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Then from between the tall tree trunks in the park we
see him in the distance outside the gates.
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He turns and gazes at the trees.
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The park is bathed in beautiful soft light.
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From the top of the heath above the grass framed by
the trees the London skyline unfolds along the Thames.
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There is nothing but greenness all around.
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He moves towards the gates.
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A single bird sings its song echoing in the quiet park.
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In the midst of this greenness a white patch
stands out in the background,
a row of houses set amongst the trees.
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We can see the houses across the trees and beyond their
back gardens.
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There was a railway here, now it's just a wide path.
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Close up of Thomas squinting through the viewfinder
adjusting the lens.
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Stop it stop it give me those pictures you can't
photograph people like that.
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The only item with which I am concerned was the rather
large black framed mezzo tint.
It was a rather indifferent mezzo tint and an indifferent
mezzo tint is perhaps
the worst form of engraving known.
It presented a full face view of a not very large
manor house
with three rows of plain sashed windows with rusticated
masonry about them.
A parapet with balls or vases at the angles and a
small portico in the centre.
On either side were trees and in front a considerable
expanse of lawn.
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The moonlight seems rather good to me and I should
have thought there were figures
or at least a figure just on the edge in front.
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And indeed there was hardly more than a black blot on
the extreme edge of the engraving.
The head of a man or woman a good deal muffled up.
The back turned to the spectator and looking towards
the house.
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It was by this time rather late.
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The picture lay face upwards on the table where the last
man who looked at it had put it
and it caught his eye.
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It was indubitable, rankly impossible no doubt but
absolutely certain.
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In the middle of the lawn in front of the unknown
house there was a figure where no
figure had been at five o'clock that afternoon.
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It was crawling on all fours towards the house and it was
muffled in a strange black garment
with a white cross on the back.
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I do not know what is the ideal course to pursue in a
situation of this kind.
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Sleep visited him rather late but it was consoling to
reflect that the behaviour of
the picture did not depend upon his own unsupported
testimony.
Otherwise he might have been tempted to think that
something gravely wrong
was happening either to his eyes or his mind.
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The figure when he had seen it was clear of the edge of
the picture but had not
gone far across the lawn.
He remembered a white mark on the back of the drapery
but he could not have been
sure it was a cross.
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The house has one, two, three rows of windows, five
in each row except at the
bottom where there's a porch instead of the middle one
and one of the windows on
the ground floor left of the door is open.
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I rather imagine we're meant to see the whole thing.
You see between the time I saw it last night and this
morning there was time for
lots of things to happen but the creature only got into
the house.
It could easily have got through its business in the
time and gone to its own
place again but the fact of the window being open I
think must mean that it's in
there now.
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I have a kind of idea that it wouldn't change much if
at all in the daytime.
We might go out for a walk this afternoon and come into
tea or whenever
it gets dark.
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The picture was leaning up against a pile of books on
the table as it had been
left.
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There was the house as before under the waning moon
and the drifting clouds.
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The window that had been open was shut and the figure
was once more on the lawn
but not this time crawling cautiously on hands and
knees.
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Now it was erect and stepping swiftly with long
strides towards the front of
the picture.
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The moon was behind it and the black drapery hung down
over its face so that
only hints of that could be seen and what was visible
made the spectators
profoundly thankful that they could see no more than a
white dome-like forehead
and a few straggling hairs.
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The head was bent down and the arms were tightly clasped
over an object which
could be dimly seen and identified as a child whether
dead or living it was not
possible to say.
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The legs of the appearance alone could be plainly
discerned and they were
horribly thin.
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From five to seven they sat and watched the picture by
turns but it never
changed.
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When they were assembled again at the earliest
possible moment the engraving
was there but the figure was gone and the house was quiet
under the moon beams.
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I have only to add that the picture is now in the Ashley
and Museum that has
been treated with a view to discovering whether sympathetic
ink has been used in
it but without effect and that though carefully watched
it has never been
known to change again.
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It will never be known how this has to be told in the
first person or in the
second using the third person plural or continually
inventing modes that will
serve for nothing.
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If one might say I will see the moon rose or we hurt me
at the back of my eyes
and especially you the blonde woman was the clouds that
race before my your his
our yours their faces what the hell.
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When one is walking about with a camera one has almost
a duty to be attentive to
not lose that abrupt and happy rebound of sun's rays
off an old stone or the
pigtails flying run of a small girl going home with a
loaf of bread or a
bottle of milk.
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He knew that the photographer always worked as a
permutation of his personal
way of seeing the world as other than the camera
insidiously imposed upon it.
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Now a large cloud is going by almost black but he
lacked no confidence in
himself knowing that he had only to go out without the
contacts to recover the
keynote of distraction the site without a frame around
it light without the
diaphragm aperture or one over 250 seconds.
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I decided not to lose a moment more I got it all
into the viewfinder with the
tree the railing the 11 o'clock sun and took the
shot in time to realize that
they both had noticed and stood there looking at me
the boy surprised and as
though questioning but she was irritated her face and
body flat-footedly hostile
feeling robbed ignominiously recorded on a small chemical
image the negative was
so good that he made an enlargement the enlargement
was so good that he made one
very much larger almost the size of a poster he tacked
up the enlargement on one
wall of the room and the first day he spent some time
looking at it and
remembering that gloomy operation of comparing the
memory with the gone reality
a frozen memory like any photo where nothing is
missing not even and
especially nothingness the true solidifier of the scene.
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It had never occurred to me that when we look at a
photo from the front the eyes
reproduce exactly the position and the vision of the lens
it's these things
that are taken for granted and it never occurs to
anyone to think about them.
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At that moment I didn't know the reason the reason I had
tapped the enlargement
onto the wall maybe all fatal acts happen that way
and that is the condition
of their fulfillment I don't think the almost furtive
trembling of the leaves on
the tree alarmed me.
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All at once the order was reversed they were alive
moving they were deciding and
had decided they were going to their future and I on
this side prisoner of
another time in a room on the fifth floor to not know
who they were to be
only the lens of my camera something fixed rigid
incapable of intervention.
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I understood if that was to understand what had to happen
now what had to have
happened then what would have to happen at that moment
among these people just
where I had poked my nose into upset an established
order interfering innocently
in that which had not happened but which was now
going to happen now was going to
be fulfilled and what I had imagined earlier was much
less horrible than the
reality.
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And little by little the frame becomes clear perhaps
the sun comes out and
again the clouds begin to come two at a time three at
a time and the pigeons
once in a while and a sparrow or two.
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I think this is another way of making cinema verity to
endow a person with a
story that is with the story which I am going to tell
you in a moment.
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I think this is another way of making cinema verity to
endow a person with a
story that is with the story which I am going to tell
you in a moment.
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I think this is another way of making cinema verity to
endow a person with a
story that is with the story which corresponds to their
appearance, to their
position, their weight, the volume they occupy in a
particular space.
Slowly I move to the end of the bar counter going round
behind the girl so
that she appears in the foreground.
At the back of the room is the slanting window with the
dust clinging to the
glass then slowly dripping to the ground as if it were
liquid.
From here with the girl in back view a relationship
between the external and
the internal is established, the image takes on body.
There is a meaning in the whiteness outside, an almost
nonexistent reality.
And the dark patches inside including the girl.
She is an object too, a character without a face,
without a story.
The setup is so beautiful that one hardly needs
anything else to complete the
impression.
Nevertheless, I go up to her and while she is getting me
another drink,
I ask her what her name is.
De Litta.
What?
De Litta.
Like De Litto, a crime?
Yes, but with an A.
I look at her in amazement.
It was my father, she explained.
He said it was a crime to bring a child into the world
in his circumstances.
But my mother wanted one so he said very well but we'll
call it De Litto, a crime.
And as I was a girl, that's how it was.
you
In reality, they have neither rackets nor balls.
However, the imaginary game gets underway with the two
players rushing around the
court with convincing vigor and tenacity but without
uttering a sound.
Close-up of Thomas watching the game.
He smiled slightly.
Suddenly the boy hits the ball so hard it goes right
over the back netting and ends
up on the grass outside.
Thomas runs towards the point where everyone saw the
non-existent ball hit the grass,
some way from the court.
He drops his camera and bends down.
Thomas picks up the imaginary ball, tosses it up and down
in his hand two or three times
and then runs forward and hurls it back into the
tennis court, watching its path through
the air with his eyes.
Then he stands watching the game again, his head moving
imperceptibly in time with the
movements of the ball.
He smiled again, ever so slightly.
And very slowly the shots themselves begin to be heard
above the rustling of the wind
in the leaves, until they can be recognised as the
typical sounds of a tennis ball hitting
racket strings.
One on this side, one on that side, one on this side,
one on that side.
Tok, tok, tok, tok.