The People in the Photo (11 page)

2 p.m. Had a phone call from Pontarlier hospital earlier asking if we knew a Nataliya Zabvina. They had found her purse with her identity card and Séverine’s number inside. They won’t say anything else, just asked us to come at once. We’re at the station; train is about to arrive.

19 November

Natasha is dead.

24 November

Funeral. Couldn’t get hold of her husband in time. He’s on manoeuvres somewhere and all the French police could do was pass the message to his high command. Given the state of the roads – at least a metre of snow has fallen in the last two days and the main road is blocked – nobody was prepared to transport the body
to Paris. So, after four days, we had to resign ourselves to having Nataliya buried at Pontarlier cemetery. I had called the Zabvines from the hospital and they arrived the following day. They’re devastated. Sylvia brought them here; she has barely said a word. When I put my arms around her, she started crying soundlessly. Pierre was there too – what’s left of him, at least. He stood very straight, numb, his mother white-faced by his side.

We are all living a nightmare now.

29 December

A month has passed since Natasha’s death and still I keep expecting her to walk through the door at any moment. I haven’t felt up to writing this diary since the funeral – too hard. I don’t know when I’ll be able to sleep through the night again.

When she set off for Lausanne that morning, heading for the clinic where she would undergo an illegal abortion, I couldn’t go with her because I was laid low with a migraine. I couldn’t stop throwing up. A local doctor came to give me a morphine injection and I passed out. It’s ridiculous to abandon someone in their hour of need because of a headache, yet that’s exactly what happened. Séverine was thinking of going in my stead, but her rather too frequent ‘travels’ meant she had been grilled at the border more than once before, and her eyesight was no longer good enough to drive back. Since Natasha had her passport with her, but not
her driving licence, which she had left in Brest, she had to avoid attracting attention at all costs. Séverine tried to get hold of another of her ‘old friends’ to ask him to stand in, but he wasn’t at home. Calling on mere acquaintances was too risky; there was always the chance of being reported. Neither could we postpone the appointment we had paid a fortune to secure.

So Natasha got behind the wheel of my Peugeot alone. I can vaguely remember her coming in to say goodbye before she left. I didn’t want her to hug me; I was covered in sweat. So instead she stroked my forehead. It was a strange, slightly maternal gesture, and stands out in my memory because we didn’t normally touch. I can still recall the feel of her hand, so cool against my tender skin. She said something in Russian: that everything would be fine, I think.

We had agreed she would call us when she arrived and I would take the first train to join her the following day. Séverine told me later she had had a coffee before she left and had seemed in good spirits, knowing her ordeal was almost over. She wanted to repay Séverine for her hospitality, when she could, but Séverine wouldn’t hear of it. She kissed her and told her to take care of herself.

‘For the first time since she got here,’ Séverine said, ‘she seemed calm, determined, clear-sighted. I wasn’t worried.’

The car came off the road somewhere between Pontarlier and La Cluse and fell into a fairly deep ravine. According to the gendarmes, the road had been
icy and it was snowing. Since there were no skid marks, their theory was she didn’t see the bend in the road and ploughed straight through the safety barrier at full speed.

She didn’t die instantly, but was taken to hospital in Pontarlier. She was in a coma when we arrived. Her chest had been crushed and she had sustained a head injury. The doctors gave us no hope, and she died at dawn from cerebral oedema. All night long I held her lifeless hand, the same soft hand that had stroked my face just hours before. Tasha was unrecognisable: her face was swollen, her head had been shaved and bandaged, and there were tubes and drips sticking out of her. Just before she died, she opened her eyes and stared at me with an intensity I had never seen in a human gaze. Her neurologist thinks it was a reflex, but I believe she gathered up all the life left in her to try to pass on one last message, which she never managed to convey.

I don’t remember what kind of state I was in. I can’t have eaten or slept for over twenty-four hours. The doctor, who took me to be her husband, pronounced her dead almost in a whisper. He got me to sign a register and gave me Natasha’s bag, which still held the money sealed inside a brown envelope. It was a hard-sided, boxy, ugly leather bag which didn’t suit her; she must have bought it with the money I lent her. It hit home that she had died miles away from her daughter, her parents, her books, without the slightest familiar object beside
her. The bile rose in my throat and I gagged. As for Séverine, she sat in the waiting room chain-smoking, saying nothing, staring at the peeling paintwork.

Back out in the open in the hospital car park, there was that strange atmosphere that comes before snow. I remember clearly the damp, heavy smell, the feeling of the cool air against my face, the incongruous memory of an afternoon’s skiing surfacing. And it struck me like a knife in the stomach that everything was over. I think that’s when it sank in. I started crying like a baby in Séverine’s arms, oblivious to the stares of all around us.

We walked until we found a taxi willing to take us to Geneva despite the forecast. Driving conditions were appalling and we didn’t speak for the entire journey. When we reached the top of the steps leading up to the studio, we stood there for at least five minutes before one of us (Séverine, I think) found the courage to knock. Pierre looked surprised and a little disappointed to see us.

‘Maman, what are you doing here?’ Neither of us replied. ‘Did Natasha get my letter?’

It’s all a bit of a blur, but somehow at that moment all the pain, lack of sleep, shock and migraine came together and I started hitting Pierre like a madman [he literally says ‘hitting like a demon’]. I think I wanted to kill him. I called him every name under the sun, shouting at him in Russian and screaming that Natasha was dead. He couldn’t understand a word I was saying. Séverine had to step in and tell him herself.

Afterwards, there was a long silence. Pierre had a faraway look in his eyes, as though his mind was elsewhere. I don’t think he had taken in the meaning of what Séverine had just said. Just then, I heard the sound of a record playing from the floor above. It was one of those syrupy [sugary] ballads by Zarah Leander, ‘Sag’ mir nicht Adieu, sag’ nur auf Wiedersehen’. For one awful moment the three of us stood listening to that ghastly refrain, and then Pierre sank ever so slowly to the floor, as if his muscles could no longer support him. His eyes glazed over; he was drained, utterly drained. The song ended, silence fell and it held us there, frozen. In a sense, it has still not let go of us.

What followed was like a nightmare without end: going to wait for the Zabvines, and Sylvia, who was driving them (I had sent her a telegram); our failure to reach the husband. The three of us headed back to Pontarlier in spite of the blizzard that had begun to swirl. Pierre didn’t speak, not a word. He only cracked when faced with the body at the morgue; on top of everything else, our beautiful Natasha had been subjected to an autopsy. When he left the room, I could see that the image of her on the slab had been imprinted on his retina, on his very being, and would haunt him for the rest of his life. His legs moved, his body functioned, but inside, he was a dead man.

Having endured the coroner, Séverine and I were treated to a barrage of questions from the police [cops].
Their tone was suspicious and needling, because they had realised the reason for Natasha’s journey. They said she must have been on something, or else it was suicide, and they made us answer dozens of questions about her – and ourselves, too. Séverine stood her ground and eventually they let us go.

We couldn’t find an Orthodox priest so Natasha was buried in a Catholic ceremony. What I remember most was the biting wind and how horrible it was to have to leave her there in the cold. Daria was sobbing, Oleg stood stock still. Just once he looked up at Pierre, whom he had recognised, and from the look in his eyes I could tell that he, one of the gentlest people you could hope to meet, would have liked to strangle the man with his bare hands. He’s no fool: he knew very well that his thirty-one-year-old daughter wasn’t there being covered in earth in deepest Jura simply because she had skidded off a bend in the road. After the ceremony, I took the Zabvines for a steaming hot cup of tea in a café that reeked of cabbage and burnt fat. We were numb with cold. We spoke in Russian. Stiff as a waxwork, Oleg kept saying, ‘We must tell Michel. We must tell Michel,’ while Daria wrung her hands and wondered what would become of Lena – just as Natasha had done a few days earlier. My heart bleeds when I think of that little girl who does not yet know that her mother is dead and that she will never see her again.

31 December

After the funeral, Sylvia left the car behind and took the train back with the Zabvines, who were a pitiful sight; their grief seemed to have aged them several years. I drove Pierre back to Geneva in his car, taking the wheel myself for fear he might do something stupid. The road was icy, it was snowing, I skidded several times, and I thought how Natasha must have felt the moment she crashed through the barrier.

We will never know whether or not it was deliberate. She loved life, better and more fully than anyone else I know, but life had quietly sapped her before letting her down completely, betraying her. She knew she had lost everything: her daughter, her unborn child, her husband and the man she loved. Had she decided to end the suffering that seemed to pursue her at every turn? She leaves the question behind her; the answer died with her. Now it’s our turn to suffer.

Here, the New Year festivities are in full swing, which only makes everything feel all the more poignant. I haven’t seen Pierre, Séverine or the Zabvines for a month and a half. I don’t know when or how Michel Hivert heard the news, or whether he has been able to visit his wife’s grave. Yesterday I got the letter Pierre had sent Natasha, returned to me from Besançon; in the note she sent with it, Séverine told me it arrived two days after the accident. She said she would rather
I return it to her son. But I don’t think I will. Whatever he might have written in it, it was too late.

1 January

Tried to develop the photos, but didn’t get beyond the first contact sheet. I feel terrible that all I have to send the Zabvines is one blurry picture, when they’re yearning for something to cling on to. But I was shaking too much that day. And not because of the cold. When I came out of the darkroom, I drank myself into a stupor.

2 January

Today I packed up all Natasha’s things – her jewellery, the contents of her bag – and sent them to her husband. I feel sorry for him. He’s not a bad man. He was always off with a book or away somewhere with the army, and the fact of the matter is that Natasha only married him to please her father. I don’t think she ever felt anything more than fondness for him. And that fondness wasn’t enough to hold her back when her path crossed Pierre’s again, two years ago. Now, the husband has become a widower, and has to live with the fact that the last time he saw his wife was when he threw her out. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes. But I don’t much like being in mine either.

13 February

Received a note from Oleg Zabvine saying Michel Hivert has flatly refused to see him and Daria. They fear they will never see Lena again and are utterly distraught.

15 June

I’ve been trying to find out where Lena is for the past two months, but Michel Hivert has moved house without leaving a forwarding address. Needless to say, his parents are covering for him and claim to know nothing. The Zabvines managed to have Natasha’s body brought back to Thiais. They go and visit her there every Sunday.

17 September

18 November

It will be a year tomorrow. It feels like yesterday. I can’t get the images out of my mind; I see Natasha in almost every nightmare. Old Dr Zabvine died of a broken heart.

22 November

Yesterday I put Pierre’s letter in an envelope and wrote ‘For Lena’ on it. I sent it to Sylvia Makhno with instructions to pass it on when the time comes. She is the little girl’s godmother and, with luck, Hivert will come round eventually and let her and Daria see her. It seems to me that the child is the only possible person to whom these words – whatever they may be – can now be conveyed, words which no longer have currency for us. She will grow up and one day seek the truth – that’s for certain. She will want to know what killed her mother. And we may no longer be around to provide the answer.

We have been bystanders to something bigger than all of us. Ten years of separation, marriage, children, none of it made the slightest difference: they still loved one another. You only had to look at them, the way they stood so close to one another even without touching. Natasha once told me that all the time they had spent apart had been like living in a coma. Once they had
found one another again, they might as well have tried to hold back the ocean. They didn’t even put up a fight.

Who, then, is to blame? They are, of course, for having given in to it, instead of going back to their respective lives and putting it all behind them. The Zabvines, for forcing Natasha to break off the engagement back in 1960 because they didn’t want their daughter marrying a penniless photographer. Michel Hivert, for leaving Natasha to raise their daughter alone, oblivious to the fact he was losing her. Sylvia, for refusing to listen when Natasha needed her most. Séverine, for setting up the appointment at that clinic. Me, for letting her take the wheel alone. And Pierre – Pierre, who, for all that he was madly in love with her, could never quite make up his mind, when she would have sacrificed everything for him. He thought the odd summer in Interlaken and a few snatched days in Brittany were all he had to offer, and spent his life hoping some miraculous solution to all his problems would suddenly materialise. Perhaps the truth is he never quite forgave her for breaking off their engagement and had resolved to sacrifice nothing for the woman who had given him up.