[Leica] leica fiction (funny but long)

[Kyle Cassidy <cassidy@netaxs.com>]

hi lugnutz,
  a few years back i entered radiojohn's "win an argus 555p toy camera"
essay contest -- the topic of which was something like "how i came to love
the argus 555p toy camera". since it also deals with leica's, i'm bouncing
it along to the list, for what it's worth. i hope you find it amusing.
be forewarned; it's fairly long, but shorter than than the collection of
ms-tnef files we usually get.

  i won the 555p, btw, and as far as toy camera's go, it's a gem.

  kc


- ------------------------ begin sillyness -----------------------

                          Luggers and Loggers 
                                  or 
         How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Argus 555p 

                           by kyle cassidy


Cartier-Bresson lurched towards the car -- he was drunken as a Marine at
Marti Gras, but that was Hemingway's fault. 

"They busted up my Leica's!" cried Bresson. 

"Shut up and run," shouted Hemingway, shoving him in the back, then
turning once more to wave his fists at the persuing crowd, "I could crush
you all!" he boasted, before leaping into the back seat on top of Henri as
I roared away. I could hear banging sounds as they pelted us with rocks
and garbage. 

"My Leica's!" cried Bresson again. 

"Oh shut up," repeated Hemingway. They both stank like whiskey. 

"They called me a colaborationist!" 

The French countryside began to roar past us. The crowd was nowhere in
sight, but I wasn't taking any chances. Those pesants were crazy, and mad
as otters. 

"I had some good photos! I was just taking photos!" 

"With a German camera you were taking photos," said Ernest, rooting under
the seat, looking for the bottle. 

"No one said a thing until you began to whistle _Deutchland Uber Alles_ 
and point to my Leica. What in hell were you thinking Ernest?" 

"Bah," said Hemingway, "we could have taken that whole bar. It was full of
lightweights and cross dressers. Not a man among them. All the real men
are out blowing up bridges. I have no tolerance for lightweights and cross
dressers." 

"They busted up my Leica's!" said Henri once more, waving his hands in the
air. The road was rutted with veins of dried mud a foot high, I was forced
to slow down. 

"You keep going on about that," said Hemingway, "we'll get you another
camera." 

"You do not understand," whispered Bresson, "there are no other cameras." 


                                   * * * 


It was late at night. I'd been following Papa and Henri from one bar to
another for days, we'd seen not a sober minute. Anyone who closed an eye
for a second was in grave danger of being slapped by Hemingway and called
a cross dresser. "We must drink!" he said, "this is France and we must
drink. We must drink, and we must kill German soldiers. First, we will
drink." And the next thing you'd know, he'd be squeezing a wine skin down
your neck and everything would go fuzzy. That man was an animal and I was
tired of babysitting. Outside Aurls we'd broken into a barn to sleep and
caught a Nazi officer and a local girl collaborating. Ernest had snatched
the officer's pants and his pistol and run out the door, laughing and
hooting like a monk, leaving Henri and I and the girl and the soldier
stairing at one another in an embarrassed silence. Then Henri spied the
soldier's Leica laying in a leather bag in the straw. Caught up in the
moment, or caught up by the weeks of debauchery, he suddenly scooped up
the camera and ran after Hemingway. After a minute of awkwardness, I
smiled idiocally and backed slowly out of the door, the german yelling
after me "Das pants! Schieser! Ferdemte Schiserkoff! Vo ist mein pants?" 


So Cartier-Bresson was back in business, snapping photos wherever we went;
of people kissing, soldiers ogling, Hemingway drinking, me barfing. It was
a magical few weeks. Henri developed the negatives in coffee and mailed
them out to Life magazine in New York. Papa had taken a nail and engraved
"La" in front of the "Leica" name on the camera and put an accent
circumflex over the "a". Everyone thought it was French camera. Hemingway
made sure of this by smearing the film plane with bree and urine so the
thing reeked like Paris. 

We were fine comrads in those days. Whenever we'd pull into town Henri
would snap some pictures, Ernest would set something on fire and I'd
follow them around trying to keep us out of trouble. It went on like this
for most of the summer, until Ernest left the La Leica in the back of a
taxi in Mont Martre one evening. Henri was on the down side of a bender
when he found out and he began weeping, "Mon La Leica! Tu est une idiot,
Papa, tu est une imbecille! Mon dieu! Ces't dumage! Mon La Leica!" It was
a sorry sight. Papa got a little self conscious and knocked him a shot in
the side of the head with a cabbage. He didn't shut up, but he quieted
down considerably. 

"Look," said Papa, pouring wine into a bowl of breakfast cerial, "I'll get
you a new camera." 

"It must be the Leica!" said Bresson in between sobs. 

"Why?" said Papa, "you think I give a damn what pencil I use to write?" 

"No, no, it is different," said Bresson, "it is very different. The Leica,
she is fast, she is light, like air, she has no mirror, she makes no noise
when she takes the picture, just click, like the air. Only the Leica." 

So Papa went out to look for a camera for Henri, but Ernest knew as much
about cameras as he did about table manners and he came back with the
wrong thing. 


"What is this?" said Henri, snatching it from Papa's paws, "ces't
magnifique! she is so very light! Much moreso than mon Leica! and whisper!
she is so quiet! Yes! Yes! truely, this is the camera for me! This 555P!" 

"And it's damn cheap," said Hemingway, pulling the cork out of a bottle of
Old Crow with his teeth, "if you leave that one in a taxi, we'll roll a
drunk and buy another." 


A few months later, during the liberation, we were seperated. I ran into
Hemingway once, years later, in a jail in Turky. But Henri I never saw
again, though once, there was a photograph of him in Le Monde that I saw.
Bobby Kennedy was lying on the floor, in a pool of blood in 1968, Henri
was leaning out from the crowd behind him, you could only see half on him,
but in his hands you could clearly see that he was holding the 555P that
Ernest got for him back in Vichy. 

kc