Nory gave the Romanesco to the Cathedral to be a part of the arrangement that was done by Threll School in the South Door, for the Harvest Festival. Kids had carried in carrots in bunches, and zucchini, which were called courgettes in Threll, and broccoli, apples, and sugar beets. But luckily nobody else in the school had given a Romanesco, which made hers easy to see. Nory’s father took three pictures of Nory in her school jacket and tie standing to one side of an open bag of potatoes. The potatoes were shaped just like the stones they put on either side of a lot of the sidewalks in Cambridge to remind your feet in a polite way that you were getting close to the grass. Cambridge was, as you may know, where you go to get a Ph.D. After they went to the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge, Nory told herself a story in the car, holding one of her dolls.
10. The Story of the Fan
One day, there was a little tiny baby. She was born too early, so she was really, really tiny. She should have gone into an incubator, but her parents weren’t rich enough, so she couldn’t. They just had to raise her as being a really, really small little person. She had a big soft-spot because she was so early. And her umbilical was too long. And so on. She was, on the whole, too small. Just a tiny little person.
When she was about three weeks old, she could already do her grasping. She couldn’t really turn yet, but she could turn her head, ever so slightly. She turned her head ever so slightly. She could almost grasp. She couldn’t have handled it yet, because that would be just impossible, so amazing that it would be a fairy tale, which this is, of course, but she seemed to be trying to grab for her mother’s fan. And ever since, she seemed to be totally interested in fans. Just completely interested in them. Her parents named her Colander.
When Colander was full grown, she was a midget, because she was just a tiny person. When she was twelve, the tallest she ever was, she was as tall as Frank is. She was really short. So one day — it was really hard for her to go to school and museums and because people might tease her because she was so short — but one day they went to a museum. It had a lot of different things in it, china and armor and sculpture. They wandered here and there. She said: ‘I see that dark room. What’s in that dark room?’
They went into the dark room she had looked at. And there were the most beautiful fans that she had ever seen. So many different kinds, shapes, sizes. In the corner of each glass case was a little yellow box of some kind of mold killer to keep all the fans from being eaten by a strong fan-eating fungus.
But the fan that really caught her eye was one that was carved from mother-of-pearl, when you opened it up. When you closed it, it had beautiful ivory carvings of children, and then the ivory was put on top of jade. And there was beautiful gold-plating, where the hair of anything would be. For instance, if there was the hair of a mother it was gold-plated, all the hair was true gold plate. And there were also some diamonds put here and there on the fan. There were many other fine fans in the room, but that one was her total favorite.
She wanted most of all in the world to have it. She wanted to start a collection, and she wanted that fan in the centerpiece of it. That was all she wanted. She thought about fans, she drew pictures of the fan, in school she doodled ‘fan’ on her hand when she’d gotten totally bored with the conversation the teacher was giving to them. It was a long conversation in Latin and she hadn’t been studying Latin all that carefully because she was thinking about the fan. The fan was what entertained her.
They went back to the museum on her birthday. Her parents asked, ‘Is it possible, you know, to get a model of that fan?’
The museum people said, ‘Oh, well, I’m sure we can have a model made.’ The owner of the museum was really really nice.
Her parents said, ‘Yes, but we don’t have much money.’
And the museum man said, ‘Oh well, it’s only fifteen dollars.’
Colander heard that and said, ‘Wait, I have fifteen dollars, I’ve been saving my allowance to get the real one, but now that you say it’s only fifteen dollars, I happen to have fifteen dollars!’
‘No, no, that was your allowance,’ her parents said.
‘No, I want to,’ Colander said, ‘I’ll get the money.’
So she paid the museum the fifteen dollars.
But her parents said, ‘No, no, no, little child, you shouldn’t be spending your own money, it’s your birthday present, we should get it for you as a birthday present.’
‘You can get me other things,’ said Colander, ‘but I’ll pay for this.’ Because she knew that her parents really didn’t have very very much money. She had tried to save up fifteen dollars for ages. She was only given about a nickel each time she completed her work, a nickel or two.
Anyway, Colander forked him the fifteen dollars the next day, and he — the museum owner — said, ‘Oh thank you very much, but you should have this. I can see that this is well-earned money. You should have it. I’ll give the fan to you free as grass, for your good work.’
Colander said, ‘Oh no, you shouldn’t. Keep it, keep it.’
Finally, after a lot of persuading, the museum man got Colander to keep the fifteen dollars. So he was actually giving her this wonderful thing free. ‘I’ll give it as my own birthday present for you,’ he said. And so he had a duplicate fan made, in a factory in Bombay, and it was to some people even more beautiful than the first. It was so gorgeous you wouldn’t believe it.
The museum owner was exceptionally rich. He was very, very rich. So this was nothing to him. ‘Pshaw. Oh, just a thousand dollars, pshaw.’ So he spent a ton of money making this one tiny little fan. He put it in a box, wrapped it up, very very nicely, and wrote ‘For Colander, from Mr. Harvonsay.’ And on her birthday Mr. Harvonsay looked in the phone book and found their address, and said, ‘Is this little Miss Colander’s house?’
Colander said, ‘Yes it is.’
So he gave her the little box.
‘Oh, great,’ she said. ‘Oh, thank you.’
She opened all her parents’ presents, and they were excited to see what was in the little box wrapped so neatly, so her mother said, ‘Now open the little box.’
Everything she’d gotten up till then was a fan to put in her collection. In the box from Mr. Harvonsay was the fan. Everyone gasped out loud, it was so superb. Then her parents said, ‘Oh, and one more present for you.’ In her room there was a glass case and little stands to put fans in. She had a whole little mini fan collection of her own.
She was very happy, but the glass case had to be very low, or she’d have to tell her parents where to put everything in it, because she was short. Her parents were relatively short, but they weren’t as short as she was. And so, the end.
11. Feeding the Swans
As for the Bishop’s Palace garden, across the street from the Cathedral, it was definitely not owned by a Bishop in the Catholic Religion. Nory was a Catholic because her mother was a Catholic, and Nory’s mother was a Catholic because her father was a Catholic, and her father was a Catholic because his mother was a Catholic, or had been. They only went to church on rare times, but they said grace every single night. If it had been a Bishop in the Catholic Religion — which was one of the most popular religions of the world, though Christianity was probably slightly more popular — there wouldn’t be a huge garden hidden out of sight, because Catholic bishops would devote all their money to the church and pray the day away, and care for the poor, and wash the poor’s wounds with hot rags. No huge grand house, and no greedy high brick wall for a Catholic Bishop.