Shooting Star

by David Brierley

  ‘Dear Steven.’ And she forgot about being angry with him for his rich car and arrogant assumption that she couldn’t drive. ‘Listen, you may be the richest and most successful photographer in London, taking the Queen’s picture every week, but for this day we are just two old friends. You mustn’t photograph me. I look old and hideous.’

  ‘You look young and stunning.’

  ‘Flatterer. You know perfectly well how ancient I am. I cannot deceive you. We’re old, old friends. Is it really twenty-five years? I simply refuse to believe it. How can twenty-five years have passed? Where have our lives vanished to? No, I don’t want to hear. Youth has drained away and I have become old and haggard.’

  He searched her face and smiled. ‘I cannot see a single wrinkle.’

  ‘I speak severely to them each morning and they slink away. But every day they take a little longer to go. Now driver, drive on. Are we expected? Is your wife waiting eagerly?’

  ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘I knew it! You’re not fat.’

  ‘Are all married men fat?’

  ‘The complacent ones. Though you’re not complacent. You’re...’

  ‘Yes?’

  She shrugged. ‘You’re someone I haven’t seen for years and years. I don’t know your secrets yet. Tell me about yourself, Steven. I have a right to know all about you. Tell me, what did you think of our production?’

  ‘I thought it was wonderful and exciting,’ he replied, knowing that praise was what she thirsted for.

  ‘What did you like best?’

  If he had been honest, and this was no time for honesty, he would have singled out the economy and wit of some of the social satire. Instead he mentioned the scene where the big man ripped off her tee-shirt. He had to repeat all its moody Götterdämmerung — she insisted on hearing it in his words. If he paused, she prompted him: ‘Were you shocked? Is it done on an English stage to unclothe a woman?’ Ilona never noticed as they passed the millrace of Hyde Park Corner, nor even whether her compatriots were outside Buckingham Palace, nor how many pigeons dirtied the tourists’ heads in Trafalgar Square. ‘Come, Steven, you can’t stop now.’ She was eager for the minutest detail. What did he think of the climax to the scene? Were the group powerful enough?

  Steven said: ‘But you were the only one with strength. Only you defied the bully. Nothing would make you flinch. Not a man’s gaze, not the soldiers, not the tanks. And I knew when and where you’d got that strength.’

  There was silence all the way across Waterloo Bridge and until Steven turned east towards Greenwich. When Ilona spoke, she began tentatively.

  ‘That wasn’t real life. You saw a piece of theatre, Steven. And theatre is just another name for magic, creating illusions on stage. That wasn’t me you saw, that was the actress. If I had strength then you should thank Zsudi. He’s the director. Do you know Zsudi? No, how could you? Brilliant man, quite mad. He keeps a piece of celery in his pocket. He says actors and politicians should chew celery every day: it develops the jaw muscles. So he is known...’

  ‘But you were the star,’ Steven interrupted. ‘Not celery man.’

  ‘The Magyar Mime Theatre is a collective group,’ Ilona said in her severest tone. Then, grinning, with a return of her old spirit: ‘But yes, I am the star. The critics adored me. But the critics in London are brilliant and perceptive persons. I’m modest myself or I would tell you what they said: the dynamics of Streisand, the sex appeal of early Monroe. They raved about the whole production. Someone called it an Eastern Blocbuster — that’s good, isn’t it? Oh but they all loved it. At least I think so. The Guardian called it a sort of “neon Trotsky”. Is that a compliment?’

  Steven turned over in his mind whether that could be taken as praise (there being a thin line between wit and misprints in The Guardian but Ilona didn’t wait for a reply. Her verve was completely restored.

  ‘It was a critic named Billington who called our show a neon Trotsky. Who is this Billington? If he is being rude I shall hit back. We are artistes, we are not dumb oxen in a slaughterhouse. Counter-attack! Do you know what I did once? I was appearing in a politikai kabaré at the Vidam Theatre and Janos Palffy wrote that our show lacked sharpness. What did I do? I bought a tremendous bunch of roses and snipped off all the flower heads and sent him just the stems with their thorns. I gave Palffy sharpness. Palffy, what a name.’

  For the first time she seemed to take in their surroundings. ‘Where are we going? You didn’t tell me you lived in the country.’

  Steven turned north after Greenwich Park, heading back once more to the river. They passed substantial residences, artisans’ terraces and Victorian redbrick houses with Pooterish entrance porches. Keeping the power station to the left he slipped into the maze of narrow streets where the buildings huddled together for companionship. Boys kicked a football and gaped at the posh folks’ car. Ilona stared through uncurtained windows at families gathered in devout silence in front of the television screen. In one newly-gentrified cottage six people lingered over a late lunch be-hind a fence of empty wine bottles.

  There was a glimpse of river, greasy and sluggish, with a dirty mudflat showing at low tide. Across the river was an area of decaying wharfs, uncommonly unattractive housing and deserted docks where Steven had once discovered fanciful street names like Thermopylae Gate and hard-nosed names like Brig Street.

  ‘I moved here first of all because it was cheap and I needed a big building for a studio. Now I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I have pubs and restaurants and museums. There’s the theatre and the park and the river.’

  Finally he stopped the car before high iron gates, which he got out to unlock. Beyond was a stone-flagged courtyard and a brick building perhaps two storeys high. It was hard to gauge its height because the facing wall was blind, apart from two windows as tight as arrow-slits. For a moment it was in Ilona’s mind to protest: But you live in a prison.

  ‘Last century, it was a wine warehouse,’ Steven said. ‘The other side of the building is right on the river. The boats from Bordeaux and Oporto used to tie up there. When I took the place there were high wooden doors to bring the casks through. Huge casks they must have been, big enough to drown in.’

  The car slipped into the courtyard. Two stone troughs of dusty and chilled geraniums flanked the door. At one side through iron railings they could see the Thames, silent and secret. The afternoon was darkening. This was a corner of London made for fog and gas-lamps and Jack the Ripper.

  3 - London, now

  War kills many and makes a few rich. The proof, if ever it was in doubt, was all over the walls. There were a couple of hundred photographs, maybe more, which were a tribute to others’ blood and Steven’s guts.

  There is a handful of photographers who choose to work in the human condition of war. This tiny band never grows big. Some are killed when a form of professional pride drives them too far. Some, with insanity all round them, create their own interior chaos of drugs. Some look in the mirror each morning at the bloodshot eyes and greying hair, and when the camera-shake gets too bad they fade away. But a few continue: which is only to say they have not yet stopped a bullet or become drug-crazed or lost their nerve. It is not fame these few achieve, though their names do get star billing on the covers of magazines; rather they are regarded with astonishment as freaks. There is a logic to gambling, that the gambler must lose in the end. But these few have defied the odds. They continue to play Russian roulette as if they could break the bank.

  To a newcomer the first sight of Steven’s studio was stunning. This was not because of red rivers of blood. The human face is more shocking than that.

  Ilona’s reaction was typical of her. In one broad sweep she took in the magnitude of Steven’s work pinned to the studio walls and turned her face into his chest. She moaned, like a bereaved mother, and said: ‘I can’t look.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’ He put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Why, Steven, why?’

  ‘Why do people
kill each other? Ask Cain. Ask God. I don’t know why.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘You’re shocked by my dedication?’

  ‘Dedication?’ She looked in his face. ‘What a terrible word to choose.’

  She moved away to stand in the centre of the room. This midpoint was as far as she could get from all four walls of suffering.

  Steven was matter-of-fact. ‘Downstairs is my working area. When I first started I took whatever work I could — fashion, advertising, anything to pay the bills. The studio was necessary, though it isn’t now. I work outside, in the world. This is an indulgence, my private gallery. Off the studio are the usual: dark room, stores, office, changing room, shower.’

  ‘You work alone?’

  ‘In the field, absolutely alone. There are even times when one person seems too much of a crowd. It’s back here I need someone, to work on the prints, answer the phone. They never last long. They come with a headful of stars, imagining themselves at my elbow telling me what shutter speed to use while the bullets whistle past. When they find they’re rooted back here, they leave. If they have any initiative they beat down some feature editor’s door and insist they were Steven Curtis’s assistant in Afghanistan.

  ‘There’s no one here today. He’s got girlfriend trouble. Or boyfriend trouble. I don’t think he’s decided yet. It’s as if he weren’t quite finished; the jelly’s poured in the mould but it’s not set. That’s my notion of being young.’

  The problems of his assistant bored Steven. He had moved to a section of wall where a spotlight created a pool of brightness. He frowned at a photograph and edged to one side to inspect it. There could have been some reflection from the glossy print; or he could have been trying to firm up a hazy outline in the soft focus background. He was staring at a part of his life and forgot Ilona’s presence.

  And she wished, with the suddenness of a wave surging in a storm, that she had never agreed to meet him. She had been expecting Istvan and a sentimental stroll through distant days; and was confronted by a stranger called Steven with an unwelcome ability to disturb. Even the way he stood disturbed her. His hands had a restless twitch to them as if he wanted to get to grips with some menace she couldn’t see. Or did he feel in imagination the weight of his camera and see the living reality he had shot? Or the dead reality? Without intending it Ilona’s eyes followed his gaze to the print and something about it held her attention. It wasn’t the shock of the image that struck her but the fact that it was familiar. She saw a boy of no more than eight or nine holding a rifle as tall as himself; his foot rested on the corpse of another child, for all the world like a big game hunter with his trophy. The situation was obscene; but she remembered now just what it was that had struck her years ago when she’d seen the photo in the paper. It was just a detail: the young boy was smoking a cigarette like any soldier in the trenches.

  She spoke out: ‘He simply has no hope, that boy.’

  ‘No one had hope in that country. It was called Cambodia when I took that. Later it became the Khmer Republic. After that, Kampuchea. In the twentieth century if you want to know how much a country has suffered, see how often it has changed its name.’

  The studio walls were of bare brick, painted white, and the pitted and ridged surface was mottled with grey shadows like the craters of the moon. There were cork pinboards on the walls; these were illuminated by spotlights that were movable along a track. It was on this dark brown cork that the photos were fixed. Ilona could see they were in groups. Presumably each group held a chapter of Steven’s life. In the Cambodian group there were a couple of dozen photos. She hadn’t intended to inspect them. The power of the images drew her. The pitiful details hurt her.

  The Cambodians went to war accompanied by their families. She saw a dead soldier stretched out on the ground. He was dressed in torn trousers, nothing more, no boots, no shirt. A woman crouched on the ground beside him, her head laid on his chest. Perhaps she was listening for a heartbeat; perhaps she was too exhausted to move, had no idea where to go. There was some sort of low building in the background and at its foot a toddler squatted. The kid appeared to be chewing something like a sweet.

  Ilona looked away and back again before she was sure: the something was a bullet.

  A man stared at the camera. There was nothing in his eyes. Intelligent thought, even awareness of the world, had crawled backwards like a crab into some sheltering hole in his mind. His jaw muscles had slackened and his mouth gaped. He had that short Cambodian hair that sticks up like fire-blackened stubble. He grasped a baby, bundled in rough cloth, to his chest. Neither seemed aware that a piece of the man’s cheek had been gouged out and blood dribbled on the swaddling clothes.

  There was a line of men sitting on stools. They would be ex-soldiers. Again there appeared to be no expression on any of the faces; it had been blown away together with an arm or a foot.

  ‘Steven, they no longer look as if they belong to the human race. They’ve been transformed into aliens.’

  ‘Shell-shocked,’ Steven muttered. ‘War-shocked. Life-shocked. Look at him.’ A man in the remnants of some uniform perched on an oil drum with his shoes in a puddle of muddy water. His eyes had the stare of fish on a slab. He held a cigarette in one hand angled half-way to his lips. ‘I gave him the cigarette and took his picture and I don’t think he knew I was there. There were other soldiers in the camp and I was talking to them. We smelt singeing flesh. This one hadn’t moved and the cigarette had burnt to ashes between his fingers.’

  Ilona turned aside but there was no relief. The faces stared at her, accusing. Africa somewhere, black faces. Two men dragged a dead comrade by his wrists; the corpse’s head bowed in its final prayer.

  Next to it: a man in officer’s uniform pleaded with his hands in front of a soldier propped against a tree. The soldier’s head lolled lifeless.

  Another: a man in dirty white singlet and khaki shorts sprawled on the dirt. Four soldiers stood over him, rifles pointed at his head. One soldier found it a huge joke. The man pleaded with terrified eyes directly at camera.

  ‘What had he done?’

  ‘Done? What had any of them done except be on the wrong side.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘The soldiers shot him while I was reloading my camera.’

  ‘He was appealing to you. Couldn’t you do anything to help?’

  But they both stared at the man’s last moments without needing to speak. In the background, against a sullen West African sky, were tall palm trees whose heavy fronds wept.

  Four photographs were pinned in a tight group. A boy with ribs like a skinned rabbit and tired despairing eyes. Then came an old woman with sagging breasts.

  ‘She was twenty-one, maybe twenty-two.’

  A line of emaciated children held out empty bowls. They stared straight into the lens.

  ‘Some might say their faces are sulky,’ Steven said. He went very close and peered at them. ‘No, there is hate there.’

  Next: a baby with its mouth open and the glass eyes of a doll. Flies were laying eggs on its tongue.

  ‘Cambodia, Biafra, Congo, Laos, Lebanon, Vietnam, Uganda...’

  ‘Stop it. I don’t want to look any more. How can you live with all these memories? What’s it done to you?’

  ‘Done to me?’ Steven seemed genuinely surprised at her question. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I am alive and none of them is, probably not one. This chronicle of suffering is their only memorial. Do you remember that famous picture — the Viet Cong kneeling while the South Vietnamese officer shoots him in the temple?’

  ‘Did you take that?’

  ‘I took three in one day. That was Vietnam, that was the worst. No, they’re all the worst at the time. I’m right up there in the front line. I’m physically fit because I have to be, I’m where the action is. I don’t get fat. I’m not back in the general’s tent with the silver candlesticks and the wine goblets. Or further back with our brave corresponde
nts at the bar in the Hilton. I’m up there in the slit-trench with this soldier. Look at him. Look at the hate in his eyes. He hates me because I may be in the trench with him but in thirty seconds he’s going to get out and run like hell across a paddy field and a road and a ditch and the enemy is waiting for him to do just that and so am I with my camera. Forget Ho Chi Minh or General Thieu — I was the most hated man in Vietnam.’

  He said it all without passion, just wanting her to understand his professional detachment. Ilona stood in a state of shock, not moving. And Steven hadn’t even finished. He crossed the studio to the far wall.

  ‘I was in the Ogaden. I found this man holding out his baby like a parcel at me. The man hates me. The mother’s dead. The baby is sick and has no food. God knows where we were, you know how the villages in Africa have no names. I’d missed the fighting but I got this picture. I’m there to catch the suffering for the world’s breakfast table. Then, by God, I’m heading back to Addis Ababa and my bottle of duty-free Scotch. But not with that baby, because it’s not just one baby. I’d be running the biggest bloody orphanage in the world after a week. Do you see? All right, that father hated me. But that’s all part of the job. Newspapers need photographs, I provide them. I’m the best there is.’

  No, she didn’t understand. He frowned at her. Why did she want him to justify his actions when so demonstrably it was the rest of the world that was mad?

  ‘But why you?’

  ‘Are you vegetarian? No? Do you imagine they find sausages growing in the woods? Somebody is working in the slaughterhouse so you can enjoy your sausages. Well, next time you pick up a newspaper or watch the news on television and you see pictures like this you whisper to yourself: I know the man who was in the slaughterhouse.’

  Inside her a small voice insisted: If he’s not dangerous, the man’s insane; and if he’s neither dangerous nor crazy, then he’s amoral. But she tried to reason with him.