The People in the Photo Read online

  Let’s keep each other posted.

  Kind regards,

  Stéphane C.

  Paris, 6 June 2007

  Dear Monsieur Crüsten,

  I’m sorry if what I have told you makes you uncomfortable. If you would rather not carry on, we can stop now. But I won’t deny it would be a blow to me; now that I’ve made the decision to find out, I want to follow it through. I have spent my whole life surrounded by so much silence, trying to tell myself it didn’t matter, but as time goes on the unanswered questions gnaw away at me. I want to find out more about my mother’s life; I know almost nothing about her. Yet at the same time I’m aware that digging up the past is risky. Who knows what secrets they were trying to protect us from and at what cost?

  It’s not too late to put a stop to this. I could always continue on my own if you’re concerned about where it might lead. Let me know your thoughts.

  Kind regards,

  Hélène H.

  Miami, 15 June (email)

  Dear Madame Hivert,

  For once I’m replying to you by email. I very much enjoy receiving letters from you and writing to you (the quaint delights of corresponding), but at the moment I’m in Florida, and I didn’t want to delay my answer any longer.

  I fear that my last letter may have given rise to a misunderstanding, by suggesting that I had misgivings about our investigation. As I said to you in one of my earlier letters, one of the reasons that prompted me to write to you is that my father remains largely a mystery to my brother and myself. He was a fairly distant, solitary, silent man. It was almost impossible to have a conversation with him. When we were children, he found our boisterousness irritating, and would often leave the table in the middle of a meal. He’d come home several hours later, and we had no idea where he had been. And yet, I have memories of him dating back to an earlier time when he was more cheerful: I recall in particular when he taught me to ride a bicycle and to tell the time, on a big light-blue alarm clock bought specially for the purpose (probably some Swiss throwback!). He started teaching me to play tennis, and I remember sunny afternoons spent on the club terrace with Jean Pamiat. He sometimes came with a friend, Friedrich, whose sunglasses and leather jacket fascinated me.

  I don’t know exactly when my father’s behaviour changed. I thought it was to do with a marital row. My mother, Anna Krüger, was the daughter of a bourgeois family from Lausanne, a dynasty of bankers and insurance brokers, and I know that her parents had been very much against her marrying my father. It seems they were swayed by their daughter’s determination. I even heard on occasion, during a family meal, my maternal grandfather refer to Pierre as ‘the Gypsy’, which made Philippe and me very curious: we couldn’t understand what our father had to do with those people we’d seen in films who lived in caravans and played the fiddle in the street!

  Meanwhile, my grandmother Crüsten, a resourceful woman who had taken over the printing works after her husband’s death, was not well disposed towards her daughter-in-law. She would always make fun of the Swiss, saying they had swallowed a cuckoo. I believe her sniping concealed a deeper grievance: my mother relished being a housewife, and was even proud of it. She always refused to work, even in the early years when the studio barely brought in any money. My grandmother, who had fought in the Resistance, been a political activist and struggled to keep a business going, found my mother’s dependence irksome.

  During our summer stays in Besançon, she would wake us up at seven every morning and give us all chores to do in the printing works, trumpeting, ‘Roll your sleeves up, the petty bourgeoisie!’ but we were very fond of her. She was a delightful woman, brave and funny; she had taken huge risks during the war, printing false documents for families in the area. She loved telling us how she had made a false ration card for a neighbour, a Pole whom she hated because he used to hit his cats ‘but we couldn’t let the man die of starvation’. She got her own back by printing his surname as Dumkopfsky.

  Forgive me, I’m straying off the subject, but I was very fond of my grandmother and like reminiscing about her. We visited her less often in the latter years of her life – she and my father fell out, I think – and that saddens me.

  Going back to my mother, she was a sweet person, but with strong principles, who devoted her life to her husband and raising her children. At one point, I don’t know why, there were explosive rows in our family. These were followed by days, weeks even, when my parents refused to speak to each other. They argued in the evening, after we’d gone to bed: they must have thought that the partitioning would stifle the noise. I didn’t understand what they were arguing about, but I was always amazed to hear my mother, a model of placidity and restraint, raise her voice. As for Philippe, he would start crying and crawl into my bed seeking comfort.

  My father got into the habit of spending the night in his studio where he had installed a divan, a tiny bathroom and a gas ring. He rarely slept at home, returning only when my mother began her chemotherapy. But as far as I know, he did not have any affairs; in any case, I didn’t see or hear anything that ever made me think he did. On the contrary, he sank further and further into extreme solitude and silence. He spoke only in monosyllables or to give curt instructions. If it hadn’t been for his assistants, who dealt with the customers, I think he’d have had to shut up shop. After the breakdown of their marriage, which was the year Philippe had his bicycle accident – in 1973 if I’m not mistaken – my parents became distant, and remained so. My brother and I are convinced that there must have been one or several serious events that were kept secret from us, but we never dared ask any questions. While we were at school, my mother spent a lot of time at the Lutheran church and found some sort of comfort there, I think, and she had her charity work. My father was often away. Once or twice, he took me with him on his photographic expeditions, but I was too little to be of much use, not able to operate the equipment fast enough. We did not repeat the experience. The result was that we were hardly a close family. My parents did not eat together, except when we had visitors. And I remember entire days spent in a leaden silence. Philippe and I sometimes whispered all day long in order not to disturb the atmosphere, which was poisonous in the extreme. To be honest, my parents were so unhappy together that I find it hard to understand why they didn’t divorce. True, my mother had no resources, but her parents, the Krügers, were wealthy enough to provide for her. On the other hand, in the seventies, the stigma of divorce in middle-class circles made people accept unpalatable arrangements.

  You tell me that for a while you refused to acknowledge the importance of those family silences. For a long time, I tried to convince my brother (who was very upset by the situation) to adopt the same attitude, telling him – telling myself above all – that raking over the past wouldn’t change it and that we should turn the page. I would be less dogmatic today. You and I are strangers, but we know each other well enough, given the circumstances that have brought us together, for me to be able to tell you that I am unmarried and do not have any children. This deliberate decision has a lot to do with the sight of my unhappy parents, a situation that I had no wish to replicate. I’m now older than the age my father was at the time we are talking about. I’d like to understand what happened to make him walk out on us. I too feel that inner emptiness, which you describe so poignantly. And, as I grow older, I find it increasingly hard to bear. The fact is, I do not know the man who fathered me.

  I hope you’ll forgive me this rambling email, and for sharing these family secrets, which you might find inappropriate since we have never even met.

  I have not spoken about this to anyone for years, and I fear I may have let myself go. Let us say that this quest is as important to me as it is to you; take these words as proof that my desire to uncover the missing portion of my past is as strong as yours.

  It will be night time in Paris when you receive this message.

  Kind regards,

  Stéphane

  Paris, 16 June (email)

/>   Thank you for being so open with me, Stéphane. It means a lot. Let’s keep going then. Letter to follow very soon.

  Warm wishes,

  Hélène

  Miami, 18 June 2007 (postcard)

  Dear Hélène,

  Greetings from Florida, where the beaches are as beautiful as in the photograph, even though the conference doesn’t leave me much time to enjoy them.

  I’ll write soon.

  Stéphane C.

  3

  The passport-sized photo, which the scissors have not cut quite square, is affixed to the pink card by two brass eyelets, one in the bottom left-hand corner and the other in the top right. The subject wears an unsmiling, almost sullen expression. Her mane of shoulder-length hair is tamed as far as possible by two metal slides at the temples, their gleam picked out by the flash. Her dark eyes are wide-open as if dazzled by the light, her brow is furrowed and her full lips form a pout. But her chin is softened by a dimple which punctuates the perfect oval of her face. Her forehead appears slightly domed – distorted, no doubt, by the camera angle. The paleness of her skin contrasts with the murky grey background, while her striped blouse brings an element of geometry to the composition and reveals a glimpse of long, white neck wearing a fine chain.

  The document was issued at the Paris prefecture on 14 March 1959 by a Monsieur Félix Thoiry on behalf of the prefect. The driving licence relates to category B automotive vehicles. At the bottom of the rectangle, neatly signed in heavy ink, is a square monogram with the initials N and Z intertwined.

  Above the photograph, it is written that the bearer of this driving licence is called Zabvina, Nataliya Olegovna, that she was born on 4 January 1941 in Archangelsk (USSR) and that her place of residence is 142 Rue de la Mouzaïa, Paris (19th arrondissement).

  Paris, 25 June 2007

  Dear Stéphane,

  I hope you got back from Florida safely and that you managed to catch at least a few rays of sunshine while you were there.

  I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write to you as promised. Getting the catalogue on the Exposition Universelle done turned out to be no mean feat and I haven’t had much time to make any further enquiries.

  I wanted to let you know how much it meant to me to get your long email: you cannot imagine how strongly your account of a broken family chimes with me, in spite of our very different circumstances. Yes, it is unbearable not knowing. Our families’ silence is a poison that infects everything it touches: our dreams, our fears, our entire adult lives. And it leaves us with nothing but questions to fall back on, thirty or forty years down the line (I don’t think I told you my age: I’m thirty-eight).

  I didn’t get a chance to go to my parents’ flat until last weekend. This time, I decided to trawl through everything methodically, opening up each file and folder one by one. Given the volume of papers and the very little spare time I have at present, I expect it will take me several weeks to get through it, but I’m fairly certain the answer is in there somewhere and I’m determined not to miss anything. I have to say, though, I felt very uneasy about rifling through my parents’ things; it’s as though I’m raiding their lives. Sad, too, because the study reminds me of my father and I miss him. As I write, I can still smell the scent of his tobacco and his favourite old leather armchair, where I sit and read sometimes when I’m over there.

  By five o’clock, I was ready to call it a day, having drawn a blank. I was straightening up a row of hardbacks on one of the top bookshelves (a pet obsession of mine), when I met some resistance. I fetched the stepladder, took down the books and discovered a notebook that had dropped behind them. It turned out to be a log-book kept by my father, who was in the medical corps, in which he recorded details of some of his tours of duty off New Caledonia and the West Indies between 1968 and 1974. There was nothing much in it besides weather reports, daily menus and route maps, accompanied by sketches of plants and nautical charts. But tucked inside the cover, I came across a document I wasn’t expecting: my mother’s driving licence. From it, I learned that my mother’s maiden name was Nataliya Olegovna Zabvina and that she was born on 4 January 1941 in ‘Archangelsk’ (the official must have copied it down wrong). There was also an address in Rue de la Mouzaïa in Paris.

  Needless to say, I was astonished. Evidently my mother was Russian and had lived in Paris in her youth. I knew none of this, of course, because it was my adoptive mother Sylvia’s name that was on my birth certificate. I don’t understand why my roots have been hidden from me, or why I’ve been told so many lies. This discovery has left me shaken, to say the least.

  The irony is that fate chose to inform me of this through a driving licence, when I’ve never managed to pass my test even after four attempts, one of which has gone down in the annals of my driving school (I fainted at the wheel and almost got us killed).

  You told me you found it difficult to come to terms with your background. As for me, I’ve been plagued by anxiety my whole life. My mind is filled with images I can’t explain, scenes of catastrophe and things falling apart. I have rarely been able to shake this sense of anguish, even at what should have been the happiest times of my life. This probably explains why I have found it so hard to build anything lasting; I never wanted children either, for the same reasons as you, I think.

  None of this is really so terrible in itself. Yet the familiar, invisible burden becomes harder to bear with every year that passes. I’m a chronic asthma sufferer, which I now put down to the suffocating weight of silence. There’s something neat about this psychosomatic explanation, but above all it allows me to give form to the crushing emptiness of my memory. In any case, every time I have an asthma attack, I’m relieved that no one will inherit this from me.

  I intend to visit my mother’s old address, which is somewhere near the Buttes-Chaumont. But for the time being, I think I need to step back and mull it all over.

  All the best,

  Hélène

  Ashford, 28 June (email)

  Dear Hélène,

  I can’t put myself in your shoes, but I imagine you must be reeling. When you said you knew little of your mother’s life, I didn’t realise you were ignorant even of her nationality and date of birth. I don’t know what could have made your parents conceal all that from you, but, looking back, such secrecy seems extremely cruel. This time, I’m the one who fears I’m prying, but what exactly were you told about your mother, and how did she die? Do you have any other documents besides that driving licence? I’d like to go to Geneva as soon as possible to look through the albums, but I’m stuck in my laboratory working on an experiment that’s going to require at least a month and a half of daily observations (no rest for scientists). Do you think you can wait until August? In the meantime, let me give you my phone number here in England. It’s at the bottom of this email in the signature. If you’d like to talk about all this over the phone, don’t hesitate to call me.

  All the best,

  Stéphane

  Paris, 1 July (email)

  Dear Stéphane,

  Just a note to thank you for your offer and comforting words. For the time being, I think I need some space to reflect on what I’ve found out, but I’ll give you a call soon. It will be nice to hear your voice.

  Best wishes,

  Hélène

  Ashford, 8 July (email)

  Dear Hélène,

  Thank you for your phone call the other evening. It was a pleasure to be able to talk to you in person at last. That said, I very much enjoy writing and receiving letters, and sometimes I watch out for the postman. So I hope that as well as talking to each other, we will continue to write.

  All the best,

  Stéphane

  Paris, 11 July 2007

  Dear Stéphane,

  Now that my mini existential crisis has blown over, I’m ready to pick up my pen again. By the way, I forgot to ask the other day: what is this experiment that’s keeping you in England?

  You ask how much I know about my mot
her. The answer is simple: nothing. Let me tell you something. When I found that newspaper clipping, and particularly when I read the caption at the bottom, it literally took my breath away because it was the first time I had actually seen my mother’s face. And not only that, I had to deduce that it was her from the name below the photo – without it, I would never have recognised her. Of course I must have seen that face hundreds of times as a child, but my memory of it has vanished. Growing up, I was never shown any pictures of Nathalie (as my father called her, on the two or three occasions he referred to her), no matter how many times I asked. My father and Sylvia always told me that the album had been lost when they moved house(!). When I asked them what my mother looked like, he would reply that she was beautiful and then he’d change the subject. Even as a teenager, I thought nothing of the fact that no one had kept a single portrait of her, not even a passport photo.

  My whole childhood, I never knew how my mother had died. I remember a period of a few months, when I was eight or nine, when I constantly pestered the grown-ups about it. One day, when I had been asking the same thing over and over at the dinner table in that way children have of repeating things and no doubt driving their parents to distraction (‘But how did Nathalie die?’), my father, who’d stayed silent throughout, stood up and calmly slapped my face, twice: ‘That’s enough.’ Then he went back to his omelette. That was the only time in his life he ever raised a hand to me and it was such a shock that I didn’t even cry. Needless to say, I never broached the subject with him again.