Frame 39

By Rick Shands

In two different timelines, an architect finds his perfect obsession,  and a writer chases the source of 39 mysterious photos across the globe. Like the very twins that pop up throughout this impeccable novel, the journeys of both main characters take them to the same spritual historical sites that often share different historical soci

• Language: English
• Publisher: RebelBooksPress.com
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088087077

Book preview

Commencement

She set the canister on the kitchen counter. It had brought with it the faint briny smell of the sea, where it had been for who knows how long. She recognized it, encased in a thin coating of barnacles, and, rattling it, had guessed that it did indeed contain a roll of film. The question was: what would happen when she opened it.

If it contained a roll of film, and exposed film at that, what risk was there that opening the canister would destroy whatever images were contained on the strip of celluloid? The canister seemed intact, and well-sealed; it appeared to be the older, aluminum type with the screw-on top, as opposed to the later plastic type. Should she free it of barnacles first, then try to unscrew the top? She picked up the phone, and watched her half-reflection in the kitchen window, clouds darkening beyond, as she speed-dialed Marc’s number.

Marc, it’s Jennifer.

Hey Jenn! How’s your New Found Land?

It’s good. I’m settling in. Listen, I was down on the rocks doing my Caspar David Friedrich ‘Pondering the Immensity’ thing this morning when I came upon a film canister.

So the script is finished, film in the can, and ready to roll already?

No, no. I think it’s a roll of 35mm still film, like Kodak or whatever. It’s covered in barnacles – the canister – one of those aluminum types with a screw-on top. Maybe it’s my message in a bottle, and I’m wondering what the risks are if I mangle it to get it open. So I thought I’d ask the photojournalist world traveler. What do you think? Ever have this happen to you?

Well, if the canister is intact and airtight, then the film could still be good. Risks of the maritime crusties infecting the film? I doubt it. Evaporation on contact with air? That’s of some possibility, but we can control that.

I like that you say we, because, to be honest, my other problem will be developing the film. This place might be ‘on the edge of time and in a by- gone era’, but it’s all digital here. No one locally does developing. Not even at the newspaper. I was wondering if I could send it to you, both to crack and to develop?

For sure. You’ll want prints with that?

That would be great. It’ll be my storyboard, maybe.

Well, ship it off. Hey you know my little project on Matthew Brady? Did you know there was express mail service in the 1850s? Adams Express. ‘Plus ça change’, n’est pas?

"That is cool. I think it will be DHL from here. Or maybe standard postal services. I’ll take it around today. Thanks, Marc."

Jennifer carefully packed her hope into a tissue-swathed box, found an express mail service outpost, and shipped it off. Marc was both her oldest, and her most long-time still friend. They had known each other since she was twenty, and he forty. He figured in a documentary she was involved in, and his studio mesmerized her with the walls of photos that seemed to click into patterns of narrative connections, of countless story possibilities, as she looked around. And the stories he could tell: from his native Algeria, through war corresponding, travel photography and more, never ceased to entertain. They gravitated to different coasts, but kept in contact. Now, ten years on and back in New York, it was Marc who drove her up to his friend’s house in Paradise, Newfoundland.

Jennifer continued her trips down to the shore. She was fascinated by the sea’s ceaseless lapping and sometimes bashing of the stalwart, craggy interface presented by the land. She admired the active, caressing persistence of the one, and the passive, muscular persistence of the other. She downloaded images of paintings by Friedrich, had a hiking couple take photos of her from behind overlooking the Atlantic, and spliced herself into the paintings: landscapes, seascapes, church ruins. She spliced herself into her own photos of open seascapes, seascapes with icebergs, landscapes, town- and village-scapes, recreating Friedrich’s world into her own.

It took a few days, but Marc called her back. Hey you. Successful operation. The possibly still-live donor – I don’t know much about barnacles – yielded up the contents, well preserved. It developed OK – 39 images, or 38 and three-quarters images. The last one may have got a bit exposed to light when the photographer removed the spool from the camera.

And?

And I did the prints. Eight by tens, matte finish.

And??

Well, whoever it was, was no photographer. Looks like a travel record. Someone who sketches too. Not too good at, or bothered with, composition. Especially at the end. Frame 39 is, well, have a look. I’m not sure what it is showing. But you know what Diane Arbus said about pictures: the more they tell you, the less you know. I’m sending them off now. DHL is just down the street. You’ll have them tomorrow, if they know where Paradise is.

Thanks, Marc. You have me intrigued. And of course that was your intention.

But of course.

The package arrived two days later. Marc had done the prints sprocket holes and all, so the numbering was on each one: the chronological record of someone’s movements in space and time, apparently over some part of the globe. The preserved record of one person’s interests, from day to day, from time to time. No apparent narrative in it: from the start looking down on an airport, partly blocked by the wing and jet engine of the plane, there were various shots of places, of sketches in a sketchbook, of people, a curious concentration on twins mostly posed somewhat awkwardly, looking at the camera as if to say, ‘what’s the big deal?’ or ‘we’re not freaks, you know’. And the curious, fading suggestion of frame 39 → 39A.

Frame 1

It was a cold day. Light frost dusted just about everything, and thicker snow hugged the buildings and trees where fields had been carved out in what were apparently the shadows of these thicknesses on the earth. The trees were mostly conifers, and aside from the airport buildings, the buildings were mostly of pitched roofs in grey and black – homes and farm buildings. There was a hint of glittering water – a lake, most likely – in one corner that, along with the distinct shadow lines, showed that the sun was out, but fairly low in the sky, probably. ‘Could almost be here,’ thought Jennifer. ‘And now,’ looking out as sun broke through again through the shifting bumper car clouds.

She had taped them all to the wall, pulling the dining table away to get a clear view. Frames 1 through 39, in three rows of thirteen. But she was of two minds whether to take the images in their sequence, or work back and forth to build the metapicture behind. The full story, if there even was one, was laid out, maybe with an end, maybe not; maybe with a beginning, maybe not. Would it be possible to reconstruct what connected the frames, by taking them one at a time – as if, like for the photographer himself, or herself, each frame revealed itself only in time, with little or no foreseeable prediction as to what would be photographed next, or why?

‘Mostly conifers, it snows there, houses with pitched roofs in black and greys seen through the snow, which also seemed more intact on the shadow side than the side getting sun. So, snow was melting, air temperature was not too cold, but there was frost, or maybe a light powdery dusting of new snow’. It occurred to Jennifer that she didn’t know much, or anything, about conifers. How to tell a pine from a spruce tree? And if you were just trying to locate a place, did it much matter?

She took a walk toward the woods, looking for differences in form, color, height, something. She came upon the same couple who had photographed her by the sea.

Ready for full frontals now? said the man with a grin.

Jennifer smiled. I’m into tree-looking today, wondering just what kinds of conifers these are.

Mostly pine, a smattering of spruce. Interesting you should ask because it’s a bit of a transition here on the island. Note the few oak as well. Further inland, there are more spruce. Further south, the deciduous start to pick up: oak, poplar, elm even. Further north, well, you’re eventually hitting the tree line. What’s the new found interest?

Just wondering how much of the world is covered with similar trees. Probably a lot.

Yeah, certainly. The Northern hemisphere wears like a cap, fringed with terminal moraines and crocheted with conifers, pretty much the same style cap all around, I would guess, ornamented with glittery lakes here and there said the woman looking round the treetops surrounding them, and practically wearing the cap she had just described.

They parted, with Jennifer hovering over an airport somewhere, looking down on trees like this, somewhere.

Back in the kitchen, she looked at the assembled images. Of course, if this person had been on a plane, he (she decided he would be a he, it was, after all, a male hand in frame two) would know where he was going, and an assumption that the next photo would indicate where that was, was not so out of line. She allowed herself to think ahead at least a bit.

Frame 3

Acurving colonnade, in ruins, fragmented columns in the foreground sweeping to the left then around to the right beyond before ending. The sweep of the columns embraces a moat-like body of water, with a curbed, curving piece of land within containing rising and falling ruins in brick. More brick ruins could be seen beyond, arching, thrusting and rising like Friedrich’s Das Eismeer, like some wild natural phenomenon beyond the containment of man’s civilizing attempts, which now lay in ruins. And one lone, bulbous conifer perched above just beyond. In the water, concentric rings could be seen, as if something had been tossed in just before the photo was taken. A good luck coin tossed to ensure return? Jennifer recognized the brick as Roman brick, the capitals on the columns as Ionic, and so felt safe enough to guess she was now in Italy somewhere. Was it safe to return to the first image again? To begin the journey?

Frame 1A

It did not appear to be a huge airport. The terminal was smallish, although the full extent of it was blocked in the view by the plane’s wing. ‘Perhaps my traveler had thought too late that it would make a good shot, rummaged for his camera, fumbled to get the case open, and was ready too late,’ she thought. ‘I would have appreciated the whole thing, thank you.’ There appeared to be a tower of some sort under construction on the landside in the center of the photo. On the airside, a pod of maybe ten docking bays could be seen, and the hint of a curving line of a building facing the tarmac was terminated by the wing, lost too in the glint of sunlight off the edge of the wing at just that spot. That there was such forest and farmland so close suggested it was not near a big city, certainly not a La Guardia, but still this was not limiting the possibilities much. Large enough planes could land there, so Italy could certainly be within its reach. Then she noticed something. Most of the planes had on their tails what appeared to be the same logo. As if the airport were a hub.

She couldn’t make out what the logo was, so she rummaged a bit for a magnifying glass. Not expecting to find one, she broke off and headed into the village. Finding a cheap one, she came back and came up to the wall of photos. It looked to be 545, which would have made some sense on one, but not all of them. Then it struck her: in dark letters on a white background, each one read SAS.

Instinctively, she was on the phone to Marc.

Marc, it’s me. Listen, this is bizarre I know, but are you up for a trip, leaving Gettysburg and box cameras and all behind for a while?

Yeah, maybe. What in the world is up?

I’ve been looking at these photos, trying almost to climb inside them, and I’ve been trying to figure out where, if not when, they were taken. And I just had a breakthrough on frame one, where it all begins, at least in this sequence.

The airport shot. I remember. What’s the breakthrough? You know which one it is?

I’ve realized the logo on the planes is SAS. Swedish Airlines, isn’t it?

Scandinavian Airlines Something. You have internet there, right?

I’m firing it up as we speak. I’m so excited.

So what are you thinking? Sounds like you have in mind more than doing riffs on these photos.

I do, yeah. I’m thinking I want to follow this. Literally.

To Oslo. Or wherever. And then?

Oslo. Wait, wait. I’m searching images. Oslo Airport…. ‘Gardemoan’. No, that’s not it, I don’t think.

Try Arlanda.

Where? How do you spell that?

Stockholm. It’s Stockholm’s airport.

OK. OK, Stockholm…. Hmmm. Maybe. Hey I think that’s it.

I was there once...

"That is it! That’s it! Stockholm. It’s expanded since this but, yeah, that is it. He started in Stockholm!"

You’re sure. So now what?

I need to go. That’s all. I just need to go.

Frame 2

Apparently still on the plane, or maybe again on a plane, the photo showed a sketchbook, open and with one left hand holding the book down and flat, covering most of the verso page. To the right, a number of sketches forming a pattern of interlocking squares filled the page, almost obsessively, composed of lines and dots that reminded her of the photos on the walls of Marc’s studio all those years ago, when patterns jumped out at her, connecting some photos and not others into a narrative, like John Nash’s visions in A Beautiful Mind . ‘Maybe I am a little crazy,’ she thought, ‘even if I am pursuing a narrative, rather than being pursued by one.’

Through the fingers of the hand could be seen the words, or letters, or word fragments ‘arvis’ and, below that, ‘nkring sig’. From ‘arvis’ there was an arcing arrow to one of the squares with a dotted square within. Jennifer guessed there was a full note hidden beneath, but what it might be, she didn’t have a clue, or she had clues, but couldn’t read them. The fold-down tray of the passenger seat was visible, as was the back of the seat in front, some non-descript pattern with a dark background. Plastic, maybe from a blanket, was wedged between the seat and the side of the plane’s interior. In fact the interior looked just like where she sat, but then, airplanes had looked pretty much the same for years, and from plane to plane, as far as she could remember. Only the pattern of the upholstery changed.

The flight was a time for writing, sleeping if she could, and of course movies. She had to smile when she saw that A Beautiful Mind was playing on the Classics channel. Of course she took it in.

It was a different day at Arlanda as she landed: warm, sunny, the clear smell of spring victorious in the air as she stood with bus ticket in hand for the ride into Stockholm. She guessed she was looking at the tower that was under construction in the photo, now complete. It reminded her of twins, conjoined along the back – she in black and white, looking one way, he in white and black and a bit taller, looking the other. The most handsome control tower she had ever seen, she thought, way better than the one at LAX, which was an abomination, really.

Jennifer had had plenty of time to work out just what she would do when she came to Sweden, but she really hadn’t a clue. Maybe it was just to imbibe the atmosphere. The bus glided into town and the driver spoke, first in Swedish, then in somewhat comical English announcing their arrival. Her hotel attracted her with its name, Nordic Light. It was nearby, central, and, she guessed, very Swedish modern. She settled in quickly, a quick brushing of the teeth and hair, and was out on the streets still without a clue. She meandered for hours in a small roughly modern center, ringed by a more historic periphery, across bridges and into the middle ages of the Old Town. ‘Here is probably The Place to Live’, she thought, as a woman struggled somewhat to get a pram with an infant out from a narrow half- door and down a stone step onto the cobblestones. In the large windows on the first floor of the next building were long, white tables with people at computer screens, PARVIS ARKITEKTER in crisp, thin white letters in the lower right of one of the large panes. ‘Also the place to work’, she noted.

At a café, she asked what were probably a Swedish couple about the little bit of writing to be found in the second photograph. For this one, said the woman, pointing to ‘arvis’, I don’t know, maybe parvis, which means by two’s. What do you think? she said turning to the man. No, no other idea, said the man, and the other part, maybe it’s ‘omkring sig’, with ‘o,m’, not ‘o,n’, which means ‘around itself ’. Like, I don’t know, ‘he always had a lot of friends around himself.’ Does that help?"

Jennifer didn’t know if it helped or didn’t help. Just now, it didn’t, but it might, eventually.

‘how goes it?’ came the sms vibrating and pinging in her bag. She fished out her phone and read. Marc. ‘Stockholm grey and lovely. Just walking about, taking it in. new center, old town, water, bridges, grey sky, chill now in the pm,’ she sent off to him. ‘Matt and I have been thinking of you. Where you off to next?’ Marc always got charmingly personal with his subjects; it often came through in his work as well. He was great with people, great with kids, no matter, it seemed, what the circumstances. He probably keeps a photo of Matthew Brady in his wallet, she smiled. ‘Rome tomorrow. Haven’t really figured where pic 3 is taken yet, just guessing.’ ‘let me know if you need anything OK?’ ‘D’accord!’

‘Probably not going to join me,’ she thought. ‘But that’s OK. Stockholm feels like a place to be solitary, or have I simply seen too many Bergman films. Come to think of it, I don’t know any other Swedish filmmakers.

Must do something about that.’ She asked directions to a cinema, and was directed back up what was apparently Queen’s Street, a long pedestrian street, to a large square with, lo and behold, the blue building where the Nobel Prize ceremonies take place, where John Nash himself once stood. The offerings at the cinema were 100% American, and she asked for where she might find an actual Swedish film. It won’t be subtitled, you know, said the young man with an American accent. "There’s an SF cinema just around the corner showing, what would it be? ‘Let The Right One In’, I guess. ‘Vampire in the Swedish suburb’," he said, doing a bit of a theatrical ghoulish dance. Sound good? Yeah, why not? The young man led Jennifer around to the cinema, and waved goodbye. She stood in the red foyer and wondered, ‘I’m a writer, and I’m going to see a film in a language I don’t understand. Maybe that’s good. Maybe it’s good not to know too much. I’ll write my own script." She bought her ticket, and went in.

Still stunned as she walked out into the considerably colder night air, haunted still by the music, Jennifer almost thought she had her mission right there – a Hollywood re-make. Although that seemed to diminish what she had just seen. ‘Anyway, something to take a note on. Future project. I’m on a trail right now.’ She asked after the Nordic Light Hotel, and found to her relief that it was just down the street.

The rather cool modernism of the hotel by day had given way to a decidedly more fantastical environment with the interiors now illuminated without competition from the grey light outside that seemed to suck light away from things. She thought about the palette of the film she had just seen – greys, whites, black, blond hair, pale skin, a world where color had been virtually sucked out, except for the blood. Was it Bergman let loose? All the suppression in his black and white and grey world finally seeping out, washing away, even destroying life? But here in the hotel was a wonderland. Perhaps Sweden needed more time to get to know. It had certainly come to her with a reputation that the film both confirmed in its bleakness and confounded in its violence. But she had scheduled a flight to Rome for the next day, and she would be on it.

Day 1

The presentation had gone well, handshakes all around. John left the university town he had left so many years before, determined then never to return. But the Church was headquartered there, and so meetings on the new commission took place there. He took a bus to the airport, ready to start, ready to seek real inspiration. Because the real work, the real spark, couldn’t come until he had seen the ground, smelt and felt the place and the movement of the sun across it. So far, the client had been content with his ideas. But there was a process, moving those ideas to reality. And he had to follow it. It was like a path, always the same, yet always different because the place was different, the goal had changed, there was a new purpose.

From the plane, he realized he had a chance to snap a photo of his control tower, now well under construction. He fumbled in his carry-on, pulled out the camera, unsnapped the case and removed the lens cap, and snapped it, centered in the photo, just before it disappeared behind the wing. Then he settled back, sketchbook on the table tray, and began testing further ideas.

Day 2

He knew Rome well, had sketched and sketched here for several weeks years ago. Had studied St. Peter’s square, learned the word ‘parvis’ there, and of course sketched it from every vantage, including from atop Michelangelo’s dome.

So the real goal for this stop-over was Hadrian’s Villa, a place he had been fascinated over, mostly in plan rather than from the photographic vignettes he had seen. A collage city in miniature, it seemed a good place to take in before moving on to reviewing the site. Trying to negotiate his way there, he wondered if in the end it would have been better to have taken a taxi. It certainly took him more than the ‘one hour, maximum’ the agent had assured him it would.

Spring had come earlier to Rome, and trees were in blossom a good month before they would be seen in Stockholm. Being a Wednesday, perhaps, there were not so many people around. John practically had Hadrian’s travel collections to himself, or the ruins of them. ‘It was in a way good,’ he thought, ‘to not show too much. Leave something to the imagination. It was probably too complete when finished, actually.’ Somehow, he knew that would be part of the design, part of how ecumenism had to work, especially across religions. You couldn’t think you knew in advance what form it would take. The building, or complex, would have that sense of incompleteness. He bought the guidebook that had the best plan – a fold- out version with good detail, painstakingly made. He loved the way the buildings and forms crashed together, almost as if they had been driven from the corners of Hadrian’s Empire, and parked there willy-nilly. The plan was to spend the day walking and sketching. He had his camera, but rarely used it. The sketches were sometimes quick and impressionistic, sometimes careful and methodical. Sometimes the ruins looked more like rocky landscapes in the sharply defining sun, sometimes the curve of an ionic capital was carefully transcribed.

As the day lengthened its shadows, he was satisfied, and found himself sketching more a building to be than the buildings that were. It was time to move on. He drove back to the airport, driving through Rome for old times’ sake, and took a cab to his hotel.

Frame 3A

Back at the airport early, she bade farewell to the towering twins, locked in their embrace that, with the new morning, she saw as possibly the start of a pas de deux, something potentially more fluid, more uplifting, albeit with the risk of tragedy as well.

The plane arced up to a southerly route and bore her and the others to something else in Italy. She had bought a Lonely Planet guide to Italy and read as she had probably never read a travel guide before. None of the images clicked, but the general palette of Roman brick, white marble columns, a mix of classical column capital styles, cypress trees (those she recognized) and other conifers that continued to elude her continued to confirm to her that her instinct was correct.

Heading into the capital center, she thought about that she had not been in Rome for some time, possibly ten years. Absentmindedly she checked her phone for word from Marc. In the taxi, she found herself in the epicenter of classical architecture, and it occurred to her that she had just come from a northern outpost of this style that had found its way to all corners of the earth, imitated, duplicated, transmogrified, as with any language she had studied. And it was good to be in a sound environment where she could connect, understand, and communicate. She checked into the same hotel where she had last stayed on Via Margutta, installed herself, and quickly hit the streets of this city she loved.

The bookstore on Via del Babuino was still there. How much time she had spent browsing, and occasionally buying, there. Rather than browse this time, she went directly to a sales clerk, took out the photo of frame 3, and asked for assistance in locating this. She was taken to the Architecture section and handed over to a young woman who took the photo, and knew pretty much immediately what it was. She turned and walked down an aisle, reached up and pulled a book from the shelf: Villa Adriana: Il Sogno Di Un Imperatore. This is your place – Villa Adriana; it’s just outside of Rome near the town of Tivoli, not more than half an hour from here. The Dream of an Emperor. In memory of all the hours spent browsing here, she bought the book.

Jennifer decided to entrust herself to a taxi driver rather than her own driving. Years of defiant carlessness in Manhattan had the occasional downside, and Rome was probably not the place to get back behind the wheel. The drive was also more pleasant without the stress or responsibility. History passed her by, giving way to progressively bleaker suburbs that were suddenly not unlike ‘Let The Right One In’ that made her sit up and look more closely. These gave way to countryside via a non-descript highway, followed by a slow arc into the village of Adrianno before the driver deposited her at the entrance to the emperor’s dream.

It was a magical, dreamlike place, vistas giving way to vistas, hints of buildings yielding to other thoughts of places long ago, like waking from a dream and feeling it all slip away. Then, as she circumnavigated a copse of conifers with one in particular popping up like an umbrella or an ancient fan to cool the emperor on a day like today, she found herself standing before it – Il Teatro Marittimo, the Maritime Theater – practically in the place from where the photo had been taken: the sweep of the colonnade, captured in reflection in the still water, the little island of ruins, and beyond, arching and thrusting ruins in brick, and the umbrella tree. ‘What did he see here?’ she thought. ‘What do I see? Is this place the work of a man who maybe would not be king, but was? Someone who furthered an empire, but preferred a dream? A man who loved intensely, but one of his own, not an opposite?’ She found herself a spot to sit, and lost herself further in the book she had bought.

Traveling back into the city past black-skied suburbs, she decided she would visit the Capitoline Museums in the morning, where works excavated from the Villa had in part been taken. Dinner was a simple luxury. Tomorrow, the barren ruins would be populated.

*

Marc’s text message awaited her in the morning: ‘report from Rome awaited.’ ‘frame 3 is Villa Adriano. Was there yesterday. Today I will visit its one-time residents,’ she responded. ‘We are searching for something in particular?’ came the reply. ‘hard to say. What do you mean ‘we’ my stay-at-home world traveler?’ ‘email me!’

She found there was wifi at the trattoria. ‘Modern times everywhere’, she thought.

Hey.

I tracked frame 3 to Hadrian’s Villa, not far from Rome’s heart. Very beautiful ruins, actually. I think it’s where Hadrian’s heart was. ‘The Reluctant Emperor,’ I have dubbed him. According to the guidebook, the artwork and artifacts have mostly been removed to two museums – the Capitoline Museums and the Vatican Museum – along with a whole load of statues removed to nearby Villa d’Este, oh, and pilfering for tourists in the 17th century. ‘Plus ҫa change’, as you would say. I want to see what there is, what life there was in those movie sets. I bought a book with subtitle The Dream of an Emperor. I do like that. I will start with the Capitoline Hill. A good morning walk. More later.

She could easily lose herself in museums like the Capitoline. She could feel the hand that honed the statue, that laid the mosaics, the sculptor that kept the vision of someone he knew alive in his mind’s eye as he searched the marble block for the form within, the object of his act of re-creation slowly coming forth as he chipped away. The marbles in particular fascinated Jennifer – hair and irises, lips and skin, gowns and togas with folds and embroidery, all reduced to a pallid, quiet, death-like repose that rendered them timelessly alive: noblemen and noblewomen, satyrs and gods, Cicero, Augustus, Venus, Agrippina, and one particularly attractive young man, possibly Hadrian’s lover, possibly Hermes, that Marc would have enjoyed. She herself was particularly drawn to an intertwined Cupid and Psyche. She couldn’t recall if these statues were thought to have been painted, which, she thought, would have rendered them as lifeless as mannequins in a storefront window. She came upon a