DAILYSOMETHING

The Photograph

When Galina Mikhaylovna found the glossy but book-worn photo of a young girl in a swimming suit, reclining playfully on a sofa, she thought it odd that it looked so old. The photo was on top of some branches next to a sixteen floor highrise. The highrise was a stamp project built in the eighties, you can find these in Moscow just as well as any other city. The complexes inherited an indearing name of a particularly sour forest berry.

Masha knew quite before she knew love that she would only love once. She thought it must be a peculiar thing that happens to a few people. She was fourteen, then fifteen, then sixteen, but Pavel, who came only to pick up her older brother for volleyball games and one holiday celebration or another, was that guy. Pavel had curly hair and seemed kind and funny even when he tried very hard to detract her from staring aimlessly at him. She knew he thought she was too young.

They met as equals when she was eighteen. Though many guys tried hard to convince her that she was the most beautiful girl in Moscow, she preferred to think that she was pretty, and that it was the lightness of her soul that so inspired everyone. Pavel’s face showed discomfort rather than surprise — he knew that she was pretty and he has seen her for many years, drifting through various early stages of female grace. It was discomfort because he now understood that she has the mind to comprehend his line of though at the moment, that she was beautiful, that sex filled the space between their eyes when they met. Masha was a bit ahead of him in this, for she had years to think of ways to affect him.

They drank vodka at her brother’s apartment, Pavel roomed with him. It was Pavel’s twenty fourth birthday. They drank and the night moved faster as more vodka vaporized through their pores. Masha left with her friend at four and Pavel slept almost peacefully till midday. It was two weeks before New Year’s.

Lana’s occupation was always work and seriousness. Pavel met her through a friend of his. She invited them for New Year’s. There were plans for New Year’s with Masha too, but over a moment of serious thinking Pavel decided to go into unknown company and celebrate with Lana.

The moment at which the photo of Masha was taken was when she was seventeen. She and her friend goofed around the house with an old camera. The photo was the only one that developed well from the whole roll. Galina Mikhaylovna took the photo into the smelly lobby of the building and placed it on top of the free newspapers, in case someone had dropped it from a balcony.

Needless to say Pavel married Lana. Fourteen years later Masha had won the Beauty of Russia contest three years in a row, and had been divorced for four. Pavel lived in Switzerland and owned a hectic but profitable business. But fourteen years later, this time in the summer, when Pavel had returned to Moscow after ten years and was walking to a subway station, he felt someone looking at him. He knew it was her and she was striking, tall, slender, looking ten years younger then she was. This time it was a surprise on his face, but again not at her beauty — she came at him with tears in her eyes, and the honesty of it stroke him almost to tears too. “Is it you?” she asked. And he said yes.

What followed was a bottle of champaign and chocolate at her apartment, which despite her mature lifestyle still looked and smelled quite girlish. When it was late enough to part, he, spirited by her beauty and the stories of time past, asked for a photo from a time that he knew her last. The photo that he was too reluctant to rip as he dropped it from the balcony as the sun was about to rise. It was a good farewell, but having returned to the newspaper stack downstairs, this time with his wife and daughter along, it was a kind of past that creeps up, so he took it up with a newspaper and ripped it quite angrily in the bathroom.