Paul Theroux - Picture Palace

I was approaching Atlantic Wharf when I heard it, a terrible scream, like a cat’s protesting yowl on a summer night, and then the tramp of running, the shudder of blundering boots. A little black man shot in front of me, out of the alley, nearly knocking me down. I was startled — fearful — before I realized that he was harmless: he had passed his fright to me. I still heard the feet rumbling closer and finally blaring as six sweaty men came booting out of the alley waving gaffs, hooks, and clawhammers.

“Where’d he go?”

Like a fool, I pointed to the warehouse the little man had beetled into. “In there.”

“Out of the way, lady. After him!”

They were shouting and struggling into the warehouse. It had all happened so fast I hadn’t had time to think, but at that moment I knew the man being chased was innocent and the others with their clumsy weapons were going to brain him for nothing. And now that I could no longer see him I remembered his face: it had been gray with terror.

“Wait!” I yelled. But it was too late. I could hear the grunts, the boots slam-banging on the warehouse planks, and the men barging into metal drums.

As I entered the building I saw them leaving by the sunny door at the far end, going at a good clip onto the wharf. I saw no sign of the black man. The warehouse stank of rope and tar and fish oil. I ran through to the wharf, where a ship’s horn drowned the noises of the chase, the six brutes hounding the little figure along the pier.

The light made it bearable. The sun on the water shone so intensely they were diminished, half-sized, shimmering narrowly after the man who seemed no longer than an insect in that glare. It turned the brutality into play, almost a dance, the sun slowing them and making them twitch with their toy-like weapons. Light is an unintelligent pencil. It is kind or cruel; it distorts; it is seldom fair, it is never innocent. If I had not looked those men in the face I would have said they were children fooling and gone away.

But I stayed and watched them stop running. The little man was trapped at the end of the pier, dwarfed by the violent light and by the black logs that served as hitching posts for the ships’ hawsers. I thought of calling a cop, but I knew that if I left that place it would be too late: the man would be in the drink or worse. And though I could hear the noises of Boston, the trains ringing down Atlantic Avenue, and even voices skimming clearly on the water from boats and other piers, there was no one around to help me stop this persecution.

I didn’t want to go any nearer, but there was nothing else I could usefully do. I had given the poor man away — I had to save him. I ran to the pier and along the boards a quarter of the way, making as much noise as I could. The mens’ backs were turned; the little man crouched near a ladder on his last inch of safety, holding his palm up in a feeble protest. Behind him, great gulls swooped as if they thought this desperate man was flinging them crusts.

I said, “Hey!”

They didn’t turn. They prolonged their menace by walking slowly toward their victim and raising their weapons.

I screamed, I fumbled for my camera, I shook it at them. And now the men did turn, as I aimed it at their heads. They covered their faces. Strange — it was as if they had never seen one before. They behaved like true savages, for whom the unknown is dangerous, cowed by the tiniest mystery. I held it at them and took a step. They reacted by staggering and twisting their faces. They dropped their arms and looked at me sideways.

One said, “Put that down!”

Another muttered, “Get him.”

Him ? It was the back-lighting. The sun that made them small made me big, a man, a threat.

“You just stay where you are or I’ll use this,” I said. “And you’ll be sorry.”

“It’s some crazy dame.”

I screamed again and made them jump. I must have looked vast, toppling at them from the dark eye of the sun, the fierce exaggeration pitching my shadow at them. Really, we were eight people on a pier, counting the victim; but the midafternoon sun of autumn lighted us differently with drama and the halation and flare put me in charge and ridiculed them; it made them cowardly and me brave, and now I saw I had them backing away.

“You better be careful with that thing,” one called out.

“Stay right where you are,” I hollered. “Stay put!”

They tried to shield their eyes and I knew that as long as I kept the sun behind me I was safely distorted in its dazzle.

All this took less than a minute, but with bluff only seconds are necessary. The next sound was the clack of oarlocks. The little man had scrambled down the ladder and found a dinghy under the pier. He was away, rowing like mad and bouncing his oars in the water.

“There he goes!” The men ran to the pier-head and shouted at him and I fled the way I had come and jumped on a bus. As soon as I paid my fare and found a seat I put my face in my hands and burst into tears. It was not that little man’s life I had saved, but my own. The man, I knew now — and it was something that had been crucial for me to remember — looked exactly like my old subject, Teets.

In this unexpected way I came to trust my camera. It proved useful, even when I wasn’t taking pictures. And there was a further reckoning to make: the light. The camera had given me courage, but the light had saved me. That peculiar angle of the sun had made me briefly a giantess and stretched my shadows all over the pier. People mattered according to the way they were lighted: I could make Orlando listen to me.

And, as frights will do, my mind had been squeezed and concentrated. There had been a sense of finality in my attempt to rescue the little black man. In my response was an ultimatum: danger had triggered inspiration, boldness had made me bolder and my sense of charade more inventive. I had my idea and I knew where to take it.

Orlando, in his second year of law school, had a tutor’s suite of rooms in Adams House. As I entered Plympton Street I saw him shouldering his way through the Adams House gate. I almost called out to him, but thought better of it, and instead followed him past the Lampoon Building and down the sloping streets to the river. He must have sensed my eyes on him because at the Harvard Boat House he turned. He was in his sculling gear — sneakers, gloves, shorts, jersey — and he looked in the aching autumn light like an unbuckled prince fixing to set sail, the sun at three giving his beanie a halo. Orlando appeared to own anything he was near: the river, the meadow, and all the maples of Back Bay. I faltered, but instead of going down on my knees I snapped his picture with my usual devotion.

He didn’t act surprised to see me. That was Orlando, as calm as you please: he never betrayed surprise. He said, “I’ve been looking all over for you. I had something to ask you.”

I fell for it. “You do?”

He said, “Yes. How’s your belly where the pig bit you?”

Then he laughed and hugged me and we walked into the Boat House hand in hand. On the ramp he said, “You won’t fit into a shell, so choose a skiff and let’s go while the sun’s still shining.”

He grabbed the painter of a small rowboat and pulled it into the water. He threw off his beanie and heaved us away. In the river we were buoyed by the rising light, now dim, now dazzling, as the yellow leaves from the shore wavered under the water’s mirror. The wind swept a shower of them from the maples. They were gold foil torn from the boughs, curling in gusts across the grass and into the river where they magnetized their reflections, leaf to leaf, and spun. It was like paper fire — the bright cut-out leaves scattering down from the trees and turning the trees dark and small — the sort of cool light I could touch, big ragged atoms of it dancing wildly in the wind and then becoming part of the river’s surface.