She always divided the photographs into two categories: "Like" and "Don't like." This was true not only of the photographs. Arina once visited an exhibit at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, where, surrounded by a mound of garbage bags and empty milk cartons and yogurt packs, there was a live person, a woman, practically naked, covered only in garbage bags. It was an installation, something about how the modern world of technology and information entombed true nature. Arina didn't like this kind of art at all. She preferred photographs and paintings of nature and animals.
"One hundred rubles if you have a student card," the ticket controller said, fidgeting in her chair. There was no queue, no reason to rush, but she acted on autopilot.
"Okay, I'll take one." Arina looked at the spherical sculptures again. Nellie would say that the spheres were "cool."
"The sixth floor is closed today," the ticket lady sneered. "For a press conference. Journalists only."
"Journalists?" This caught Arina's interest. The good thing about living in Moscow was that you could find yourself in the midst of the most incredible events at any moment. A shooting of a movie about the dead, students protesting against something and throwing leaflets at passersby or journalists holding big microphones with plush or sponge tops.
"There they are, behind the fence," the ticket lady explained, but Arina had already noticed that the way to the cube-shaped, snow-white staircase had been temporarily blocked off with red tape tied to the posts. A group of sleepy, unhappy journalists was standing behind the posts, behind the artificial fence. To the right, near the wall, there were small banquet tables with tall glasses filled with champagne, and small canapé sandwiches, all looking very inviting. Arina licked her lips. She should have eaten before heading to the exhibition. Another mistake.
"What's over there?" she asked, nodding towards the media gathering.
"Hatred," the ticket lady replied, sounding even more annoyed.
"What?" Arina winced. The ticket lady tore herself away from the computer screen and thoroughly studied Arina's pale, young face, with two birthmarks on the left cheek, and her black hair pulled into a loose ponytail, as if she were deciding whether it was even worth replying to the little girl. She shrugged her shoulders and sneered again as if saying that Arina was some kind of barbarian that didn't know anything, didn't care about anything, and wasn't following the news.
"An exhibit. The photographs of some cult photographer. He arrives today and they are all waiting for him here." Then, she added sarcastically, "Paparazzi."
"Hatred?" Arina repeated, incredulously, but apparently, the ticket lady had already gotten tired of talking to her client. She printed the ticket and shoved it into her hands together with a small pile of brochures and booklets.
Arina walked inside through the glass doors, heading towards the spherical sculptures. Incredibly beautiful photographs covered the snow-white walls. She saw a million bright colors and shapes as if the lens had accidentally captured parallel worlds and universes. The photographs were immense. Arina moved closer to the sign and read the title. Uncharted Worlds of the Human Cell. This outland world, which turned out to be macro photographs of microbiological samples, made her literally stop dead in her tracks and drop her jaw.
How beautiful!
Arina hesitated for a second trying to figure out where to go first. Luckily for her, the photographs of the natural landscapes of the Russian North were displayed on the third floor. She could probably hang out there. The other booklet invited Arina to "touch the light" that came to life in the installations of some European artist. Hmm, another installation. We'll see. The third booklet, the color of dark chocolate, was printed on much denser paper. It had nothing else on it but the word "Hatred" printed with glowing neon letters that looked like they were floating in the dark. If you looked closer, you could see vague shapes, subtle against the chocolate background, hiding behind each letter.
Hatred. How could hatred be beautiful? It couldn't and it was unlikely that the photographer wanted to capture beauty. It was most likely something pretentious, something that followed the principle of "the more sickening the better". And yet . . . Arina was curious to find out what was so "cult" about it and for what reason all the journalists had gathered here, or, rather, for whom?
"The TV crew is waiting for Korshun, right?" a girl passing by asked Arina. She was about twenty-five, almost as tall as Arina but wearing sky-high stiletto heels. Arina hated high heels. She wore sneakers or running shoes pretty much the entire year round, except in the very cold of winter.
"Korshun?" Arina winced. "I don't know. Who's that?"
The girl gave her a scornful look, scanning Arina from head to toe, which was easy because Arina was still sitting on the bench. Then the girl took the "chocolate" booklet out of Arina's hands, opened it and pointed her finger at a picture entitled, in large white lettering, MAXIM KORSHUN.
A man's face, the expressive face of a handsome man who didn't care how handsome he was.
His face, in a bright square the color of the ocean abyss, looking straight ahead as if he were having his passport photograph taken. His hair a mess, dark bangs tangled and slightly wet as if he had recently been playing sport and started sweating. He held his head up high, neck straight and shoulders proudly stretched out. He was wearing orange overalls like a prisoner, looking straight into the lens, into the eyes of the person holding the booklet, into Arina's eyes.
His gaze is sharp and angry. Fire and ice. His lips are pressed together; his jaw tight. "Hatred?" What a piercing glance, Arina thought. Then, unexpectedly even for herself, she thought, Oh, he has such beautiful, intelligent eyes.
"Is that him?" Arina asked.
"Yup, that's him," the girl sat down right next to Arina and rubbed her foot. The high heels were making her feet sore. "Isn't he hot?"
"I guess," Arina nodded, still looking at the picture. If anybody needed to do anything to attract girls, it was definitely not this man, even despite the fact that he was unshaven, messy, and on top of that, sweating. He wasn't trying to please the camera or those who would later see his picture, yet both women instantly found him insanely attractive.
"I have to meet him. I just have to," the girl said firmly and pulled a compact out of her purse.
"Do you think that's possible?" Arina asked surprised, and in that very moment she suddenly realized that the man in the picture, who she had been looking at for the past few minutes, would arrive here at any moment. He would walk through the same glass doors as she had done a little while ago. He would be here in the flesh.
Ariana suddenly felt as if she couldn't breathe, as if she were flying down a snowy hill in a sled with the wind blowing in her face, and her heart skipped a beat from fear and happiness. At home in Vladimir, she had a poster from a magazine hanging over her bed. Jensen Ackles from Supernatural smiled at Arina with a kind, open smile. He too was beautiful by nature; everybody liked him at first glance and flames danced in his eyes too. She could think about him all she wanted. She could even imagine something unimaginable, imagine herself with him, but she had never struggled for breath before.
After all, Jensen Ankles would never descend down to her from the poster. The man from the picture, on the other hand, would be here soon.
Arina suddenly wanted to sneak behind the fence to the journalists and see Korshun in person.
What if he saw her too? What if he noticed her?
Not in this life. How stupid! If only Arina were different, dressed in beautiful clothes, with nicer arms and legs, not so pale-skinned, blond, for Christ's sake . . . Anything but an awkward teenager who was nineteen but didn't look older than fifteen. If only she were someone else, a beautiful, self-confident woman. Then, he would notice her. "Nobody wants you, you're like a hedgehog!"
"Hatred is like a dream of death, a nightmare from which you can't wake up. Hatred is similar to thoughts of suicide put into someone else's head. Hatred destroys even what it loves. Hatred defeats childhood and nourishes those who have nothing. Hatred kills." The girl in high heels was chanting the words from the booklet and Arina was listening to her paralyzed by her own absurd desires and destructive thoughts about herself. She wasn't even trying to understand the words. She couldn't look away from the doors.
"The exhibit will be here until the twenty-fifth, and then it's gone. It'll move to London," the girl went on. "But, of course, he'll be here for a couple of days."
Suddenly, Arina got up and froze on the spot. The booklets slipped out of her hand and scattered on the floor, but she hardly noticed. She was staring helplessly at the unshaven man who stopped in the glass doors. Her heart began to pound and her breathing almost stopped.
It was him.