The World, the City, and the Wakemans Quotes

“Damien arrived home after his usual Saturday afternoon visit to the Botolph Museum. He lay down on the living room couch before supper. Just as he was about to slip into a doze, a key rattled in the front door. He sat up, alert and eager, sleepiness gone, “What did the doctor say?”
“More tests,” his wife Adita replied.
“And more waiting,” Damien sighed as she stooped to embrace him. He lay back down afterwards. “We’ll get through it.”
He had a few minutes before supper and went to the third floor study of the house they rented from his father when they moved to Botolph. Old Professor Higginbotham was now living in Florida,
Damien ran a hand along a half-shelf of books his father wrote or edited about Prabashtan, an ancient mountainous country in Central Asia.
His great-grandfather, a merchant trader, had many contacts there. Adita’s parents left the country for Canada after a war started.
These family connections, along with the fact that he and Adita had spent a two week holiday there earlier in the year, inspired Damien to visit the Prabashtan galleries at Botolph’s art museum on Saturday afternoons and whenever he felt adrift. The only thing that came of his gallery-haunting so far was a hundred or so unformed notes he meant as a present for Adita that he based on items in the exhibits. He sat at his father’s old desk and wrote another:

Winsome Lady

Well-proportioned figure at rest.
Leafy fan, lark headdress,
A smile that’s fading.
Green and ochre, brown.
He watched, pleased,
Deceived by scenes
He imagined taking place
In a distant court.”
― Richard French, The World, the City, and the Wakemans