He can hear Carl in the kitchen. Must have just gotten home. Carl is yelling at his son. Actually it’s more of a nagging, like the women on the Lower East Side, as if the voice had a life of its own and was seizing hold of Carl’s body. It made Josef feel sorry for him.

At first he had wanted to go up to his brother and tell him to calm down, tell him everything’s fine. But at this point he just wants to belt him one.

But at least Carl’s story has been a smooth one. Not his. His is crooked and warped.

In prison he sometimes thought of Gandhi. For Gandhi things had moved forward, toward something, despite his being in prison, whereas in his case things moved backward, his life got smaller and smaller, contained less and less.

He has cleaned the bellows, and now he takes a little oil to grease the joints. Then he turns the pivot plate. Screw after screw comes out, the mounts come loose.

Normally he makes himself scarce right before Carl comes back in the early afternoon, exhausted from his delivery route. He takes his lonely walks through town, through streets with caved-in roofs and charred walls, and on his way back he prepares a few harmless topics that make for easy conversation: Did you see that Maikelowski is selling beer now?

Not today. Taking the camera apart is too much fun. By now there’s a pile of metal spread out on the table in front of him. He looks at the handle of the cable release. There are a few cracks in the rubber coating. Carl has taken a lot of photos with the shutter release, starting with his honeymoon, and relatively few of his surroundings—no buildings, hardly any other people, always just himself, himself alone and himself with Edith, then later with the kids.

Ever since their gnocchi lunch, Edith has stopped tidying up in his room. Carl mustn’t know this. Josef makes his bed every morning, and whatever he uses he puts away immediately. When Carl or the children are around, Edith acts friendly toward him. If they’re alone, she’s distant.

He inspects the baseboard and focus cam. What brilliant precision workmanship! He touches the screwdriver to the casing, takes off the mount for the tripod. Screw after screw, they roll toward him. Carl stomps around the bedroom. He can hear him speaking with Edith but can’t understand a word.