Conjuring Her Face

The famous artist from Serbia says she looks familiar: he’s seen her face in a Belgrade café. She’s never been to Belgrade. “That doesn’t matter,” he replies. He’s seen her face—the square jaw, the high cheekbones, the way her eyes scan a room for the nearest exit. He’s sketched her a hundred times sipping strong black tea in glass cups, poring over a literary journal filled with oblique poems, impatiently waiting for her lover to stop talking on his cell phone. He’s conjured her face with light pastels and translucent watercolors, layered acrylics and misted charcoal, blue pen and sharp pencil. He’s memorized every nuance of her expression, every outline she exhales on the pages of his sketchbook. “Look at these,” he shows her, “I know you.” Eventually, she starts to believe the evidence. As if she never lived her life, as if the blood of her ancestors never left his country.