| I seemed to see the
paintings for the first time, and they looked
oddly like stills culled from a strip of movie
filmEach image was a little clearer, a little
more in focus, but always essentially the same,
always the ship I had first glimpsed in a dream
It was always sunset, and the light filling the
west was always a titanic red anvil that spread
blood across the water and infected the skyThe
ship was a three-masted corpse, something that had
floated in from a plaguehouse of the deadIts deck was desertedThere was
something horrible in every angular line, and
although it was impossible to say just what, you
feared for the little girl alone in her rowboat,
the little girl who first appeared in a tic-tactoe
dress, the little girl afloat on the wine-dark
Gulf
724
In that first version, the angle of the omega planet ocean watches deathship
was wrong to see anything of the name2, the angle had improved but the little
girl (still with the false red hair and now also
wearing Reba's polka-dotted dress) blocked out all
but the letter P3, P had become PER and
Reba had pretty clearly become Ilse, even back-to
John Eastlake's spear-pistol lay in the rowboat
If Elizabeth recognized this, she gave no
indicationI pushed her slowly up the line as the
ship bulked larger and closer, its black masts
looming like fingers, its sails sagging like dead
fleshThe furnace sky glared through the holes in
the canvasNow the name on the transom was PERSE
There might have been more - there was room for
more - but if so, it was hidden by shadows6 (the ship now looming over the
rowboat), the little girl was wearing what
appeared to be a blue singlet with a yellow stripe
around the chanel purse white neckHer hair in that one was orangeish;
it was the only Rowboat Girl whose identity I
wasn't sure ofMaybe it was Ilse, since the
others werebut I wasn't entirely convincedIn
this one the first few rose-petals had begun to
725
appear on the water (plus one single yellow-green
tennis ball with the letters DUNL visible on it),
and an odd assortment of geegaws were heaped on
deck: a tall mirror (which, reflecting the sunset,
appeared filled with blood), a child's rocking
horse, a steamer trunk, a pile of shoesThese
same objects appeared in No8, where
they had been joined by several others - a young
girl's bicycle leaning against the foremast, a
pile of tires stacked on the stern, a great
hourglass at midshipsThis last also reflected
the sun and appeared to be full of blood instead
of sand8 there were chanel handbags shop online more
rose-petals floating between the rowboat and the
PerseThere were more tennis balls, too, at least
half a dozenAnd a rotting garland of flowers
hung around the neck of the rocking horseI could
almost smell the stench of their perfume on the
still air
"Dear God," Elizabeth whispered"She has grown so
strong There had been color in her face but now
it was all goneShe didn't look eighty-five; she
looked two hundred
Who? I tried to ask, but nothing came outyou shouldn't tax
yourself," Pam said"Can you get her a glass of
water?"
"I will, Dad," Illy said
Elizabeth was still staring at Girl and Ship Nodo you
recognize?" she askedThe
girl in the rowboat of No8 was no souvenir, but
she was IlseThe green dress, with its bare back
and crisscrossing straps, had seemed jarringly
***y for a little girl, but now I knew why: it was
a dress omega ladies watch Ilse had bought recently, from a mailorder
catalogue, and Ilse was no longer a little
girlOtherwise, the tennis balls were still a
mystery to me, the mirror meant nothing, nor did
the stack of tiresAnd I didn't know for a fact
that the bicycle leaning against the foremast had
been Tina Garibaldi's, but I feared itand my
heart was somehow sure of it
Elizabeth's hand, dreadfully cold, settled on my
wrist"There's no bullet on the frame of this
last one
727
"I don't know what you're-"
Her grip tightenedYou know exactly what
I meanThe show is a sell, Edgar, do you think
I'm blind? A bullet on the frame of every painting
we've looked at - including No6, the one with my
sister Adie in the rowboat - but not this one!"
I looked back toward No6, where Rowboat Girl had
orange hair"That's your sister?"
She paid no balenciaga replica handbags attentio |