Nothing is worse than not knowing what to write about. No, I know that I have to write about hats. But what can one write about them? Only the lazy have not written about hats. About the cap of invisibility, and “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “The Living Hat.” Everything has already been written. And books are sold: The Cat in the Hat, It’s in the Hat, With a Sword I Stand, and a Hat with a Feather, A Hat for a Sparrow, and so on and so forth.
There is even a film — The Straw Hat.
How can one say something new here, choosing such a theme? You write something, and someone you know will read it and say: “Oh, you old hat...”
Everything about hats has been written, drawn, invented. About the Hatter, and Dunno, and the musketeers. And there are hats everywhere, countless hats. For every taste and budget, so that one’s eyes scatter.
Here you have top hats, sombreros, Akubras, kepis, birettas, boaters, bonnets, bowlers, Panamas, cloche hats, rastacaps. Can one list them all, especially if one adds a papakha, a pith helmet, a Budyonovka and a balaclava?
I thought and thought, grew completely sad, and so in my pondering fell asleep, saying to myself that the morning is wiser than the evening...
I woke because someone was quietly touching my sleeping cheek. You know how unpleasant and alarming it is to wake in the deepest part of the night.
With difficulty I opened my left eye (the right one was sunk into the pillow) and from astonishment woke up at once: before me stood a short, somehow bodiless lady in a flowered dress and holding a yellow tulip.
“Hello,” she whispered so as not to wake my husband sleeping nearby. “Come with me.”
I quietly slipped out from under the blanket, followed the strange guest on tiptoe and closed the door. To be honest, I was more intrigued and bewildered than alarmed. Questions swarmed in my head: “Who are you?”, “How did you get here?”, “What do you need?” But I decided to keep the pause.
“You did not recognize me?” the guest was surprised. “Look carefully.”
I looked closely. There was something elusively familiar in her whole appearance. The flowered dress with a lace collar and cuffs on short sleeves, the thin bracelets on her wrist, the massive silver earrings... I had seen all this somewhere.
The stranger’s hair was chestnut-colored and softly curled — I would say waved — down to her shoulders.
No, I had definitely seen all this before. But where? Where?
And the yellow flower, a lone tulip, more like a large snowdrop. Déjà vu? Or sclerosis? Oh, more likely both together.
“Would you like some tea?” I asked in the voice of a hospitable hostess, hoping for refusal (what tea in the deep night and in such strange company?!).
But the strange lady joyfully nodded: “Yes, yes! I would! Very much! I have never tried tea!”
The night was becoming stranger and stranger.
I seated the guest on the sofa, brought mugs from the kitchen — my favorite violet one and a bright yellow one, to match the tulip, for my strange vis-à-vis.
“What is your name?” I asked the lady.
“I don’t know,” she smiled.
“How is that? And how am I to address you?”
“As you wish,” she waved her little hand. “You may call me ‘the lady,’ as you are calling me in your mind.”
And that was when, at last, I became frightened. Would you not have been? A strange woman bursts into your home at night, in the very midst of your sleep, a complete stranger who has appeared from nowhere and somehow passed through a locked door, and for some reason evokes vague memories or rather associations. How, pray, is one to understand this???!!! A ghost? A criminal (though she was rather too bodiless for a criminal)? Or worse — a hallucination? As Freken Bok said in the voice of Faina Ranevskaya: “I believe I have gone mad?!”
I did not like that thought. Not at all. Of course, I am no longer a girl, but not to that extent.
I closed my eyes and asked in a tense voice: “Who are you? And how did you get here?”
“I do not even know how to answer your questions,” the guest replied thoughtfully. “Perhaps we can try to figure it out together?”
“Let us try,” I agreed. “I have seen you somewhere. Your face, your dress, and even that flower have definitely met me before. And this monochrome quality of your whole appearance is familiar to me.”
I looked at the lady now without embarrassment. There was some understatement in her whole appearance, some incompleteness.
“And where did you come from, and how did you end up in a locked apartment? Can you answer that? Did you pick the lock?”
“What are you saying?!” laughed the lady. “I came from that room.” She waved her hand toward my studio.
And then a vague guess flashed through my puzzled head. Apologizing, I left my guest and rushed into the studio.
On the large worktable lay an open folder. I began feverishly sorting through the works. There were not many of them. I had started that folder only at the end of last year, which had been a poor harvest because inspiration had abandoned me.
Here, a still life with lilac roses; here, chrysanthemum-like daisies against the background of my favorite work; here, a winter city...
Yes, that was it! The sketchbook my husband had given me for my birthday, exactly a week before New Year, was missing! My husband had given me then a whole box of artistic joys: several sets of watercolor, sketchbooks, watercolor pads, brushes and liners, and I decided at once to try the new materials and began drawing the first thing that came to mind: a flowered dress, lace, a hand with thin bracelets, a flower from the same bouquet of yellow tulips... But... the time was busy, pre-New Year. And I did not finish the drawing...
How many times in childhood mother and grandmother had told me the phrase I later often repeated to my pupils: “One must not leave unfinished works before New Year! They will follow you all year!”
There! There! I myself had broken the familiar rule. I myself was to blame!
I returned to our tea table and looked carefully at the guest. “You know, I want to give you a gift — even two!”
I opened the wardrobe and took out a stack of hats, of which I was a lover and admirer.
From the middle I pulled out an Italian straw hat and handed it to the guest: “Put it on!”
From another shelf I took a glasses case with my favorite sunglasses, brought from the sea, in which beloved landscapes always seemed to be reflected.
Now the image was complete! The guest even became more dense and material.
“Thank you!” she smiled merrily. “And you know what — call me Marina!”
She stood up, looked at herself in the mirror, seemed satisfied, and unhurriedly headed toward the studio...
