My father's Zenit

The parcel arrived from Chisinau wrapped in the kind of brown paper my father still irons flat with his palm. Inside: his old Zenit-E, chrome top dulled to a soft pewter, black leather body worn shiny at the edges where a strap once rubbed, and the brown leather case that smells faintly of cupboard dust and winter coats. Above the lens, the little selenium light meter window looks out like a tired eye. This is the camera he used to photograph my mother, decades ago, before either of them had practiced being parents.

There was no letter. Only a library catalogue card, the beige kind with the hole at the bottom, and one sentence in his careful librarian handwriting. I will not repeat it here. It was enough to make the kitchen go quiet in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

I loaded a test roll that evening, winding the stiff advance lever until it seated with a small protest. The shutter sounds like a small door closing on a room you have decided to leave. I took six frames of the samovar and the window and stopped, not from superstition exactly, but from a wish not to spend the inheritance too quickly. Some things arrive while everyone is still alive. I have decided that is the better schedule, even if the lever still sticks and the meter needle hesitates before it commits.