expeditions to look at pictures.â
âWhy not? Pictures are important.â
âArt is important only as a way of opening the mind to excellence,â Maia said, but she didnât sound very sincere. She took the book back and closed it. In the seconds I could see it I noticed that it had a circular picture of the Madonna on the cover, surrounded by angels. She put it on a high shelf with other books.
âOh, please!â I said.
âYou know I canât show you that. I probably shouldnât have shown you this book at all.â
âHow is it that we have the nine Botticelli paintings that we do have?â I asked.
âThey were going to be destroyed and we rescued them,â Maia said.
âMother Hera!â I didnât often swear, but I couldnât stop myself blurting it out. âDestroyed!â
âYes, some terrible things happened in that future youâd like to visit to look at paintings! Youâre much better off here. Now, go to bed, and let me know if you need any more sponges.â
I bade her joy of the night and went off thoughtfully down the street. The city looked especially beautiful by moonlight. I raised my arms and murmured a line of a praise-song to Selene Artemis. But my mind was buzzing, not with thoughts of menstruation and marriage, which I had almost forgotten, but with Botticelli. The mysterious figures gathered around in Spring . The smile of his Aphrodite. The thought that our nine paintings would have been destroyed. Was that true of all the art in the city, I wondered? Had Phidiasâs gold and ivory Athene in the agora been rescued? How about the Herm I had been crowned before, the one with the mysterious smile? What about the bronze lion on the corner I always patted as I went by? I stopped to pat him now, and the moonlight found an expression of sadness on his bronze face that I had never seen before. His mane had fantastical curls, which I stroked, tracing the whorls. He seemed so real, so solid, so impossible to harm. It was my bleeding body making me sad for no reason, I told myself. My mother had talked about that. But it was true about the Botticellis, Maia had said so.
I gave the lion a last pat and turned to take the last few steps to Hyssop and my bed. All the art, saved, as we children had been saved? But saved for what purpose? Saved to make the city? A worker trundled past, unsleeping, off on some errand in the dark. Had they been saved too? And from where? I opened the door and wondered if I would ever have answers to these questions.
The next summer I taught eleven children to swim with no difficulty. The twelfth was Pytheas. He was a boy from Delphi, so I had seen him at the palaestra, and wrestled with him once or twice, but I did not know him well. I had noticed how beautiful he was, and how unconscious he seemed to be of it. He had an air of confidence that was not quite conceit. I had friends who disliked him because he was so lovely and seemed so effortlessly good at everything. I had been inclined to go along with them without examining why. Teaching him to swim made us friends.
As with the first eleven non-swimmers, I took Pytheas down the slope of the beach until we stood in chest-deep water. Then I had him lie back onto my hand, to learn how the water would support and cradle him. The problem was that he couldnât relax. It didnât help that he had essentially no body fatâevery curve on his twelve-year-old body was muscle. But Mother Tethys is powerful; he would not have sunk lying back with my palm flat in the small of his back, if he could have found a way to do that. He tensed immediately, every time, and jerked back under the water. The exercise was meant to teach trust of the water, and he couldnât trust it enough to learn it. Yet he wanted to learn, he wanted it fiercely.
âHuman bodies were not made for this,â he muttered, as he went down spluttering one more time and I hauled
âWhy not? Pictures are important.â
âArt is important only as a way of opening the mind to excellence,â Maia said, but she didnât sound very sincere. She took the book back and closed it. In the seconds I could see it I noticed that it had a circular picture of the Madonna on the cover, surrounded by angels. She put it on a high shelf with other books.
âOh, please!â I said.
âYou know I canât show you that. I probably shouldnât have shown you this book at all.â
âHow is it that we have the nine Botticelli paintings that we do have?â I asked.
âThey were going to be destroyed and we rescued them,â Maia said.
âMother Hera!â I didnât often swear, but I couldnât stop myself blurting it out. âDestroyed!â
âYes, some terrible things happened in that future youâd like to visit to look at paintings! Youâre much better off here. Now, go to bed, and let me know if you need any more sponges.â
I bade her joy of the night and went off thoughtfully down the street. The city looked especially beautiful by moonlight. I raised my arms and murmured a line of a praise-song to Selene Artemis. But my mind was buzzing, not with thoughts of menstruation and marriage, which I had almost forgotten, but with Botticelli. The mysterious figures gathered around in Spring . The smile of his Aphrodite. The thought that our nine paintings would have been destroyed. Was that true of all the art in the city, I wondered? Had Phidiasâs gold and ivory Athene in the agora been rescued? How about the Herm I had been crowned before, the one with the mysterious smile? What about the bronze lion on the corner I always patted as I went by? I stopped to pat him now, and the moonlight found an expression of sadness on his bronze face that I had never seen before. His mane had fantastical curls, which I stroked, tracing the whorls. He seemed so real, so solid, so impossible to harm. It was my bleeding body making me sad for no reason, I told myself. My mother had talked about that. But it was true about the Botticellis, Maia had said so.
I gave the lion a last pat and turned to take the last few steps to Hyssop and my bed. All the art, saved, as we children had been saved? But saved for what purpose? Saved to make the city? A worker trundled past, unsleeping, off on some errand in the dark. Had they been saved too? And from where? I opened the door and wondered if I would ever have answers to these questions.
The next summer I taught eleven children to swim with no difficulty. The twelfth was Pytheas. He was a boy from Delphi, so I had seen him at the palaestra, and wrestled with him once or twice, but I did not know him well. I had noticed how beautiful he was, and how unconscious he seemed to be of it. He had an air of confidence that was not quite conceit. I had friends who disliked him because he was so lovely and seemed so effortlessly good at everything. I had been inclined to go along with them without examining why. Teaching him to swim made us friends.
As with the first eleven non-swimmers, I took Pytheas down the slope of the beach until we stood in chest-deep water. Then I had him lie back onto my hand, to learn how the water would support and cradle him. The problem was that he couldnât relax. It didnât help that he had essentially no body fatâevery curve on his twelve-year-old body was muscle. But Mother Tethys is powerful; he would not have sunk lying back with my palm flat in the small of his back, if he could have found a way to do that. He tensed immediately, every time, and jerked back under the water. The exercise was meant to teach trust of the water, and he couldnât trust it enough to learn it. Yet he wanted to learn, he wanted it fiercely.
âHuman bodies were not made for this,â he muttered, as he went down spluttering one more time and I hauled
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