LITMIR.BIZ

      The Red Pub, an old dive in the old basement of a big apartment house, famous from the Peter the Great times, was brightly lit, warm, smoke-filled and busy.

      A group of tipsy students unsuccessfully began singing a Latin song while the small group of gypsy musicians --one guitar, two violins, drum and harp –played something quietly on the small stage at the west wall, when Lodie and Vadim came in, going downstairs.

      “Be mirthful now, for nothing stays…

      Our good and evil both are brief!

      Capricious Fate leads many ways…

      Sometimes to joy, sometimes to grief!”

      It was a sort of Cabaret to night --a musical performance first, and then a show or a Séance of something new and unbelievable –that’s why, as soon as the Pub was full, the pub-owner tried to pacify the most unruly or noisy guests sitting on chairs or benches at long tables, drinking or awaiting drinks. Taking off their hats and ungloving hands, Vadim and Lodie could find seats only on a bench at a table underneath one of vaults of the ceiling at the east wall. By the oil-lamps Vadim could see well-dressed people and smell rich fragrant scents. Before he looked attentively at his neighbours, one chic lady attracted his attention.

      A lady in a hat with a black and white feather plume. He undid the fur neckband of her fur coat and one could see her necklace so large and blinding that it might belong to a queen of diamonds, and more, one could see that she was apparently very slender. Her fair complexion, the deliberate artificialness of her brightly rouged lips and festively decorated eyes made her looking like a living doll who took no notice of anyone’s attention. Lodie said in undertones, “She may be after the ballet show, she may be with someone…Une pâlotte efflanquée… Flattish.” Lodie watched the Unknown Lady too. And Vadim recognized the smile, her smile, the same damned indifferent smile --like a derisive ghost that could flaunt out of sight any minute --Smile the phantom, Smile the lost, Smile the memory, whose reality the woman had suddenly proved. However beautiful this phantom, the smile meant conventionality, slavery, deceit, denying his love for her and fettering his heart, because her eyes looked as though she peered into darkness in the middle of nowhere. Lodie was whispering something in Vadim’s ear so excitedly that one of their neighbours grunted and got his ear closer to them. Vadim said, “That’ll do, that’ll do… please calm down.” Meanwhile, the gypsy small orchestra began playing louder, or rather they simply came forward from the back of the stage, but this didn’t prevent Vadim from hearing his neighbours who talked apparently about the Unknown Lady--

      “An Italian woman. Count Radziwil has brought her to the city.”

      “No. That one is fat.”

      “She’s lost weight.”

      “What for?” The reasonable reply made the two burst out laughing.

      The laughter created a strange vibration at the table; it seemed to Vadim that the humans could turn into laughing phantoms and fly away in search of a vent out somewhere below the ceiling; but Lodie and he got their drinks, and any oddity of the moment vanished.

      The Pub walls were decorated with small oval portraits of each of Russian Emperors. One of the neighbours, a tall and nosy middle-aged gentlemen looked at the portrait of the current Emperor Nicholas I above their table, he looked at the stage and the bar at the south wall with tables close to it, and he began talking with his companion, “Red Pub. Their faces’ rubedo explains this name. By the by, did you know, gentlemen, that Count Orloff used to visit this pub to take a drink, at least once, sixty-seven years ago, on the long night before elevation of his Empress to the throne? Maybe our table was taken by the Count, or most probably he took his glass of vodka, standing up, in a hurry. Apropos, His Lordship’s King was born sixty-seven years ago,” looking round his table mates, he gave a resonant slap on the top of the table and looked at his companion who he called “His Lordship.”

      Sniffing his own glass --blush wine --Vadim glanced at “His Lordship,” the well-dressed young man with coiffured blond hair. A gold-laced waistcoat of paduasoy, perlmutter haliotis buttons, diamond tie-pin and ivory lorgnette were visible between the sides of his undone calabar-edged coat, but it was not his clothing what betrayed the young man’s foreign origin. His complexion too fresh; even after his wind-reddened face got back to its normal colour, his look too youngish, his blue eyes too bright; and his hand was white and manicured, nails looked quite sharp, and the left little finger was adorned with a gold and black stone ring –these details about the blond-haired stranger were too bright to remain unnoticed.

      A voice said in a loud friendly voice, “Gentlemen, be quiet, please!”

      The Pub-Owner, the big panting man wearing a loose-fitting jacket and trousers, passed by with a tray in hands. “Rozamira will sing Wondrous Moment, latest song, so beautiful.”

      The Tall Nosy stranger said friendly, “Naturally, Herr Kessenich! How’s Frau Kessenich? Send my regards…”

      The pub-owner straightened his loosely tied necktie, “Meine Frau is quite all right, thank you Herr Knabbe. Don’t quarrel tonight, please, Sirs.”

      The stranger of the German name “Knabbe” was older than his blond-haired friend, rather middle-aged, with a curled and obviously dyed reddish-brown hair and big sinewy hands. His heavy-lidden eyes twinkled and thin mocking lips smiled ironically. Nothing sinister was in the men’s look, even Knabbe’s cane with a knob in shape of a black eagle head –made of black amber, as it became known later --looked rather usual, though his manners looked like a jabber’s at times.

      The members of the small orchestra took seats on chairs, making room for three gypsies, who appeared on the stage making bows and nodding to friends. The elderly gypsy was very obese, and the younger one was as thin as jockey; both of them were dressed quite well and accordingly to their profession and nation: red neck-cloths, long blue jackets, red braided, and baggy dark plushes tucked in high boots; both of them played guitars. Rozamira, the young gypsy woman whose kinky hair was ginger for some reason, straightened the kerseymere shawl on her shoulders, and began singing in a pleasant contralto:

      “The wondrous moment of our meeting...

      I well remember you appear

      before me like a vision fleeting,

      a beauty's angel pure and clear.

      In hopeless ennui surrounding

      the worldly bustle, to my ear

      for

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