pleasure how much of a shared language they possess. Her brown eyes are warm, and she tells him about being in the States as a young woman, an assistant researcher on a big international project on the Radiolaria. He tells her about articles he has seen, developments in the field she knows nothing about. They do not, not yet, talk about their dead.
Theo takes his leave; she has his phone number, she must ring him soon, he says. He points her towards Natural History. Past the stuffed animals and up the stairs, he says. Good luck.
Alone again, she feels daunted. She stands for a moment, a small figure in a dark tunic and headscarf, collecting herself beneath that huge ceiling, and then on an impulse heads up the grand flight of stairs to the right, to the art galleries.
There she drifts unsystematically, letting herself be drawn by colours, by faces, looking only occasionally at the labels. A handful of medieval Madonnas, each with Child. The women are lovely, though most of the babies are unconvincing, one or two almost grotesque; but she finds one she likes, a sweet-faced girl holding a boy who reminds her of Teddy, soft curly blond head, laughing. His mother must have been fair, she thinks; Dan is quite dark.
A large picture at the end of the room pulls her over. In the foreground is another Madonna, this one without Child, standing in front of a busy orchard full of workers piling fruit into wooden carts. She is tall, slender and stern. One hand holds a book close to her body; in the other is a glass of water, lifted to the light, a yellow September light which makes the orchard behind her glow. Lina is curious enough to read the label. Our Lady of the Apple-Carts , it says, Italian, Tuscan School, possibly C15th . Which leaves her none the wiser, really, but then her knowledge of Christian tradition, beyond the basics, is pretty weak. The woman looks almost unhappy, she thinks, in spite of the piles of beautiful apples, the assiduous peasants.
She moves on through other galleries. Castles, a whole wall of them, from all over Wales. Cardiffâs looks lovely, she thinks, all trees and water where the road should be, and a man sitting in the dust with his dog; and a woman hanging out her washing to flap against the walls. Another room. Rodinâs naked lovers unsettle her, and few of the Impressionists make her want to stop. She climbs a small flight of stairs to see where it goes, and finds a big wooden door with a sign on it: Oriel Galatea Gallery : Closed / Ar Gau . She comes back down a different way into a room full of modernist portraits, all of them apparently staring at her, and suddenly feeling she has had enough of Western tradition and its obsession with human form, hurries through two more rooms and down a short corridor to emerge, with relief, into a world of plants and creatures.
Five minutes later she has found the Blaschkas. The pictures she remembers seeing many years ago in a book do not come close. Inside the glass case, glass creatures, her creatures, a million times magnified, exquisite, strange and so familiar she cannot help the tears in her eyes. She blinks them away and circles the case in complete wonder. Reads blurrily how they were created by the Blaschkas, Leopold and Rudolf, father and son, in late nineteenth-century Bohemia, how their techniques have never since been reproduced. And there, centre-stage, is the Actinota Heliosphaera , the fretted glass sphere with irregular rays like slender spears of ice. Crystalline. Uncanny. More than ever, she thinks, more even than under the microscope, they look like entities from the farthest depths of space, from the stars; oh I wish you could see them Ali, can you see them? I wish you were here now, my husband, I wish you could see this.
And because she doesnât want to frighten the beautiful young man sitting discreetly against the wall in the attendantâs chair, and because she is on the verge of something worse than tears, she
Theo takes his leave; she has his phone number, she must ring him soon, he says. He points her towards Natural History. Past the stuffed animals and up the stairs, he says. Good luck.
Alone again, she feels daunted. She stands for a moment, a small figure in a dark tunic and headscarf, collecting herself beneath that huge ceiling, and then on an impulse heads up the grand flight of stairs to the right, to the art galleries.
There she drifts unsystematically, letting herself be drawn by colours, by faces, looking only occasionally at the labels. A handful of medieval Madonnas, each with Child. The women are lovely, though most of the babies are unconvincing, one or two almost grotesque; but she finds one she likes, a sweet-faced girl holding a boy who reminds her of Teddy, soft curly blond head, laughing. His mother must have been fair, she thinks; Dan is quite dark.
A large picture at the end of the room pulls her over. In the foreground is another Madonna, this one without Child, standing in front of a busy orchard full of workers piling fruit into wooden carts. She is tall, slender and stern. One hand holds a book close to her body; in the other is a glass of water, lifted to the light, a yellow September light which makes the orchard behind her glow. Lina is curious enough to read the label. Our Lady of the Apple-Carts , it says, Italian, Tuscan School, possibly C15th . Which leaves her none the wiser, really, but then her knowledge of Christian tradition, beyond the basics, is pretty weak. The woman looks almost unhappy, she thinks, in spite of the piles of beautiful apples, the assiduous peasants.
She moves on through other galleries. Castles, a whole wall of them, from all over Wales. Cardiffâs looks lovely, she thinks, all trees and water where the road should be, and a man sitting in the dust with his dog; and a woman hanging out her washing to flap against the walls. Another room. Rodinâs naked lovers unsettle her, and few of the Impressionists make her want to stop. She climbs a small flight of stairs to see where it goes, and finds a big wooden door with a sign on it: Oriel Galatea Gallery : Closed / Ar Gau . She comes back down a different way into a room full of modernist portraits, all of them apparently staring at her, and suddenly feeling she has had enough of Western tradition and its obsession with human form, hurries through two more rooms and down a short corridor to emerge, with relief, into a world of plants and creatures.
Five minutes later she has found the Blaschkas. The pictures she remembers seeing many years ago in a book do not come close. Inside the glass case, glass creatures, her creatures, a million times magnified, exquisite, strange and so familiar she cannot help the tears in her eyes. She blinks them away and circles the case in complete wonder. Reads blurrily how they were created by the Blaschkas, Leopold and Rudolf, father and son, in late nineteenth-century Bohemia, how their techniques have never since been reproduced. And there, centre-stage, is the Actinota Heliosphaera , the fretted glass sphere with irregular rays like slender spears of ice. Crystalline. Uncanny. More than ever, she thinks, more even than under the microscope, they look like entities from the farthest depths of space, from the stars; oh I wish you could see them Ali, can you see them? I wish you were here now, my husband, I wish you could see this.
And because she doesnât want to frighten the beautiful young man sitting discreetly against the wall in the attendantâs chair, and because she is on the verge of something worse than tears, she
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