Image Decay

by Mark Lisac

  “You know what all the places like that have in common?” Ostroski said. “All those stories they’re trapped in are old. They live halfway in the past. Maybe if they had more pictures of how things really were they could stop carrying pictures around in their heads.”

  “I don’t know, Jack. I’m not a photographer, just a lawyer.”

  “I’ll think about it. About Becker and the pictures he wants. Not Jeffries though. He and all his bunch will have to live with the memories, even if they don’t know for sure which of their memories are real.”

  “I’ll see you around, Jack. Thanks for the beer.”

  Rabani walked out into the cold street. He decided to check back at work rather than going to his apartment. He wanted people around him so he walked back to the office on the main avenue rather than on one of the less travelled avenues north of it. The sun behind him began finding openings in the lead-coloured clouds sliding out of the west in ragged bands. The low light of late autumn reflected off a new building that had just been finished that summer. It was a departure from the usual grey concrete and dark green glass. The whole seven-storey building was clad in a copper-gold glass that reflected bright rays of sunshine. It looked like a dream of prosperity, an illusion that hope could always be made real in this land of never-ending memories and endless new optimisms.

  He rode up the elevator to the office and the deep green hallway carpets that felt a little like a cushion of air. Inside the office, he slipped off his coat and sat down in his chair, thinking he could spend half an hour reviewing one of the two files he had left behind, and then go out for supper. He reached for a folder and stopped. Without putting his usual thought into it he picked up the phone and dialed Adela’s number. He was surprised when she answered and even more surprised when, after a second of thinking it over, she agreed to go out for supper with him.

  They talked and occasionally laughed. They both stayed away from worrisome topics. He told her how his first car had been a used 1976 Ford Pinto and he had been scared of stories about exploding gas tanks but it turned out he should have been even more scared about weak engine timing belts and rust-prone fenders. She told him she had been intrigued by the notion of making banana bread. When she was a girl, someone had always done that for her. She found that the most difficult part was judging when bananas were soft enough for baking but not yet collapsed into an unappetizing brown mess. “They’re like people,” she said. “You want them mature, but not collapsing into a soft middle age. Ripe but not turning into mush.”

  They went for a walk afterward and kissed in an empty corner park. They drifted toward his apartment. His biggest surprise of the evening came when she agreed to go up with him and they quickly began making love. It was the most physical affection he’d known in three years. She stayed until one in the morning. She came back once in early January, the coldest week of the year. By then he realized that what he liked about her best was the sound of her voice.

  27.

  THEY MET ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON FOR A WALK ALONG the riverbank. It was the last week of February. The weather had warmed up but was still wintry. Ice on the river was covered now by deep snow. The snow bore tracks where deer had sauntered out of the willows and poplars in the safety of darkness. The deer had wandered out where the surface was still firm and smooth. Near the far bank a narrow stream of open water ran downstream from a drainage outlet. In some places, ice piled up in chunks like boulders on an avalanche slope.

  Fluting whistles of chickadees pierced the air as sharply as the slivers of sunlight dazzling about them. They looked up at the bundles of black, grey and white hopping from twig to twig and looking back at them.

  “Chickadees were the first birds I truly noticed when I moved here,” Adela said. “They look so friendly.”

  “They are,” Rabani said. “I’ve walked down here on weekends when I needed a break from work and there was no one to spend any time with. The chickadees are always here. They’re always curious about you, which is something a lot of people can’t manage.”

  He was happy that it was warm enough not to have the lenses of his glasses fog up. They were a week old, with frames of thick black plastic instead of the tortoiseshell look he had favoured for years. Rabani liked the idea of going into courtrooms and into client meetings looking a little more aggressive than he had in the past; still, he counted on strong preparation rather than on the projection of a useful image.

  Adela had noticed the change, not so much of looks as of tone. She did not talk about that, though. She talked instead about the book he had lent her, the autobiography of Clarence Darrow. He had told her that reading it was one of the main reasons he had gone into law.

  “It’s different from Agatha Christie,” she said. “Christie made up a world full of nicely placed facts and big emotions pushing against each other in tightly contained spaces. Darrow’s world was full of rock-solid principles and factual uncertainties, contested in a wide-open social setting. The crimes in those settings often reflected the struggle of big conflicting interests in the surrounding society. Some could even be described as a struggle of alienation against settled order.”

  “That’s true,” he said, which was a way of saying he liked hearing her think. “Darrow’s world had verdicts but often no absolute certainty about what had really happened. The appeal of Christie’s fiction is the knowledge that one will get to the bottom of things.”

  “Yes,” she said, “the appeal of knowing.”

  The sidewalk had been swept clear of snow. They did not have the familiar crunching squeak under their boots but they did have the radiant glitter of the low February sun and the delicate ridges of snow on tree branches to marvel at. He waited for her to take a glove off her hand and hold his, as she often did when they walked along this pathway, looking down at the frozen river. He thought their hands were magically a perfect fit.

  “I’m going to stay with the firm,” he said. “I may even make a lifelong career there. The senior partners, one in particular, are good men, all worth knowing and learning from. Some of the new associates are promising talents and good company. But I’ve been changing my mind about what sorts of cases to take on. This city, the whole province, has more rottenness in it than I imagined. Like waking up one morning and finding your bananas have turned squishy and brown,” he joked. “I think it’s time I accepted that. Maybe what my colleagues call the garbage cases are worth taking on. They’re as real as the higher-status ones. Maybe I can learn more from them.”

  She said nothing for about half a minute. Then she said, “You will make a good lawyer, George. I think it is a career that will suit you. And this city suits you. You will probably be a senior partner yourself one day, perhaps sooner than some of your colleagues.”

  He kept walking, looking at the bright snow on the tree branches and the occasional chickadee twitching its head to study the passersby with its bright eyes. But he felt a hollowing in his chest, a sudden and certain sense of relegation, of being placed on a shelf from which there would be no return.

  “I’ll just keep doing my job,” he said. “It’s the most interesting thing I can think of.”

  They reached a small observation platform and crowded to its wooden railing to look out over the silent valley. That was when she told him she had given notice to Jack that she would be leaving the city in mid-March.

  “I am moving to Chicago,” she said.

  He could not immediately find words.

  “I have a chance to work in architectural restoration there,” she said. “They are beginning to restore truly beautiful buildings from the first forty years of this century and even some from the last of the nineteenth. It’s what I was trained to do and want to do.”

  She did not stop to wait for anything he might say. “Nothing like that will happen here. Here they think a city is a place to build structures fast and pull them down not long afterward to make room for new ones. They think they acknowledge the past if they keep a little sto
ne from an old façade on the front of a new building. Or maybe they put a fresh coat of paint on one of the big advertisements that used to be painted on the sides of old brick warehouses. It’s true that Chicago has more money to make preservation and restoration possible. Very rich families and businesses have started foundations with enough grant money at their disposal to make such work possible. But here? I don’t think money can ever make a difference. Here there is no will.”

  He finally found a voice and said, “What about Roberto?”

  “We have talked,” she said. “He will stay here. I think he likes it. He likes it now even more than before his encounter with authority. He said he felt fairly treated. And he felt he had friends looking after him. He likes construction work too. That’s what he will do. He said he may decide to become an apprentice in one of the trades. Carpentry and electrical installation both interest him. I think Jack will look after him as well as Jack can look after anyone. I hope you will keep in touch with him, too.” She turned to look at him with the last statement. A request? A polite acknowledgment? Something close to a direction? A hope sent floating into the winter air?

  She turned back to the river and said, “In any event, he will be better off staying here than dealing with the American authorities after his legal experience here and with his background.”

  “Separating still seems like a difficult way for a brother and sister to proceed.”

  “Do not forget that we were separated for two years when he was abducted by the guerrillas,” she said. “And I was much older. We enjoyed each other’s company but we were never as close as many siblings. Even here, when we ended up living together again, he and I were living quite different lives.”

  “Different is not the same as separate.”

  “No, but I think perhaps this is inevitable. Now I will live in a city where people want to preserve architectural evidence of the past but see those buildings as a departure point for new ways of expressing who they are, and what their community is. Roberto will build new structures. But he will do that in a city that always tears down its old ones. Perhaps the achievements of the past are never thought to be good enough. The visual evidence steadily disappears. It is removed quickly and replaced quickly. People here seem to think that is the way to build the future. I think it is a way to keep forever building a future that forever recedes from view. You think you are leaving the past when you take down all the old buildings. But you keep living the memory of old dreams, hoping the next building will be the fulfillment, the one that will finally get you to the future.”

  “You make it sound glum,” he said. “Not even tragic, just glum.”

  They were both looking at the river and the snow-frosted trees on the other side. A couple in puffy jackets, he in red and she in white, stood talking on the far bank, looking quite small, too far away to hear.

  “I hope you will find someone to keep you company,” she said. “I know there are women who like you. That friend of my friend Rosa, the one named Ginny, she told Rosa she liked you.”

  “I liked you,” he said.

  They walked back to his car and he drove her to her apartment. He wished her good luck with her new life and she wished him good luck with his career. She kissed him on his right cheek and slipped out of the car seat and onto the sidewalk, so quickly he had the impression of a blur. They never saw each other again.

  Midway through March, he was walking along the thickly carpeted hallway toward his office one afternoon when a door opened and Asher stepped out, his overcoat on and a briefcase in his hand.

  Rabani broke into a smile, surprising himself. “Hello, Harry,” he said. “You had a good day?”

  “Progress on all fronts. You?”

  “My two top cases are coming along nicely,” Rabani said. “One should be wrapped up in a few days and the other in a couple of weeks. I’ll probably spend some of the evening in the office going over the files. The first case will be in the judge’s hands. The other is probably headed for a reasonably amicable settlement.”

  “You should remember to save time for company some evenings,” Asher said. “Preferably female.”

  “I intend to work on that. You know, I’m changing course with the kinds of cases I handle. The partners had me lined up to take on some important new commercial work but I’ve been losing interest in that field. Commercial cases more and more seem artificial. That drawn-out business with Ostroski’s photographs opened my eyes to what’s underneath what passes for high society in this place. It’s a densely intertwined and often unseemly world. That could be interesting to explore. I’m going to start taking on the cases that none of the partners want to touch, messy things like divorce and fraud.”

  “Are you sure?” Asher said. “There could be a fine line between interesting and depressing. It could also put you on a very slow road to a partnership. It usually pays to keep one eye on the future.”

  “True,” Rabani said. “But in this town, probably in this whole province, the future often seems to be jumping out of reach. Like it’s running away from the past and the past never gives up or lies down to rest. Be careful the past doesn’t catch you someday, Harry. It’s a dangerous thing around here. Sometimes you can’t recognize it until it’s all around you.”

  Asher smiled. “I never believed in ghosts, George. But I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Rabani thought he had time to drive over to the camera shop on the way home. It was late enough in the afternoon that he would find a parking spot with no problem. He pulled up on the street opposite the little storefront and noticed how small and sparse it looked. Not desolate and bare. The sign over the window gave it a spark of life—but, what to say, a modest life, careful, watchful, yet insistent on its own small space. A sparrow in a park full of crows and magpies.

  Ostroski was behind the counter reading a photography magazine. He looked up as the door opened and said, “Hello, lawyer. Here to hand deliver my receipt for paying the bill?”

  “That’s only for clients we can expect to be repeat customers,” Rabani said. “How are you making out these days?”

  “Personally? Fine. If you’re asking how I’m going to get along without Adela to help out, I’ve got a kid coming in from the photography class I teach over at the college. A couple of them can take good pictures but he’s interested in learning how to do basic repairs, too.”

  “That’s good. And Roberto?”

  “I see him from time to time. He promised to drop in once every week or two. So far he’s kept his promise. We go out for burgers or something. He has a bigger appetite than I do. How about you?”

  “There’s never any shortage of work for a lawyer in this town. Especially now that I’m switching into the messier side of the work—divorce, business partners suing each other, that sort of thing.”

  “I was thinking more of your social life. You can’t work all the time. You going out on a date some night with that Ginny Radescu? From what I hear, she could be fun.”

  “That’s the impression I got the one time I met her,” Rabani said. “Yeah, I think I’ll see what she’s like.”

  “She used to be involved with Becker, you know?”

  “That’s my understanding. I thought he’d be one of my divorce cases. I guess not, though. He strikes me as a guy who never managed to settle down. Now he has.”

  “He was in here a few days ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “Picking up a few negatives. I decided to let him have those photos I took in Riverton. He didn’t want me to make any prints, just the negatives. Didn’t want to use the loupe to inspect them closely, either. Said he’d probably look at them someday.”

  “That’s good, Jack.”

  Ostroski put down the magazine and looked around the shop. “Well, what the hell, he doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, really. Even offered to let me have one of his dogs if I wanted it. He said that one he calls Mitzi likes me. What would I do with a dog? And a dachshund. I’d rather take my cha
nces with that Doberman he keeps.”

  He opened his hands and looked at the palms and tilted his gaze back up at Rabani. “You know, I have a bunch of other old pictures around here. I took some of Adela once. She didn’t like having her picture taken but I got her to stand outside in the sunlight and behind the counter here when I was testing an old Leicaflex. You could have any of them you wanted.”

  Rabani had time to think as Ostroski was finishing the offer and answered without hesitating: “No thanks, Jack. That guy you met from my office, Harry, told me he doesn’t believe in ghosts. Think I’ll try to see if he’s right. Can I let you know if I change my mind?”

  “I’ll keep them nicely stored.”

  Rabani shuffled to look up at the black and white prints with a ghostly moon and strangely luminous aspens and said, “Well, I just dropped in to see how you were doing, and check on Roberto.”

  He started walking out and heard Ostroski say, “Okay. Don’t be a stranger.”

  Then he drove to the observation point overlooking the river valley, where he saw the ice had started to thaw and break up, just as it did every spring.

  TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

  THE SMELL OF FURNITURE IN A STRONGLY HEATED ROOM oozed up around Rabani, along with the leftover aromas of chicken soup and some kind of sandwiches. The staff were clearing away the last of the lunch clutter. All the chairs at the lunch tables had arms and all the stuffed couches and seats around the sides were covered in floral print fabric. He saw Ostroski sitting in an armchair in a corner talking to a woman with thinning whitish hair and thick spectacles with translucent cream-coloured frames. He walked up and smiled a hello.