Richard wasn’t interested in anything he had to say about Capa.
I think you went because of Dad.
I don’t know. Maybe in some way I did.
But you didn’t see Dad’s war. You saw another war.
You’re right. There are lots of wars.
It was the closest moment they’d had since he had got home. Too close, in that room, on a day like that one, with the trees bare and the leaves on the ground, when the past pressed them closer. Richard took down his hands and looked at Jonny for a moment. They were men now, not boys, two men looking into each other across a room. He did not know if his brother had done that before, seen him as a man, as much a man as their father or himself. And then Richard walked out of the room and there were only the photos on the table, the pretty ones, the Japanese ones, the ones of the pretty girl, and beside all that maumau they seemed like nothing.
It was true, what he had said. It had been surprisingly easy to get in, whoever you were, that first mad modern war where photographers got to go everywhere. The trip to Vietnam had been an accident, as far as he was concerned, an aberration, as it seemed now, though at the time it had seemed intentional, fated even, the turning of a circle. Even if to others it seemed an achievement. How could he explain that to his brother? That those photos, which so impressed people that they remembered him for them, which had made a magazine cover, and which might even have been the start of a career, seemed all a mistake and even a shame. That there was no courage in them but only chance, and rush, and fear. The weight of the camera in his hands, the cold consciousness of the camera, as if only the lens saw what he himself could not bear to see and the hands were helpless to help.
Surprising how doors opened to you sometimes. Offered you a chance to be Capa, running into battle with a camera around your neck. To be a hero like Capa. Like your own father even. To see war. Shouldn’t a young man see war? Wasn’t the greatest photographer the photographer of war, of life and death?
Hey, Richard, see this. This is more than anything you’re ever likely to see. See what your father might have seen. Get in closer. That was what Capa said made a photographer great, getting in close.
Turn war into images. Make money out of it. Let the men and women in your pictures stand for men and women anywhere. The victims, and the soldiers. Fix them in that moment in their lives or their deaths. So what if they are individuals each with their own future, who might be recognised later, those who survive, when they’re not soldiers or victims any more. You don’t have responsibility for them. You’re only the one behind the camera. You are producing the images for other people to see, that either they think they want to see or you think they ought to see. Richard wouldn’t understand how it felt. In Tokyo there had been a friend who might have understood, but he didn’t see him any more. His friend had been at the war but he had been a soldier, in front of the camera, not behind it. He, like their father, like those victims, wasn’t ever going to escape having been there. Even if he had a home like this to escape to, a safe home where nobody knew any of that. Where there was a view open in all directions. A wide sky. Nice clouds. Hedged fields. A girlfriend who would travel halfway across the world to visit him.
She stood at the front door.
He said, I want a picture of you there. Just like that, standing there with your back to it, like it’s your house. Like a child’s picture of a house and its owner.
But if I owned it, she said, I’d be going in, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t be standing here looking out.
OK then, open the door and stand in the doorway.
Why?
I’m so happy to have you here, I want it to look like you belong. He was walking away with the camera, then stopping to look through the lens.
I don’t belong, she said. I’m spare. I sleep in the spare room, remember?
She turned about and reached for the brass knocker. It was a big black door, with a fanlight above it. He would have a picture of the door and the back of a short Japanese girl knocking.
Take that one.
He was happy that she had come during this spell of fine weather. The garden was full of flowers. The house had the windows thrown open. This was the home that he wanted her to see. Stand at the door, I want to take a picture of you there. He had a sudden thought that he should have used black-and-white film. Somewhere in the family albums there was a picture of his mother in the same spot, a grey image of a young woman in a summer dress with one hand to the half-open door, looking out as if she was saying goodbye to someone in a departing car, of which you saw just a bulbous 1950s wing, a wheel hub and a door, and at the same time she was putting out a hand to the dog, their old retriever Jess, to stop her from running out in front of the car. But Kumiko turned to face the door and knocked. That’s lovely, he
