The bright summer nights of Saint Petersburg had kept Nathan awake for nigh on three weeks now. He cursed softly as the alarm on his mobile phone rang its annoying, nondescript chime. Dishevelled and drained, he sat up on his bed and looked around his room. He breathed. His nose drank in remnants of a young man’s solo party. Cheap glossy pages clutched and crackled. The decay of good times past left a thick, senseless taste at the back of his throat: a sensation of mind inseparable from his own reality. Mould damp, stale hash like stairwell urine. Sallow mayonnaise ejaculated over chicken remains framed by unwashed laundry. His gaze crossed to the sash window. Varying thicknesses of brushes dried and cracked, complemented by the barely whitewashed wood. Rusted steel clouds scoured the sky. He itched to see them gone. Mercury-blown glass rippled the murk beyond, giving him the impression he was underwater. But dry he was, and empty. Not swimming or choking. He was on his own there; there was no one to attempt to talk to. His mother tongue fell light on the frowns of Slavic dissonances. Alone, his flaccid efforts escaped ridicule, or recognition.
Nathan was in a flat which was on the premises of the Volga Medical College. He had decided to save up on hotel bills and stay on campus for the three weeks he’d be in the city. The campus was empty for the most part during the summer. Only a few Asian and African students were left who couldn’t afford the airfare back home and, instead, chose to spend the long sunny nights studying in the library or wallowing in front of the telly.
He decided to open one of the windows to let some fresh air in and gazed idly out the window. Amidst the domes soaring above the city, he could see the cross of the Kazan Cathedral glistening despite the cloudy skies. It was named in honour of the icon of the mother of God miraculously found during the storm of Kazan by the troops of Ivan the Terrible. He had visited the cathedral two days ago—but not to pray. That aspect of his spirituality had long ceased to be of any consequence in his life. He had gone there to finish what he had arrived in the city to do: paint the magnificent cathedrals and palaces he had heard so much about.
He had indeed managed to paint quite a lot in the last three weeks, but a vague sense of disenchantment plagued him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Perhaps it was the fact that he couldn’t converse much with the locals and had gone for nearly a month without much contact with people. He hadn’t met anyone he could talk to—the language proved an almost insurmountable barrier.
He wasn’t too concerned about not having anyone to talk to. He wasn’t keen on conversation. He was too consumed by his desire to paint. He believed that everyone needs time to dream and contemplate the infinite. He wasn’t interested in selling any of his paintings, not only because he didn’t crave recognition and did not need money, but also because he felt his own art was alien to himself. This was probably because of his deep-rooted artistic insecurity. He felt out on the edge with nothing to lose.
He knew, though, that to live a creative life, he must lose the fear of being wrong. In art there was no right or wrong. It was all about being either honest or dishonest. He knew there was a thin line between art and junk.Where one drew that line he wasn’t sure, but that it existed was beyond doubt. He also wondered who drew that line. For no two people share the same aesthetic apprehension of beauty. The aphorism “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder” had more layers of ramifications and implications than he cared to reflect upon.
He had once been informed that art was anything that had aesthetic beauty or was aesthetically pleasing. That caused him even more consternation, because then he would be forced to include all kinds of junk under the parasol of “art.” If a piece of junk is aesthetically pleasing to one person then it was art to him. From then on, he decided that all that mattered to him was an honest expression of his inner conflicts, emotions, and ideas—and through this expression a resolution, even solace perhaps.
So he was quite content to spend his mornings painting the plethora of splendid cathedrals and palaces scattered around the city and his evenings strolling down Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare of the city, admiring the many outstanding architectural landmarks of the eighteenth century. The onion domes of Moscow seemed embarrassingly old-fashioned in this city whose architects had carefully designed it to be the most European in all of Russia. The rostral columns erected to commemorate naval victories; the pontoon bridges along the river Neva, the city’s main pulsating artery; the summer gardens; the majestic and imposing statues that littered the city’s precincts; even the colours of the city’s structures—the green and gold of the Winter Palace, the red beside the Anichkov Bridge, the blue of Smolny Cathedral—evinced a closer kinship to the courts of Europe than to the Kremlin. The baroque façades of the palaces exuded the riotous opulence and ostentatious extravagance of tsarist aristocracy. This patrician hubris at the expense of the proletariat saw its apotheosis in the construction of the massive Hermitage that contained over a thousand rooms and countless works of priceless art.
His decision to leave Saint Petersburg weighed on his mood. Too often his hand’s devotion fell guiltily from the religion of surfaces. Pencil-bland walls. Pine-leaf lettering, meaningless as hieroglyphs. And how proud their disdain of strangers! Particularly those of colour. The hues of his travels seemed to arouse passions eluding the Russians, who could not escape experiencing only themselves and each other. Once, while he was walking along the Fontanka waterway, a group of neo-Nazis screamed in his face. Their hatred stretched pale across their skulls as open as winter ice. Their temper thawed with the timely arrival of a constable, who had despatched them breezily. How his ache clenched within him to be away from here. He decided to stay away from the less crowded areas of the city and found that for the most part the Russians were quite content to go about their business and ignored him completely.
But all that was behind him now as this was his last day in Saint Petersburg. His train to Moscow would leave in a few hours.
He wasn’t sorry to be leaving. He had felt lonely and lost in Russia. He had spent far too much time by himself, and even though he had managed to paint prodigiously during his stay, he was starting to feel trapped and depressed. He was a traveller who found his solace in wandering from country to country, seeking inspiration. His trip to Russia was, however, more the tentative advance of one seeking refuge from physical reality. He sought to find meaning and significance in life through humanity, but not the “herd.” Therefore, it was to his paintings that he had turned his attention in an attempt to find a rationale for his own life.
He turned away from the window and the cloudy skies at the sound of a sharp knock on the door. He quickly slipped on a shirt and answered the door. It was Madam Bruskino, the curmudgeonly matron of the building.
“You are leave today?” she inquired in her thick Russian accent. A grim old babushka, she had acquired a smattering of English during the many years she dealt with foreign students. “Don’t forget drawing books—and you must pay to me fifty dollars before you go to train station. Also lock door before you go.”
“Not a problem, Madam Bruskino,” Nathan replied. “Where can I get a taxi to the railway station?”
“No taxi.”
He seemed a bit baffled. Now that he thought about it he realised he couldn’t recollect having seen any taxis during his three weeks in Saint Petersburg.
“How do I get to the railway station?”
“Maybe you get private car on Gorokhovaya Ulitsya,” she said sourly and turned and walked away.
He realised that if he was going to make it on time he would have to get going immediately. He quickly shaved and showered, locked his backpack, rolled up his canvases, and headed for Gorokhovaya Ulitsya Street. On the way, he passed Yusupov Palace at Naberezhnaya Reki where Rasputin, invited to dinner by Prince Felix and friends, was poisoned, shot, beaten, and later drowned to death.
As he walked along, a private taxi drove up to him and the driver asked him where he wanted to go.
“Zhilyeznuhda rohzhni vagh zahl,” he replied, having carefully memorised the Russian words for railway station.
The driver indicated to him to hop in.
“Skolka Stoyeet?” Nathan inquired, careful not to sit before agreeing on the price.
“Stoh dollars,” replied the driver.
“A hundred dollars! You must be kidding! Nyet spaseeba,”
“Pidisyaht dollars,” the driver said, with a compromising wave.
“I’m sorry, but fifty dollars is still too much. Spaseeba,” he replied, laughing out loud. How could he possibly pay that much for a five-minute taxi drive, he thought to himself. But as in other countries, taxi drivers in Russia were renowned for fleecing unsuspecting tourists. He was sure if he had sat in the cab the driver would have taken him to the end of the city and back when the train station was really quite close by.
He decided to walk the short distance. As he opened his travel guide map to check the easiest way to Nevsky Prospekt, he felt a few drops of rain on his arms. He looked up and realised that the light greyness of the morning had given way to dark, portentous clouds that were harbingers of an imminent downpour. He scanned anxiously for a taxi, but there were none to be seen. He glanced back at his map, plotted the quickest way to the station on Ploshchad Vosstaniya and set off at a brisk pace.
He passed several American fast-food outlets and billboard signs and mused on how Westernised Saint Petersburg had become. It could quite easily be any European city. The Russians were now becoming more American than the Americans. He thought it was a bit sad because for so many decades it was only the Russians who were a counterbalance to the might of the Americans but now the great Soviet Empire was in ruins and Russian roubles were worth no more than Argentinean pesos.
As he hurried towards the station, he passed several kiosk groups selling en masse more or less the same things: fake clothes from China, bindis and henna from India, Finnish canned juice, bootleg video cassettes, cheap vodka, pornographic magazines, and Western beer. He stopped at one of the kiosks and quickly rummaged through their music collection. He had discovered CDs were remarkably cheap in Russia, probably because they had never heard of copyright. He found a copy of Alla Pugacheva, a popular Russian singer from the seventies, and a copy of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony no. 3, conducted by the Symphony Orchestra Moskau. He also picked up a matryoshka, a set of wooden dolls within dolls. Glasnost had rendered them one of Russia’s few ubiquitous pieces of genuine folk art. He paid for them with a few Russian coins he had in his pocket and hurried out.
Just as he stepped out, it began to rain. It was a steady downpour—not too heavy, but enough to get him soaked if he didn’t get to the station quickly. He decided to run the remaining distance.
By the time he got to the station, he was drenched and out of breath. He walked through the porte cochere and through a massive portcullis to what looked like the reception area. His hair was soaked, and thin streamlets of water ran down his face and neck. Luckily, his backpack was waterproof. The rolled canvases he was struggling with were drenched. He stood there looking miserable and lost. All the signs were in Russian. He had to ask for help. A distinguished-looking gentleman sat on a bench and he decided to ask him if he spoke English.
“Vih gavareetyeh pa angleeski?” Nathan inquired.
“Nyet,” came the predictable reply.
He then decided to walk towards a counter that said in bold Cyrillic letters: SPRAVUCHNAYA BURO. He knew it was the information desk. But when he spoke to the lady he wasn’t too surprised to discover she didn’t speak any English. And worse, it seems the Russians had confused capitalism with highway robbery for she charged him fifteen cents per question even though she couldn’t understand what it was he wanted.
He walked away from the counter and looked around, at a complete loss. There were several dozen trains, and he wasn’t sure which were arrivals and which were departures. He was starting to despair. He was also anxious about missing his train to Moscow. People around pushed past him, tugging trolley bags and suitcases. This was how it had been throughout his stay in Russia. For the most part, he treated such situations with equanimity and fortitude, but this morning was a bit too much for him to handle, coming as it did as a culmination of the miserable, lonely time he had spent in Russia.
His wet clothes clung to him, and the rainwater still trickled down his drenched head, and he felt a bit dizzy. He walked towards one of the tall, Ionic columns lining the massive hall and leaned against it, still a bit breathless from his run. The sound of thousands of people speaking in an alien tongue rang, resounded, and reverberated in his head. The grey streaks on the marble floor were blurry and seemed to quiver and fashion themselves into strange patterns in his head. The smoke from the pale, sullen-faced teenager a few feet away choked him. The massive hall seemed to swim around and around; he felt like a medieval dervish caught in a whirlwind; the needles on the giant clock on the opposite wall seemed to spin faster and faster.
With a great effort, he managed to pull himself together. He took a deep breath and pulled out a bottle of water from his backpack and took large, thankful gulps.
He felt much better and decided to walk around in the hope of finding some clue as to where his train might be. As he hitched his backpack and collected his canvases, he felt a tap on the back of his shoulder and heard a gentle female voice: “Excuse me, do you speak English?”
He whirled around and saw the voice belonged to an extremely attractive girl in her early twenties wearing a cerise top. Nathan could tell that she too had been caught in the rain because her blond hair was glossy and wet, and thin trickles of water ran down her neck. For that moment, her voice seemed to be the most welcoming sound he had ever heard.
“Why, yes…yes, I do speak English,” he replied, a bit confused. He was still not sure whether she was talking to him. He glanced behind him to make sure there wasn’t someone else behind him but there was no one. “Yes, I do speak English. Why do you ask?”
“You are obviously not Russian, and you look bit lost. I thought maybe I could offer to you some help?” She spoke slowly with a Russian accent, careful to enunciate each word of the foreign language as perfectly as she could. Her gentle, attenuated voice had a softness to it and hinted at a hidden conviviality that somehow made her seem like one of the angels from Saint Nicholas’ Cathedral come to life.
“Why, thank you…that’s umm…very kind of you,” Nathan replied, still so captivated by this almost beatific spectre appearing out of nowhere that he felt his normal eloquent self was under ambush. But he was also relieved that there was someone to help him. “I…I…have this ticket to…to Moscow,” he continued, delving into his pocket in search of the ticket, “but I can’t seem to figure out which train to catch. You must think me extremely stupid, but you see, I have no acquaintances here, and no one here can help because no one here seems to speak any other language besides Russian.”
“Nyet, I don’t think you are stupid,” she said laughing, “I think in some way you’re quite brave to coming to Russia without knowing nobody here. Let me see ticket.”
He handed her the ticket and gazed at her as she peered at the information on it. She was slightly built and had a Phidian nose. There was a tenderness in her lips and a warm intelligent twinkle in her eye that made her seem sensitive and amiable. She was, as Byron would have said, like a Praxitelean creation, newly formed or moulded, well poised with a serene beauty about her.
“Oh, you have plenty of time,” she exclaimed with a warm smile. “Your train has been delayed by two hours. Look there at notice board, it says so. Your train is not in this side of station, but you must take stairs and walk over bridge to other side. I could show to you if you like.”
“Umm…thank you so much, but I couldn’t possibly keep you, you must be busy.”
“No busy, not at all. I am going to visit to my friend. She stays in Petrodvorets. It is only half-hour journey, and there are many trains. Actually I would like to practice my English with you. Do you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind at all. You speak English quite well. Did you learn it at school?”
“No, in Russian schools we learn only Russian. I learn English on my own. I buy books and teach to myself how to speak English,” she said, as she wiped a drop of water that was balancing on her eyelashes with the back of her hand. She took out a small handkerchief and began to dry her wet hair. “Maybe you would like to eat or drink something before you leave. Over here there is a small traktir…how you say…where you can eat and drink—tavern?”
“Yeah, a tavern, or a pub,” he replied.
“Yes, pub; would you like?” she asked, still drying her hair.
He looked at his watch and decided there were worse ways to spend the next two hours. The pub was inside the station just a few feet away from where they stood. It wasn’t really a pub. Just a sort of kiosk that sold drinks and had a few standing tables around it. So he told her it sounded like a good idea. He was already beginning to feel attracted to this girl. She seemed gentle and intelligent and kind, which was a welcome change after being surrounded by strangers for so long.
As they walked the short distance to the kiosk, the girl looked searchingly around the massive hall and said, “I must first buy for my friend some books she wanted. But I cannot see bookshop. Maybe I buy afterwards. What would you like for drink?”
“Maybe I’ll have some Moskovskaya vodka.”
The girl turned to him and said with gentle excitement, “Have you ever tried Pertsovka? It’s with pepper.”
“No, I haven’t. Maybe I’ll try some,” he said with a smile.
There was a composed vivacity and tranquil maturity about this girl that he found intriguing. He definitely wanted to get to know her better. She spoke in rapid Russian to the kiosk owner who produced a small bottle of Pertsovka.
“Please allow me…” Nathan said, insisting on paying.
The girl waved him away and said, “You are guest in my country. When I come to your country, you can pay.”
They walked with the bottle and two glasses to one of the empty standing tables. The rain that had been pouring earlier had stopped in the last few minutes, and the sun shone brightly through the stained glass ceiling, throwing a motley, shimmering glow of colours on the wall next to them. Refulgent specks of light shone through the ornate chintz and serge that curtained the massive latticed windows and formed a golden filigree on the floor. Nathan poured the vodka and realised he hadn’t asked her her name.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t asked you your name.”
“My name is Ksenya. What about yours? And why you are come to Russia?”
He told her his name and said, “It’s my last day in Saint Petersburg. I came to Russia to paint the beautiful palaces and cathedrals.”
“Oh, you are painter? That’s so exciting! Can I see what you paint?”
He pulled out his roll of canvases and displayed them on the table. Ksenya was thrilled to look at his art, and every now and then looked up with quiet admiration.
“This is really beautiful. You must really think of exhibiting. You know, I have never leave out of Russia. The most far I go is to Petrodvorets, which is not far. I really want to see the different peoples and different country,” she said quietly.
She stared into the distance and continued, “Post-glasnost Russia is creating breed of youth addicted to McDonalds, MTV, and The Simpsons. I can’t fit in with my friends. I spend most of my time studying philosophy and history of art at university.”
Ksenya could discuss with the authority and acumen of a professional art critic more than half the pieces in the Hermitage. She believed art was vital to moral health. She felt living in a world of art allowed her to bring into play, express, and purge emotions and energies that in everyday life could be harmful.
She took a sip of vodka and said, “Working at the Hermitage as art guide to thousands of tourists who come to galleries allow me to disconnect from everyday world.”
She knew her appreciation of art was purely contemplative, but she responded to and loved the artists’ creations for what they were in themselves.
“Beauty and ugliness are two sides of same coin,” she continued. “There is beauty in ugliness just as there is ugliness in beauty. A great work of art can be beautiful in its depiction of a gruesome scene,” she said, as she took another sip of her vodka. “I feel free only when I am surrounded by masterful paintings at Hermitage Art Museum. There I feel alive—full of the life.”
The Hermitage became a special place set apart where her delicate values and her gentle personality could be preserved and protected. It assumed the role of a sacred garden—her very own hortus conclusus.
As Nathan listened to her, he thought to himself that there was undoubtedly an element of escapism that figured in her choice of workplace—it offered her a temporary freedom from worry about a world threatened by such problems as hunger, disease, and poverty, all of which were exacerbated by the consumerist revolution.
Being surrounded by the brilliant pieces of art in a museum that exuded the triumphs and tribulations of generations of artists provided her an escape to a simpler, happier, and more exotic world uncontaminated by the problems of life. It was not merely a love of the archaic or a form of nostalgia for a more colourful way of life, but a subconscious sublimation of her desire to paint and participate in the act of creation.
“You know, Nathan, I believe that the idea of God should be an activity in people’s mind. When we portray the wonder of our imagination, we are recreating magic of the original creation—yes, I know only on small scale, but it is true, no? God, for me, is not kind grandfather in sky. For me God is pursuit—a how you say—a process…a way of doing things…oh I cannot say it in English…I wish I could speak to you better.”
“Oh no, please, carry on…I understand you perfectly. Your English isn’t as bad as you think it is. I understand you just fine.”
She smiled nervously and continued, “I believe that religion and spirituality is worth nothing in itself—it is how you say…it is silly, and making you feel like slave…also it is selfish for reward in afterlife. What afterlife! For me only thing important is to be self-improvement. To be better person is all. I want to perfect my mind and spirit.”
Nathan found himself in agreement with everything she was saying. He nodded and took a sip of vodka and said, “To be generous and compassionate, to have the courage of your convictions, to refrain from conflicts, and to be indifferent to the hoarding of possessions is what matters.”
“You know, Nathan, when I am alone, I am always thinking, thinking, oh these thoughts in my head they won’t go…they are always coming and coming. But when I am alone I can also dream and think. I want to make friends, but I do not know why I can’t have many friend. Even at work in the Hermitage, there are so many bad tourist men, they are always asking me go out with them and ask for my phone number; I really don’t like.”
Nathan could see why she was struggling to make friends. He recognised very early on that to love humanity was one thing, but to mingle with the herd was quite another. It was one thing to be kind and amiable but quite another to share one’s inner thoughts with people around. The tension that was inevitably established between her outer world and her withdrawal into the safety of her private world added to the concomitant aura of mystery about her. This in turn enhanced her sexual desirability. Little wonder then that she had to ward off the unwelcome advances from boorish tourists and bourgeois art critics.
The impression he got at the end of it all was that Ksenya was a lonely girl. Her life was marked by a frame of static—there was no climax leading up to or away from anything. Her stasis was supported by the arresting ambiguity of the fact that she desired a connection with another but didn’t seem inclined to form relationships. This compartmentalisation of the solitary from the communal self was an important strategy that served as a driving force for all that she hoped to accomplish in her life.
Ksenya looked at Nathan with eyes that were smiling and melancholic at the same time and said, “I run away from the home when I was fifteen. I survive for working as a waitress in many restaurant. All time I read and teach myself to speak English. I hope that one day I might earn extra money to teaching it and leave the Russia to see the world.”
Nathan said, “That’s what I’ve decided to do. I’m going to travel the world.”
She looked wistfully at him and said with repressed excitement, “Oh, how I want to travel and meet people from different culture…just travel the world!” Her single-minded imaginative speculation on the evocative idea of leaving Russia and travelling the world drew out lines of battle between what she saw as illusory expectation and a knowledge of hopelessness.
The paintings allowed her the scope of individual freedom. And here, talking to Nathan, for the first time she felt that sense of liberation outside the world of the museum. He could sense she felt a strange attraction to him, as he did to her.
“You know,” she said, “I don’t know why I came up to talk to you earlier, but something made me to. I felt I just had to get to know you. And you know, I am so happy I did. I do not always have habit of speaking to strange men, but something about you assure me that I would be fine.”
They continued laughing and talking with unstudied ease. She took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. She took a puff and said, “You know, I feel happier now than I have been in a long time.”
It was almost as if he made her feel she could trust him completely. It was almost as if she could unburden all her secrets and share with him her deepest thoughts. He was the beguiling anodyne for her desperate loneliness.
Nathan himself was amazed at how natural and easy it felt to be talking to Ksenya. Here in the middle of a crowded railway station thousands of miles from home, he felt more comfortable with her than with anyone else before. New and striking thoughts followed from him in rapid successions, and the flame of his hidden persona lit up as if winged with wildfire. He seemed to be filled with a new zest for life. With her he seemed prone to mirth and jocularity. It was fun simply standing next to her. The gloom he felt earlier that morning had vanished completely and, in its place right now, he felt a serene sense of bliss and inner peace. Usually in mixed company he was not very talkative. But standing here talking to Ksenya, he felt free and unreserved, and they seemed to share an intimacy he found strange, because it was formed so quickly in such a short period of acquaintance. He only knew he was happy. Everything around him seemed beautiful. He knew from past experience that passionate feelings produced a falseness in his impressions of external things. His strong and sudden feelings for Ksenya were inexplicable, but it coloured his entire response to the world around him. Being with her had completely ameliorated the loneliness he had experienced in the last few weeks. The world seemed swathed in hues of kindliness and swaddled in shades of compassion.
Ksenya and Nathan were cocooned in a private world of their own making. These precious moments within a palisade of spiritual compatibility were all they had together. The world around them buzzed and hummed and droned. The tedium and the fuss of the herd meant nothing to them. They were wrapped in each other. They were entranced by each other. The world seemed bright and full of possibilities. Each delightful smile and each peal of laughter shared between them succeeded in levelling yet another crease in the fabric of their cares. But the magical time they were having together was brought to a jolting halt when he looked at his watch and cried out, “Oh, goodness! My train! It’s time for it to leave.”
Ksenya looked at her watch and couldn’t hide her disappointment. “Yes,” she said, “we must go quickly. Follow me.” She slipped her handbag over her shoulder and held his hand, and they began to run towards the stairs leading to the other end of the station. As they reached the correct platform, they noticed that everyone had boarded the train and it was ready to leave in a minute or so. Ksenya found him his carriage, and they stood outside trying to say good-bye.
Nathan sensed that Ksenya longed for him to stay. The look in her eyes spoke more eloquently than a thousand words. He knew he wanted to stay. He wished fervently he could convey to her how enchanted he was by her. He longed to take her in his arms and hold her. He wished he could stroke her lustrous gossamer hair and gently kiss the nape of her alabaster neck. But he didn’t. He knew if he stepped onto that train he would be throwing away the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Neither of them betrayed their thoughts. Ksenya smiled a pretty smile and said what a pleasure it was to meet him and to practise her English.
He thanked her for the vodka and for the wonderful chat. He wished her good luck and stepped onto the train.
The train began to move, and he turned to wave goodbye. He could hear her dulcet voice and her alluring whispers in his mind. The feel of her tantalizing breath, the caress of her delicate fingers, her disarming smile, her intelligent eyes…all contrived to make him want to stay. Something told him that the time he spent with her was a bubble in the fabric of time, a ripple in space that could never be created again. He wanted to stay. He wished he could stay. He couldn’t explain why he stepped onto the train when every fibre in his being, every scintilla of his self told him to stay.
Ksenya stood on the platform, impassively watching the train leave. All feeling was stifled. Thought was held at abeyance. All movement stagnated. She seemed weak. Her fingers clutched tenaciously at her handbag. It seemed as if all her broken dreams and futile aspirations came rushing back frenetically in that instant to haunt her. She was filled with despair at how yet another concatenation of random events raised her hopes only to send them crashing down. She didn’t know where to go from there. She couldn’t bear to go back to the lonely life she lived. How much better never to have encountered this stranger, she thought, than to have met him only to be reduced to this state of desolation.
The humdrum of life bustled and thronged around them, but they held their gaze, watching each other in silence. The train moved farther away. Nathan continued to gaze at her till the platform was a brown speck on the horizon.
He closed his eyes. A hush of white noise flooded his mind and splashed against his inner world like surreal waves on a Cassinian ocean. Time seemed to slow down. The world trudged along—birds flew, cars whizzed, trains chugged, people tramped, clocks chimed…No one around them knew what they were going through, but sadder still, no one cared. Breughel’s painting The Fall of Icarus flashed through his mind. He knew then that the world had problems of its own. A broken heart was the least of its worries.
He also knew that they would never meet each other again. They never did. That morning in Saint Petersburg was the first and the last he ever saw of Ksenya.
