Waiting for Robert Capa. Susana Fortes

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       Chapter Five

      It was all a game at first. That shirt I like, that one I don’t. While he went into a changing room at La Samaritaine department store, she would wait for him at the entrance of the dressing area outside. Lounging with blasé entitlement on some sort of a red velvet sofa with her legs crossed, swinging one foot back and forth, until she saw him step out transformed into a fashion figure. Then, with arched eyebrows, she’d mockingly look him up and down, make him take the bullfighter’s lap of honor, scrunching her nose a bit before giving him her approval. In reality, he looked like a film star: clean-shaven, a white collared shirt and tie, polished shoes, an all-American hairdo. His eyes, on the other hand, were still that of a Gypsy. This could not be fixed.

      She enjoyed the distance that he maintained around himself, a space that was necessary in order for each to occupy their place. He was never bothered by her reprimands or when she told him what to do. He began calling her “the boss.” This pact filled them both with a curious energy, as if there were a signal floating between them in the air, meeting at Le Dôme Café without having planned it, or when he passed below her window whistling without a care in the world, or, by coincidence, they both happened to be trying out a new restaurant on the very same night. Although by then, they both knew that their casual meetings were not the least bit casual.

      Operation Image Makeover had its immediate results. Gerta was right. Her mother’s teachings had proven themselves once more. Being elegant will not only improve your living, it can also help you earn one. Part two of the Sarre report became André’s rite of passage. An air of success begets success.

      Ruth rushed up the stairs with the breakfast baguette in one hand and the new edition of Vu magazine in the other. SARRE, PART TWO, stated the headline. ITS RESIDENTS’ OPINIONS AND WHO THEY WILL VOTE FOR. Gerta, still in pajamas, desperately waited for her in the stairwell, wearing thick socks, her eyes swollen from having just woken up. And though it was still very early, she could hardly contain herself. Pushing aside the teapot and cups, she cleared a space on the kitchen table in order to spread open the magazine as if it were a map of the world. A flashy headline, its words moving across the page in a diagonal, and the photos she had originally seen stuck to the bathroom tiles as contact sheets were now enlarged and well emphasized on the page. She inhaled the smell of fresh ink from the page, as she had with her Magic Markers when she was young. In black lettering, the photo credit read: ANDRÉ FRIEDMANN. Gerta smiled over her gray pajama top and instinctively raised her fist to the air as a sign of victory. Exactly like Joe Jacobs did when he raised Max Schmeling’s winning glove before the flashing cameras. When it comes down to it, not all boxing matches are fought inside the ring.

      She liked to think of it as just a temporary alliance, nothing more. A mutual aid society for Jewish refugees. Today for you. Tomorrow for me. Besides, thought Gerta, it was not as if she had nothing to gain from it. She also received something in return. It was comforting to think like this, as if not getting too involved made her feel better. They got into the habit of waking up early to walk through the neighborhood and catch the first cart deliveries of fruit and fish to the markets. Together they’d wander through the streets with all the spices, behind the church of Saint-Séverin. The ringing of the bells passing through them both as they strolled in the fresh morning air, already charged with the smell of carbon and hemp. Foreigners in a dream city. The sky changing from indigo to gold with a soft gleam of light in the east. They were a strangelooking pair: a dark-haired guy dressed in a sweater and a blazer, and a redhead in tennis shoes and a Leica hanging from her shoulder like the bow of Diana the Huntress. She didn’t always carry an extra roll of film with her, because she didn’t want to waste a single franc, but she learned fast. Each kept to their own part of the sidewalk, without brushing up against the other, maintaining their distance. A day with beautiful light, a cigarette … That’s all it was. In just a few weeks, she learned how to use the Leica and develop film in the bathroom using a piece of red cellophane to cover the lamp. André taught her how to get close to the object in question.

      “You have to be there,” he’d say, “glued to your prey, lying in wait, in order to be able to shoot at the exact moment, not a second before, not a second after.” Click.

      As a result of the lessons, she became more cautious and aggressive. Though when it came time to finding the perfect composition for an image, she lacked determination. She would just stand there on some corner near Notre Dame, focusing in on an old man with a thick beard and astrakhan hat, seeing a fragment of his thin cheek in relation to the Gothic portal of the Last Judgment, and lower her camera. She could capture it all with her eyes, except when it came to the temporal. The gray cobblestoned streets and silvery skies were not of interest to her anymore. It was something else. Perhaps she started to realize that what she was holding in her hands was a weapon. The reason why those long walks began to increasingly become a place to escape oneself, her special way of peeking out into the world—still easily surprised, maybe a tad too contradictory. The way you look at things is also how you think about and confront life. More than anything, she wanted to learn and to change. It was the perfect opportunity to do so, the moment when everything was about to happen, in which life’s course could still alter itself. Many months later, just before daybreak in another country, beneath the rattling of machine guns in minusfive-degree weather, she would remember that initial moment when happiness was going out to hunt and not killing the bird.

      “Photography helps my mind wander,” she wrote in her diary. “It’s like when I lie down on the roof at night and look at the stars.” It was one of her favorite things to do during their vacations in Galicia. She’d climb out of her bedroom window and up to the rooftop, position herself face-up, and carve a hole in the night sky with her eyes. Taking in the summer breeze, not thinking about anything, in the middle of complete darkness. “In Paris, there are no stars, but there are the cafés’ red lanterns. They look like new constellations created by the universe. Yesterday, while sitting at an outside table at Le Dôme, I sat in on a passionate debate about the visual power of the image between Chim, André, and that skinny Norm who joins us occasionally. He’s an interesting character, that Henri, well-educated, from a good family, but at times you sense that guilt that people from the upper class have, their conscience conflicted because of their family’s origins, and who then try to excuse themselves by being the most Leftist person at the table. André always teases him, saying that Cartier-Bresson never answers the telephone before reading the editorial in L’Humanité. But it isn’t true. Other than being quick-witted and déclassé, Henri likes to consider himself free. They argue whether a photograph should be a useful documentation or the product of an artistic quest. It seems to me that the three of them think alike, but with different wording. But I don’t fully understand.

      “When I walk around the neighborhood with André, I’ll look up at a balcony and suddenly, there’s the photo: a woman hanging out her clothes to dry. It’s something that has life, the antithesis of smiling and posing. Enough with having to know where one should be looking. I’m learning. I like the Leica; it’s small and doesn’t weigh a thing. You can take up to thirty-six shots in a row without having to carry around a light stand with you everywhere. In the bathroom, we’ve set up a darkroom. I help André, writing the photo captions, typing in three languages, and every now and again I’m able to get an ad assignment for Alliance Photo. It’s not much, but it allows me to practice and get to know the inside world of journalism. The scene is not encouraging. It’s not easy to break through; you have to elbow your way in. At least André has good contacts. Ruth and I got a new job typing up handwritten screenplays for Max Ophüls. I’m also still working at René’s office on Thursday afternoons. With all of this we have enough to pay the rent, though it barely lasts us until the end of the month. But at least I don’t owe anyone money. Oh, and we have a new roommate, a parrot from Guiana, a present from André, with an orange-colored beak and a black tongue—poor СКАЧАТЬ