Frame - Angus Hansen (books to read in your 30s .TXT) 📗

years just to buy another one.’
Sometimes I would just watch him work. Nothing penetrated his focus. He seemed to grow bigger, to fill out when he was taking photos. It was as though his work carried him to another realm in which the petty drudgery of everyday life ceased to matter.
One day I aimed the camera at him, half as a joke. He kept working for a while, oblivious. Then he must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, because he started.
‘Put that fucking thing down.’
I might have been aiming a gun at him. I knew he didn’t like being photographed – he was always the other side of the camera at family events – but I couldn’t have guessed at the force of his reaction.
I kept the camera on him for a second, seeing what he would do. He rushed at me and yanked the camera out of my hands. He pulled down on the camera, so that the cord bit into my neck. Even when I started crying he didn’t stop.
‘Don’t you ever aim a camera at me, or by God I’ll make you sorry.’
After that we resumed our picture taking, as though nothing had happened.

When my parents bought our house it had two bedrooms in it. Dad took one and turned it into a darkroom. I don’t believe they had any intention of having kids, or at least dad didn’t. When I was old enough to have my own room they were in a bind. Mum suggested dad give up his darkroom but he dug his heels in.
The previous owners had built a retaining wall next to the kitchen to stop the south wall from rattling with the harsh southerlies. The wall finished about a foot from the ceiling. Dad’s solution was to have another wall built and close it off as a bedroom for me.
Soon after the incident with the camera I started spying on dad through the gap at the top of my bedroom wall. He often came home from work late, when mum was already in bed. He would come in and clomp around the kitchen in his steel-toed workboots, filling the place with the smell of welding electrodes and black grease. More often than not he would eat his food cold. I’d stand on the top of my bookshelf, camera in hand, aiming it at him. I wasn’t worried about taking good shots, about using light and shade or any of that. It was enough just to get him in the frame.
Originally I was furious at what he had done. It had taken a week for the welt on my neck to go down. But as I watched him my anger dissipated. He seemed to wear a different face in solitude – softer, more malleable. Sometimes his face was changeable as the holographic images I used to collect from chip packets, as though he was having some sort of discussion in his head, giving all points of view on the matter.
It was weeks before I finally got the courage up to take a shot. I knew he had some measure of industrial deafness, but how much I wasn’t sure. He was sitting in his characteristic stance: hunched over the table, his hairy arms resting either side of his plate like an animal protecting its food. I watched his face, mesmerised. From one second to the next it would change: momentarily soft, reflective, it would suddenly harden, perhaps on some memory. I brought the camera to my eye and clicked. It was loud as an explosion to my tentative ears. I pulled myself back, in case he looked up. When I looked out again he did not seem to have stirred.
I finished a whole roll of film that night. I got him eating, coming out of the bathroom, standing at the kitchen sink drinking a glass of water. I went to bed shaking with excitement.

A few days later I wagged school and developed the photos in his darkroom. I was painstaking in my attention to detail, to ensure I did not leave a trace of my presence. Afterwards I looked through the photos in raptures. It was as though I were seeing him for the first time: pared back, revealed.

They are all here, in front of me, the ones I took that night, plus all the others. I am on my third glass of wine (not counting the ones at the exhibition). If only I could rediscover some of the euphoria, the triumph of that first time. But triumph is only experienced with the defeat of a strong opponent; beating an underdog is always tinged with bitterness.
On a whim I gather them up, form a neat pile and go outside to the front garden. It looks more and more like a jungle every day. God knows what is living in the thicket. I make my way in darkness down the side of the house, where I left the prunings of some plant or other the last time I got the impulse to garden. I bring them back to the main path and make a pile. Inserting some newspaper into the clump of twigs I light a match. Am I really going to do this? I’ve always been against big decisions when I’m drunk.
The twigs must have more sense than me; they are too damp to catch alight. I kick them across the yard, then go inside and put the photos back in their envelopes.

I lie down in bed but can’t sleep. How hubristic of me to think I can pick the scab off the past and then just put it back on the shelf. No more photographs though. I will lie here and think. I feel sober now, grateful I did not burn the pictures of my father. For better or worse, they are all I have left of him. I made the mistake of thinking that by burning them I could free myself of the feelings they inspire, when really those feelings are down there all the time, working away in the darkness, operating the machinery of my character. Perhaps it’s even good to bring them into the light once in a while, see what shape they have become.

I was in the darkroom, developing my latest film, when the front door opened. My whole body went cold; not just cold, frozen. I tried to think what I could do. My father had had the windows removed from the darkroom, so escape was out of the question. Nor was there anywhere to hide. I considered making a dash for it, then leaving home for good.
I listened to the footsteps coming up the hall. They veered off into my parent’s bedroom. Then they went through to the kitchen.
‘Robbie?’ mum called out. I started breathing again. I must have left some trace of myself in the kitchen.
‘I’m in the darkroom don’t come in!’
‘What?’
I could hear the footsteps coming back.
‘I’m in the darkroom. Don’t come in.’
She waited outside for me to finish. When I opened the door she was standing there, arms folded.
‘You’re supposed to be at school.’
‘I know.’
‘What are you doing in your father’s darkroom. He’d be furious if he found you in there.’
‘I’m developing some photos.’
‘What kind of photos?’
‘Just photos.’
‘Let me see.’
She looked through the photos, her brow knitted. I couldn’t read anything into her face. No anger, no surprise. When she was done she handed them back to me.
‘You took these?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does your father know?’
I shook my head.
‘You know how he’d feel if he found out.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, make sure you go to school tomorrow,’ she said, and left out the front door.
Three days later she left dad for good.

Surely it wasn’t my photos that caused her to leave. Good sense says this notion is absurd. Probably she had been planning to leave for years, maybe even decades. But maybe the photos gave her the resolve. Maybe they allowed her to finally see dad for what he was, unblinded by his charisma, his booming voice, the threat of those heavy arms. I should ask her some time, but it’s not really the sort of thing you can discuss over the phone.
When Sarah told me she wanted a divorce, the reason she gave was that she was sick of being married to a shell of a person. She said she was always trying to get at something deeper inside me, but I blocked her at every turn.
The thing is I could not help but agree with her. Sometimes I just feel empty, like the place where I should have grown into myself is a void.

I moved in with mum. Occasionally I would go back and visit dad. There were always dishes piled up in his sink, and his bin was full of eggshells and bean-cans. Most of the time he was sitting in front of the television. His jowls started to sag.
Once I asked him if he wanted to go and take some photos. I thought maybe it would bring a little focus back into his life. But he told me he had sold his camera. Later when I was taking his trash out I found pieces of it strewn on the brickwork.
When I told him I was going to study photography he said nothing. He just made his usual chewing motion and stared at the screen.

The next day, between shoots, I go and visit Mardi. She has clients there with her, and seems distracted. She tells me to wait. I walk around the gallery, looking at the same photos as last night. They are different. No, photos stay the same; it’s people who change, the way we look at them.
Mardi sees her clients out and asks me what’s wrong. She seems surprised at my visit. It isn’t the sort of reception I expected after her multiple offers of friendship. Perhaps the offers are part of the service, not meant to be taken literally.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I say. ‘I just… Look, I’ll come right out with it. Would you like to go out for dinner with me some time?’
‘Ah.’ That’s all she says for a while. I can feel my eyes starting to water. I look at the photographs for diversion.
‘You seem like a really nice guy but-’
I hold up a hand.
‘Enough said.’
‘Hang on-’
‘Really, you can spare me the explanation. I’ve made enough of a fool out of myself already.’
‘I don’t think you’re a fool.’
‘Well that’s very kind of you,’ I say, backing out of the gallery. The light seems sharper when I step outside. I’m still shaking from putting myself on the line. Now I burst out laughing. I can’t control