it off, fi-om the start. Winfred, just released from a nine-month
jail sentence for heavy opium
abuse, was on strict parole,
having to report,
after class, to the Deputy Police Officer.
That very afternoon, Franz
hastened to court
to sign up as the youth's legal guardian_
And soon, the white midaged
Carib Indian
and his black phantom
(/Iter ego
had struck up a rare marriage of hearts and minds_ Folks
on the street, in market or tavern, supposed Dania
to be Franz's adoptive son, so rarely were those two men beheld
apart, outside Franz's business
hours at the museum: the one
rattling off
multiple versions of key Myths and Legends
he'd collected from visi ts
wi th the
Elders
in homes of his students; while the other,
notepad in hand , scrawled
quick portrai ts
of enchanted characters
and settings to ill umine the oral texts-sketches he would later
work up into full-scale paintings in
oils,
temperas,
gouaches_ Together, they reconnoitered the sacred caves and ponds,
the shoreline sites and coastal
promontories, Franz fast
with anecdotes
of his own boyhood hideaways and stakeouts
in these wilds_ He'd raged
to learn contours,
the lay of tlatlands and highlands alike:
those identifying marks
of earth's corpus-
