But like so many young women, she was chasing cheap thrills in places like this. The wildcat fur I'd watched with such reverence was surely the price of her services here.
I decided to scan the curtained boxes one by one and identify the occupants. Half an hour later, I had memorized every passionate couple in those private nooks. The woman in the fur coat definitely wasn't in any of them. Risking everyone's curiosity, I peered carefully into each box as the curtains opened and closed. Not a single box held anyone sitting alone or in pairs who never went out to dance.
My anxious hesitation returned. Had I been mistaken again tonight? Surely she wasn't the only woman in Berlin wearing a fur coat like that? Besides, I hadn't even seen her face. Was it possible to recognize—by her walk—a woman who, the night before, when I was drunk, had fixed her gaze on me with a mocking smile? Had I even really seen her last night? Or was it all just a fantasy, as I'd been interpreting it since this morning? I began to fear myself. What was happening to me? Being so affected by a painting... Then imagining the woman from it had appeared before me at night... Then chasing after some random woman based on her footsteps and fur... There was no choice but to leave immediately and put myself under strict control.
The hall suddenly went dark. Only a dim light remained where the orchestra sat. The dance floor emptied. A moment later, a slow piece of music began. From behind the strings, a thin violin sound emerged. The sound gradually approached. A young woman in a white, very low-cut dress descended while continuing to play the violin. In a low alto, close to a male voice, she began singing one of the popular songs of the day. A spotlight traced an oval circle on the floor, illuminating the performer.
I recognized her instantly. All my hesitation, my thousand meaningless guesses vanished. A pang seized my chest again. Seeing her here, forced to work—scattering fake smiles around her, making reluctant, flirtatious gestures—struck me as profoundly sad.
It was possible to imagine the woman from the painting in any situation, even being passed from arm to arm. But I could never have pictured her like this. In this state, there was a plain wretchedness about her that couldn't be compared to the proud, aloof, strong-willed woman I kept in my mind. I thought, "She would have done those things willingly, after all. She'd have let herself go, forgotten herself. But this work she's doing now—she clearly doesn't want to do it at all." There was nothing exceptional about her violin playing, and her voice was only naturally beautiful—or rather, affecting. She sang songs that trembled with complaint, as if spilling from the mouth of a drunken boy. The smile plastered on her face seemed to wait for a small excuse to vanish. And indeed, after leaning toward one table and tossing a few languid notes at the customers, her face would briefly turn serious as she moved to the next table, taking on the exact expression I'd seen in her portrait. Nothing in the world has ever struck me as more painful than someone naturally melancholic trying to force a smile. At one table, a young drunken man slowly rose from his chair and kissed her bare back. A wince, as if from a snakebite, crossed her face, and an icy shudder ran through her body—but it lasted only a moment, perhaps less than a quarter of a second. I saw her shake her head with an expression that seemed to say, "That's nothing."
After each song, a few applause sounded, and the woman nodded to the orchestra to play something else. Then she'd start another song in the same plaintive, complaining voice, dragging her feet—disappearing under the white hem—across the parquet floor from table to table, and beside drunken couples wrapped around each other, or in front of the closed curtains of boxes where she couldn't see what was happening, she'd lean her head on the violin and move her not-very-skilled fingers across the strings.
As she neared my table, I grew very nervous. I didn't know how to look at her or what to do. Then I laughed at myself. Could she possibly recognize a man she'd seen on a dark street at midnight? To her, what else could I be but some young man—a customer who'd come here to have fun and find a companion? Still, I bowed my head. I saw her hem, dusty at the tips from dragging on the floor, and under it, the white décolleté shoes with toes peeking out slightly. She wasn't wearing stockings. On the top of her foot, where her toes began, there was a small strip about a finger's width—pink despite the spotlight's dull white light. When my eyes caught that spot, I felt a shiver and shame, as if I'd seen her entire body naked, and I lifted my eyes upward. She was looking at me carefully. She wasn't singing; she was only playing the violin. That artificial smile was gone from her face. When our gazes met, she greeted me with her eyes in a friendly way. Yes, without exaggeration, without a hint of awkwardness, she greeted me like an old friend. She did it simply by opening and closing her eyes once, but so clearly I couldn't be mistaken. Then she smiled. She smiled with an open, clean, honest smile that spread across her whole face. The way you'd smile at an old friend... After playing for a moment and greeting me once more—this time with her eyes and a nod—she moved on to other tables.
I felt an overwhelming urge to jump up, throw my arms around her neck, and kiss her while crying. I couldn't remember ever being so happy in my life, feeling my heart so expanded. How could one person make another this happy by doing almost nothing? A friendly greeting and a clean smile... I was the richest man in the world. I whispered as my eyes followed her: "Thank you..." And I was pleased to see that my thoughts while watching the painting at the exhibition had been right. She was exactly as I had imagined her... If she were any different, would she have looked at me with such familiar eyes and greeted me?
For a moment, a sharp doubt jabbed inside me: "Could she have mistaken me for someone else?" I wondered. Or was it because she recognized this face she'd seen making a fool of itself on the street last night, but couldn't quite place me, so she greeted me just to be cautious? But there was not the slightest hesitation on her face, no absent-mindedness suggesting she was searching her memory... She had looked straight into my eyes with complete confidence, then smiled. Whatever the reason, the fact that she showed me this closeness was enough to make me the happiest person on earth. I sat at my table with that insolent, carefree grin of people satisfied with life, looking around—at the room, and at the young woman now at the far end of the hall. Her dark, wavy, short hair fell onto the nape of her neck. As her bare arms moved, her waist bent slightly left and right, and fine muscles rippled on her back.
After her last song, she disappeared behind the orchestra with quick steps, and the lights came back on. I sat there for a while, basking in the joy of my happiness, thinking nothing. I asked myself, "What now? Should I go out and wait for her by the door?" What for?... "If I said 'I was waiting for you,'" what would she think of me? Was I going to respond to the bit of interest she'd shown me with such a clichéd pickup line?
I decided the most polite thing to do was to leave immediately and come back tomorrow night. I'd gradually build up our acquaintance... For one night, this was already a lot... Besides, I'd always been afraid of squandering happiness since I was a child—I always wanted to save some for later. This habit had probably made me miss many opportunities, but I'd always been wary of scaring off my luck by asking for too much.
I looked around for the waiter. My eyes caught the woman coming through the orchestra toward the hall. She wasn't holding her violin. She walked quickly. When I saw her approaching my side, I looked around... She was coming to me. To my table. She was smiling like an old friend again. She said, "So, you're not angry?"
Only then did I snap out of my daze enough to think of standing up.
"Thank you..."
She sat down on the chair across from me. She said, "I was afraid you might be angry."
I was completely baffled. Since I didn't understand what she meant, a bunch of inappropriate possibilities came to mind.
"No," I said. "Why would I be angry?"
Her voice wasn't unfamiliar at all. It was natural that I knew every feature of her face by heart, and even found far more meaning in it than actually existed. I had stared at her portrait for days, engraving it into my mind, then thoroughly completed that image with the Madonna painting. But her voice... I must have heard it somewhere before. Maybe in some distant time, in my childhood... Or maybe just in my imagination.
To stop thinking about these things, I made a movement. Since she was there in front of me and talking to me, it was pointless and meaningless to dwell on other things.
The woman asked again: "So, you're not angry, then..."
"Oh dear... How was I supposed to know?" I began to ask, moving my lips. But I stopped with a not-very-honest thought. What if she realized she was mistaken at my question, offered a brief apology, and walked away? The longer this wonderfully beautiful dream lasted, the better. I had no right to interrupt it, leave it unfinished, or wake up—even at the cost of reality.
"I'm not angry at all. On the contrary..."
After a moment's terrible confusion—lasting less than a second—I leaped from my chair. "Maria!" I shouted. I understood everything. I remembered where I knew that voice from.
She laughed... A laugh that wasn't very loud, but open and rich. I remembered that laugh too. She was the woman who had laughed at me that day at the exhibition with Herr Camera, when I said, "I couldn't see the soup..." How I hadn't recognized her then, I couldn't understand. Had the painting consumed me so much that it took away my ability to see the original?
I murmured, "But you were wearing a short dress and short hair... I couldn't possibly have known!"
"Ah," she said. "So you're one of those people who don't recognize someone unless they see them in a fur coat and long skirt? And with long hair."
"No, I don't think so..."
"Yes, you looked at me a few times... But how? Not like you recognized someone..."
Then, pulling her hands, which were still in my palms, she said, "Sit down now."
She said, "When I got back to my friends, I didn't tell them you didn't recognize me. I don't know why... Maybe I wanted that secret for myself."
"What is this—the article you mentioned?"
I paused, unable to remember at first. Then I answered quickly: "Of course... Of course..."
She laughed again. "So, how old are you?"
"You can't ask things like that. But anyway—twenty-six!"
"See?" She laughed again.
"Then you're the younger one. Because I'm twenty-eight."
We were silent for a while... I felt there were endless things in my head to say to her—things that could take years to exhaust. But none of them came to mind right then. She too looked down without saying anything. Her right elbow rested on the table. Her hand lay loosely on the white cloth. She had small fingers, tapering at the tips, so delicate they seemed all bones, and their tips were red, as if from cold. I remembered that her hands, which I had held in mine just moments ago, were indeed cold. I said, "Your hands are frozen."
She held them out to me. "Warm them up." And she extended both hands at once.
I looked at her face. Her eyes were commanding and resolute. She seemed to find nothing unusual about surrendering her hands to a man she was speaking to for the first time. I wondered? The same inappropriate possibilities kept coming to mind. I said, "If I had seen you in the street before hearing you, I wouldn't have recognized you. You were so cheerful, even mocking... Then, how should I put it, your whole demeanor was the opposite of the painting... Your hair was short... Your skirt also short, and your dress tight... You walked almost as if running or hopping... It would have been very hard to identify you with that serious, pensive, even somewhat sorrowful painting the critics call 'Madonna in a Fur Coat'... But I'm amazed..."
She laughed again. "You're very strange."
"Yes, very... I've remembered you since the first day you came to the exhibition. You were wandering around looking bored, and then suddenly you stopped in front of my portrait. You started staring with such strange attention that even passersby noticed. At first, I thought you must have mistaken the painting for an acquaintance. Then you started coming every day... I grew curious—as you can easily imagine. A few times I came close and watched the painting with you, almost as if we were alone together. You didn't notice anything; even when you occasionally turned your eyes to this spectator disturbing your peace, you didn't recognize me. There was a strange charm in your absorption... As I said, I was also curious... Finally, I decided to come up and talk to you. The other painter friends were curious about you too... They insisted too... But I wish I hadn't... We lost you completely."
"I couldn't come," I said. But I immediately regretted it. She might take offense. "That's very good," she replied.
"Then you knew I would come?"
"I guessed... I mean, the way you looked at the portrait, I thought you must have been somehow affected... "
"I was... Truly... "
"I understand too... You see, I'm the kind of person who doesn't waste time on unnecessary words. I talk the way I feel. "
"You haven't been alone?"
"I mean... only that... alone... spiritually alone... How can I say it... You have such a quality..."
"I understand, I understand... I'm completely alone. Not just in Berlin... I'm alone in the whole world," she said. "I'm used to it."
"Then we can be friends."
"You're making a very sudden decision."
"Sudden? You've just met me, but I've been studying you for fifteen or twenty days. There's something about you that's not like everyone else. Yes, we could be very good friends."
I stared at her in bewilderment. What did she mean? What could a woman offer a man like that? I knew nothing. I had no experience and didn't know people at all.
She noticed. "Don't be alarmed," she said. "Don't try to give my words other meanings. I always speak this openly. Like a man... Actually, many of my traits are like a man's."
She scrutinized me for a long time. "Yes," she said. "I realize now. Maybe that's why I decided there was something about you that I liked from the moment I first saw you."
"Because I looked like your sister?"
"No, not at all... But there is a resemblance... An air... The very look of innocence you had the other night at the little door when you were protecting your virtue like a frightened girl..."
Hearing this phrase—one I'd heard so often from my mother and father—from someone I'd just met startled and upset me. "Who told you about that?" I said.
"Your letter."
"My letter? What letter? I didn't write one."
"Don't you remember? The letter you left at the exhibition gate... I still have it..."
"I remember... I remember... So it reached you?"
"Of course it did... I laughed all night whenever it came to mind... You were thrashing about like an innocent young girl trying to defend her honor."
"That letter was a testament to my helplessness."
"And also to your honesty... But you know, I thought you resembled someone from that day on when I first saw your portrait..."
"Who?"
There was a note of jealousy in my voice. She laughed. "Don't you know Frau van Tiedemann?"
"Know? She's a relative! My cousin on my mother's side. But we're not on good terms now. Not me—my mother doesn't want to see her, because of her lifestyle... Her husband was a lawyer. He died in the Great War... Now—in my mother's words—she lives an 'improper' life... But what's it to us? What happened last night? Did you escape?"
"I was locked in the toilet until morning. But how do you know... Did she tell you?"
"Of course. She and I are staying at the same pension."
I understood she wanted to close the subject with that remark. We were silent for a while. We kept looking at each other with the approving smile of someone saying, "We understand each other." I found the courage to say, "I've never been to such a place before."
"Like me!"
Embarrassed at having said something meaningless, I added, "You too?"
"Yes. I'd never been to places like this."
"Tonight?"
"I've been coming for about a month."
Summoning all my courage, I said, "I followed you!"
She seemed a bit surprised: "Was it you following me to the door?"
"Yes. So you noticed!"
"Of course. Wouldn't a woman notice such things?"
"But you didn't look back!"
"I never turn to look..."
She fell silent for a moment, thought about something, then with a mischievous smile: "That's a kind of entertainment for me," she said. "When I feel someone behind me on the street, I overcome all my curiosity and insist on not turning my head. Meanwhile, I run through many possibilities in my mind: the person behind me could be a young man, an old, decrepit womanizer, a rich prince, a poor student, or even a drunken tramp. I try to determine who they are from the sound of their footsteps, and this way, without realizing how I got there, the road ends... So it was you tonight, huh? From your hesitant footsteps, I thought you were an older, married man."