her husband, only painted when he felt like it.
“But he’s a great artist.”
The voice came from the corner, a voice with a contralto tone to it that I would never have suspected from such a young girl.
“Yes, indeed he is,” Goncharova sighed, and when she bowed her head, I noticed the thick net of white threads that embellished her black hair. “Sit down, Igor, if Nina doesn’t mind,” she told me. “I have to look after the other guests for a while.”
I sat in her place. But maybe because the young girl had such a fragile air about her, I sat on the sofa as far as I could from her, until I was rubbing up against the knees of some noisy young man. The girl kept giving furtive looks at a corner on the other side of the room, which was so dark I was unable to see if there was someone there or if the corner were empty. When she looked at me, Nina’s wide eyes had a touch of irony in them, but when they looked over at whatever was in the corner, they shone, dewy. The candlelight revealed a look of surrender. But, to whom?
“Which of Natalia Goncharova’s paintings do you like best, Nina Nikolayevna?” I asked to break the silence that had risen between us.
“I never tire of looking at her pictures of Moscow in the snow. But the one I like the most is that blue cow that looks like a pet. It seems as sweet as a teddy bear. If I had money, that’s the painting I’d buy from her.”
I started to talk about the The Donkey’s Tail, the group of painters that Larionov had founded when he still lived in Moscow ten or twelve years earlier, but Nina, clearly uninterested, only answered me in monosyllables. So I tried more philosophical subjects: freedom, my freedom, the freedom of one who depends on no man and no woman, on no government or ideology. The more she listened to my words, the more restless the girl got, and I realized that her face expressed a rejection so strong I lost the courage to go on. We fell silent. She must have gone on thinking about something while I wondered what else I could say. The silence made me feel uncomfortable.
But, as if she had read my thoughts, the girl said, “I like silence and solitude. I prefer to be silent, you know? But I want to tell you that I don’t agree with what you have just said. Because freedom, once obtained, is not difficult to bear, don’t you agree? In any event, it shouldn’t be for an adult person capable of reflection.”
Once again, it seemed to me that her words didn’t match her youthful appearance, and even less with the teddy bear she’d mentioned just a moment earlier. I wanted to protest, but Nina went on:
“I’m one of those people for whom the place where they were born has never been a symbol of safety or refuge. The awareness that I do not have this refuge, I find satisfying; I can even say that I like it. I have no homeland or political party, family or tribe. I don’t look for any, I don’t need any.”
Young people obliged to live without a defined set of values, often substitute theories for values. However, I didn’t want to initiate any controversy, not least because I wasn’t quite sure of my own position on this topic. So I limited myself to saying, “You live in Paris, you have a new homeland, new friends. Isn’t that a refuge?”
“We are just passing through Paris. The day after tomorrow, we go back to Berlin. But Berlin will not become home for me, I’m sure of that.”
I looked at her, perplexed. Nonetheless it felt good to be next to her. Maybe in her company I could even manage to enjoy being silent. I felt respect and a little fear in her presence. But above all I needed to think about everything that we had said. While I shifted about on the sofa, restless, Nina sent another look into the darkness. I followed her eyes: a man’s figure moved in the corner on the other side of the room, a head was shaken, and a mane of long hair spread over the back of the chair.
“Monsieur, ce métro va à Billancourt?”
“Oui, monsieur. But there’s nothing interesting in Billancourt. Just factories and immigrants. The Russians were there before the war, and recently a