Nadia’s mother and father stood on the steps of the cathedral, her father looking stern and handsome in his charcoal-colored suit. He had the same dark hair as Nadia, the same Turgenev green eyes. But the cat-like shape—that came from her mother. Samara looked as regal as an empress in her ornate white gown, stiff and heavy and extending for yards and yards behind her. On a lesser woman those endless swaths of fabric might have been overwhelming, but nothing could detract from the stark beauty of the twenty-one-year-old Samara.
Over the traditional lace veil, she wore a headdress that was like a crown. Her face was a perfect oval, upon which her features seemed inscribed by a painter’s brush. Starkly arching brows, fine, high cheekbones, an imperiously straight nose, and the full mouth that betrayed no hint of the dimples that only showed when Samara was extremely happy. The face was so perfect that it might have been boring, if not for those exotic, mischievously slanted eyes.
Even in the black-and-white formal photograph, Nadia could see the fine texture of her mother’s skin, her softly blushing cheeks. But all the beauty in the world could not hide that Samara was miserable, utterly miserable on her wedding day.
She neither looked at or touched her newly-married husband. She gazed off into space with the look of someone who is utterly lost.
Nadia stared at the photograph in sick confusion.
She knew her parents had grown apart over the years, but she had always assumed there was a time when they were madly in love with each other. Why else would her mother have moved all the way from Moscow to Paris? Why else would they have gotten married?
“Galina,” she said, hesitantly. “How long did my mother and father know each other? Before they got married?”
“Two months,” Galina said, without hesitation. “They met on the day they were engaged.”
* * *
3
Nadia
Nadia was supposed to meet Maxim for dinner when she got back from Galina’s house, but instead, she went back to her own apartment and set to work translating her mother’s diary. She soon discovered that the task would take her much longer than she anticipated. Her knowledge of written Cyrillic was extremely poor, and that, along with Samara’s difficult handwriting, combined to create a code that Nadia had to puzzle out letter by letter, writing the words out longhand on a sheet of paper so she could read the sentences in their entirety.
Of course, she could have gotten it translated by any number of friends or relatives who could read Russian easily, but she had a strange aversion to doing so. Samara had always been a private woman. Allowing anybody else to read her mother’s most intimate thoughts would be the worst kind of violation. In fact, Nadia felt guilty reading the diary herself.
She was so desperate, though, for any glimpse into Samara’s mind. It surprised her, how painfully she was missing her mother They had never been very close. But now Nadia felt as if she were mourning her chance to change that, as much as mourning the mother she had actually lost.
She was so absorbed in the tedious process of translation that she was quite startled when she looked out her window and realized the sky had gone completely dark. Picking up her phone, she saw that she had missed several calls and texts from Maxim, who was annoyed at being stood up for their dinner plans.
Sorry,she texted him at last.Can’t make it tonight.
What about tomorrow?he wrote back, after an affronted pause of ten or twenty minutes.
I have to start packing up my mother’s house tomorrow.
Another pause.
Then,How long is that going to take?
No offer to come along and help her. Which was fine. Maxim wasn’t very helpful with manual tasks under the best of circumstances.
I don’t know,she said.
Can’t you just hire someone to do it?
No,she typed in irritation.I have to do it myself.
Fine,he said.Just come over whenever you’re done.
She put her phone down without promising one way or another.
She dreaded the task of going through her mother’s belongings, but she knew she had better do it sooner than later. The longer she waited, the more the house would become a sort of museum or shrine, and the more difficult it would be to deal with it.
She might as well do it now, while she was already miserable.
Nadia put on the kettle while she took a shower, then changed into a soft, loose robe. She padded around her apartment barefoot, setting her tea to steep, tidying her living room.
Once the tea had turned the lovely deep brown she preferred, she took a steaming mug over to the couch, and sat down with the photo album Galina had consented to lend her.
