Tonight I sat down at the large communal table at Segafredo with a glass of wine and a book. While leafing through "Grandmother's secrets- ancient rituals and healing power of belly dancing" to find the place I left off earlier this evening, I noticed the face of a very young man sitting on the opposite side of the table. He looked not much older than maybe 19 years of age, his lips were flushed red, the skin of his face was translucent and slightly pale and his eyes were looking into the distance, lost in thought. I could see some anguish on his sensitive face, like he was stricken with passion and a feeling of surprise aｔ something unexpected that moved his heart . He was wearing glasses and was looking serious and quite intelligent. After a while he opened the book again that he was holding in his hand and read some more. Then, after a couple of pages, he closed it again as though he could not bear reading more of it at a time, and his eyes were looking into the distance again, filled with longing, pain and sadness. I glanced at the title written on the back of his book, in Japanese letters- it was "Anna Karenina". Oh dear, I thought, was I sitting opposite a modern day young version of Vronsky? Was some Karenin stopping his Anna from coming to meet him in this coffee shop and he was trying to find out more about this situation through this book? Or was he a Russian literature major in some university?
After unobtrusively observing him for a while, feeling sympathy for him and his plight, I returned to my book. Here I was, feeling like a "woman of the world" and wishing this young man would have the courage to ask me for advice. Maybe he had deeply fallen in love for the first time?
It has been a long time I have seen any youngster in Japan looking this moved by a book, or any kind of emotion.
I read on, about the power of pelvic movements, ancient rituals, the power of woman, the joy of being lost in a dance purely for the joy of one's own soul, a dance which had become corrupted by churches, goverments, societies over the centuries of time into a much shallower form of entertainment. Women brought under the control of men, forbidden to dance, or only allowed to move if their dance could be owned by some man who decided to watch them...
And meanwhile, the young man would time and again, take in a few more pages of this Russian classic that was causing him so much pain, or maybe was mirroring for him what he was feeling. And Anna never came. He sadly finished his coffee, looked nervously at his watch, and finally put his book back into the paper bag that bore the name of the bookstore where he had just acquired this treasure and left...