45 Interlude 1983 Budapest. The room is full of teenagers sitting everywhere. The lifeless image of the Panasonic VCR on the Orion Color TV. “My name is Bond, James Bond.” Roger Moore pours a drink and nonchalantly puts the Dom Perignon in the ice bucket. The monotone male voice-over impassively speaks the Bond girl’s lines too. “It’s called Octopussy,” says the diplomat’s kid. Understand? Octopus-pussy. Roaring laughter. Someone knocks over the bottle of red wine. Paris and Vasarely Vasarely was a god at the time, and even more so in Gordes – he practically made the small town in the south of France one of the era’s art centres. And Marc Chagall, another Eastern European genius. Of course, it was Vasarely who renovated the local castle and lived and worked in the town for many years. The locals loved him! Upon our arrival, he took us straight to the hotel – which of course he wouldn’t let me pay for, and I wouldn’t have been able to either – and suggested we have a drink and told me not to hesitate to ask. I looked at the drinks, but my eyes, being used to Bikavér and Sovietskoye Igristoye, could not find anything familiar. Well, there was one after all. Obviously, I chose a Dom Perignon, I think it was a vintage bottle. It must have cost a fortune – obviously, I had no idea. The waiter looked at me reprovingly, especially when I asked for another bottle and a third one to go. Then we went over to the Master’s house, and sat in the garden, drinking champagne in the August heat. It was as if we had known each other for years, me talking about my plans, him giving me advice, and quite often resting his eyes on Kati’s behind in her bathing suit as she walked around in the garden. But this did not prevent Vasarely from elaborating on his theoretical theses of painting, claiming that movement is the violence with which structures and forms stimulate the retina of the eye. I think my girlfriend was living proof of that.
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