The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [29]
Despite bombings – one fell into the gallery's small courtyard and didn't explode until six days later, ironically while the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal Unit was at lunch – for six and a half years there was a performance each week: 1,698 concerts. My mother took personal pride at this, for our sitting room concerts must have been nearly as many.
When they drove together along the edges of the flooded St. Lawrence landscape, Avery sometimes stopped and took out his paintbox – smaller than a pocketbook, square, with a hinge lid, a gift from his father – which he almost always carried with him. It was not often immediately clear to Jean what had caught his eye, an isolated farm building, a tree, the clouds. While Avery painted, Jean took the time to look at things. She kept a plant diary. Jean was used to long hours outside, but this feeling of companionship across a field was new.
They unwrapped the meals Jean packed for them – Edwards cheddar, sunflower bread, McIntosh apples, wholemeal biscuits – and ate on the ground, or in the car if it was raining – and only a long time later, in the dark, driving home to Clarendon Avenue, would they would describe to each other what they, with their different eyes, had seen.
It was an engagement of mind that was almost shattering in its pleasure. Jean could not look at the world now without seeing hypars and span-to-depth ratios, wind drift, and vortex separation oscillations. She learned that a building must never sway more than 1/500ths of its height or the wind could create alternating vacuums that would start the building wavering as much as three feet from side to side. “Office workers,” said Avery, “have been known to get airsick in high towers.” He told her about bascules and swing bridges, Gauss's domes and steel whiskers, and how an entire bridge can be supported by half an inch of metal. He explained the difference between hundred-year winds and design winds; he explained that air rushing between tall buildings behaved just like water forced through a narrow gorge. He told her about soil mechanics and the strange case of the National Theatre in Mexico City, which had been built on a sandy foundation. The weight of the heavy stone theatre squeezed water from the sand and the building sank ten feet. But just when they'd constructed a new staircase leading down to the sunken entrance, the building started to rise again, and yet another staircase had to be built so theatregoers could now climb up to the entrance. All the newly erected buildings surrounding the theatre had squeezed the water out of their foundations too and had lifted the theatre back up again. The world, she now understood, was always on the verge of flying apart. The only thing holding matter together was the very fact that it had reached its limits.
Jean had her secrets of matter too. She told him of the shyest plant on earth, the colocynth or bitter gourd, whose seeds cannot bear even a flicker of light; a flash will send them back to dormancy and they will hibernate until they are sure of the darkness they need to sprout. This makes them perfect desert plants, for they need only a little moisture to establish a strong root system before growing to face the scorching desert sun. She told him of a fungus that eats through wood, turning entire buildings to powder, and lichen that is blown about the steppes into great heaps, where it is gathered and roasted