Image Decay

by Mark Lisac

  “And all he said is that the photos are somehow related to doing justice?”

  “He even used the word evidence.”

  “Well, speculation could lead anywhere. It’s difficult to imagine what a government photographer could have recorded that would be evidence in a serious matter. He would usually have been working in a crowd of people.”

  “That’s one of the things I don’t get. Another is what could possibly be nagging Becker and/or somebody else in the government many years after the fact. If it involves a crime you’d think steps would have been taken long ago. If not, what could a few photographs mean? And whatever they mean to Becker touches him deeply. You know he’s one of the smoother operators in cabinet. Never ruffled. Always ready to treat an opposition attack like a mildly funny joke. His face didn’t look that way when he was talking to me this morning. I’d describe him as looking at least as desperate as he did forceful.”

  Jackson spread his hands on his desk. He moved his thick fingers as if manipulating a pliable object into an understandable shape. He stopped moving his fingers and said, “I’m just thinking of a German writer named Walter Benjamin.”

  “Oddly enough, I heard about him a few weeks ago,” Rabani said. “I don’t know much about him other than that he collected things.”

  “He did that too. Benjamin said there’s a difference between history and what he called remembrance. History tells you what happened in the past. Remembrance involves a past event that still has to be settled. He said experienced events have a definite beginning and end. But remembered events are infinite because they are only the keys to everything that happened before and after them.”

  Rabani thought about that. “Keys aren’t usually shared with a lot of people,” he said.

  He said he had taken up enough of Jackson’s time, said thanks, and paced back to his office, thinking about how many people had walked along the soothingly carpeted hallway with secrets they had hoped to protect.

  He waited until late afternoon to walk to the camera shop, calculating that he was most likely to catch Ostroski without customers at that time of day. The usual pieces of trash lay on the sidewalk in the light autumn breeze. Dingy and still wet from recent rain, they did not add the usual spots of colour or jittery movement to the grey sidewalk. He walked up to the familiar storefront with its thick layers of paint on the window frame, each layer cratered with its own flaked depressions. He opened the door and walked in. The door squeaked against the jamb as he pushed it shut. He heard the light tinkling of the bell that announced customers entering.

  Ostroski shuffled out of the back room and behind the counter, keeping his eyes on Rabani the whole distance. Rabani smelled a hint of film developing chemicals.

  “I know,” Ostroski said. “I’ll take the cheque over to your office tomorrow. You won’t have to hear it’s in the mail.”

  “I didn’t come about the bill. There’s unfinished business to take care of. Becker was in my office this morning. He’s worked up about photographs he says you have and he wants. They aren’t the ones you took from the collection, although the government would like to get those back. These are some private ones. He said you’d know what he was talking about.”

  “He asked me for some old pictures himself. I told him no. I didn’t say whether they really exist.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to play that game, Jack. He’s willing to let you keep the originals and just take copies. He said if he doesn’t get them, there will be serious consequences. Not could be. Will be.”

  Ostroski snorted. “What serious consequences? He’s going to make sure I never work for the government again? Check that my city business licence is up to date? He can shove his consequences up his ass.”

  “The deal you had with the government is complete,” Rabani said. “But a good lawyer could probably find a way to accuse you of reneging somehow. Your taking some photos out of the collection while you reviewed it is probably a good starting point. Then they may come after your money. Or just take you to court and watch your legal bills mount up, which would not be coming from me by the way.”

  “Let them. I don’t feel like giving him anything.”

  “It doesn’t have to go like that. He’s willing to come up with more money too. He didn’t say how much but I had the impression he was talking five figures again.”

  “From him or from the government?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters. It’s a funny thing. I felt a little sorry for Becker. If I could trust him....”

  “Trust him with what?”

  Ostroski pulled up a corner of his mouth, appraising his former lawyer. He waited and the moments stretched out. At length he said, “All right, I guess you earned it, but I’m taking the full thirty days to pay your bill.”

  Rabani said nothing. Ostroski appeared to be reconsidering, but then started talking.

  “I was in Wisconsin in the early Seventies, visiting a friend in Riverton. We heard there was trouble brewing down at the local college. I wandered down there with my old 35mm Canon. I couldn’t tell you why, maybe habit. Same reason I always took the camera when I went anywhere. A couple of hundred college kids were demonstrating against the war. I guess the local authorities didn’t like that, or were just scared. Of a bunch of kids. A platoon of National Guardsmen showed up on a rise in the road most of the kids were on. Nice positioning. On the high ground. Some lieutenant must have paid attention in tactics class. There was a lot of yelling going on. A couple of TV crews were there shooting, for the local evening news, I guess, and maybe hoping their footage would make it to the networks. The cameras just incited the more rambunctious of the kids. A few stones started flying. I tried to stay out of the way and started taking pictures. Habit again. Documentary images from the front lines.

  “Next thing I know I see a bunch of the Guardsmen levelling their rifles at the kids. I didn’t hear any orders being shouted. It looked bad, which was all the more reason to snap a few more frames. I started out with a roll of thirty-six. Then I hear shots and see rifles jerking. I’m looking through the lens at all this. I hear screaming. A girl is down. She’s in a long flower-print dress and sandals like they used to wear. Blood’s pouring out of her chest like a hose someone forgot to turn off. Jesus.”

  Ostroski looked down at the chipped Formica countertop. Rabani heard oppressive silence around them.

  “I’d been taking photos of the Guardsmen. I was off to one side and in among a few onlookers who might have been college officials or professors. The Guardsmen were concentrating on the kids. If they’d seen me with the camera pointed at them they might have let loose on me too. The TV crews had been pointing their cameras at the kids when it happened so they were nothing to worry about. Hell, the Guardsmen probably thought their pictures could be useful in spreading an object lesson. I nearly got sick to my stomach but beat it out of there. When I develop the film strip I can see I caught the decisive moment, just like Cartier-Bresson said you can. You remember I told you about him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Three Guardsmen pointing their rifles but fairly elevated. Even from the rise in the road they were going to be shooting over the crowd’s heads. One had his rifle pointed straight. He was shooting to hit someone. I caught the moment the bullet was leaving the rifle and I caught his face. I never tried to look him up. I can imagine what was going through his head. He couldn’t have been scared. The kids were too far away and were never going to get close enough to hurt those guys. He was mad. Could have been mad about kids throwing stones at him. I ended up thinking he had a brother or a friend in Nam, maybe still alive or maybe dead, and here were a bunch of privileged, snotty college kids making all that sacrifice look cheap. It wasn’t all that way, of course. By then the war had been going on a few years. Some of those college kids had probably been drafted and served over there. They knew what they were protesting against.

  “Maybe it was even simpler for the shooter
. Some of those guys were just law-and-order types. I once met one who had me over to his place for a drink. He had posters of SS soldiers on one of his walls. You never know. But I ended up thinking the guy who did the shooting was gritting his teeth about snotty kids carrying flowers and smoking dope and playing guitars while his friend or brother was looking around in the dark in some swamp hoping there weren’t snipers or booby traps waiting for him. You know what the capper was? I could see my old man doing exactly that. He might have fired. And I’m not about to let John Becker or anyone else get hold of that guy’s picture and track him down to be crucified. Now you’ve got it. Satisfied?”

  Rabani was not. His life consisted of asking questions. “Why didn’t you just destroy the negatives?”

  “I couldn’t. Cartier-Bresson said a photograph can fix eternity in an instant. That’s what happened in Riverton. It was too much responsibility. An armed man killing an innocent girl. That’s eternity. I told you before, keeping it fixed is what a picture does. It fixes the moment. It doesn’t keep the moment alive. It keeps the moment from spreading. I need a beer. Want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Rabani watched Ostroski head into the back room, visualized him walking past what he called the time machine, heard the door open and close on the 1950s-era fridge and heard the bottle cap snapped off. Ostroski had what looked like a third of the bottle drained before he came back into the shop. He sat down and took another pull on his beer.

  “Well, what now, lawyer?”

  “I’m not sure, Jack. Why do you think Becker would go after that fellow, even if it were possible to track him down, if in fact he’s still alive?”

  “Becker’s obsessed. I’ve seen that before. He won’t let it rest because he can’t.”

  “People change. What’s important to them changes. He may still be obsessed about getting his hands on the photo. Taking some kind of revenge is an entirely separate step.”

  “Why take the chance?”

  “Then there’s the question of whether it really is right to protect that Guardsman. He wouldn’t be charged with a crime even if a definite link could be made to him. People have to be responsible for their actions. That’s a large part of what appeals to me about the law. It’s a way of applying that principle of responsibility. Making the principle a reality.”

  Ostroski tilted the bottle for another long drink. Rabani was briefly struck by the ridiculousness of the sight of an Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  Ostroski looked at the chipped and yellowed linoleum floor and then at Rabani with an unfocused gaze: “Maybe it’s the other way around. People also have to be responsible for what they don’t do. That’s a lot harder to pin down. Someone might have stopped something and didn’t. No coming up before a judge and jury to explain that. Just something eating away at your insides for the rest of your life. You ever think that’s why Becker is obsessed about this Riverton business? Maybe what’s really galling him is this friend of his who got killed in Vietnam. Do you know about that?”

  “No. What about it?”

  “He lost his best friend. He told me this himself when he came to talk to me the other day. Didn’t want the friend to go. It could have been arranged. Thousands of guys found ways to avoid being drafted. Or their fathers did it for them. Anyway, the friend got killed and Becker swore to himself someone would pay. That’s a good one. One of the old bastards who got us into that mess was going to pay somehow. Now think about this. What if the guy who really had to pay—has been paying every day of his life since then—was Becker? What if he thought, still thinks, he could have tried harder to keep his friend at home and alive? Maybe he thinks he’s the guilty party but he’s trying to take it out on someone else. Besides, why should I try to help him with his problems? No one ever helped me.”

  Rabani felt his stomach tighten. His head felt light the way it had at the cemetery and he let it slump forward until he was sure he had recovered. He stood to leave and Ostroski said, “Aw hell ... I’ll think it over.”

  Rabani said, “Thank you, Jack.” He walked to the door, went out, pulled it shut behind him and looked down the pallid street. People two blocks away on the main avenue were starting to hurry back to their homes after a day at work or pick up a birthday card or newly repaired shoes before closing time.

  Next morning, Adela arrived at the shop with two coffees. Ostroski said thanks and told her he would be in back working on a newly arrived Pentax for about half an hour and then going out.

  She said, “You look a little funny, Jack. Is everything all right”

  “I had some trouble with Becker and I’m trying to figure out what to do about it. Fixing cameras is easier than fixing people.”

  24.

  SHE WAS BACK TO WORK IN THE CAMERA SHOP ON TIME THE following Tuesday morning. She hadn’t brought coffee. She had her grim face on instead of the smiling one. Ostroski thought about how many times trouble had started on a Tuesday in recent months. The title of an old song came to mind: “Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad).” Yeah, Monday morning is a peach in comparison.

  He wasn’t ready for the story she had to tell him: immigration trouble. Not just any immigration trouble. This had come out of nowhere, and for no good reason that she could see. And it was serious. A potential deportation order for her and her brother. And all happening fast. She said she hoped to see if the lawyer could resolve whatever issue the government had with her. But she doubted they had any real issue, despite Roberto’s slight brush with the law a few months ago. She was suspicious about the coincidence of an unwarranted immigration problem and Ostroski’s problem with a man who now was in the powerful post of provincial energy minister. Politicians were all potentially corrupt. The smart ones all knew how to pull strings and get things done, even dirty things. She had said that to Roberto.

  He told her going to the lawyer was probably the best idea. Get him to look into both ends of the business—take on the federal officials but also talk to Becker. Afterward, he telephoned Rabani, explained what was happening. He said if it came to that, he might trade the Riverton photos in exchange for keeping Morales and her brother safe, but the photos should be held in reserve until they were clearly needed.

  Rabani called Becker’s office and learned how difficult it was to reach a cabinet minister, even on what he described as urgent personal business. The minister was away talking to oil and gas executives, he was told. Then he was coming back to the capital but would be leaving the office immediately and had left strict instructions not to be bothered until the next day. Rabani thought about staking out evening commuter flights at the mid-city airport but did not want to appear desperate. A short window of time the next day would do.

  Becker had far different things on his mind. After an inconclusive meeting at which he heard about what he’d expected on regulations and royalties he stopped at a high-end jewellery store. He bought an AA-grade ammolite pendant set in gold for an anniversary present. Not the most spectacular gem that he could have bought but one he knew Arlene would appreciate; it came from near her family’s ranch in the southern foothills. He had already done some research after hearing about ammolite and been amused to find it fit his impression of the province. The rainbow-hued stone was actually a fossil. In jewellery it was almost invariably set as a thin veneer attached to a backing material like slate. Everything valuable in this place comes from dirt and usually still has a bit of dirt attached to it, he thought.

  Back in his office two hours later he was told about the urgent request to meet with George Rabani and resigned himself to what would probably be another exercise in frustration. But you never knew. Something could come of it. Just better not to build up hope. He decided to set aside ten minutes after lunch the next day. He walked out to his car, noting the chill and the telltale puffiness in the clouds. On the way home he listened to a classical music program rather than his other usual choices. Mozart suited his mood. He planned to take his wife out for dinne
r but then return home reasonably early.

  In the middle of town, Rabani packed a thick file into his briefcase for further reading after supper and decided to stop at the Czech bistro on the way home because he knew he could get a fairly light meal there. He was not officially on a diet, but still....

  Back in his apartment later, he decided the file was too thick to handle in his reading chair. He took it to his oak table and placed it under the hanging lamp. He had worked through about ten pages when a loud insistent rapping on the door interrupted him. He opened it. Adela Rosales stood in the hallway, her mouth partly open and her eyes looking filmy with gathering tears. He quickly asked her in and before he could invite her to sit down or ask what was wrong, heard her say, “I’m afraid for Roberto. I think he is going to do something stupid and dangerous.”

  The story spilled out in short bursts. Roberto knew about Becker’s approach to Ostroski and about the implied threat in his warning of consequences for failure to give him what he wanted. When he heard about the threat to his and his sister’s immigration status, he had flared up but quickly gone cold and sullen. Now she had found a note from him saying he was going to “take care of ” the persecutor. If he did not come back, she should know that he loved her and had always appreciated everything she had done for him. She knew he had access to guns.

  “Just a minute,” Rabani said. “Someone in my office spends time with people in the government. He may know how to get in touch with Becker.” He called Morley Jackson, who had Becker’s private phone number and address in his private files. Then he called the number but got no answer.

  “I’ll have to go out there,” he said. “I’ll take Jack with me. And maybe someone else from the office. Do you know Jack’s number? I keep it at the office but I don’t remember it.”