Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia by Jose Manuel Prieto Page A

left mute with astonishment. This was L INDA’S skin. As if it had been deliberately stretched across her cheeks in such a way as to retract, while she blew into the FLUTE , without forming any wrinkles, assimilating itself into the depths. Only a slight intensification of tone to a deeper red gave away the work of that skin, the subcutaneous flow of blood. (In winter, cheeks like that, brushstrokes of bright red applied by the HARD FROST , embellished the vestibule of a movie theater where we’d taken refuge to warm up: the vivid bloom of a naive doll’s painted face. Then a gradual return to a pale pink that bespoke such freshness, a quality that belonged to the centuries before the habit of sunbathing became widespread, and that was very well suited to the still life V** and I comprised, stretched out on the bed: the sheet’s heavy folds, the leaden gray of a vase, the inchoate drift of our disarticulated limbs, dark against pale.)
    After a short pause, the flautist attacked a march with great resolve—the happy tremolo—then almost immediately interrupted her playing to remove her warm woolen cap. A luxuriant mass of red hair, rolled into locks thick as snakes, fell in cascades over her back, shoulders, chest. ( Oh how well doth a fair colour and a brilliant sheen upon the glittering hair! Behold it encountereth with the beams of the sun like swift lightning, or doth softly reflect them back again, or changeth clean contrary into another grace. Sometimes the beauty of the hair, shining like gold, resembles the colour of honey; sometimes, when it is raven black, the blue plume and azure feathers about the necks of does, especially when it is anointed with the nard of Arabia, or trimly tuffed out with the teeth of a fine comb; and if it be tied up in the nape of the neck, it seemeth to the lover that beholdeth the same as a glass that yieldeth forth a more pleasant and gracious comeliness.—The Golden Ass, Being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, translated by William Adlington.) Monk stops short, fears he will lose his footing and topple into the abyss at his feet, and quickly raises his eyes beyond this splash of red ochre, locating the bridge with its winged lions, the canal’s gray parapet, to rest them there a while, the girl forgotten in the depths of his peripheral vision. His calm regained, he courageously resolves to focus his gaze on her once more: the apparition of Venus on the seashell, a chorus of little angels, their cheeks puffed out, blowing. A vision that filled Monk with indescribable tenderness: the great God who has placed another portion of that B READ . . .
    I wonder if T HELONIOUS would ever have discovered L INDA if not for the miracle of that music. Be that as it may, he decides to follow her. He watches her pick up the hat full of small change, then separate the FLUTE into three parts and return them to their case; he watchesher take the arm of her friend in the overcoat and walk away from the cathedral toward Nevsky Prospekt . . .
    K VAS . Russia is an old country with strange fermented beverages and barrel staves lying in the mud. I jump from stave to stave to keep my boots from getting dirty, while dogs bark behind fences. At the corner—this city on the Volga where I’ve come to spend a few weeks, these low brick buildings—the same woman as yesterday is pouring out KVAS .

L
    L ENIN ( the swine ). “A man’s at the door for you, quite the BRODIAGA ,” R UDI murmurs in my ear.
    I went out to the lobby. The rain had stopped and the day was still as bright as it had been at six that evening. I recognized my baggage handler’s checked jacket and black cap.
    “Dimitri!”
    “(It’s Kolia.)” “Kolia!” I turned to the doorman. “He’s a friend.”
    “However did you find me? What a surprise! Come in and join us; no one will mind.”
    Touched that I hadn’t put him out in the street, he lied, “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
    “Say no more,” I patted his