Red Dress in Black and White

by Elliot Ackerman

  He glanced back at Catherine to gauge her reaction to the portrait, which she studied like a woman who understands all the answers to a work of art, or at least all the questions, first leaning back and then inching ever closer, as if searching for the correct angle from which to examine the photograph. She rested an index finger on her mouth and then smiled beneath it, but her lips were thin as thread.

  “Do you see the hands?” said Peter, pointing into the portrait. “Karsh was an innovator. If you look at his photos, he lights the subject’s hands and face separately. It’s his trademark.”

  Catherine gazed down the row of frames, searching for what Peter referenced, the special lighting on each subject’s hands. “I’m glad you like our exhibit,” she said, feigning through her tone that she had, in some way, been part of putting the exhibit together.

  “Has there been any controversy surrounding it?” asked Peter.

  “None,” answered Catherine, yet she felt herself on shaky intellectual ground. Why would an exhibit of twentieth-century portraiture by Karsh be controversial? Before she could answer Peter further, the hostess called their reservation from the entrance of the restaurant.

  “I thought there might have been some anti-Armenian backlash around Karsh,” explained Peter as he followed behind Catherine.

  “Oh that,” she said. “Usually when the government gets wrapped up around the Armenian issue, it’s just posturing. How long have you been here?”

  “About six months.”

  “Times are good now, the economy, security, everything is stable. When times get hard, that’s when the Armenian question, or some other question, becomes relevant again.” They had followed the hostess into the restaurant. She had found them a corner table in the back, one near the window. Peter offered Catherine the seat facing outside. She refused, saying, “I’m used to the view, tired of it even. You’ve got a fresh set of eyes.”

  * * *

  They ordered three courses and the kitchen was slow. Behind Peter, on the wall of the restaurant, there was a clock. Catherine watched the time pass, not because she wanted to leave, but rather because she wanted to stay. She willed its hands to slow down, to allow her this night to sit and talk with him. He had produced a book of his work, setting it on the table. She then took it in her lap. He explained that his current project was a survey—thousands of photos—and that the book represented a sampling of the work he had gathered up to this point. Glancing through its pages she asked, “And what is the concept behind all these portraits?”

  “There is an old political theory I’m interested in,” explained Peter, “a holdover from the Cold War. The western powers called it the strategy of tension. They would at times support leftist terrorist attacks, propaganda and even radical politicians in order to keep their right-wing allies under threat. A society in crisis, one that is gripped by tension, can be more easily manipulated and controlled than one that’s stable, or so the theory goes.”

  Catherine flipped through the images as Peter explained himself. The entire book was perhaps one hundred unfinished pages of black-and-white portraits, all shot on the street, and all shot from the shoulders up. Catherine found nothing remarkable in the photos themselves; rather, she was interested in their arrangement, the way each was juxtaposed to its pairing across the page—a homemaker in hijab buying groceries at the market set next to an uncovered female executive at a client luncheon, a politician campaigning through Beşiktaş district set next to an army officer waiting at Istanbul’s Sirkeci Terminal for the train which would take him back to his front-line post in the restive southeast, a bar owner smoking a nargile off İstiklal Caddesi set next to a muezzin climbing his minaret in Ortaköy.

  Peter leaned over the table to gauge Catherine’s progress through his book. “The point of the survey is to take the portraits, but most importantly to arrange them against one another. It is basically a huge pairing exercise, not only are you seeing each person, but you are also seeing their contradiction.”

  “And that’s the strategy of tension?” asked Catherine.

  “The way two people suspend each other in place.”

  “What if they’ve never met that other person?”

  “Doesn’t matter, the idea of the other person is enough.”

  Catherine leafed through the pages, taking in the portraits one at a time. Peter watched her intently. He wasn’t certain what Kristin had told Catherine about him, whether she knew that he was nearly ready to abandon the project altogether, that he was ready to return home. The question implied in each portrait was that the viewer also had a pairing, that they too existed in tension with another person, and in that tension resided their own fate. Peter felt the weight of this tension every time he opened the book, as if an invisible opposite was pulling him like gravity in a direction he didn’t understand. He hoped that Catherine would feel that tension when she looked at the images. If Catherine felt nothing, Peter knew that he had failed, for what else was the point of art except emotional transference, the ability of the artist through some medium to transfer his understanding and what he felt to the stranger who viewed his work.

  While Catherine continued to flip through Peter’s book, a man wearing a dark double-breasted suit tailored snugly at the waist with a maroon turtleneck beneath tapped Catherine on the shoulder. “Wonderful to see you, Cat.”

  A relaxed smile blossomed across her face. She stood and kissed him on either cheek. “Deniz, meet Peter. He’s a fantastic photographer, and I think we should talk about showing some of his work.” Catherine, who was clutching Peter’s book to her chest, offered it to Deniz.

  “A pleasure,” said Deniz. “I don’t want to interrupt your dinner.”

  “Not at all,” said Catherine, as she pulled up a chair from an adjacent table. Deniz sat, unhooking the single button of his coat so that its drape hung at his sides like a flag unfurled. Catherine spread Peter’s book in front of him. “Deniz is our chief curator … and a complete genius.”

  “Not everyone thinks so,” said Deniz. Without taking his concentrated gaze away from the photographs, he fished from his inside pocket a pack of Winstons, giving it a jerk so a single cigarette freed itself, and then he clutched its filter with his teeth, unsheathing a smoke, which he lit with the candle that served as the table’s centerpiece.

  An observant waiter crossed the restaurant and pointed to the No Smoking sign, which had only recently been affixed to the restaurant’s far wall, beneath the clock, as part of a new and unexpected round of government provisions. The waiter and Deniz had a sharp exchange in Turkish, which resulted in the waiter eventually delivering an ashtray. “They won’t let us smoke, soon they won’t let us drink, and soon they’ll shut this museum down.”

  “They approved the renovation plans,” said Catherine. “Why would they shut us down?”

  “They keep us open so as to claim credit when they shut us down,” replied Deniz.

  “Everything is a conspiracy with you,” said Catherine.

  Deniz rested his cigarette along the rim of the ashtray. Sensuous in his calm, he lazily turned the pages while shifting closer to Peter so that the two of them might comment together on the book. Their shoulders touched. Then their legs. Peter gradually leaned away as Deniz continued to flip through the photographs. Deniz then shut the book and glanced up at Peter, who was looking not at his work but rather at Deniz’s cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. “Relax,” said Deniz, noticing how Peter had awkwardly propped himself on his elbow to create some physical distance between them. “I’d take Cat home before you.” Then Deniz began to laugh darkly over facts that seemed to amuse him alone.

  “I’m not sure I understand?” said Peter.

  “Oh, come now,” said Deniz, who turned toward Catherine, as if she were his accomplice. “You Americans are suppressed bigots. In this country we are at least a bit more open about our prejudices.
You pretend they don’t exist. You say that when one person rules over ninety-nine people it is despotism, but when fifty-one rule over forty-nine it is democracy. If you’re part of the minority, what’s the difference?”

  “Deniz set up the Karsh exhibit,” interjected Catherine, trying to change the subject. “Peter is a great admirer of Karsh.”

  “I can see that,” answered Deniz, as he glanced down his nose and resumed turning the pages of Peter’s book. “Karsh can be controversial.”

  “Is it difficult to show an Armenian’s work?” asked Peter.

  Deniz returned a perplexed look. “No, that Armenian nonsense is not why he’s controversial. The true controversy around Karsh is the criticism that his work is too static, whether his style—the absence of motion—is a reflection of his limitations as a photographer.”

  “He was a master of light,” said Peter. “He would—”

  Deniz interrupted. “Yes, yes, he would light the subject’s hands and face separately so that one contrasted against the other. Does that make him a genius? It’s a nice little trick, but aside from that all he did was photograph famous people. If he was alive today, he would be working as a paparazzo for Posta, or some other glossy gossip magazine.”

  “He could evoke the one shot that revealed his subject,” Peter added.

  “Or, perhaps Karsh only picked the photos that revealed the prejudices he brought to his subjects. Perhaps Karsh had already formed his opinions.” Deniz rested Peter’s book on the table.

  “Why did you set up the exhibit if you don’t like his work?” asked Peter.

  “I don’t have to like his work to think that it is important.”

  Catherine placed her hand on Peter’s arm, catching his attention. “That’s what holds Deniz apart from other curators,” she said, speaking as though Deniz weren’t sitting at the table with them. “Our collection is much broader because Deniz includes pieces that he might not like, but whose importance he recognizes.”

  “I also can’t afford to buy the pieces that I really want,” said Deniz, and then he glanced at Catherine. “But she keeps promising to help me with that.”

  “How long have you been at the Istanbul Modern?” asked Peter.

  Deniz glanced subserviently at Catherine, volleying the response to this question over to her. “He’s been here for several years now,” she said. “He’s risen very fast.”

  “Where were you before that?” added Peter.

  Deniz again hesitated, looking once more to Catherine before speaking. “In Esenler,” he said, “living a cheap life after being kicked out of university.” The hardscrabble neighborhood was far from the Bosphorus, and thus far from the cultural, financial, and political forces that defined the city, and Peter struggled to imagine the conspiracy of events that had resulted in Deniz beating out his competition to ascend into the lead curatorial position at the Istanbul Modern. Far easier for Peter was imagining the circumstances that forced someone of Deniz’s evidently omnivorous proclivities out of the city’s conservative universities. To that question, all Deniz said was “I partied too hard … , or at least not in the acceptable ways.” As the conversation continued, Catherine and Deniz divided and then answered Peter’s questions as though they were a married couple being asked about a shared but complex history, each of them making quick determinations as to who was better suited to respond to certain chapters of their mutual story. Deniz added, “I consider Cat to be one of my oldest and closest friends.”

  “I was thinking,” said Catherine, “that we could host an exhibit for Peter once we move out the Karsh portraits?”

  Deniz, who had once again opened Peter’s book, hardly seemed to hear her. He was deep in thought, as if for the first time considering the photographs Peter had presented and the manner in which each was juxtaposed against another. Deniz had begun to slowly stroke his radically smooth chin. Then in a single motion he clasped the pages shut with his one hand palming the spine. Like a mason setting a keystone, he rested the book on the table with great care and deliberation, but also as if he had completed his work.

  “What do you think?” Catherine asked Deniz.

  “You must have taken thousands of photos.” There was a long pause.

  Both Peter and Catherine waited to see if he would say more.

  Noon on that day

  The restaurant is a kids’ place and the vinyl tablecloths are sticky, so Peter keeps his hands in his lap. Their server has set out three menus. Catherine sits next to him while in the back corner by the kitchen a vintage arcade machine occupies William. He toggles the joystick and slaps the buttons, but he doesn’t have any coins so only pretends to play, controlling nothing. Catherine and Peter sip their waters and poke at the bobbing lemon wedges with their straws while glancing down at the lunch specials. A frightening quiet settles between them. They have little to say to one another. Their relationship up until this point has been defined by a series of escalations: their first encounter at the Istanbul Modern, the night on the bridge when they talked about vertigo and she went home with him, the afternoons that followed in his apartment and, ultimately, her bringing William to meet him at last night’s exhibit, hosted by Deniz. Each of these advances had fueled the one that proceeded, but they have now played to a standstill, to the silence between them.

  A waiter arrives at their table, notepad and pen at the ready. Peter orders the köfte plate, so does Catherine. “And your son?” he asks. Catherine calls over to William, who, having given up on the arcade game, leans heavily over its controls, his chin notched on the crook of his elbow, watching the flashing screen. He doesn’t reply. Pixelated aliens trickle down the display and he seems to have fallen into the grip of some interior awareness. A defending starship anchored to the screen’s bottom shuffles back and forth repulsing the invaders, which, time and again, overwhelm its efforts.

  Peter recognizes the game, which is a throwback to his own childhood and, watching William, he recalls himself at that age, when the exigencies of an adult’s world couldn’t be understood, but only felt. Peter can’t help but wonder whether William’s comprehension of the last day is deeper than his own.

  Catherine orders her son a grilled cheese.

  The waiter tucks his pad into his apron pocket and cradles the three menus beneath his arm. He hurries to the kitchen but stops as he passes by William. The waiter unclips a key chain from his belt loop. He bends down and unlocks the coin slot on the arcade game. After he jostles a switch deep inside the console, the game comes to life. William straightens himself up and returns to the controls.

  While they wait for their food, William plays and Catherine researches flights from Atatürk International on her phone. “We’re going back to the States,” she announces. With those words, Peter recognizes that the question of who is included in this we has yet to be determined, along with so many other questions—airfare, passports, William’s schooling, the logistics of what increasingly feels like an amateurish getaway.

  Her purse lies open on the table. Spilling from it are the few credit cards linked to the accounts Murat has frozen, her little bit of cash, as well as a cigarette case Peter had given her many months before. After the night on the bridge, Peter had wanted to see Catherine again. He was concerned, however, about how she would perceive a direct invitation. Nevertheless, he asked her to dinner. They met at a restaurant built into the hillside overlooking Bebek, a neighborhood with a Riviera feel, twinkling reflections on the water, anchored yachts lulling on an esplanade crowded with fishermen who never seemed to catch anything. They sat out on a pine-board-slatted terrace painted white. The lighted apartments floated above, the crowded bars below, the parked cars washed with rain. It was early spring. The air had a snap to it. They huddled beneath a heat lamp among the small, closely spaced tables. By keeping this appointment with one another, they had crossed an illicit frontier far greater than t
he physical boundary they had crossed before. This meeting was deliberate. It couldn’t be explained away as a single night’s impulse.

  When Peter had pulled a pack of American-blend Marlboro Lights from his shirt pocket, Catherine’s eyes had lingered. He offered her one and then struck his lighter in a single practiced motion that began at his wrist. She glanced up at him gratefully. Her face had many possibilities. Looking at her, one could imagine many scenes. With the cigarette poised between her lips, she tilted her head like a thoughtful bird and dipped its tip into the flame, inhaling deeply, as if into some sensory memory. She never smoked at home, she explained, and didn’t care for the local tobacco, which was too harsh. Her husband didn’t approve of her habit, although he stole more than the occasional cigarette himself. Had Catherine confessed to Peter the deepest secret of her past, it couldn’t have meant more to him than the way they sat out together on the terrace sharing his Marlboros. “Do you enjoy life as an expat?” she asked him. “Me too,” she continued, “but it attracts a certain type. We come for the romance of a new place, but after some time the romance evaporates. So we leave. We expats are pretty faithless.” An urge within Peter silently flared up. But that night they went home separately, neither of them finding adequate pretense to return to his apartment as they had done before.

  Later that week they met at another restaurant, one block from where he lived. As they sat down, Catherine asked if he had brought his cigarettes. He had intentionally forgotten them at the apartment. They could just pop over and pick them up, if she wanted. After that day they abandoned all pretenses—they no longer met in cafés or in restaurants, they adopted their system of short and long knocks, they spent entire afternoons in the confines of his apartment.