Sun and Shadow / Sun and Shadow: Sun and Shadow

| Sun and Shadow

#1

| Ray Bradbury

#2

The camera clicked like an insect. It was blue and metallic, like a great fat beetle held in the man's precious and tenderly exploiting hands. It winked in the flashing sunlight.

#3

"Hsst, Ricardo, come away!"

#4

"You down there!" cried Ricardo out the window.

#5

"Ricardo, stop!"

#6

He turned to his wife. "Don't tell me to stop, tell them to stop. Go down and tell them, or are you afraid?"

#7

"They aren't hurting anything," said his wife, patiently.

#8

He shook her off and leaned out the window and looked down into the alley. "You there!" he cried.

#9

The man in the alley with the camera glanced up, then went on focusing his machine at the lady in the salt-white beach pants, the white brassiere, and the green checkered scarf. She leaned against the cracked plaster of the building. Behind her a dark boy smiled, his hand to his mouth.

#10

"Tomas!" yelled Ricardo. He turned to his wife. "O Jesus the Blessed, Tomas is in the street, my own son laughing there!" Ricardo started out the door.

#11

"Don't do anything!" said his wife.

#12

"I'll cut off their heads," said Ricardo, and was gone.

#13

In the street the lazy woman was lounging now against the peeling blue paint of a banister. Ricardo emerged in time to see her doing this. "That's my banister!" he said.

#14

The cameraman hurried up. "No, no, we're taking pictures. Everything's all right. We'll be moving on."

#15

"Everything is not all right," said Ricardo, his brown eyes flashing. He waved a wrinkled hand. "She's on my house."

#16

"We're taking fashion pictures," said the photographer, smiling.

#17

"_Now_ what am I to do?" said Ricardo to the blue sky. "Go mad with this news? Dance around like an epileptic saint?"

#18

"If it's money, well, here's a five peso bill," said the photographer.

#19

Ricardo pushed the hand away. "I _work_ for my money. You don't understand. Please go."

#20

The photographer was bewildered. "Wait ..."

#21

"Tomas, get in the house!"

#22

"But, Papa, ..."

#23

"Gahh!" bellowed Ricardo.

#24

The boy vanished.

#25

"This has _never_ happened before," said the photographer.

#26

"It is long past time! What are we? Cowards?" Ricardo asked the world.

#27

A crowd was gathering. They murmured and smiled and nudged each other's elbows. The photographer with irritable good will snapped his camera shut and said, over his shoulder, to the model: "All right, we'll use that other street. There was a nice cracked wall there and oblique shadows. If we hurry—"

#28

The girl, who had stood during this exchange, nervously twisting her scarf, now seized her make-up kit and darted by Ricardo, but not before he touched her arm.

#29

"Do not misunderstand," he said quickly.

#30

She stopped, blinked at him.

#31

He went on. "It is not you I am mad at. Or you—" he addressed the photographer.

#32

"Then why—" said the photographer.

#33

Ricardo waved his hand. "You are employed, I am employed. We are all people employed. We must understand each other. But when you come to my house with your camera, then the understanding is over. I will not have my alley used because of its pretty shadows, or my sky used because of its sun, or my house used because there is an interesting crack in the wall, here! You _see_! Ah, how beautiful! Lean here! Stand there! Sit here! Crouch there! Hold it! Oh, I _heard_ you. Do you think I am stupid? I have books up in my room. You see that window? Maria!"

#34

His wife's head popped out.

#35

"Show them my books!" he cried.

#36

She fussed and muttered, but a moment later she held out one, then two, then half a dozen books, her head turned away as if they were old fish.

#37

"And two dozen more like them upstairs!" cried Ricardo. "You're not talking to some cow in the forest, you're talking to a man!"

#38

"Look," said the photographer, packing his plates swiftly. "We're going. Thanks for nothing."

#39

"Before you go, you must see what I am getting at," said Ricardo. "I am not a mean man. But I _can_ be a very angry man. Do I look like a piece of cardboard?"

#40

"Nobody said anybody looked like anything." The photographer hefted his case and started off.

#41

"There is a photographer two blocks over," said Ricardo, pacing him. "They have pieces of cardboard there, with pictures on them. You stand in front of them. It says GRAND HOTEL. They take a picture of you and it looks like you are in the Grand Hotel. Do you see what I mean? My alley is my alley, my life is my life, my son is my son. My son is not cardboard! I saw you putting my son against the wall, so and thus, in the background. What do you call it—for the correct air? To make the whole attractive, and the pretty lady in front of him?"

#42

"It's getting late," said the photographer, sweating. The model trotted along on the other side of him.

#43

"We are poor people," said Ricardo. "Our doors peel paint, our walls are chipped and cracked, our gutters fume in the street, the alleys are all cobbles. But it fills me with a terrible rage when I see you make over these things as if I had _planned_ it this way, as if I had, years ago, induced the wall to crack. Did you think I knew you were coming, and aged the paint? Or that I knew you were coming and put my boy in his dirtiest clothes? We are _not_ a studio! We are people and must be given attention as people. Have I made it clear?"

#44

"With abundant detail," said the photographer, not looking at him, hurrying.

#45

"Now that you know my wishes and my reasoning, you will do the friendly thing and go home?"

#46

"You are a hilarious man," said the photographer.

#47

"Hey!" They had joined a group of five other models and a second photographer at the base of a vast stone stairway which in layers, like a bridal cake, led up to the white town square. "How you doing, Joe?"

#48

"We got some beautiful shots near the Church of the Virgin, some statuary without any noses, lovely stuff," said Joe. "What's the commotion?"

#49

"Pancho here got in an uproar. Seems we leaned against his house and knocked it down."

#50