The Shadow Catcher

“We need your mother here to pray to God — forgive me — that you haven’t shattered your pelvis, Edward,” she told him. “Here, I’ll show you—” She dug in the Icarus chest until she came up with a heavy tome with the words ANATOMIE/DAS SKELETT etched in gold on its green leather. She sat on the edge of the bed, turning pages. Beautiful book, Edward said. He ran his fingers down its padded edge. “Handsomely made. I thought only Bibles were as beautiful as this.”

“Lodz thought I was a fool for taking all of these — Lodz was our neighbor — he thought I was irresponsible taking all these books in foreign languages I can’t even read but how could I resist? They were so pretty—” She realized she was talking far too much, although from the way he stared at her he didn’t seem to mind. She found a page in the German anatomy book where there was a drawing of the human pelvis and she held it up for him to see. I don’t think you’ve damaged the ball and socket, here, she said, “or else we’d see it, I’d feel the dislocation beneath your skin…but this pan-like bone,” she pointed, “you can see how it’s a single piece and it can shatter, crack, just like a plate and we wouldn’t see the damage with our naked eye.”

“And a doctor would?”

“He could diagnose it, yes. Through manipulation.”

She turned the page to a drawing of the human spine attached to the pelvic girdle, legs and feet. They looked at it together. It’s intricate, she noted. “I could make it worse by pulling or stretching any of these bones the wrong way.”

“And if I’ve cracked this part?” He pointed to the girdle.

“It will mend.”

“On its own?”

“If you don’t move it.”

“Do you know everything?”

She colored.

I want to know as much as you, he said. “Tell me more.” To her surprise he dipped a piece of bread in broth and held it to her mouth and she ate it from his fingers. “Tell me who was Lodz. Tell me about the paintings on these walls and why you have these books. Teach me about this one—” He held out the Italian book and tried to read its title, “Gli Capolavori della—”

“‘Masterpieces of Early Italian Renaissance,’” she translated. She met his uncomprehending stare. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know when they were painted. Who painted them. How they were painted. Where I can go to see them. I want to know about this one—” He turned to a page.

“Oh, Giotto…my father liked him, too. He learned a lot from him.”

“They met?”

“—lord, no. Giotto was painting in the thirteen hundreds…I mean my father learned a lot from looking at his paintings.”

“Looking at them.”

“You can learn a lot from looking, Edward.”

“Yes I know but first you have to put yourself in front of something, don’t you? You have to know that it exists. I didn’t know that these existed. I can’t ‘look’ unless I’m seeing. First I have to see a thing. And only then can I begin to look. What’s this hand supposed to be that’s hanging in the sky?”

What do you think it is?

Again, his uncomprehending look.

“Understand, paintings of this era were religious paintings, undertaken for religious purposes, usually to illustrate a lesson, narrate a tale or humanize a figure from the Scriptures — Christ, for instance, or the saints or the disciples. What distinguishes Giotto from painters before him is his use of human gesture — the way he captures the emotions in a few strokes, here, around the eyes, his preference for human profile over the full face—”

Profile, Edward repeated. “But then he paints a figure facing away from those who view it. Facing backwards. Why do that?”

“Same question my father asked — that everybody asks the first time that we see it. That’s my father’s self-portrait over there—” She pointed to a painting on the wall of a man in the foreground standing at a window, looking out, his back turned at the viewer.

“There’s no reflection in the window,” Edward noted. “How can you tell that the figure in the painting is your father?”