Fiction Fix early mastery of the medium, but then took an unexpected turn. “Listen to this,” Sue said to Paul at the breakfast table as she was skimming through the paper. “‘Detractors,’ it says here, ‘have questioned compromises he was apt to make throughout his life, that made him socialize without qualm with the likes of Heinrich Himmler and Leni Riefenstahl.’ Can you believe this?” Paul was taken aback by the news. The glorified artist was a mortal man with faults after all, who’d been drawn into the vortex of evil of this century, which was about to turn. To think of Eisenstaedt rubbing shoulders with Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, the man directly responsible for the Holocaust! And Leni Riefenstahl, who had put her rolling camera in the servitude of Nazi propaganda! “It sure is difficult,” Paul said. “But I think I can.” He got up from his chair and walked over to the photograph, the investment that had probably tripled in value the exact moment the old man’s heart had stopped. He took another look at the ballerina—her pale visceral presence, the flimsy straps of her black leotard running over her shoulders, her helpless posture in the makeup room. The picture seemed to gain a new significance as he watched the girl frozen in motion. “You know, Sue,” he said, stepping back with a sudden resolve, “we did well, though, didn’t we? Forget about Eisenstaedt the man, forget about his dubious choice of companions. In the end the picture is really about us.” Sue looked up from the paper. “You mean us? You mean about you and me?” “It’s all about us, the picture, don’t you see? The fact that we have it now, right here on our wall? It says so much about the things we can do together. You know, if we try?”
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