Echoes From a Distant Land by Frank Coates

of you, back to work.’ He began to shout his orders.
    Wangira turned to leave.
    â€˜Wait,’ Ketterman said to Hungerford. ‘Let me take a picture of him.’ He indicated Wangira. ‘To demonstrate the camera, I mean.’
    Ketterman fumbled with the controls, twisting a knob and turning a wheel.
    Hungerford shrugged and walked off.
    â€˜Very well,’ Ketterman said, satisfied. ‘I’m ready. Now stand with your arms by your side.’
    Wangira stood bolt upright, and waited.
    Ketterman, realising that Wangira had obeyed, looked up from the viewfinder. ‘You speak English?’
    Wangira nodded. ‘Yes. Bwana .’
    Ketterman appeared pleased at the news. Again there was a pause before he turned his attention back to the camera.
    â€˜Hold it!’ he said.
    The request was unnecessary. Wangira had already stiffened with a sense of unease. Having heard the description of the functions of a camera he didn’t quite know what to expect.
    He heard a faint click.
    â€˜There,’ said Ketterman, lowering the camera.
    Wangira swallowed, and for a moment didn’t comprehend that whatever was supposed to happen, had happened.
    Wangira waited a moment, then moved off to join the others erecting tents, setting the cooking fires and sorting through the mountain of packs. He felt vaguely disappointed to have been onlymomentarily the centre of attention and because the moment had quickly turned out to be uneventful.
    But it did not extinguish his burning desire to know all about the boxes called cameras.
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    Within the muted light of his developing tent, Ira Ketterman slipped his hands into the armholes of his lightproof bag and unravelled enough celluloid to safely snip the section of exposed film containing the young porter. He then replaced the remainder of the reel in its container.
    Before placing his hands into the armholes to the washing tanks, he checked the thermometer and set the stopwatch.
    He found working with the portable processing equipment far more cumbersome than using his darkroom back in New York, but he had no other options. He couldn’t afford to risk a camera failure going undetected, causing him to arrive home after three months’ work only to find he had five hundred feet of useless celluloid.
    He had practised with the portable equipment many times at home in New York and soon adapted to the constraints.
    After a final wash, he removed the negative from the lightproof bag and swung up the tent flap to examine it. The negative was sharp.
    He grabbed his pipe and headed for the black tent he used to make prints and enlargements. It contained a pressure lamp and a complicated set of mirrors and lenses — the most delicate pieces in his entire suite of laboratory equipment.
    At the end of the process he took the pressure lamp from the enlargement equipment. The blackened tent filled with light. Ketterman studied the print.
    He fumbled around in his coat pocket to find his pipe, filled the bowl with tobacco and slowly tamped it down. The match flared and, when the centre was glowing red, he took a long and satisfying pull of smoke into his lungs. His tension eased. The porter’s body appeared in sharp contrast. The print was perfect.
    He sat for a long time until the air in the black tent had become almost unbearably hot. But he stayed on, staring at the Adonis captured so perfectly in the print.
    Ira Ketterman was sixty-seven years old, and in love.
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    Wangira was returning from the central storage tent to where Ali was organising the distribution of packs, equipment and crates, when he found Ira Ketterman looking at him.
    There was a moment when Wangira thought he wanted to speak to him, but it passed and Wangira continued on his way.
    â€˜Wait,’ Ketterman said.
    Wangira turned to him.
    â€˜We need to have a talk, you and I.’
    Wangira looked around for Ali, who was known to have a particular dislike of porters fraternising