[bksvol-discuss] Re: can someone get
- From: Jamie Yates <jamieyates@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 11:50:27 -0700 (PDT)
Here you go Amber. If you'd rather have it as an
attachment in a word file just let me know.
THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD
it.? Her sweeping gesture would direct their eyes down
the grand staircase and back up again to the soaring
ceilings.
?Comrades, all this is yours.?
This is the official welcome, lines scripted by some
Party functionary, but for her it is not empty
propaganda. She herself is still amazed: they are her
paintings. She is like a lover who still sees her
beloved in the trembling golden light of their first
meeting.
Her uncle brought her here for the first time shortly
after she came to live with them. It was the day his
wife went to the hospital to deliver their first
child. Rather than following the old ways?leaving his
niece with the women while he went off with the men
and got drunk?he decided instead to bring her with him
to the museum, saying that they could both pass the
time better in educational pursuits. She was bitterly
disappointed by this change in plans, having looked
forward to seeing for herself what she had heard about
only in whispers. Nothing her uncle proposed could be
expected to be nearly so interesting; that much she
had learned already.
Even now, she can still recall her shock, how shallow
and fast her breath came, as she first walked through
these gilt rooms, how each new hall opened dreamlike
onto still another room. The walls were crowded with
the faces of stern old men and the nude figures of
young women, their bodies a hot shock of flesh. Her
uncle seemed not to notice what she saw?he droned on
about acquisitions and restorations and who knows what
else, while around them angels fluttered in turbulent
skies and serene Madonnas gazed down as they passed.
And the landscapes, one after another, shimmering with
light, each
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