Free The People in the Photo by Hélène Gestern Page B

have been with yours? Do you think there’s any way at all of communicating with Jean Pamiat to try to find out more?
     
    Love,
     
    Hélène

    Ashford, 12 January (email)
    Dear Hélène,
    Jean is too frail to be able to explain anything, but I’m going to talk to him about the parcel when I next visit him, asking questions to which he can simply reply yes or no. I promise you.
    If Nataliya died in Geneva in January 1973, that would explain my father’s grim mood from that year on. But in 1973, as far as I can remember, he was still living at home. Unless his absences for photographic expeditions served to cover up a parallel existence.
    You might find other clues when you investigate the contents of the box. Above all, be sure to keep me posted.
     
    Love,
     
    Stéphane

    Paris, 13 January (email)
    Dear Stéphane,
    Even though I desperately wanted to know what was inside, I really had to force myself to open the tin. The dry string snapped clean in half the moment I touched it. I had the same uneasy feeling I had experienced at Vera Vassilyeva’s, the same impression of shadows becoming flesh. And the same sense that everything I had taken for granted was revealing itself to be utterly counterfeit. I took in the contents of the box half-fascinated , half-nauseous.
    I am now in possession of Nataliya’s wedding ring – which they must have removed before she was cremated – engraved with the words ‘Michel and Nathalie, 1 February 1968’. Another ring, made from guilloched silver, carries an inscription in Russian:meaning something along the lines of ‘seek and ye shall find’. Oh, the irony! If you look closely at your father’s self-portrait, you’ll see he’s wearing the same ring, or one exactly like it, around his neck. A rectangular blue-lacquered cigarette lighter monogrammed ‘NZ’; a faded tortoiseshell comb;round glasses with a broken lens and a strange serpent bracelet which I might have played with as a child – it vaguely rings a bell.
    The tin also contained a wallet, whose leather had hardened and cracked at the edges. It must have lain untouched for thirty-five years and I felt I was committing an act of sacrilege by rifling through it. Inside I found an identity card, still registered to Rue de la Mouzaïa, a passport, a reader’s card for Sainte-Geneviève library issued in 1971, and some first-class métro tickets. One of them had a phone number written on the back, without a name. And then there was a picture of me as a baby, the same one I had seen at Vera Vassilyeva’s.
    The last thing left in the bottom of the tin was a 1972 diary. Its cover was completely falling apart, as if the leather had been slashed with something sharp. There’s very little written in it: the address of a military base in Nouméa, some initials (‘P.’, ‘I.’: Pierre? Interlaken?) and arrows across the dates when my father was away. While most of the notes are in French, in April 1972 Nataliya wrote a word in Cyrillic, quite a complicated one. According to my dictionary, it means something like ‘hydrotherapy clinic’. To treat what illness? Whatever it was, it’s clear to me she was keen to hide mention of this trip from my father, hence her writing it in Russian. October and November contain several telephone numbers, one of which (the same one on the métro ticket) is in the centre of a page, underlined. Anda meeting with a certain Maître Niemetz on 26 October. A divorce lawyer?
    She has marked certain dates with crosses every four or five weeks, but after September they disappear. In the addresses section at the back, there is a list of names, most of which I’ve never heard of, with the exception of Vera Vassilyeva, Jean and Sylvia M. (my Sylvia, I think). An address with no name (284 Rue Suzanne-Lilar ), an appointment with no details besides the time (3 p.m.) on 17 November, and then nothing. She must have been torn from this life so brutally.
    For the moment, I’m not sure what to make of