“It’s so . . . predictable. You’re still not looking the right way. At all. It’s a wonder you can create such art. You still see this—” he gesticulated vaguely at his own body with a monkey’s paw “—as pathology. You’re still interested in what was and how it went wrong. This is not error or absence or mutancy: this is image and essence . . .” His voice rang around the rafters.

He calmed a little and lowered his many arms.

“This is totality.”

She nodded to show that she understood, too tired to be intimidated.

“Maybe I’m too hard on you,” Mr. Motley said reflectively. “I mean . . . this piece before us makes it clear that you have a sense of the ruptured moment, even if your question suggests the opposite . . . So maybe,” he continued slowly, “you yourself contain that moment. Part of you understands without recourse to words, even if your higher mind asks questions in a format which renders an answer impossible.”

He looked at her triumphantly.

“You too are the bastard-zone, Ms. Lin! Your art takes place where your understanding and your ignorance blur.”

Fine, she signed as she gathered her things. Whatever. Sorry I asked.

“So was I, but not any more, I think,” he replied.

Lin folded her wooden case around her stained pallet, around the remaining colourberries (she needed more, she saw) and the blocks of paste. Mr. Motley continued with his philosophical ramblings, his ruminations on mongrel theory. Lin was not listening. She tuned her antennae away from him, felt the tiny ructions and rumblings of the house, the weight of the air on the window.

I want a sky above me, she thought, not this ancient dusty brace of beams, this tarred, brittle roof. I’m walking home. Slowly. Through Brock Marsh.

Her resolution increased as her thoughts progressed.

I’ll stop at the lab and nonchalantly ask Isaac to come with me, and I’ll steal him away for a night.

Mr. Motley continued sounding.

Shut up, shut up, you spoilt child, you damn megalomaniac with your crackpot theories, thought Lin.

When she turned to sign goodbye, it was with only the faintest semblance of politeness.

Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A pigeon hung cruciform on an X of darkwood on Isaac’s desk. Its head bobbed frantically from side to side, but despite its terror, it could only emit a bathetic cooing.

Its wings were pinned with thin nails driven through the tight spaces between splayed feathers and bent hard down to pinion the wingtip. The pigeon’s legs were tied to the lower quarters of the little cross. The wood beneath it was spattered with the dirty white and grey of birdshit. It spasmed and tried to shake its wings, but it was held.

Isaac loomed over it brandishing a magnifying glass and a long pen.