She got up, went closer to the tree, inhaled the bright little blossoms scattered over its branches… Her friend's words could be heard at the other end of the yard, coming from the cellar-Li's studio. Olga went down the steps: she could not yet imagine who might be on the receiving end of these cheerful and encouraging remarks.

"No no, my dear man, don't forget you're a satyr! Come on, give me a lewd grimace. Yes, very good, that's right, a look inflamed with desire, licking your lips with lust. Perfect! Hold it there… And you, Madame, look alarmed, tremble! A nymph already feeling this lubricious monster's breath on her neck… Good! Don't move…"

The cellar was lit with a sharp, theatrical light. Li, motionless behind a tripod, her eye glued to her camera, was pointing it at a huge plywood panel. Against an exuberant painted background of plants and leaves, it portrayed a beautiful nymph with a white, shapely body being embraced by a satyr surging up out of the rushes. The nymph blinked her eyes a little nervously. The satyr coughed.

"And-now-quite-still-everyone!" repeated Li in a magician's voice, and there was a click.

The faces of the satyr and the nymph detached themselves from the plywood and left two dark, empty circles in their place.

Li stood up, noticed Olga, and gave her a wink. A man and woman came out from behind the panel. It was comical to see their heads detach themselves from the painted figures and come down to earth on very correctly dressed bodies: a summer dress, a light shirt with a tie. They themselves seemed a little disconcerted by this sudden transformation.

"The photos will be ready the day after tomorrow, about noon," Li explained as she led them out.

They had lunch in this cellar where there were several painted panels arranged along the walls. On one of them Olga made out a castle in flames with a musketeer escaping out the window, clasping a swooning beauty in his arms. A little farther on a couple of suntanned bathers were basking at the edge of an expanse of blue, beneath the palm trees. The holes for their faces stood out oddly against the background of the tropical sky. In the foreground Olga was surprised to detect a streak of real sand, and a large seashell… Li followed her gaze.

"Oh that's quite an old one. From the days when I was going all out for the illusion of depth, trompe l'oeil. I noticed that people very much enjoyed the realism…"

Olga listened to her, amazed and touched, thinking: "This is Li. Elusive. Who is she? Conjurer. Painter. Photographer. Nurse. Three years at the front during the First World War. Imprisoned and tortured under the Occupation, yes, those hands covered in burns… Last night she cried in her sleep. What was she dreaming about?"

Li got up, forgetting the meal, and took out one panel after another, placing them all on the stands. It was not the first time she had shown her collection to Olga, but, as with all great enthusiasts, her passion was rekindled each time and gave spectators the impression of experiencing anew things they had seen before.

"I just had to keep inventing," she explained, putting her head through a cutout circle. "This is my mythological period. Recognize it?"

A girl clad in a transparent tunic was approaching a bed, by the light of a candle. A winged cupid lay there asleep in voluptuous abandon. Li's face appeared now in the aura of the candle, now on the pillow.

"And after that, one day, a flash of inspiration. And my literary period begins. Look!"

This time it was a man with a bushy beard, wearing a long peasant blouse, a giant standing beside an izba and leaning on the handle of a swing plow. The character posed beside him seemed, in his city clothes, to be the very epitome of the average man.

"You see," exclaimed the photographer, thrusting her face into the cutout, "a certain Mr. N calling on Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana. And you can't imagine how many Mr. Ns have already succeeded in convincing people they were on intimate terms with the writer. And not only the French: even the Russians allow themselves to be taken in."

Olga was beginning to feel slightly drunk. It was not the taste, now forgotten, of the wine Li had served, but intoxication at the nonchalance with which her friend conducted her life.

"I've even concocted my little theory on the subject of all these fantasies. This Mr. N who wants (mainly as a joke, but not only as a joke) to have himself photographed in the company of Tolstoy. What stopped him from shaking hands with him in real life? Minor hazards of existence. Not even his modest origins. Tolstoy used to walk about on foot just like him and lived in Moscow in the next street. It was not even his age: this Mr. N was twenty when Tolstoy died. In short, what kept them apart was the most trivial bad luck. The same that causes one passerby to slip on a banana peel and break his leg, while the one before just misses it."

"So you decided to give fate a little helping hand?"

"No. I simply wanted people who come here to learn to defy chance. To liberate themselves. Not to assume their own lives are the only possible existence. You know, I've even found a motto: Listen to this! 'Tolstoy is walking by on the opposite side of the street… Cross over!' They send one another these photos for April Fools' Day. But I want them to change their lives. I want to make them live waiting for the unexpected, miracles. I want…"

Olga nearly asked: "But Cupid and Psyche? Isn't it rather unlikely that your clients will meet them, even if they do cross the road?…" She held her peace. Despite Li's playful tone, she had sensed a vibrant, tense intonation in her voice. Which is how one presents one's credo to a friend, behind a smokescreen of jokes.

At that moment Li's face appeared in the next cutout, breathing life into a lady holding a white Pomeranian on a leash. The man who accompanied her had a pince-nez fixed in the empty oval of the face by means of a very fine wire. "Cunning, no?" exclaimed the photographer with a laugh, and… leaving the lady with her lapdog, she thrust her head into the hole with the pince-nez. When Olga went and placed herself behind the panel with the nymph laughter overcame them. They looked at each other from the two ends of the cellar-Li as the writer with his pince-nez and Olga as the satyr leaping out of the reeds. Then the satyr confronted the lady with the lapdog; after that it was Psyche and the huge vacationer in his striped bathing suit… Laughing, they stuck their heads into different panels and improvised conversations between the characters. "The satyr is walking by on the opposite bank… Cross over," cried Li between two outbursts of laughter.

A client arrived for a simple passport photo. And, without admitting it to themselves, they both became aware that the presence of this man, motionless in his dark suit, with his serious expression in front of the lens, was in reality no less strange, in his anonymous personal mystery, than all the nymphs, satyrs, and musketeers…

When the day drew to a close, and the sun's rays steadily lengthened, a feeling stole over them that their interlude of unreflecting laughter was coming to an end. Time was turned upside down, no longer flowing from its morning source but toward that moment when they would have to get up and say their good-byes, while trying to maintain a lighthearted, cheerful tone. It was that brief moment when solitudes are revealed; when one feels disarmed, incapable of checking the flight of the impalpable, gossamer stuff of happiness. Perhaps in an effort to hold onto the gaiety of the afternoon a little longer, Li gave a demonstration of a special camera. Its mechanism was concealed in a big book, a very clever simulation, with a thick binding and a gilded top. You could hardly see the reflection of the tiny lens…

"I bought it from an American officer," explained Li. "You put it on a shelf. It reacts automatically to a change of light. It takes five pictures at three-second intervals…"