A few days after I gave him the camera, he asked if he could borrow a thousand dollars to buy a used car his brother had located in Geneva. I had only $1,300 to my name. What’s more, if I agreed, it would mean that at some point I’d have to fly back to Paris to take out the cash, meet Doru and the car in Geneva, then drive back to Bucharest in time to cover the elections. But I said yes and booked my flight back to Paris. That’s when the bickering started in earnest. Doru hates himself for asking me for the money. He hates himself for his future debt to me. I hate myself for not realizing that he would.
So, naturally, we take it out on each other.
Doru tells me he has to run over to the AFP bureau. They have an assignment for him, and he needs the cash. Normally, a photographer working for Gamma is not allowed to simultaneously shoot for a wire agency, but Doru could care less. The way he figures, the more money he can earn, the quicker he can get out of Romania.
When Doru leaves, I sit on his bed and stare out the window. My view is partially blocked by the two bricks of black-and-white film—a brick being a package of twenty rolls—which are sitting on top of Doru’s dresser. They are the rolls of Tri-X I grabbed on my way out of my apartment in my mad rush to Charles de Gaulle airport, when was that? Two weeks ago? Three? It feels like a year. The boxes are still tightly wrapped in their shrink-wrap, just sitting there between me and the window, gathering dust.
Yesterday, I bumped into a colleague in the lobby of the Inter-Continental Hotel, a photographer named Jim from New York whom I’d run into a few times in the past. He asked if he could buy some black-and-white film from me. He’d arrived in Bucharest from some other godforsaken place, I could never keep track of where, and he was low on supplies. I told him I’d think about it, see how much film I had left, even though I knew I had the two bricks sitting unopened on the dresser in Doru’s apartment.
One of the most talented, well-respected and scrupulously honest photojournalists around, Jim was a member of Magnum, had a contract with Time magazine and had won many prestigious awards for his toils. Some people called him “The Monk.” He drank only Perrier, never smoked, never cursed, had never divorced (or ever married, for that matter), kept his lean body in perfect physical shape and every night, at least as far as any of us could gather, he went to bed both early and unaccompanied. There were rumors of hearts Jim had broken during the small pockets of downtime he had between stories, but no hard evidence.
Jim’s reputation among us mortals was practically mythic, as if he were not human but rather a deified Hollywood version of himself. They said that his khaki wardrobe was always pressed and unsullied, no matter the war or how long he’d been covering it. That his straight brown hair remained combed and perfectly coiffed even in the midst of shooting a battle. That his handsome face was always scrubbed and clean-shaven regardless of the scarcity of razors, soap or running water.
In reality, he was simply a focused, well-groomed ascetic whose talent, clout and strong jaw fueled the petty jealousies and snarky comments of his less competent, less comely, more grass-stained colleagues.
I liked Jim, appreciated his idiosyncrasies. I understood that, unlike the majority of us photographers who were shooting for the thrill of it, Jim was a man on a mission. He truly believed he’d been put on this planet to record its every misery and to try to save it, and he could not see the point of being distracted, clouded or exhausted by earthly temptations. Which pretty much ruled out all but one of the w words (war) most photojournalists love (wine, women, whiskey, Winstons, weed, whoring, whatever.)
“What have you been up to that you’ve run out of film?” I asked Jim when I saw him in the lobby.
In typical Jim fashion, he answered, “Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that,” which probably meant he’d just completed a lengthy assignment in some far-flung destination like Namibia or Burma for National Geographic. He wasn’t being rude; Jim just never liked to brag.
When he inquired about my recent exploits, I was equally vague. But not, like Jim, out of modesty. I didn’t tell Jim about Vulturesti because I was afraid of getting scooped. I knew that if I told him about the orphanage, Jim would want to shoot it, to add it to his archive of human suffering. Then, because of his skill and his stature in the world of photojournalism, the magazines would buy his pictures, not mine.
Now, staring at the film on Doru’s desk, still numb from my conversation with Henri, I suddenly realize what I must do.
I shove the two bricks of black-and-white film inside a plastic FNAC bag. Then I take out my reporter’s notebook and a pen and hastily scribble down directions from Bucharest to the orphanage in Vulturesti. I tear the sheet of paper from the spiral, fold it in half, and throw it in with the film. I grab the bag, run out of the apartment and dash back through the streets of Bucharest until I reach the Inter-Continental, sweating and out of breath. As usual, the lobby is swarming with journalists, so it doesn’t take long for me to locate Jim. “I just saw him, eating lunch,” Gad tells me, pointing in the direction of the restaurant.
“He just went back up to his room,” his fixer tells me, when I find him sitting all alone at a table.
Jim’s room is on the same floor as the AFP bureau, and as I pass by the office, Doru is heading out the door. “Where are you going?” he asks, surprised to run into me.
“To see a friend,” I say, caught off guard. I don’t want to have to explain to Doru what I’m up to, because that would involve telling him about my telephone conversation with Henri. Which I know will not only crush him, because he’s counting on paying me back the thousand dollars he owes me with his earnings from the Vulturesti story, it will dredge up his ingrained Romanian paranoia. He’ll think Henri, instead of just being stupid, is trying to fuck him over. And I don’t need that right now. Recently, after Ovidiu planted the notion in his head, Doru has become convinced that Henri has been tampering with his sales reports and withholding his money.
I try changing the subject. “So, what did they assign you?” I ask.
“Miners. Again. Can you believe it? I’ll bet you not a single miner shows up tonight. They’ll come when no one’s waiting for them. But as long as AFP is paying me, I don’t really care.” Doru pauses, raising one eyebrow. “What friend?”
I’m stuck. “Jim. That guy from Magnum. You know him?”
Doru looks at me suspiciously. “Of course. The god of photojournalism. No, I don’t know him personally,” he says.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know him that well either. I just have a package for him, that’s all.”
He eyes the FNAC bag, its lower-case, late-seventies-style white letters against a gold backdrop. Any French photographer would immediately know it contains film, the Fédération Nationale des Achats des Cadres—the National Federation of Executive Purchases, how French is that?—being the one chain store in France where all photographers buy their film. But to Doru it’s just a plastic bag. “I see. A package,” he says, his voice tinged with a mixture of doubt and sarcasm. “So, will I see you later?”
“Sure. I’ll find you in the streets,” I say, running off down the hallway to Jim’s room.
“You do that,” he calls after me, in a tone meant to convey that this conversation is far from over.
Jim answers the door to his room dressed, as usual, in various shades of tan and olive. The room itself is spotless. I let my eyes wander around, looking for clues, but nothing speaks to me. There’s not even an iron in sight, no object to tell me anything more about Jim than he allows to be known.
I walk over to the bed and turn my plastic bag upside down, letting the film and the note fall on the blanket. I tell him about what I saw, about the beds with no mattresses, about the dead boy, about the ripped clothes and the starvation. I tell him about Gamma sitting on the pictures. As I speak, Jim listens politely, his face betraying little emotion. Any other photographer would be salivating by
now. I show him the note, make sure he can read my manic scribbles. “Vul-tur-es-ti,” I say. “That’s V-u-l-t-u-r-e-s-t-i. It’s hard to find.” I tell him at this point I don’t care whose pictures get published first or where; my only concern is that they do get published.
What I really want to tell him about but don’t is those dreams, those horrible gas chamber dreams in which everyone dies except me because I hog the air hole. That the dreams are now sprouting new characters, birdlike kids with flapping wings, a boy with his face peeled off walking around, zombielike, with his dead, bloodless heart in his hands. That somehow I imagine that if I can save a couple of orphans by handing the story over to Jim—who, because of his clout, will most likely get his pictures published—the dreams might stop. Which I know is just selfishness and survivor guilt masquerading as philanthropy, but I don’t care.
Instead, when Jim looks me in the eye and with a vaguely nonplussed tone asks me if I’m sure I want to hand the Vulturesti story over to him, I say only, “Yes. I’m sure.”
“I understand,” he says, sounding more like a clergyman than a journalist. He takes my hands in his and thanks me. Says he can probably get The New York Times Magazine interested in the story. Asks me how much he owes me for the film.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just promise me you’ll go.”
“I promise,” he says. He shows me out the door. “And thanks. Really.”
“No problem.”
I walk out of the hotel and find Doru sitting on some steps overlooking University Plaza, smoking one of his acrid-smelling Romanian cigarettes and waiting for miners. The plaza is wide, teeming with people and their banners, surrounded by buildings that fall into two distinct schools of architecture. The older buildings, oversized and overly ornate, look like they might have been designed by Haussmann if he’d been sneaking steroids from under his drafting table. Though they are now crumbling and decrepit, some with big chunks of pediment simply missing, they hint at a glorious if pompous past. Then there are the hideous modernist buildings like the Inter-Continental, a giant, stretched-out shoe box of an eyesore, obviously constructed under the whip of communism. It is anonymous, drab and ugly, nothing more than gray slabs of concrete slapped carelessly together.
Every visible surface in University Plaza—not only the facades of the buildings, but the sidewalks, the roads, even the street signs—is covered with soot. Even the protesters themselves seem to be covered with a layer of grime.
“How can you smoke those things?” I say, sitting down next to Doru. “Don’t you have any Marlboros left?” I bought Doru another whole carton on our last trip to the airport.
Doru scoots his body away from me, leaving a gap between us. He mutters something in Romanian, and then, switching to French, says, “I have many Marlboros left.” He stares straight ahead at the growing crowd. “I just wanted to smoke one of my own, if you don’t mind.” He pretends to adjust the ASA dial on the Nikkormat, my beloved old camera. Then, as if thinking better of it, he removes the camera from around his neck and shoves it into the Domke bag at his feet.
I tell him of course I don’t mind, but he stubs the half-smoked cigarette out anyway. I’m not sure what to do, so I take out my own pack of Marlboros and offer him one. He waves it off. Then I remember the Toblerone bar in my camera bag, the one I bought with my American dollars in the hotel gift shop when I couldn’t face another breakfast of stale bread and rancid butter. “Hey,” I say, opening the foil and breaking off a triangle, “how about a piece of this?”
He finally turns to look at me, his eyes filled with animosity. “I don’t need your charity,” he says. Then he stands up to leave.
I go after him, finally grabbing his arm to keep him from escaping. “Please, Doru, don’t do this,” I plead.
He yanks his arm free. “Leave me alone,” he says. “Just go away. I love you. But I don’t want any more of your fucking charity.” His voice is louder now, but because of the noise of the crowds, no one else seems to notice. He tells me to stop treating him as if he were one of the orphans. He’s not unrecoverable. He doesn’t need my help or anybody else’s. He doesn’t need to be fixed. He doesn’t need to be saved. He doesn’t need my presents. Okay, well, he needs the car I’m about to buy him, but he says that he’s thought that one through, and that I’ll end up saving money by not having to rent one during the elections when we get back. He says that while I was off with Jim, maybe even having sex for all he knows, he was out here in the street, earning a living, trying to make enough money to get himself out of this hellhole. That he doesn’t really need chocolate anyway. In fact, if he never eats another bite of chocolate in his entire life, he’ll be just fine.
I don’t even know where to begin to respond. I can barely speak, and when I do I can only address the one statement I know, without any doubt, to be false. “I did not have sex with Jim,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Doru, “just like you didn’t have sex with Nicolas. Give me a break, okay? I’m not stupid.”
I finally snap. “Jesus, Doru, for the ninety-eighth time, I didn’t sleep with Nicolas! Or Gad or Jim or anyone else since you and I have been together! Why are you doing this?” I’m yelling now, my body coiled, my fists in tight little balls. Then, unable to stop myself, I unfurl my right hand and slap Doru’s face. The impact leaves a red welt on his cheek. He instinctively clutches at it and stares at me through stunned eyes. Furious and tripping over my own words, mixing English with French, I tell him the jealousy has got to stop. That I went to Jim’s room to give him some film. That I don’t want to ever hear Nicolas’s name mentioned again. That I’m sick and tired of him not trusting me. That the presents I give him, I give him out of love, not charity.
Doru still stares at me, looking befuddled and holding his slapped cheek in his hand. He says nothing. I can feel the mucus running down my throat, my nose running, my eyes stinging with tears.
“Love?” he says. “Love?” He shakes his head, lets out a small, angry burst of laughter. “Please, Deborah, don’t confuse pity for love.” He rubs his eye and pretends that it’s nothing more than a piece of dust that’s caused it to water. Then he picks up his camera bag, walks down the steps and heads off into the crowd of demonstrators. It engulfs him and he disappears.
MARION AND I TAKE the elevator to the top floor of the Inter-Continental, laughing together as usual. Marion has arrived from Paris to spend her twenty-fifth birthday with me in Romania. I called her to cry about my newly miserable situation with Doru, but by the end of the conversation I was comforting her because she’d just found out that her boyfriend, Philippe, who would not commit to celebrating her birthday with her, had recently impregnated another woman. I said this was probably not a good sign, and then I jokingly suggested she come join me here. “Romania is a shit hole,” I said, “but it can’t be any worse than the place you’re at.” The next day (and this is why I love Marion), she bought a plane ticket to Bucharest.
She’s squatting with me at Doru’s apartment. Since Doru and I are not sleeping together anymore, or even talking much anymore, Marion and I have been relegated to the living room floor. After my fight with Doru, at the end of April, I went back to Paris for ten days to deal with his car and to buy more film to cover the elections. During that short stay in Paris, as strange as it may sound, I happened to meet and fall in love with the man I would eventually marry. The timing could not have been worse.
If Doru was merely jealous beforehand, he is furious now. In fact, he hates me. And rightfully so. I just don’t know what to do about it. I tried to get Libération to pay for a hotel room upon my return, but I was told their budget wouldn’t allow for it. They said they hired me to cover the elections because I had assured them (back when Doru and I were getting along, back before I accidentally met my future husband during the furlough in Paris) that I would be covering my own lodging expenses, which I found not only annoying but mildly insulti
ng, as I’d been imagining they hired me for my proficiency as a photographer. Since I have no savings left after lending Doru the money for his car, and since Libération is counting on my coverage, Doru has very graciously suggested a cohabitation based on the late-eighties French political model: peaceful but icy, like Mitterrand sharing his government with Chirac.
Sure, I wanted to say, except Chirac never felt a strangely maternal love—the kind of love he never knew he was capable of feeling—for Mitterrand. Chirac never saw Mitterrand get misty over his first Marlboro. He never danced the Lambada with Mitterrand, six times, in a Transylvanian mountain hideaway. And he never once felt an electrical surge pulsating from his heart to his extremities after a single kiss from Mitterrand’s lips.
After that short trip to Paris, the situation for both Doru and me became almost untenable. Which is why I called Marion crying in the first place. And why things are better now that she’s here, to act as a buffer between us.
Marion and I are the first of our group to arrive for dinner in the formal dining room at the hotel, and we take our seats. The formal dining room serves the same lousy fried meat and soggy fried potato cubes as the less formal cafeteria on the ground floor, but it has what in Romania passes for atmosphere—gaudy, too-bright chandeliers, garish synthetic linens, waiters in polyester suits with bow ties, enormous open space and triple-height ceilings. While it is hardly an intimate setting, it does have big round tables that can accommodate up to twenty people, which is helpful because we’ve made a reservation for seventeen.
Because of new rumors about marauding miners, I probably should have come dressed to work—the pockets of my vest filled with film, my cameras loaded, my flash battery charged. But I’m so sick of all the lies and false intelligence, I can’t be bothered. As the other photographers arrive one by one, however, I notice they’re all wearing their Banana Republic vests, all carrying heavy bags of equipment. The rumor, as usual, has traveled fast.
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