“You speak English, good, my Russian’s terrible,” he said, smiling. “I was asking if you had the time . . . to join us for a drink.” Another incandescent smile, naughty, cherubic. “There’s no one around this place and we’ve been here for two weeks.” Intrigued, Dominika walked back toward him and peeked into the door. It was a cafeteria, a dining room for staff. Two other young men and two women were the only ones in the room sitting at a table littered with plates and glasses. Four empty wine bottles were clustered together. They were all smoking and an overflowing ashtray was in the center of the table. The people around the table smiled—they were from Poland—and the young man held out a chair and poured her a glass of wine. Dominika introduced herself as a visiting event organizer, something vague.
The charming young man was Andreas. He was the leader of the team from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts Department of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art. He introduced his colleagues, all art-restoration experts, attractive, attentive. Everyone spoke at once, all smart, new generation Poles who knew English well (in the generation since the Soviets withdrew, East European schoolchildren no longer willingly studied Russian). The academy in Warsaw had been hired by
The Poles had been working in the empty palace overseen by scowling security thugs and a cavillous Russian foreman, and had cabin fever. They were apparently unconcerned about speaking freely.
“The murals are ghastly,” giggled Anka, a blonde.
“A Sardinian artist painted them when the place was built,” said Stefan, with a serious face. “Russians are the only ones who would think they were elegant.” Anka shushed him with a slap on the arm. Dominika smiled to show she was not offended.
“It turns out that Russian plumbers connect pipes as well as Sardinians paint,” said Andreas. “They’ve had burst water pipes everywhere, a lot of panels were damaged, and we’re here to repair the plaster and restore the paintings.” Dominika sipped her wine, interested.
Sitting at the table with these fresh-faced Poles, their country once a satellite state but now eagerly facing the challenges of a future where many things were possible, Dominika thought of her mother in her tiny State-provided Moscow apartment with the sooty heat-curdled wallpaper over the radiators that were always lukewarm, never hot, and her late father’s university photo on the mantelpiece alongside the photo of her mother standing in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, serenely receiving applause, her violin under her arm, and the little wooden box on the outside windowsill to keep food colder than any freezer, and the tiny table with an opened tin of
“How much longer will you be here?” she asked. “They’re getting ready for a big gathering in November.” The Poles rolled their eyes.
“We know. That smelly foreman is always telling us to work faster,” said Stefan. “But there’s too much damage. We’ll probably need more people to come from Warsaw. The Russians don’t care, and they pay what we ask. We’ve heard this is the president’s house.”
“It’s best not to speculate,” said Dominika, with a wink. The Poles all laughed. It was a merry party. A glass of wine later, Andreas asked Dominika if she would like to see some of the murals they were working on. They walked up a magnificent double spiral staircase into a series of long corridors with vaulted painted ceilings. Every light seemed to be on, but the place was deserted.
“This is just mechanical restoration, a matter of renewing new pigment that has been damaged. It is nothing like restoring an altar screen painted by Giotto in 1305. Nothing.” Dominika saw the fire in his eyes. He turned and caught her looking at him, and colored slightly.
“You should see how special it can be. Following the master’s brushstrokes, cleaning the dirt and varnish of the ages, seeing the blue he mixed with his own hand come back to the light, it’s magical.” He bashfully avoided looking at her.
