The Shadow Catcher

She forced herself to worry less and entertain him more. “Not my father’s style — can’t you see the difference? This painting on the sea chest is a figurative one, realistic. My father’s style is moody, more impressionistic. But this was one of his favorite paintings, the original, this is a copy, of course, a rather good one, except for the second-rate colors that were used. Could be that is why I purchased it, because my father was so fond of the original — I’ve forgotten the Dutch artist’s name — or perhaps he was Flemish — sixteenth century, nevertheless, and you can see that by then the Europeans had answered the quandaries posed by the subject of perspective because this painting — it’s called Icarus, that much I remember — here you see the plowman in the foreground, his figure proportionally larger than the distant ship behind him, even though no human, naturally, is larger than a ship—”

“What does ‘Icarus’ mean?”

“—I’m sorry?”

“Icarus. What does it mean? What language is it?”

“Greek. I don’t know that the name means anything. Like ‘John.’ Or ‘Edward.’”

“Icarus is a person’s name?”

“Yes, this is Icarus here, in the right hand corner of the painting with his legs sticking up from where he’s fallen in the water.”

His steady look.

“The boy who flew too close to the sun?”

Uncomprehending.

“The Greek myth,” Clara said.

“Yes, go on. I’ve heard of them. Legends from the ancient past.”

“Legends, yes, but legends only now. At the time that they were told they were believed to be as factual and truthful as this textbook.” She held up the ANATOMIE.

“What happened to them?”

“The Greeks?”

“The myths.”

“People stopped believing in the truth of them.”

“Ah. Because they were not true, at heart.”

“People stopped believing in the magic of them, then.”

“How does that happen?”

“—loss of faith? I suppose most often one kind of faith replaces another. It’s not faith that is transformed, but the object of it.”

“Then what did the Greeks believe in when they lost faith in myths?”

“Other myths, I suppose. Christianity. These…” She held up the pages of the saints in Giotto’s paintings.

“Tell me the myth of Icarus,” he said, “so I can decide if I’ll believe it.”

“Not a good myth to start with, Edward, for someone who’s just fallen off a roof…”

She told him the myth, which could be recited in its full in four brief sentences and then he asked her how the Icarus sea chest had come into her possession and she told him that, too, about the money from Lodz and who Lodz was and how she and Hercules had gone to the market to shop and she’d bought the chest with all the books inside and how Hercules had spent his full ten dollars on a suit of clothes that he’d already outgrown.

“The suit was handsome?”

“He was very pleased with it.”

“I would have done the same. You’re laughing?”

“He’s a boy, Edward — a boy of eight — and you’re a man. I think you would not have squandered your entire fortune on a suit of clothes that you were destined to outgrow.”

“Oh but as most men from a meager background I am attracted to fine things, fine clothes.” He ran his hand along the counterpane again, in contemplation of its weave. “Your family must have been, at some time, wealthy, I suspect.”

“Wealthy, no. Had they been wealthy I would not be here. Existing on your family’s charity. Living from a sea chest.”

“Wealthy enough to buy your education, though. You are well educated, I observe.”

“If I appear that way it is because my primary education derived from my parents’ company. They were greatly learned people. Far better schooled than I.”

“So you see the root cause of my disability. Given the company that I was made to keep as a small boy.”

“You mean your father—”

“But I taught myself to read. The Leatherstocking Tales. Do you know these books?”

“Fenimore Cooper,” Clara vaguely recalled.

“The Deerstalker. The Pathfinder. Oh they’re magnificent. The Last of the Mohicans. I’ve read them all. You must read them. You must make them necessary reading. I’ll lend them to you. In fact, in honor of your taking time to share your books from your sea chest with me, I’m going to call you Scout. That’s what Hawk-eye, the Pathfinder, is — a scout. And that’s what you’ll be for me. My Scout. That’s going to be my name for you.”

As he’d yet to address her by any name, especially her own, Clara accepted this false baptism with reluctant gratitude.

“Are there any books in that sea chest, Scout, that you could read to me — in English?”

“English, yes, aye, aye, sir, let’s just see—” She went hunting again, among the books and mementos. “—I brought along some favorite novels of my parents, here we are—” She stood up holding several volumes. “Louisa May Alcott, no, that won’t do—”

“A woman writer?”

“—even worse, Edward. A woman writer writing one called Little Women—”

He looked, almost on cue, newly pained.