Scenario for photograph no.4
by Carl Lavery
In roughly 3.2 seconds from now the pensive man in the black suit and round spectacles will find himself subjected to an interrogation. This – the interrogation – will be the performance. His interrogator will wear a black suit and round spectacles and look exactly like the man under interrogation. He will sit on the uncomfortable-looking purple chair in front of the prominent wall-socket, and cross his hands in priestly fashion while catching sight of his tensed profile in the reflective chrome of the chair directly opposite him. He will look at his shoes and notice a thin smear of red earth on the otherwise clean toe cap of the left shoe. Immediately after that he will feel suddenly engulfed with a strange sense of sadness as he catches sight of the emptiness between the chairs. He will see grains of dust held in the air there like so much suspended matter in the short stream of light that will come from the window on the left-hand side of the room. At this he will stifle a feeling of nausea. His palms will sweat slightly, but he will conduct himself with charm and even strive (despite his better judgement) to seduce. The whole episode will be filmed by two men wearing black suits and round spectacles. They too will look exactly like the interrogator and his pensive victim. Their activity will also be filmed from behind a crimson curtain by a cameraman wearing a black suit and round spectacles. The entire mise-en-scene will resemble the earrings worn by the cow advertising Le Vache qui rit cheese, an image which has haunted the victim since his first visit to a French supermarket in Le Havre in 1977.(1) The only difference between the two protagonists in what we might call the Ur-scenario of interrogation is that the interrogator will be wearing a different brand of aftershave, a brand which is slightly more expensive and refined. It will not improve his love life and the intense feelings of erotic misery that have consumed him for days will persist unabated. They will be ferocious. 35 seconds into the interrogation he will hear the sound – the banal sound - of light rain spitting on the roof of the building, but there will be no real rain just the simulacrum of digital weather. He will realise this and feel indifferent. After 75.7 seconds, the original man in the black suit and round spectacles will want to get up and go to the toilet, but an odd sense of anxiety and foreboding will prevent him from doing so. He will frown while remembering his time as an actor. The memory will make him feel worse. Then at 88.9 seconds precisely he will feel inconsolably saddened by the fact that he had never had a sister. This feeling of loss for an intimacy he never shared will remain with him throughout the interrogation and will eventually lead to a single teardrop falling from the corner of his eye and leaving a faint trace on the right-hand side of his face. He will not taste the salt of the tear as it will have finished running its downward course 5.7 millimetres from his mouth. At the exact moment when the teardrop loses its liquidity and turns saline, he will carefully reach into the top pocket of his suit, remove a sheet of paper and unfold it slowly. With a sense of lassitude, he will read the following enigmatic lines, the mystery of which will be heightened by the strangely comforting musicality of his foreign accent:
Some time after his return, he was transferred to another part of the camp. He knew that his jailers would not spare him. He had been a tool in their hands, his childhood image had been used as bait to condition him, he had lived up to their expectations, he had played his part.
1 In the image the cow advertising the cheese is wearing earrings upon which the consumer sees a similar image in miniature. This continues ad infinitum. In French, the technical term for this glimpse into infinity is mise-en-abyme (literally: putting something into the abyss). This explains, perhaps, the sense of horror that such a glimpse often provokes in the consciousness of those witnessing it.
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