"TALES OF GHOSTS"
about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series
"BROKEN MIRROR"
13. A PHOTO FILM
Alexander took his favorite photo camera out of the closet and went to the crash place. He wasn’t a famous photographer, however, his portfolio included footage of the biggest disasters of recent years. Photos of all kinds. Both ordinary and non-standard. He used to put the latter in a separate album and showed them to his friend.
***
We flew to Rome for the Shareholders’ Meeting. Pasha was supposed to go alone, but at the last moment, for some reason, the Italians sent an invitation to me as well. I had never been to Rome, although we often went on vacation in Italy, and I had long wanted to see that city. Nevertheless, I boarded the plane with mixed feelings, as if we were going to our own funeral. At the Shareholders’ Meeting Pasha would be retired, yes, a small tragedy, caused by someone’s personal ambitions in political games. However, I was glad to be there with him at such a hard moment.
***
Having photographed everything that seemed interesting, Alexander drew attention to a foggy haze appearing near an old pine tree. He stepped closer and took another picture. Would it reveal itself? A couple more steps, and the photographer noticed a photo film in the grass under the tree, probably directly related to one of the victims of the plane crash. Alexander carefully picked up the unexpected trophy from the ground and took it with him.
***
Rome is the eternal city that makes you forget what time you are in and look into the eyes of Eternity. We came for a week. Official events had been planned for Monday and Tuesday, the rest of the days we were left to our own. August was on the calendar, with a terrible heat outside, over 40 degrees. It was good that I brought the light white dress I had danced in last summer at our daughter’s wedding.
***
Finally, the photos were ready, and Alexander began to examine them leisurely. Almost all the pictures featured a charming lady in white. She was smiling as if she felt like the happiest woman in the world. For some reason, the word ‘wedding’ came to his mind.
“It’s strange, the dress doesn’t look like a wedding one,” Alexander pondered. He always tried to imagine stories of unknown people by their photographs.
***
The hotel was located almost in the center, by the Angel’s Castle. We spent the whole weekend wandering around the city. I reveled in Rome, only a presentiment of something irreversible, inexplicably crept into my soul even before our departure, saddened me. That was why I didn’t want to be photographed together with Pasha, someone had told me in childhood and I believed, joint photos meant separation.
For the past year, our communication had been reduced to talking about the fate of the company. I know, and everyone knew, that Pasha did his best. Of course, he was worried and, constantly thinking aloud, replaying the chain of events and trying to imagine what would have happened if he had acted differently at one point or another, but the ending loomed always the same: the company had been doomed.
There must be something or someone Upstairs, which or who determines our path, that contains some inevitable points to pass through, and no human being can avoid them under any circumstances. I tried to explain to Pasha somehow that life would go on anyway, but he didn’t seem to hear me.
***
The following pictures show people in business suits. An obese, bald man with small eyes and a large red nose, apparently drinker, caused the photographer to associate him with a pig.
“Did the woman in white come to sign a business contract there? Most likely, a very important one. Probably a multi-million dollar contract. That’s why she’s happy…” thought Alexander.
***
Maurizio was supposed to pick us up from the hotel in twenty minutes. The representative of the Russian shareholder, Mr. Piggins, who had arrived in Rome the day before, was having breakfast at a far table by the window. Pasha went to greet him and returned to me gloomier than clouds.
“The Shareholders’ Meeting is in danger of being cancelled. Mr. Piggins didn’t recognize me. He must have been drinking all night!”
Mr. Piggins hadn’t drunk for five years. Yes, before that he had been an important person in the district committee and apparently drunk a lot. Recently he began to have problems with his new boss. Mr. Piggins was at the pre-retirement age, and he could be dismissed from his post at any moment.
We returned to the room, changed into business suits and went down to the lobby. Maurizio hadn’t yet appeared, but an excited hotel employee immediately ran up to us.
“The third member of your delegation was just descending the stairs from the restaurant and fell, spanning seven steps, broke a flower vase and the wall with his head. I called an ambulance for him, I think he is drunk, but he speaks neither Italian nor English. He’s in his room now. Can you help talking to him?”
I sighed heavily. Mr. Piggins was obliged not only to attend the Shareholders’ Meeting, but also to read out several points of the minutes, vote and sign the voting results. Without his signature and personal presence, the Shareholders’ Meeting could be protested.
The ambulance arrived at the same time as Maurizio. Pasha asked us to wait downstairs and went up to Mr. Piggins’ room. A few minutes later he returned and said that Mr. Piggins had locked himself in the bathroom, shouting that everything was all right with him, and he would soon come down.
We were sitting on pins and needles. The lift door opened, Mr. Piggins fell out of it in an expensive suit, with a dangling tie and unbuttoned trousers. He stopped against the wall, smiling stupidly and practically falling over. Pasha grabbed Mr. Piggins and dragged him towards the exit, where the hotel employee made him sign a refusal of medical assistance.
We pushed Mr. Piggins into the car. He couldn’t move his tongue and could hardly think of anything… An hour later, having driven up to the office in the suburbs of Rome, we pulled Mr. Piggins out of the car. He was smiling foolishly and swaying in the wind. Pasha prudently kept Mr. Piggins in his hands. We hardly got him through the security, that demanded our passports, since Mr. Piggins couldn’t find his one in the briefcase. Then we seated him in the office, and when everyone had gathered, we declared the Shareholders’ Meeting open.
Mr. Piggins volunteered to sign in advance all the papers that were usually signed after the meeting, and everything was fine while he kept silent. As we reached the point of his solo, Mr. Piggins opened his mouth and spoke with rapture the exact opposite to the minutes!
I was numb stared at Pasha, who had already relaxed, having read out the annual report, and was not listening to Mr. Piggins’ nonsense. I kicked Pasha under the table with my foot and explained the situation in a whisper. The Italians got nervous. Pasha slipped to Mr. Piggins his copy of the protocol, pointing with his pen at the correct line. Mr. Piggins put on his glasses and began to read. I exhaled in relief.
After the Shareholders’ Meeting, Mr. Piggins asked to send him to the hotel, but, unfortunately, he didn’t refuse the Italian-Russian dinner at the restaurant. The Italians said they would pick us up at the lobby at 8 p.m.
We still had a few hours of free time, and my husband and I met with our old acquaintance Marco, an Italian, who had been living in Russia for many years, but at that moment was in Rome. I remember we reached the Trevi Fountain when someone called Pasha, and he stepped aside.
“Where are you going in vacation this year?” Marco decided to fill in the pause. “If you like, come to my villa. It’s all at your disposal.”
I suddenly thought, that we had used to discuss with Pasha the issue of our next vacation almost half a year in advance, but not that time…
“Thank you,” I said. “We haven’t thought about vacation yet. I don’t want to say it out loud, but… there is a concept of a ‘closed future’. I have a bad feeling. I can’t see anything further. I start thinking about ‘tomorrow’, and there’s just emptiness in front of me.”
“Come on, you still have everything ahead!” Marco assured me. “You will be back, and a new life starts immediately! Listen, what if we persuade Pasha to change the return plane tickets? Fly back a week later, stay at my place!”
That was a great idea! Pasha finished his phone conversation and approached us. Marco offered to change the tickets, I joined, but Pasha, referring to some important deeds he had instantly thought up himself, politely refused and offered to take a picture of me and Marco at the Trevi Fountain. Marco hugged me, and I smiled at the photographer, but the thought of a ‘closed future’ didn’t leave my soul alone.
***
Looking at the photos, Alexander drew attention to a strange shadow that appeared in the pictures next to the woman in white. Someone else’s shadow, not her own. Especially clearly it was shown up in the photo, where the woman in white was standing next to a tall black-haired man against the Trevi Fountain. That man appeared to be captured in only one photograph.
“An Italian, for sure! And she must have loved him, she has a sad smile here,” thought Alexander.
***
In the evening we went down to the reception and waited for Mr. Piggins. He appeared soon, although not sober at all. Maurizio picked us up from the hotel and brought us to a small cozy restaurant. We asked the Italians not to order alcohol, but the most cunning Italian kept offering another bottle to Mr. Piggins. Mr. Piggins broke into a good-natured smile and carried on some kind of quiet conversation with himself.
We talked with the Italians about the weather, nature and other general topics. From time to time, our peaceful conversation was interrupted by the exclamations of Mr. Piggins, desperately waving his arms and shouting out the same phrase, “2% for me, and 6% for him!!!”
At some point, Mr. Piggins addressed to the audience with a toast.
“For the sake of Mr. Leo Profits!” he said, everyone raised their glasses, and Mr. Piggins continued, “The ex-president of the doomed, your damn company, made an undeniable contribution to it!”
Then Mr. Piggins spoke for such a hopelessly long time that everyone had already put their glasses on the table, tired of holding them. Periodically, Mr. Piggins was lost into his thoughts and even suddenly, in the middle of his ode to Mr. Profits, inserted,
“I feel great only when my wife is driving!”
The Italians nodded understandably. Mr. Profits’ contribution to the fate of the company couldn’t be underestimated, thanks to him, it had started to die. Mr. Piggins knew that better than others, he himself had suffered from Mr. Profits, perhaps that was why he finished his ode with a desperate statement.
“What a bastard, that Mr. Profits!!!” he said, although already looking at Pasha, and drained his glass in one gulp.
Finally, our dinner was declared over, and we returned to the hotel.
Mr. Piggins was leaving the next morning. He didn’t even realize then how lucky he was. Why was Mr. Piggins saved? Maybe because his young wife and a one-year-old daughter were waiting for him at home. And we still had a few more days in Rome.
***
Alexander looked at another photo and froze: instead of the usual shadow, he saw an already clearly manifested huge cross. The photo was taken in Piazza Navona. Alexander had been in Rome not so long ago and every evening he had dinner in those places. In the picture, the woman in white was standing next to a gypsy woman. Both with a happy smile. Although … no, that second one was not even a gypsy, but an ordinary woman in a gypsy outfit.
“Did she go for fortune-telling? Of course, she was told about her happy future. What a shameless lie all these fortune-tellers say!” thought Alexander.
***
At night, Rome was very beautiful and looked like a fairy tale.
“Well, how are we going to spend our last hours?” Pasha asked, kissing me gently on the cheek.
‘Last Hours’ echoed in my head, and I shuddered.
We went out to dinner at Piazza Navona, where even at midnight it was noisy and fun. Artists were selling paintings and portraits, street musicians were singing along to the guitar, boys were offering men to buy flowers for their ladies.
On one of the streets diverging from the square, there were three tables, where fortune-tellers and palmists-astrologers waited for their potential clients.
“Look!” I nodded my head towards them. “There is a sign at that table ‘in English, Italian and Russian’!”
“Do you want us to have our fortune told?” Pasha asked quite seriously. “Okay, let’s go! Let them tell us about our bright tomorrow!”
A woman dressed as a gypsy, about forty-five years old, sat at the table. She seemed to be Russian, and I was about to address her in Russian, when Pasha started to talk in English.
“By palm or by cards?” the woman asked in English as well and smiled affably.
I held out my palm to her. The fortune-teller was silent for a while, and then she began to talk about my character and health, quite accurately listed the events of my past, from early childhood to that day. Everything she said coincided with reality. When the fortune-teller finished her speech and returned my hand, Pasha, a real skeptic, suddenly asked her to tell fortunes to him also.
“Oddly enough, but it’s true!” he admitted in Russian after her witchcraft.
“Wow! Do you speak Russian?!!” the fortune-teller exclaimed in surprise. “Why didn’t you say it right away? After all, I don’t know English very well, but I would have turned around in Russian!”
An emigrant from Russia, she had been living in Rome for seventeen years. I asked Pasha to take a picture of us. I have never had a single photo with a ‘gypsy’ in my life.
“You still haven’t changed your plane tickets,” suddenly she sighed sadly before saying goodbye.
“We’d better come again,” Pasha promised without finding out how the fortune-teller had known about it.
“Well, Godspeed you,” she crossed us afterwards.
We returned to the hotel and started packing. A strange thought came into my mind.
“Didn’t anything surprise you about what the ‘gypsy’ said?” I asked Pasha.
“Why?”
“She told us about something that had already HAPPENED.”
“And?”
“She said nothing about our FUTURE!”
***
Alexander carefully studied the last photo. As the photographers would state, it was a trash. Half of the frame was over-lit. Half on the right. The left part was manifested, and the right part was a solid spot of light. That used to happen when the film was running out.
The woman in white stood at the timetable board, exactly in the center of the frame, so Alexander could see only one half of her, the second half belonged to the Light. On the board above the woman’s head, her flight number, airline, departure time were visible. The destination and everything to the right went into the Light. Alexander dialed his friend to share the results of his discovery.
***
Yes, a revealing photo, I agree… Our flight wasn’t delayed. I asked Pasha to take a picture of me by the timetable board with our flight info. He pressed the button, but the automatic rewind of the frames immediately worked, since the film came to its end.
“Let our past life end with it!” I said.
They had already given us the snacks, and Pasha was dozing off. I closed my eyes and fell asleep, leaning my head against his shoulder. My whole life flashed before my inner eye, like a film. I wondered whether I had been happy in it. Yes. Even in the hardest times, I never gave up and tried to find something good, aspired with my soul to the Light and went towards It. And these photos found by you are just another proof of my words. It’s a pity only that… I was sent to warn you never to fly to Thailand for Christmas, and you don’t hear me at all, young man…
August 2002