It couldn’t be found, first attempt. While she waited for Martin to return in his own time and from wherever he was in the world, freed at last by the work that had kept him captive, freed by the praise for that work as if those who praised wore rings of keys that opened the doors of cells, a profusion of letters and postcards arrived from Venice, from Madrid, from Amsterdam, from London, and she would climb the first flight of stairs and turn and climb the next flight, reading. The foreign airmail stationery was of a fine, soft texture and subtle colors, and his handwriting over this weightless paper—careful but not precise, quick but still contemplative—and over all the postcards of paintings in museums enabled her to imagine him among the places he described. She imagined him possessed by all there was to see, euphoric one moment and dazed the next by the realization that he was never to see it all. One among the many postcards was Rembrandt’s portrait of himself when he was a young man, and she gazed at that one for a long time.
