Combat Camera

by Andrew Somerset

  Zane stared at the image for a few moments, and then deleted it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  At about the age of ten, Zane decided that what he could not remember must never have happened.

  He arrived at this theory lying awake in his bed at night, on nights when the sounds of the furnace coming on and of the wind in the birch tree outside his window failed to coalesce into the certainty that something was watching him from behind. On those nights, he allowed the events of the day to pass through his mind in instant replay. What he remembered, had happened. What he did not remember might well not have happened at all. The only way to be certain of anything would be to memorize it.

  His speculations deepened. Perhaps all experience was nothing more than the playback of memories. It seemed conceivable that he had already reached the end of his life and was now only witnessing the playback. If one were to die at the age of ten, say, of something sneaking up in the dark, for example, and if one had failed to be properly attentive up to that time, then the entire playback of one’s memories might take only a year or two. It was a sobering possibility. And each day’s film seemed disappointingly short.

  So: it was essential to be attentive. Lying in bed, Zane concentrated: okay, I know that this moment is real, that this is happening to me, because I am thinking that I can remember it, and therefore I must actually be remembering it, from some future vantage point. And if I think I remember it, then I must be able to remember that I am thinking that. Otherwise, I would not know I was thinking it.

  At some point in his philosophical struggles, young Zane invariably fell asleep. The onset of unconsciousness he naturally failed to remember, since sleep necessarily follows from a failure of attention. On the following evening, this fact became grist for further ruminations. If he could not remember falling asleep, had he slept at all? If not, how had he awakened?

  It seemed to Zane that a lot of life was lost in the playback. It did not occur to him then that this is a tragic thought to have rattling around the inside of your head at the age of ten. And it was not until much later that he realized that the memories he most wanted to retain inevitably collapsed into footnotes, while the experience that remained consisted chiefly of things he would rather forget.

  Someone had knocked a carton of eggs off the supermarket shelf. It was the fractured shape of an eggshell, lying on the tiles, that set him off.

  At first, Zane’s mind refused to make sense of the scene. A man lay on his side in the road. He looked almost as if he was resting, but for the blood and dirt on his face. He had not been dead long, had not yet started to smell with that terrible smell that soap can never remove. The executioner’s bullet had carried away the back of his head, and the sun shone into his empty skull, glared bright across the white edge of shattered bone.

  Zane got to work. He went down on his knees with the fifty-five macro, focused in close. The exit wound gaped, a cave entrance, darkness behind a threshold of white bone. He leaned in to get a better shot. Too dark. The camera shook. He cranked up the shutter speed to fight the shakes, shot with the lens wide open. A trickle of sweat stung his dominant eye and he could feel his pulse in his chest.

  You’re going to have to push this roll to get anything.

  You are in the supermarket. You are in Toronto. You are shopping for groceries.

  Oppressive humidity and the smell of garbage and tropical flowers, sickly sweet. Sweat stinging your eye, tickling between your shoulder blades.

  Lapierre’s hand on your shoulder. Zane came to his senses, crouching beside the body, the front element of his lens only inches from the exit wound. Taking close-ups of the inside of a human skull. Too dark to show anything, even if he wanted to. He stopped, looked up. Sunlight pierced his eyes.

  “Who is going to buy that picture, Lucas?”

  Now he could hear again: the thrum of the truck engine and the buzzing of cicadas in the trees. Heat and humidity enclosed him. He stood, brushed the red dust of the road off his knees.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Lapierre lit two cigarettes and handed one to Zane. One of his vile French Gauloises. Zane took the smoke but did not take a drag. He wasn’t sure his stomach could take it.

  “Sometimes all you can think is to make a picture,” said Lapierre. The picture doesn’t have to make sense. Sometimes, you can’t make a picture that makes sense. Sometimes, having a camera in front of your eyes lets you avoid seeing. Lapierre said all these things, at one time or another.

  Zane kept seeing the edges of the skull.

  He tried not to look at the eggshells, concentrated on slowing his breathing and calming his heart. You are in Toronto, in the supermarket, standing in the rush of cool air coming off a refrigerated cabinet filled with egg cartons. You can smell stale milk, spilled from a leaking carton. You came here to buy groceries.

  “Are you all right?”

  He had seen this woman before, working the cash. He had noticed her face as she rang up his groceries. Pretty, in a delicate way, her pale skin white over the bridge of her nose. She was thin, looked impossibly fragile.

  He could still smell the smoke from Lapierre’s Gauloise.

  “Dizzy spell,” he said. Sweat on his forehead, the pace of his breathing, the thrum of his heart.

  “Do you need to sit down? I can call someone.”

  You are beautiful in every sense. Normal people keep their distance. Normal people call the cops on weirdos who break out sweating and start freaking out in public places. That’s how you get tasered. Every cop loves a weirdo.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure? Can I get you a glass of water?”

  “No, I’m okay. Thanks.”

  What you need is a bolt-hole, someplace dark and quiet where you can hole up away from all these people. What you need is space and distance. Not this public freak show.

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Let me get you a chair.”

  “Just please leave me the fuck alone, will you?”

  You want to pull cans and cartons down from the shelves, throw jars, break glass, trash the place. As long as we’re making a scene, let’s make a scene. You want a freak show I’ll give you a fucking freak show, people.

  In the parking lot, the sudden weight of humid air and the sun stabbing your eyes. My kingdom for someone to hit. Just give me a reason, any reason at all, knuckles splitting against smiling teeth, blood spilt on hot asphalt. You light up like a flood of gasoline and it feels good. It feels clean. As he reached the sidewalk he started to run, and people turned to stare. Crazy man in blue jeans, running down the street.

  He was just going to have to do without groceries.

  Zane was perturbed.

  The ultimate cause of Zane’s agitation was one Richard Barker, who had telephoned earlier and asked him to drive Melissa to work.

  To refuse Barker would be like refusing the wind. The wind blows on, heedless, carries in storms, kicks up dust, demolishes carefully ordered hairstyles and the occasional trailer park. The wind is everywhere, a law unto itself. The wind is a fact. You don’t refuse it.

  So Zane telephoned Melissa, who then insisted on walking down to his place and meeting him there. He was not to go out of his way to pick her up. But the last thing Zane wanted was an intruder in his sanctuary, particularly one who could render him transparent with her eyes. A brief standoff ensued.

  “It’s really not very far out of my way,” he said.

  “It’s okay. I’ll just walk on over.”

  “You shouldn’t be walking round out there alone.”

  “Shit, Zane, don’t be such an old maid. It really isn’t that far.”

  So, logically, it should be no trouble for me to pick you up. But now is the time to recognize defeat, to accept your lot with maturity and grace. One can sustain such a rally only so long before superficial politeness is revealed for what it is. Beyo
nd that point, further resistance can only lead once more to the question you so hope to avoid, to wit, what’s wrong with you. She had him cornered.

  And: an old maid?

  Zane told her to come for half-past one. He made sure to do the dishes.

  And now the immediate cause of Zane’s agitation was knocking at his door. He needed to pee but went to the door instead.

  Melissa, her head balloon-swollen in the fisheye lens of his peephole, twitched like a ferret at the entrance to a rabbit warren. And like a rabbit, Zane froze. In this way, the rabbit hopes to remain unseen, and thus to avoid being torn into bite-sized pieces. As a survival strategy, remaining perfectly still in the face of onrushing death is not a consistent success; the species compensates by profligate breeding. That option was not open to Zane. He opened the door.

  “You’re early.”

  “It was much closer than I thought.”

  “That’s why I offered to pick you up. Remember?”

  “So do I get to come in, or should I wait in the hall?”

  Zane stepped out of the way. She brushed past him. A faint scent of lemon, of flowers, and the mind reels. A good thing you took a shower and found a clean shirt.

  “Nice place. You live like a king.”

  He made for the kitchen.

  It is essential that we keep things plumb. Also, to control ourselves; should you suddenly insist, apropos of nothing, on this imperative to keep things plumb, she will probably form the opinion that you are distinctly odd. Especially if you then admit that you haven’t the faintest idea what you actually mean by that.

  “You sure have done a lot with this place. I mean, look at this couch. You get this from the dump?”

  The couch was among his landlord’s excuses for calling the place furnished. Likewise the television, of late 1980s vintage.

  “I gotta take a leak,” he said.

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  Zane closed himself into the bathroom, his inner sanctum, the one place where he alone still ruled. Relief, on more than one count.

  But above the splash and rush from the toilet bowl, he heard another sound. Melissa moving around, and something else, just below the mutter of the television. It occurred to him that Melissa’s interest in his apartment might be based solely on the value of its contents, specifically his cameras, at the nearest pawn shop. He knew nothing about her, save that she was not the kind of girl one takes home to meet mother.

  His mother’s likely reaction to that introduction beggared the imagination. Yes, mother, this is Melissa, who as it happens, works as an actress in pornographic films.

  A porno girl! How interesting! We simply must compare notes sometime. Chattering thus, the womenfolk proceed to the kitchen of the Zane homestead, presumably to exchange recipes therein.

  This sound could be the sound of twenty-five thousand dollars departing in his old-fashioned canvas camera bag. Meanwhile, Zane was otherwise engaged. He finished as quickly as he could.

  When he emerged, Melissa and his cameras were right where he had left them. She sat on the couch with her feet on his battered coffee table, holding a large book with a black cover, Lapierre’s posthumous career retrospective. Foreword by Lucas Zane.

  “Lucas Zane? Lucas?”

  “Where’d you find that?”

  She pointed at the pile of boxes in the corner.

  “You always snoop through other people’s stuff?”

  She dismissed his question with a wave of her hand; no harm, no foul, objection overruled.

  “I always figured Zane was your first name.”

  “Only my friends call me Lucas.”

  “I never heard anybody call you that.”

  He went to the cupboard and found a glass and filled it with water from the tap.

  “Maybe I’ll start calling you Luke.”

  “Nobody calls me Luke.”

  “Luke Skywalker. Cool Hand Luke.”

  “I just go by Zane.”

  “Lucky Luke. Luke the Kook.” Again the smile of amusement, the mocking smirk. She turned back to the book, flipped quickly through the pages and closed it to look at the cover.

  “So this guy was, like, famous.”

  “Define famous.”

  “You been holding out on me, man. Just who the hell are you?”

  This is a question that interests us all.

  “They got this picture of you in Nicaragua or someplace.” She opened the book to the page in question, his foreword, held it up to show him.

  “The guy who took those pictures was a good friend of mine.”

  “I can’t picture you in places like that.”

  Zane didn’t want to picture places like that.

  You should have put the boxes in the closet. You shouldn’t have left them out. You should have thrown all that stuff out, long ago. But you didn’t, and now the ferrets are on the loose, appraising the furniture, checking out the family heirlooms.

  “Zane, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “What am I doing what?”

  She put the book on the coffee table and stood up.

  “I mean, what are you doing working for Rich?”

  “It buys the groceries.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” She picked the book up and waved it at him. The ferrets go on a rampage, smashing the china, setting the couch on fire. “Why are you doing this cheap-shit porno when you could be in Iraq?”

  “What do you know about Iraq?”

  “Shit, Zane, you think I’m just some dumb porno chick? I watch the news.”

  “Why would I want to go to Iraq?”

  “You could be doing something that matters, man.”

  This is what you get for dealing with ferrets. The species is not known for its manners. They’re nosy; they pry. Also, they like the taste of blood. He heard his mother’s voice: well, she seems very nice, dear, but not particularly well brought up. You have no idea what she told me in the kitchen. Where exactly did you say you met?

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get you at all.”

  “Why don’t we talk about your personal life?”

  “We’re talking about you, buster.”

  “No, we’re not.” And: buster? Zane picked up his camera bag and slung the strap over his shoulder and dug out his car keys. You should have burned that book, years ago. “You’re talking about me, and I’m getting ready for work.”

  “I just think it’s a waste.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Go look in the mirror and tell me about a waste.” He took the book from her, carried it back into the kitchen and threw it in the garbage with unnecessary force. “We’re going to be late.”

  So Melissa finds all your farm animals, again. You never do learn, after all. The outcome, however, provided some small satisfaction that overrode the urge to apologize: Melissa remained silent thereafter.

  In his first months in El Salvador, after any particularly difficult day, Zane would chance the vagaries of the Salvadoran telephone system and the resulting bill, and call home to Trish, the woman to whom he was then engaged.

  Zane first met Trish at a restaurant in Toronto, where she worked as a waitress. He found her features striking enough that he returned often, more often than he could afford. Eventually, with the abandon of one too many glasses of wine and the desperation of a man at the limits of his already limited credit, he informed her that he found her nose remarkable. This, she might have written off entirely had he not followed up with a stream of nonsense to the effect that, as a photographer, he collected unusual faces. Her eyes narrowed, calculating risk. After a stream of qualifications and clarifications – not unusual bad, I mean, just unusual striking, interesting – he lapsed into silence.

  The truth of the matter was much simpler: he thought her lips looked edible, and furthermore had on several occasions gained a fine view of her cleavage as she leaned over to clear tables.
This, he wished to investigate. Her remarkable nose was merely the fine print.

  She said her name was Trish, agreed to meet him for coffee. Just for coffee, she said. Something in her voice said we’ve been down this road before. You pick up the waitress; what a cliché. He expected her to stand him up.

  She didn’t. Zane remained on his best behaviour, didn’t mention photography again. He didn’t say anything about photography until she said, aren’t you going to ask to take my picture?

  “I don’t really do portraits.”

  Again her eyes narrowed. “What exactly do you do?”

  “I’m more in the vein of candid street photography. I’m interested in showing things as they are.”

  “Portraits don’t show people as they are?”

  “Portraits show people striking poses.” He unzipped his jacket pocket and pulled out a small album of four-by-six black-and-white prints. “This is the kind of stuff I do.”

  Zane’s portfolio at that time was a collection of clichés, student work, all ironic juxtapositions and alienated tension, in imitation of the masters. But Trish had no background in photography. She said they looked witty and intelligent.

  “I thought you might like this one.” He had kept the shot in an envelope up to now, Trish in profile at the bus stop a block down from the restaurant, where he had met her in the street and briefly chatted to her the week before. He thought of the picture as his Girl in Fulton Street, after Walker Evans.

  “I took that Tuesday. After talking to you at the bus stop.”

  She frowned at it, lips tightening.

  “Is that what you do? Follow girls around and take their pictures?”

  He deflated like a bad tire.

  “I’m sorry. Forget it.”

  “I was going to ask you out. I took that to have a picture to give you. Even if you said no. You can keep it.”