Dirty Feet - Edem Awumey [16]
“Harlem . . . a man, a friend, a one-time lover? Someone you loved?”
“Harlem, America.”
Harlem was where she had taken her first pictures. The first real ones. She had completed her training in photography in Sofia. But without much enthusiasm. The passion — true, pure, jolting — would come later. In Harlem. Her first trip. She had been invited there by Penny, an American woman whose education in photography had followed the same path as Olia’s and who wrote in her letters how the soul of Harlem inspired her. Nothing had inspired Olia up to that point. So it occurred to her that she needed her share of voyaging, a pilgrimage to the Mecca of what for her could be new and different. She might have gone to Bombay had she known someone there. To Lima, Recife . . . She went to Harlem because that was where her friend Penny was.
She told Askia that it was there that everything had started. Thanks to Willy, an artist doomed to freeze to death on 125th Street. Willy photographed the feet of passersby. He said he was capturing the feet, fixing on paper feet that could never stop walking.
She made a point of exploring the neighbourhood on her own. That bothered Penny, but it also gave her time to concentrate on her own projects. Olia found herself in the vicinity of West 144th, near the Studio Museum, where, Penny had said, certain artists were in the habit of storing their material and their dreams of greatness. She met Willy there, one fall afternoon in 1996 with the leaves painting the landscape yellow and the incipient frost tickling their toes.
She had her Leica. She strolled and took photos of an old crone stooped over her cane as she walked her dog; a grocer who resembled the Brazilian actor Grande Otelo, smoking a pipe in front of his store; a child who must have had the day off from school, bouncing a ball. In front of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a pastor sermonizing with a stack of Bibles beside him.
This was Harlem more or less as she had imagined it. But she wanted to see more. She was contemplating a visit to the Studio Museum when she saw him. Willy. On the sidewalk in front of the museum, he shouted unabashedly:
“If you were an angel you would pose for me, beautiful! If you were an angel you would say yes like an angel who never says no! If you’re agreeable, I’ll take your portrait and your feet. Please, don’t turn down the most famous photographer on 125th Street. If truth be told, I’m honouring you!”
“I’m not an angel. Just a tourist.”
She found him funny, entertaining. She agreed to pose for him if he showed her around the museum first. He could help her. Help her to locate the soul of this place that he knew so well. They passed under the large glass marquee overhanging the museum entrance and pushed open the doors. He explained the history of the institution since 1967, the famous exhibitions that had been held there, and the one he hoped would someday be devoted to his work. And then for three whole days he showed her the places — cafés, bars, squares, lanes — all the subtleties that are apt to elude the sightseer’s hurried eye. And for three whole days she posed for him. Jokingly, he said he wanted to photograph her in three dimensions: full-face to catch the light of her being, in profile to capture the intimate part of her, from behind to imprint on film what he called her mystery. She played along, and on the third day he brought her the negatives. In three dimensions: her being, her profile, her mystery.
After that he went on to her feet, which he took in the act of walking. Because, he said, they were a story. What’s more, they were beautiful. Olia’s feet. They barely touched the ground when she walked. She didn’t want to take root. She was unable to. She was not of that breed. Willy said all these things to her.
It was a splendid adventure but there was something amiss. The little cough nagging at Willy when they first met had worsened. It had been cold the past two nights in the