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Show 18 flat-faced mare that is his favorite. She strikes her right foot at the ground and throws back her head. Garrett regrets again that he has brought nothing for her. She seems agitated, angry. He apologizes aloud, soothingly, and again reaches out. The mare backs off, hesitantly it seems to Garrett, into the barn. He follows her with his eyes. She does not go far, six feet perhaps, but far enough for Garrett to identify the source of her agitation. Hanging from the rafters by a rope, well off the ground in the dark dusty air, is Ahmed. For a long time Garrett is aware only of the noise of the horses, all three of them making low nervous sounds which shatter the evening, and the lifeless shape suspended behind and above them. Then, slowly, without thinking, Garrett allows his eyes to work with details. The thick dust filtering through the air in the last slanting light, the dark puffiness of the Turks' face, the ancient slats of the corral below; and the camera, behind the gate at the back of the building, posed effeminately on the telescoped legs of the tripod, more alive in its delicate spider-like form than the man whose last breathing image it had unquestionably recorded. How, wonders Garrett, did he intend to get that last photograph into his album. The answer makes Garrett swallow the saliva that has been accumulating in his mouth. The Turk's eyes stare pleadingly from their sockets. Ahmed's sister has come with him to the port of Pireaus, and when they learn that the Naxos will be late she sits with him in a |
