He sat cross-legged on the floor, pulled out a thick black portfolio, and started flipping through the photos. They were mostly in black and white. I plopped down beside him, looked over his shoulder, and stopped him at a page: the hands of a workingman, crusted with dirt, callused, cradling a tulip bulb. “I love this one.”
He grimaced, rueful. “The client rejected it.” He tapped on the sheet beside it, which held a color photo of the farmer, cleaned and shaven, complete with a fake smile. “This is what they bought in the end. I keep this here to remind myself not to get too carried away when I am being paid by the client. I am a photojournalist. I should document, not dominate.”
We paged through the warm-toned photos. They were almost three-dimensional with the depth of the developing he had done on them. I felt I could reach in and touch the images: a bat the size of a small dog hanging upside down with gleaming red eyes, a flamingo poised at sunrise, a child in rags peddling rice wrapped in leaves—and then his more commercial work: pouting models, tropical flowers and landscapes, all lush, colorful, filled with brilliance.
“I do not know, Lukas,” I said. “You, the camera, the subject. They all become one in the photo. Maybe you need more of yourself in your work, not less.”
Now his voice roughened, became more intimate. “I am fascinated by the way the process influences the result, the ways I can manipulate the images. A grain of dirt, a flash of light—I am crazy about the physicality of film. We are tangible beings. I revel in that.”
On some, he had colored in the negatives or clipped out a little girl and transferred her so that her ghostly image floated above her father who had just tossed her in the air. From the girl’s angle, I could not tell if the man was poised to catch her in his arms again or if he had launched her into the great world. There were even a few shots of Lukas from his trip to South America last year. He stood knee-deep in water, wearing tall rubber boots, his teeth white in the midst of his unshaven face, holding a line with a fish with large teeth dangling from the end.
I leaned closer to the image. “Is that a piranha?”
“Our dinner that night. The river was filled with them.”
“Bet you were glad for your boots. Who took the pictures of you?” I said, turning to another photo of him. Lukas smiling into the camera, a black spider monkey with one arm wound around his neck while licking its own fingers.
“My guide wanted to try out my camera. I believe the monkey had found a flea in my hair and was very happy about eating it.”
There was an old woman sitting in a ramshackle hut, her leathery skin illuminated by the weak flames in the tin can before her. A sheet filled with holes hung next to her and kept out the night, both serenity and struggle plain on her face. Then a faded Polaroid of me fell out. I took one look at my homely eight-year-old self and flipped it over. Some things I did not wish to remember.
“What is this doing here?”
“It was the first good portrait I ever took.”
“You were always sneaking around with that Polaroid camera. Did you not get it for your birthday?” I had not been allowed to touch it. Even though Lukas did not mind, I had understood the difference between Lukas and me then, between blood and child companion. Film was expensive. I had never taken a single photo with it.
He nodded. “Do you remember how the teacher made us sing that song for my birthday?”
“It was horrible.” I still remembered the lyrics, sung to the tune of “Happy Birthday to You.”
Hanky panky Shanghai
Hanky panky Shanghai
Hanky panky
Hanky panky
Hanky panky Shanghai
How the Dutch people loved this song. They would stretch their eyes into long slits and move them back and forth as they sang. To make things worse: that teacher had been our favorite, a friendly woman with long red hair who fed us tea and caramel waffles when we behaved. In that moment, the gulf separating Lukas and me, the only nonwhite children in the group, from the rest of the class grew into an abyss. That space had always existed, I realized then, I had just not been aware of it. Lukas had scrunched his face into a scowl and looked at me. I had pressed my lips together, unsure what we could do to stop them.
“Do not be shy,” the teacher said with her customary cheer. “Come up, sing along!”
At our silence, she took us both by the arm and led us, humiliated, to the front of the room. “Okay, everyone together. Again.”
The children obeyed. Lukas and I looked out over the classroom, surrounded by an ocean of singing pale heads.
“You too,” she said, nodding at us. She clapped her hands in encouragement.
Lukas wrapped his arms around his skinny frame and glowered. I burst into tears.
“Oh, sweetie,” the teacher said. She felt my forehead. “Sit down, then. You must not be feeling well.” As Lukas and I slumped in our chairs, I heard her say to the student teacher with a shrug, “I thought they would enjoy it, something fun from their culture.”
Now, Lukas said, “They still sing that song at children’s birthday parties, you know, to this very day. But a few years after you left, I went to the director and told her how racist it was and they never sang it at school again.”
“You have changed, Lukas.” He had once been a quiet child, like me, and now he was this.
“Yes and no. But I learned that if you do not speak, no one will ever hear you.”
At that moment, my stomach rumbled so loudly we both jumped. Hiding a smile, Lukas said, “Okay, enough of this. Shall we go get you something to eat? You lied about the airplane food.” He stood and held out his hand to me.
I let him drag me to my feet. “How did you know?” I stretched and groaned. It had been a long day.
He was already headed for the doorway and said over his shoulder, “You paid for the ticket, right? You would never purchase first class for yourself. When we were little, I always ate all of my candy in five minutes, but you would still be munching away many days later. Despite your expensive clothing, you are frugal.”
I used my haughty voice. “Oh? You are a fashion expert now?”
He scratched his head. “Umm, no. But I saw your bag in a magazine I worked for. And your clothes seem very—” He was bounding down the stairs in front of me; his broad back barely fit in the narrow stairwell. He fluttered his arms in the air. “Fancy. But you buy them as a soldier collects weapons. In the end, you are practical. You would see flying first class as wasting money on yourself.”
I flushed as red as a beet, happy his back was to me and he could not see it. He had it right. Indeed, I used those designer labels as armor, to communicate my status to my clients and colleagues, nothing more. I never indulged in extravagances just for myself.
He continued, “Come on. We can go to the snack bar and stop by Estelle’s. She would love to see you. Maybe she has an old bicycle she can lend you.”
We went outside and he wheeled a black bike out from underneath the carport. A gentle breeze tousled his hair.
I whistled. “Now you are riding a lady’s bike?”
“You are out of touch, Sylvie. It is hip for guys to be on grandma bikes nowadays. I am just being a modern man, although Estelle tells me I need to work on becoming more metrosexual.”