II. PAINTING

On the top of it, there is an inscription in French " Cite de Paris " with a little bird-like accent mark above the first 'e', like a bird in the bucolic cumulus clouds of Ile-de-France. Produced in three basic colors of the French national flag, the canvas represents sort of a map of Paris with its humpy yoke of the Seine River in the middle, with all necessary mapping delineations, and with the usual cartographic markings given in French.

Here I must emphasize one linguistic phenomenon which is both pretty curious and common at the same time. Sure you know the typical aberration when for some or another reason a menu written in French makes food taste better because of the language used. Now, coming back to my painting I dare to suggest that for a gourmand and Francophile type the map of Paris can be equated not just to a menu (i.e. "minimum") but rather to the "maximum" - to the experience of double richness. Here, mes cher ami, we are dealing with a variety of taste familiar especially to connoisseurs of the verbal medium; in particular to the individuals for whom even a map can represent a sensual kind of object. I mean these people can experience certain pleasure `tasting' geographical names, they can delectate the Parisian map like an exquisite dish, or something akin to a feminine body landscape, tracing scrupulously through its veins and curvatures - through its famous avenues and boulevards. A Francophile likes in his most intimate manner reach deep into the very essence, into some hidden convolute of his targeted picture. He will rake slowly though the capillary system of the by-streets and passages, tasting dreamily some Rue de Latran or Rue des Vin-Aigriers in the vicinity of the canal Saint-Martin, or some absolute nowhere place - Rue Rotrou by Odeon. Once in a while with my neighbor Max we used to play this name-collector's game - Who will recall more of the Parisian monuments? In what district (arrondissement) such-and-such tiny street is located? Once again, I want it to be perfectly clear now - a dedicated Francophile treats even the Parisian map as an exotic sensual object. Possessing it, he needs neither the fleshy females of Rubens, nor those simplistic pin-up Playboy pictures so widely adored by the intellectual adolescents. In brief, that's about the subtext of my painting obsession I had at the time. The voluptuous curvature of my Parisian bride, I guess, had also contributed to my pictorial idea.

Standing near the painting one can clearly see the particular streets and squares; while observing the same from a distance, you will gradually distinguish a reclining nude, a big green-eyed odalisque with nothing on except an exquisite wide-brimmed bonnet. The lady is depicted across a tri-colored pictorial field. Above her, there is the glorious ultramarine of the Parisian summer with the afore-mentioned cumulus clouds, of course; beneath her - crumpled scarlet bed covers. The blue, white and red represent, obviously, the national palette of the French Republic. Coming closer again, the observer notices that all body lines, folds and creases are nothing but actually the essential links of the complex municipal structure. The lady is nothing but the virtual city map; that's how it is. The painting having being basically done, still needed, I felt, more final decisive brush strokes or something. In any case, I couldn't get the etude completely out of my mind. Who knows when an artistic conception is entirely realized? Whether it is when an initial idea had been totally transferred to the canvas, or has it more to do with a special moment in the painter's personal life? Who or what on earth tells us when to start, when to stop, when to live and when to die? Could it be a sign from above or merely a blind chance?

My studio, the same as my apartment, is on the top of the Washington Heights, allowing for a beautiful view of the Upper Broadway, of the Tryon Park and the G.W.B. with the river and the Henry Hudson Parkway running alongside. Early bird, I usually open my eyes when, on a cloudless night, the darkness just begins dissolving around the moon. At the moment, the night is still dark; it seems even darker far away, on the highway where the tail-lights and traffic signals are mysteriously flashing following a smartly preset nightly traffic routine. I watch how the Superintendent of Heavens is turning off - first the moon, then - the stars and other illumination not useful anymore; how the ghostly automobiles, still colorless like a deepwater fish in a stormy weather or like amoebas under the electronic microscope, start moving along the sleeping buildings also still colorless and pale. All this - until the daybreak is suddenly slashing across the horizon, revealing the basic American colors - the green of the baseball field, the red of the brick walls, and the kaleidoscopes mixture of mundane commercial signs. Sometimes, an old fashioned artistry intervenes in the picture, adding a fancy baroque effect with the smoky bunch of sunrays piercing the morning fog a-la Claude Lorraine. That's exactly the time when I tune into the Radio France International to get reports on weather or on a worker's strike, pretending to be in Paris; or, even better, I'd listen to Yves Montand crooning my favorite giddy tune by Francis Lemark:

A Paris! /Quand un amour fleurit, ca fait pendant des semaines / Deux coeurs qui se sourirent tout ca parce qu'ils s'aiment a Paris...

Max, my neighbor, is from a family of Hungarian leftists who had fallen victims of the Red Terror back in the fifties. As a child, he lived in Moscow for awhile, and he still is capable on occasion to say something po-russ-ku, to say `hello' and even more sophisticated stuff. It seems, he is never tired of making our Russian immigrants sick with his impossible ways - predatory shouting at them from behind Drass-vui-te! And, then, he always happily smiles expecting... God knows what is that he really is waiting for. I'm used to his bursts of wild joy. On the whole, Max isn't much of a joker; not at all. He is rather a secret melancholic and a moody philosopher type. In America, he had tried everything - selling glasses, insurance, and real estate. Eventually, he went broke in everything he'd tried, still never forfeiting his ultimate American dream - to become rich overnight by pulling off a victorious ingenious trick. What is strange, however, that in twenty years in this country, he has managed to avoid Americanization (he likes to think so), watching the American life as an impartial observer. He observes and judges, feeling, in his words, 'sorry for not so cultured, - confused locals'. With his unbeatable hubris he'd never miss an occasion to enlighten me about his views - about the idiotic daytime TV designed to brainwash the American housewives, or about the cheap-chat of self-appointed mass media gurus filling the air with their usual nonsense.

Listening to him, I've readily recognized that critical attitude quite popular among the immigrants of our European extraction. The same platitudes, perhaps, the same grand theories which, I confess, I've also practiced for a while, every time pondering - could it be that this psychological ambivalence with respect to the country adopting us, was kind of a necessity for us, supplying us, say, with a moral vitamin we somehow urgently needed? The critical views are eventually coming to our secret moral superiority, of course, on the very basis of our outsider's position. Whatever is subject in question, anything goes. "Hey, Yankees", a newcomer says, for example, "How come are you so smart but only in your movies?" The apparent dichotomy is always the main object. One has to know that idealistic image of America as seen from afar, to understand fully how it's hard to be reconciled with not so glorious actuality, with its confused populace which is routinely victimized by the smart ass media, with the notorious ads and commercials pushing sales down your throat... It's practically impossible for a person who's not been born in this country to connect all the dots. That's why together with Max I personally don't believe in suddenly becoming an American, just by virtue of getting naturalized and by converting your name. In Russian I am Oleg - the name unusually proof to conversions, is like that of a Russian medieval prince. In the States they call me sometimes Ollie but I'm not Oliver. Sounds close, but I just don't feel like one.

From the very start, I and Max, we became the fast friends, not the least, I believe, because of our Francomania. For hours, he with the Hungarian accent, and I with the Russian (Jewish, both of us), we were recalling to each other the charms of Old Europe - the real and the imagined ones colored always the rosiest in our time-softened recollections. As opposite, you can guess, to the vapid sterility of our present life we were exaggerating a great deal; but we loved it that way, drooling about the classy, high-cultured Europe and Paris - its undisputable sensual locus. We were of the same opinion that after any international trip, say, to Australia, Brazil or Canada, one always won't be totally satisfied, not having visited Paris as well.

"France has given so much to the humankind that the French is synonymic with Culture itself. Anything, you just name it, even an ordinary term - citizen," - Max would say during our debates, is a product of the "Great French Revolution Which Changed the World." Since it was Max who had mentioned this first, I had nothing but to expand on the idea, saying that the Russians, as nobody else cherish the same exact word. In any Russian bread line one can hear the casual shrieks, "Hey you, freaking citizen slob, easy with your filthy handbag. Stop kicking your fellow-citizens around!"

With the mindset like this, one could appropriately ask, didn't we feel sorry for not leaving to Paris for good? Rhetorically, yes. But always with a reservation that sooner or later (say, for retirement), we'll move over there anyway. Not now, of course, hell no. There's a rule, in case you don't know, - better stay away from your secret dream if you like it to survive for the long time. The word `dream' is routinely going together with the definition - `impossible'. That's precisely why we couldn't appreciate our proper residence place, our Washington Heights. Big deal - any moment we can look out of window - to see our hectic Heights buzzing, clattering, and dancing their Macarena - after work, at work, instead of work by all means.

If, as I said, Max is not exactly a success story, neither am I. For one, my mother, it seems, will never be well again. She can hardly walk. From her bedroom to mine, smells flow of her medicine mixing with the sharp odor of my turpentine and paints. Whenever I ask her if she needs anything, my mother invariably answers - "Thank you, Oleg, I'm OK. I need nothing." And after a pause, she always adds: "All I secretly wish for you is to find a good-hearted girl. I don't want you to be alone, especially with your condition, these episodes of yours". That's how she calls my super sensitivity spells I've told you about. Once, still a toddler, in the dark of a movie theater in Moscow, I pulled myself down from her knees, and, with my hands outstretched, went to the huge screen stand, wishing to penetrate the projection. It had been Chartreuse de Parma, I believe, when I wished to crawl under the puffy crinoline skirts of Madam Danielle Darrieux. I could have actually done it if not the guards intercepting me on my way. Later, in my adolescence, the condition worsened, I had been turning sometimes into a human tree; suddenly my legs and hands mysteriously were growing longer and longer... In the process, vertiginous and delirious, I had been emitting incomprehensible animal sounds. I hate being reminded of that stuff! But you can't tell it to Ma; she must always sound so clinical mentioning my 'episodes' as well as my being single for too long. Well, now the latter is going to change. I have already promised mother to marry and not just anybody but a veritable Parisian.

While I'm painting my hopelessly unmarketable chef-d-oeuvres, Max is usually standing behind me, having a beer, smoking and watching for the doors, his and mine, to stay open all the time to the corridor in between. If there's a telephone call or a buzz from the downstairs, he would disappear and stay in his room with his one-night stand 'client', a Rumanian girl, a Korean, a Senegalese... My Max is a devoted sexual internationalist, an equal opportunity employer. I'd say in all fairness that he is an equal-opportunity lover boy, genuinely color-blind to the subtleties of the feminine charms. Blondes, brunettes, tall, short, pretty or not, he never cares much about those minor details; he loves them all. He loves the feminine idea in itself, whatever it means.

When I mentioned my idea to fly on TWA-800 to get married, Max, I remember, attempted protesting instantly, preaching to me: "One should never tie knot in rush. What do you think your Lulu is the last girl in the world! For one, she's not a baby; she can come to New York on her own, and, besides... what's the matter with you, Oleg, - every time you have a romance, you have to marry?" I liked especially his 'every time' remark. Contrary to him, my Casanova buddy, I've never needed a calculator to keep track of my so-called romantic 'times'.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-04