The Spectator

Chapter 8

I wasn’t here to challenge The Rev. I stood before him—he hadn’t asked me to be seated—nodded at appropriate moments, as and when The Rev. paused to catch his breath, and affirmed solidarity with his cause.

The Rev. was converting junior staff, claiming acolytes, taking no prisoners. Office politics. When rebutted, The Rev. was indomitable. Anger softened the texture of his voice. His tone sheered. His gaze broke down the recalcitrant party. The person who had had the impunity to challenge The Rev. cringed before his frank appraisal. His flint-edged candor, so to speak.

‘The East shall rise. Haven’t mountains sprung from the bowels of the sea?’ he always asked the offending party, and in such phrases could be heard hints of faith indomitable. Faith not deterred by facts or, for that matter, by negative facts.

Because what are negative facts? ‘Negative facts—something that says something is not the case—are not proof, at least not sufficient proof to annul faith,’ The Rev. asserted. If pushed it was his wont to argue ‘Because doubt is powerless before belief. A fact can’t obviate the obverse against which it is invoked.’

Expedient one sign-up. Such was the consensus amongst the junior staff. So I did. I was a freelancer. A temp. A photographer of minor repute. A microscopic cog. I was expendable.

Let there be no doubters, I was as aligned with The Rev.’s cause as my native doppelganger was in agreement with the gospel of JHC. Nevertheless, standing before him, I was mostly ‘yeses’ and ‘Right you are, Chief.’

‘Bring me stories about our new Babylon,’ The Rev. concluded. ‘Who cares what happened a hundred or two hundred years ago. Those long defunct trading posts of the British Raj might be of interest to the scholar. We run a magazine here for Christ’s sakes. We run a business for profit and not some goddamn academic journal.’

‘Right you are, Chief,’ said I.

He ushered me out his office. His hand thumped my shoulder, confirmed our alignment.

The Rev. didn’t know about the de Milos—female nudes in the local parlance—I had started photographing for a rag of a weekly to make extra income. Easy money for a bloke with the right contacts, questionable morals, and some skill handling a camera— the man who recruited me had said.

Location for the shoot was disclosed the morning of the appointment and I was expected to show, work or no work. A note slipped under my door with the time and address, or a phone call at the landlady’s that began with the question, ‘Do you have a pen?’ To which I always responded in the affirmative and answered, ‘I do.’ I was then told: Take down this address.

At the given time I presented myself at some nondescript building that housed another featureless apartment converted to a photographer’s studio for the few hours I needed to get the work done.

For the first few jobs I rode my bicycle as the locations happened to be near The Barracks. Later I took the tram or the bus or some combination of the two.

At first, because the models showed thirty or forty minutes after me, I thought I was early. Then it occurred to me the hour I was given for the shoot was different from that provided to the model. The extra time I suppose was to allow me to set up the equipment—cameras and light and so forth.

The model arrived escorted by a man. The men, without exception, cursorily searched the place before leaving. What they were checking for, I couldn’t tell. A few hours later the man would return and lead the girl away.

These were men with few words to spare and no smile to share. The rough brusque actions as they deposited or retrieved a girl, the gestures they made at the time of arrival or departure from one or another apartment, had all but exhausted my conviction that there is at the core of every man a spark of righteousness.   

After I was finished with a job, an afternoon’s work at the makeshift studio and a night developing the negatives, the arrangement was concluded with exchange of cash for photographs. The photographs were placed in the mailbox of the apartment; the money was slipped under my door. Anonymous and convenient, if you asked me.

A parade of girls had passed before my camera lens. Every one of these girls had dismissed the impersonal gaze of the camera and by some mannerism—one obsessive gesture—she had also challenged the impotent eye behind the viewfinder.

The girls for some reason bore a striking resemblance with one another. Each girl who came before my camera was like the previous one I had photographed a few days before. Touch of the Hail Mary with a portion of your average sporting girl.

Except for Kavki. Even before the camera lens was focused, I already knew she wasn’t like the others. She was different. Her body and face the nub of any argument for the classical lines of feminine beauty.

Back pressed against a wall to stop the feet from slipping, I framed a section of her face and left breast; gazed at her through the rectangle formed by my four linked fingers.

The photo shoot finished, I gave her my card and asked her to call. ‘Let’s go to Flurys for a coffee,’ I said.

She told me she didn’t drink coffee.

‘Well, goodbye then. I hope I see you again,’ I said, little knowing that fate is a curious beast and you never can tell if it will bite the hand that feeds it or feed the hand that bites it.

Two weeks later there was a postcard at the office from Kavki for me. I have never been partial to coffee, she wrote, unless there was a touch of the Irish to it. She said a band she liked was performing at Southside Balari Bar and if I had the evening free I should meet her there. A time and date was jotted beneath her name.

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