The November sun is brilliant in the cloudless sky and Man is the most lighthearted Lee has ever seen him. In two hours they haven’t even made it to the furniture huts, where the cabinet Man purports to need might be, but he tells her those are off in the more expensive area of the Biron, and they’ll go there later.
The dirt lanes they walk through are crowded with hundreds of vendors, their wares displayed on thick Oriental rugs in front of their stalls, which are filled with crowded stacks of what mostly looks like junk. Lee was puzzled when Man brought several large cloth shopping bags with him; now, as he pauses at a hut selling porcelain doll heads and begins to haggle with the rag-and-bone man over the price, she understands. Man has already filled two of his bags and—four doll heads successfully haggled for—is well on his way to filling a third.
A few huts farther down, they both stop to look at a display of glove makers’ molds, the white hands stuck upright in a wire rack like a forest of small white trees.
“If I had my camera, I would take a picture of that,” Lee says.
“Good eye.” Man makes a square with his hands and holds it up to his face like a viewfinder. “What sort do you use?”
“I don’t—” She pauses. “I meant, if I still had my camera. I never found it.” She feels the loss again, as sharp as it was initially.
Farther back in the hut are mannequin parts, a jumble of elbows in a large wooden crate. Man picks one up and inspects it. “I forgot you told me that. What a shame. You’ll have to get another.”
Lee holds her tongue. Does he not realize how little he pays her? They wander farther down the lane. At the next stall, rows of stereoscopic pictures are arranged in boxes, organized by subject. Man thumbs through them. “These feel so dated.” He holds up a picture of Trafalgar Square filled with carriages, the image doubled on the paper. Lee walks over to him and flips through another box.
“My father took stereoscope pictures,” she says.
“Really? There’s a technique to it. Was he a photographer?”
“Yes—we moved to a farm when I was little, and he built a lab there. I helped him with it.”
Man glances at her. “No wonder you know what you’re doing.”
“Not really. I didn’t do much.” It’s not true, so she’s not sure why she says it. Man’s sudden attention is making her uneasy, out here in the throngs of people.
Lee flips through some more pictures and stops at one of a mother in stiff Victorian dress, her young son perched on her knee. Both mother and child stare at the camera with the blank expressions the long exposure time required. At their farm, Lee’s father’s stereoscope collection was kept in his library, contained in several dozen dove-gray boxes lining the lower shelves of his bookcases. When he was working, Lee would go by herself into the room and kneel behind his desk, taking from its case the viewer she was not allowed to play with and inserting the stereo cards one by one into its frame. When she held up the device to her eyes, the small black-and-white images would hang for a moment in their separate fields of vision before converging into three-dimensionality, the scenes suddenly sharpened and made tactile. Sometimes when Lee looked at a scene of particular beauty—the Pantheon, or the palm fronds framing the Great Pyramids—she would, without even realizing what she was doing, put her free hand out in front of her as if to touch the images she saw, exactly as a blind man might feel for the edges of the objects around him. Her father had literally hundreds of these cards; they were a sort of obsession for him, one of the largest collections of a man who collected everything.
Man has moved on, but Lee puts down the card and moves farther into the hut, where she starts flipping through another box, first some street scenes of Paris and Copenhagen, and then, behind those, photos of nude women, lounging on half-made beds, hanging coyly from brass poles, brushing their hair in front of vanity mirrors. These, too, are familiar. Her father had this collection as well, and alone in his office Lee would linger over them, memorizing what these women had done to capture her father’s attention. Dark lips, dark hair, white skin. Fleshy rolls of fat where Lee was still slim. Shoes with pointed toes, hats with sequined veils or knee-high fishnet stockings. Until she found that box, she thought her father didn’t look at pictures of any other girls but her.
After checking to see how far ahead of her Man has gotten, Lee picks up a photo of a woman dressed in nothing but three tassels, one on each nipple and one at the cleft of her legs; she’s swiveling her hips to make them twirl. She holds up the photo and asks the rag-and-bone man how much, pays, tucks it in her handbag, and then hurries to catch up with Man before she loses him in the crowd.
At another hut there are rows of uniforms, blue as the sky, with metal helmets stacked upside down like bowls next to them. Lee fingers the wool collars, the steel buttons. Man disappears and returns wearing a helmet and brandishing an épée, which he whirls in the air and jabs at her.
“En garde!” he shouts. Lee laughs out loud. Man looks so silly in the helmet, and his lack of inhibition is surprising and wonderful. She grabs her own épée and feints toward him, then pretends she’s been stabbed and staggers back against the uniforms. Man’s eyes are bright. He sets down the sword and picks up a rounded piece of metal mesh, lofting it above his head and admiring it. “Ah, now this,” he says, “this is coming home with us.”
The object is curved like the spine of a nautilus, two feet in diameter, its purpose a complete mystery. Lee already knows he likes things like this, meshes and grids of wire or metal that take the light and break it into patterns. Man holds it in both hands, looking thrilled.
“What is it?”
“I have no idea—a cast of some sort?”
From the back of the stall the owner tells them it is a saber guard, for fencing. Man buys it and stuffs it in another bag. “I love coming here,” he tells Lee as they move on, an acquisitive glint in his eyes. “You never know what you’re going to find. One time I got a whole skeleton—a real one, from a hospital. It was just hanging there at the back of one of the stalls.”
Soon they’ve made it to the Biron, where the road dust is brushed up with small bristle brooms and the shoppers’ clothes are more obviously expensive. It doesn’t take Man long to find the cabinet he needs—it seems everything is here, from console tables to butcher blocks to fainting couches—and he arranges quickly for it to be delivered the next day.
They pass a mother pushing a carriage and leading a small child by the hand. The child is whining loudly, his face sticky with what looks like syrup. Man and Lee both give a little shudder when they look at him, then catch each other’s eyes and smile. “Not so maternal, are you?” Man says.
“Not really.” The truth is Lee can’t imagine having children. Nothing seems further from what she wants to do with her life.
“Art and children aren’t a good mix, in my experience,” Man says.
Lee wonders if he’s cautioning her—does he see her as an artist? She doubts it. “You don’t want them either?”
Man pauses at another furniture hut, opens a secretary desk, and looks inside. “Never. It’s part of why my wife and I separated.” He moves ahead to the next hut and Lee falls behind him a few paces. She had no idea he had been married. She wonders if his wife is the K from the ledger book, and walks more quickly to catch up with him.
“Was this here—in Paris?”
“No, no. Years ago, back in the States. A different lifetime.”
“Where?” Lee hasn’t given much thought to his past before, and feels a sudden hunger to understand him.
“That was in New Jersey. It was easier than living in New York. Cheaper. We had a good time—” Man pauses, coughs. “It wasn’t really the question of children that made us separate.”
Lee is not sure if she should prompt him to keep talking or not, but then he continues.
“We were so young. I was—well, I didn’t even know what I wanted. I was supposed to be a tailor like my father, but I wanted to be an
artist. My family supported me, to a point, but they never really understood me. My mother thought it was just a passing phase. A hobby. So I moved out of Brooklyn and rented a place in Ridgefield with a friend of mine. Have you ever been there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, why would you? It’s very small, very quiet. For a while my friend Halpert and I were really making something out there. We got a printing press and started a magazine, and I was painting every day. And then I met Adon, and she was interested in what we were doing—she wrote poetry, beautiful stuff, I had never met anyone like her—and we got married. But then when I needed to get even further away, to move to Paris, Adon—she wasn’t interested. She was getting quite known in the literary circles. I haven’t spoken to her in years.”
Adon. So not K. And years earlier. “I’m sorry,” Lee says.
Man shrugs and runs his hand through his hair. They have stopped walking and are standing at the edge of the market, where the crush of people is less intense.
“Well, no need to be sorry,” Man says. “I’m not even sure why I’m telling you all of this.” He shifts his bags so they’re higher on his shoulder, and after a few moments says, “What made you want to take pictures?”
Lee tucks her hair behind her ears. She thinks of the stereoscope picture she just bought, thinks of all the photos her father took of her over the years, and says, “Oh, my father, I suppose…and I was sick of modeling. Of being photographed. I wanted to go around the other side and see how it was done.”
Man nods, as if this makes sense to him, and then says, “Lately I think all the time about giving it up.”
“You do?”
“It’s not art. Not really. All I’ve ever really wanted to do is paint. Studio portraits—clients…” His voice trails off.
Lee thinks of the work of his she’s seen so far, the recent portrait of Dalí he just shot, Dalí’s face lit from beneath so that his eyebrows cast devilish spiked shadows on his forehead. She wants to tell Man how it made her feel, how it provoked her, made her simultaneously worry about all she does not know and eager for all she has to learn. It surprises her to hear him say he could give it up. If she had his talent she’d never stop taking pictures. “Your photography is so good, though,” she says, and then immediately feels the inadequacy of her words.
“Of course. But try getting critics interested. They have no respect for photography as art. And part of me agrees with them. Photography’s primary purpose isn’t art, it’s replication.”
Lee looks at him curiously. “I think that portrait you took of Barbette—the double exposure—I think that’s art.”
Man huffs air through his nose. “Maybe. But I do get tired of all the studio work, traveling to the dress houses, and all the rest. It’s such drudgery. If I had my way, I’d go back to painting full-time.”
“Well, why don’t you?”
He holds up one of his bulky shopping bags and smiles wryly. “Because painting does not pay for trips to the Vernaison.”
A few blocks later, Lee and Man descend into the Métro, a waft of stale air blowing leaves up the stairs and around them. Man waves her off when she goes to buy a ticket and pays for her. As they board the train, Man shifts his heavy bags to his other shoulder and takes her elbow. An older man and woman bundled up in coats sit on the train’s far side, watching them as they enter. To them, Lee and Man must seem like a married couple, he carrying her packages and leading her solicitously by the arm. There must be nothing odd about it to them, clearly old and married themselves. Man must have acted similarly with his wife, all those years ago. The thought of how she and Man look together is a strange one, and makes Lee strangely happy.
Chapter Six
A few times a month Man pays student models a small stipend so he can work on pictures he is not being paid to take, and when he does he is always in a good mood. Today he’s using a new girl, Amélie, small and dark-haired like all the models Man hires. Lee hears him whistling as he sets up the studio.
Amélie arrives fifteen minutes late, sniffling. Her nose is red and her eyes watery.
“Are you sick?” Lee asks. As she looks at the girl, Lee is convinced she feels a scratch in her own throat and vows to make a tonic when she gets home.
“No, I’m fine,” Amélie declares, but after a few minutes in the studio it’s clear she’s not. She droops over the couch like a wilted flower, poses for pictures with her mouth hanging open since she doesn’t seem to be able to breathe through her nose.
Man doesn’t seem to notice that she’s sick, or care. He’s humming, cracking jokes, putting Amélie in strange poses and muttering “Brilliant!” under his breath. Lee has come to find his appreciation of his own work endearing.
“Now,” he says, “I thought we could try out this object. Put you in front of the window and play with the shadows a bit?” He pulls out the saber guard he bought at the Vernaison and shows it to Amélie, who stares at him blankly until he brings it over to her and says, “Your arm, here.” The metal mesh is delicate as lacework but sharp along the edges. Amélie places her arm through it and winces as she balances it on the table.
Man steps back. He tilts his head as he always does, looking for the through line the image will need. He kneels and grasps Amélie’s hand, tugging it so that her palm is a bit more open.
“Like this,” he says, tugging again on her arm and moving it at an awkward angle. Satisfied, he disappears under the camera hood. Amélie breathes shallowly and Lee finds herself slowing her own breath to match. Man is out of view for quite a while, calling out now and then for Lee to move the reflectors or adjust the curtains behind them.
Finally he emerges from under the hood. “All done,” he says to Amélie, and then he leaves the room to let her get dressed in peace. She takes her arm out of the saber guard, her face a moue of discomfort.
“So sharp,” she whines to Lee, rubbing a red mark on the pale white underside of her arm.
“Well, models must do what is asked of them.” Lee doesn’t try to hide her annoyance.
Amélie disappears behind the curtain after throwing a mean look at Lee. When she emerges a few moments later, Lee has left the room and stationed herself behind the desk in the office, where she busies herself with some papers.
“Bonsoir,” Lee calls to Amélie as she walks by, artificially cheerful now that the young woman is leaving. After she is gone, Lee goes and looks for Man. He is in the parlor just pouring a cup of tea. He gestures to it—does she want one?—but she shakes her head.
“You shouldn’t use those students anymore,” she says, settling herself on the horsehair couch.
“Ah, she was fine. Needed some meat on her bones, but I was doing a lot of cropped shots and she has nice skin.”
“She wasn’t interested in it.”
“They don’t have to be interested. They just have to stand there and listen to what I tell them.”
He sits down opposite Lee and takes a loud sip. She watches him, still annoyed and not completely sure why. The girl bothered her. Not just her germs, which Lee pictures as little fleas dancing on the couch, on the saber guard, all over the studio. It was more how unimpressed she acted during the shoot. Does Amélie even know who Man is?
“I saw it come through, when I used to model,” she says.
“Saw what?”
“When the model didn’t know why she was there. I’ve done it myself—” She stops.
“You?” Man seems to almost chuckle as he takes another sip of tea. “I bet you look ravishing in every picture anyone has ever taken of you.”
Lee flushes and doesn’t meet his eye. Since the day he hired her, Man hasn’t commented on her appearance. It is what she thought she wanted—a working relationship free from all that—but over the weeks she has often caught herself wondering what he thinks of her. Just the other day she wore one of her nicest dresses to work to see if he would compliment her. He didn’t, which was fine, but now his words send a tingl
e through her she isn’t expecting to feel.
“It is easy for me,” Lee says, “but not for the reasons you would think. I always felt like…” She pauses, suddenly feeling she is about to reveal too much.
“Tell me.”
She goes over to the kettle. Standing with her back to Man, she says, “I would use this trick—I learned it, I think, when I was little, when I modeled for my father. I can make my expression practically anything—” Here Lee turns around and gives him a confident stare, her eyes narrowed. “But while I’m doing it I can send my mind anywhere. With my father sometimes I would pretend I was a queen, the Queen of England, and that posing was required of me for my royal subjects. Or later, when I was at Vogue, I could put on a gown and pretend that I was at a gala or whatever it was they wanted the photograph to look like. I guess maybe it’s a bit like acting. I had a name for it, when I was little.”
“What was it?”
“I called it my wild mind.” She coughs, to cover up her embarrassment.
“Wild mind. I love it.”
“Yes, well. Amélie doesn’t have it. She was probably thinking about a mustard poultice the whole time she was here. That’s what her face was saying.”
Man sets down his teacup. “Would you pose for me?”
He sounds eager, and it thrills her. She wants to say yes. Part of her always wants to say yes, to please whatever man is asking something of her. And she knows Man’s pictures of her would be beautiful, probably better than anyone else’s have ever been, and that is tempting too, to help him make his art. But posing for him even once will change things between them. She will have given him something of herself, even if he doesn’t see it that way, and he will always think of how his camera made her look when he sees her.
“I’m sorry, I can’t—I have a lot of work left to do this afternoon.” The words hang in the air.
The Age of Light Page 6