Читать книгу Fleeting Snow - Pavel Villikovsky - Страница 20

5.a

Here’s the thing: it all started when I found an old photograph at the bottom of a drawer while cleaning. It was taken on our first date – actually, it wasn’t even a proper date, we weren’t quite sure at that point that it was one. Someone, probably a fellow student, snapped us sitting on a bench, caught in the act and smiling at the camera in embarrassment.

I showed my wife the photo: ‘Look!’ I thought it would make her smile, like it made me, this time not in embarrassment but rather smiling indulgently at those two silly young things. She stared at the photo for a long time; she didn’t know where her glasses were so she held it close up and scrutinized it as if scouring it for fingerprints. In vain, for the only prints on it were mine, and now also hers. Eventually she asked: ‘Who is that with you, some girlfriend of yours?’

‘Of course it is’, I said. I thought she was making a joke; after all, she recognised me without any problem, or at least guessed who I was. But she wasn’t joking, she was simply a stranger to herself. She put the photograph to one side and gave me a questioning look, as if about to say: ‘That’s the first I’ve heard about this.’

‘Yes’, I went on, ‘a girlfriend. This one here’, I said, poking her in the ribs with a finger. She picked up the photo again, looked at it for a while and shook her head in disbelief.

I just laughed it off at the time.