Had I known how to say it at the time I would have called this way of smiling “femininity.” … But my language was too concrete in those days. I contented myself with studying the women’s faces in our photograph albums and identifying this glow of beauty in some of them. For these women knew that in order to be beautiful, what they must do several seconds before the flash blinded them was to articulate the following mysterious syllables in French, of which few understood the meaning: “petite-pomme.” … As if by magic, the mouth, instead of being extended in counterfeit bliss, or contracting into an anxious grin, would form a gracious round. The whole face was thus transfigured. The eyebrows arched slightly, the oval of the cheeks was elongated. You said “petite pomme,” and the shadow of a distant and dreamy sweetness veiled your gaze, refined your features, and caused the soft light of bygone days to hover over the snapshot. This photographic spell had won the confidence of the most diverse women: for example, a relative from Moscow in the only color photo in our albums.
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