Free Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia by Jose Manuel Prieto Page B

sure you have the money for this?”
    “L INDA , I spent more than a year amassing the capital for this novel, thinking about a restaurant like this one (or even finer) and a redheaded girl like you. The budget for the dinner scene is more than adequate, as you’ll see. It’s only eight p.m. We’re just getting started.”
    L INDA said, “I want to write you a letter.”
    As if instead of a white tablecloth between us there were kilometers of arid landscape, desert dunes. She insisted. “There are some things I want to tell you.”
    She wanted to gaze directly into my eyes via the immediacy that only epistolary communication can confer. Allow me to introduce here the first one she wrote that night.
    Her first letter, as if from afar.
Hello J OSIK :
    This morning I’d been having intense thoughts about a bag of oranges. It’s been about half a year since I’ve eaten an orange. When you told me about your plan, I thought you’d be able to buy lots of them. I don’t mean that was the only reason I agreed to go along with you, but sometimes I dream about baskets brimming over with oranges. I would go to Morocco just for the oranges. From any port on the Black Sea we’d be there in five days. We could also eat our fill of bananas. You grew up surrounded by fruit, that’s why you’re such a good person. I realized this when we were strolling through the garden. I suffer from vitamin deficiencies in the spring; my gums bleed. Even my hair loses its shine. Your teeth are good, too, like a movie star’s. We’ll make a very good couple in Crimea. I like your plan more and more. Thanks to which I remembered oranges.
    Bye.
    Nastia
    I. The morning after our dinner at the Astoria, Maarif brought me a second letter from L INDA . She never explained why she was writing me again so soon. Apparently Maarif had made a jealous scene, which she brought to a close by punishing him with the task of serving as messenger boy between us. (And thus, after the vulgar fashion of a vulgar love triangle, was the plot thickening.)
    Her second letter was full of lies.
Hello J OSHELE :
    I have to tell you the truth about my nose. My real last name is Katz. I had a grandfather named Kats or Katz who went to America to make his fortune . . .
    It couldn’t be true! My pursuit of S OSHA’S Hebrew tresses had brought me directly to a Katz! He was from L VOV : Bruno Schulz, Sholem Aleichem, an unexpected twist. I continued reading: . . . came back ten years later and without so much as going home to give his children a kiss went to the VILLAGE tavern and spent eight hours there, not once stepping outside for a breath of air. He gambled away all his savings at cards, and then, with nothing else to wager, his house. That same morning, before day had dawned, someone killed him out of pity. He didn’t have enough years of life left to go back to Chicago and save up the money to pay that debt. My grandmother nailed an ace of spades to the coffin and paid two gypsies to lead the funeral procession, throwing out playing cards to the crowd. It was a terrible vengeance. When I think that a quarter of my blood is Hebrew . . .
    Oh, for God’s sake, only a quarter . . . But her lovely story was false. She had invented it to mortify Maarif and solidify her relations with me, a foreigner. As if to say: “Look, I’ve stolen lots of things.” She was going to Y ALTA with me; that was what I gathered from this message. Her decision was irrevocable and she had chosen this extravagant means of conveying it to me.

K
    K**. She had the translucent skin of a nocturnal animal. And the way she walked: as if she were trying to steal into the enemy camp, find the silken tent of the sleeping khan, and plunge the silver-handled dagger into his chest. I preferred her to other women because she looked straight into the depths of existence and would formulate questions that were as clear and hard as blocks of ice. Would I be capable of killing someone in order to steal, of