The fellow knew nothing. He did not even know Orlando’s name. For Frank, I was my work, and short of autobiography there seemed no way of proving to him that my story was not in my pictures. It was all off-camera, in the pitch of my blind body’s witness. And yet I needed Frank to remind me of that contradiction.
“I’ve always liked this one,” he said, still looking admiringly upon the squinched face of Ezra Pound, that crumpled rubber road map.
“That’s just what I mean,” I said, following my own train of thought. I wondered if I should let him in on the secret. “There’s quite a story behind that picture.”
He became attentive in the cringing way that is characteristic of fellowshippers who are fearful, hearing a secret revealed, that their reaction might be wrong: they might laugh too hard or too soon or not at all, the cash a dead weight on their sense of spontaneity. “I’ve got work to do,” Frank was always saying — but if I found it hard to take my own work seriously, how could I keep a straight face about his?
“I remember when this baby appeared,” he said, holding Ezra up, sort of mounting him in the air. “It caused a sensation.”
“A certain flurry,” I said, and looked at Frank. Over several months, while I had been preoccupied with my life and Frank with my work, he had changed his image. Some wild access of confidence? The Guggenheim money? He had let his hair grow over his ears, he wore bell-bottom trousers with three-inch cuffs, and russet clodhoppers with four-inch heels. His pink shirt was open to the navel, so I could see on his skinny curator’s chest two strings of beads. Beads! They matched the beaded bracelet where his watch had been. Very stylish, but he could not quite bring it off. He looked uneasy in the clothes, like a damned fool in fact, who had gone too far and suspected that I might mock him. But I only found the clothes discouraging. As soon as I saw those beads and platform shoes I knew I could not possibly depend on him.
“Wasn’t it the first picture of Pound to appear after he was let out of the funny farm?”
I said, “One day I was in a magazine office in New York and the editor says, ‘Have a look at this — ever see anything like it?’ It was a picture of a turkey buzzard pouncing on a snake — three pictures, actually, the approach, the snatch, and the getaway. ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ he says. I agreed. But it was too amazing — so perfect I didn’t believe it. Anyway, wildlife photography seems as silly to me as talking animals. I says, ‘There’s something about that snake. Doesn’t it seem rather limp to you?’ He was annoyed. ‘You think it’s a fake?’ ‘Just dead,’ I says. He tried to defend the picture. ‘But it’s a fine turkey buzzard!’ he says. ‘What turkey buzzard,’ I says, ‘would want to eat a dead snake?’ We looked at the turkey buzzard, a rigged-up bird with crooked wings. I says, ‘Stuffed. And the mountain looks pretty suspicious, too.’ I thought that man was going to cry.”
“Wait a minute,” said Frank. “Does that have anything to do with this picture of Pound?”
“Everything,” I said. “It’s a turkey, isn’t it?”
Frank said, “You’re always so critical of your work.”
“You’d be critical too, if you were in my shoes.”
“They’re great pictures.”
“They’re stiffs,” I said. “They don’t matter. If you had any sense you’d see that.”
“You know,” he said, fingering the beads around his neck, “I’m glad I’m doing this retrospective. The way I see it, I’m kind of saving you from yourself.”
“Listen, buster. I took that picture in Italy around ’fifty-nine or so. I’d been sent to do a photographic essay on Cocteau and Picasso, but Venice wasn’t far from Cannes and my editor was screaming for a glimpse of Pound, who’d just been let out of his rubber room. The only thing was, he refused to see me. His wop servant slammed the door in my face. ‘We don’t want any!’ T. S. Eliot gives me a pep talk and two cups of tea, and Pound won’t even give me the right time. Anyway, a few days later, I’m on the coast in Rimini having some spaghetti and I look up and who do I see walking by the restaurant? Ezra! I whistled down my noodles and rushed off in hot pursuit. Ezra’s just strolling along, tapping his walking stick and singing. It was unmistakably him, whiskery and old, in a floppy hat and jacket. ‘Wait a sec,’ I said, ‘aren’t you Ezra Pound?’ He sort of grins and says, ‘Waal, bless my buttons,’ and shows me his fangy teeth. We start talking about poetry — Eliot, Cummings, Frost, whoever. He names someone and I say, ‘I’ve done him.’ ‘How about a cup of tea at my place?’ he says, and I can’t believe my luck. My picture’s as good as in the bag.
“Up the road we enter the courtyard of a run-down palazzo. He takes me into the study, a funny little room — there’s a small bookshelf with only three books on it. ‘The greatest books ever written,’ he says. Gone With The Wind, The Pisan Cantos, and Picture Palace, by a man called R. G. Perdew. ‘I’ve heard of the first two, and I love the title of the third one,’ I said, ‘but who’s this R. G. Perdew?’ He said, ‘Why, that’s me!’ ‘You’re not Ezra Pound?’ I asked. ‘Occasionally,’ he said.
“Occasionally? It turns out that this guy’s pretending to be Pound — wants people to take him for the poet, even writes letters to him. ‘Do me a favor,’ I says. ‘Ask your friend Pound if he’ll let me do him. I can’t go home until I get a picture of that man.’ Perdew gave me a very Pound-like whinny and leered crazily at me. ‘Looks like you ain’t going home, dearie,’ he says. ‘Ezra don’t pose for pictures.’ ‘Crap,’ I said. ‘Picasso jumped at the chance up in Cap Ferrat.’ ‘Ezra don’t jump no more. And the fact is,’ said this Mister Perdow, ‘even if you did do him, no one would recognize him. They wouldn’t believe you. He don’t look like Ezra Pound. He’s all scrawny and shriveled up with bug juice. Looks like some derelict. I know cause I’ve seen him. He used to look like me, this little bushy beard and sombrero. But now he don’t.’ So I said, ‘All righty then, I’ll do you.’ And I did. He was so pleased he started singing a song. Later on he showed me his pictures. They were a damn sight better than Ezra’s poems and so was my portrait.”
Frank said, “You mean it’s not Pound?”
“No, but it’s a dead-ringer. Now do you still think you’re throwing me a rope?” I let this sink in, then said, “My pictures are worthless, Frank. But there’s a moral. Every maniac has a spitting image. Whose double-ganger are you?”
“Maybe yours.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m an original.” Or was he? Was this barnacle my Third Eye, the camera I had renounced? Perhaps even in his necklace and funny shoes he was necessary to me.
“Your Picasso — is it faked?”
One might have thought it was a bit of trick photography, the famous googly-eyed head printed on a naked body. But, “Nope. That’s the real McCoy. He loved posing bare-ass.”
“This one of Somerset Maugham is terrific.”
“The Empress Dowager — he had more wrinkles than Auden, that other amazing raisin. Poor old Willie. He was on the Riviera then, too. The English are so portable. I caught him on a bad day. He was brooding over a case of constipation, but as soon as I did him I knew people would look at him and think he was speculating on the future of mankind. Ain’t it always the way?”
“And that’s when you did your Cocteau?”
“Correct. Looks like a sardine, don’t he? He says to me, ‘Ja swee san doot le poet le plew incanoe et le plew celebra.’ I says, ‘May oon poet — say la shows important.’ ‘Incanoe,’ he says, full of that weepy French dignity. ‘May commie foe,’ I says, and when he starts in again I says. ‘Murd de shovel,’ and keeps on clicking.”