Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje [15]
Snap. Lady with dog. Lady on sofa half naked. Snap. Naked lady. Lady next to dresser. Lady at window. Snap. Lady on balcony sunlight. Holding up her arm for the shade.
There were things Bellocq hadn’t told him. He knew for he looked up from the street and saw the photographer in the window. He continued walking, the damp picture in his hand.
The connection between Bellocq and Buddy was strange. Buddy was a social dog, talked always to three or four people at once, a racer. He had no deceit but he roamed through conversations as if they were the countryside not listening carefully just picking up moments. And what was strong in Bellocq was the slow convolution of that brain. He was self-sufficient, complete as a perpetual motion machine. What could Buddy have to do with him?
The next day Webb knew more about Bellocq. The man worked with a team of photographers for the Foundation Company—a shipbuilding firm. Each of them worked alone and they photographed sections of boats, hulls that had been damaged and so on. Job work. Photographs to help ship designers. Bellocq, with the money he made, kept a room, ate, bought equipment, and paid whores to let him photograph them. What had Bolden seen in all this? He would have had to take time and care. Bellocq seemed paralysed by suspicions. He had let Buddy so close.
Webb walked around Bellocq for several days. Bellocq with his stoop, and his clothy hump, bent over the sprawled legs of his tripod. Not even bent over but an extension for he didn’t have to bend at all, being 4 foot 11 inches. Bellocq with hair at the back of his head down to his shoulders, the hair at the front cut in a fringe so no wisps would spoil his vision. Bellocq sleeping on trains as he went from town to town to photograph ships, the plates wrapped carefully and riding in his large coat pockets. Something about the man who carries his profession with him always, like a wife, the way Bolden carried his mouthpiece even in exile. This is the way Bellocq moved. E.J. Bellocq in his worn, crumpled suits, but uncrumpled behind the knees.
In the no-smoker carriages his face through the glass, the superimposed picture, windows of passing houses across his mouth and eyes. Looking at the close face Webb understood the head shape, the blood vessels, the quiver to the side of the lip. Face machinery, H Y D R O C E P H A L I C. His blood and water circulation which was of such a pattern that he knew he would be dead before forty and which made the bending of his knees difficult. To avoid the usual splay or arced walk which was the natural movement for people with this problem, he walked straight and forward. That is he went high on the toe, say of his right leg, which allowed the whole left leg enough space to move forward directly under his body like a pendulum, and so travel past the right leg. Then with the other foot. This also helped Bellocq with his height. However he did not walk that much. He never shot landscapes, mostly portraits. Webb discovered the minds of certain people through their bodies. Or through the perceptions that distinguished them. This was the stage that Bellocq’s circulation and walk had reached.
In the heat heart of the Brewitts’ bathtub his body