The Russians and I are walking through the botanical gardens on the first nice day in spring. It’s Sunday. The sky is blue. The sun is warm. We saunter through the walkway of magnolias in bloom… hundreds of trees with fragrant blossoms open to the sun… the watering hoses raining down a silver veil of wetness through the sunshine piercing shady recesses. The four of us, Raia, Elena, Kostya and I have come along. Vadya has stayed home, because his knee is hurting and, he says, he has to meet with a student… hmmmm… one way to relieve oneself of joint pain. I miss Vadya’s craziness and humor, though, and wish he were here.

It would be hard not to like the Russians…how they have survived so many hardships and still live lives of grace and culture… dark humor born of irony… shrewdness and deep expression articulated in stories, art and conversation. I love Kostya, because he is like an ascetic holy man walking out of the Siberian forest… and Vadya, because he is a hard-living, vodka-drinking Dmitri from the Brother’s Karamazov… only with a paintbrush… and Raia and Elena who have the nerve to criticize an icon such as Chekov with a sneer.

I’ve taken the Russians to lunch. Among the dishes I’ve ordered are tree ear mushrooms and radish peel… after all, Russian literature is full of radishes and mushrooms. They are delighted and ask me if I search in the forests of America for mushrooms. What can I do, but smile? Only in Russian fairytales.

I inquire if I should send down the street for loaves of fresh bread from the charcoal ovens, but they surprise me and just want to eat rice. I am so gratified that they are pleased with the food I’ve considered so carefully and chase away the Chinese staff when they gather up bowls and chopsticks in the private, elegant dining room and prepare for us to leave… after-dinner conversation not always at a high premium in China.

Kostya takes out his paintings and all of us, the Russians, the young waiters and waitresses and I gather around to see… tiny oils, some no larger than a postage stamp…fairy tale creatures… beautiful women… landscapes… forest paths and quiet lakes. It is as if the forest has thoughts like mists suspended over the treetops that wind themselves out onto the paper in just one brushstroke. Kostya tells me that he uses the slips of paper as models for larger canvases, but his real gift lies in these diminutive, lush pieces that he carries around in a worn, leather satchel.

I imagine sharing his tiny pictures, but, of course, without even asking, I know that these forest thoughts are not for sale. Later, he gives me a gift… a larger canvas painted on the back of an Aili Bakery carton. He apologizes for the carton, but I love the painting anyway… his resolve to create on what others would discard carelessly. Kostya could not help but paint in the dirt for lack of anything else.

There are many thoughts not for sale in a life such as this one. They are glowing firefly lights in the night showing up here and, then, there. They are moments of revelation… moments that cannot be clutched or possessed. Kostya’s paintings fill me with desire to become only the thought that curls itself out of the forest in one continuous brushstroke… the one understood only by someone who is really looking.