“Why strange? Do you think they might be smugglers?” she asked with enthusiasm.
“At the tourist home they told us that…,” I began confidently, without the slightest idea as to what I was going to say next.
Just at that moment there was a shuffling of boots, and two men began descending the iron ladder. One of them was carrying a large wooden basket covered with a towel; the other had a sack slung over his shoulder.
I broke off in midsentence and laid a finger to my lips.
“How exciting,” whispered the girl. “What are they going to do?”
I gave a slight shake of my head as if to indicate that nothing good could be expected from such men. The girl bit her lip and huddled even closer to the guardrail.
The man with the basket jumped into the bow of the swaying skiff, hopped over the front and middle seats and sat down in the stern, placing the basket between his legs. Before I could collect myself, he raised his dark, ruddy face in a smile and nodded in my direction. He was one of the fishermen with whom I had gone out on my first assignment some time before. His name was Spiro.
“Greetings to our friends from the press!” he called out, his white teeth flashing.
Blushing involuntarily, I gave a slight nod in his direction. But it was too late to shut him up.
“You sample our fish, but write about the goatibex,” he shouted and then, taking in both of us at a glance, he added: “An interesting undertaking, to say the least…”
“How’s it going?” I asked limply, realizing that it would be ridiculous to try to keep up the pretence any longer.
“I’ve just put some of our bonus money to good use, as you can see.” He pulled back the towel covering the basket; it was filled with bottles of wine.
“We’re going to overfulfill the plan, though we haven’t yet landed any golden fish,”[12] he added, glancing at the girl with shamelessly transparent eyes. “Kalon karitsa (a nice-looking girl)!” he shouted in Abkhazian, leaning back in his seat and bursting into laughter. Obviously he had thoroughly sampled the wine before buying it. And now, suddenly remembering something, he started off on a new tangent:
“Oh, Miss, ask him to sing you the goatibex song. He sings it very well; they’re all singing that song and every time they sing it, they raise their glasses to the goatibex.”
Finally his companion pushed off from the pier and began to row. Spiro continued to horse around, pretending at one point that he was about to drown himself before our very eyes — we being too blind and foolish to appreciate this exceptional personality who was still in our midst.
“Don’t keep your readers in suspense!” he cried from a distance as the skiff began to fade into the sea’s wavering darkness.
The girl seemed to have taken it all very well and now, seeing the friendly smile on her face, I began to relax.
“What’s this goatibex he was talking about?” she asked after the boat had disappeared from sight.
“Oh, it’s just a new animal,” I replied casually.
“That’s funny, I wonder why I’ve never heard of it before.”
“You soon will,” I said.
“And you sing a song about this new animal?”
“You might say that I hum along.”
“Are they already singing it in Moscow?”
“Not yet, I don’t think.”
“It’s time we left,” came an unexpected voice from the rear.
We turned around. The two ladies had gotten up from the bench and were eyeing me with open hostility.
“We’re on the beach every day,” she said as if finishing a sentence. Then she meekly walked over to her companions and took them by the arm.
I bid all three of them a polite farewell and quickly walked off. I crossed the shore boulevard and made my way home along a deserted side street where I was unlikely to run into any of my friends. I didn’t want anyone or anything to detract from my present state of euphoria. And as I walked along, happily reflecting on her last words, it seemed perfectly natural to interpret them as an indication of her desire to see me again.
The next day at the office I was fairly bursting with joy at the thought of our future meeting. Not wanting to be caught in any indecent display of emotion, however, I decided to dampen my joy somewhat by spending the entire day answering letters from our readers.
At five o’clock sharp I locked the door to my office, left the building and caught the first bus headed for the beach. The bus was jammed with people, and the smell of sweat lay heavy in the air.
Upon arrival at the beach I was immediately enveloped in the soft, soothing music which came from the loudspeaker. Somehow the music always made it easier to undress, forming as it did a sort of fluid transition between land and sea.
Feeling somewhat excited, I started off down the beach, peering under tents and umbrellas along the way. All around me was a profusion of multicolored bathing suits, healthy-looking tans of every possible shade, and languid, complacent poses worthy of the ancient Greeks.
Suddenly I began to feel that I was in no great hurry to find her; for as long as I continued to search for her, I still had the right to observe and admire my surroundings. It even seemed to me that yesterday’s impressions had begun to wear off, apparently dulled by this carnival of seaside color. And knowing from experience that any overflow of feeling would be self-defeating, I was happy to note that for the moment at least, my feelings remained completely under control.
Whenever I met a girl I liked, I would foolishly overwhelm her with an avalanche of my most exalted feelings. As a result the girl would usually take fright or even be offended. Perhaps the very strength of my feeling made her wonder if she had not underestimated her own charms and somehow overlooked the wealth of resources buried within her. And if such were the case, her first priority, metaphorically speaking, was to reevaluate these resources, stake them off or, at any rate, not yield them up to the first bidder.
Whatever the reason, as soon as the avalanche came hurtling down on top of her, I would promptly be relegated to a second-string position. Eventually I would tire of this and become interested in some other girl. And even though I knew I should be more cautious and restrained, each time the process would repeat itself: the avalanche of feeling would come hurtling down of its own accord, and the girl would jump out from under it completely unscathed — or at most with a slightly rumpled hairdo.
Reflecting on all this, I could not help but rejoice at my present state of calm. By this time, however, I had walked the length of the beach, and now as it appeared that I was not going to find her, my mood began to deteriorate. I even tried walking along the water’s edge in order to have a closer look at those who were bathing, but she was not here either.
Noticing that the afternoon sun was beginning to fade, I slowly began to undress. As long as I was here on the beach, I might as well take a swim. Standing nearby was a photographer dressed in white shorts beneath which gleamed the bronze and sturdy legs of the seaside entrepreneur. At the moment, he was photographing a woman whose head had just emerged from the foam of an incoming wave.
“Just one more shot, Madame.”
And now the wave retreated, revealing the arms and torso of this sea-sprung Venus. She lay resting on her hands, which were firmly implanted in the sand.
“Okay…get set!”
He proceeded so slowly and painstakingly — in the manner of some old-time resident of St. Petersburg — that a group of young tourists sitting nearby suddenly burst out laughing.
12
In one of Pushkin’s well-known fairy tales a golden fish grants a number of wishes to a kindly fisherman who has freed her from his net and returned her to the sea. (Trans.)