Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

Mastering the technical never showed Sylvia how to take shots like the ones hanging in front of her. And after she’d nailed the technical she didn’t know where else to go. The past few years have brought that kind of funk where she’s started to think you’re either born with that other kind of knowledge or you’re not. You either know how to make shots like these seven before her. Or you don’t.

And when that thought proved too depressing, she decided that maybe it isn’t the photographer at all. That maybe it’s always just the coincidence of image and time and lighting and motion and a hundred other things coming together at exactly the right moment. And it’s luck that determines who’s in the right place at the right time. Holding a camera.

So, she’s operated on a shaky faith, assumed that if she spent enough hours walking around with a loaded camera, waiting, prepared, maybe sooner or later she’d be on the scene when all the elements came together. She’d be the one to lock them up in the frozen instant. She’d be the receptacle for the image, the conductor between the image and every pair of eyes that it might ever grace.

Whoever this photographer is, he found his moment here. He stood focused at the correct place and instant. He opened his shutter seven times, let in the light, introduced the image to the film, to the play of chemicals.

Sylvia gets an almost tactile sense while looking at the shots. She can almost feel how smooth and cool the woman’s shoulder is. She can almost feel the grit of ash and stone under the woman’s feet. She can practically flinch at the shower of dust, barely visible in the cones of light rays, falling on the head of the infant.

She spends another two hours in the darkroom. She gets out her magnifying glass and peers over every inch of each photo. She rearranges the order in which they hang on the dry line. She sits on the step stool and attempts to imitate the woman’s posture, the arch of her back, the tilt of her shoulder and head. At one point she even takes off her sweatshirt, drapes it over her right shoulder and back, and cradles a jug of stop bath to her chest.

That’s when it occurs to her. Sitting there half-naked at three A.M., shivering with the touch of a cold glass bottle. She’ll go see the photographer. She’ll go back to Jack Derry’s and explain what she’s found. She’ll get the photographer’s address. She’ll go to his home. She’ll present the seven photos.

And she’ll ask him what it was like.

Mr. Quevedo is used to spending large amounts of time in silence. But the silence of the Hotel St.Vitus is unlike any other he has ever known. There’s a deeper meaning to this kind of quiet, a sense of something lurking in the absence of noise.

Still, anything to please a customer. So he sits in the dimness of the top floor chapel-cum-office, a room made even more dim by his advancing cataracts, until Hermann Kinsky enters carrying a serving tray filled with a teapot, cups, saucers, milk, sugar, a plate of Oreos and a bulging envelope. Kinsky places the tray on the altar and sits down next to Quevedo.

“The housekeeper’s day off,” he says. “I hope you’ll forgive the tea. I’m not very talented in the domestic arts.”

“I’m sure everything is just fine,” Quevedo says, though he’s neither hungry nor thirsty.

“There was a type of cookie,” Hermann says, “in the old country. During Hanukkah, the women of the hills would bring them to my orphanage. A very thin crust. It was said they were made with a touch of arsenic, but I never knew any of the children to die. I cannot find them here.”

Quevedo nods his sympathies. “I have the same problem. So many things from my youth, I can no longer locate.”

He looks to the tray, but Kinsky makes no move to pour the tea.

“This surprises me,” Hermann says. “I would have thought a man in your position could manage to locate anything he desired.”

Quevedo holds his palms out. “You tell me, my friend. Where am I to get the banana water? The dulce de leche? Where do I go for a true dish of Bikaner stew? We gain by coming here, but we lose also. You would agree?”

“Perhaps,” Kinsky says, a smile spreading, enjoying his contrariness, “some things are best left behind.”

“Change,” Quevedo says, “can be as kind as it is cruel.”

“Is this an Argentine saying?”

“I think,” Quevedo says, “it is a universal truth.”

Hermann shakes his head. “No such thing.”

Quevedo shrugs, nods, smiles.

“I’m moving to a new home,” Kinsky blurts, the sudden volume of his voice making his guest flinch.

“So soon?”

“We’ve outgrown the house. It served us well for a time.”

Quevedo motions loosely to the icons and crucifixes hanging around the room. “If you need help disposing—”

“Rest assured, my friend, when the time of the move comes, you will be called.”

“Anything I can do to help.”

“Yes, yes,” Hermann says, getting up and moving to the window, his back now to Quevedo. “And would you be able to help me today, Luis?”

Quevedo knew this was coming, but he still dreads it. There’s no reasoning with a man like Hermann. Customers of this nature should be avoided, no matter how profitable. In the end, the aggravation can be deadly.

“As I tried to tell you on the phone, Hermann,” Quevedo says patiently, “these types of transactions take time. There is progress. We are still working.”

“It has been months, my friend,” my friend not at all what he means.

“To be a successful collector requires a great deal of endurance. An ability to wait for the right moment. To sometimes wait years. You know, Hermann, in trying to hurry your acquisition, you may well have brought this delay on yourself.”

Kinsky’s anger is starting to simmer, but he can only afford to give the dealer so much guff. Judgment is everything.

“Your friend’s sudden departure had nothing to do with me.”

Quevedo can barely absorb this kind of insult to his intelligence. But he sucks it up for the promise of a record-breaking commission.

“As you say. We were dealing with an unstable man. I’ve known Jack for some time. I’ve expected this type of vanishing act. It is not the surprise to me that it is to others.”

“Exactly,” Hermann says. “He was nothing to me but a tenant. I never even visited the property. All the collections were handled by my nephew and his people.”

Quevedo almost chokes on the phrase his people. He finds the gangboys — the Grey Roaches — to be “people” in only the most generous sense of the word. He’s all too familiar with their monthly visits and he promises himself that if this deal becomes a reality, an exemption from the standard protection fee will be part of the closing costs. Quevedo will hand nothing over until he’s assured he’ll never have to look at Felix’s brutal face again.

“Tell me, Hermann, can I control mental illness? Please, tell me, how am I to knit a man’s mind back to normal? Jack was diagnosed with the schizophrenia long ago. He spent years at the Glaspoint Clinic in Algeria. He’s been an outpatient at Toth Care Facility since he arrived in the city. Treated by Dr. Raglan himself. The medication fails from time to time.”

“This is an answer to me?” Kinsky says quietly. “The medication fails from time to time . This should satisfy me?”

Quevedo’s been in the business long enough to know that he can’t win. He’s here to be chastised and prodded. The sooner he concedes to that, the sooner he can leave and get back to work.

“You’ve been exceedingly tolerant, Hermann,” he says. “Your waiting will be rewarded, I assure you. I have things in motion as we sit here. The machine is turned on, so to speak. I am expecting results any day now.”