The Smoke Jumper (39 page)

It was all a mess and a muddle, as Grandma Tully used to say. But then, so was life. It was a bitch and then you died. Wow, he mused sleepily, listen to the great philosopher. Dreamily, he could still hear Julia and Amy chattering away but he was too tired to concentrate on what they were saying. His mind was floating like a butterfly from one thought to another.

Poor old Connor. Had success made him happy? Ed somehow doubted it. How could anyone do that kind of work and be happy? Maybe they should all fly to New York and show up unannounced at the opening of his exhibition? Give the great photographer a surprise. Give him a blind man’s verdict on his pictures. Just
love
the texture there. And, wow, can’t you just smell those dead bodies? And by the way, here’s your god-daughter. Hasn’t she grown?

Poor old Connor. How he missed him. What a mess it all was. What a goddamn mess, muddle and fuckup.

22

C
onnor asked the cabdriver to pull up across the street from the gallery and handed him a twenty-dollar bill through the gap in the security screen. The driver was a Nigerian and muffled like a mummy with a long scarf and gloves and a big woolen hat with flaps like the ears of a spaniel. On the trip down to SoHo, through the cold and the fog and the acid gray slush, he had been going on about how great it was to live in New York. Connor had been to Lagos only once and hadn’t much liked it but on a night like this he knew which of the two cities he’d choose. He told the guy to keep the change and wished him luck and then climbed out into the freezing night air.

The street was narrow and the buildings on both sides were tall and grim and seemed to lean in like the walls of a black crevasse, though maybe that was just his mood. He stood in the shadows and shivered and turned his coat collar up against the cold and looked across at the big plate-glass window of the gallery spilling light out onto the grimed snow heaped along the sidewalk. There were maybe twenty or thirty people in there, sipping champagne and chatting. One or two were even looking at his photographs.

He was an hour late and almost hadn’t come at all. Why he had ever let himself be talked into it, he couldn’t imagine. Eloise, the gallery owner, was a friend of his editor, dear old Harry Turney, and it was hard to figure out who was doing whom a favor. Probably all three of them. Eloise had lots of fancy media connections and some of them were going to be there tonight. There was even supposed to be a TV crew from a cable channel arts show that Connor had never heard of. He was glad that there didn’t seem to be any sign of them.

He’d already had an idea of what lay in store. Eloise had fixed up an interview with a new glossy magazine which, she said, was passionate about photography. The editor was a good friend.

‘Believe me, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be like
Life
, only with an edge. They see you as the new Robert Capa. You’re probably going to be on the cover.’

The young woman who came to interview him looked about seventeen years old and had never heard of either Robert Capa or
Life
magazine. She asked him if he ever took pictures of famous people and seemed to lose interest once he’d said he didn’t. The magazine had hit the newsstands this morning. Connor wasn’t on the cover. There, instead, was a young man with a black shirt, a smug grin and a bunch of Canons around his neck. The headline said:
Shooting in the War Zone with Dino Tornari
.

Connor was intrigued. He knew most war photographers but had never heard of this one before. He turned inside to discover that the war zone in question was outside various chic Manhattan clubs and restaurants where Dino, ‘undisputed King of the Paparazzi,’ lurked to snatch indiscreet pictures of the rich and famous and for his pains regularly got beaten up.

The piece about Connor was tucked away at the back and distilled down to six paragraphs, every one containing an error. They’d somehow managed to find an old picture of him in a cowboy hat and talked about his ‘Marlboro man looks’ and his ‘harrowing pictures from the heart of darkness.’ The only shot they had used was one he had taken of a Dayak tribesman in Borneo. The caption called the man a Rwandan headhunter. It didn’t really matter. The picture was so small and poorly reproduced, even the man’s own mother wouldn’t recognize him.

It was Connor’s first taste of being on the other end of media attention. Now, against all his better instincts, he was about to get his second. He took a deep breath and headed across the street.

Eloise Martin was one of those black-garbed New York women, so thin and chic and sharp, you felt you could almost cut yourself looking at her. Harry Turney had it on good authority that she was pushing sixty, but without inside information you would never have guessed. Her eyes were made up like a fifties jazz fan and she had an immaculate bob of black hair which she liked to toss a lot when she laughed. Harry said she was in a state of constant overhaul, a work in progress, and disappeared every spring to Rio to have some new nip or tuck. Her bond-dealing billionaire husband had once been heard to joke that when he went to pick her up at the airport he was never able to recognize her and had to hold up a sign with her name on it. Eloise divided the rest of her time, according to Harry, between art and philanthropy.

Connor’s exhibition fell squarely, thank God, into the latter category. Several of the photographs were from his most recent trip to northern Uganda where he had spent two weeks at St. Mary of the Angels, a rehabilitation center for child soldiers. He had been there several times before and regularly sent them money. The proceeds from any pictures sold from the exhibition would be going there too.

Eloise came to greet him while he was still checking in his coat.

‘Connor, darling. You’re such a naughty boy. There are so many people dying to meet you. The TV crew had to go but they said they’d come back.’

‘I’m sorry, the traffic was terrible.’

‘Of course. Have some champagne. It’ll make you look less miserable. Don’t the pictures look marvelous?’

‘Yeah, you did a great job.’

She summoned one of the waiters and Connor took a glass and drained half of it in one gulp. He was suddenly aware of everyone staring at him and he told himself to go easy. He felt as if he’d just checked in at his own funeral. Eloise went off to find ‘someone important’ whom she wanted him to meet. His heart sank lower. Harry sidled up and put a consoling hand on his shoulder.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said quietly. ‘You don’t have to stay long.’

Eloise came back with a tall young woman, so mesmerizingly beautiful that Connor didn’t concentrate on Eloise’s introduction. All he caught was her first name which was Beatrice and that she worked for
Vanity Fair
. Eloise led Harry away, leaving the two of them alone, and as she went she gave Connor a look that was no doubt meant to tell him to make a good impression.

Beatrice seemed no better at small talk than he was and for a while it was awkward. Connor was waiting for her to ask if he ever took pictures of famous people. But instead she asked which photographers he most admired and it turned out that she knew the work of every one he mentioned. He asked her how and she shrugged and said she’d just always been interested. She had met and written about some of Connor’s personal heroes, people like Don McCullin and older ones like Eve Arnold and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

She asked him if he would give her a guided tour of his photographs and although he didn’t want to, especially now that he knew about her expertise, he agreed.

It had been hard enough selecting the photographs and printing them, so he had left the hanging to Eloise. This was the first time he had seen them together and in sequence. They covered pretty much his whole career and were hung chronologically, starting with his picture of Ed silhouetted against the Yellowstone fire. He had also included the shot of the elk with its flaming antlers, the one that had struck such chill into Julia. He hadn’t looked at it for many years and out of superstition had never had it published. Beatrice stood silently in front of it for a long time.

‘Did it survive?’ she asked at last.

Connor shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was there, then it was gone.’

‘So, you were a firefighter.’

‘A smoke jumper.’

She nodded, as if this explained something, and moved on. Sometimes she stopped and asked a question but mostly she just looked and Connor wondered if he ought to be more forthcoming and give her some background on where and how and why the pictures were taken, but he didn’t.

Walking behind her, studying them in sequence, it was as if he were taking a tour of his life and seeing it with clear eyes for the first time. And as he moved from one image to the next and saw the pain and the loss and the horror in the eyes of those before whom he had stood, he felt a cold sorrow well within him. The women hanging in the blossom; the little girl in Sniper’s Alley, howling over her mother’s body; the Rwandan boy, wide-eyed and skeletal from hiding for two weeks under corpses; a vulture perched on the open-armed statue of Christ; the chilling stare of the murderous mayor, Emmanuel Kabugi, caught in his lair in Goma; a young Liberian rebel kneeling bound before his executioners. One face after another, staring in silence as Connor passed, watching him walk his own private catacomb, the dead and the dying and the cold-eyed killers of all colors and creeds, disposable apostles of faceless men with their gods of hatred and greed.

At last they reached the final picture. It was of Thomas, one of the children Connor had photographed at St. Mary of the Angels. At the age of ten he and his twin brother had been kidnapped by rebels who called themselves the Warriors for God. To seal the boys’ loyalty, they were forced to take part in the burning of their own village and the massacre of their own people. Many months later Thomas had either escaped or been discarded to die. A government border patrol found him wandering in the bush. He was shriveled and skeletal and had lost the power of speech.

Connor stood in front of the picture for a long time, staring at it and then staring through it, at the vision of himself that was on display here and in all the other pictures he had just walked past. Something seemed to be expanding inside his chest, squeezing his lungs, making it hard for him to breathe. He felt himself sway and his shoulders start to shake.

‘What were you looking for?’

He turned and saw Beatrice staring at the picture too, as if she had addressed the question to the boy. Connor swallowed. He didn’t know if he could trust his own voice.

‘In this picture, you mean?’

‘In all of them.’

It was a question so uncannily close to his own thoughts that his instinct was to brush it off, to give the standard line that they were just images, moments captured by some undefinable combination of chance and instinct that somehow ended up telling a story. But instead, as if it sprang from nowhere, he gave a different answer.

‘Hope.’

It was a shock to hear himself say it. God, he was feeling weird. He couldn’t stop shaking. Beatrice was looking at him now, assessing what he had just said. He shrugged and went on, trying to make light of it. ‘Maybe not. Who knows? Hell, I don’t think I’m looking for anything.’

‘Oh yes. I think you are. But I don’t think it’s hope.’

‘No? Well, there you go.’

Connor forced a little laugh but it sounded odd. Maybe he was getting sick or something. He hadn’t eaten all day. Maybe it was the champagne on an empty stomach. Anyhow, who the hell did she think she was, asking him a question like that? She’d known him all of ten minutes. But despite himself, goddamn it, he wanted to know what she thought.

‘So okay, what is it I’m looking for?’ he said sharply.

She looked at him for a moment and saw his anger. She smiled politely.

‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’

‘No, please. Since you know all these famous photographers and what makes them tick and all, you’d be doing me a favor. So feel free, go right ahead and tell me. What am I looking for?’

She frowned. ‘Why are you so hostile?’

‘For fuck’s sake, just tell me!’

Out of the corner of his eye he saw heads turn toward them. Beatrice paused again and then said quietly and simply:

‘I think you’re looking for a mirror of your own sadness.’

Connor stood staring at her and then nodded.

‘Well, thanks. Now I know. Beatrice, it’s been a pleasure.’

He turned abruptly and walked in a daze toward the door.

He felt tears coming. Jesus, what the hell was going on here?

He heard Eloise calling after him but he didn’t turn, just rummaged for his coat among the others.

‘Connor? Where are you going? What happened?’

‘I’m sorry, Eloise. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.’

He found his coat and launched himself out into the street. He took a great gulp of the frozen, pungent air and tried to gather himself, closing his eyes and putting his hands over his face. His heart was thumping like a jackhammer and he was panting and he thought for a moment that he must be having a heart attack or something. But no, he was okay. He was okay.

He put on his coat and bowed his head and started to walk.

How far he walked or where, he never knew. But by the time he got back to his apartment, the towered skyline of the East Side was streaked with crimson. As he came in from the street the doorman said hi and then frowned and asked him if he was all right and Connor said he was fine, just a little tired. He took the elevator to the sixth floor, leaning thrice-mirrored in the corner, not daring to look at himself.

The apartment was as cold as outside. The heating didn’t work and he hadn’t bothered to get it fixed. It was six years since he’d bought the place but the only thing he’d spent money on was converting what had once been the bedroom into a state-of-the-art darkroom. He slept instead in the long living room which, with all his camera gear stacked in cases around it, looked more like a left-luggage place than a home. It had bare floorboards, flaking gray walls and three tall windows with black Venetian blinds that were broken and dusty. The bed was at one end and at the other was a big table littered with papers and photographs and old magazines. There was a small, drab bathroom and a smaller, drabber kitchen. The refrigerator had more film in it than food. Apart from a TV, a phone and one sagging armchair, the only gestures to comfort were a couple of small rugs and a handful of carved figures that he’d brought back from his travels. He hated the place and it knew it and hated him back.