Years ago, I found an important photograph of my father, a film maker who said his own father had been born and raised in the Netherlands.
Or was it Belgium? The photograph had been taken before the war. We know this because of the condition of the paper, which, perhaps, had been chewed around the edges by a mouse, ants, moths, or some other symbol of time. In the photograph, my father is buried to his neck in a vacant lot. Imagine putting a watermelon down in a field and taking a picture of it from about ten or so yards away and from a fairly low field of view and you’ll have a sense of the scene.
My father’s head is small, like that watermelon. From the look of the sky, the day may have been somewhat cloudy, though the browning black and white photograph makes it difficult to judge. The angles of the shadows are a better way. Near my father’s exposed head is a bird, an ominous crow or raven. A dim but noticeable shadow points from the bird to my father’s face, and from my father’s head another shadow extends. Of course, the second shadow is rounder than the shadow spearing out from the large crow. The sun, therefore, while there may have been clouds in the sky, is positioned slightly to my father’s left and behind the crow.
What we don’t know is whether the bird is approaching my father’s head as there’s nothing in the photograph that proves one way or the other. The crow, however, is observing my father’s helpless head with that taut and menacing expression of crows.
“It was a prank,” my brother says. “They buried him in the ground because he wanted them to?”
“No,” my sister says. “It was punishment. In those days, families buried children in the ground to their chins if they broke the rules.”
I say, “But that’s the photo of a man, not a child.” My sister smiles, sometimes laughs. We would laugh at the photo. We would pass it hand to hand and then we’d hide it when my mother entered the room and lift other, less controversial photographs.
The expression on my father’s face is interesting. In one interpretation, my father looks like he’s just bitten into a lemon or into a grapefruit and the hair on his head has been combed up and out in the aspect of a fern. Another interpretation claims that my father is in terror of the crow. That the crow is moving closer and closer, stalking his unprotected head. Prior to the photograph being taken, the crow had landed, intending to inspect the head. My father, who’s helplessly buried, knows that the crow will soon be plucking at his eyes with its hard black and hungry beak and so he’s pinched his face, preparing for the inevitable attack by the bird.
“It’s obviously a prop,” my brother says, “put there by his friends. It’s all staged. They buried him, stuffed up a good toy of a crow, and then took the photograph.”
My sister says, “Maybe, but look at the feathers. I’ve observed crows. That’s a real crow. Look closely behind the bird and you’ll see it’s footsteps. It’s coming for his eyes and ears.”
I say, “It’s impossible to tell. We’re too far away from the crow. Those marks behind it could be anything. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Regardless of interpretation, every time we found the photograph and passed it around, we’d end up laughing at it. My sister would laugh; my brother would follow with his own laughter, pinching an edge of the rather fragile photograph in his fingers. I remember a night when we quickly hid the photograph and staunched our laughter when my mother called from the kitchen, asking, “What are you three laughing at?” Maybe some Thanksgiving or Christmas.
It was years later when I summoned the courage to ask my mother about the photograph, as, after so many years, the photograph had been lost.
“The photo of Dad,” I said. “The one where he’s buried in a vacant lot. There’s a crow. He’s buried to his head. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
“I can’t remember why we never asked her about it,” my brother says.
“It does seem strange that we never did,” my sister says, “absurd, even. And now it’s lost.”
My mother said I must be crazy. “Buried,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s buried to the neck. I know it sounds crazy. There’s a crow. Dad’s buried in the ground. I’m sure you know it.”
“I really don’t know what picture you’re talking about,” my mother said. “Something like that I’d remember, don’t you think?”
“Could you just look?” I say.
My mother sounded confused, but in her voice I made out a hesitation, a hesitation that bespoke a knowingness or sudden recollection, and that she was thinking fast and had to express something that would either divert me away from the subject or mitigate the reality, immerse it in some other context that would turn the photograph into a misinterpretation or childhood figment, thus easily dismiss it as false. I sensed that she was thinking through her options. She said, “I’ve never seen such a thing, but, sure, I’ll look.”
“Yes, just look,” I said over the phone, which must’ve made the request even stranger.
“I think she knew we’d found it,” my brother says.
My sister says, “I think she burned it, tore it up. It’s amazing. You must have caught her off guard.”
I regretted asking my mother to look for the such a photograph.
“I will,” she said. “I’ll look for it.”
