He considered mentioning that they had met before, car to car, she with Rudy and he with Jaak. No, he would be a good guest, he told himself.

The doors were opened. The gallery was a loft with a high ceiling and movable partitions stationed to create an open section on one side, a theater on the other, and to lead the eye in between. Arkady was aware of Irina, Max, waitresses, the alert faces of security guards, the anxious faces of employees right and left.

On a stand in the middle of the gallery was a weathered, rectangular crate of wood. Though the corners were chipped, it was obvious that it was well constructed. Through stains, Arkady could see a blurred stamp of the eagle, wreath and swastika of the postal authority of the Third Reich.

However, his attention had gone to the painting that hung alone on the far wall. It was a small square canvas painted red. There was no portrait or landscape or “picture” in it at all. There was no other color, only red.

Polina had painted six almost like it to blow up cars in Moscow.

Arkady also recognized it as “Red Square,” one of the most famous paintings in the history of Russian art. It wasn’t large and it wasn’t a true square either, because the upper right-hand corner rose in a disorienting manner. And it wasn’t just red; as he approached, he saw that the square floated on a white background.

Kazimir Malevich, the son of a sugar maker, was perhaps the greatest Russian painter of the century, and certainly the most modern, even though he died in the thirties. He was attacked as a bourgeois idealist and his paintings were hidden in museum cellars, but with the perverse pride that Russia took in the quality of its victims, everyone knew the images of Malevich. Like every other student in Moscow, Arkady had dared to paint a red square, a black square, a white square … and produced junk. Somehow Malevich, who did it first, had created art, and now the world genuflected to him.

The gallery filled rapidly. A separate room was hung with other artists of the Russian avant-garde, the brief cultural explosion that had started with the last days of the czar, heralded the Revolution, was stifled by Stalin and was buried with Lenin. There were examples of sketches, ceramics and book jackets, though none of the gum wrappers that Feldman had mentioned. The room was almost empty because everyone was drawn to the simple red square on a white field.

Irina said, “I promised you the show would be beautiful.” In Russian, the word for “beautiful” has the same root as the word for “red.” “What do you think?”

“I love it.”

“You said the right thing.”

The painting reflected Irina. She radiated.

“Congratulations.” Max arrived with glasses of champagne. “This is a coup.”