Silent Pictures
Silent Pictures
by David Michael
William pushed through the doors of the church, his worn canvas bag of cameras, lenses, flashbulbs and tripods making him look like an off-balance scarecrow in its Sunday best. He paused to straighten his hat and adjust his tie and jacket. He hadn’t shot a wedding in a long time, and he wanted to make a good impression.
The hubbub of a wedding in the making swirled around him briefly, and then the crowd parted and a young woman strode up to him.
“Are you helping Robert with the photography?” she asked.
“In a way,” William replied. “Robert found himself unavoidably detained at the last minute. We have worked together before–in fact, you could say I taught him everything he knows about photography.” He felt the picture in his right breast pocket squirm. “So Robert asked me–” He tapped himself on the chest as he said this, simultaneously indicating himself and punishing the picture in his pocket. “–if I wouldn’t mind filling in at the last minute. And here I am.”
“No no no,” the young woman said. “That’s bull-shit. No offense,” she added after a pause. “I’m sure you’re a great photographer, but I am going to kill Robert the next time I see him. We had worked out the list of pictures and poses…” She pulled out a cellphone and used her thumb to page through a list of numbers. “I’ll call him and see what the fuck is going on.”
Such foul language for such a pretty mouth, William thought, but kept this to himself. Today’s youngsters said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. And he really wanted to shoot this wedding. It had been so long, but he wanted one more wedding before he retired.
“Shit,” the young woman said after a minute. “No answer. Hang on, voicemail.” She pursed her lips, waiting for something only she could hear, then took a breath. “Goddamnit Robert. Where are you?” By the ornate clock on the wall, William could see that she took a full four minutes to complain at, curse, and threaten Robert on his voicemail. She seemed to deflate a little after she closed the phone.
A small crowd of men, women, and children in various stages of wedding attire, black and white and chiffon, had gathered around while the woman had been on the phone. The bride-to-be, who William learned was named Alexis, used this new opportunity to disparage Robert’s ancestors, legitimacy, and sexual preferences as she explained why the old man was here.
“Robert did give me the list of shots and setups you wanted,” William said, when Alexis stopped to take a breath. He could see she was on the verge of another emotional outburst. He reached into his jacket and took the folded sheet from his right breast pocket. He almost smiled as he imagined the man in the picture in the same pocket trying to stop him, grabbing desperately, futilely at the paper that slid past.
Alexis sighed and took control of herself again. “OK,” she said. “Any photographer is better than no photographer.”
William fixed his smile in place, then said, “Let me show you some examples of what I can do.” He reached into his right breast pocket and pulled out a 4×5 proof and handed it to the woman.
“What the hell is this?”
Snatching the picture back, William caught a glimpse of a young woman, her hair pulled back by an antique veil but otherwise nude. He thought he saw words written with lipstick across the uncovered breasts and stomach, the glossy red of the lipstick showing as shiny black in the black-and-white photo. He didn’t get a chance to read the words, though, because the woman scampered out of frame, a look of shame and horror on her face.
“My apologies,” William said. “I have been a photographer for many years. I’ve shot everything from weddings and birthday parties to race riots and war zones. I should have been more careful when I selected my example.” He put the picture back into his pocket, poked it, hard, almost enough to tear the photographic paper, three times before he took it out again. He looked at the picture to make sure it showed a happy bride of the 1940’s wearing a lace-covered gown and blowing a kiss at the viewer as he said, “I think this picture is more appropriate.” He extended the picture to her again.
Alexis just looked at him for a few seconds, then took the picture. Reluctance on her face gave way to surprise and then wonder. “Oh my god,” she said. She flipped the picture over to look at the back, and then back to the image. “This looks–and feels–just like an old photo album picture, but…wow…”
William smiled as the other people nearby came closer to look at the picture. The happy bride smiled, winked and blew a kiss at all of them, repeating every few seconds.
“How did you do that?” Alexis asked.
Still smiling, William said, “Dark room magic.” He took back the picture and waited again while the bride-to-be and the other women in the wedding party discussed their options. He heard the mantra “any photographer beats no photographer” several more times before Alexis turned to him with the final decision.
“OK, you’ve got the job. I can’t afford to pay you full price. You can get the rest of your money from Robert, since I paid him half in advance.”
William gestured dismissively. “That will be fine,” he said. “I’m just happy to shoot one more wedding.”
Wedding shoots, William remembered as the day wore on, had always been exceptionally tiring, even when he was a much younger man. Alexis kept him busy the entire afternoon and into the evening.
His cameras, vintage Rollei twin lens reflex cameras from the 1920’s, caused a lot of excitement at first. “Do those even work anymore?” he was asked several times. “Of course,” he replied. And he did seem to know what he was doing, setting up creative poses according to both classic and modern portraiture, using a calm voice and clear instructions. Alexis, now coiffed, made up and dressed in her white gown looked stunning. Foul mouth or not, William thought, he was very glad he had chosen this wedding to shoot. Alexis was a rare beauty.
“Not a fan of digital?” a young man asked William during one of his few chances to sit down.
William shook his head. “There’s not as much magic in digital,” he said.
“I guess you haven’t seen what they can do with Photoshop these days,” the young man said.
William just shrugged. “To each his own.”
Finally, the wedding and reception came to an end. Tired though he was, William insisted on carrying his equipment bag himself, waving off the young man who offered to help. “Thank you,” he said. “Really. But some things an old professional has to do himself.” Some things, he added to himself, are too valuable to let anyone else even touch.
He wished he could’ve slept late the next day, but the habits of a lifetime and the propensities of old age had him awake and in pain before 8 am. He wanted to get into the dark room immediately, but it would have to wait. He couldn’t be on his feet all day today, as well. Not after a wedding shoot. Tomorrow it would be.
But there was something he could do today.
He shuffled to the chair where he had draped his jacket the night before and pulled out the picture of Jessica, and the one of Robert. The picture of Robert he didn’t need any more, so he tore it in two, ignoring the pain and horror of the man in the picture, and threw it into the trash.
Jessica wasn’t happy to see him. She extended the middle fingers of both hands at him, an expression she had learned from some of the women he had shot in the 1960’s. When he had first shot Jessica, she had been the sweetest little creature. In 60 years, she had learned a lot of bad habits. He hated to do it, but it was time for another lesson. To keep the others in line.
He went into his picture room, with its thousands of images arranged on the walls. The subjects of the many portraits all moved within their frames when he flipped on the light. Some of them stretched their mouths in huge smiles, hoping to please him. Some, like Jessica had done, expressed their hatred with a variety of gestures. Some just stared out of their frames, expressionless.
William gathered together all of Jessica’s pictures and placed them on the table in the middle of the room, where all of the other pictures could see. And where she couldn’t flee to any of the images on the wall. He had made this table especially for that purpose. Then he began burning Jessica’s portraits, one at a time.
She retreated from image to image, moving out of the frame of the burning picture into the frame of the next. She waved frantically at him, beseeching him to stop. She stripped out of her smoldering wedding gown and posed provocatively, hoping, he supposed, to tempt him to keep just one of her. He just shook his head. It was too late for that. She had tried to betray him.
The last image he didn’t burn, not at first. Instead he used scissors to cut the image into ever smaller pieces. Each piece he cut off, he burned to ashes. He didn’t burn the last piece, not completely. It was a section about half an inch square. All he could see was her right eye, which constantly looked around, panic clearly visible. With a match, he scorched the edges of the image. Then he took it to a corkboard mounted on one wall. Like the table, he had specially treated the corkboard so that the subjects of the portraits were unable to leave their images. He stuck the last bit of Jessica’s picture to the corkboard with a thumbtack, right in the middle of the eye.
He sat in the picture room the rest of the day, admiring his work, the poses, the happy expressions of brides and grooms, the loving looks of husbands and wives, the joyful outbursts of children. He had been a photographer for a long time, and the styles of clothing and haircuts represented almost the entire range of the 20th century.
William rested up for tomorrow, when he could go into the dark room and start developing the pictures of Alexis’s wedding. He wouldn’t be able to hear her foul mouth in her pictures, he thought with a smile.
Copyright © 2006 by David Michael. All rights reserved.
A Short Story a Day » Best of ASSAD 2006 said,
December 26, 2006 @ 6:09 pm
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