Filippa Rolf
AS IT IS WRITTEN
The paintings were relatively genuine, bought in the 1840s
or 50s, before counterfeiting was lucrative for the middlemen:
the
Ruisdael, a large forest with a rutted road; the Raphael, a standing
Mary with the children Jesus and John, a wistful Joseph walking
in
the distance, looking over his shoulder; the Rubens, the hilarious,
true-to-life arrangement of ladies sittin.g on top of each other,
the
child Jesus, almost levitated on so many blankets, holding the Lamb,
which, in tum, holds the sacrificial banner of suffering.
My
FAMILY
I:
GRANDMOTHER
My birth as a girl apparently as sturdy as the others, but in a
dry way and depending largely on hypnosis for achievement - a ter–
rible, hairraising calamity, wherein cramps and the maddening me–
tallic shivers of - mingled with my mother's teeth-chattering -
the
copper-shiny doors of the tiled stove in a primitive lying-in hospital
played prominent parts - occurred on Nov. 15, 1924, in Rigden,
Ankarea. (This is what happens to cities and countries when you
emigrate: they become fantasy.) The stove doors made noise because ,
in an effort to relax her tension, the nurses kept abnormal fires going
in my mother's room. And shortly after, the maid, a buoyant woman,
later on an American - in my imagination she committed suicide–
in a baker's or cook's outfit to celebrate the glad event came in
with
me on her arm and a chief's high white hat on the top of her foolish
I
head for my first meal. The frail and helplessly cold, not quite young
woman with light curly hair over a tall forehead suffered from
this
