Appassionata by Eva Hoffman Page A

in a sort of promise. Then he turns abruptly, as if his allotted time were running out—yes, that was the gesture she’s tried to place—and walks away.
    The reception to which Anzor has invited her takes place on the top floor of a European Union building, in a low-ceilinged space whose windows, ranged into a wall of glass, reflect the city’s jeweled nighttime glitter. The building gleams too, though in a muted way, glass and chrome mingling with blond wood and unostentatious spaces. A becoming modesty, probably achieved at great cost. A graceful sculpture, made of delicate metal rods, cascades down several floors, into the well of a curving, conch-shaped staircase. She takes in the nicely dressed crowd, the sanitized hubbub of restrained conversation, the sideways glances. When it’s not a concert, the world is, apparently, a conference.
    Anzor is nowhere in sight. Instead, another familiar face manifests itself out of the scattered groups. It is the Russian poetess introduced to her by that man in Paris—she’ll remember his name later—and she is hurrying toward Isabel as if they were old friends. Isabel restrains a gesture of slightly alarmed surprise. What is the Russian woman doing here, how come she is surfacing again in this unexpected setting? She was exhaustingly clever, Isabel recollects; and Katrina—yes, that is her name—instantly confirms this by launching into some playful disquisition in lieu of a greeting—something about the thickening of coincidence as a correlative of the increasing density of the modern world.
    “But what are you doing here, darling?” she asks, stopping herself midstream. “I didn’t know this was your kind of scene!”
    Isabel mutters something indistinct about having been invited by someone named Anzor Islikhanov, perhaps Katrina has come across him, he is from Chechnya …
    “Ah, Anzorichka,” Katrina says liltingly, but her eyebrows go up a fraction, and she looks at Isabel with sudden attentiveness. “Good old Anzorichka …”
    “What do you mean?” Isabel asks in increased confusion, but Katrina has turned toward the window, and is pointing to the view outside. “Isn’t this … poetic?” she asks, with a rhetorical gesture of her plump arm. “Surely, poets in such a country should have no difficulty finding subjects, don’t you think?” Her tone is hard to read, and Isabel isn’t sure whether she’s being taken into collusive confidence, or included among the objects of Katrina’s seemingly ubiquitous mockery.
    “Why, do poets in Russia have difficulties finding subjects?” she asks.
    “Ah, this Russia where I live,” Katrina answers, “it has nothing poetic about it. Except maybe its extreme ugliness, and we’ve never learned to make poetry out of that. Very backward of us,don’t you think? But we Russians, you know, we need our poetry to be misty and ideal.”
    Katrina is speaking with silver-quick merriment, but she continues to inspect Isabel quite carefully. Then Anzor is suddenly there, and Katrina raises her glass to him with sly complicity. “Isn’t that right, Anzorichka? That we all need an ideal, we children of the Soviet Empire?”
    They clearly know each other well, Isabel notes, with a small but informative twist in her diaphragm. Jealousy is a possibility even when she has absolutely no rights to it.
    “Ah, you’re impossible, Katrina,” Anzor says, and his gaze travels toward Isabel, in an implicit inquiry. He clearly wants to know what they’ve been talking about. “Is she bending your ear?” he asks Isabel, in his civil, urbane tone. Not the tone of their few private conversations. Isabel begins to say something polite, but Anzor interrupts. “If you don’t watch out, she will confuse you completely. She is our theorist at this conference, as well as our poetess. She has confused most of us already.”
    “Poet,” Katrina corrects him sternly. “You have to keep up.”
    “Yes, yes,” Anzor agrees, as if he’s