The first time I saw her was on a snapshot. The organization in charge of the refugees must have sent it while she was still over there. I saw it by accident. You were taking something else out of your wallet, money to pay for the books, probably. (Do you remember the books I procured for you for years till the day I got caught and then you had to pay for them full price?) Anyhow the snapshot fell on the floor and I picked it up. You’ve been holding out on me, I said. You didn’t have girls in your wallet or on your mind like me. That’s how I learned about her, that she was coming over to live a while with you. Why did you make such a secret of it?
She was nothing special. She was there with her parents standing in snow in front of pine-trees. She must have been thirteen. The photo was a little blurred but she didn’t look like a promising beauty. I think I told you so. You like them young I said. I think I said I preferred the mother. I disclaim all responsibility for things I said or did then. At that age I was the crown prince of schmucks. I think it was some time in 1943, ancient history. I don’t mean the photo, but when I saw the photo. The photo too, of course, even more ancient history, since they were all together on it and looked reasonably happy. You have to in front of a camera. What’s the point of all this?
(He dwarfed them. They were on each side of him, their arms linked in his. He had his hands in his pockets. His wife was smiling at the camera. So was he, but reserved, self-sufficient, as a concession to the occasion you felt. He had horn-rimmed glasses and a moustache like Thomas Mann or Stephan Zweig. The girl was looking up at her towering father. You could see the long black shadow of the photographer across the snow like a giant finger pointing at her. The branches of the pines were covered with snow. There was a crow on one of the branches. The amateurish blur of the photo reminded you even then, that first time, of the photos of obscure families doomed into making the third page of a tabloid.)