The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones

Author:Gail Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2018-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

20

WHAT WAS HE seeking, leaning too close to the screen, his face broad as a moonstone and artificially shiny? What was she wanting, leaning back, distrustful of his imploring image?

‘I don’t understand,’ said Evie. ‘This woman is taking you to a shrine?’

‘To cure Nina. She wants to help me cure Nina.’

‘I thought you didn’t want her cured.’

‘Lighten up, Evie. It’s folk wisdom, you know. I’m not really wanting a cure. Maria bought these cute little tin ears to place before Santa Rosalia.’

‘Jesus,’ she sighed. ‘So, what else are you doing there?’

‘Sketching. Walking. Watching Italian pop on the telly. There’s a great performer, Jovanotti. Totally cool.’

‘You sound like a kid, Martin.’

‘Grazie, mamma. Grazie mille.’

‘So what else?’

‘Hanging around. It’s a sad city, Evie. It gets to you. Gets into you. I feel things gathering inside me. Memories. Ideas.’

At his new tone she paused before formulating a retort. She heard Martin pause, too, perhaps not sure how to go on after what seemed the spilling of a secret. It was a moment in which both glanced away from the monitor.

‘Noah,’ she insisted. ‘Anything more about Noah? What did Dora say?’

‘Not much. She didn’t want to talk. Antonio told me they’d been on some sort of holiday together, so I figure they were close, but you’d never guess it. Tight as a clam. A bit edgy. She has a sketch of the sculpture, but no real link.’

There was nothing to tell. No reliable information. Evie was disappointed.

‘And what about your blind guy?’

‘My employer, not my blind guy. Benjamin. It’s going well, I think. I passed my week of probation. A Hitchcock: Marnie. And a Bertolucci, The Conformist. Good that he knows Italian.’

Martin was too near again, his face looming and inflated. There was a starry glint in his eyes that might have been the reflection of his screen.

‘How about we turn off the vision and just talk?’ Evie asked.

They did so and, returning each to their own world, their conversation calmed. What a relief the dark screen was—no huge brother-face to incite or command her.

‘Tell me more about that Czech guy, the anatomist you mentioned.’

‘Purkyně? What about him?’

‘Anything, really. You’re the smart one.’

‘I thought it was Ritter you were interested in.’

‘Him too. But I like the name: Purkyně. I wrote it down when we spoke.’

‘You could just google him, you know. Jan Evangelista Purkyně, 1787 to 1869.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Okay. Subjective vision. He liked to experiment on himself.’ She knew this would entice him.

Martin waited. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s not really my field.’

‘Indulge me, Evie.’

‘Well, the story goes that as a kid Purkyně was fascinated by what we call entoptic images—like what you see when the eyelid is pressed against the eyeball. Shadows of blood vessels, dots, squiggly lines. You close your eyes and there are images, but they’re not images of the outside world.’

‘Right.’

‘He ran electric currents into his own eyeballs and did little drawings of what he saw, diamond patterns, mostly, and lines that looked like filaments and zapping electricity. And he took various drugs to gauge the effects on his vision.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.