The Last Summer of the World Page 3

  “Ach, I doubt you can make a print from this thing,” Schwarz told him when he saw the negative. He held it close to his face and looked at it intently, tracing the lines with his fingers. He put it up to the light. “It’s too dark. What is this supposed to be again?”

  After a few more attempts, Edward began to get negatives that he could print from. He made prints on the new silver chloride paper, which gave a gray finish, nearly blue, cold and precise, or when he could afford it, on platinum paper that made the pictures warmer, illuminated and full of movement.

  “It’s like the difference between what you see when you walk out of your door, and what you see when you are dreaming,” he told Lilian, showing her two prints of a farmhouse seen across a field of long grass. “All the best photographers in America use platinum paper now. They call themselves Pictorialists.” He had found books on photography at the public library, copies of a magazine called Camera Notes, edited by Alfred Stieglitz for the Camera Club of New York. “They believe that photography is art,” he told Lilian solemnly. “That’s what I believe.”

  It was from Camera Notes that he learned about the Second Philadelphia Photographic Salon. A panel of judges would be considering entries over the next few months. All photographers, amateurs as well as professionals, were invited to enter their work. He decided to try. When he asked Schwarz about it, the old man shrugged and said, “Yes, send some of your pictures. What harm can it do?”

  “I CAN’T COMPETE with the other photographers for technique,” he says to Lilian as he sets up the camera in the long hallway that leads back to the kitchen. “So I’ll have to do something unusual. That’s the only way I’ll get into the show.” He’s peering into the viewfinder on top of the camera, which he’s set up on a tripod borrowed from Schwarz for the day last Tuesday. It’s now Saturday, but Edward is sure the old man doesn’t need it. After all, he has other tripods besides this one, right? He smiles as he adjusts the aperture and focuses in on the dark square that he’s put dead center in the frame.

  “I’m going to make it a study in contrasts,” he says. “The use of space. There. Perfect. Come and have a look through this and tell me whether it’s OK.”

  Lilian is sitting on the staircase a little above him, watching through the banisters. She’s been kicking at a place where the carpet had come away from the wood beneath, worrying the frayed edge with the toe of her boot. She stands up wearily and stomps down the stairs. She looks into the viewfinder for maybe half a second and says, “Sure. It’s fine.”

  “You didn’t even look,” he says.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “No, you couldn’t have.” He looks at her. Her face is sullen and she seems, he suddenly notices, like she might be about to cry. “What on earth is the matter?” he asks.

  “Nothing. Mama says that I can’t apply to the state college next year. I have to get a job, like you did. I have to help her in the store.”

  “Oh, Lil.” He puts an arm around her. “Can’t you talk her into it?”

  “I already tried—too many times. She told me if I bring it up again, she’ll be mad. You don’t know. You can talk her into things a lot more easily than I can.”

  “Getting a job isn’t so bad.”

  “You didn’t want to go to college,” she says, and sits down heavily at the foot of the stairs. She puts her face in her hands.

  “Oh, come on, Lil. Don’t be sad. Come here.” He takes her by the hand and stands her behind the camera. “This is the dial for the aperture. This is the f-stop. It tells you how deep your focus will be. This is the button that makes the exposure.” He goes and stands around in front of the camera. “I’ve got it all set up. Just check that it’s focused and then go ahead.”

  She looks into the camera and sees him standing to one side of the framed box of light. He is looking at her through the glass lenses of the camera, his blue eyes filled with that brightness, that delight of his that seems completely waterproof—sadness runs off him and pools at his feet. It is a quality she loves and hates in equal measure.

  “Ready?” she asks. He nods gently.

  “Ready.”

  TWO

  June 10, 1918

  HE HAD NOT felt like celebrating, but the St-Omer men insisted on throwing him a farewell party anyway. At least, his departure was the nominal excuse for the gathering; it did not take much, admittedly, for the British pilots to decide on a long night of drinking. They’d gotten hold of some bottles of gin and drunk it straight, insisting that he keep up with them until they were all silly from it.

  Around midnight they ran out of liquor. This dampened their mood until one of the pilots remembered that he had hidden some whisky under his mattress, and those still awake went off to find the bottle and, as Sanders said, “liberate it.” Edward took the opportunity to stagger off to bed, feeling old and knowing that he would pay for all of it in the morning.

  Now, waiting for the Paris-bound train, he felt like someone had screwed his skull on too tight. When the train came, he boarded and sat next to the window of his compartment, pressing his forehead to the cool of the glass, letting his breath mist the pane.

  He had put Marion’s letter in the bottom of his suitcase and piled his other belongings on top of it, as though this would somehow smother it and help him to forget that it was there; but the out-of-sight, out-of-mind principle wasn’t working very well today. Eventually, he gave up trying to ignore it and instead decided to focus on thinking clearly about how to respond to it.

  The easiest thing would be to do nothing at all. The letter had not requested any specific action, except to help when the time came, and perhaps the best course was to just continue as he would have had he not received it. He was not at liberty in any case to go where he liked. He was under orders from the Air Service. Clara could sue the pope if she liked, he would still have to go and take up his command. He could simply write to Marion and tell her he would do whatever she wished; he would wait to hear what she needed and then go on with his work as well as he could.

  But this felt insufficient. The letter’s brevity, its lack of demands (so like Marion, that restraint) only served to make it more upsetting. He had never been someone who could just sit quietly while things happened around him. He wanted to do something more than just wait anxiously. But what could it be?

  He could write to Clara and plead with her to withdraw the suit. He could tell her, again, that her accusations were wrong; that she had misunderstood what she had seen that day, four years ago in Voulangis. He could beg her to stop before she inflicted any more pain on the people who had loved her. But so far, all his pleading for her to come to her senses had not succeeded in swaying her. It seemed unlikely that any protestation from him would change her mind now.

  His most powerful impulse told him to go and find Marion. The letter had revealed to him that she was in France now. The return address was a hospital near Arras to the north—a day’s journey. But on second thoughts, seeking her out began to seem like the worst and most fruitless course of action. The perverse result of Clara’s suit was that his presence near her now would be incriminating. He should not be seen with her because it could add credibility to Clara’s absurd charges. Besides, what help could he offer her in person that he could not offer in writing? No, he thought regretfully, he should stay away.

  There was one other person that he could try to contact, someone who might still have a chance of convincing Clara to pull back from her present disastrous course. This was Mildred Aldrich. She was an old friend to both of them, almost a second mother to Clara, and had been their neighbor in the Marne. She had remained in France after the war began, when so many foreigners were fleeing to their own countries; she had written about living near the war zone, books that had been widely read in America. I cannot fight, she had told him. This is what I can give. She had stayed in her house in the village of Huiry until this year, when the new German advances had put that part of the country in danger as it had not
been since 1914.

  When Clara had left him in the spring of 1915 and, taking their younger daughter, Kate, with her, came back to live in their old house in Voulangis, Mildred, who was then living just a few miles away, had been one of her only companions. Clara trusted Mildred. She was one of the few people of whom this was true.

  Maybe Mildred could prevail with his wife where he had not, where Marion and countless other friends had failed. Mildred lived in Paris now, in Montparnasse. He did not know if he would be able to see her while he was there. But he would try.

  The flat expanse of northern countryside spun by under a low sky, and he watched the city begin to gather itself. From the train, the streets were a series of still lifes: square, suburban houses arrayed along tree-lined avenues, sturdy and ordinary. He peered at their windows, trying to see something of the lives that were lived in them. He saw a woman hanging laundry across her garden, and, in a third-floor study, a man sat at a desk writing, glancing out distracted by the Paris train rolling past his window. And in a downstairs room he thought he saw a woman playing the piano, leaning forward to peer at the music on her stand. What was she playing? Clara had always played Mozart in the daytime, and Chopin at night. Once, very early in their marriage, he had asked her why. She said she’d never really thought about it. She just played whatever came to mind, whatever seemed right, though now that he mentioned it, she did think that Chopin wrote nighttime music; it was music for autumn and spring, the uncertain times of the year; and it sounded far better in Paris than it ever could in America. Had she laughed then? He tried to remember—it was strange to recall such ordinary details now—and the movement of the train snatched away the woman in the window, so that soon he couldn’t see her house among the others built to look just like it.

  Brown brick gave way to the pale sandstone façades of the central arrondissements, the little parks among them green as emeralds. The railway cut through the gentle rises and falls of the 18th Arrondissement, and on his right he could see Montmartre, with its white crown of Le Sacré-Coeur. He felt an involuntary pleasure at how familiar it all was, his Paris, still so beautiful in spite of everything.

  And yet he knew this was not right; it was not the same as it had been. Of the Americans he had known here, Mildred Aldrich and Gertrude and Leo Stein had stayed; but many more had left: Arthur Carles and Mercedes de Cordoba had married at last and were in Philadelphia. Alfred Stieglitz was in New York. Of the French and British, many had gone to the war; some had not come back.

  His oldest friend in Paris, Auguste Rodin, had died early that year. Edward had been on board ship when it happened, and so he’d received the news standing on the quay at Brest, among the unloaded crates of supplies and ammunition, the shouts and confusion of disembarking soldiers. He read the telegram three times: PNEUMONIA. FUNERAL WEDNESDAY. What day is it today? he’d asked the courier. Friday, said the boy. Today is Friday. Thank you, Edward said quietly, and the boy saluted and ran off, weaving his way down the crowded dock until he disappeared.

  Of course, some of Americans had come back to France to help with the war effort, and Marion Beckett, it now turned out, was among them. He had not known she was here until he received her letter. When they had parted in 1914, she to catch a ferry for England, he on his way to Marseilles to get passage for himself, Clara, Kate, and Mary to New York, she had said that, after the incidents of the summer, they should not stay in touch. As she spoke, she had folded and refolded her hands as though to contain something inside them that kept trying to escape. He had disagreed and told her so. They were innocent of any misconduct; why shouldn’t they write to each other if they wanted to? She had looked at him as though he were speaking a foreign language. Honestly, she said, you are like a child sometimes, Edward.

  The train pulled into the Gare du Nord, easing to a stop with a sound like a sigh. The guard called the station, the end of the line, and up and down the carriages doors creaked open, shoes and baggage clattered on the platform. Passengers crowded past his compartment, moving toward the exit and the street. He pulled his bags from the rack above his seat, pushed the door open and was about to climb down the carriage steps when something happening on the platform below made him stop.

  A man in the blue-gray uniform of a poilu was standing and waving at a small boy running toward him. The boy struggled against the tide of people walking the other way, wriggling through spaces left by big adult bodies, crawling between legs and over luggage. The waving man dropped his kit bag and stooped down, his arms open. After the boy came a woman, walking, slow and determined, as though wading upstream. She stopped a few feet from them.

  She was dressed in a red overcoat and a hat with dried flowers around the brim. She was short, and under the coat her body was thick, pendulous, as though it had been tugged slowly downward piece by piece. Her face was pale and tired, her dark eyes marooned among features too clumsy to be pretty. But her stillness—she could have been alone except for the kneeling man and the child in his arms. She did nothing, merely watched, her eyes dry as though tears would have been disruptive.

  Other passengers pushed past them; they were almost all soldiers, dressed in the drab uniforms of this war, the French in gray, the British in khaki, a few Americans in the same muddy brown but wearing their overseas caps jauntily to one side, as though to say they were not yet completely a part of all this grimness. He had watched through his window as the train collected them along its route, but it was not until this moment, seeing them pass under the station arches, that he understood how many there were. Among them, the small woman in her red coat drew the eye like a lone poppy in a field.

  Edward pulled his kit bag to his shoulder, remembering all at once that his head ached, and allowed himself to be swept down the platform with the crowd. He lost sight of the woman in the red coat. All around him reunions were taking place; people embraced and kissed. To his left a man hoisted a small girl onto his shoulders, and she laughed out loud with delight, the sound magnified in the cavern of the station.

  Some people glanced at his uniform, curious and approving; American officers were still a rarity in Paris. But mostly they ignored him, too caught up in their own homecomings to pay attention to anything else. He walked quickly to the end of the platform and through the ticket barrier. He tried not to look at the faces around him too intently, or to allow himself to hope for one that was familiar. No one would be waiting to meet him on the station concourse, and so there was no point, he thought, in lingering there.

  MAJOR JAMES BARNES, waiting outside the station, drew his watch from his breast pocket and checked it for the fifth time in as many minutes, opening its case with a snap.

  “Thirty,” he said to his driver. The driver nodded.

  “It’s always thirty minutes late, sir.”

  Barnes snorted and put his watch away. Yes, of course the train was late, he thought. The St-Omer train, late again today, was only one example of the way that things worked, or didn’t work, in this country.

  “If this war were run any worse, the Germans would be in Gibraltar by now,” he said. He paced around the outside of the car, his hands in his pockets, and peered into the stream of men issuing from the station gates, looking for an American uniform among them.

  Barnes had worked with Steichen in Washington before they had both been sent abroad. He remembered the first time they met, at Steichen’s interview: a tall man walked jauntily into the room and shook hands with everyone present, including the junior staff assistant who was only there to serve the coffee and take minutes. The kind of man who couldn’t help making jokes even under the most serious circumstances. When they gave him the standard army test for color blindness, a bundle of multicolored threads in which he was asked, simply enough, to find the red ones, he’d insisted that there were no red threads in the batch he’d been handed. None at all. He’d looked around at the blank faces of the interview panel with a curious expression: one couldn’t say for certain if he was smiling or not. N
o, he’d repeated. No red threads. Only cherry, vermilion, carmine and scarlet ones. The junior assistant had snorted with laughter, and very nearly spilled the cup of coffee he was carrying onto Major Barnes’s lap. Not an auspicious beginning.

  But it turned out that the man knew about cameras. He knew about printing and developing, how fast it could be done, which companies made the equipment they would need. He said he wanted to photograph the front the way Mathew Brady had in the Civil War. He already had opinions about which cameras would be most suitable for use there based on their weight, sturdiness, dimensions.

  “I’ve been looking,” he said, “at the English reconnaissance pictures in the newspapers. They are good, useful, but you can see that they have no standard for linking the focal length to the altitude, so some of them are out of focus. If we drew up tables for this, even someone with no experience could take these pictures and get them perfect every time.”

  “What is your current occupation?” Barnes asked.

  “I am an artist. A painter and photographer.”

  “Where do you reside?”

  “I live in New York. But until three years ago, I lived in France.”

  That had clinched it. They offered Steichen a commission as a lieutenant in the Signal Corps and, with another round of handshakes, he accepted. It was only subsequently that Barnes learned that the man had quite a reputation. He’d taken portraits of a number of famous men: J. P. Morgan, Auguste Rodin. He was well known in certain circles, well thought of by people who cared about such things.