With each rotation of the lens barrel Brother Skunk is brought toward then forced on
past the point of focus. Twisting it back a fraction to re-align the split
prism centre-screen, deleted name visits a delicate pressure upon the
shutter button; simultaneous with lifting the camera away from his face, he
winds the film on to its next frame.
deleted name: It’s funny, I haven’t taken a photograph in years, not in years.
I couldn’t even begin to guess when the last time was I used this. I
don’t know if that’s an age thing, or just...
trailing
off as it suddenly occurs to him, and that it is only now occurring to
him is a source of enormous disquiet, that he does not have a single photograph
of the girl whose life and death are the only things as link him to this young
man with whom he has spent the past ten days. He is, even in his attempt at its
teaching, learning his own lesson.
deleted name (as if to interrupt his own thoughts): Here,
passing
the camera, its strap looping beneath, across to Brother Skunk
deleted name: see if you can eh, see if you can ge- capture a good likeness.
Skunk
rather gingerly takes hold of the equipment, tipping it slightly from himself
to examine the lens.
Skunk
(laughing, his voice retaining yet its residual croak): Now will you be wanting
the classic portrait with a shallow depth of field, or
deleted name (laughing): You’ve got the light. Roll it on round to f16 and
everything from here to the back of the world will be in focus.
Skunk:
“Said Elvis.”
Skunk
frames and focuses the image, and then, having taken the photograph, lowers the
camera, looking beyond deleted name to the large white house behind,
only just visible through the trees. The dread he feels at the prospect of his
imminent return to the airport, let alone actually boarding the plane itself
for the flight home, is somewhat tempered by these thoughts of knowing to a
degree and taking comfort in the domestic geography of this place: the rooms in
the house with which he is familiar; the bedroom assigned him and its bathroom;
the kitchen in which they have eaten; those sections of the grounds he has
walked both solo and accompanied by his host; the city closeby, its streets and
their shops, its places to eat, and all of this for him now drawing to its
close, all to fade away reciprocal to his broken voice being returned him.
Thumbing
the wind-on lever, Brother Skunk notices the exposure counter rotating on to
twenty-six, and asks
Skunk:
Are there twenty-four or thirty-six shots on this? It’s up to twenty-six at
deleted name (sighing, passing a hand across his beard): It’s eh, it’s neither.
Skunk
(looking up from the camera in his hands): What do you mean?
deleted name: There’s, well, uh, if truth be told, Skunk, there’s actually no
film in the camera.
Skunk:
Excuse me?
deleted name (clearing his throat): There’s no ehm... Look, there’s no film in
there, Skunk; it’s empty.
Skunk
(with witless grimace): You are kidding me.
deleted name (motioning for the camera): Here look
and
popping open the back offers proof.
Brother
Skunk, dismissing all with the flap of a hand, sits himself down right there in
the still-damp grass.
Skunk:
So what was the point? What was the point of all that?
deleted name: If I’d told you
Skunk:
If you’d told me what? That there was no film in the camera? WHAT was the point?
deleted name: If you’d known there was no film in the camera, you’d... There’s
no way you would... commit to taking the photographs in the same way.
This way, you’ll... You,
Skunk
(with a sarcasm borne of disappointment): Oh do go on, proceed.
deleted name: You’d have been um, you wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on
the images for precisely that reason, that you wouldn’t be able to see
the point. This way, you’ve already seen the photographs through the
viewfinder, and that’s what I want you to remember. With enough time, and
without ever having seen them, you may even think you recall the physical
photographs themselves.
Skunk
grabs abstractedly at the grass, ripping it from out the ground and throwing
the damp detritus at his boots.
deleted name: Hey look, in some ways... It doesn’t, really it doesn’t make any
difference either way. If it helps, you can think of them just as
photographs you saw once and then...
gesturing
deleted name: ..and then misplaced. Which, in a way, is actually true.
Brother
Skunk wipes his fingers and palms, textured with the remnant wet blades, back
and forth across his Levi’s.
deleted name: Skunk, this is what I’m telling you. Will you listen to me? Will
you listen? This is what I’m te-, trying to tell you: You don’t need the, the
mass of the actual. What you do, now, tomorrow, none of that matters. All that
matters is the memory of what you do, how you think about the past in
the, in in in whatever present it is that you find yourself. Your today might
be awful, but if the part of it you remember you remember with some fondness,
then that’s the... that’s what counts. That physical heft of the artefact is
a... okay, yes, it’s a beautiful thing, yes, but your memory doesn’t
actually need it. And as much as you might think you do to remember, what I’m
telling you is that you do not.
Skunk
(sighing, oblivious): I can’t believe you don’t have any film.
unaware
he has not yet accrued enough distance from himself to understand that deleted name might be revealing to him his very grief as something with which he
might live, rather than battle.
Staring
Brother Skunk gravely in the face, deleted name removes from his pocket
and holds up between thumb and forefinger two boxes of 35mm film.
