Prospero's Children

She had been standing in front of the picture for several minutes before she began to notice it. The other paintings in the gallery were purely abstract but as she stared at this one, waiting for her father, passing the time, shapes began to emerge from the field of nondescript color, vague as shadows on smoke: disconnected fragments of stair, random archways, openings into nowhere, ghostly glimpses of an unfinished labyrinth. Here and there a detail was highlighted, a splinter of sky beyond a broken vault, a segment of window with branching latticework, eye blinks of clarity which seemed to flicker into being even as her gaze skimmed over them. The artist drew her attention to and fro with a skill that was almost disquieting, letting her roam the boundaries of image, then pulling her gradually toward the focus, where an irregular patch of vividly contrasting color was set like a gaudy postage stamp at the very center of the picture. Initially the truncated rectangle, perhaps three inches high, appeared so crowded with microscopic detail that it resembled a vast and complex mosaic, miniaturized until all coherence was lost. But as she studied it, either because her vision became acclimatized or by some contrivance of the artist, the tiny shapes seemed to shift, like a kaleidoscope falling into place, and she found herself looking through a doorway or casement out over a city. Wide streets lined with columns and colonnades, clustered roofs hiding secret alleys, glistening domes, steeples, spires, palaces and terraces, temple-walls and tavern-walls, courtyards, backyards, fountains, gardens. Everything was bathed in the gold of a falling sun, enriching paintwork and stonework, touching the gilding on the domes with pure fire. She did not know what city it was yet it looked both ancient and timeless, a Rome that lived on free of traffic and tourism, a new-built Jerusalem unscarred by warring factions, the seat, maybe, of a higher civilization, older than history, fresh as the world in which it flourished, whose ruins had since crumbled to dust and whose wisdom had long been forgotten. She was not a fanciful girl, or so she told herself, yet her dormant fancy was stirred: she was pierced by a nostalgia for a place she had never seen, for the fairy-tale realms she had always rejected. "Do you like it?" inquired a voice behind her. "You seem to be rather absorbed." She turned abruptly. The gallery was carpeted and the owner--she was sure he must be the owner--had approached so quietly she had not heard him. "I don't know," she said. "I haven't decided. It's very interesting." "So you don't believe in impulsive judgments." The voice was as smooth as pouring cream with a faint intonation of mockery, but whether lofty or merely teasing it was impossible to tell. There was little humor visible in his expression. Glossy pale gray hair framed his face like a steel halo; his café-crème complexion was unlined, creating an effect of careful preservation rather than enduring youth; his eyes were almond-shaped and flecked with glints of yellow light. He was delicately suave, discreetly elegant, gracefully tall. She disliked him immediately, on impulse. "It's an etching," he went on. "Did you know?" "No, I didn't." Of course she didn't. "I thought etchings had to be in black and white." "The technique is very complex." Once again, that trace of superiority. "Bellkush has always favored the most difficult approach. The effect, I think, is almost unearthly--those diaphanous layers of subtle color. Almost unearthly. Appropriate, perhaps, to the subject matter." "What is it called?" she asked, rather as if the question had been wrung out of her. "Lost City." There was a pause while she felt herself drawn back to the contemplation of that crowdeSiegel, Jan is the author of 'Prospero's Children' with ISBN 9780345441430 and ISBN 0345441435.