Image Decay

by Mark Lisac

  “Hi George, this is Hazel,” Ostroski said. “I’ve been trying to get her to model for me because I think her cheekbones would photograph well but she says it might lead to hanky panky.”

  “Oh you,” Hazel said. Rabani thought her tone of voice contained an unresolved mixture of delight and annoyance.

  “Excuse us, please, Hazel,” Ostroski said. “Time for gin rummy. Have to keep the brain cells firing.”

  They moved to a card table, Ostroski walking stiffly but at a good pace. His hands were getting a little stiff too but he could still shuffle if he did not try to rush.

  “What’s new in the world? All we ever get to see of it in this place is the evening news, and I don’t trust any of that.”

  “Not much. The usual. You’d probably be interested to know, though, that phone manufacturers are squeezing high enough resolution into their camera feature this year that they expect a lot of people will forget about having separate equipment and just take pictures with their phones.”

  “Hmmph. They’ll think they’re taking pictures. I’m not surprised. Getting rid of Kodachrome was only the first shoe to fall.”

  “Anything new here?”

  “You’d never guess. John Becker is one of the inmates now. He checked in three weeks ago. Still has most of his marbles but they’re starting to fall out of the bag. Just gets a little vague now and then. I suppose he can hang on well enough to talk to for another six months, maybe a year if he’s lucky. I don’t know if you’ll see him today. He likes a nap after lunch.”

  “I suppose he’s here because his wife died several months ago.”

  “Looks like it. His kids aren’t eager to have him living with them. He says he wasn’t eager to impose on them anyway. They’re all well fixed enough to go their own ways. His wife sold the family ranch and there weren’t many other relatives to split it with. Funny thing. She used to make a big deal about preserving the ranch way of life down there. You used to see her in the papers talking about how it was the heart of the province. But he said she had it in her will that a block of the land right up against the foothills should be leased to a wind power company. She wanted the rest sold to a nature conservancy.”

  Rabani considered whether to pick up a discard or try his luck from the top of the pack. He turned a card from the pack and said, “She was a realist. She knew you can hang onto the past for a long time, or let the past hang onto you, but a long time is not forever.”

  Voices rose on the other side of the room. They looked over to see a small family group around one of the other residents. A woman in a striped dress had a cellphone out and was taking snapshots with it.

  “Phones,” Ostroski snorted. “Any old camera in my shop would have taken better pictures. The digital cameras have a lot going for them, I’ll admit. When the staff here found out I made a living as a photographer they got me to take pictures of birthdays and things like that. They lend me one of those pocket-size digital cameras. It’s a long way from a good 35mm with Kodachrome or Ilford film but you can take as many shots as you like and you can see what you have instantly. That makes you less careful, of course. But every professional photographer threw away a lot of exposures. One of the secrets of the trade was to keep taking a lot of pictures. You looked for the one or two that would stand out.”

  He was getting wound up now. Rabani didn’t mind. He had come to enjoy the grumpy lectures.

  “And those phone cameras are too handy, too accessible. You see relatives coming in here and using them all the time. I read about people taking pictures of themselves and everyone and everything around them and putting them on the Internet. I see in the paper once a week a full page of pictures that people have taken of food.

  You wonder how you see so many fat people around these days when they’re taking pictures of their food instead of eating it. They don’t have a clue. They don’t realize that when they record everything in their lives they’re not saving it, they’re throwing it away. They’re making everything forgettable the instant they live it. Who knows? Maybe they don’t even live their life, just see it through a little glass screen. People constantly taking pictures of themselves like they’re television stars. And they don’t realize television dissolves the past, chews it up. Hell, the TV’s on in here most nights. You know what I see? The same thing over and over. TV finally used up every idea any writer or director ever had. Now they just keep remaking the same shows with different names and different characters. Even the stars aren’t stars anymore. They’re just a bunch of factory workers no one remembers the week after their series is cancelled.”

  “You finished?” Rabani said.

  “Sure. Gin.”

  Rabani wasn’t surprised. Ostroski was in the home because of arthritis and a weakened heart, not because he had lost his ability to count cards and talk at the same time. Rabani shuffled the deck and Ostroski said, “Speaking of gin, how come you never married that woman?”

  “Ginny? I don’t know. She never pressed the issue. I thought about it off and on. Then we ran out of time. Too used to not having to trip over someone else in the apartment now. We still see each other a lot. Sometimes we stay over at each other’s places.”

  “I think I’d have married her. Maybe doing that would have been a mistake, maybe not. You can’t go through life without making mistakes. I look back and think about all the things I would have done differently if I’d been as smart as I am now. I used to regret most of them. Now? I see people taking pictures like they have no choice. I read about insurance companies bribing people to install devices in their cars to let the companies keep track of how they drive. I read about experiments with driverless cars. I hear about younger folks buying nothing but premade dinners and getting wrapped up in social causes that don’t mean much. All those causes do is keep them from paying attention to things that really count. From what I hear about computers you don’t even have much choice there. You buy Microsoft or Apple, and then you’re stuck with buying everything else from the same company. Now I hear the big outfits don’t even want to sell you stuff, they want you to pay a monthly subscription, like you’re on the hook forever at a company store. Fridges that spy on you. I look back and think we didn’t have a lot of the conveniences people have now but at least we had freedom.”

  “You’re getting ornery in your old age, Jack.”

  “I’m working at it. Got to keep your mind occupied somehow in this overheated birdcage or it’ll turn to mush. Time to take a walk after this hand?”

  “Yes, I have some time. I have some refreshments in the car so we won’t get dehydrated.”

  They drove to a small unnamed park area overlooking the river and strolled slowly to a bench where they sat down and opened two cans of beer that Rabani had selected because the labels could easily be mistaken for something non-alcoholic.

  Ostroski took as long a sip as he could manage and smacked his lips. “Ah,” he said. “Thank you, George. The doctors and the dietitians who keep trying to tell me how to die don’t know how this tastes on a summer day. They probably stick to that stuff they call energy drinks, or broccoli juice. We get enough broccoli at dinner in that place.” He took another sip. “Goddamn busybodies,” he snarled.

  Rabani smiled at the thought of how much his friend sounded like a short-tempered dachshund.

  He looked at the river, knowing Ostroski was enjoying the sight of the placid, multi-coloured surface with the deep currents underneath, flowing between the willows and cottonwoods year after year. He looked up at the clouds, endless white puffs of cumulus sliding across the austere blue sky, and wondered what dreams he could make of them or what memories they could stir.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  What images decay in the course of this story? Do some images not decay and, if so, what makes them different? Do the effects of images that decay and those that resist decay differ?

  George Rabani becomes a link between a number of quite different characters in the book. Does he have a
strong personality of his own and how does his personality allow for him to interact with the other characters?

  Is Jack Ostroski fundamentally a sympathetic and likable character or not? Would you want to spend any time with him?

  This is a book about place as well as about characters. The setting is not meant to be a mirror image of Alberta but is obviously in the same location. In what ways does it look like Alberta to you? Are there ways in which it does not?

  Jack Ostroski argues that photographs are a way of forgetting rather than remembering. Is he right or wrong? Or can they be both? Why?

  Most of the characters live with memories, often memories they regret. Some may even have lives shaped by those memories. Is that unusual or is it a common condition experienced by most people?

  Ostroski ends up saying people had more freedom in the analogue days than during the modern digital days. Is he right? Is there a similarity between that freedom and Alex Rabani’s living without much memory? Is Alex’s state a loss or a freedom?

  Differences in social class seem to underlie some of the characters’ attitudes and some of the events in the book. How important are these differences? Do they reflect real life as you know it?

  Some of the characters feel at home in the place where they live, some do not, and some keep insisting it is their home when they may not actually fit in. For example, Arlene Becker and Adela Morales have strengths that may not be immediately apparent and opposing views of the place where they live. How do their experiences alter how they view the city in which they live? To what extent is feeling at home anyplace you live a result of objective circumstance, and to what extent is it a result of your own perceptions and adaptability?

  MARK IS A WRITER LIVING IN EDMONTON, ALBERTA. Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, he began working as a journalist in Regina in 1973; moved to Edmonton in 1978 to join The Canadian Press as a reporter-editor; became provincial affairs columnist at the Edmonton Journal in 1987; and was publisher and editor of an independent political newsletter from 2005 to 2013. He has since been a freelance editor and written novels, the first being Where the Bodies Lie, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for best first crime novel. He edited a collection of speeches by former Alberta lieutenant-governor Lois Hole, titled Lois Hole Speaks, and wrote two books about Alberta politics, The Klein Revolution and Alberta Politics Uncovered, the latter winning the Writers Guild of Alberta Wilfred Eggleston Award for non-fiction in 2005. He enjoys the work of many authors, including David Adams Richards; his favourite authors of mysteries/thrillers include Ross Macdonald, K.C. Constantine, Nicolas Freeling, Dorothy Sayers and Josephine Tey.