a grey hat with a white brim, white antelope pumps. Below, on the door’s stone ledge, a handbag of the same antelope skin as the pumps had been discarded to allow her to keep her hands free.
Paul recognized her without difficulty as Ann, although he found it difficult to believe that it was she. Reaching up on the toes of her pumps on the stone ledge, one hand gripping the bars of the door, with the other she fought to grasp the lilac branch, which was beyond her reach. The skirt of her suit slid up above her knees, a rounded, delicate pair of knees that could have belonged to an adolescent girl. The street was empty, although from one moment to the next someone could come along, even if it weren’t the owner of the property that was being plundered. The branch gave way at last, a large branch with dense, violet bouquets. The girl jumped onto the sidewalk, without hurry, without emotion, shook the sleeves of her jacket down to her wrists, picked up her handbag, looked up the street, then finally, with the lilac branch in her arms, with her blond head concealed among the flowers — although her high forehead poked up above them — she set off boldly up the street with her small, decisive steps.
Paul watched her move away and it seemed to him as if a train of light hung in her wake. He, too, felt younger. The season, about which he had forgotten, came back to him. The girl’s slight craziness had brought a little light into his day. He would have liked to rush after her to thank her, to kiss her hand; but her let her cross unimpeded at the corner and disappear. Even so, he felt the need to send her a word of warm greeting, the first since he had met her. He remembered that nearby, in Piaţa Senatului, there was a florist. He went in and bought all the lilacs he could find, to the astonishment of the sales clerk, who told him, certainly without irony: “If you need any more, we can get them for you.”
Furthermore, they were unexpectedly cheap, and with the few hundred lei he had left, Paul bought the whole garden and sent it to Ann, leaves and all, along with a few words written in haste on the back of his business card: Next time you want lilacs, be more careful. If you need a lawyer (articles 306 and 308 of the penal code: “He who takes in a concealed manner an object belonging to another commits theft. Theft is punished with a prison term of between 15 days and two years…”) I am at your disposal.
“You don’t know how ashamed I am,” Ann said to him two days later, receiving him at her home. “If I’d known you were watching me, I would have died of mortification on the spot, with my hands on the door. You’re a man I’ve always been a little afraid of. I don’t know why: don’t ask me why.”
The apartment was full of lilacs that had been delivered the previous evening. Those that didn’t fit in the flower vases had been placed in jugs of water, in glasses, on the table, on the shelves, in the window.
“I’ll always keep them here. When they wither, I’ll put others in their place. And it’s possible they won’t even wither.”
She wore a simple navy blue dress with a white collar, which gave her the appearance of a schoolgirl.
“Are you really that young?”
“Are you really that old? I’m afraid of you. I’ve always been afraid of you. You’re so gloomy, so absent! When you say hello to me on the street — and you don’t always say hello — I have the impression that you don’t even see me.”
She spoke quickly, seemingly afraid of his silence. She raised her hands to her breast in order to suppress her gesticulations, a tactic which only gave her once more a school-girlish air.
“It’s difficult for me to believe you’re here. I’ve thought so many times that you might possibly come, but I’ve never dared to hope for it. I know so many things about you. I know the books you read. I know who you went to Balcic8 with last summer. I know that last Thursday evening you went to the Philharmonic orchestra and left during the intermission. Don’t you want us to be friends? Don’t you want to try? So many times, when I’m painting something, I wonder: would he like it? So many times I read a book and I wonder: what would he think of it? I’d like to see you more often. I don’t like my extravagant gestures, how I don’t sound serious when I talk. I’d like you to think I’m less scatterbrained than even-handed, less superficial… I promise you I’ll be a good girlfriend. I won’t pry, I won’t nag. Come over whenever you want. Or, better yet, let’s set a day for you to come over every week. We’ll try it for a little while. If it works — good; if not, we call it quits.”