Mao II - Don Delillo [90]
In the morning they drove twenty-two miles to buy a lightbox and magnifier, and twenty-two miles back.
In the afternoon they cleared the desk in the attic and spread out the contacts. There were twelve sheets, each containing thirty-six black-and-white exposures—six strips, six frames per strip. The sheets were eight and a half by eleven inches and each frame was one and a half inches long and one inch high.
Scott and Karen stood at different ends of the desk. They bent over, careful where they put their fingers, and looked at the strips of developed film but not thoroughly or analytically. It was too soon for that.
Karen’s hands were clasped behind her back and after a while Scott put his hands in his pockets and this was how they scanned, leaning deeply toward the desk, moving around each other to exchange positions.
In the evening, after early dinner, Scott carried the telephone table up to the attic. He set it at one end of the desk and placed the lightbox on top.
They took turns looking at the sheets. Because the frames followed each other in the original order of exposure, they were able to see how Brita had established rhythms and themes, catching a signal, tracking some small business in Bill’s face and working to enlarge it or explain it, make it true, make it him. The pictures of Bill were glimpses of Brita thinking, a little anatomy of mind and eye. Scott thought she wanted something undesigned and casually come-upon, a familiar colloquial Bill. He took the magnifier to frame after frame and saw a photographer who was trying to deliver her subject from every mystery that hovered over his chosen life. She wanted to do pictures that erased his seclusion, made it never happen and made him over and gave him a face we’ve known all our lives.
But maybe not. Scott didn’t want to move too soon into a theory of how much meaning a photograph can bear.
First came the great work of cataloguing the pictures, making lists based on camera angle, subject’s expression, part of room, degree of shadow, head shot, head and chest, hands showing or not showing, visible background and so on. What we have in front of us represents one thing. How we analyze and describe and codify it is something else completely.
Although in a way, and at a glance, the differences frame to frame were so extraordinarily slight that all twelve sheets might easily be one picture repeated, like mass visual litter that occupies a blink.
All the more reason to analyze. Because there really were differences of course—position of hands, placement of cigarette —and it would require time to do a comprehensive survey.
At breakfast Scott said, “There’s something I haven’t wanted to think about.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“We have to be prepared for the possibility that Bill won’t return, that we won’t ever hear from him again. But I’m not going to be puzzled or resentful.”
“Neither am I.”
“We can’t let our own feelings define his behavior.”
“We can’t use normal standards.”
“Whatever he’s done, we have to understand it’s something he was preparing for, something he’s been carrying all these years.”
“He needed to do it.”
“And we are absolutely the last people on earth to require an explanation.”
“Can we still live here?” Karen said.
“The house is paid for. And he’d want us to live here. And I have money saved from the salary he paid me and this money goes automatically from his account to mine every month and if he didn’t want me to keep getting it he would have advised the bank when he went away.”
“I can get a job waitressing.”
“I think we’ll be all right. We’re in Bill’s house. His