Double Exposure

The maestro was pounding on the darkroom door. "Four minutes to deadline, Wicky," he said virtuously.

Wickert closed the lightproof developing tank, started the timer and opened the door. "I'll take ten," he said. "Tell them I think I got the flash of the blast, maybe. Hurry up, so you can come back and help me print!"

"They don't like to hold the first edition."

"I don't like to work on my day off, either. Go on, tell them they better hold! And then get back here."

The maestro departed, grumbling, as usual, at anything that upset the frantic rhythm as the paper neared its deadline. He was a hulking, half-foolish old man who had been with the paper 32 years. His idea of a good news picture was just 32 years behind the times, but in the darkroom he was the best. Wickert was not even sure what his name was. Everybody called him "The maestro," half in respect and half in derision.

Wickert, who had not even been born when the maestro went to work here, watched the timer carefully. He had an odd feeling about this roll of film, something pretty close to dread. He wished he could inspect it first alone, but it was too close to deadline for that.

The maestro returned as Wickert took the long strip of film from the fast drier. "They're holding," he said. "Three known dead so far, and they'll be digging most of the night. An explosion, explosion and fire."

"I know. I was there," Wickert said. "You print. Just the last eleven frames. The others are personal."

The old man took the long strip of film. "I know. Art stuff! Nudes, with discreet shadows instead of a fig leaf. Bazooms and bottoms and belly buttons."

"No, not nudes," Wickert said savagely.

The maestro, with an expression of distaste, cut off the last 11 frames, throwing the other 25 into a corner on the enlarger table. He despised 35-millimeter cameras and film; indeed, he despised anything that had come out in photography since the invention of the flashbulb. But his big, soft hands were as gentle as they were swift with any negative, and he never failed to bring out the best possible print in the shortest possible time.

He fed the film into the enlarger. The bright lights went out. A cone of light came on under the enlarger, projecting the first of the 11 frames on the printing easel. It winked out before Wickert could get a look at the image, so fast did the old man work.

"You'll have ten prints," said the maestro. "The first shot is a double exposure."

"A double exposure is impossible with that camera."

"Nothing's impossible with a camera. Nothing! You got a double exposure, two pictures on the same frame. Here!"

There had been a rustle of printing paper, and the enlarger light had blinked on and off again. Wickert took the exposed paper from the maestro's hand and slid it into the tray of developer. Before the image had started to emerge on the first print, the maestro had thrust another into his hand.

"How they look, Wicky?"

The image on the first print materialized quickly, and Wickert caught his breath. "On the button!" he breathed. "You can see every brick. There's a barrel flying through the air—there's a piece of machinery—no, my God, I think it's a human body!"

The maestro went on working. In six (continued on page 120) Double Exposure (continued from page 116) minutes—no record for him—the last picture was in the developer and the first ones were in the fix. The maestro bullied Wickert out of the way to move the prints from developer to rinse to fixing solution himself. When the last one was in the fix, he turned on the bright lights.

"Not bad," he conceded. "That's a man flying through the air, all right—or what's left of him. He has sure got the hell mashed out of him, hasn't he?"

"I felt the concussion myself," said Wickert. "It was unbelievable."

"Too bad you ruined your first shot."

"A double exposure is impossible with that camera."

"Make a print. See for yourself. You have one picture superimposed on another."

The maestro rinsed the prints quickly, slapped them briefly between blotters, and trotted off with them to the city room. Wickert ran the strip of film backward through the enlarger until he came to the first frame. He turned out the lights and studied the projected image on the easel.

It was a double exposure—the explosion superimposed on the face of the girl.

He did not remember taking a big-head close-up of her, but she had had him so rattled that he might have. He decided to print one and see for himself; any darkroom suggestion of the maestro's was worth taking seriously, old fool that he was. He had it printed and in the fix by the time the maestro returned.

"Lucky you!" said the maestro. "They're giving you a picture page. Four more bodies. Seven dead so far. Lucky, lucky, lucky!"

"Maestro," said Wickert, "what do you make of this?"

The old man leaned over the sink and picked the wet print up by a corner. "It's a dandy, all right! Explosion's perfect. Girl's perfect. Only, you'll notice that one's on top of the other. Better get that shutter and film transport checked. You know you can't depend on those miniature gadgets."

On the wall hung Wickert's coat, with the camera in a pocket. Wickert took it out, removed the back and worked the action several times. This "gadget," as the maestro called it, was brand-new, and had cost him §505.50. It was a perfect piece of precision machining and, although a little stiff from newness, was working perfectly.

"Try it yourself, maestro."

The old man took the empty camera and worked it again and again, in silence. He handed it back to Wickert, and turned to dash the wet print through the rinse water and pat it across a blotter. Both men then leaned over it to study it.

It showed a barrel in the air, and the same human body—a man in white overalls, apparently—that had been in the next frame of film. On that other frame, the body apparently had been descending, while in this one, it was still being hurled upward by the force of the explosion. In the other one, the building had been disintegrating—in this one, it still had four walls and a roof, although Wickert's camera had stopped them in the act of coming apart. Bricks were yielding their grip on ancient mortar as walls assumed a curvature that could not contain the terrible force of the blast. That blur between the bulging roof and the distorted body of the man in white overalls—that was actually a photograph of superheated air expanding so violently that nothing could stop it. He had photographed the explosion itself.

But over it, perfectly framed and in perfect focus, was the girl's face, more childish than Wickert remembered it, and more beautiful, too. The eyes looked straight into his, in them a look that made him turn away guiltily and a little sorrowfully.

The maestro put the picture back into the rinse. "The test of any camera," he said, "is in the pictures it takes. That's basic. Something else is basic, too—that's a double exposure."

Wickert said nothing.

"Very sweet face, Wicky," the maestro murmured, watching the picture that dipped and rose, dipped and rose, in the water in the rinse tank. "Not your type, I'd say. Too innocent. Jailbait, ain't she?"

"About fifteen, I'd say."

"Who is she?"

"I've got her name," Wickert said. "Got some other shots of her to print, too, for her mother."

I should hope so, at her age, and with a face like that. Go ahead, print. You're a big shot around here, after today. Lucky, lucky, lucky!"

The maestro went out. Wickert turned on the red warning light outside the door and turned off the bright ones inside the darkroom. He took the strip of 25 frames that the maestro had pitched onto the corner of the table, and inserted it in the enlarger. He snapped its switch and there she was, projected on the printing easel.

There was nothing sweet or innocent about her in this shot. He felt again the mixture of lawless desire, civilized fear and the curious, aching pity that the girl herself had inspired ...

• • •

The pigeons were settling back into the steeple before the last echo of the bell died away. Wickert came to a stop, his camera poised uselessly. He had visualized this picture—of the pigeons scattering as the bell rang—for years. It had been in his mind when he finally nerved himself to pay §505.50 for a new camera.

He had on the right lens—90 millimeters, medium telephoto. The cold, heavy clouds behind the church were so good he would never see their like again. There was a lonely dullness to the lighting. There were enough white pigeons, but just enough, to make them stand out dramatically from the gray and blue and brown ones.

Everything was exactly right, except that the preacher had rung the bell several minutes early.

"What are you going to take a picture of?" said a voice behind him.

It was a child's voice. He did not turn around. "Nothing," he said shortly.

"What have you got a camera for, then?"

This time he turned. He judged her to be about 15. She wore lipstick and horrible green eye shadow, and there were meager little bulges where her bosom belonged. Her face was thin and fine-boned, her skin white and flawless. Her straight, fair hair, which hung to her thin shoulders, was combed straight back. Her eyes were blue, far too big for her face, and full of far too much gutter wisdom.

She had probably come out of one of the old houses nearby. Fifty years ago this had been a fashionable church, surrounded by fashionable mansions. Now those turreted, dormered, gabled, archaic and gone-to-seed houses had been divided into "light housekeeping rooms." There might be only a gas plate, two beds and a furnace register which, on a day like this, gave forth only clammy gusts to shake the dirty old drapes. But there were parquet floors, marble mantels and plate-glass mirrors that had gone half blind after reflecting a half century of degeneration.

"Nothing," he said again, and began walking.

She fell into step beside him. "Take a picture of me, why don't you?" she said.

"You run along," said Wickert.

"Aw, come on! Take a picture of me, huh, please?"

He glanced around, and this time he saw the thinness of her bare legs and the thinness of her faded blue dress, which had a collar of darker blue. She must, he thought, be half frozen. The hem of the dress came well above her knees, and he was sure she had no slip on under it.

It struck him that she might be worth photographing. Here was a girl on the verge of spoiling, a girl too pretty for her own good in this ratty slum. The blue collar framed her sharp, wistful, white face perfectly, and the lonely quality of the light was just right for her, as it had been for the pigeons.

Here, he thought, was something worth saving in a picture, whether or (continued on page 142) Double Exposure (continued from page 120) not it would be saved in the girl herself. They were walking along beside the brick wall of a warehouse, a perfect background for her. If he could capture the dull desperation of her environment, and at the same time catch a look of pale-skinned, vulnerable innocence and beauty——

"All right," he said, reaching into his pocket for pencil and paper. "What are your parents' names and address?"

"What do you want that for?" she said suspiciously.

"So I can send them the pictures." No use trying to explain to this child that he would need her parents' legal release, in case he did get a picture good enough to sell.

"My dad ran off a long time ago. I live with my mother, Mrs. Loretta Norman, 573 Amber, apartment J," the girl said eagerly. "You really going to take my picture?"

"Yes. Now, what's your name?"

"Brenda. Brenda Norman."

Brenda! All that style, but no coat and no underwear, in a slum like this. He took a reading with his light meter and decided—luckily—to leave on the 90-mm. lens. He set the shutter at 1/1000 of a second—luckily. The explosion was still ten blocks and nearly an hour away, but luckily he did all the right things to have his camera ready for it.

"OK, wipe off that lipstick and eye shadow, Brenda."

"Wha-a-at?" she demanded, indignantly.

He knew how to handle kids by now. "All right, we'll take a few your way and a few mine. Don't look straight into the camera and none of that breathe-deeply stuff."

"I haven't got on any bra," she said, with a slight giggle.

"Sure, fine, but just lean against the wall there, and look across the street. Put your foot against the wall and your hands behind you, and sort of look down. Never mind your hair! Just let it fall."

"Like this?"

"No, honey, keep your head down," he said, as she tried again to thrust out her immature breasts.

"You called me 'honey,' " she said, with another giggle.

"Yeah. Just hold it. Lean against the wall more!"

He got several shots of her that way. She did not seem to feel the cold bricks, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not get her thin body into an ungraceful pose. It was her face that was all wrong. With all that dime-store makeup, she looked like a juvenile hustler waiting to earn a hamburger and a package of gum from the first degenerate to come along.

"Let's wipe off the lipstick and that green gunk around your eyes now," he suggested.

He handed her the clean handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat. She unfolded it carefully, watching him in a strange sort of silence as she rubbed off the make-up. She handed the handkerchief back.

"Now what do you want me to do?"

"Let's stand over there by the wall again. Same shot, only without the gunk."

She gave him another of those bold, upward glances. "What'll you give me if I let you take my picture naked?" she said.

It caught him by surprise, and so did the response of his own body. That he could feel desire for such a skinny, shabby child shocked him deeply. He looked around in confusion and panic. There was not a soul to be seen. They were alone in a slum where, as any newspaperman knew, these suggestions, these desires, this flouting of the law whether in thought or act, were quite normal.

"We can go to my place," she said. "Momma's at work. I'll go up, and you come a few minutes later. Nobody will see you! You can take me in front of a mirror, huh? How much will you give me? Five dollars?"

Why not? he thought. What can I know that she doesn't already know? And if I don't, someone else will ...

Yet he did not, nor was it fear of the law alone that made him take a quick grip on himself. The very boldness of her proposition was a kind of innocence. Virginity, after all, was a medical technicality. Even if she had lost that or was trying to lose it, there was still much, much more to lose in her before she descended to the level of her environment.

And that was what he wanted to photograph. "Get that out of your mind right now, Brenda," he said sternly. "I'll pay your mother ten dollars for these pictures, and if it's all right with, her, I'll give you another five. But now do as I say. Back to the wall!"

She went reluctantly. She wanted the five dollars, yes, but she also wanted a picture of herself naked, and she wanted him to take it. She was lonely and cold. She wanted him close to her, warming her as her precocious instincts told her he could. She wanted love.

He did not keep track of the shots he made; later, having escaped, he noticed that the counter on the film transport was at 26.

I could have gotten away with it, he thought, as he sat down in a lunchroom for a cup of coffee. I don't know what I got in the way of pictures. But I know what I missed ...

He had not, but somebody else would.

He finished the coffee and started back to his car. He was climbing the steep alley steps to the high lot where it was parked, when he was aware of a hard flash of brilliant light behind him. His new camera, luckily ready for anything, dangled from a strap around his neck.

He turned quickly, just as a hard gust knocked him down. He found himself sitting on the top step, some 12 feet above the alley, watching a building blow itself to pieces on the other side of it. The concussion pressed him backward, but without thinking he fired his camera, cocked it and fired it, again and again, until he ran out of film.

He had used up the whole roll before the debris began to fall around him. The searing heat from the flames that were roaring up in the heap of bricks across the alley made his face smart. His ears rang, and there was no other sound in them for a moment. When he stood up, his knees trembled and he found he had lost his sense of balance.

His first thought was to call the paper, but all the nearby phones were dead. By the time he found one that worked, three blocks away, he could hear sirens. The city desk was sending a crew, so he could hurry in and print his lucky, lucky pictures. His wits were clear enough, and his hand steady enough, by the time he got to the paper. And yet, even in the excitement of the explosion, he could not rid himself of the memory of the girl, and of the strange, pitiful, about-to-be-lost expression of innocence in her thin, white face.

• • •

He printed the 25 pictures of her rapidly. Not one had the quality he had been seeking. These were photographs of a brash little tramp who was trying to look sexy, and who was succeeding in a way she could not possibly understand.

He was studying that puzzling double exposure again when the maestro returned. "Nine dead so far," the old man said, importantly. "It was a candy factory. Somebody put a steel barrel of vegetable fat on the range without opening the bung. Eight or ten more of 'em blew up before they damped out the fire, and you were right there. Lucky, lucky, lucky!"

"Sure," said Wickert, handing him the other 25 prints. "What do you think of these, maestro?"

The old man merely glanced through them before returning to the double exposure. "This is still your best shot, Wicky. Too bad you screwed it up. Best of the explosion and best of the girl."

"Right."

"Those others—snapshot stuff. This is the face of—well, of an angel."

"The others?"

"Snapshots, I said, of a little bum."

"I'm not so sure."

"Where's she live?"

"Near Grace Church, say ten blocks from the candy factory."

The maestro snorted. "In that neighborhood, for five bucks you could have shot her naked."

The old man did not see Wickert's guilty movement, nor the way the curiously mixed sensations of shame, regret and pity drove the color from his face. Wickert never wanted to see the girl again, but that remark of the maestro's warned him that he must. Had anyone happened to see him taking pictures of her, or if she talked—and kids her age did talk—he could be in serious trouble.

Firemen were still grubbing through the debris of the candy factory when he passed it, but the rest of the story was being covered by a fresh crew. He had had his luck for the day. He drove on and parked near the church. 573 Amber Street turned out to be a frame shingle-down of three stories, with a turret, a ramshackle veranda, and a fanlight of colored glass over the front door.

It was almost dusk, and the neighborhood looked grimmer and more depressingly disreputable than ever. There was no doorbell, and when he went inside, he found that every downstairs room had been converted into a separate "light housekeeping room." They seemed to be deserted, however, although he thought he could hear the murmur of voices upstairs.

By the dim light in the old-fashioned foyer, he determined that the apartments on the first floor stopped at E, and the girl and her mother lived in J. He went up the dark, shabby but still graceful old staircase, and at the top discovered why the lower floor was empty. Everyone in the house seemed to be milling around in this hall, muttering and murmuring by the light of another small bulb. There was a smell of stale cabbage, and another, quite like it, of unwashed socks.

A blowzy, blonde woman saw him and approached him suspiciously, blocking his way near the top of the stairs. "Can I help you?" she said.

"Please. I'm looking for apartment J, Mrs. Loretta Norman," Wickert said.

"Why? Are you another reporter?"

Why another? He played it safe. "No ma'am," he said, holding out the envelope of pictures. "I just want to deliver this and talk to Mrs. Norman."

"I'm afraid you can't. Give me the package. I'll see that she gets it."

He had to have the child's mother's signature. He shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't. I owe her some money, too, and I have to get a receipt."

"Money? Oh, that'll help! Everycent's going to count now. Her little girl's dead, you know."

Wickert felt the same weak-kneed dizziness that he had felt as the debris from the explosion at the candy factory began to fall around him. "Dead?" he said. "You mean Brenda, by any chance?"

The woman began weeping. "Her only child. It was an explosion in the factory where Loretta worked."

"Let's get this straight," Wickert said thickly. "A thin girl, about fifteen?"

"Thirteen. I guess she wanted to walk home with her mother. Loretta was out on an errand—she wasn't hurt at all. But Brenda was in the kitchen, right where it happened. At least that's what they think. She never had a chance! They had to identify her by pieces of her dress."

The woman had talked herself into a good cry. "A blue dress," Wickert said, "trimmed in darker blue?"

"Yes. The only comfort is that she must have died instantly. She was right in the middle of it, the explosion, I mean. That's all they found of her, pieces of the dress."

Wickert promised to return later to make his delivery, although he knew that he never would. Have the child remembered by these wanton, guttersnipe pictures? Oh no! The sooner he destroyed them, the better he'd feel.

What if he had taken her up on her proposition? Suppose he had gone home with her, to photograph her naked? She wouldn't have gone to the candy factory then. She would have missed the explosion. This minute she would be alive.

But then what? There were so few white pigeons here, and so many gray and blue and brown ones. At least, Wickert thought, she won't be waiting here for somebody who would take her up on it.

The weight of the camera in his pocket reminded him of something the maestro had said: "Nothing's impossible with a camera." How had this one, this foolproof gem of precision machining, made a double exposure?

Or had it? He remembered something else the maestro had said: "The face of an angel." Was it really a double exposure? Or had he photographed Brenda after death, in the infinitesimal instant of transfiguration, as she escaped the earth untouched by whoever would have taken her up on the next proposition? Was that it? Was it? Was it? Was it