Picture Palace by Paul Theroux Page B

“It’s time to go.”
    Seeing that we were leaving, Charlie picked himself up and laughed—a rueful and defeated snicker. He had snow on his back and snow on his head and looked punished, like a tramp in a storm.
    Orlando’s was the best reply I had ever seen, and it taught me everything I needed to know about critics: a critic was someone you wanted to hit.
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Orlando, when we were in the car. He started the engine and chuckled. “No, I’m not sorry.”
    I had never loved him more. His poem had kindled a fire in me where there had been warm ashes. It was unlike him to fight, but it was unlike him to do somersaults in public or recite poems. He was full of surprises.
    Â 
    Frank said, “What’s the matter?”
    â€œNothing,” I said. “You’re sure you want to go to Provincetown?”
    â€œIt was your idea.”
    We were now beyond Truro, the road had widened, the sky was everywhere, propped magnificently on shafts of sunlight that held the clouds high. And soon we were sailing across the dunes into Provincetown. It had saved me before; it saved me again. I’d done it.

11
Boogie-Men
    A PLACE I had plumbed with my camera had few memories for me. The pictures were definition enough, done at so many angles that the photographs were the whole; more was presumption, mere lies. If a person said, “I’ve seen your pictures—now I want to go there,” I knew I had failed. Only bad pictures made you look further. A great portrait to me was intimate knowledge, ample warning that there was nothing concealed, nothing more to say. I knew from
Mrs. Conklin, Frenise
, and
Slaughter
that my camera recorded surfaces, but that surfaces disclosed inner states: a person wore his history on his face, past and future, the mortal veil of lines and the skull beneath. There is a self-destruction, suicide’s wince, in the eyes of my
Marilyn
and my
Hemingway
, and my
Frost
shows an utter egomaniac. I never denied the truth of the savage’s complaint about photographers, that in taking their pictures we were stealing their souls.
    I had always been interested in what people called savages. I thought of them as boogie-men. They bulked large in my first exhibition, which was held in a boathouse, formerly the Wharf Theater, in Provincetown. Frank wanted to see the place and hear about the show. I could tell he was rather let down by its size, the dinginess that gave it the look of a little chapel. If you didn’t have the faith you wouldn’t hear; you’d just find the acoustics awfully echoic and the stage too narrow and the whole building a firetrap.
    Frank said, “Is this all there is to it?” I said yes, and he said, “It’s just the way I imagined it.”
    â€œSure it is.”
    â€œBut I wish I’d seen Provincetown before it got commercialized.”
    â€œBull-sugar,” I said. “It was always commercialized. It’s been like this for sixty years—vulgar, plastic, phony antiques, windows full of saltwater taffy, queers everywhere, and pennants saying ‘Provincetown.’ It was declared a national monument by President Taft, and he weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. It’s been on the map ever since they started to sell egg-timers with Pilgrims painted on them and ashtrays made out of quahog shells. Don’t knock it—that’s its heritage.”
    We were on the street, walking to the Town Wharf for lunch. Frank said, “Really strange people, too. They’re all on drugs.”
    â€œNonsense.”
    â€œI blame their parents.”
    â€œBull. They’re carsick. Listen, it’s a long drive.”
    Provincetown before my time had been an appalling fishing village of dull clapboard houses, narrow streets, creaking porches, one severe church, and sand blowing down from the dunes eroding the Puritan geometry. It had always had its Sunday painters: