The Curio Of Monsieur Cabinét

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(Published in The Timberline Review, Issue #7, 2018)

 

 

     This was the young soldier's first visit to the Pearl Of The Black Sea. He'd brought enough rubles for one night only, setting out on a mission from his hamlet which left him both exhilarated and uneasy. Anyone else would have explored the plazas and amusements of one of the great cosmopolitan cities of Tsarist Russia. Odessa certainly had more than its share of august monuments and scented temptations of the night, but for this young man time was precious. He had no leisure for history or amusement. Sprinting through fashionable boulevards he sought a particular address. His haste, however, did not afford license for untidiness, especially when in uniform. He was now a military gentleman with a tradition to maintain. Besides, scuffing his boots would have ruined the special day.

     On a fashionable avenue the polished cadet matched the scribblings on his rough envelope to elaborate script on a store front and arrived at his mark: Le Studio Cabinét. He'd made the appointment at the suggestion of his commanding officer.

     “Every young officer of the corps should have his photograph taken,” his commander had said, which the soldier took as strong counsel. In seven weeks he had saved enough money for overnight lodging in a guest house and Monsieur's hefty fee.

     M. Cabinét, in 1904, was the premiere portraitist on the Black Sea. His sitters were asked to strike a motionless pose as the slow chemistry of silver gelatin on glass preserved their features, but the bearded and monocled Monsieur had a knack for putting his clients at unaccustomed ease in this highly stratified society, and they comfortably dropped their guard. His fine German lenses captured minute details overlooked in the everyday rush of life: the fit of a wedding ring on a squat finger, the barest flicker in a soulful eye. Immobility is fragile. It cracks at the tenderest thought. It was that elusive moment which M. Cabinét sought from his clients. He would certainly seek it f

rom his next young client. My soldier arrived a half hour before his appointment. That gave him more than enough time to wipe the dust from his cuffs and straighten his cap.

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     The young officer's sepia photo is in my keeping now, one hundred and fourteen years old, still mounted on the original board and embossed with the name of the studio and its address in Odessa. I used to stare at his picture as a child, on the altar of my grandmother's dressing table where all her family photos were spread. He was the nephew of one of her relations though I never learned his name. When she died I stole the photo. I've been its steward for almost twenty-five years.
     Snapped to crisp attention in his uniform, he sports a sensitive face in an unyielding collar. I can trace a direct line from the top of his military cap to his boot heels; starting at the gleaming insignia on his visor, dropping smartly past his epaulets, gold bands and shining belt buckle, and finally soft-landing on the hard and supple finish of his leather boots. A short portion of decorative chain on his chest is out of alignment, for effect. The crisp military uniform with its gleaming buttons, gold braid and shining visor advertise a soldier's honor, while light playing off the silver buckle and starched ornamental cuffs dazzle. Wrapped in his almost perfectly symmetrical uniform is his perfectly oval face. His slicked-back hair leaves no ambiguity.

     Here stops my head! it shouts.
    “He was a soldier,” Grandmother informed me. "Jewish men didn't go in the army often, but an officer took a liking to him and gave him a career.”

     My distant relation in uniform had seemed an exemplar of Tsarist autocratic symmetry when I was a boy. But close in my hands M. Cabinét's eye for detail points up the hollow starched promise of my relative's equipage. The boy had to puff out his chest to fill his jacket for the photograph. It is oversize and his sleeves are too long. His torso is full frontal, though one leg skews slightly and his left toes point out, leaving me to wonder if charging straight ahead while wielding a bayonet was even a possibility for my kinsman. (I have a similarly slightly shortened leg.) He is immensely handsome with flawlessly smooth skin, a thin sparse boyish mustache and no beard. Flaring nostrils above a downward turning mouth feign determination, but his heavy lidded eyes stare uncertainly into the camera with the resignation of one who lives and dies by the caprice of others. He can't be more than twenty years old.

     At the end of 1905, according to Grandmother, the boy returned from the vicious theater of the Russo-Japanese War.

     “You wouldn't know it was him when he came back.” she would say, her lips trembling.  “Oy! Oy! They carried him home in a basket.”  

     His arms and legs had been blown off, and he was blind. His distraught mother carried him from shade to sunlight and back again, for his health. According to Grandmother's account, when he was left outdoors his ceaseless wailing tolled through every village window, rending the hearts of all mothers: “Mama. Please! Mama. Give me poison!”

     Of course his mama never did.