by
Things of an unusual sort seek me out. It comes from reading too many translations. I am not fluent. Perhaps we should stick to our own idioms, expressed in our own language, and leave others alone, unless we can read and understand a foreign tongue. Subtleties, I'm told, are lost. Still, we are getting two works when we get a translation, at least one of which is technically perfect. Both are masterpieces; perhaps this is more than we can absorb. One wonders: is it the ideas expressed which we cannot comprehend, or only the imperfect expression - the translation? Here's something contradictory now - what do I do? The original is creatively perfect, technically imperfect; the translation just the reverse. I could fall on my knees before a purist, beg forgiveness, swear off translations; or sink further into the ordinary, even take up best sellers. Never get up, or never get out.
My apartment faces the ocean. Columbus, Ohio, is my home, and although my balcony overlooks Interstate 71, I gauge my position from the Atlantic coast. I have not been in the surf, but I feel I would instinctively know how to resist its hypnotic pull. No one in my family has ever drowned. Disappearances are not too rare though. I'm reminded of a miniature of a great uncle that an avalanche abruptly ended one branch of our family tree. I favor beige in my decor. My favorite chair is vaguely that color. The bathroom, which, my apartment being rented, I have no control over, is blue, and I'm relaxed when I'm in that room. I could refer skeptics to the Luscher Color Test. I've lived here almost a year.
Before I began my present job, I finished reading Vargas Llosa's The Green House: I had to hurry, it was slow going - one reviewer called the work "chaotic" - and I wanted it behind me. I had begun it during one stage of existence, when I did not work but only studied and reflected and read; I did not wish it to extend into the active stage. I am a photographer; I only take pictures for profit, and when on assignment I put all my books, translations most of them, aside; I do not read, I do not even think of reading. I sometimes plan shots, it's true - artistic shots, purely for my own enjoyment; but never take them. The planning even makes me anxious: I cannot see photography other than in a materialistic light, nor art in anything but a spiritual light. Art is unprofitable in my scheme; whatever is for profit is not art. Two distinct worlds are confined in enough space for only one; one acquaintance calls my existence anarchic. I take that word to mean not so much without law as without order. I often debate which of the two I prefer.
The tool of my trade - my weapon, which I use to stalk my living (an inexact metaphor but something I have of late felt inclined to take up after having perused, in a bookstore here in Columbus, one of those chain stores, a tract by Susan Sontag on photography, which takes the position that something is vanquished every time the shutter clicks - or at least I think that was the position) - my tool is a Pentax ME. Not the ME Super; just the ME. A single lens reflex, a 35mm camera. There are those who tell me a layman's camera is not proper for a professional, that I ought to acquire a Hassalblad or a Nikon, certainly something larger than 35mm. I'm not an artist, and not a journalist, not even a photographer people come to for portraits. I work for a realtor, I photograph his various properties. Sometimes for local trade journals, mostly for out of state clients. They buy, or they rent space, or they simply return the proofs: "Thanks but no thanks." It doesn't affect my commission one way or the other.
"Shlim." My name is not Shlim but Slim; my boss slurs it. "Shlim," he told me, "you should initial in the right hand corner of your pictures like Picassho." I just walked off, as if I had not heard him. I'm no artist; I refuse to fake artistry by mimicry. No initials; and I resent the suggestion.
"Shlattery: You know where it is. I want four good shots. Shtress the glash. Good glash in that building. Give me plenty of glash. Great shelling point. And I mean Shlim I want him to be able to look at these shots and almost shee himshelf reflected, the glash is so clear. Crystal, Shlim: Your aim should be for crystal." Don't you mean cryshtal? I felt like saying. "I don't want a lot of reflection. Don't give me Rexall across the shtreet. And for God shake no panhandlers passhing by. Just the building. I don't want nothing in the windows but what's inshide looking out. Little thigh if you get some honey shtanding in front of a window, if you know what I mean. Jakjake's no fairy; give me some thigh if you can. Won't hurt a bit when I shend him the leash. Well, Shlim my boy: Let's get at it. That Brownie of yours won't take its own shots, you've got to be right there with her. Clickety-shnap-click. That's the name of this game, Shlim."
Someone once told me if it was buildings I wanted to photograph, move to New York. The Seagram Building, they say. I get nervous though. They don't have to take photographs of the Seagram Building to persuade businessmen to lease office space. Just let me worry about Slattery's Building; leave art of it - all eight stories of it. Plate glass, steel, concrete: what won't they think of next? A man I met here in town said they used bronze for the Seagram Building; I don't know how we got to talking about it. Bronze you could photograph without getting everything from one end of the street to the other in it. This plate glass though. Jesus what an assignment!
Someone at work told me, I forget what the occasion was, that my routine made him think of the Atacama Desert. It's a rich area - nitrates; but the driest on earth.
"I don't see the connection," I told him.
"The way you go about things," he said. "I don't know if there is a connection, it just makes me think of the Atacama Desert, the way you go so far out of your way to make things convenient. Like parking six blocks away just so you'll have a dark place to load your camera. I don't want to criticize you, Slim, but you're weird. Really weird."
"I'm an Ohio State man!" I told him. I suppose that means something, I don't know what though. I always say it when I get defensive. I guess it's my way of saying no, I'm not weird. Presumably you can't be weird and get into Ohio State. I didn't exactly graduate. Even though they have a Photography major, and that's my field, I didn't take it; I debated taking it, but decided not to. Instead I took Business Administration, plus one beginner course in photography. It made me nervous so I dropped it. I dropped out altogether after one semester. The English instructor was good; that's about all. He got me onto translations.
True, it is six blocks away, like my acquaintance at work said; and, yes, there are parking lots closer; but this is the only covered garage in the area. Anybody who takes the trouble to read knows that film - the "magazine" kind, that's used in 35mm cameras - has to be loaded in subdued light. I don't care if you use Kodak, GAF, Ilford or even drug store film - it makes no difference; it has to be loaded in the dark. I can park my car - have it parked, that is, the attendants do the actual parking; then, when it's brought down to the street level and I get in, I just pull it off to the side before I leave for my assignment - there's plenty of room - and the light from the street doesn't filter too far into the garage; and I load my camera. Then I'm off to my assignment. It's better than loading it in the office, and having someone come up behind you, like they did to one guy, and scare you, and cause you to drop your camera. There's a method to my way of doing things, you can count on that.
This Pentax ME is fully automatic; it's so automatic that it doesn't even have a manual override. It does everything. It knows how much light, how long the exposure should be, how much distance. I just point it and press a button. Its design allows for no distortion. I don't care what building I'm shooting, it'll show up exactly as it is.
So I followed my routine to the letter. I pulled over, I began loading my film. This screech - this God-awful screech - from absolutely nowhere shoots out, straight for me. This son of a bitch - and I knew before I saw him which attendant it was, the son of a bitch is nothing but a God damn hot rod the way he tears around there with those cars. He's going to kill somebody some day and that'll be the end of his career. Heads straight for me. I mean, straight for me.
"Jesus Christ!" I cried. I almost dropped my camera, right in the middle of loading it. I thought I was done for till he slams on his breaks, just at the last minute before plowing right into me. He sticks his head out the door.
"Close one!" he called. And there I was shaking like a leaf.
"Jesus man what the hell were you trying to do?" I leaned out and asked.
"It's over, you're okay, forget it, unless you're a pussy!"
"I'm an Ohio State man!" I yelled at him at the top of my lungs.
"Yeah?" he yelled back. "And I'm a PMI man!"
"PMI?" I asked.
"You figure it buddy!" he called. "You figure it." And he drove off like a wild man, his wheels screaming out like they were laughing at me. I don't know what the hell PMI is. Maybe some kind of military academy - not that he needed to be there; he was aggressive enough without any training.
It was awhile before I felt up to driving. I just sat there. It gave me an idea. Background material, I thought: that's what I need. Background material on the Slattery Building - something to include in the letter to Jakjake; a little biography. Maybe he'd like that; maybe my boss would. I knew it would have to be a biography - anyone in Columbus would know that. Brotious X. Slattery, the leading citizen - one time citizen - of Columbus: our most renowned inhabitant. That might be the right touch. Since it was still early, and since I didn't want to get a direct glare on the plate glass anyway, I decided to visit the library first; then, say around noon, get the photographs.
"Are there any biographies of Mr. Slattery?" I asked the librarian. She glared at me.
"Young man," she informed me, "one whole room is devoted exclusively to Slattery memorabilia. All his private papers have been donated to us. We - this branch of the public library - house the Slattery Library. This building was once his private residence. You see that desk over there, young man? He used to sit there of an evening, doing what men do before their desks. And yes, we have a score of biographies. The best, and the one the curator of the Slattery Library personally recommended, is the Dayton edition, copyright 1942. D.W. Gnebso: Brotious X. Slattery, Scientist. Is something amusing you, young man?" the librarian asked.
I stammered something about Ohio State and walked off to find the Slattery Library. I had suppressed a laugh in front of the librarian. Just as she gave the title of Slattery's biography, I remembered something from my high school biology class. This guy sat next to me and we did experiments together, and so on. And of course we'd cut up once in a while, like the time we were studying Slattery's work with moss and lichen, and, showing me a picture of Slattery, John - my lab partner's name was John Morrison, whom everyone in class called John Moribund - said "There's a fungus among us!" I think we were just at the tail end of that expression's popularity. That was what the title of the Gnebso biography made me think of. "There's a fungus among us!" In a way it's good to want to laugh. John was killed when a scaffold he was working on fell. The irony is, he was helping build the Slattery Building. He was a blond headed kid, with glasses; a really nice kid, and lots of fun.
I made a detour to the bathroom. There was somebody at the urinal so I went into a stall. I couldn't help wondering if Brotious X. Slattery used to sit here of a morning - doing what men do at their pots. It's a sobering thought, me using the same bathroom as the first citizen of Columbus. It made me think of Llosa's The Green House, the way the past and present merge; it made me a little nervous, as if I were somehow trying to fill up a space he left behind. Anyway, even though this is a library, it wasn't a library for me just then but a place of business. I was there working.
"Hey pal, I'm using this toilet - can't you see? Find your own!" I told some guy who was about to come into the stall with me. Strange things like that are always happening to me though, so when I got out, and the guy was at the sink combing his hair, I smiled into the mirror at him and said I was sorry I yelled. He just turned away.
I couldn't seem to find that book. The room - the famous Slattery Library - was somewhat disappointing. I expected paneled walls, sculptured ceilings, elegant, almost parlor type furnishings - big stuffed chairs with lace doilies on the arms, cocktail tables, Tiffany lamps maybe; at any rate, something a cut above the ordinary library fare. But it wasn't. Plastic topped tables - mylar: it even said that in the grain at the far end of each, and I looked at each table; and regular chairs with vinyl seats. The carpet was nice; but altogether it was obvious it was just an ordinary room. I looked and looked but I simply could not find the book.
"Excuse me," I went back to the librarian. "I can't find the Gnebso biography."
"Now that's the Dayton edition," she reminded me.
"Uh huh. Yeah, it is. All the way from Dayton. My dad was born near there. Mom's from out of state. They helped pay my way to school. I looked under the D's," I told her.
"My God!" she said. "You looked under the D's?" I nodded that I did.
"D.W.Gnebso," I reminded her.
"My God, my God," she kept murmuring as she led me back to the Slattery Library. She went right to the book.
"Oh," I said, "someone stuck it in with the G's. No wonder I couldn't find it, huh? I guess you run into that a lot, don't you? By the way, who is this guy Gnebso?" I asked her.
"Guy?" she repeated. "This 'guy'? Young man, a 'guy' is a wire; D.W.Gnebso is an author. Observe, there is a difference."
"Well who was he?" I asked after a moment. I guess I was going to say something smart at first, like "I know there's a difference - I didn't major in architecture at Ohio State for nothing!" But I didn't major in architecture; and, being a librarian, it wouldn't be all that hard for her to check and see that I didn't.
"He was perhaps the most famous biographer of his day," she explained.
"I guess I'm not much of a one for biographies," I confessed.
"I suppose not," she said, and walked off.
"Psst!" someone called me. I looked around, and a man sitting over next to the window motioned me. I had seen him before, when I inspected the tables, but he was busy reading then. "Don't believe a word she says, Mack," he told me when I got to him. The man looked out of place here. He had on overalls, stained with what looked, and smelled, like grease; and he wore a kind of locomotive driver's cap, and had thick scuffed boots. From beneath his seat he withdrew a half smoked, half chewed cigar, which he had hidden while the librarian was there; no doubt he had situated himself beside the window, which was opened just a sliver, to let the smoke out so she couldn't smell it.
I started to say she seemed pretty knowledgeable to me, but before I could he repeated his advice. "Don't believe her, 'cause I know."
"You know?" I asked.
"That phony name she gave you: don't you believe it for a second. It's a pseudie-name. No more real than mine or yours."
"But look - here's the book!" I showed him; I pointed right to the name. He shook his head. I was about to point out that it was the Dayton edition, but he shook his head again.
"Old Bill Faulkner - that's who wrote that. Wrote it in Mississippi, sittin' right there on his back porch swing. Yes sir, little Billy Faulkner. All five feet four of him. Did it for money." He motioned me very close and whispered: "Booze." Then he went on in his normal voice. "They thought they had him all pinned down, thought they'd get old Bill Faulkner to write up the life of old B.X.Slattery, but he fooled 'em, fooled 'em all, like he always did. Didn't use his own name. Nothing they could do but go on like it was someone real important, this D.W.Gnebso. Big biographer. Little novelist. That man had more pseudie-names than you could shake a stick at. More than old W.C.Fields himself. It's through me old Billy's works got to be so popular down in South America." Here he motioned me close again. "Tramp steamer," he whispered. "I ran gun, drugs, women, and by God old Bill Faulkner's books! And plenty of booze. I've seen it all, son. But you don't need to take my word for it, you just read that there biography, page at a time if you want, 'less old Evie Wood's been teachin' you to sight read; see if you don't find old Billy there winking his old evil eye at you from every page."
I sat down. I began reading; not all of it though, I didn't want Slattery's entire story, just the highlights, to get a kind of feel for the man's life, hopefully to better understand his building - to give me some new angles on it, so to speak. Well, it wasn't really his building. He died before it was finished; he slipped on a lady's hairpin, in the supermarket. A whole shelf full of goods fell down on him - tins of exotic coffees. That didn't kill him though; it just stunned him. When they were carrying him out, he fell off the stretcher and struck his head on one of the para-medics' boots and a foreign body lodged in his skull. He lay there in a coma for nearly a week, while the doctors debated whether or not to operate, till some nurse gave him the wrong medicine by mistake. Quinine is what finished him off. I don't know though: I have reservations about quinine having toxic properties, and I've never heard of anyone being allergic to it - let alone anyone ever being given any by mistake. The whole incident read like an anecdote in the Reader's Digest. I could tell I had a puzzled look on my face; and when I looped up, sure enough my eyes met the tramp steamer captain's eyes. He nodded, and winked, as if to say "See - what'd I tell you? Old Bill Faulkner strikes again!" At any rate, one thing was clear: the man and his building had nothing in common.
I was impressed with Slattery's work though, his various research projects, so I guess it wasn't entirely a waste of time perusing the Dayton edition. I must have puckered my lips and made the kind of face you make when you're impressed, because when I looked up there was the captain shaking his head from side to side.
"Wasn't him," he said.
"Wasn't him?" I asked.
"Nope. All those discoveries he took credit for? It was old Al Einstein did 'em. Yes sir, old Albert himself."
"But I thought Einstein was a physicist."
"And he wanted to keep it that way. That's why he let old Slattery take all the glory, even though he was only a third rate lab assistant. Light and time: that was enough for old Al."
"And music," I reminded him. "Don't forget he played the violin."
"And never took a cent for it either!" the captain reminded me. Now that made me smile. That made he smile. I left that library in much better spirits than what I came in with. He was still there when I left; in fact, I waved to him from outside. I could just barely see him sitting there still chewing his stogy. And I waved.
The time was just about right, the sun nearly overhead; this would be my best chance to get just the building and not a lot of reflection, or glare. Maybe even get a little thigh, as my boss suggested. That reminded me: give him a call, let him know you got some background data. I stopped a couple blocks from the Slattery Building, parked along the street, paid the meter, then I went to a phone booth. From where I was, the very top of the Slattery Building was visible, but only that; the rest was hidden behind the Hind Building, an old building, ugly, worn, acid stained, directly between the phone booth where I was and the Slattery. Other, smaller buildings intervened also, but they were completely blocked by the Hind.
"It's me," I said. The boss himself had answered. That meant Miss Glencoe was down the hall again flirting.
"Shlim!" he practically yelled at me, "did you shoot the Roep Building? Or was it Johnny J?"
"It was me."
"Okay, okay Shlim, what did I tel you? I want initials, Shlim! I want to know who the hell took what around here! I'm no Shwammy, I can't guess whose shots is whose - I want initials Shlim! I want to see your initials on anything you shoot! Am I coming through to you?"
"Yes," I said, "you are." Loud and clear!
"Now what was it you wanted?" my boss asked.
I thought a moment. I could hear him getting ready to say my name. "Want?" I asked. "I didn't want anything. It was you who called me, I thought."
"Oh," he said. It was awkward, so we both mumbled something about seeing each other later and hung up. I guess I'd forgotten about the background material, or else maybe it didn't seem quite so important. I went back to my car and read a little from the Gnebso biography, which I had checked out of the library. I don't think it was Faulkner, I don't think it could have been; it just wasn't his style.
"Was ever a man a benefactor, verily a friend, to his brethren but what his life grew richer, richer than a king, richer than the richest, richer than rich itself? Nay, it was not so. Nor was this man so. We cannot measure so grand an expanse as the soul of Brotious X. Slattery, Scientist. Not even he, given all his tinkering, could have!"
No, this just wasn't Faulkner's style. Still, even skimming, Slattery's life does sound interesting, if a bit overstated. Now I know there has never been a man alive who fit Gnebso's description of Slattery.
"He would verily glide along, as if he were a ship on the doldrum sea, some vast and ancient mariner staying his course in the face of all obstacles. His hands would greet all mankind, knotted fingers, yet with the subtle suggestion of smoothness, and the coarsest of coarse grained skin, matted with tufts of hair on the back, and the pinkest, sunniest nails. And eyes like a clouded forest."
Jesus: were his eyes perched on his fingertips? I wondered. I liked it though, even down to the "seven hairs of his Olympian brow standing upright." I think I'd like to have known him, except maybe toward the end. Gnebso doesn't mention it - but then how could he? the biography was written over twenty years before Slattery died? - but toward the end of his life, I've heard people say, Slattery got to be pretty nasty. I don't guess that's any of my business though. Who's to say I won't get pretty nasty some day too? Maybe we all will. Maybe God will. Maybe He has already; maybe through us He's polluting the universe in His old age. But enough of this; I have work to do.
I just walked the two blocks to the Slattery Building; left my car where it was. The sun was perfect, but not too high; it hadn't yet come around to shine straight into the building. Something just that instant dawned on me though. I got real nervous. The Slattery facade didn't face east, like I remembered, but west. I could have kicked myself: here I loitered around all morning waiting for the sun to get above the building when in fact all I did was to miss the best part of the day to shoot it. All morning the sun was behind it, not before it! Oh well; noon is still the best time to shoot buildings. There are no shadows, no subtleties of light; just the building.
"Hey Mack!" somebody called. It was a gruff voice, almost like a drunk's voice, not that it slurred, but just that it had that rasping, hoarse quality. I looked around. "Over here Mack!" he called. I turned to face the building and there, standing right by the front entrance, was a panhandler. For some reason they seem to like this part of town, they stand around here all day long, unless the police chase them off. This was a middle aged man, pretty unkempt, with wrinkled, faded clothes; gnarled fingers, but I think more from arthritis than anything ethereal; shoes nearly in shreds; and, of course, he was not clean shaven. I've never understood why you never see a panhandler with a beard; since they clearly don't shave regularly, why do they shave at all? and where? and with what? Gee, it would take a D.W.Gnebso to tackle that one! Make that Gnebso, D.W.
"I seen you coming with your camera," the panhandler said. I didn't say anything though, one way or the other. "Hey Mack!" he called out, "I said I seen you coming with your camera! You gonna respond to me like a civil tongue or would you maybe rather pretend like you didn't hear me?"
I looked down at my camera, then to the panhandler. "I'd rather pretend I didn't see you," I said, like I was being prompted from behind.
"Hear!" he shouted. "Not see - I didn't say that: I know you seen me, I said hear me!"
I guess in a past life he must have been a philologist, or a sensualist. Maybe he was just a nut in that life too. I didn't want to take his picture; I knew that was coming next. I'm always being stopped by panhandlers and asked to photograph them. No one's ever asked for a picture of himself though; they just want to be photographed. I guess it makes them feel like celebrities. I always more or less refuse; they always more or less insist. So I always allow them three pictures on each roll. "I'll take three - yeah, I have three I can spare," I always tell them. It does nothing for me that it makes them happy: it makes me unhappy; I don't like to use my camera for anything I'm not making money on.
"I hear you," I finally admitted.
"Hey Mack," he said. He looked all around, as if he were about to sell me stolen merchandise. He lowered his voice. "Got any film in that camera?"
"I don't think so," I said. I saw a chance to keep from being asked for a photograph; it's rare when you get a chance.
"Let me see," he said.
"Well, wait a minute: there is some," I had to admit.
"Hey Mack, how about taking my picture?" he finally asked, still in a lowered voice.
"I don't think so. I really can't." We haggled; I got him down to my usual three.
"Okay," he directed me, "over here. Right there - whoa! whoa! right there! You stand right there, I'll go over here, like I own the place - you see? - like I'm coming out the door, going home. See? And I'm looking up - see? And touching the side, like I own it - see? Alright, quick - quick! - snap it! before anyone comes!" I did.
"Now hold it!" he called. Move a little bit to the left - no! to your left! Yeah, okay, that's right. Perfect. Now - no one coming, is he? Good - I'll get like this - see? Just like I'm the owner. Gesture of ownership - see?" He put one leg straight out and propped his foot up against the side of the portico, and leaned his head back like he was resting. The irony was, it really did seem to be a gesture of ownership. "Quick!" he ordered. "Snap it!" I did. "One more!" he called. "That's our deal - remember? Three pictures. Okay, now move way back - farther! I mean out in the street if you have to. I want a picture of the whole building, and here's what I'll be doing - see?" He was pretending to be inspecting the glass, as if looking for water spots. The traffic light gave me just the time I needed to get halfway into the street and, on his signal, take his third picture.
"You got it?" he asked when I returned.
"I did," I said.
"Good. Now when anyone looks at these, you tell 'em that's Mister -" Here he turned and looked all around until, his eyes finding the building's name imprinted above the entrance, he completed his identity. "Mister Brotyous X. Slattery. You got that? Bro-ty-o-us - like like Ohio-us - X. Slattery." People were starting to come out; he left. He didn't say thanks, or good bye; he didn't even tip his hat, or even ask for a coin. He just left.
The timing was perfect. This would be the best shot of the building I'd ever get. The sun was just a little beyond directly overhead. There were reflections; but if I found just the right angle, I could minimize the glare. Just find the right angle, I told myself.
I began sizing the place up. There were eight stories: this I already knew from my research on the building, and from my friend John Morrison's death. The scaffold he was on was on the eighth floor. Sometimes I wake up at night dreaming I'm him - a falling dream, with one variant: I'm not the one falling; things are falling on me. Books: sometimes it's books. Sometimes photographs; they just keep pouring from an overturned album. Once it was globes: Rand McNally's, I think; I remember waking up calling him every name I could think of. Then once it was blonde hairs, and they made a kind of spider's web over me. I've never been so scared in my life. I looked up, in that dream, I was still my friend, and I saw me - the real me, six foot one, kind of skinny, with great big hands and feet and ears and reddish-brown hair - sliding down a blonde hair strung taut from a limb overhead. I don't know why, but I was scared.
I know this building is eight stories. I know its steel girders show through when the light hits it just right, almost as if it were an X-ray, or a negative, of itself. I know you can look in, straight in, at night, and see the staircases: fire escapes. I know that because I've seen John Morrison walking up and down those stairways trying to find his way out. I'd never be able to photograph him though. It isn't that kind of an image. I knew it was just my imagination; even so, once I set my tripod up to get a photograph, but I got so nervous I ended up knocking it over before I could click the shutter. I just barely saved my camera from being smashed on the pavement. It wasn't John though. It's weird the way I see him walking up and down those steps; I can't quite get him out of my mind, I guess.
I just couldn't seem to find the perfect angle, no matter how I tried. Well, I thought, I'll have to settle for second best; so I got a fairly decent perspective, even though there was a glare and a little reflection. Just when I started to take the picture, something registered, all of a sudden; something I had noticed earlier but had not had time to let sink in. Now it dawned on me. When I had advanced the film after taking the third picture of the panhandler, I happened to notice the little window, the one in the right hand corner with black vertical lines against a red background - it indicates whether or not the magazine is advancing. Normally I always watch it when I first load the film to make certain I've gotten it in right; I guess in all the excitement back at the garage I forgot to. Now it hit me. None of the pictures of the panhandler could possibly have taken; there was nothing there to record the image on, the film had not advanced, I had not put it in right. I couldn't help almost laughing, thinking about it. Here he went to such trouble, and for nothing. For absolutely nothing. I don't think something like that would happen to a Slattery, just to a panhandler. Maybe not.
A lifelong resident of Columbus, and I'd never been in the Slattery Building; I had only watched it from outside. Even when I tried to photograph John Morrison in the middle of the night. When I went in to find a dark place to reload my camera, that marked an event in my life. The Slattery Building: I hated it inside. It had an unfinished look, like a government building, where, no matter how sleek, how modern, how handsome the exterior, inside it was all linoleum, drab paint, concrete stairwells, fluorescent lighting; and all closed off. It gave the feeling of confinement: no space, no great gallery, no foyer, no terrazzo, no draperies. The first thing you saw, the moment you came in, was a hallway. They wanted neither time nor space. And, despite the horrid fluorescent glare, it was dark. A thought struck me: if at night John Morrison ascended and descended the staircases, perhaps it was only to escape these wearisome hallways. God I wouldn't want to be locked up here every night.
I found my way, with the aid of a directory, to the building's cafeteria. It reminded me of the cafeteria at high school; I had a difficult time locating a corner dark enough to open my camera and realign the film in. I got a cup of coffee so no one would think me a freeloader.
"Excuse me please: you are helping me find someone?" an odd, foreign sounding voice out of nowhere asked all of a sudden. At first it startled me, because I had not noticed anyone approaching, then here was this strange voice asking me something which I could not even begin to get the sense of; then it annoyed me that anyone would approach so stealthfully.
"What?" I asked, I guess in a kind of irritated tone of voice. Good God, I thought, here's another one wants a picture!
"I am looking for someone, you are willing to help me - yes?" he asked. I have no idea what his accent was, only that it was so heavy I could barely understand him (or, as D.W.Gnebso might have put it, his accent was so thick I could verily have cut it with a knife!)
"I am not a tour guide, pal," I said, and, immediately, I was sorry I said it. I could tell it hurt his feelings.
"I am not - how you say - sight seeking," he replied in a dejected voice. He looked to be debating whether or not to leave. I felt I had no choice, even though I wanted to get back outside and get my shots; I invited him to be seated at my table. I offered to get him a coffee; he obviously misunderstood me because before I could stop him he took my coffee and began drinking it.
"This is your famous heavenly coffee?" he asked.
"Some call it bug juice," I said. I couldn't resist saying that. An uncle of mine always used to call coffee "bug juice." The foreigner didn't seem to understand. He took another sip, then again asked me for help.
"I cannot find my agent," he explained. "I have been in this big building for half an hour later than my appointment. I will not be made welcome when I find the right room." He looked very dejected. I asked if he had used the Directory, but again he misunderstood; he said someone had been in there.
"But perhaps you are helping me - yes?" he asked hopefully.
"Sure," I said. It occurred to me I could have said that the first time he asked just as easily. "Who are you looking for?"
"I look for the famous American agent, Mister Henry Beest," he said. I puzzled a moment, then I remarked that he couldn't have been too famous. "But in America," he said, very zealously, "everyone is very famous - I am told for fifteen minutes - yes?"
I smiled. They must do it alphabetically," I said. He looked at me as if he didn't understand. "Zinkum," I said. "My name begins with a Z."
"Ah! Like Zorro!" Then he traced a slashing Z through the air. We both laughed.
"May I ask why you want to see the famous Mister Henry Beest?"
"He is making me very famous," was the reply. Then, in a very soft voice, he added "Maybe." For a moment he was silent; then he explained that he was a writer and wished to have his works put before the American public who, he claimed, would "Eat them up." But the problem was, being a foreigner and unfamiliar with the subtleties of the English language, he was reluctant to attempt writing directly in English. Apparently what he was actually seeking was the services of a translator.
"I wish it to be Mister Gregory Rabassa," he announced. I was frankly stunned. I know a little something about translations, and the name Gregory Rabassa is anything but unknown to me, since he translated Vargas Llosa's The Green House and, in fact, most of the great modern Latin American works, those in Spanish anyway. Peru - Columbia - Ecuador - Argentina: they're all in his domain. I'm told that Garcia-Marquez waited two years to have One Hundred Years of Solitude translated because at the time Rabassa was working on another project. A great translator is almost as great as a great writer - to me, anyway. This is why I don't feel guilty reading translated works.
"Why Columbus?" I asked. "Why not New York? Or Los Angeles? Surely you can't expect to get in touch with Gregory Rabassa from here. No one would know him."
The foreigner nodded, as if to acknowledge the truth of what I had said, though the sadness in his eyes made me regret having said it. It's not my place to discourage him.
"Let's go find your Mister Beest," I said. It took no time at all.
"You will be waiting for my brief exit - yes?" he asked. God knows I wanted to get out of there. I've never been more nervous in all my life. But I agreed to wait. "You can put yourself here?" he half asked, half ordered, pointing to a chair in the reception room. I sat down. I knew it wouldn't be long, and it wasn't, till he came out of his agent's room. My eyes hurt: they actually hurt, to look at him.
"This is being harder than I thought," he said in a voice struggling not to break.
They had a kind of Muzak being piped through the halls. Usually it's something in an accordion, with maybe an organ accompaniment or a vapid quartet singing, though once in a while you do hear a fine song, in a superb arrangement; or maybe I'm not really one to make such judgments. They were playing a song I loved just then. An instrumental of Paul Simon's El Condor Pasa. A magnificent arrangement. Even my friend seemed to be listening attentively - and he was after all an artist, so his judgment had to be worth something; even if mine wasn't. I believe he tried to hum along at first, then he ceased humming.
"It's back to PMI," he murmured.
"What?" I asked, perhaps a bit abruptly.
"I return to PMI again."
"What - you teach?" I asked. He looked very puzzled.
"No," he replied; he seemed confused. "I do not teach them to park, I park for them." Now I looked puzzled.
"You don't teach?" I asked. He nodded. Just as I started to ask him exactly what he did do, and exactly what PMI stood for, a rather odd looking gentleman, approaching from the opposite end of the hall, stopped us and volunteered a remark or two. I got so nervous listening to him, I ended up walking away, leaving my friend to finish hearing him out. Completely unsolicited, he started right in criticizing not only Paul Simon for his music but in particular for the very song that was playing, El Condor Pasa. He pointed upward the whole time he spoke, as if the music were directly overhead.
"Plagiarism!" he cried. "He didn't write that any more than I did!" I was relieved he at least didn't try to say he had written it.
"What do you mean?" I asked, and I'm certain my voice was menacing because my friend the foreign writer turned and gave me an astonished look.
"He didn't write that! he didn't write it! no sir, he didn't! most certainly did not!" he exclaimed.
"Any more than you did?" I said as sarcastically as I could.
"No sir!"
"Then who did write it?"
"That song was born in evil, born in evil! Old Huascar began it, got himself killed - by his brother! by his brother! Old Atahualpa killed him, stole his song, finished it, then old Pissaro - the Spanish conquistador himself - killed old Atahualpa and took over the whole Inca empire! Born in sin, born in evil! One heathen emperor began it, another heathen emperor finished it - brothers! brothers in sin! That song's responsible for more deaths than old Henry Ford and his Model T are! A whole nation - heathens, every one of them, except old Atahualpa right at the end: they managed to get him baptized, praise God!; then they killed him - the whole corrupt Inca nation slaughtered, wiped out without a trace - all for a song! Machu Picchu: gone! gone I tell you! I hunted the Andes thirty years for it! Gone without a trace! Replaced by a Hollywood set - old Cecil B. DeMille's creation; his entirely! He was going to make him the grand-daddy of all epic movies - The Lords of Titicaca! A cast of thousands! And all 101 of old Walt Disney's Dalmatians - except it wasn't Walt at all, it was all old Roy Disney's brainchild: Walt was just brought along to pretty it up. But they didn't mean for it to get out of hand like it did. The Disney boys set out to catch old Walt Lang in a sting operation - catch him and Bugs Bunny red-handed stealing their cartoons; then the thing just snow-balled out of control till now you've got to sign an oath in blood just to ride the Ferris Wheel! Yep, old Cecil DeMille meant to make the biggest blockbuster of them all - till he up and died. Drowned in the Red Sea; swept all the way to Persia and back. Had to abandon my theory entirely. Columbus did not come from Spain, but from Peru. I could have proven it but for that monstrous song! Wiped all trace of evidence from the face of the earth. Almost got me too, back in '68. Mud slide. Earthquake. The city of Yungay - the Jewel of the Andes - wiped out, covered up, engulfed in a sea of mud - old Huascar's mud and bones! That old Pacific plate; just like someone took her and shook her. Plate tectonics: that's where I'm putting my money. No more anthropology, not for me; not for me. Plate tectonics. That song though, that song: every time I hear it I shudder. I expect the walls to crumble. I expect the whole Andes mountains to come tumbling down around my shoulders. I was buried alive; half dead but alive. Had that song running through my mind the whole entire time. Crawled my way out - had to get as far away from that song as possible. Mud everywhere. Hate flutes. Hate them. I never go to a concert for fear of what I'll do to the flautist. Jean-Pierre Rampal: hate him with a passion. It's an ill wind. Hateful instrument. Hateful song. Hateful. And now old Paul Simon's brought it to our shores. Hateful. Hateful."
The song had stopped playing long before his tirade ended. Muzak had gone on to something else, something snappy in an accordion, and somebody every once in a while - was it old Johnny Mann's singers? - zipped out bright, sprightly, bouncy lyrics. It sounded to me like they were singing about Pepto-Bismol; I don't think they were though.
My friend and I helped him up. The gentleman who had spoken, upon completion, turned to go, rather abruptly, and, apparently catching his foot somehow in the linoleum, tripped and fell flat. We hurried to him. My friend was right by him anyway, and I was actually only a few feet away; I hadn't really moved so far I couldn't hear him, I was just too nervous to stand right beside him. He had already started back up, using the wall as a prop; we each took an arm and, in no time, had him back on his feet.
"Gentlemen," he announced gravely, "I feared the worst." As we helped dust him off, the hall being poorly maintained, if maintained at all, he explained what his fear was. "That cursed plate - I was sure it had gone and slipped again. '68 all over again. We'd be worse than dead by now if it had been. Thank God it wasn't! It was horrible enough, whatever it was, and I hope to heaven never to undergo such an experience again!; but at least it wasn't that old Pacific plate. But very soon now, my friends, the planets are going to align, and they'll shake that thing like it was a wooly bear on a twig. That'll be the end of Peru and Chile once and for all. Maybe of Columbus too - who knows? That's why I'm getting out of here. Headed for Katmandu. I'll take my chances with that old Yeti, by heaven! Gentlemen, when we meet again, half this world will be gone. And we'll be standing there shaking our heads. And mark my words: old Paul Simon'll write you a song about it - and try his damndest to get old Yeti to sing along.! Mark my words." He stood there a second, in his dusty white suit, Panama hat and sandals; a heavy set man, short, with thick hands and stubby fingers and excessively hairy arms. His coat sleeves were rolled up, otherwise his arms would not have been visible. My friend smiled watching him make his way down the hallway in a waddling sort of gait, as if he were wading a stream.
"He is many men in one," my friend said. "He is making me famous with writing about him," he looked at me and said.
"I didn't like the way he talked about Paul Simon," was all I said.
"This Paul Simon: he is your friend?" I nodded that no, he wasn't. "But if you like him so much - how can he not be?"
"I like his songs," I explained. "Maybe I wouldn't like him."
My friend looked hurt. "He is his songs," he said. "Just as I am my novels. You like me very much, we are very dear friends to each other; you would like my work as much. You like his works, they are dear to you; you would like him too."
I couldn't bring myself to contradict him, even though I think his reasoning is screwy. I don't believe what Henry James said: that it takes a good man to write a good novel. I wish it were so, but I don't believe it is. I'm sure there are those who, while reciting the most beautiful sonnet in your ear, are readying the blade to stick between your ribs; and just as they near the rhyming couplet, they zap you. I'm disillusioned, I guess. Perhaps that's why I take pictures only for money. I try to keep art separate, and the only way I succeed is by repressing it altogether.
I had to laugh at my friend. He jumped - because I jumped. Just as we turned a corner, and up ahead was a stairwell, I thought I saw old John Morrison disappearing down the stairs. It startled me, and I jumped; and when I did, it apparently startled my friend, and he jumped. We both laughed.
"You have seen the ghost riders?" he asked. I just smiled. I didn't answer though.
Once we were outside, things seemed different. Right at first neither of us could see; the sun had crept beyond the zenith and hit us at an angle, though not the kind of angle, directly ahead, which would have really blinded us after being inside the Slattery Building for almost an hour. Maybe over an hour. Then, also, we both seemed to feel a little ill at ease with each other; it was bigger, more public, outside, and whether or not it was that, something made our tongues stick. My friend described it as the cat having gotten onto his tongue; I told him it seemed to have gotten onto mine too.
"For one long afternoon, my friend," he managed to get said, though awkwardly, "we were two picaros together." It was an odd thing to say and a bad time to say it. Somebody happened to be passing by, two ladies, and the one nearest made a dreadful face, prompting the other to question her.
"What did he say?" the second lady asked, trying, I guess, to disguise her question by bending her ear near her friend rather than lowering her voice. The first one shuddered.
"He said they spent the entire afternoon picking each other's noses," she answered. Then both ladies shuddered, and said something like "Yuk!" They glanced at us once more before continuing on, shaking their heads.
"These ladies shall have found us attractive?" my friend asked. Apparently his familiarity with English did not extend to this kind of malapropism, if that's the correct term for it. I nodded that yes, they seemed to. He smiled. "I like American women," he admitted. I admitted that I did too. "Ah," he commented, "you are a top man?" I said I guessed I was. He nodded approvingly. "We must part now," he said after a pause. "You are the best friend I've met in America," he confessed. I thanked him. "It is back to -" he started to say, but I interrupted.
"What's PMI?" I remembered to ask. "A military academy - right?" He said no, it was the parking lot where he worked. In Washington, which he called the District of Columbus.
"It is a branch of Columbus, Ohio?" he asked, but in such a way that I could tell he was trying to be amusing.
"No," I said, in the same vein, "we are the branch!" He laughed. We said good bye. He walked off. I returned to seeking the right angle for my shot. The old Slattery Building - standing right where I left it. I guess there was no plate under it, or if there was, it hadn't slipped: there's always some consolation in life, in this the best of all possible worlds. I only know that expression because I read translations. Voltaire really raked old Leibniz over that coals on that one!
"All I know," I spoke out laud, "is what I see translated."
"Amen," said someone who moved quickly past. Before I could even turn around, whoever had spoken was gone.
The Slattery Building is the hatefullest building there is. I didn't know where to begin. Finding an open space among those hundreds of windows, all coming together to form what looked almost like one huge sheet of glass - of Plate Glass: I stress here the adjective - was like finding Truth itself. It is, no matter what the angle or the time of day, one solid expanse of mirror; it reflects everything that comes near it. Getting the interior is simply beyond human capacity. And what I can't see my Pentax ME can't either: it isn't a magic box, it won't do the impossible, it can't show what isn't there. I could no more see in than I could go sailing over top the building. Unless I took the pictures at night, which for obvious reasons I ruled out entirely.
I managed to get a couple shots relatively free of interference - of unwanted detail, that is: panhandlers, traffic, myself, other passers-by and so forth. But I still wasn't really getting the building though, just a kind of compromise between it and the world around it. I'm told there's a school of thought which says you can't filter out interference anyway; I've heard some scientists speak of background radiation. I guess that's what they mean. I kept feeling, as I lurked outside the Slattery Building with my Pentax, like I was caught in a fishing net or something and being twisted and turned in fifty directions. It just felt like a hopeless task. I even gave serious thought to double exposing a shot: first I'd take one of the outside of the building, then I'd go inside, find just the right office, one with a pretty secretary with lots of thigh showing, and get a picture of her to superimpose over the building. Then I thought Holy Llama! (not cow, but llama! I guess I still had the Incas on my mind) - Holy Llama! this is beginning to sound like art, what with double exposing and all! I've got to get out of here, and fast! So I took a few more pictures - I absolutely did not care of what either - and got away from there. Fast.
It wasn't just the Incas I still had on my mind. It was Paul Simon. Specifically, it was El Condor Pasa. Ever since that guy accused the song of being a plagiarism, I was so nervous I couldn't think or do anything. I had to find out, no matter what.
I went to a music store nearby. I'd never been in there but I knew of it. It was a highbrow store; they had almost entirely classical music, very little else, no rock music. You'd be lucky to find anybody under forty-five in there. Except for me, that day at least. First I looked around; I didn't want to go right up to the sales clerk and ask. But he came to me.
"May I help you with your selection?" he asked. He was an elderly man, and very proper looking, with a dark coat and tie.
"Actually," I said, "I was wondering." He must have thought I said "wandering."
"You'll have to leave I'm afraid," he said and, although he said it very politely, it rubbed me the wrong way.
"I'm a music professor at Ohio State," I said. "I'm doing a paper." I had started to say "term paper" but caught myself in time. "A research paper," I added in a haughty voice. "On Peruvian folk tunes. Well, actually not folk but aristocratic tunes. The kind that might be written by royalty. Perhaps amid intrigue. Assassination. Invasion. Conversion. Execution. Family matters. Do you have it?"
"Have what, specifically?" he asked. I got a little nervous.
"You know the tune El Pondor Casa?" I asked, not even realizing till much later my transposition of letters. He said he didn't know it. "It's a modern tune, but my research indicates it dates to the Incas." The clerk laughed.
"My dear sir," he advised me, "the Incas, I quite assure you, were absolutely tone deaf. The altitude," he explained. "Too little oxygen. But if I understand the gist of what it is you're seeking, I can tell you unequivocally that almost all music written since the seventeenth century derives in some form or another from earlier, anonymous, folk tunes. It is a very time honored custom among the great composers to borrow, as it were, from earlier cultures, just as many modern day cities are built on the ruins of much older ones."
"Really?" I asked. I had never heard that one before. "You mean like Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven, and those guys? Sort of like the Hollywood set they built on top of Machu Picchu? till it got overrun with Dalmatians?" The clerk gave me a funny look.
"Is this part of some bizarre initiation rite into some obscure fraternity?" he asked. I didn't know what to say. "Where did you say you went to college?" he asked.
"It was a university," I answered.
"What university?" he asked.
The first thing that came to my mind was the word Tuskegee. "The University of Tuskegee, or something," I said.
"Isn't that Tuskegee Institute?"
"Yes," I said, "sometimes it was. They changed the name of it every other day, we barely had time to wolf down our breakfast of grits 'n homilies before it was something else. It was horrible. I got buried half alive in there when they had an air raid one night."
"An air raid?"
"Something like that. Well, actually," I changed my story at the last minute, "I ate some grits one morning that weren't properly cooked and it made me sick and I got so frightened that night I buried my head under my pillow. It's not quite the same thing, I guess - although it is what you're supposed to do in an air raid, I know that much." I had no way of knowing if he believed me or not.
"I think you'd better leave," he finally said. I nodded yes, I thought so too. On the way out I managed to say that I was just curious if the song had been plagiarized. He explained that it was not considered plagiarism where anonymous folk tunes were concerned.
"It's not anonymous when old Hidalgo himself wrote it!" I yelled. I knew I had given out the wrong name, but I couldn't remember what that Inca's name was; and, besides, I didn't really care any longer. I just ran as fast and as far as I could. I didn't really care that I had nothing to believe in, therefore nothing to run to or from. I just ran. Someone yelled "Stop that man!" Undoubtedly, when they see you running they think you've just done something terrible. It never occurs to them, I guess, that you run all the harder when you've just had something terrible done to you. The sad part was, I had no idea what terrible think had been done to me, or by whom, or for what reason. Or even if it really had. For all I knew the fact that it felt as if it had was all there was to it. If so, then I got shot for nothing.
The last thing I saw before I passed out was me pointing my camera at my friend John Morrison and taking his picture and when I took it it killed him, and he cried out in anguish.
It seems the police had seen me running, had heard the cry to stop me, had pursued me, had evidently called out for me to halt, had even fired a warning shot, before they fired at me. It hit me in the leg; the wound wasn't really bad, but it caused me to trip and fall, and in falling I must have hit my head and been knocked unconscious. When I woke up, in the hospital, my first thought was for my camera. I could just picture it, smashed into a zillion pieces, and all my film ruined. I can't describe how happy I was to discover it had not been damaged in the least. I don't know how, but it hadn't.
My first day back at work, after I was released from the hospital and the police established that I had not committed a crime but was only guilty of being a public nuisance, my boss handed me a snapshot. He explained that he had had to get my film developed right away, even though I had been in the hospital less than a week, in order to get the pictures of the Slattery Building to Jakjake as quickly as possible.
"Not your best shots, eh Shlim?" he observed. Then he handed me the snapshot. "Shelf portrait?" he asked and walked away. I looked. I nearly dropped the picture. It was of me, of my face, twisted in anguish, just like my friend John Morrison's face had looked to me when I was shot. Behind me was the sky; it looked like it was falling, or else like I had just fallen from it. I just wanted to go home, and stand on my balcony, and look out over the ocean, as far as my eyes could see.