Won but Lost, Then Fell to Their Knees in Thanksgiving

In a certain peculiar country, there lived a company of sailors who had just won a race to discover an island. For months they had crossed seas of rhetoric, unrolled thick charts crammed with accusations, and rowed boats of argument against the current of suspicion. These sailors were not, strictly speaking, people who knew where a ship ought to be steered. But they possessed one talent rare among seafarers: the ability to cheer before the announcement had been read out in full.

And so, when the judges climbed onto the platform and declared, "Your objection is dismissed. You have still won the race," the quayside erupted. They leapt about in delight, beat their drums, hoisted their banners, and some even threw themselves down in prayers of thanksgiving, foreheads pressed to planks still smelling of brine and not yet dry from the tide. Some wept, some embraced, and a few hurried to photograph themselves in prostration so that, in years to come, they might display the picture as proof that the victory had truly taken place.

Yet the judges had read out one further sentence, tucked away at the very end like change that a customer never stops to count: "Nevertheless, the island you claimed as the destination of your voyage has still not been found."

Curiously, the sailors paid it very little mind. They treated that sentence as one treats a platform announcement in a crowded station: perfectly audible, yet addressed to nobody in particular. Their ears had been selectively trained. The word "won" was caught from ten miles away, while the words "not been found" were left to sink along with the anchor. They went home bearing the trophy and bawling, "We won! We won!" They repeated it so often and so loudly that one might have supposed repetition to be the cheapest way of turning an empty shoreline into an island.

On the beach, an old man who happened to be mending his nets watched the procession with a furrowed brow. Then he asked, with the politeness of one who has seen this sort of thing far too often, "Wasn't the aim of the race to prove that the island exists?"

The sailors replied, "Yes."

"And the island has not been found?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you celebrating?"

They stared at him in astonishment, as though he had asked why the sea is salty on a perfectly sunny day. Then one of them, wearing the most earnest expression ever worn by a human face, answered, "Because we won."

The old man nodded slowly. He did not argue, for he knew there are conversations which, if pursued, leave the questioner feeling that he is the one in the wrong. He returned to his nets, reflecting that this was perhaps the only country on earth where people could win the question yet lose the answer. They had obtained a ruling, but failed to obtain a proof. They had won the match, yet the ball had never gone into the net, and, funnier still, the referee had blown the final whistle while pointing quite plainly at the empty goal.

And perhaps that is why their thanksgiving looked so profound. It was not gratitude that the truth had been proved. It was gratitude that a defeat had been dressed up so skilfully that it passed for a victory, complete with powder, perfume and rhythmic applause. The make-up artists of defeat in that country were remarkably accomplished. They knew that a defeat tied with a gold ribbon would sell far more easily than a defeat honestly admitted, particularly when the buyers were already in debt to their own loyalty.

It was rather like a merchant cheering because he had passed his audit, though his warehouse remained empty. He holds his certificate aloft before the customers while, in the back, the mice have already begun to move out because there is nothing left to nibble. Or like a man who wins a lawsuit over the existence of an elephant, while the paddock said to house the beast stays stubbornly vacant. The judge has brought down the gavel, the supporters have raised their cheers, and the gardener has been told to arrange flowers for the party. But the elephant never arrives, and the straw in the paddock lies untouched by any trunk.

He wins in the courtroom. But he loses in the paddock.

And amid the applause of the faithful, while the drums were still beating and the trophy was still being paraded round the village, there came a whisper, the quietest and sharpest satire of all, whether from the old man on the beach or from the sea breeze that had watched that country for far too long:

"Sometimes, people do not need a victory. They merely need something that can be called one."

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The Allegory of a Photograph: On Frames, Chairs, and the Elephant Nobody Invited

A photograph can mean a great many things. It can be a keepsake, evidence, or merely a handy way to hide a damp patch on the wall. Yet a photograph hung in the foyer of an office, in a classroom, in a boardroom, or even on the wall of a roadside café is no mere decoration. It is a statement. It is a quiet announcement of who is deemed worthy of respect, trust and emulation, made without a microphone and yet audible in the farthest corner of the room.

For that reason, people tend to expect that the figure in the frame has something to be proud of. Achievement, service, experience, or at the very least a life story that does not cause search engines to suffer a minor nervous breakdown, nor oblige Artificial Intelligence to adopt the careful diction of a press secretary attempting to address an awkward question without venturing anywhere near an actual answer. The expectation is a modest one, rather like expecting a portrait of a sea captain to depict a man who has actually seen the sea, or who has at least been out on a pedalo.

And yet, now and then, the photograph has a sense of humour.

Among the rows of faces whose qualifications trail behind them like the carriages of a night train, with strings of letters marching before and after each name, there hangs one whose educational history is more mysterious than a pirate's treasure map. The map, at least, has the decency to be honest about one thing: it never meant to show anyone the way. Our figure's paperwork, meanwhile, is sought high and low, from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet to the farthest corridors of the internet. The details shift with the wind, the explanations breed like rabbits in springtime, and every clarification only gives birth to the need for another clarification, as though the truth were a family inheritance that the relatives can never quite agree how to divide.

Yet, miraculously, the chair stays firmly put.

In this allegorical land, chairs are evidently not held up by four sturdy oak legs but by an extraordinary talent for withstanding questions. Structural engineers might well shake their heads, for no theory of the strength of materials explains how a chair can stand upright on foundations whose very existence is under constant dispute. But perhaps that is simply how mystery works: the harder the chair is rocked, the more tightly its occupant hugs it.

The more people ask, the thicker the glass in the frame becomes. The deeper the public's doubt, the more often the photograph is reprinted, in higher resolution, in larger sizes, in frames of ever greater sparkle, as though a doubted face need only be sharpened for the doubt to blur. The printer on the high street has suddenly never had it so good, and he is quietly the party most keen for the question never to be settled.

Behind it all lies a beautiful, if naive, conviction: that if a picture is hung in enough places, reality will eventually surrender to the décor. A wall crowded with portraits will be taken for a wall crowded with proof. A room that smells of fresh varnish will be presumed free of any whiff of something rotten. Such is the logic, and nobody is permitted to question it too loudly, because a raised voice might make the frame rattle.

Consequently, the photograph slowly changes its function. It is no longer the portrait of an official. It becomes a national monument to humankind's gift for ignoring the elephant standing in the middle of the room while debating the colour of the curtains. The elephant is large and grey, and from time to time it flaps an ear so that dust drifts into the faces of those present. Still, the meeting proceeds with due solemnity, because the business of the day is to decide whether the curtains would look better in cream or in ivory.

Those who point at the elephant are accused of disturbing the peace. They are branded rude, idle, even suspected of harbouring ulterior motives, as though naming something that stands plainly in the middle of the room were an act of sedition. Meanwhile, those who admire the curtains are called wise, mature, and capable of seeing the bigger picture, though the bigger picture in question turns out to be merely the cloth that is covering the elephant's feet.

Funnier still, some people no longer defend the person in the photograph at all. They defend only the fact that the photograph is up. Perhaps they have simply grown weary of questions about who the man is, what his history may be, and where on earth his certificate has got to, and have retreated to a safer position: that a picture once hung must never be taken down. As if admitting the mistake of hanging a picture were more shameful than hanging the mistaken picture. The nail has already gone in, they say, and pulling it out would leave a hole in the wall. Nobody thinks to ask why a hole in the plaster should be thought more alarming than a hole in public trust.

And so, every morning, the staff file past the photograph in an orderly queue. Some look upon it with deference, offering the little nod that has long since become a reflex, like ducking beneath a low doorway. Some stare blankly, thinking of the mortgage, the commute, or whether there is any milk left in the staff kitchen. Others glance at it while suppressing a smile, and that smile is the only thing in the building to have slipped through security without a pass.

For they all know one simple secret: a photograph cannot speak. But its silence is sometimes louder than any speech. It speaks through a gaze that never blinks when questioned, through a frame that gleams without fail while dust gathers in the archive, and through the long hush that settles over a single question, one far too old to be called new and far too important to be called settled.

And in some cases, the most expensive frame is used to display a question that has never once been answered. One day, when the wall is pulled down, and historians sift through the rubble, they may well find a gilded frame still perfectly intact. Inside it, once the picture has faded with time, will remain just one thing that never lost its colour: a question mark, which has proved far more durable than every title hanging around it.

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