From
A Veranda for Showers:

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     A white flower blossomed on the veranda; it was a twelve-year-old girl. Perhaps older, thought Edward. All these slender Indian girls look much younger than most of their peers in America. She was wearing a white nightgown that almost swept the cement floor. She approached the barrel, dipped her hands and ponytails in it and, resting her chin on the metal rim, began to splash the water delicately. Edward's powerful zoom lens brought the girl as close as three feet. He kept pushing her back until flowerpots and a large bird, sitting between them and attracted by the water, appeared in the frame. The shutter clicked and the beautiful moment wasn't lost among other moments, relentlessly arriving from the future. Then, the girl stepped away from the barrel, bent down, grabbed the bottom of her gown, stood up straight, lifted her arms, and holding her white gown in one hand, as if it were a white flag, she surrendered her naked, thin body to his camera.

     What am I doing, old idiot? I am a vice director of a department of an international corporation, I've been married for thirty years, I have three married daughters, and yet I am shamelessly spying from my window on a naked bathing Indian Lolita, and I am even secretly taking pictures of her. What will I do with these pictures? I won't send them to a journal and I won't hang them in my living room. . . . What would my wife say?

     The girl abandoned the veranda only to return with a large dipper. She drowned it in the barrel, lifted it with difficulty, bent slightly under its weight and poured on herself a little torrential shower. We've been assured, thought Edward, that time moves only forward. But then, why are there so many ways-books, movies, photos, memory-why are there so many ways to return to what had already happened? From now on, this young Indian girl, whenever I desire, will obediently bend, like a young tree standing against the wind. The shower of everything men throw on women will drop with pitiless force on her weak shoulders. And that melody will again mourn her whenever I wish so.

     The girl scooped the water again, placed the dipper next to her, crouched, began to lather her body, then spilled several more showers; after that, the veranda became empty. He should have returned to bed and somehow slept until it was time to go to work, but anticipating some continuation he remained at the window.

     A street. White cows. They are just resting. Or walking slowly. Or chewing a piece of newspaper. Rickshas without passengers. They push wheel against wheel and, waiting for clients, exchange words. A boy-servant is running across the street with twenty cups of tea. . . .

     Emerging from under the cement overhang and following the wet tracks left by the first girl, an adolescent girl entered the veranda. He must have imagined what was happening on the street after he saw the first girl. Most likely, he got lost for a few years in a forgotten fragment of his life. Later, he returned to this hotel, stood at dawn at the window, and saw how the same, but now more mature girl walked up to the barrel with water. She stretched, lifted her head, and looked straight at Edward. He jumped away from the window and then carefully peeked through the crack between the flapping blinds. The girl was lifting the bottom of her nightgown. She didn't notice me, he thought, and continued to take pictures. Above the knees, even higher. . . . And then, as if somebody made a grave error-pulled the wrong string-the curtain fell, hiding the stage, and the actress, like a frightened bird, took wing and flew away. . . .

     The street. The white cows. The boy-servant is running with twenty empty cups. . . .

     The veranda was filled-perhaps even overfilled-by the familiar heavy woman in a sari. She walked up to the barrel. Or perhaps he was lost again, perhaps now he was lost for twenty years or so? This is what the girl turned into. What kind of life is it, why is it going on-just to turn a treasure into a barrel of lard? Casting a sidelong look at the hotel's window and letting him know that he was seen, the woman put her hands in the water, splashed herself several times, turned her wet face to Edward (and to those who will see her in his photo album), sharply turned around, and dived into the depths lurking under the roof.

     A pink ray of light touched the bulbous roof of the building on the other side of the street; the delicately colored finger of the sun was announcing to those who wanted to see it that soon the city would be assailed by excruciating heat. The birds will fly away and hide from it. Where? In shadows unknown to humans. The flowers will quickly age from the heat; many will age irrevocably. And the heat will make the air so sweaty, so smelly, and so dusty that one will do better running away from it. But where can one hide from the air? Unable to escape the heat, people will habitually continue doing everything they've been taught by centuries. The astrologers and palm readers, the idlers and the poor, dogs, goats, children, vendors of sweets and spices, and the sellers of sandalwood sticks and pan (when people chew it, they look like vampires: their mouths are filled with red saliva, frequent and plentiful spits splash the walls and the sidewalks, and the streets resemble a movie set prepared for the filming of a massacre of demonstrators)-all will sit down, looking like animated, noisy tree stumps. Trucks, buses, and cars will speed by, roaring and covering them in dust. Barely touching the hot ground, bicycles and three-legged carriages will roll, carrying passengers in blindingly-white clothes. An elephant will stomp, a camel will sway, a bull will ram its way through, and a buffalo will wobble, passing by.

     A servant with a floor rag joylessly animated the veranda. Edward closed the window more tightly, got into bed and thought that under the quiet surface of his life, normal and even successful on the outside, everything was muddled up by anxiety and doubt, and to look even deeper inside was terrifying because for many years that space had been inhabited by an ugly creature called failure.

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     His marriage was considered successful only by the number of years he spent with his wife. Obviously, a transparent dress is not the best reason for marriage. Even though it was so transparent, it placed such an opaque veil around the girl's soul that Edward finally began to see through it only when his first daughter was born. After graduating from their colleges, his daughters turned into cold and shallow Philistines, found themselves exactly the same mates, and remembered their father only during holidays or when they needed him (that is, when they needed his money). He should not have given up then, long ago; he should have brought them up with the same strictness, with which he was brought up. Instead, he abandoned them to be devoured by teenage friends, liberal ideas, and stupefying television.

     His profession, international trade, Edward selected not with his heart, but heeding the advice of other people and taking into account financial advantages. He understood too late that every job should engage some unique talent, that is, the inborn talent to do something better than the others. Was he given any talents? Was he given a talent to feel differently than other people? He did not have enough courage to say yes . But if he answered no , at least he could ask another question: Why was he sometimes able to notice the moments when unexpectedly and mysteriously everything came together in such a way that he experienced a feeling possibly reserved only for those living in paradise? If someone asked Edward to describe such a feeling, he probably would not find precise words; instead, he would illustrate this state-this everything came together -with situations, but without hope that his interlocutor would ever feel the same thing. Music and feminine beauty often played an important part in those situations. It was not the physical beauty pushed on men by women, but the fleeting and mysterious one: the maddening bow of a head; the wave of unearthly origin suddenly flooding a face; or the trembling of a curl on a neck that melts, like a white candle, and its hot wax drips, searing your heart.

     Perhaps everything in the world used to come together all his life, but for the first time he clearly noticed this condition when as a thirty-year-old father he sat at a school concert. The orchestra, which included his daughter, played a tune by Mozart. The tune was beautiful, but it was marred by an erratic performance (nevertheless, the parental enthusiasm made a tremendous success out of it). Bored, Edward scrutinized the musicians and his eyes stopped at a girl, gracefully leaning towards her cello. She wore a black silk dress and her shiny long hair rhythmically, like ocean waves, rolled over her instrument. It seemed that she trembled all over-from the music, from being so young or from being in love with someone. Here is a girl , he thought and in that moment, the externally common schoolgirl suddenly grew up to the sky and squashed him with her future. It seemed as if the abyss of all the emotions of all those men who would ever fall in love with her showed in her instantly, simultaneously, in explosively dangerous concentration. . . .

     Another time, he stopped his car at a light. Listening to baroque music, he suddenly discovered in his rear-view mirror a cute little face. Darting glances from side to side, the girl was retouching her eyelashes; after that, she opened her tender lips and made them even more desirable with lipstick and pencil. Then, after she put the cosmetics in her purse, her face became serious and she got lost in thought. At that moment, time seemed to stop and Edward understood that everything came together : the old classical music, and the pretty thoughtful face, and the fat white clouds lazily sprawled above Paris, and the girl's romantic recollection, which he seemed to have perceived. . . .

     And once, on a cloudy and windy day in autumn, Edward was slowly strolling through a park. It began to snow; the snow was prickly and tiny and it rustled against the dry leaves. Soon, this rustling sound formed a rhythm and a melody, composed by some higher power and expressing Edward's longing for that unique woman he was unable to meet. The park grew dull from unexpected tears that resembled the tears shed during the final farewell to the dream of living through great love. And, unable to move forward, Edward fell into a bittersweet daze. . . .

     Let's say he knew that he had a talent, but how could he find a practical application for it, what business could it relate to? There are, indeed, such strange talents that the society either does not need them or their bearers cannot not figured out how to bring them to society and make them popular commodities.

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