Feed My Dear Dogs. Emma Richler

and they are always seeing, which goes to show how an artist does not need a lot of detail to make a thing real. At times, hands are painted in so much detail, limbs and clothing are a bit boring, as if the artist knocked himself out doing the hand part and kind of gave up after that. Other times, hands resemble stumps of wood with little bits of kindling for fingers.

      I don’t like to see tons of paintings all at once, because I get them all mixed up, and that can be depressing, but here is my favourite so far. This is the name of the painting. The Annunciation, by Fra Filippo Lippi, b.1406?, d.1469. I am quite interested in dates, partly since the nuns told me how in olden times people had very short lives, and it made me a bit anxious, so I like to do some calculations of my own. B.1406? I don’t understand why they are not sure of Filippo’s birth year, did his parents forget to write it down? Mr and Mrs Lippi were so happy when Filippo came along, they just forget, and friends ask, how old is he now, when was he born? And the Lippis scratch their heads and look at each other in a merry distracted fashion and say, We don’t know! About 1406? Or maybe Filippo was a foundling. Of unknown origins. It’s possible. They knew when he died though, someone wrote that down all right.

      In the painting, the Angel Gabriel is giving the big news to Mary about the Immaculate Conception that is coming up for her. She is reading a book before calling it a night, and you can see her bedroom with the blanket neatly folded back at one corner like in a hotel. I have been to two hotels and I am most impressed by this foldy thing they do, some stranger worrying about you last thing at night, and just not wanting you to tussle with sheets and blankets at this difficult time in the day when you are all worn out from life. I do it to my own bed now and then, and pretend someone else did it. OK. Mary is listening to Gabriel and she is quite pleased about the news, even though she will not be able to get much reading done for a while, which was the only bad thing for Mum regarding the five babyhoods in our house, the loss of reading time, but she is catching up now that we are not so pathetic and helpless.

      In the painting, Gabriel’s right hand is doing something strange. His first and second fingers are in that two-finger position signifying, I happen to know from nuns who are well up on this sort of information, the dual nature of Christ, human and divine. For nuns, these are the facts. Gabriel’s third and fourth fingers are furled backwards, holding on to his red cloak, and I tried to do this myself, pointing with two fingers and gripping my jumper at the same time, and what I got was an almighty pain in the hand, meaning an angel maybe develops special muscles in his hands the way piano players do. Special-purposes muscles. Most of all, I want to touch Gabriel’s hand, I want it to touch me. I do not care if it is unrealistic.

      It’s autumn and Mum wears kid gloves, this is the kind she always wears. She wears kid gloves and has a kid on the end of her hand. Kid gloves are very soft and thin and made out of baby goats, a piece of news I aim to keep from my little sister as she has a very big thing for fauna, especially the lamb species to whom goats are closely related, and she does not need to be reminded that Mum’s gloves are made from goats who never had the chance to be grown-up goats and lead a full life, b.Monday, d.Friday, over and out, goodbye.

      I can sense Mum right through the gloves, the gentleness, the slender bones, the little changes in pressure she applies for fun, she knows I’m here. I imagine the blood flowing in her fingers, and the little pulses pulsing until I cannot tell the difference any more between the feelings in her hand and the feelings in mine, like we are only one hand now, and suddenly I am in panic stations about it, I start flipping my thumb wildly from inside her palm, to the back of her hand, and as we get closer and closer to Zetland’s, I have a superstition moment, involving having to count to eighteen before we reach the door and Mum lets go of my hand, or else. Or else there will be no binoculars left. Or else there will be only one, and all seven Weisses will have to share it out, tearing off seven miserable pieces and saying prayers over them, and eating very, very slowly with a poignant cheery expression on our faces, signifying courage in the face of asperity as in nice poor families in books by Dickens. It will be terrible.

      One, two, three … don’t let go … eighteen!

      ‘Here we are,’ says Mum, releasing my hand and maybe wondering why I am close to fainting and in need of stretcher-bearers.

      Mrs Zetland smiles an all-out smile at Mum, because Mum is the kind of person people smile at, no matter what, even if it is not their big thing in life, to show signs of merriment for no obvious reason, and I clip my thumbs into my jeans pockets, and waltz up real casual to the binocular basket in the front of the shop, worrying that even though I made it to eighteen, I had called upon disaster anyway, because I am a fallen type, and must stay on my toes and never count on soft landings in passing ships.

      The basket is brimfull of binoculars, and they strike me as the most rare and miraculous binoculars of all time, because fate did not mess with me, and also because of this new thing, how if I imagine a bad thing happening, I have a lot of grief, as if that bad thing has already happened, it is news. Mostly I do this late at night when I cannot sleep, I picture it, all the ghastly outcomes, beginning with small things, such as no more binoculars and always ending up with the same doomy thing, Mum going missing, which is a ridiculous fear to have and plain silly, but I saw it in my head, so now I worry, and I feel responsible, so I will have to watch out, like in that poem Mum reads to Gus from Christopher Robin.

      James James

      Morrison Morrison

      Weatherby George Dupree

      Took great

      Care of his Mother,

      Though he was only three.

      James James

      Said to his Mother,

      ‘Mother,’ he said, said he;

      ‘You must never go down to the end of the town,

       if you don’t go down with me.’

      There is a tip-off in this poem, when the mother goes missing, that James may be imagining things. Here it is. James bashes off on his tricycle at breakneck speed and petitions the King. Nothing wrong with that. But the King’s name is JOHN. I looked this up. The right king at the time of Christopher Robin was George VI. Good work, Jem.

      King John

      Put up a notice,

      ‘LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!

      JAMES JAMES

      MORRISON’S MOTHER,

      SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.’

      James may be imagining things, but he worries, and you can’t take the worry out of the boy, even with bare facts. Your mother is right here, around the corner, coming soon. James James has a problem with fear and worry, and he is only three.

      I check out the basket, which is brimfull.

      ‘Whoa!’ I say. ‘Binoculars.’

      There are questions I want to ask my mother today, but never will, not even in fun, in the spirit of the Why game, say, because these questions would worry her, and worrying is bad for her, alarming as I now find strong light and some frequencies, and society at large. The great world. Everyone needs protection from something.

      Worry. This is an interesting word and it derives from the Old English wyrgan, a hunting term meaning to kill by strangulation, and worrier, for so long, meant someone tormenting something or someone else, most typically an object of desire, and not until modern times has worrying become a word for a self-inflicted torment, that passion all one’s own. I worry.

      Whither thou goest, I will go.

      Come back.

      Still no passenger ships, but I do not rule it out, I do not rule out the Moon. Or thereabouts.

      When the small lovestruck boy with the fluffy blond head and single suit of fine clothes, finally touches down to Earth, in an African desert, he meets a snake, a funny old creature, he observes politely, slender as a finger, flicking through the sand, he reflects, a chain, colour of the Moon.

      —Bonne nuit, he says.