Appassionata by Eva Hoffman Page B

heard this before. Their in-joke, apparently. Just how well do they know each other?
    “I was just saying to Isabel,” Katrina lilts on, undeterred, “that the new ugliness in Russia is at least more interesting than the old ugliness. Don’t you think so, Anzorichka? That’s our great improvement, that these days we can afford to be ugly in a really vulgar sort of way. Camp, isn’t that what you would call it? I know it’s old news in the West, but in the past, we couldn’t even afford that. Kitsch is a sign of progress.”
    “Is that your new theory?” Anzor asks, without a hint of humor. There are undertones in their exchanges that Isabel can’t quite catch.
    “The newest,” Katrina drawls. “You have to keep up. And what interesting conclusions have you gathered from this conference,darling?” she asks, raising her eyebrows again in sly expectation.
    “Ah, conclusions …” Anzor repeats sardonically. “You know, they invite us, they observe us, they study us. Like noble savages. And we perform for them. We try to prove we are civilized.” His tone has traveled from irony toward something darker and more edgy. Katrina gives a brief laugh of appreciation.
    “But sometimes it’s nice to perform, no? I mean, isn’t it more fun than always having this one identity ?”
    Anzor shrugs impatiently. “And there are all these good roles to choose from,” she continues, though her tone is again becoming unreadable to Isabel. “For example, you can be noble savage or ignoble savage, or a marginal of the margins, or of the center…. Ah, Ahmed,” she croons, without missing a beat, and greets a handsome chocolate-skinned man in a cream-colored Nehru shirt who is hovering hesitantly nearby. “Come and talk to us. I’m sure you can explain everything to our guest, can’t you? As a marginal, you can’t get any more central than Ahmed,” she informs Isabel. “Can you, Ahmed?”
    She twinkles at Ahmed, as she twines her arm through Anzor’s conspiratorially, and leads him away. So they know each other very well. Isabel tries to turn her attention to Ahmed, whose manner and liquid eyes are almost excessively gentle, and who is looking at her with a compassionate, or maybe slightly pitying gaze.
    “Katrina likes to mock everything and everyone,” he says feelingly, though whether in complaint or compassion, Isabel cannot tell. “I am actually not very important at all.” Isabel asks him where he’s from, and he says, smiling wistfully, that answers to simple questions are becoming ever more complicated. “But I was born right here,” he says, pointing at the floor. “In Brussels.” She must look surprised, because he says, “Yes, I know it is unexpected. But it is true. Although, you see, in some other, perhapstruer way, I come from Bangladesh. That’s where my ancestors are from. That is the place that draws my soul.” He speaks soothingly, as if to soften the effect of his difficult disclosures. “You might say, that is where my soul comes from, even if my body came into the world right here.”
    “But you live here,” Isabel notes, or asks. He smiles even more consolingly. “I no longer have any choice,” he says. “I have made my bed in Brussels and must lie in it. I have a responsible job, you see, I could not let people down. But my sons … I hope my sons will go back to Bangladesh, to find their true community. I hope their souls will be in better alignment with where they live.” He looks at her wistfully, and asks which country she is representing. She explains that she is there under false pretenses, a musician on tour who happened to be invited. A traveling performer, let in through the back door.
    “A musician, is it?” he says appreciatively. “Then I think you may understand about having a true home, yes? A soul home.” She nods, charmed by his sincerity, his lack of guile. “Sometimes I go to Bangladesh, you see,” he continues, “and after several days there, I