“They’ve managed to turn the page at last,” Shutov says to himself. And the thought of being left behind, like a dried flower, between the preceding pages, gives him the desire to hurry, to catch up on lost time.
“You didn’t have time to change?”
“No… Well, I only brought this jacket.”
“I see…”
Their words are drowned by the music. He smiles, ruefully, fingering the lapels of his jacket. Bulging pockets, faded material… The restaurant staff know Yana and greet her with respect. Some of the customers nod to her. She is among her own people, thinks Shutov, unable to guess what criterion, in the new Russia, distinguishes such people from the rest. Friendship, simply? Profession? Politics?
They sit at a terrace overlooking a park where boisterously merry music is being played, so this disturbance is not the fault of the restaurant. The headwaiter offers his apologies. “Oh, this tercentenary…,” sighs Yana.
They need to shout to be heard, but what Shutov would like to say cannot be uttered in ringing tones. So they do as the others do; smile, eat, then yell and gesticulate. From this intermittent dialogue he learns about what he already knew: Yana’s life after their brief, undeclared love affair. Work, marriage, the birth of a son, divorce, return to Leningrad, which had once more become Saint Petersburg…
The words that falter within him, rendered fragile by the passage of so many years, are too frail to cut through the noise. “Do you remember that evening at Peterhof,” he would like to say, “the golden haze over the Gulf of Finland…” He also learns what he had not known: the hotel chain where Yana works belongs to her! Well, not to her in person, but to the mysterious “us” she refers to when talking about her life. Her partner and her? Their family business? More than the music it is this language barrier that makes comprehension hard.
Suddenly the din stops. An amazed silence, one can hear the rustling of the leaves… And the cell phones ring, as if the calls had all been waiting for this pause. No, it was simply that people could not hear them before. They all respond at the same time, delighted at having recovered the power of speech.
Yana is telephoned as well, and Shutov can already manage to identify the person she is speaking to from the tone she adopts. That slightly irritated voice is reserved for the staff of one of “her” hotels. The sulky, simpering tones for a man whose bad temper has to be soothed and who seems to be a part of this vague but powerful “us.” Her partner, no doubt. Or else a husband from whom she must conceal this lover of thirty years ago? No, that would be too stupid…
She puts the telephone aside and he hopes that at last he will be able to tell her the purpose of his visit. “We’re having a housewarming party, tomorrow,” she says. “Just a glass of champagne-it’s still a building site, as you saw. There aren’t even any tables. And in the evening we’re inviting everyone to our country place… Some of the key people in Saint Petersburg. I don’t know if you’d be interested. You won’t know anyone… The mayor should be coming…” This is someone Shutov does know: the beheaded man whose Gucci tie was cut short…
A couple come over to greet Yana. Rapid glances of appraisal at Shutov: Who is he? A Russian? But not dressed smartly enough for this spot. A foreigner? But lacking the ease of manner that can be sensed on encountering people from the West. Shutov reads this judgment in their looks. The embarrassment he had detected in Yana becomes clear to him: he is unclassifiable, difficult to introduce to friends, he has a poor social profile. When the couple move away he tries to assume the relaxed air of a former fellow student: “So this dacha, where did you build it? Yes, I’d like to drop by.” Yana hesitates, as if she regrets having issued the invitation: “It’s an old izba. The plot is a bit constricted for us, less than eight acres. On the Gulf of Finland…”
A man stops in front of Yana, begins talking to her. “The golden haze over the Gulf of Finland…,” Shutov recalls.
The man is handsome, young (under forty, or at least at that smooth and tanned age that people with the means know how to fix). “Tall, dark, and asinine,” Shutov thinks. (It was something Léa used to say and they would both laugh…) The malice of it makes him feel guilty. This handsome man can, in fact, be graded by American norms of virility, in such cases the French speak of B-movie heroes… An impeccably cut lightweight suit, the manner of a seducer indulgent toward his victims’ weakness. Yana adopts a voice that is new to Shutov, an assumed nonchalance, slipping into frail tones of fond helplessness. Her face, in particular, expresses this, her eyes, as she gazes up at the man: the concerned look of a woman who has lost a loved one in the middle of a crowd. The music starts again, she stands up, draws closer to the man, and this tender anxiety is even more visible when their words can no longer be heard.
“This must be her lover…” The brutality of the observation irritates him but he no longer has any wish to delude himself. “The golden haze over the Gulf of Finland…” It was idiotic to think that she would still remember it. He calls to mind the different voices Yana employs to speak to her staff, to her husband, to this tall, dark, handsome man. She leads several lives at once and it is clear that this excites her. She stands there before her lover, considerably shorter than him, and her whole body betrays the demeanor of a woman giving herself. Shutov feels like an actor who has just missed his cue.
The man brushes Yana’s cheek with his lips, takes his leave. She sits down, directs a look of radiant blindness at Shutov. They drink coffee without speaking to one another… As he escorts her to her car, Shutov is tempted to warn her to go carefully, as she seems so absent. But she quickly pulls herself together; she has to “dash off to a shareholders’ meeting” and advises Shutov to return on foot, “you take the main alley through the park and then turn left, remember.” She drives off as he embarks on an observation about how vividly he recalls those pathways amid the autumn foliage…
Emerging from the trees he encounters the Brazilian dancers. They are changing in a small van. Shutov recognizes the one who was running along earlier, clearing the way for the fool. She has taken off her plumage, washed away the mascara, her face is very young and her look a little melancholy, as before. Shutov perceives a tenderness in it, possibly intended, strangely enough, for him…
As he opens the door to Yana’s new apartment he hears Vlad’s voice: “Listen. It’s quite simple. We need two topless girls for the back cover. Then you call the editorial team. If they won’t include it in the article, we withdraw our ad and that’s that…” Intrigued, Shutov walks toward the voice. As he passes the little bedroom where the old man lodges he catches sight of that same green blanket, a hand holding a book.
Each title includes a woman’s name: Tatyana, or the Fire Tamer; Deborah and the Chemistry of Pleasure; Bella, a Woman with No Taboos… Vlad is showing Shutov the new series launched by his publishing house. They lifted the idea from Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, he concedes. But Nabokov himself borrowed it from women’s romantic fiction… The young man talks a language Shutov has never heard in Russia. “Market analysis,” “book promotion,” “boosting sales”… For the new series what they needed was a clear definition of the “generational niche,” which, happily, is quite broad: female readers between the ages of thirty and fifty who are “not very intellectual” (coming from Vlad, this is a compliment) and a small minority of men who “have a bit of a problem with sex” and will read these books on the quiet.