Serafim and Claire

by Mark Lavorato

  “Not hiring, sorry.” He turned to leave, but she caught his arm and forced a wad of bills into his palm.

  “Please,” she pleaded. “Just one shift, to start.”

  He stepped back, looked her over, then counted the bills, hesitating.

  “Please,” she repeated.

  He sighed, buried the wad in his pocket. “So much as a blink of funny business and you’re black and blue in the alley, hear?” He shook his head, as if at himself, as if he were wilfully ignoring a bad feeling that was worming around in the bottom of his gut. “Shift starts at five.”

  Paris, França; 22 de fevereiro de 1927

  Caro Serafim,

  How extravagantly unpredictable this world is! Travelling through Oporto last month, I learned that the calm and provincial plan you once had for your life has since turned itself into an ocean-going adventure. How I await news of the photography you see there, and wonder if it is as vibrant as in Paris.

  Yes, Paris. With the dictatorship installing itself in Portugal, the anarchists’ aims were forfeited, and so I began to ask every photographer I knew to point me in the direction of where the vanguards of our medium were gathering. The answer was either Berlin or Paris. I chose the latter because it was closer and cheaper to get to. But Serafim, what a decision it was!

  I’ve set myself up in Montparnasse, which it would seem is the very hub of art on the planet. Writers, poets, painters, sculptors, photographers, as well as the models required for their work, meet and mingle at the Café du Dôme every morning and evening, in an air that is gentle and smells of coffee and warm brioches. The atmosphere is fluid and accepting, newcomers greeted as regulars, the boundaries of class and ethnicity lifted.

  My first day here, a painter saw my camera and commissioned me to take shots for his studies. Later, in his studio, two young models called by, looking for work. He asked them to remove all their clothes and stand near the window. Would you believe that they did?! This, now, is what I photograph to pay my rent.

  And you, my dear friend, how are you finding America? Your uncle seemed to hint that you had happened across a substantial sum before embarking, hence I’ve been imagining you in some lavish city skyscraper. Please, tell me, of your photos, your life.

  As minhas mais sinceras saudações,

  Álvaro

  18

  Serafim was soon swallowed into the folds and undulations of his brand new world. He lived as a boarder in the Italian neighbourhood at Coursol Street and Dominion, rooming with Antonino Spada for his first year. Just as Antonino had predicted, Serafim managed to find a job quickly, as a darkroom technician at a photography studio downtown. The studio was owned and operated by an old Scotsman, a man who was constantly smoking a pipe, and who spoke very little; sweet and silent clouds ribboning the bulb of Serafim’s darkroom. While living in relative poverty, Serafim slowly and painstakingly scrimped together enough to pay Antonino back for his first weeks as a boarder. He made a point of reminding his new friend, on a daily basis, that he hadn’t forgotten his debt, and that he was busy saving whatever he could to chip away at it. After what felt like an eternity, he finally handed Antonino the last of the money he owed, which freed him up to begin scraping together whatever he could to take and develop photos of his own again. He did this by saving chemicals and paper that would normally have been discarded in his regular darkroom work. The results of his photography were less than optimal, but, he reasoned, developing subpar photos was better than producing nothing new at all.

  In the autumn, he showed some of his new images to Antonino, which had the instant effect of deepening their friendship. With the exception of Álvaro, Antonino was the only person to have ever expressed authentic appreciation of Serafim’s talents, his eye, his aesthetic. He’d even — though unconsciously, without meaning to — referred to Serafim as an artist once or twice.

  Antonino himself was staying in Canada on a student visa, studying at one of the city’s universities. Within weeks of their arrival, his fiery discussions had burgeoned into polemics that, he was convinced, could no longer be contained. Action had become necessary. Antonino was most upset by how blindly supportive the Italian community was of Mussolini, and by two highly publicized trials of Italian immigrants, one unfolding in New York, the other in Montreal. The verdict in Montreal had already been meted out, with seven men sentenced to hang at the Bordeaux jail for robbery and murder. Four of them (three of whom were Italian born) had already been executed. During their trial, however, there had been countless allusions and references to kickbacks and protection money that had been systematically paid to the authorities, from beat-walking constables all the way to the police chief himself. Yet, Antonino pointed out to Serafim, it was only the lowly immigrant “dagos” whose heads were being bridled by a noose.

  During the course of several drunken discussions, Serafim took pictures of Antonino’s enraged gestures as his hands and arms swung out over oak barrel tops — barrels of beer that the matron of their boarding house purchased and served for extra income, the woman stoically filling steins as if deaf to the shouting around her. Antonino eventually decided that he would start an independent newspaper, and that he would call it Il Risveglio Italiano. It would be a journal that offered a refreshing perspective, though most importantly (and he swore this on his mother’s soul) it would not be just another boccheggiante, something that paid lip service to the Church and prominent members of the Italian community.

  When the first issue was printed, Antonino, bristling with contentment, tied a stack of the papers in hemp twine and brought them home, jauntily thumping the package onto the floor and soliciting Serafim’s help in distributing them. He was sorry the antiquated press he’d procured could only print four pages of text and no photos; otherwise, he said, he would happily have printed one of Serafim’s shots. Antonino gauged the newspaper’s success by how entrenched and loyal his old friends were forced to become, as well as by the growing number of new enemies he was making. People shook their fists at him as he passed in the streets, cursing the same mother whose soul Antonino had sworn on to hell, or at times (and this was a complete mystery to Serafim) cursing him to Naples.

  Throughout his first year, Serafim often asked people where he might find other Portuguese immigrants in the city. Constantly struggling in Italian, English, and French, and never feeling the words leave his mouth as they did in his native tongue — as effortless and weightless as breath — had him hankering for even the smallest small talk in Portuguese. What soon became apparent to Serafim was that there were very few, if any, Portuguese denizens in the city. Things had substantially improved in Portugal and there was little reason to leave, unless, like Serafim, you’d made a reason for yourself. And so, in his head, with an internal Portuguese voice that spoke in soliloquies (and with no small degree of sentimentalism), Serafim catalogued the differences in the ways the seasons changed, between his old land and his new.

  First, he noted that the summer heat was less dry in Montreal than it was in Oporto, more oppressive. It stuck to his skin like a damp cloth beneath his jacket, vest, and shirt. This was followed by his perpetual shock at the colours of autumn, which were vibrant and luminous hues that soaked and bled into the streetscape, drew the eye up and out at the sky and its grey-lacquered clouds. The leaves had tones that made Serafim wish colour film had developed beyond either prohibitively expensive experiments or lengthy screen-plate processes that rendered unconvincing results. He had long since trained his eye to see in grey-scale, in degrees of contrast, recognizing the way light on objects would translate into the fields of black and white. For the first time, however, he wanted to hold and record the entire spectrum of colour. That is, until all the leaves were gone.

  Winters in Portugal had been, at worst, cool and gloomy. In Quebec, Serafim discovered that the coolness in the air could quickly reach a point where the air particles themselves felt jagged, lik
e teeth that could bite pinholes into his skin, despite the layers and layers of clothing he wore. Serafim observed oblong puddles from bitter rain begin to clamp shut overnight, incisors of ice sealing themselves up into plate glass smiles, cross-hatches of canines and molars maniacally clenched. He sometimes wondered how people in the streets, slouching with their collars high and going about their daily business, didn’t die in great numbers.

  When the first snowfall, sparse and icing-sugar soft, spiralled from the sky, Serafim photographed children running in circles on the sidewalk, giggling with their mouths open, chasing the flakes with the pink of their tongues. He had seen snow only one other time in his life, while on a train southeast of Oporto, where the mountains of the Serra da Estrela had risen as a pallid set of hills in the far distance. Until he moved to Montreal, the concept of snow had been remote and abstract. Now that he could see it up close, he was mostly preoccupied with brushing the flakes off his camera, worried about their possible effects on his equipment. When he woke the next day, most of the snow was gone, the cityscape dusted white, salted like cod. He imagined the rest of the winter would continue this same way, a few flakes here and there, which would then be gone by the following afternoon. Perhaps, he thought, winter was going to be manageable after all.

  As the winter truly dug itself in, however, Serafim was astounded that a state of emergency was not being called. In fact, to all appearances, it was even the contrary. These people almost welcomed the cold and snow, revelled in the way it piled up, high, higher, banking the streets and drifting onto the storefronts. People shovelled it as if they were transporting boxes on moving day, simply, methodically, and as a matter of course, digging out cars, converting their horse-drawn vehicles into sleighs and cutters, and draping themselves in thick animal skins to ride outside in the freezing elements — mitts, woollen hats, fur gauntlets, and muskox robes. Kids skated at intersections or near fire stations, where the very people who were responsible for ensuring safety and security in the metropolis used their hoses to create massive rinks for wild children, who would then wield precariously hooked sticks and strap blades to their feet to shove a rubber disc and speed around after it. On the weekends, people took to the hill that stood at the centre of the city (which everyone referred to as “the mountain”) to play in the arctic white — skiers in overcoats with sashes, snowshoers in short blanket coats or mackinaws, everyone sporting high boots, heavy knickers, sweaters, and woollen underwear. A lane for toboggans was fashioned on the mountain, with flares shooting violently into the night to beckon onlookers to a place where water had been poured on the hill, creating a straight-run luge track where math students with stopwatches calculated the tobogganers to be running at close to 90 miles an hour. These people, Serafim was increasingly convinced, were mad.

  On the other hand, their print media was as conservative and lagging behind the times as it was in Portugal. Serafim had scanned everything that was printed in the city, looking for photographs that might stretch beyond the limits of the standard portrait mug shots of opulent proprietors and politicians. Sadly, there were virtually no exceptions to the conventional rule. Even though the technology existed almost everywhere to blanket journals and periodicals with every kind of photograph imaginable, the only cities experimenting with such possibilities were, according to reports from Álvaro, the illustrated news and travel magazines out of Paris and Berlin. Álvaro had sent Serafim a few pages from one of these magazines, published in Paris, called Vu. Serafim was astonished to see such creativity and openness in a popular publication: cutting-edge angles, candid shots, and experimental subjects and processes. Serafim was sure that the rest of the world was just about to catch on. It had to, he thought to himself (in an appeasing Portuguese voice). It had to.

  He had approached a few of the newspapers with some of his candid photos, armed as well with the best of the glossy pages that Álvaro had sent from Vu, but it was all for naught. People, the editors argued, simply wouldn’t be receptive to such abnormal pictures. They would be seen as untoward, unseemly. “Trust us. We’ve been in the business for a long time. But we do thank you all the same, and bid you a very fine day.” The click of the door as it shut and sealed at Serafim’s back. He was disheartened, to be sure, but not dissuaded, and continued spending every penny he could afford on taking candid shots in the streets.

  One Sunday in January, he had again bundled himself up against the absurd temperature, fifteen below, and set out towards the larger buildings of downtown to take a few exposures. He was on St. Catherine Street, taking a break in a café, when he became aware, looking through the café’s window, of a jarring shift in the way people were acting. Something was clearly wrong. He hustled to pay for his coffee and headed out the door to spot a crowd gathering around a theatre several blocks away. Smoke was being emitted from its upper floors in ever-greater plumes.

  As Serafim got closer, it became evident that there were people trapped inside, and nearing the horses and firemen, he could hear the high-pitched screams of children. The following morning he would read that eight hundred of them had crammed into the theatre to watch a Sunday matinee, and that seventy-eight did not come out alive. Many of the children were crushed or asphyxiated in the confusion and architectural mistakes of the building. The silent film they had been watching was a comedy starring Stan Laurel, and the title was Get ’Em Young. The fire had been caused by a discarded cigarette, which had smouldered in a slat in the floorboards, its heat sponging into the wood, until a patient splay of embers eventually blossomed into flame.

  Serafim, distressed and unnerved, simply stood around like everyone else, watching as the firemen raced and fumbled to save whatever lives they could. They laboured with a steam pump, shovelling coal into it from the back of a truck. Teams of white and bay horses that had hauled the pumps, ladders, and equipment twitched, muscular and motionless, the skids on the sleighs behind them resting heavily on the compacted snow. Eventually a door was broken in, and tiny bodies began to be yanked out, and were grimly piled onto the frozen sidewalk, placed out of the way as rescuers continued searching for the living.

  Needing to avert his eyes from the sight — youthful, charcoal-smeared cheeks, now lifeless — Serafim found himself focusing on the crowd that had gathered, noticing the looks on everyone’s faces, depicting the depth of the tragedy. It occurred to him that these expressions had to be recorded, were themselves in need of being witnessed, documented. So he took his Leica from his coat pocket and began snapping photos of the bystanders. A man with a hand pressing firmly down on the top of his flat cap, agape, eyes wide and wet. A woman cupping her fingers over her nose and mouth, standing tall, still, statuesque. An older gentlemen with the handle of his cane lifted to his temple, the length of it dangling limp in the air at his side, his gaze as busy as a speed-reader’s.

  While he hadn’t thought for a minute to approach any of the city’s newspapers with what he’d captured, a photo of the event, taken by someone else, was in fact printed in La Presse the following day. It was the first explicitly candid shot he’d seen since he arrived.

  As Serafim was taking pictures of the crowd that afternoon, he would swear on his mother’s memory that he saw Inês Sá among the faces; or at the very least someone who bore a striking resemblance to her. The woman had the same features and jawline, the same thick head of auburn hair (though it was cropped quite short), the same dark-water irises. But just at the moment he’d noticed her, she vanished, and so he’d hurriedly snapped an exposure in the direction that she disappeared. When he developed the photo the next morning, however, all he could make out was a blur of tresses amid a cluster of horrified faces.

  What might this mean, he wondered, seeing Inês thousands of miles away from where he knew she was? And why would this happen, of all moments, alongside a disaster that was so busy ushering seventy-eight innocent souls through the flames and up to their Maker? As Serafim developed the photo with varying s
ettings, it was a question to which he dedicated a great deal of philosophical thought and time. Gradually, and with an irrefutable logic all its own, an unsettling answer began to emerge.

  Medium:Gelatin silver print

  Description:Vaudeville dancers

  Location:The Blue Sky, Montreal

  Date:1922

  Eight young women on a stage, posing in a chorus line, one leg out in front of the other, pointed toes, heels lifted daintily from the ground. A white plume arcs from each of their hats, curling back on itself like the gangly neck of a crane, furled and preening. Their faces are young, dark-lipsticked, powder-puff pale.

  They are divided, four on each side, and have been arranged in descending height from the centre, carefully symmetrical, flanking each other in identical feather-ruffled costumes; the open wings of a colossal bird whose spine is aligned with the parting point of the curtains that loom behind them. The curtains rise to an unknowable height, out of the frame, climbing vertical folds up through the rafters, disappearing into the heights of cardboard clouds and stencilled stars.

  Each of the girls is reaching down with one hand to lift the hem of her dress, revealing a white shin in its suggestive entirety, peaking close to the knee. Sleeveless arms and low-cut necks are milk-smooth, untainted. The smiles on their lips suggest a mischievous abandon, imply that at this moment they feel careless, lewd, bawdy.

  One of the girls, however — on the far left, shorter — has a certain weight to her expression, an encumbrance. As if she knows something more than the others. As if she wished she did not.

  19

  Claire ended up keeping the job she’d underhandedly sidled into at the Kit-Kat Cabaret, though she was cautious never to take it for granted. She came to her shifts on time, when onstage danced with gusto, unglamorously served tables, washed glasses, and even managed not to react to the sneers and remarks that were audibly whispered by the other dancers — gossiping in the powder room about Claire’s stunt with the manager at the Gayety, smashing glasses against the kitchen wall of an influential man, derailing her career. Claire was counting on the fact that there were other commanding individuals in the city, other opportunities that remained hidden, waiting to be teased out into the open.