The People in the Photo (9 page)

A few months after that, she told me she was engaged to a young doctor, Michel Hivert. She introduced me to him a week later. He was Breton, shy, very intelligent and rather mysterious, and he was just finishing his training at the École de Santé des Armées. I think he must have met the Zabvines through a work do while he was completing his internship at Val-de-Grâce military hospital. The old doctor had taken the young man under his wing as a kind of spiritual son. The fact he was a practising Catholic, if not Russian Orthodox, went down well with Daria, and I suspect it was the parents who arranged the engagement. In any case, it was clear to me that Natasha’s feelings for this young man were nothing compared to the passion she had felt for Pierre. Michel, on the other hand, was besotted with Natasha, who was both beautiful and cultured, and he treated her as if she were a goddess. Sometimes the three of us would go out to a café and he wouldn’t say a word all evening but simply stare longingly at her, leaving me feeling somewhat uncomfortable.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this, but if Michel was in love, for Nataliya it was more what might be termed a marriage of convenience, entered into for the sake of form. Again, you must remember that in those days such things happened all the time and, for a woman, being single was treated like an affliction. Sometimes, these orchestrated unions produced couples who held
each other in mutual regard and managed to build a stable life together. I have always wondered what would have happened had May ’68 come a few months sooner, or Natasha been allowed to marry Pierre. But events took a different course, and it was Michel Hivert who led her down the aisle in February ’68. They went to great lengths to be granted an Orthodox ceremony. It was probably the happiest day of Daria’s life, watching her daughter get married at Saint-Serge. Jean Pamiat and I were witnesses (he wore a silk suit), Michel’s fellow students were there in full dress uniform and the choir sang beautifully. Afterwards there was a huge party where we all drank each other under the table – even Daria, who started singing ‘Kalinka’ at the top of her voice. You should have seen the faces of the Breton contingent! Your father destroyed his wedding photographs but I kept the one I took, and I’ve never forgotten the trace of melancholy on Natasha’s face. The icon of happiness was cracked from the beginning and the signs were there, right before our eyes. But we chose not to see them.

Hawaii, 17 March (email)

Dearest Hélène,

Here I am on my balcony at the other end of the earth, and I’m looking at the photo of your parents’ wedding, which I’ve got up on screen. You look so very much like your mother. I stopped midway through reading the letter with a lump in my throat. I can imagine how distraught Pierre and Natasha must have been to be separated, and I want to take a moment to find a place where my thoughts can be with you, see your face again, your hands as you pour water to make tea or grope for your glasses, the way you converse with your cat or run your hands through my hair. All the delicious and intense things I feel when I’m with you, beside you, close to you. Because
we
are alive.

And like you, I am looking back giddily over this year of seeking, which came and shattered the routine of my quiet – probably too quiet – life. When I first wrote to you, I thought, rather presumptuously, that my reply was simply a noble gesture to calm the anxiety and answer the questions of an unknown correspondent. By the time we had exchanged three letters, things had
changed dramatically. The unease you described in your struggle with this silent past was, word for word, my own.

Our quest has given me the opportunity to understand the things that can break the life of a man, my father; to make sense of that extinction of his person that we witnessed, powerless to help. From one season to the next, and, above all, looking through the albums, I was discovering Pierre, the energy he invested in capturing on film the heartrending light of empty spaces. I guessed that these images were for him the representations of private aspirations, and that even aside from seeking refuge from his unhappy marriage, he was someone who craved solitude. I understand now how the separation of 1960 was certainly one of the sources of that pain, which he never expressed other than through photographs.

You ask who will remember us. I’d gladly tell you that first of all, it’s up to us to reinvent a present that will be ours, one that the dead cannot take away from us. We are driven forward, it’s true. But side by side this time.

Stéphane

Sylvia’s Letter (2)

Not long after the wedding, having graduated, your father received his first posting. He and Natasha moved to Brest, where his garrison was stationed. She wrote to me from time to time and sent the occasional postcard. She seemed bored whenever Michel was away, as he was most of the time. He had forbidden her to work, out of principle, and besides she had fallen pregnant straight away. He had, however, bought her a piano on hire purchase to give her something to occupy her time. She told me she would spend whole days sight-reading and playing Chopin waltzes.

You were born prematurely at seven and a half months after a difficult labour, and we were worried you might not survive. You had to stay in hospital for four months while Natasha slowly recovered from a pulmonary embolism, but in the end you both pulled through. Your grandmother rushed over to see you as soon as you were born and prayed for you from dawn until dusk, took care of you and showered you with love. It really was touch and go for a while. She had got it into her head to call you Hélène Seryozha
Hivert – the masculine diminutive of Sergey, which she wanted to try to pass off as a girl’s name! But neither the council nor the Catholic priest would register it, and I don’t think Michel put up much of a fight.

Your mother asked me to be your godmother, and I was honoured to accept: you’ll find the christening notice among the other papers.

Judging by Tasha’s letters, things seemed to pick up around then. She sounded happy: she adored you, her Lena, her Lenochka, her little princess. When you were about nine months old, she began bringing you to Paris when Michel was away; he could no longer put off resuming his assignments overseas. To your grandparents, you were something approaching the eighth wonder of the world … Oleg and Daria had decided to teach you Russian, which your mother already spoke to you when her husband wasn’t around. Your grandmother even tried to take you to vespers at Saint-Serge once, but apparently you made so much noise she never did it again!

I often dropped in to Rue Marsoulan, so I saw quite a bit of you. You were absolutely adorable, babbling away and trying to attract the attention of the cat, a fat tomcat who was shut away every night for fear he might lie on top of you and suffocate you. For your first birthday, I bought you a wooden toy with animals painted on it, and I remember telling you their names in Russian. I think
kot
was your first word when you started talking.

I came to see you in Brest, too – your parents invited me one Christmas. The flat was gloomy and the town, which had been completely rebuilt after the war, was also quite depressing. Michel and Nataliya – whom he called ‘Nathalie’ – were getting on well, but even so it always seemed to me there was something about them as a couple that didn’t quite work. Natasha, who was usually so talkative, would just sit there with a fixed, distracted smile plastered across her face whenever her husband was in the room. This pleasant yet vaguely distant demeanour served as a kind of defence mechanism, but it was clear that something was wrong beneath the veneer. I don’t think there was much love lost between her and her in-laws, Breton traditionalists who still hadn’t resigned themselves to Michel having married ‘the Russian girl’. In Brest, your mother was getting better and better at the piano, and she had a few friends, mostly officers’ wives. But they never became close: her glorious untidiness, her chain-smoking (always Craven As), lack of interest in baby talk and increasingly staunch feminism made her stand out. Too much.

She still wasn’t working. The only remnant of her past life – music aside – was her passion for reading, which remained as fervent as ever. More than once I witnessed her ignoring your cries until she had finished her chapter. She told me she even read while she was breastfeeding you! One night while I was staying with you, I found her fast asleep on the sofa with a book,
even though Michel had returned from his posting. She was still there the next morning. I don’t think it was a one-off.

It was September 1970, I remember well, when I received a letter from Natasha asking to see me as soon as possible. She came to Paris, leaving you behind, and I met her in a café near the Odéon. She told me she had seen Pierre, her fiancé of 1960, again; she had bumped into him by chance while on holiday in Switzerland, and was having an affair with him. Then, Hélène, I did something I’m still ashamed of to this day: I lectured her. In no uncertain terms. I told her she had lost her mind, that she must break it off at once, think of her family, think of you. I called her a bad daughter, an unfit mother and who knows what other foolish things besides. You see, I had lost my husband; Jean and I hadn’t had the chance to have children, and I was lonely, pretty unhappy and probably rather bitter. In the end I was so angry I called her
sumasshedshaya
– crazy, reckless. I don’t think she expected me to react the way I did. She blanched, gathered up her things, paid for her coffee and left. That was the last time I saw her alive.

I’ve replayed that scene over and over in my head hundreds of times since. I would give anything for it not to have happened but it did, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The following year, Natasha sent me a card from Saint-Malo, and another one to wish me a happy New Year. I felt so awkward about the way I had
reacted, yet unable to get down off my high horse, and I didn’t know what to write back. So I didn’t. Then, a little over two years after we had last spoken, she called me at work one October evening, from a café. She told me something serious had happened and she was taking the train to see Jean in Geneva. She sounded awful; I think she was in tears. She asked me to look after you should anything happen and then she hung up, saying she would call me back.

A few days later, I received a letter from Michel Hivert with another letter addressed to Natasha inside. I don’t know how he had worked out that I knew where she was; perhaps he simply guessed. I duly forwarded it, and took the opportunity to ask how she was. But Natasha still didn’t call me back. So, after going to great pains to track down Jean’s telephone number (there was no internet back then, of course), I called from the post office to find out what was going on. International telephone calls were prohibitively expensive, so I had to be brief. Jean told me Natasha had left her husband and was not in the best shape, but he was looking after her. I could tell they were hiding something from me. They no longer trusted me and, in a way, it was my own fault.

On the evening of 18 November, Jean sent me a telegram telling me to come to a town called Pontarlier in the Jura, and to bring the Zabvines with me. Your mother had been involved in a car accident. We set off in
the early hours of the next morning, but by the time we arrived, after a long day driving through rain and snow, it was too late. Tasha had sustained serious head injuries and a perforated lung, and she died without regaining consciousness. I always told you she was cremated, but that wasn’t true; she was buried initially at the cemetery in Pontarlier because the terrible weather had made the roads impassable. Then, four months later, her body was moved to the cemetery at Thiais just outside Paris, on the express wishes of the Zabvines. She was laid to rest in the Orthodox section; you can find her grave and say a prayer for her there, if you wish. Your grandparents are buried there too.

We were all there in Pontarlier. All except your father, who had been posted to a remote part of New Caledonia. He was informed too late to catch a flight in time, and arrived twenty-four hours after the funeral. He never forgave himself for that, among many other things.

The police report concluded it was an accident. The roads were icy, there was thick fog and Natasha was travelling in Jean’s car, which she can’t have been used to driving. I don’t know what she was doing there or where she was going, but I promise you it was an accident, a tragic accident. There’s no doubt about that.

I wanted to come and see you on my way back home so I took the train to Brest, but your father wouldn’t allow me in. He was devastated, and angry too. I think he had found out about the affair and thought I was in on the secret. I told myself he was in shock, that he just
needed time, and I resolved to come back when things had calmed down.

But when I next tried to get in touch in early 1973, he had moved house without leaving a forwarding address. I did all I could to locate you, to no avail. Your grandparents hadn’t heard anything either and were at their wits’ end. They were tearing their hair out, absolutely desperate to see you. Despite serious misgivings, your grandfather ended up hiring a private detective, but two months later he had a heart attack and died; the detective took the money and ran. My own attempts at finding you remained fruitless; it was as if you had vanished into thin air. Then, three years later, I happened to overhear a conversation in a waiting room: a woman was talking about her son, a soldier who had suffered an eye injury operated on by ‘Dr Hivert’. It could only be your father. I asked the woman where he practised, rang his surgery at Val-de-Grâce hospital and he agreed to speak to me. A few days later, I was able to see you again.

You had grown so much! You were now seven years old and when you walked into the room, it brought tears to my eyes. You were Tasha in miniature. You had (and still have) exactly the same smile, the same unruly hair (and a skew-whiff velvet bow), the same expression. You inherited her beauty, you know. But what struck me most, there and then, was how sad you looked. You never smiled but only gazed around you with those big pale eyes, not saying a word. You didn’t recognise me,
of course, and I didn’t even dare kiss you for fear of frightening you. Your father explained that you had not spoken at home or school for several months and he had had to ask his psychiatrist colleagues to step in to prevent you from being moved to a special school, since autism had been mentioned. It turned out you had only been back in Paris a few weeks: to begin with, Michel had left you with his parents, your paternal grandparents. He obtained a transfer to Marseille and came to fetch you to live with him, and then the pair of you went to Polynesia for a long-term posting. But while you were there, you picked up a quite serious flu-like virus called dengue fever, and it took you a long time to get over it. He sent you back to France to be looked after by one of his sisters, who lived near Le Mans, until he could get a posting back home. It was at that point you stopped talking.

I think you had been through too much upheaval and your silence was your way of saying you had had enough. Your father was raising you on his own in Paris, with a little help from his other sister, Madeleine, but his work was very demanding, and he was losing patience with your refusal to speak. If he agreed to let you spend time with me, it’s because he would have agreed to anything that might help you get better. He even told me he wouldn’t mind you seeing your grandmother again; what he didn’t know was that Daria had died of cancer the previous year.

So I was able to spend some time with you, taking you
to the zoo at Vincennes, ice-skating and to the cinema. You were a lovely child, good as gold; you looked around, taking everything in. But you never asked for anything; never said anything at all.

Even so, it didn’t take long to work out that there were some things you liked more than others: the overground sections of the métro (you would stare out of the window with both hands pressed against the glass); the stuffed animals at the natural history museum; hot chocolate; the piano, which I played with your little squirrel-like hands resting on top of mine. Sometimes when you were with me on a Sunday, you fell asleep in my arms sucking your thumb like a baby, and I would rock you to the Russian nursery rhymes your mother used to sing to you. You were so avid for affection, and I became more attached to you each day.

One evening on the métro, enthralled by the sight of the winter lights twinkling over the Seine, you grabbed hold of my sleeve and said ‘Sylvia’. It was the first word I had heard you utter since your return and I squeezed you so tightly you squirmed to be let go. You were so unused to the sound of your own voice that afterwards you became overexcited and couldn’t stop shouting ‘Syl-via, Syl-via’ as we walked through the underground tunnels while I mimed applause, beaming with delight. People turned and stared at us as if we were completely mad. Yet the first time you said ‘pa-pa’ to Michel again, he turned away to hide the emotion on his face. Your silence had been a living nightmare for him.

From then on, your father began to relax a little. He invited me round for dinner with you. Then he came with us to the zoo. And soon the three of us were doing lots of things together, especially going to concerts, because you loved music and could sit still for hours listening to Chopin. You gradually became more comfortable in your own skin. For your eighth birthday, with Michel’s consent, I bought you a kitten, the kitten who would grow to become our big fat Chacha. It was the first time I had seen you really laugh; you seemed so delighted with your present. When I asked what you wanted to call it, you immediately replied ‘Koshka’. Michel pursed his lips and told you a French name would be nicer. You never said it again in front of him, but I know you carried on calling your cat the name you had chosen. You still didn’t say much to us, but I sometimes heard you in your bedroom holding forth to the animal in a made-up language I could make neither head nor tail of. You seemed to be progressing all the time. And within a few weeks, you were talking to us again.

Two years later, in 1978, Michel asked me to marry him. The idea of me marrying my best friend’s husband, and he his dead wife’s best friend, will no doubt seem peculiar to you. But your father and I had a great deal in common: in spite of his military background, he was a scholarly man, one of the old breed of medics interested in botany and poetry, and I worked in the book world. We both enjoyed music as
well as peace and quiet. And above all, we both loved you. One night, when he had drunk too much whisky and the past must have been weighing more heavily on him than usual, Michel confessed that he had thrown your mother out a few weeks before the accident. At the time, he was religious, and madly in love with her, and he reacted very, very badly to the news of her affair. Not a world away from how I had behaved myself. You cannot imagine how guilty he felt. He never spoke of it again, but his nightmares gave him away: he would wake up gasping, covered in sweat, and go out walking the streets in the middle of the night. I sometimes didn’t see him again until breakfast, by which time I would be frantic, worrying he was never coming back.