by Paul Theroux
“They’re all here for your show,” said Umlah. “It’s been like this ever since we opened.”
“Cash customers?”
“There’s no entrance fee,” he said.
“I mean, are they buying the pictures?”
Umlah said, “I suppose they would, if they were for sale.”
“Of course they are!” I snapped. “Don’t tell me you’re not selling them.”
“I had no idea,” he said disgustedly, “no idea you were doing this for the money.”
“I do it for my health. It’s expensive.”
“I understood you enjoyed taking pictures.”
“Back up,” I said. “That’s the oldest trick in the book for exploiting artists—capitalizing on their sense of fun. Anyway, what’s it got to do with paying the rent, wear and tear, overheads?”
Randy said, “We thought you were on a Guggenheim.”
“Fuck you, Jack—don’t patronize me.”
“Please,” said Umlah. “What is it you want us to do?”
“You,” I said, poking my finger at Randy, “you’re playing with yourself. Lay off the pocket pool and go over and put price tags on them.”
“I’ll take care of that,” said Umlah, sounding pretty shattered by my outburst.
“Yeah,” said Randy. “I want to go upstairs and process these plates of the fire.”
“We’d better price them together,” said Umlah.
“That’s easy,” I said.
“There are quite a few of them.”
“I always say, if you’re vulgar enough to put a price on things you’re vulgar enough to price them by size. Me, I do it by the inch. The eight-by-tens are a hundred apiece, anything smaller is sixty. There are a few big ones—I think we can ask a hundred and fifty for those.”
Umlah’s face was lit by indignation and greed, the hot twisted look of a celibate’s lust: he was aroused by the money-value of my pictures. He said, “And where does that leave the club?”
“Ten percent for you.”
“Twenty is standard.”
“Okay, I’ll split the difference—fifteen. I’m no Arab,” I said. “But, my, you learn fast, Mister Umlah. I knew the minute I laid eyes on you that you were a practical man. Now let’s get those prices on before everyone clears out.”
“Come along with me, just to make sure I don’t make any blunders,” he said. “We may as well start at the beginning. Here—oh, this is a perfectly marvelous one—that porch scene.”
What porch scene? I leaned forward and looked, and though I was aware of the wall returning my murmurs to me, and quite conscious of a group of admiring people nearby, I could not make out a picture for the life of me, I had had no difficulty perceiving the city, my hotel room, two men scrapping nine floors below, the fire in the building, or the arsonist. But the pictures were another story entirely: they were impossible to see. Indeed, as far as I was concerned, they were indistinguishable from the wall’s featureless din.
“What do you say, Miss Pratt?”
The wall was pale green; a vein of stress ran down the plaster, splitting the paint; fingerprint whorls near the door, kickmarks on the baseboard, a horse hair prickled in an old brushstroke. But the picture? I couldn’t tell whether it was big or small, dark or light. Was it Boarders? Or Hornette on the glider at Mrs. Fritts’s? Or what? I said, “Hadn’t we better measure it?”
“Fred,” said a man to my left, “mind if we tag along? We’re doing a piece on Miss Pratt’s show.”
“That’s up to Miss Pratt,” said Umlah.
“Feel free,” I said. But I was wondering how I was going to plow through the whole exhibition without revealing my blindness. So far, I had been lucky; but my pictures baffled me, and might betray me. I could not see them.
Umlah said, “I’d like you to meet Iris Clinch and Dick Shuggery. Reporters.”
“Critics, actually,” said Iris. “We’re Time-Life. Life’s giving you a spread. We’re going to use a whole raft of your pictures.”
“First I heard of it,” I said.
“Aren’t you pleased?”
“Tickled pink,” I said. “But there’s a little question of copyright.”
“We’ll come to some agreement,” said Shuggery, his voice all Crisco with confidence.
“Hold on—I don’t do any horse-trading where my pictures are concerned. I call the shots around here, get it? If you don’t see things my way”—which was ironic, because I couldn’t see a blessed thing—“the deal’s off.”
Iris stiffened, probably thinking: The avaricious little so-and-so, ain’t she ever going to be satisfied? Life’s giving her a spread!
She said, “We were hoping to buy some outright.”
“You going into business?” I said. “Out of the question. You can buy these prints—hang them up and admire them, hide the cracks on your walls. But I keep the negatives and all reproduction rights. I’ve got to look after my interests, toots.”
“You mean we can’t use them?”
“Sure, on a one-time basis, for a fee, if you dig deep enough. But let’s leave the dickering for later. We’ve got to get on with this pricing.”
“Suit yourself,” she said.
Shuggery said, “It’s a truly amazing show. Something scandalous and at the same time very artistic. It’s an unbeatable combination—genius vindicating the almost unlawful. The virtuosity in the outdoor shots, all those prehistoric swamps and dead trees, and the total aridity and nakedness of that banquet, sort of stylized savagery—”
“Shall we say a hundred dollars for this porch scene?” said Umlah.
“Fine,” I said.
“In a sense,” said Iris. “But—correct me if I’m wrong—there’s something deeply European about them, old world and, oh, pagan. I’m talking about intensity, I guess—it’s rare in American photography, which is so preoccupied with space, no naively naturalistic. But your landscapes have a terrific indoor quality—I mean, that foliage looks like parlor drapes and hunks of furniture and you’ve sort of hidden the people, haven’t you? And, as Dick said, the banquet is breathtaking and, well, it’s Roman—you’ve got a beautiful little grudge there. Maybe it’s because I’m devoted to Brassai, but I never thought we could produce the same thing, the decadent skin-tones, the effect of squalid pleasure. Let’s face it, Florida’s not France—we can’t match their old-fashioned rituals, but your photographs pass the hardest test of art—”
“Sixty?” said Umlah, moving along.
“All right by me,” I said.
“—I mean, the toughest criterion. They’re news! Dick and I think they’re intimations of war.”
“And sixty there,” said Umlah, “and another sixty and a pair of hundreds.”
“Slap on the tags,” I said.
Shuggery sidled up to me. “Walker Evans was here the other day—the Walker Evans. Know what he said? Tell her, Iris.”
Iris said, “You.”
“He said, ‘These are classics. I don’t care who took them or how it happened, but this is art—it is experience. This photographer has broken the code and instead of simplifying it has translated the message into the calligraphy of art. Shapes, and beneath the shapes an intelligent pattern, and beneath that, flesh and blood—and behind it all, truth. It is pictorial language, the mirror we all have to pass through to see the world as it is. I will walk out of here a different man. Everyone who sees this will be affected. It is the highest art—the kind that changes your life. Nothing will look the same after this—the world will have a light in it that wasn’t there before. A light, and of course a shadow. It helps me to understand religious art, it makes me want to get down on my knees.’ That’s what he said. Walker Evans.”
Music to my ears, exactly what I had intended, if a bit florid in the retelling. But all I said was, “Sounds to me like he was having an art attack.”
Umlah said, “A hundred apiece for these four?”
“You bet.” And to Shuggery: “I think Wal
ker was pulling your leg.”
“She thinks Walker was pulling my leg,” he said.
“All those arts. Arts and flowers. Art strings. Art and soul. Bleeding art. He gave you the business. The world’s the same, more or less,” I said. “Ain’t it? Besides, Walker Evans is employed by the Farm Security Administration, They pay him to say things like that.”
Umlah said, “From here to the fire alarm on that wall, all sixties.”
“You’re the boss,” I said. I heard him hungrily licking the labels and I thought: I’ll never take another picture in this condition—it’s money in the bank.
“They’re as timeless as paintings,” said Iris. “That’s what he was really saying.”
“Shit and derision,” I said. “That’s a silly comparison. People are always saying that, but what’s so great about paintings? Paintings look so confounded wet to me, as if you’d get sticky stuff on your fingers if you touched them—ketchup, axle grease, marmalade and jam. I’m not talking about your Van Goghs and your Rembrandts, though some of those Van Goghs drip like crazy and I’ve seen Rembrandts that look like melted cheese on burned toast. But this modern junk! Rotting candy, discombobulated people, Cubists with rulers! They’re decorations, aren’t they? They’re supposed to match the color scheme in your breakfast nook. Don’t talk to me about Steichen—I know he’s a painter, too, but if his house caught fire you can bet your bottom dollar he’d come rushing out with an armload of his own negatives. Look, paintings are for museums—museums are just churches, all that tiptoeing around, everyone whispering. Or the decoration angle—‘Let’s brighten up that corner with a nice blue Winslow Homer’—that sort of thing.”
“Who’s pulling whose leg now?” said Shuggery.
“Get off the bucket, I’m serious,” I said. “Oh, sure, museums are harmless enough if you happen to admire that kind of taxidermy, but if anyone put my photographs in a museum I’d shoot myself. You call these decorations? Like hell. You can roll them up, wrap fish in them, put them in your pocket, lay them out flat, then dive in and paddle around. Don’t let me catch you admiring them—you don’t admire blizzards or swamps or circuses, do you? Or that jaybird on the trapeze? They move too much for you to sit there and gawk at them. I could barely get clothespins on them they were leaping around so much! This here ain’t art, it’s life. Hey, them are windows!”
Someone—Iris perhaps—was writing all this down. I could hear the pen nib scratching and sputtering on the pad.
“—and a hundred and a hundred and a hundred,” said Umlah, who was far enough ahead not to hear my impromptu lecture. “Nearly done.”
“Do you have any idea of the impact these pictures have made?” said Iris.
“I won’t know that until I see my accountant,” I said.
But she soldiered on: “The French think they’re French, the Germans think they’re German. The Communist Party in New York thinks you’re a reformer and the Daily Worker wants to interview you. But don’t laugh yet—you’ve made quite a splash with the decadents, too. Naked lion-tamers, tight-rope walkers in the altogether and your Lady Godiva? You’ve got the collectors running a temperature. The Christians think you’re a moralist, and the bohemian crowd takes you for a fellow pagan.”
“Let’s call that sixty and that a hundred,” said Umlah.
“Okay,” I said. “What you’re saying is, everyone likes my work.”
“For different reasons,” said Iris. “I can’t explain it.”
I was going to mention my “drowning quotient,” but I felt I had said enough, and anyway Shuggery interrupted.
He said, “But there’s some people who won’t like it.”
“I wonder who?” I said.
“The people in the pictures.”
“I’m on their side. The people who perform in circuses are always hungrier than the spectators, but it’s the spectators who eat well—the performers get rotten meals. So you get the weak performing for the strong, people doing handstands on an empty stomach. That’s the point about the nakedness.”
“I was talking about the spectators,” said Shuggery.
Umlah said, “And a hundred and fifty for that last one. Stieglitz. That about wraps it up.”
Iris said, “Mind answering a few personal questions?”
“All questions are personal,” I said.
“What sort of a family do you come from?”
“Leave them out of this.”
“She doesn’t want to talk,” said Shuggery.
“If I knew how to talk—or do anything else—do you think I’d waste my time taking pictures? This is all I have to say,” I said, gesturing at what I hoped were the pictures on the gallery walls. “Why is it that people expect photographers to be talkers? Photography is the most inarticulate of the arts—it’s probably not even an art,”
“All photography?”
“Look, most photographs are works of subversion.”
“Too hard to talk about them. That it?” said Iris.
I shook my head. “Too easy. Talking always simplifies things. And anyway, who cares?”
“You ought to. They’re your pictures.”
“Ah-hah! There’s where you’re wrong.”
“But you took them.”
“I happened to be there when they were,” I said. “It could have been you. Ubiquity—that’s what photography’s all about. Locomotion. Not thought—action. Know how I got interested in photography? A friend of Mama’s bought me a camera because she thought I wasn’t getting enough fresh air.”
Shuggery said, “She’s joshing.”
“I was lucky,” I said.
“But you created these pictures.”
“Don’t be a sap. I found them.”
“She found them!” Scratch, scratch: someone was copying down my words. And I could tell that a sizable crowd had gathered to listen to me. But I was tired. I wanted to sit down. I was about to tell them all to clear out, when I heard a commotion.
“Sure, I found them,” I said. “No one was looking, so I took them.”
Umlah said, “Here’s Randy.”
“Miss Pratt,” said Randy excitedly. “I’ve got your pictures.”
“Keep them—they’re yours,” I said. “It was your camera.”
Randy said, “No. Now I know what true genius is. We were both there. It was my camera—my chances should have been the same as yours. But look what happened!”
He rattled the pictures and pressed them into my hand. People were breathing down my neck and there were murmurs of interest.
“Very attractive,” I said. They were still limp from the processing. I tried to hand them back.
“What do you make of this one?” he asked, pushing closer to me.
“I don’t make anything of that,” I said, which was the truth: I saw nothing. “Excuse me, I must sit down. My dogs are barking.”
“The face,” he said. “That man.”
I held a picture up: blackness. It might have been blank. “Oh, yes, found him,” I said. “Firebug. I heard him clearing his throat, and that’s when I whipped around and did him—wrist-action, very important. Nifty, huh? He liked the fire—you can see it on his face. Frankly, I think he started it.”
“Who started it?” said Iris.
“Him,” I said. I peeled off the picture and showed her. “I don’t see anyone,” she said. “All I see is a fire truck.”
“That’s mine,” said Randy.
“I meant this one,” I said, and peeled off another. It had to be there somewhere. “This man—look how crazed he is. He loves fires, that one. A real goofball.”
“That’s a burning building,” said Iris.
Now they were all nudging me. And they weren’t looking at the pictures anymore—they were looking at me, probably wondering why I was wearing dark glasses indoors. Their eyes were boring holes in my face.
“This,” said Iris, and took another of the pictures. “Is this yours?”
“I’m not absol
utely sure.”
“The rather mad features with the firelight reflected on the face—the hair all askew—yes?”
“That’s it,” I said.
“Now take your glasses off.”
“No.” I tried to pull away, but the people were crowding in on me and I was bumped back into Iris’s cunning grip.
“That’s not the picture,” she said. She was really enjoying this. Her patronizing remarks hadn’t got her anywhere with me; she obviously felt rebuffed and thought she’d take me down a peg or two. I could have throttled her. “Take a good look.”
“Go scratch,” I said.
Umlah said, “What seems to be the problem?”
“She’s being evasive again,” said Iris.
“Evasive!” I yelled. “Look at this show—is that evasion? Open your eyes!”
“I’m not talking about the show,” she said. “I’m talking about you.”
“Never mind about me—I don’t matter. And I didn’t come down here to get the third degree. Don’t you people ever learn?”
I dropped the pictures and tried to get away. I was lumbering and heavy, stung like a stupid baited bear. I heard people hissing, and in my distraction I could not make them out, only the odor of stale cigarettes and the drizzling light of the gallery, and the itchy wool of winter coats. I caught an elbow in my ribs and bringing up my hand to steady my glasses I was too quick—I knocked them off. When I bent to retrieve them I heard someone step on them (“Whoops” and “Uh-oh”), a chewing crunch like ice breaking under skates, but with a shattering finality that only broken glass conveys. “Out of my way!”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Iris.”
I attempted to hide my staring eyes with my arm.
There was a muttering and a whispering. I stuck out my free arm and blundered forward.
