CHAPTER 11

Monsieur Sorbonne Takes His Camera Out for a Walk

The next morning Monsieur Sorbonne retrieved the View Camera, which had been buried deep in his closet. How could he have left it there for long, when it was his search for meaning that had caused him to buy it in the first place?

How—and why—had it ended up in the closet? He had fallen in love. They had moved into their little house. He had lost his Oblong Credit Card. He had gone to work, and the camera—that treasure, the key perhaps to his sense of meaning—had languished in the closet, gathering fleas, as it were. Fleas—he laughed to contemplate it. Fleas! Perhaps this was in fact, how the Flea Fair got its name. Considering this, he laughed once again. He was happy that a little flicker of humor should have so crossed his mind. And feeling thus minutely cheered, he loaded it with the single roll of film, which, remarkably, still remained at the bottom of the small maroon velvet pouch.

Out on the boulevard the chestnut trees were in bloom, their towering blossoms a festival of pink. He photographed them and the clouds, the endlessly poetic sky, then a beautiful wrought iron gate. He snap-snapped a doorway of stately proportions, then another and another, its multiple layers of paint decomposing, and windows, light shadowing them, obscuring whatever mysteries the rooms behind them contained.

He was amazed, arriving at his office, to discover that he had already exploited the whole roll of film. So distracted was he by the possibility of seeing, that the morning raced by and at noon he went out to drop off the film at the Films Development Store, after which he ate a small sandwich lunch in the park.

The afternoon dragged. No more could he attend intently to his artifacts. It was fortunate, therefore, that starting out he had been so zealously committed, for even now, today, doing almost nothing, he was still far ahead with his work. When five o’clock came, eyes itching, he raced out like a schoolboy to the Films Store to pick up his photographs.