Elisabeth Blair

Photograph

Cradling your tie, you fight to shut off the individuality. It must be gone, it must be gone, you think.

You think, it’s gone. You think, now to leave, to go to emptiness, to go to an empty house on an empty stretch of beach; to take the motorcar.

To go there and to be suitably impressed; to step into the flagstoned house, to stand and nod understandingly when I speak about the empty house.

You step inside my house and remark on the corners and their possibilities. I tell you, “I have a camera, let us take some pictures.” You tell me yes, and we go outside, and it is just as you had prepared yourself for: the long stretch of land, the backside of the house. The barely grown grass, the water in the middle distance, the horizon at the end, and you smile and stand leaning on one leg, you adequately look around, then you adequately straighten up for the camera. (And we all have been having a good time looking things over.) He stands away behind me and he gets out his camera too. I joke about two cameras photographing each other.

I prepare with my camera. I look down into the tiny glass rectangle. I can see you upside down in this rectangle; I position you so there is both a corner of the house and the sea.
He takes a picture of me doing this. His picture includes the wall of the house, both of us, and the rudimentary grown grass.

You stifle the restless need to leave, you stifle your boredom. You stifle everything. You have one hand on your tie, you have your toes resting on the raised flagstone foundation. You have a sore stomach.

The long morning finishes and I feed you lunch. You have worse and worse pain. You refuse most of the food I offer you. You stifle the pain. You stifle the protests from me, as your host. I want you to eat. You take a sip of a coffee. We are sitting in the kitchen because it is the only room with a table. I have no furniture to speak of. You sit politely.

“Shall I tell you, then, about my plans for these two rooms?” I say. “We have enough money,” I go on, “to add a second wall to this room there. That way, I can have a study. That way, there is more privacy in general. Do you not think so?”

You nod. You stifle the need to bend over, to lie down. You stand up and look more closely at the empty place that will hold a wall, a wall for my study.

I do not know where he is.

“I believe he is outside photographing the house from many different angles,” I say to you.
“I believe he has a good camera,” I say, chuckling. “Not a camera like mine.”

You touch your tie, you fold it in half and release it. A little longer, you think.

I do not know what he is doing. He has only one roll of film.

You and I do not speak now and the flagpole clinks from the direction of the sea. Streamers run from the top of the flagpole to the ground. There are triangles of air between the streamers, the ground, the pole. I look up suddenly as though I have thought of something or as though I have seen something. I look thoughtfully at the pole. He is not near the pole; I cannot see him.
You force down the rest of your coffee. You prepare yourself.
“It’s a good place you have here,” you begin.
“It’s a valuable place,” you say.
“I must come out and visit you sometime soon, being,” you mumble now, “so near the sea and all.”
I nod at you, I nod vigorously and absolutely. “You absolutely must come to visit,”
I announce. “The sea does you good.” I give you an appraising glance. I appraise you. I do not see your discomfort. I see only that you are lesser than I and that the reason is indiscernible.

I start, I look out the window once more. Now he is there, he is standing by the pole, by the triangles. He is below the house, below the platform of flagstones. He is standing before the middle distance, before the sea, before the horizon.

You do not want to make it important that we have found him.

“It has been a good morning,” you say.
“I hate to say it,” you say, “but I must be going if I mean to be in New York by four o’clock.”

I nod. I have much to say about this, the subject of automobiles, and travelling. I want to say it.

But I can still see him. I go to the window, which is already open, and I push it open more. I lean out casually and call to him. I jokingly scold him. He says nothing. He only looks at me.

You have stood up. You are determined now. You will soon be seated in the motor-car.
You back out of the kitchen, you put on your hat, and you make it seem that you wish to stay but cannot. You walk out of the empty house and now you must cross empty barely grown grass, you must reach the car, you must not look back; you feel very ill now. But you reach the car, and you reach New York, and you feel less guilty, and you no longer feel obliged to return.

And I am fretting, because he is gone again, though he has only one roll of film.
He must be photographing the house from all different angles.

I sit down in the kitchen and I wait.