And the murderous one of Orlando and Phoebe naked in the windmill — the only one in fifty years that truly mattered: suppressed! How like a masturbator to hide his imagery in shame.
“What retrospective?” I said aloud. To see this show, one would have thought, as I so often had, that my life had been rich and happy, full of travel and excitement, fifty years of achievement. No failures, no tears. But this was the lie of perfection imperfectly concealing that it was mostly failure. And it was hardly surprising that no one at the party had recognized me. I was not one of my pictures, or even the sum of them.
I wandered back to the Provincetown room. Frank had mounted a slide projector behind a wall, and as the sorrowing gulls cried and the waves sloshed the timbers of an invisible jetty (and was that a whiff of saltwater taffy in the air?), the pictures changed: Dunes, Clamdiggers, Cummings, Pigga, Sunday Bonnets, Hurricane Damage. Not mine — they were the world’s property and the experience of whoever cast a glance at them. But no life was this neat.
Footsteps in the vestibule. I listened hard. One pair of clodhoppers.
“Maude!”
I turned and tried to smile.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding. I’ve been looking all over—”
“Dry up,” I said.
Yet I wanted to reassure him, to hug him and say, Forget it — it’s all yours! You’re welcome to it! Then I saw his smugly patronizing face and cough-drop sucker’s mouth. I had the impression he wanted to kiss me.
I said, “I’d like to be alone.”
“You’ve been drinking again.”
To spite him, I burped, bringing the gas up from the depths of my gut. Then, pleased with this piece of theater, I wanted to go.
“Come on out and take a bow.”
“No. It’s time I went home.”
He looked relieved. He cleared his throat. “Say, what do you think of the show?”
“Very nice, but it ain’t mine. Anyway, there’s one missing.”
He blushed and touched at his face and left a chalk-white fingerprint of pressure on his cheek. His eyes were glazed with shame. He said, “Give it to me. I’ll make room for it.”
“Get a job, Frank!” I said, and couldn’t help laughing. I started to walk away — and my mind raced ahead of my feet: I was home, in my room, drinking alone in my nightie and reflecting that if the pictures were his so was the guilt; and I was at last free.
“Which one?” he asked, but he didn’t want to hear.
“You wouldn’t know,” I said. “Besides, I haven’t done it yet.”
I chose to leave by passing once again through the exhibition. And it struck me that the pictures told me more about Frank than about myself, for the mind was revealed by the way it distorted, or suppressed, or seized upon a particularly telling travesty. Literally that: a man in a dress spoke volumes, while a woman with a camera seemed to have few secrets. I was merely a spectator, stinking of chemicals. I had to be seen to be believed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Lower River and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.