Love Story: In The Web of Life Ken Renshaw (the best novels to read TXT) 📖

I observed, "You know, a couple of months ago,I would have thought you were being irrational, talking aboutexperiencing dead artist's emotions by looking at their paintings.Now, it all seems perfectly reasonable to me."

Tina leaned over and squeezed my hand, and gaveme a look that I shall never forget. It was as though we weresuddenly bound together.

Then, she looked a little embarrassed and said,"Lets go into the galleries."

We spent about an hour looking at theImpressionist and Post–impressionist paintings by Manet, van Gogh,Matisse, Monet, etc. without saying much. I did notice that thevibration I sensed from her changed significantly when she lookedat some paintings.

After a while, Tina said, "Let's walk in thegarden, I am getting visually saturated."

As we walked into the garden, I said, "Maybethat's one of the features of great art, it is a ticket to travelin space-time to be perceptually with an artist, or a person, inanother place in space-time."

Tina didn't respond; she simply gave me anotherversion of the look she gave me at lunch.

The garden is surrounded by high brown tilesurfaced walls, the same height and color as the as the museum. Inthe center there is a long pond, covered with patches of waterlilies and edged with a variety of rushes and reeds. A wide varietyof trees, some in bloom, filled the garden and shaded a path thatmeanders around the pond. Bronze and granite statues are placedaround the pond and under the trees. The late afternoon sunreflected off the pond and projected a soft ripple of light on manystatues.

As we walked from statue to statue, we didn'ttalk much. We looked at each statue for a minute or more, sometimeswalking over to read the nameplate, and looking at the surroundingplants or trees. We came to a large dark metal statue of a nudewoman, maybe double life-size, who appeared to be tumbling sidewaysinto the patch of lavender surrounding the base, her arms stretchedout in the air, her feet flailing with only her hip touching thebase.

I went over to the nameplate and read aloud,"Air."

Tina said, "By Aristide Maillol,right?"

I nodded yes.

"Tina, I kind of feel like this when I amaround you, at times like today, like I’m about totumble."

"Me, too," she answered. "But into a bed oflavender isn't all that bad."

I took her hand and said, "I think we shouldlive together. I want to be around you as much aspossible."

She turned and put her hands on my cheeks, gaveme that look again, smiled her mischievous smile, said, "I wouldlike that. Your place or mine?" and gave me a long kiss.

"We will work that out," I said with a bigsmile.

"Is this only until you go off to war nextWednesday?"

"No," I said looking directly into her eyes,"I'm glad you are such a careful listener. I plan for this to befor much longer and..."

She cut me off and said, "I must warn you I'llhave to redecorate your place a little bit, definitely adding someart work."

"No Rothko's, I hope."

With a sly grin she said, "We'llsee."

****

We decided to start our togetherness at myplace. Tomorrow was a legal holiday, my office was closed, and Ididn't want to go there anyway. We stopped at Tina's, picked up afew things, and then went to a market. Tina said she wanted to cooka really fine dinner. I, feeling very domestic, was comfortablewith the idea. Somehow, all of a sudden, I felt as though we were apair. I thought to myself as we climbed the stairs to my apartment,'Look at me, carrying bags of groceries full of real food into myapartment, walking behind someone else who lives here.'

Tina cooked a marvelous dinner. We ate bycandlelight to the sound of romantic music, my contribution. It wasa marvelous evening. I fell into the lavender.

****

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of Tinahumming and the smell of breakfast and coffee filling the air. Ilay in bed and reveled at my new domestic scene. We lolled andloved away the day, my best-ever holiday.

In the late afternoon, we were sitting on thecouch in the living room still in out bathrobes. Tina, leaned herback on me as I read a book, and she was working with myiPad.

"I have been researching German World War Iflying," said Tina. "At the start of the war, nobody was veryexperienced as a pilot. Also, they hadn't figured out how to havethe machine guns shoot through the propellers. The machine gunswere mounted on the top wings of the biplanes so it was difficultto reload them. They had to stand up in the cockpit–that must havebeen scary– or use cumbersome track sort of things to pull the gunsdown to the cockpit to reload. All in all it sounded veryawkward.

"At the start of the war a medal, nicknamed theBlue Max, but officially the Order Pour leMe‘rite, was awarded to pilots who shot down eightenemy aircraft. There weren't that many enemy aircraft to shootdown, and they had to spend too much time messing with their gunsduring a dogfight. Eight victories, as they called them, were anachievement.

"Later in the war, they invented a way to shootthe guns through the propellers, so the guns could be sitting rightin front of the pilots where they could be reloaded or unjammedeasily. There were also more enemy aircraft to shoot down. They hadto raise the award level to sixteen.

"Even later in the war there were thousands ofenemy aircraft, many piloted by boys with only a few hours oftraining who had no flying skills to use evading attackers. Theyhad to raise the award level to thirty.

"Here is a picture of the medal," she said asshe handed the iPad to me.

I looked at the picture and felt my heart sink."Wow!" I said, "That creates an emotional response in me. That mustrelate to the experience in my space-time recall with Tom." Themedal was a blue cross with gold eagles filling in the spacebetween the arms of the cross. On the arms of the cross were thewords, Pour leMe‘rite.

"That award must be why