neutered cat. That’s certainly a lot more than I can hope for in another ten years . . . Ten years. What a strange thing time is. When I think about time, I imagine threadbare innerlinings, I don’t know, something like a dream. That’s the only revolution it would be worth fighting for. The revolution of time. A photographer supposedly freezes moments. To tell the truth, all I freeze are landscapes, outfits, customs, little animals in danger of extinction, traditional costumes, ancestral habits, a collection of full-color photographs, covers for
National Geographic
. That’s what I’m paid for, local color and anthropological flavor, I’m no Juan Rulfo or Robert Capa, but I am number one at photographing Bedouins, orchids, seals, and Maoris. That’s not nothing. My work forced me to give up accident and crime reporting, coverage of swollen women, Colombian burials, waiting lines outside of police stations, just awful, and become a photographer oxygenated by Nature and adventure trips. But I’m also aware, don’t think I’m not, that to take a photograph is to stir up something of death, like the dust that comes off butterfly wings and gets stuck between your fingers. Pure necrophilia.”
Óscar framed him with his fingers and winked his eye through the imaginary viewfinder of a camera.
“You should only look through one eye and apply yourself to the vision at the moment the photograph is taken; everything comes down to applying the basic principle of limits. I can photograph a beautiful girl in a field of red flowers, I can photograph the bare feet of that same girl crushing the flowers . . . You have to decide, up or down. Everything else is literature, criticism, deferment. But I’ll tell you something, Gabriel, I have never developed my best photographs. All of them have yet to be made. Some images remain stuck to your retina. And when I blink again, one week, two months, three years later, they come loose from my optic nerve, like scales, and with every image that comes loose, I lose a memory. That’s fortunate, because it’s not easy to forget. In hotel rooms, I leave behind images and scales, like the contact lenses near-sighted people lose in plazas or swimming pools, but there are other images that never come loose, they stay there behind your eyelids, like glow worms. However hard I try to develop them, they remain stuck to the frontal bone, right here, above my eyebrow, but I can feel they are alive, warm, and I wonder what they’re expecting me to do with them. I imagine they’re the only photographs worth developing. Because, you know what?” he asked, lowering his voice. “A photograph, deep down, is an act of love.”
He stopped looking at him through his fingers and arched an eyebrow.
“By the way, Gabriel, have you been to see the doctor? You’re very thin, and you look paler than usual. How long has it been since you slept with a woman? That’s what you need, a good woman, a good lay. I know a journalist who’s a bombshell, I’ll introduce you to her. By the way”—he pointed at his empty glass—“one more Bombay Sapphire?”
But it was later, when they were both yielding to the impulses of their drinking spree, and instead of one Óscar there were two, and instead of one Gabriel there were another two, and suddenly there were four guys drinking gin and tonic—not counting the empty stool that was also suddenly duplicated—and laughing, or groaning, or putting their arms around each other’s shoulders, precariously balanced on their stools, that one of the two Óscars, it may have been the original, or perhaps just his double, left a fistful of crumpled bills on the counter, buried his red face in his neck, hugged him, and staggering out of the bar, both of them clinging to the door to help them out onto the street, said,“You don’t know how much I loved Laura. You have no idea.”
Several days later, his anxiety still persisting, he allowed a needle to be stuck into
National Geographic
. That’s what I’m paid for, local color and anthropological flavor, I’m no Juan Rulfo or Robert Capa, but I am number one at photographing Bedouins, orchids, seals, and Maoris. That’s not nothing. My work forced me to give up accident and crime reporting, coverage of swollen women, Colombian burials, waiting lines outside of police stations, just awful, and become a photographer oxygenated by Nature and adventure trips. But I’m also aware, don’t think I’m not, that to take a photograph is to stir up something of death, like the dust that comes off butterfly wings and gets stuck between your fingers. Pure necrophilia.”
Óscar framed him with his fingers and winked his eye through the imaginary viewfinder of a camera.
“You should only look through one eye and apply yourself to the vision at the moment the photograph is taken; everything comes down to applying the basic principle of limits. I can photograph a beautiful girl in a field of red flowers, I can photograph the bare feet of that same girl crushing the flowers . . . You have to decide, up or down. Everything else is literature, criticism, deferment. But I’ll tell you something, Gabriel, I have never developed my best photographs. All of them have yet to be made. Some images remain stuck to your retina. And when I blink again, one week, two months, three years later, they come loose from my optic nerve, like scales, and with every image that comes loose, I lose a memory. That’s fortunate, because it’s not easy to forget. In hotel rooms, I leave behind images and scales, like the contact lenses near-sighted people lose in plazas or swimming pools, but there are other images that never come loose, they stay there behind your eyelids, like glow worms. However hard I try to develop them, they remain stuck to the frontal bone, right here, above my eyebrow, but I can feel they are alive, warm, and I wonder what they’re expecting me to do with them. I imagine they’re the only photographs worth developing. Because, you know what?” he asked, lowering his voice. “A photograph, deep down, is an act of love.”
He stopped looking at him through his fingers and arched an eyebrow.
“By the way, Gabriel, have you been to see the doctor? You’re very thin, and you look paler than usual. How long has it been since you slept with a woman? That’s what you need, a good woman, a good lay. I know a journalist who’s a bombshell, I’ll introduce you to her. By the way”—he pointed at his empty glass—“one more Bombay Sapphire?”
But it was later, when they were both yielding to the impulses of their drinking spree, and instead of one Óscar there were two, and instead of one Gabriel there were another two, and suddenly there were four guys drinking gin and tonic—not counting the empty stool that was also suddenly duplicated—and laughing, or groaning, or putting their arms around each other’s shoulders, precariously balanced on their stools, that one of the two Óscars, it may have been the original, or perhaps just his double, left a fistful of crumpled bills on the counter, buried his red face in his neck, hugged him, and staggering out of the bar, both of them clinging to the door to help them out onto the street, said,“You don’t know how much I loved Laura. You have no idea.”
Several days later, his anxiety still persisting, he allowed a needle to be stuck into
Similar Books
