Get Lenin Read Online Free Page B

make-up, she would touch the photograph tenderly and reminisce.
    Eva’s idea of heaven was getting lost in the numerous bookstores around the city, wrapped in her trusty blue raincoat, when the men were off drinking. Theo, walking in the footsteps of his hero Toulouse Lautrec, would frequent the bordellos, restaurants and his drinking haunts that peppered the city.
    By night they would gather at the Caf é Procope on Rue Buci with their French counterparts, the hours spent discussing cinema, philosophy and politics over simple food and carafes of wine. Eva had to grasp the language quickly as the debates got heated and found she could, becoming more often than not the referee.
    Theo, perhaps caught up in the zeitgeist, announced he was a Communist, content with his bohemian lot and, as a reflection, his art became more de-structured and free-flowing. He stopped using colour, developing a tonal two and three tone style. Refusing to purchase picture frames, he set up a scrap wood stall along the Pont Notre-Dame with the sketches pinned and fluttering in the breeze.
    He squandered his allowance from his father in reckless abandon. Purchasing a bicycle, he travelled around the city, his long thin legs pumping the pedals in determination, his free arm clutching his materials. For her birthday he bought Eva a camera, a simple box brownie, and she thrived on travelling around the city alone by foot, bus and metro, capturing it. Dariusz had built a dark room in the apartment and he allowed her time to learn how to develop pictures in between his projects. Theo had paid for all of the wood from his father's allowance, helping Dariusz to haul the lumber up the flights of rickety stairs and hammering the whole thing together. The apartment’s window remained open most of the time after that owing to the smell of the processing chemicals.
    Eva's wanderings gave her a new fulfilment, making her aware of not only her own beauty but the beauty of the city and its people. She would buy all her of dresses from the flea markets and slowly she began to eat again, filling out and regaining her superb figure. The summer nights were balmy and the bright lights of the city somehow soothing. She truly loved Paris, loved being anonymous amid its streets. Theo would smile appreciatively, charcoal poised over paper as she undressed when Dariusz was out of the apartment haunting a cinema somewhere.
    Theo would sit at the caf é s sketching the passing population, waiters, waitresses and patrons. Among his drawings was a quick free-flowing sketch of Samuel Beckett who one evening sat and discussed the films and style of Sergi Eisenstein with the group. Eva’s English helped the Pole expand on his theories with the Irishman despite the time lag between the effusive Dariusz and the measured responses of Beckett. With Theo’s quick execution, Beckett appeared all twisted and bent like a crow dashing across the page. He told them he’d be back, but was departing for Germany to report on the rise and the abuses that the new Reich was perpetrating. Kissing Eva’s hand gallantly, Beckett asked her to visit Ireland sometime. Smiling back warmly, she promised she would.
    Eva loved to photograph the twilight, a time of the day when the darkness around her vision seemed the most bearable, where the shadows blended rather than clashed with the available light. Beside Daruisz's reels of film, hung Eva’s first images of the city; the carousels of Sacr é Coeur, the city's bridges, and the museums, all captured in a moment in black and white. Sometimes she would photograph an empty street, or a square just after a rain shower. She captured the storefront lights glistening on the ground, reflected back on the puddles. She photographed the mausoleums of P è re Lachaise, wandering amid the graves allowing her thoughts to drift firstly to her parents, then to her happy childhood, and then to Jonas. When alone, she believed Jonas was near, his presence almost within