He was not interested in her response to these paintings, even though he knew she was an artist. She wandered on her own, looking at the portraits. The big crowd scenes were too much for her, like epic movies all jammed into a single frame. The subjects of the portraits, on the other hand, looked at her with expressions she recognized immediately. “I am always me, I am always new, I am always me”-for eight centuries they had been saying it. Nothing but women and men. One woman had her left nipple exposed, just under the curve of a necklace; in most periods that would have been transgressive, she seemed to recall. Almost all the women were very small-breasted and big-waisted. Well-fed, under-exercised; didn’t nurse their own babies; not working people. The bodies of nobles. Beginning of speciation. Tintoretto’s Leda looked quite fond of the swan ravishing her, in fact was protecting the swan from an intruder. Swan had once or twice been swan to a Leda, not violently of course-at least not physical violence-and she recalled some of the Ledas had liked it. Others not.

She returned to Wahram, who was again inspecting Paradise, this time from as far away as he could get, thus at a slant. To Swan it still seemed a mess. “It’s very crowded,” she said. “The figures are in too symmetrical a pattern, and God and Christ look like doges. Indeed the whole thing looks like a Venetian senate meeting. Maybe that was Tintoretto’s idea of paradise.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“You don’t agree. You like it.”

“I’m not sure,” he said, and walked a few meters away from her.

He didn’t want to talk about it. Swan went off to look at more Venetians. For her art was something to make, first and foremost, and after that something to talk about. Ineffable aesthetic responses, communing with a work-these struck her as too precious. One of the portraits glowered, another tried to suppress a little ironic smile; they agreed with her. She was out here with a stick of a toad. Mqaret had said Alex revered this man, but now she doubted it could be true. Who was he? What was he?