Paul Theroux - Picture Palace

“Who’s pulling whose leg now?” said Shuggery.

“Get off the bucket, I’m serious,” I said. “Oh, sure, museums are harmless enough if you happen to admire that kind of taxidermy, but if anyone put my photographs in a museum I’d shoot myself. You call these decorations? Like hell. You can roll them up, wrap fish in them, put them in your pocket, lay them out flat, then dive in and paddle around. Don’t let me catch you admiring them — you don’t admire blizzards or swamps or circuses, do you? Or that jaybird on the trapeze? They move too much for you to sit there and gawk at them. I could barely get clothespins on them they were leaping around so much! This here ain’t art, it’s life. Hey, them are windows!”

Someone — Iris perhaps — was writing all this down. I could hear the pen nib scratching and sputtering on the pad.

“—and a hundred and a hundred and a hundred,” said Umlah, who was far enough ahead not to hear my impromptu lecture. “Nearly done.”

“Do you have any idea of the impact these pictures have made?” said Iris.

“I won’t know that until I see my accountant,” I said.

But she soldiered on: “The French think they’re French, the Germans think they’re German. The Communist Party in New York thinks you’re a reformer and the Daily Worker wants to interview you. But don’t laugh yet — you’ve made quite a splash with the decadents, too. Naked lion-tamers, tight-rope walkers in the altogether and your Lady Godiva? You’ve got the collectors running a temperature. The Christians think you’re a moralist, and the bohemian crowd takes you for a fellow pagan.”

“Let’s call that sixty and that a hundred,” said Umlah.

“Okay,” I said. “What you’re saying is, everyone likes my work.”

“For different reasons,” said Iris. “I can’t explain it.”

I was going to mention my “drowning quotient,” but I felt I had said enough, and anyway Shuggery interrupted.

He said, “But there’s some people who won’t like it.”

“I wonder who?” I said.

“The people in the pictures.”

“I’m on their side. The people who perform in circuses are always hungrier than the spectators, but it’s the spectators who eat well — the performers get rotten meals. So you get the weak performing for the strong, people doing handstands on an empty stomach. That’s the point about the nakedness.”

“I was talking about the spectators,” said Shuggery.

Umlah said, “And a hundred and fifty for that last one. Stieglitz. That about wraps it up.”

Iris said, “Mind answering a few personal questions?”

“All questions are personal,” I said.

“What sort of a family do you come from?”

“Leave them out of this.”

“She doesn’t want to talk,” said Shuggery.

“If I knew how to talk — or do anything else — do you think I’d waste my time taking pictures? This is all I have to say,” I said, gesturing at what I hoped were the pictures on the gallery walls. “Why is it that people expect photographers to be talkers? Photography is the most inarticulate of the arts — it’s probably not even an art,”

“All photography?”

“Look, most photographs are works of subversion.”

“Too hard to talk about them. That it?” said Iris.

I shook my head. “Too easy. Talking always simplifies things. And anyway, who cares?”

“You ought to. They’re your pictures.”

“Ah-hah! There’s where you’re wrong.”

“But you took them.”

“I happened to be there when they were,” I said. “It could have been you. Ubiquity — that’s what photography’s all about. Locomotion. Not thought — action. Know how I got interested in photography? A friend of Mama’s bought me a camera because she thought I wasn’t getting enough fresh air.”

Shuggery said, “She’s joshing.”

“I was lucky,” I said.

“But you created these pictures.”

“Don’t be a sap. I found them.”

“She found them!” Scratch, scratch: someone was copying down my words. And I could tell that a sizable crowd had gathered to listen to me. But I was tired. I wanted to sit down. I was about to tell them all to clear out, when I heard a commotion.

“Sure, I found them,” I said. “No one was looking, so I took them.”

Umlah said, “Here’s Randy.”

“Miss Pratt,” said Randy excitedly. “I’ve got your pictures.”

“Keep them — they’re yours,” I said. “It was your camera.”

Randy said, “No. Now I know what true genius is. We were both there. It was my camera — my chances should have been the same as yours. But look what happened!”

He rattled the pictures and pressed them into my hand. People were breathing down my neck and there were murmurs of interest.

“Very attractive,” I said. They were still limp from the processing. I tried to hand them back.

“What do you make of this one?” he asked, pushing closer to me.

“I don’t make anything of that,” I said, which was the truth: I saw nothing. “Excuse me, I must sit down. My dogs are barking.”

“The face,” he said. “That man.”

I held a picture up: blackness. It might have been blank. “Oh, yes, found him,” I said. “Firebug. I heard him clearing his throat, and that’s when I whipped around and did him — wrist-action, very important. Nifty, huh? He liked the fire — you can see it on his face. Frankly, I think he started it.”

“Who started it?” said Iris.

“Him,” I said. I peeled off the picture and showed her. “I don’t see anyone,” she said. “All I see is a fire truck.”

“That’s mine,” said Randy.

“I meant this one,” I said, and peeled off another. It had to be there somewhere. “This man — look how crazed he is. He loves fires, that one. A real goofball.”

“That’s a burning building,” said Iris.

Now they were all nudging me. And they weren’t looking at the pictures anymore — they were looking at me, probably wondering why I was wearing dark glasses indoors. Their eyes were boring holes in my face.

“This,” said Iris, and took another of the pictures. “Is this yours?”

“I’m not absolutely sure.”

“The rather mad features with the firelight reflected on the face — the hair all askew — yes?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“Now take your glasses off.”

“No.” I tried to pull away, but the people were crowding in on me and I was bumped back into Iris’s cunning grip.

“That’s not the picture,” she said. She was really enjoying this. Her patronizing remarks hadn’t got her anywhere with me; she obviously felt rebuffed and thought she’d take me down a peg or two. I could have throttled her. “Take a good look.”

“Go scratch,” I said.

Umlah said, “What seems to be the problem?”

“She’s being evasive again,” said Iris.

“Evasive!” I yelled. “Look at this show — is that evasion? Open your eyes!”

“I’m not talking about the show,” she said. “I’m talking about you.”

“Never mind about me — I don’t matter. And I didn’t come down here to get the third degree. Don’t you people ever learn?”

I dropped the pictures and tried to get away. I was lumbering and heavy, stung like a stupid baited bear. I heard people hissing, and in my distraction I could not make them out, only the odor of stale cigarettes and the drizzling light of the gallery, and the itchy wool of winter coats. I caught an elbow in my ribs and bringing up my hand to steady my glasses I was too quick — I knocked them off. When I bent to retrieve them I heard someone step on them (“Whoops” and “Uh-oh”), a chewing crunch like ice breaking under skates, but with a shattering finality that only broken glass conveys. “Out of my way!”