This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover photograph, design, typesetting and ebook authoring by Phil Strahl.
THE CAMERA
A SHORT STORY
The sky was clear, the air was dry but the big trees at the Arkonaplatz provided some shelter from the unforgiving heat of the summer sun. It was that Sunday a while ago I purchased the camera. My trip to the little flea market was merely one made out of exhaustion and tedium and I didn’t expect stumbling across anything there I would like to own. Yet there was that big old camera bag made out of gray leather, a little shabby and quite dusty, but I was intrigued the minute I laid my eyes upon it. The man behind the booth encouraged me to take the camera out of its leathery confinement and have a good look at it.
Being a traditionally trained photographer I instantly recognized the black body and heavy frame as being a Japanese medium format camera produced in the 1970’s, a Mamiya RB67. Its body and lens appeared worn and used but a swift examination from all angles did not reveal any apparent defects. I was convinced that I had to own it at any price and this determination got the better of me as I negotiated the price. It obviously was beyond the expectations of the previous owner as he wanted me to have the camera’s bag as well. I had no use for an old, greasy and scruffy looking bag but I realized that it would make the transport of the camera much less cumbersome so I took it and left the friendly shadows of the market.
Eager for some privacy and comfort to review and inspect my hefty impulse purchase further, I strolled down a couple of quiet, almost deserted streets to escape the beaten tracks of the tourists flooding the much more popular Mauerpark flea market that lost its appeal a long time ago, being picked clean of every treasure there ever was. Now it was a hotbed of shady ostentatious peddlers selling bulky refuse for prices elsewhere reserved for antiques, budding underground artists dreaming of being internationally discovered and crate upon crate of broken junk.
After half an hour’s brisk walk in the scorching heat I was glad to discover a small staircase of a former coal cellar that lead to a small café half a floor below the city’s sidewalks. A whiff of cool, damp air greeted me before my eyes could adapt to the sudden absence of light. Two little wooden tables with rickety chairs flanked the entrance, a blackboard above the bar advertised drinks and prices and the owner (or waitress?) leaned against the counter, looking down, her face being hidden behind a long streak of green hair from one side of her scalp. The other half was bald. I ordered water and a latte macchiato. She looked up and the green hair shortly revealed a pretty face with a nose ring. She mumbled a word of confirmation and went straight back to the little screen in her hands. I looked around and noticed another small room with more tables to the left. The walls were unpainted and rough, the tables battered yet not without a certain charm of dilapidation, probably a trademark of establishments in the eastern districts of this city.
I placed myself on a heavy table there, below the small cellar window looking out at the street. The sun shone harshly through it, bounced off the table and illuminated the whole room in a warm, indirect glow. It was the perfect place to spread the contents of the camera bag.
The bag’s leather appeared now in worse condition than before: It was incredibly dirty at the base and emitted strange musty odors of mildew and decay. Where the metal of the buckles was not blackened by dirt, it was red with rust. One leather strap was torn and what in its time must have been an expensive bag now presented itself as a dismal pile of accumulated neglect.
Once again I lifted the camera out of the case and placed it into the angular shape of the sunlight before me. Apart from the scratches I had noticed before, it still was in good shape and complete with a hooded reflex screen on top, attached lens on the front and a black magazine on the back for holding and advancing the film. A deep white scratch scarred the left side of the body, corrosion had taken its toll on the trigger’s ring and the hood of the reflect screen was severely grazed. However those deficiencies appeared to be only cosmetic in nature, the system presented itself as mechanically sound. Nothing rattled or clattered and even the hinges of the bellow were sufficiently greased. Yes, the camera looked worn, the edges dented and the cladding dull, yet below those imperfections a hint of its heydays persisted. Somebody had once cared a great deal for this hunk of metal. Despite the fact of being stashed god knows where for at least ten to fifteen years, it had endured this punishment well, and perhaps it was still functioning. How much of the world’s sights have been captured with this camera, I wondered.
Suddenly I felt the thrill of taking a picture and tried to recall the appropriate procedure for this wholly analog camera. At first one needed to remove the darkslide between the attached magazine and body. While clumsily fingering for the handle I realized that the magazine still held a little white piece of torn paper with black and green lettering on its back in a frame of the same dimensions, “Ilford HP5 Plus 400”. I folded open the hood on top and a magnifying lens swung up over the focusing screen that presented a cropped view of the door and anteroom in front upside down. In search for a makeshift subject I pointed the camera at the girl with the green hair preparing my coffee behind the counter. I pushed the button and a hearty snap assured me that also shutter and aperture still appeared undamaged, although the loud sound prompted an irritated and annoyed look in the waitress. With an apologetic gesture I put back the darkslide and advanced the film. The little inspection window on top showed the number 9. So there still was a film inside and there still was one room for one more exposure.
“Hope it was good because that’s the first and the last picture you take of me, understood?” the girl with the green hair dryly commented as she set the coffee and water harshly down on the table. Without another glance she went back to her place behind the counter and directed her attention once again fully towards her phone.
I had now established that the camera had been not that bad a purchase and was functioning better than expected. And still I felt as if the camera was hiding something from me like a buried treasure barely beneath the surface only waiting to be found. With nothing else to do I went on and fumbled through the compartments, occasionally with the need to ignore my disgust for all the filth. After a few minutes with waning excitement I ended up with a short blunt pencil, two bottle caps of drinks I was unable to identify, a worn greasy cloth, a wire release (functioning) and a number of empty film cartridge spools. My disappointment was as silly as it was palpable. Did I really believe to just happen to find the needle in the hay, a needle that most likely wasn’t even there? I chuckled to myself at my childish dreams, emptied the glass of water and took the behemoth back into its ugly resting place. But over a sip of coffee I noticed that despite the table’s flat surface the camera’s hood was clearly protruding unevenly from the bag. The marks in the bag’s flap assured me that it was like this since the camera was stored, still, I couldn’t help but feel that this unbalanced placement of the camera might not have been intended by the manufacturer of what once was an expensive professional camera bag. I lifted the camera once again and set to investigate.
The bottom was padded with a dirty protective cotton that had been stitched on one side to the inner walls of the bag and hence was not as easy to remove as I had anticipated. Nonetheless what was concealed underneath rewarded for my naïve quest fo
r The Hidden Gem in a way that was everything but expected. I neither found a doubloon of Spanish gold nor a treasure map nor a bag of diamonds. My treasure’s appearance was much more humble still its value might just as profound: Two rolls of exposed yet undeveloped film and a stained, green notebook filled with chicken-scratch handwriting. On the first page was the owner’s