Infrared

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Rena is slanting to the right, slowly sinking farther and farther to the right on the red leather seat of the coffee shop, gradually collapsing against her stepmother’s corpulent maternal body. They’ve been up all night, and it’s been a long night indeed. Ingrid puts an arm around her and in the dawn’s uncertain light it would be difficult to say which of the two women is hanging onto the other. Though her eyes are closed, Rena is not asleep — far from it. She’s conscious of the smells of bleach and frothy milk, the bitter taste of tobacco in her throat, the soft touch of Ingrid’s blouse against her cheek, all the reassuring noises in the café—spoons clinking, doors opening and shutting, to say nothing of the numerous overlapping voices, businessmen in a hurry to down a last ristretto before boarding the train for Rome, a drunkard ordering his first beer of the day, loud-speaker announcements about arrivals and departures, the chatter of waitresses. I sink therefore I am, Rena says to herself, or rather, I’m sinking towards the right therefore I am in Italy, in italics, all my thoughts are in italics, insisting, repeating, recriminating, accusing, screaming at me, How is it possible? You claim to be an ultrasensitive film and yet you saw nothing, noticed nothing, detected nothing, guessed at nothing, comprehended nothing? No, because — not that, you understand, breast yes skin yes stomach yes bronchia yes mediastinum yes, since 1936 infrared photography has been used in all those areas but not in this one not in this one no, no, not at all.