VanCleef & Arpels on the summer night. Nonna Ananieva
had tea and they handed out diplomas to us, certifying that we had listened to her lecture. In a word, it was just rubbish. Well, perhaps there were a few interesting examples, and a story of how they had found fake pearls among the belongings of Wallace Simpson, which had been auctioned as the genuine article. In fact a lot of famous women added fakes to their jewelry collections: it is impossible always to speak only the truth and to abstain from gentle dalliance with men we oughtn’t to flirt with. “Out of the question!” Restrictions pursue us from our babyhood nappies, or as we should say now, our pampers, till the day we die. Sometimes restrictions can have a positive effect, as they force us to think smarter and jump higher to reach the forbidden fruit of our illusions.
By the sea back then everything was forbidden to us. Even solitude. We chatted a little bit about local scenery, the route, Carthage, which will outlive us all, about the Tunisians, who should have cared more about it, about the marvelously tasty sea air (for four whole months I had been without a sore throat, so I no longer wore my scarf as I usually do during the Moscow winter), about palms, about scorpions, and about his waiting for this night since the first day when we had landed…
I walked back to my car, reminiscing. Echoes of that period had not come to me for a long time. To begin with I didn’t let myself lapse into memories, and then later I got used to looking ahead. But now, I automatically switched off to the spring rain tapping on my new purchase, to the forthcoming trip to Geneva for the annual fair of exquisite watches and clocks, to the new raincoat in the car trunk and to the blue eyes of my close distant friend.
2
The Bolshoi Theater, new stage, auditorium. I won’t go into detail about the beauty and originality of the interior decoration. Well – I should probably mention the ceiling, at least, with the chandelier right in the center. I saw something like it in Moscow, in Slava Cinema when I was a schoolgirl. At first sight the comparison is not absolutely exact, but so what? The thought struck me anyway. A folding seat in the orchestra stalls. All of a sudden I began to long for The Nutcracker, for the excited and eternally tragic music of Tchaikovsky. I opened the program booklet: “It seems that in the 20th century no choreographer – from the great traditional George Balanchine right up to the super-avant-guarde choreographer Mark Morris – has resisted the temptation of plunging into the languor of the sounds of Tchaikovsky… As his music could not be kept within the framework of a nice, simple fairy-tale for schoolchildren, it erupted into the space of tragic philosophical generalizations».
I was six when my mother took me to see The Nutcracker. “Bravo Vasiliev! Bravo Maksimova!” chanted the audience. I’ll never forget that couple. But I couldn’t call that ballet a fairytale. For two months after that, I had a dream that I went to the children’s New Year party with Kostik Sokolov, a boy from my kindergarten who I didn’t really care for in real life – we never even played together. However, like me he loathed tea with milk and that strange soup the Russians make with pickled cucumbers. After that visit to the Bolshoi I began notice grown-up music, and to develop an affection for the ballet.
That excellent performance lingered in my mind for a long time; it inspired me, helped to dispel feelings of despair, to overcome disappointment in other people more easily, to cope with our inability to change the certain difficult circumstances, to put the insignificant to one side, to see through to the essence of things. It’s a life source, a miracle of human sensitivity. But I never dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer or even of attending dancing classes. I preserved the ballet for myself just like that – viewed from the perspective of the audience. I had no specialist knowledge of it and never intended to acquire any. This is how we delighted in contemplating a castle when we have no idea about architectural drawings, construction problems, all the research the designer had to do…. Nevertheless, I do sometimes muse on the creativity of choreographer, and on the lives of the people in the ballet profession.
After the Nutcracker life went back to normal: boutiques, sales, customers, orders, reports from the office. In the office almost everyone’s trying to be the boss, pretending to formulate brilliant strategic solutions, spinning intrigues, sucking up to overseas directors, putting on airs around us, while those down behind the shop counters seek favoritism, scrambling to get closer to the powers-that-be. This is the place where you can take real advantage of what’s on offer: power, trips, cars, and money are all at your disposal, and you get paid for nothing but pretending to work, and for feeling tired at the end of the day. Of course it’s tiring, nobody denies that! You should keep the boss interested, surprise him wherever possible; colleagues should be made fools of as often as possible; you should plagiarize other people’s ideas; make sure you look like a million dollars thanks to beauty salons and fashionable clothes; and implicitly understand what the boss appreciates and how he likes things done. Add to that constant pressure because of your ever-present competitors. The most important thing is to keep everything under control, squashing any parvenus in good time; to be ready to produce tears at any moment and bewail your childhood spent in poverty in a distant Soviet town; and to be able to squeeze as much out of your boss as possible as when the opportunity arises. In-between all this, you can also temporarily marry someone as a tactical move, or simply live with someone, depending on how things work out – crucially, don’t loll in front of the TV by yourself on Sundays or be seen going to the cinema with a girlfriend. And then the boss will be jealous; he’ll appreciate you and think that he’s not the only man who wants you. He’s male, after all.
I am quite sure that the foreigners who risked so much to come to this unknown and enticing Russia in the early nineties to set up their multimillion businesses here will have plenty of memories to entertain them in their old age. They could not in their wildest dreams have anticipated the vigour with which they were attacked by girls from the provinces looking for a new life. The newcomers certainly had the opportunity to enjoy the time they spent here. They could paint themselves as whatever they wanted: as hereditary aristocrats, children of millionaires, scientists, internationally renowned philanthropists… they could invent anything about their past life. They could describe things they’d read in books, things they’d seen in films – the girls would believe it all, take it all seriously. Later on they came to believe their own fantasies of adventurous youth. Their contemporaries were all telling the same lies. Everyone was doing their best to pursue their own goals. And these poor miserable childhoods, although faked, seemed to be the fuel needed to launch their jets into the sky of promise. Well, I consider myself quite a tolerant person. If you want to improve the world, start by improving yourself. Why should anybody tell these girls about the damage caused by smoking, about the dangers of dubious sexual relations and obsession with material possessions? Sometimes your wealth becomes your insomnia, your punishment, sapping away at your life. It’s better to strive not to be poor and to find another basis for your relationships with other people. But the only person to whom I could give this very sound advice was me myself. That was what I did.
I got a call from the office about sales. In this trade, sales are unquestionably the major index. We were doing our best. We offered jewelry of the very highest quality, really top rate. It was VanCleef & Arpels Boutique. That’s one of the most popular and respected names of the world jewelry. Not everything worked out the way we wanted it to: insufficient PR, not enough advertisement, shipping delays for new items… and as there was no showcase in the street, the majority of our potential customers didn’t even visit us. Nevertheless, with each new year we were gradually developing.
After working with Cartier sales, the pace felt very different to me, but then so did the jewelry and the clients. Cartier’s motif is aggression – you must; it’s aimed at the majority market. They advertise in practically every newspaper, with no expense spared: images of Monica, cats, giraffes, tanks, red bags. The motif of VanCleef & Arpels, by contrast, is the lady, the woman, with whom you dream to escape to wonderful distant places; who takes you by the arm and you find you no longer care where in the world you are; with whom the evening instantaneously becomes surprising and marvelous, and you dance and sing. This beauty is not to be offered to everyone – and this is the key point.
I skimmed the morning papers. Everything seemed fine. I asked the office cleaner to wipe down the glasses of the showcases once again. I opened one and took out a ruby ring, called Forest.