He turned in his seat, smiled. “Serafimeh.” He tipped up his hat. “Come stai?” Then he said something in Italian, which Claire took to mean, “Because I know you, I asked if I could come along. That way, we can get this over with as quickly and as smoothly as possible.” He turned to face the front, while the man in the back gestured that they should crouch down, out of sight. As they complied, the driver started the car and pulled away, out into the Saturday night streets of Montreal, the sidewalks that ran on either side of them already mingling with revellers and clubgoers, all of them oblivious to what was passing them by.
Case No.:L-3849
Article No.:47
Description:Charred photo, recovered
Date:May 19, 1929
Only a small corner is distinguishable as a photo, allowing the item to be identified as such. The picture must have been taken on the street, presumably in Montreal. Besides a line of pavement, one can just make out the back end of an automobile, dragging its blur out of the frame to the right.
From there, progressing to the left, the image becomes increasingly fire damaged. At first the picture is bubbled and mottled, whatever had been at the image’s centre now obscured, stretching along the distortions that the paper made while flexing in flame.
Beyond that is a jagged rim of char, black feathers and flakes curling into dust, marking the place where the photographic paper as a medium of fuel was entirely consumed.
32
As they pulled up to the back of his apartment, Serafim was amazed at how calm he felt, even relieved. He was eager to get this over with, to give them what they wanted, offer his sincerest apology, and watch them leave, no harm done. This is how he’d imagined things unfolding; particularly now, as there was really only one man he felt he had to worry about, the smaller one, who had yet to speak. There was something about him that Serafim didn’t trust, some glint in his expression that made him seem unpredictable.
The possibility of a peaceful parley, however, became doubtful when the smaller man retrieved a heavy canvas bag from the trunk and, much more roughly than was necessary, yanked Claire from the car and shoved her up towards the back door of Serafim’s apartment. Also needlessly shoved, Serafim trailed closely behind them. The driver, he noted, stayed in the car, poised to flee.
Once they were inside, all of them stepping over the debris still scattered on the floor, things quickly turned sour. The smaller man, unshouldering the canvas bag, pulled Claire close to him and began sliding his hands over the fabric of her dress. He was murmuring to her in Italian, as if speaking to a lover, his voice high-pitched and gentle. Claire looked away, the rope still in her mouth, hands still tied behind her back.
Then Serafim’s head was jostled, and the rope between his teeth loosened, falling free. He stretched his lips wide, working out the numbness along the sides of his mouth, sweeping his chin across his shirt to clear the saliva that had gathered there. As soon as he’d recovered enough to speak, he addressed the smaller man, now squeezing his hands into Claire’s buttocks as if kneading dough. “Excuse me,” he said in Italian. “Please, this doesn’t concern her. I am the one who knows where the prints and film are. I would ask you to please leave her alone. Please.”
The smaller man, tilting his head at Serafim as if in sudden understanding and sympathy, took his hands off Claire right away. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said in Italian. He took a step back from her and paused as if apologetic for a moment, before swinging a wild fist and striking her in the face, knocking her to the ground, clumsily, onto her side, where she gasped for breath through the rope, writhing to overcome the pain and shock.
Serafim stood speechless as the same man then took a few soft steps towards him, only to mete out the same reprimand. Serafim was now also on the floor, squirming to recover. Tasting blood, he swallowed it down. Looking at his apartment horizontally, his ears still ringing from the blow, he became aware that the smaller man was now tying a piece of rope to one of Claire’s ankles. Once he had done this, he dragged her across the floor, towards Serafim’s bathroom, where he disappeared for a while, apparently tying the other end of the rope to something, maybe the toilet bowl. At the time, for Serafim, this made no sense whatsoever. Though he wasn’t given long to think about it.
The second man squatted down near his face. He took off his hat and offered a warm grin. It was the man Antonino had warned him to steer clear of, the man Serafim had taken a picture of on the ship while crossing the Atlantic, and who had demanded he develop that picture as soon as they arrived in Montreal. Serafim had obliged, and had even given him the film to the exposure, a favour he was now glad to have done.
“So, where are those pictures, Serafim?”
Serafim twisted round, gesturing with his head at a corner of the room. “There. It’s a false panel. That lower part pulls out as a drawer.”
The man considered this for a moment before getting up and feeling around the cracks in the corner, kicking a few things out of his way on the ground. When he found it, he let out a childlike whistle of delight, then pulled the heavy drawer out until it crashed onto the floorboards. Tiny envelopes of Serafim’s archival film fluttered in disarray, adding to the chaos already in the room. He soon found the large envelope and lifted it from the heap, looking back at Serafim. “Is this all of them?”
“No. I developed one extra picture, and placed it under those heavy canisters. It should be there somewhere.”
Out of curiosity, the man lifted the lid of one of the bulky canisters, ruining the reel of unused film inside, before he located the extra picture. “Good, very good,” he said, returning to crouch in front of Serafim.
He opened the envelope, slid the photos out, and looked them over, turning them around, viewing them at different angles. He raised his eyebrows, gave an impressed nod, and frowned. “You take good photos. I still have mine, you know. And I like it very much.” He then threw the photos over Serafim, where they twirled like falling leaves and settled near the overturned drawer. Shaking the envelope until the film dropped out, he held one of the strips up to the light fixture. “Very good,” he said in the same tone as before. “This is all very fine.”
He then looked over his shoulder at the smaller man, who was standing above Claire’s tied ankle, lying half in and half out of the bathroom. “But you know,” he said, turning back to Serafim, “we have a problem. You once explained to me that with a film like this” — he wagged the strip in Serafim’s face — “a person could make a million copies of a picture. Our problem is: How do we know this is the only film? How do we know there aren’t more of these pictures, hidden out there in the city, waiting to resurface, waiting for someone else to try their hand at blackmailing people they should not? How do I know you haven’t sold such pictures to others? You must understand, Serafim, I have a job to do here. My instructions are to make this problem, which you have created, go away forever. Now, how can I be sure that I’ve done my job?”
Serafim’s voice betrayed his growing panic. “You . . . well, you have my word.”
“So,” the man confirmed, “to reassure me, you are offering the word of a scheming extortionist?”
“Please.” Serafim rested his head on the ground. “I swear to you, on my mother’s soul, I am telling you the truth.”
The man dropped the strip of film. “You know, instead, I want you to tell me what you think. Do you think a professional dancer needs both her feet?”
Serafim lifted his head. “What?”
The bathroom door slammed shut, Claire’s ankle preventing the heavy wood from making contact with the frame. She let out a muffled cry, curled in pain. The small man slammed it again. Again. Again. Huffing for breath, his eyes white and frenzied. Inhuman thud after thud, the sound changing as the bones in her ankle broke and so began to absorb the force more readily, in the way that soft flesh might.
Serafim yelled for him to stop, p
lease stop, but it wasn’t until Claire ceased making noise and seemed on the brink of losing consciousness that he did.
There was a strange quiet. Claire whimpering, the smaller man catching his breath, hands on his knees, inspecting the details of his work. The pulped skin of Claire’s ankle had broken in several places, her calf flecked with red.
Serafim was also squirming, looking back and forth between the two men, not knowing whom to plead with. “Please, please stop this. I promise you, there are no other pictures, no other film. You have my word. Please.”
The second man was still calmly crouched in front of him. “Yes. You’ve already told us that, Serafim. What we would like is to know something new.”
“But I have nothing new to give you!”
Grimly, the man shrugged and turned to his colleague. More slams. Three, four.
“Stop!” To make an emphatic sound, Serafim pounded his head against the floor, dizzying himself. “Stop!”
The smaller man did, and once he had caught his breath again, he looked as though he agreed with Serafim, that it was time to end this, and he bent down to untie Claire’s ankle. But Serafim knew it wasn’t over, and watched him closely, powerlessly.
Having untied her ankle, he grabbed the knot of rope that was still fastened behind her head to gag her and dragged her over to Serafim, until she was only a few feet from where he was lying on the floor. The man straightened Claire into a sitting position, embracing her from behind. Her head flopped to the side, exhausted but conscious. He then wormed his fingers into her collar and ripped open her dress and chemise, exposing her breasts.
“I am begging you. Please. Please don’t do this,” implored Serafim.
The man produced the same knife they’d seen earlier, and unfolded it, watching Serafim’s reaction. Cupping one of Claire’s breasts, he held the blade just beneath it and, with a smile, spoke for the first time. “These are such fine teats. You know, I think I’m going to bring one home with me. What do you think? Do you think I should bring one home with me?”
Both men turned to Serafim, as if solemnly interested in his answer. But Serafim was descending into himself, digging deep, focusing. He took in a long breath, leisurely let it out. They waited for him to reply.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think you should.”
The smaller man’s smile faded.
Serafim looked at the man he’d met on the ship. “I think you should do whatever you feel you have to.”
Serafim then struggled to turn himself over, to turn away from the man holding Claire. He just managed to, and spoke to the empty room that was now in front of him. “I have told you the truth, and have nothing more to give. I understand that you’re just doing what you have been told to do. I hold nothing against either of you. Take whatever you will. I accept.”
There was a baffled stillness behind him, then the shuffling of clothing.
The man he’d met on the ship eventually walked around to be in Serafim’s view again. He didn’t crouch this time. He put his hands in his pockets, looked around the room. “Okay.” From one of his pockets he pulled a pack of cigarettes, “Okay.” He traded a quick look with the other man, and gestured at the pictures and film that were scattered on the floor.
Serafim heard the smaller man let go of Claire and make his way to the canvas bag, where he retrieved something that sounded both tinny and liquid at the same time. He appeared in Serafim’s sight carrying a jerry can. He unscrewed the spout and began pouring dirty water over the pictures and film that were spread out on the floor. Serafim’s first thought was that water would do nothing to damage the prints or film; they would just need to be dried again. He was thinking of telling them this when the smell of gasoline washed over him, an ice-bath realization.
With an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, the man he’d met on the ship sauntered around to the back of Serafim and began untying his hands, talking through the butt clamped between his lips. “I want you to know,” he said, “it would have been easier to kill you both. Consider this a mercy. But if I hear so much as a whisper of you taking blackmail photos again, I will come back and do it right. Do we understand each other?”
Serafim’s hands came free. “Yes.”
“Good,” he said, standing up and making his way to the back door.
The smaller man emptied the last of the jerry can’s contents on the pictures and Serafim’s archival film and tossed it into a corner. He then looked at the door, looked at Serafim, and decided that before leaving he would run over and give him a quick, stout kick in the stomach, winding him. Once he had, he spat onto Serafim’s neck and hurried outside, his footsteps clambering down the stairs.
Serafim was still sipping air into his lungs, rolling from side to side, when the other man finally lit his cigarette. He held the match out in front of him for a moment, waiting for Serafim to look his way. Serafim did. “It’s not as if she can run,” he said. “You’d best get moving.” And with that, he tossed the match.
In mid-scramble to get up, Serafim was knocked over by the thunderous whoomp and burst of heat that lit up the room. He rolled back onto his feet and, with no time to think of how best to get Claire out, grabbed hold of the same knot that the smaller man had used to drag her with and did the same, sliding her across the floor through the islands of his scattered clothes, towards the front door, the flames madly climbing the walls and ceiling behind them, keeping up with their flight. He opened the door, stumbled onto the landing. He heard a window break. Then his neighbour began yelling fire, fire, fire. From the landing above, people were already streaming down the stairway, carrying toddlers in pyjamas, wide-eyed or crying, hurrying grandparents along.
He doubled over to help himself breathe, untied Claire’s hands and the rope that was gagging her. Another window shattered from the heat, smoke billowing out his front door like the stack of a steam engine. Serafim stopped one of the last people to come down the stairs, a wiry young man, and asked him for help. Together they carried Claire to safety, lumbering with her limp weight down the stairs and across the street, where they put her down on a patch of new grass. Serafim slumped on the ground behind her, still taking in air like an asthmatic, and covered the rip in her dress with his hands. The howl of emergency horns already swelling, galloping teams of horses in the distance, their bells like delirious tambourines.
In front of them, the fire blossomed and bloated. The rhythm of its crackles accelerating, crescendo of some frantic tempo, losing time; the growl of its baseline distending, deepening. The flames danced higher, ever higher, climbing invisible stairs into the night, ginger hips rolling, arms swaying, reaching ecstatic, while reeling embers from their fingertips up into the sky, sparks that lifted and soared through the updrafts, only to vanish abruptly into skeletons of miniature parachutes, snuffed out and drifting, already forgotten, like the fanciful dreams of children.
[FOUR]
A NEW ERA
Medium:Gelatin silver print
Description:Woman staring
Location:Montreal, Quebec
Date:1930
A woman lies on a low mattress. Folds of the duvet she’s wrapped inside gather themselves and collect at her chest, her unseen fists like an arachnid clutching at the centre of a cloth web. Her cheeks do not appear to be flushed with fever, giving one the feeling that she isn’t holding this material against her body because the room around her is cold, but that the inclement temperatures are, somehow, coming from within.
There is a bedside table at the head of the mattress. On it is a full glass of water that looks to have been sitting there for some time, minuscule bubbles lining its sides, frog eggs in a stagnant pond. A book rests in front of the glass, a limp marker of ribbon bowing over to touch the wood, inserted in what seems to be the book’s title page.
She is young, likely in her late twenties, and is lying mostly on her stomach, stari
ng at some vague and distant part of the room, perhaps into the rainy hills of a wallpapered landscape. Her hair looks unclean, oily, knotted into tufts and bristles. Her head, as if having unknowingly slid down the slope of her pillow, has sunk into the white sheet below it, a ragged weight abandoned in the snow.
The woman’s face is devoid of expression, her facial muscles lax. Her eyes appear hazy, like a swirling nighttime pool, misted over.
33
Claire was whisked to a hospital, where a doctor inspected a blurry X-ray of her ankle, lowered it from the light, and shook his head. He set it as best he could, applying an ungainly plaster-of-Paris splint to the entire lower part of her leg, and sent her home only after Serafim had covered the cost. For almost two months she lay in bed, dozed and slept, her leg elevated, staring vacantly out the window of her tiny apartment. She had little appetite for the simple food that Serafim brought her, and more than anything she just wanted to be left alone, to sit in silence and look through her window at nothing in particular. Sometimes, still staring through it, she would distractedly scratch at the outside of her cast, never seeming to realize that she couldn’t reach the damp itch below.
After seven weeks, the cast was removed, only to reveal how disfigured her ankle was, and would always be. She had lost a lot of muscle as well, which made it look even worse. The doctor doubted it would ever heal to the point where she would be able to walk without a pronounced limp. He didn’t bother offering any predictions about dance. Recovery would be slow, he warned, stressing the importance of doing exercises to increase the ankle’s mobility. She was given crutches, and told to begin gradually putting weight on it over the coming weeks, in slow increments. But all Claire really used the crutches for was getting to and from bed. Like an infant, she spent her time either in tears, nibbling food, or sleeping.
Serafim and Claire Page 28