by Abby Geni
The elephant seals have altered the architecture of the islands. They have made the coastline soft. They doze in heaps, the gray mountain of their bodies jeweled with small, dark shapes—the pups slumbering and keening and nuzzling. Nearby, the alpha males lord it over their domain. Each is the master of forty or fifty females. They parade up and down the shore, inflating their noses to make a cry that sounds like a drumbeat. The members of their harems snipe at one another good-naturedly. They spend their days nursing. Their milk is some of the richest in the animal kingdom. The babies gain ten pounds a day. I have photographed this too—coming back to the same family each morning, watching the infant swelling like a balloon.
The pups have to be careful. The rookery is not a safe place. The roar of the elephant seals is louder than the ocean. The babies must navigate through a landscape of identical figures, picking their mother’s individual call out of the chorus. More than a few have died. Some have traveled the wrong way across the grounds, leaving the pod behind, lost and gone forever. Some have drowned, too little and helpless to swim. Though the females are watchful and conscientious, the males are too aggressive—or too large—to pay attention. A few pups have been killed by their fathers, who are massive enough to crush them beneath their immense bulk without realizing it.
I still dream of the lost seal pup Mick and I saw on the grounds. I still follow it through the mist. I still listen to it crying for its mother.
The other day I was on Marine Terrace with Jewel, my large-format camera. I was attempting to capture yet another birth. The labor of an elephant seal is not an arduous process. The mother naps between contractions. The baby emerges without undue fuss. With my head beneath the black cloak, I found myself thinking about guillotines. My brain—my eyes, my visual cortex, my artistic sensibility—was separated from my body by a fall of cloth. I was gazing through the viewfinder, framing an image of the new mother lolling on her back, nipples exposed, her infant pressed against her, drinking assiduously. Then I straightened up. I removed the cloak from my head. I felt cleaved somehow, as though I had been decapitated, as though my mind had been separated from my flesh and organs, floating on the air.
Still, our work continues. Lucy has been captivated by the local population of pigeon guillemots. These birds look exactly like their landlocked counterparts—the gray, ordinary pigeons found scarfing up peanuts on the National Mall—but they are actually seabirds. They forage for food by diving to the ocean floor, plummeting up to 150 feet underwater in search of a meal. Lucy has been nattering on about “alcids” and “two eggs, rather than one” and “incubating for four weeks.” She has been hurrying all over the grounds with a handful of bands. She has been sighing a lot about how hard it is to tag the birds alone, how much Andrew loved this work.
Mick, of course, is busy with the elephant seals. The weather is still too wild to take trips in the boat. It may be a while before Captain Joe can safely visit the islands. In the meantime, Mick is trying to identify his favorite pinnipeds by their signature markings. The other day he came dashing into the cabin, almost too excited to speak. He had glimpsed a double birth—twins—a rarity. He and Charlene were so pleased that they went into the kitchen and celebrated with glasses of Perrier.
And I have been snapping images of everything. A creative surge has overtaken me; I eat, sleep, and breathe photography. Curtains of rain lashing the shore. Clouds strewn like pebbles above the horizon. A flock of puffins spinning over Lighthouse Hill. The image of a guillotine still lingers in my mind. The sensation of weightlessness has remained. There is a wonderful violence to the act of photography. The camera is a potent thing, slicing an image away from the landscape and pinning it to a sheet of film. When I choose a segment of horizon to capture, I might as well be an elephant seal hunting an octopus. The shutter clicks. Every boulder, wave, and curl of cloud included in the snapshot is severed irrevocably from what is not included. The frame is as sharp as a knife. The image is ripped from the surface of the world.
LAST NIGHT, THE clock had just chimed midnight when I shuffled down the stairs. Recently, I have often found myself thirsty in the evenings—almost painfully parched, as though all the blood in my veins has been replaced with sand. Yet that same weightlessness persists. It was a cold, blustery night. I did not bother to turn on any lamps. A draft curled around my feet as I stood in the kitchen. I shivered. I was not all the way awake. It took me a while to realize that someone was speaking. At first I thought it was the wind or an elephant seal barking. I reached for the faucet, fumbling in the darkness. Then a single word caught my ear: “Dead.”
I set my glass on the countertop and strode out of the kitchen, my head cocked, listening hard. There was, after all, a light in the living room. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that Charlene’s bedroom door was outlined with a glimmer of gold. A voice was coming from inside, floating through the wall.
“Andrew,” Charlene said.
My breath caught. The darkness in the room was overpowering. The sky outside was overcast. No moon, no stars. Only the glow from Charlene’s room could be seen. It might have been the only light in the whole world. No one else should have been awake, let alone cloistered in some secret conference, discussing matters best left alone. For a moment, I stayed on the razor’s edge, willing myself to walk away.
Instead, I gave in. Stepping closer—moving carefully over the creaky floorboards, past the octopus’s cage—I eavesdropped. Charlene’s tone was soft enough that I could catch only phrases, here and there.
“The night he died—”
“At first I wasn’t sure—”
“Andrew coughed—”
“He wasn’t alone out there—”
It did not take me long to put the pieces together. I shook my head. I knew now what story Charlene was telling. She had told the same tale to me over the Christmas holiday. I remembered her eager expression, her dancing hands. I had not been a good audience. Anything to do with Andrew was not worth a second thought, in my opinion. I had shown no inclination to analyze the matter, to ponder and speculate. Now it seemed that Charlene had chosen to confide in someone else.
I wondered who she was talking to. I wondered who else was in that room, seated on the bed, as silent as a cloud. I never caught the sound of another voice. I listened to the rise and fall of Charlene’s words as I might have listened to music, following the chord progression rather than the notes. Then I began following the rise and fall of the wind and the tide instead. The breeze howled. The waves crashed. In the distance, the storm-petrels were crying—their day just begun, the flock gathering, preparing to do what was necessary, ready for their nocturnal journey.
24
A FEW DAYS LATER, I was roused by a guttural cry. I think I already knew on some level what had happened. I had been there before. Feet running. Voices on the wind. Some kind of emergency. Someone in trouble again.
This time it was Lucy who came barging into my bedroom. At the sound of the door opening, I tugged the blanket off my head. She had obviously just come from outside. She was wearing her hat and work boots, and she smelled like the ocean.
“Get up, for God’s sake,” she shouted. “We need you.”
I opened my mouth to ask a question, but she was already gone. I heard her thumping down the stairs. A door opened somewhere. Then the house was quiet. Through the window, I could see nothing unusual. There was a panel of clouds, solid and gray, with an odd ruffle at the top, as though someone had trimmed a stretch of brick wall with lace. I pulled on my long underwear. I found my scarf in the tumble of sheets. In the distance, the elephant seals were bellowing, the alpha males beating their vocal drums, engaging in their usual territorial battles.
“Hello?” I called, heading downstairs.
Nobody answered. The kitchen was empty. A pot sat on the stove with a ladle sticking out of it. There were beans inside. More beans on a plate. Someone had been interrupted in the process of spooning out breakfast. I fingered the contents of th
e pot. Still warm.
Tugging on my coat, I stepped outside. A breeze scraped my cheek. The ocean had a clean, freshly washed look. The elephant seals were much louder now. The females hooted. The males made a gravelly bellow like a truck engine changing gears. There was another sound, too. A human voice was tangled up inside the chorus. It was hard to pinpoint where each noise was coming from.
I made my way around the cabin. No one on Marine Terrace. No one at Garbage Gulch. No one by the coast guard house. The helipad was abandoned. Yet the voices echoed all around me now, disembodied, like ghosts. The wind was a trickster, changing direction with each gust, blowing my hair into my face.
At last, I caught a hint of movement at the foot of Lighthouse Hill. The slope was backlit by the sun. The trailhead stood in shadow. Shading my eyes with a hand, I made out a mesh of figures there. Mick was planted beside the path—no mistaking that massive silhouette. Lucy was present too. I recognized the restless shift of her step, bobbing in place. More figures. Blobs against a gray landscape. Four bodies bending over something. There was a work-manlike quality about them, engaged in shared labor.
“Hey,” I called.
No one turned. My voice was lost in the wind. As I watched, they knelt in unison like a troupe of dancers doing a simultaneous plié. It was disconcerting. When they straightened up again, I glimpsed a shape at the center, a blur inside the bodies. Something about the whole scene sent a chill down my spine. After a moment, I realized what it was: they looked like pallbearers, toting an object between them.
I began to run.
Mick saw me coming and shouted. The breeze picked up, and he was drowned out by the seals. I was close enough now to recognize the gleam of the surfboard. That was what they were carrying. On the surfboard was a human figure. I saw a blush of red hair. As I drew near, Galen signaled to me.
“She’s alive,” he said. “We need to get her to the house. Grab hold.”
Mick and Forest were on one side. Galen and Lucy, on the other, were struggling to keep their half aloft. I lunged into the breach, snatching at the slick plastic with both hands. The surfboard was heavy. It swayed in my fingers as though it retained some memory of its time among the waves.
Once I was sure of my hold, I was able to focus on Charlene. She lay on her back, her limbs akimbo, her hair fanned around her brow. A sacrificial victim on a litter. She appeared to be unconscious. Looking closer, I saw a bump on her temple. She had the beginnings of a black eye. Her elbow was dislocated; beneath the sleeve of her coat, one arm was bent the wrong way. The sight sent a wave of nausea through me. I lifted my gaze, fixing my attention on the cabin instead.
We were moving in lockstep now. The ground was slippery and treacherous. In front of me, Galen was cursing to himself. Lucy kept accidentally kicking my calves. We walked for what felt like hours, bearing Charlene, trying not to jiggle her too much. Periodically she would give a breathy groan. Mick kept shouting encouragement over the breeze. “Nearly there.” Pause for breath. “Just a few more minutes.” Pause for breath. “Great work, guys!” Soon I found that I had to move sideways, crablike. The five of us stumbled along Petrel Bluff. The sea roared around us, and the elephant seals roared too. A flock of birds passed overhead, warbling to one another. The Farallon Islands continued to be unperturbed by our private disasters.
Finally we reached the porch. With all due ceremony, Charlene was ushered inside. We laid her down. She stirred for an instant, but she did not open her eyes. Around me, the others were already in motion.
“The radiophone,” Galen was saying. “I sent out a call earlier, but nobody seemed to be around. I have to—” Muttering, he hurried away.
“Has anybody seen the first aid kit?” Forest said.
“Come on.” Lucy took his hand and led him down the hall.
Mick pushed past me, saying, “Ice pack. Or some frozen peas, maybe.”
For a moment, I was alone with Charlene. Her breathing was labored. Quite plainly, she was unaware of my presence. She was not aware of anything at all. I looked her over. She was dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a man’s jacket—her usual uniform. Other than the black eye and dislocated elbow, she did not appear to be wounded. But there was moss in her hair. A smear of mud on her brow. Her sleeve was torn. She had a stick jammed into one pocket. Maybe it had caught there as she rolled down the hill. I reached toward her shoulder.
The octopus appeared suddenly. I drew my hand back with a grimace. On the coffee table, a few feet away, he ballooned into the center of his tank. He startled the life out of me as he oozed along the glass. His skin was a bright, aggressive red. His eyes swiveled on their stalks, glaring at Charlene.
The silence of him struck me anew. A dog might bark, a cat might yowl, but an octopus made no sound at all. Oliver hovered on a cloud of tentacles. I wondered how Charlene would appear to him, refracted through his bizarre, aquatic mind. I wondered what he might think had happened to her. She shifted on her surfboard, sighing. The octopus groped at the wall of his tank. He released a cloud of bubbles.
Before my eyes, the red started to wash from his skin like paint wrung from a rag. Crimson, I knew, was the color of wrath. I watched as he turned pink, then lavender, and finally blue. A pale, chalky azure. The color of concern.
25
I BEGAN TO PHOTOGRAPH the world around me when I was ten or eleven. I was not yet an artist; I was merely a child with a hobby. You indulged me, as you did with all my passions. You bought me rolls of film. You drove me to the store to have my pictures developed. You hung my best snapshots on the fridge.
Once, however, you did express a note of concern. I remember it well. It was autumn, and we were strolling through our neighborhood, window-shopping. The local boutiques had decorated themselves with paper leaves in orange and gold. We passed the post office. We stopped to gaze at the delightful wares on display at the toy store. The sky was blindingly clear as you and I rambled down K Street. I remember the jangle of your bracelet. I remember the sugar of your perfume.
A homeless man was asleep on the sidewalk. He lay in a sprawl, a stretch of newspaper over his face. It took me a moment to figure out whether he was breathing. The stench was terrible. His clothes were filthy and torn.
You fumbled in your pocket and came up with a coin to toss in his cup. I had my camera with me—a black and gray Olympus OM-1, barnacled with buttons and dials. It was an early single-lens reflex instrument, the best of its time, loaded with 35-millimeter film, heavier than my purse. Using it was a wonderfully tactile experience: the grind and swivel of the image coming into focus, the clack of the shutter, the resistance of the film advance lever. I leaned over the man’s prone form. He was missing a shoe, and his bare foot was swollen. The toenails resembled bear claws.
You laid a hand on my arm.
“Don’t,” you said.
I looked at you in surprise. You led me away.
Later, you tried to explain. It had worried you to see me like that—gazing with such detachment at another human being so obviously in distress. It had unnerved you that my first instinct had been to try to capture him on film.
“I’m not sure about this,” you said, tapping my camera.
At the time, I found this unfair. I believed I had done nothing wrong in pointing my lens at a man asleep in public. I had not hurt anyone.
Now, of course, I know better. You were right. You were so often right. More than any other art form, photography requires coldness and dispassion. Perhaps I had those qualities as a child; perhaps I developed them over the decades that followed, the years without you. This work demands a mind that sits apart.
Trauma and pain are the foundations of art. I believe that. When tragedy strikes, however, a muralist or a watercolorist has the opportunity to be a human being in the moment and an artist afterward. Faced with the death of a loved one, a sculptor or portraitist can first grieve, suffer, and heal—then create. Most artists go through life this way. They can react normally to the trials
and tribulations of the human experience. They can pass through the world with compassion and comradeship.
They can make their art later. Outside, elsewhere, beyond.
But photography is immediate. It does not offer the luxury of time. Faced with blood, death, or transformation, a photographer has no choice but to reach for the camera. An artist first, a human being afterward. Photography is a neutral record of all events, a chronicle of things both sublime and terrible. By necessity, this work is made without emotion, without connection, without love.
WE HAD TO wait a long while for the helicopter. Everyone did the best they could in the meantime. Mick held a bag of frozen peas to Charlene’s head, alternating between the bump on her brow and the black eye. Forest did some exploratory palpating of her dislocated elbow. It was red and puffy, but not so swollen as to indicate a broken bone. Lucy made sure there were no other, unseen injuries, checking Charlene’s stomach and legs as the men kept their eyes averted. Charlene herself moved in and out of consciousness; she might frown when the ice touched her forehead or grumble something inaudible, but a moment later she would be out cold again.
There was not much I could to do help. I found myself tapping my fingers on my thigh, wishing I had my camera. I wanted to get a few shots of Charlene’s limp fingers, her bruised skin. This moment was ripe for capture. But I knew better than to go fetch Jewel or Gremlin. It would have seemed heartless to the others.
Finally Galen put his foot down. He summoned us all into the kitchen and insisted that we eat something.
“You’ll feel better,” he said. “This is not a request.”
Leaning against the kitchen counter, consuming a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I did not attempt to contribute to the conversation. I listened to the biologists, who seemed fairly unfazed. Everyone ate heartily. In steady, tranquil voices, they debated what might have happened to Charlene.