The Pennant and the Wreck

A tall exhibition hall in a Moscow park on a May afternoon, daylight from high windows, in the foreground a bent, torn section of a long narrow dark wing on a low platform behind a dark velvet cord, a crumpled grey engine casing beside it, display panels with tiny photographs soft in focus, the man, a stout man of sixty-six, bald round head, light grey summer suit, two small gold medals on his lapel, right hand raised in mid-speech, face in three-quarter view, around him journalists in suits seen from directly behind, faces turned fully away, notebooks in hand, one photographer holding a camera high.