way of flattery.
Mother looked at him benignly. She had placed her foot on a tangled wad of gummy paper and was busily pawing at the ground, trying to rid herself of the garbage.
"Fascinating, Mr. Taqdir," she said breathily, drawing her datebook out from her mammoth handbag. "I'm in awe. We must, however, set a schedule." Mother put her pen to paper, awaiting word from her new employer. But he just smiled.
"The working begins now," he told her. "We will discuss timetables when it's time. Never hurry to go, I will be saying. One thing and then the next."
Mother pushed the datebook back deep into the folds of her ruglike purse, giving Mr. Taqdir a brisk smile.
Men in dirtied white coveralls worked in bunches around one or another mammoth construction, teams of seven or eight at each station, translating life-size clay models into giant sculpture by means of a three-dimensional pantograph. There must have been a dozen such machines all told, swinging this way and that, setting the surface dimensions of each piece, all working in the vast airy expanse of the open warehouse, white walls and plaster dust all around.
The pantograph has a stiff iron finger maybe three feet long extending out from a mechanical frame. By moving this finger over the surface of the model and touching it down at each important point of relief, the sculptor causes a corresponding part to define the same surface in immensely exaggerated proportions.
(Mother helped me with this part.)
At that other end, several men record these positions by pushing nails into a monstrous tangle of wood and steel pipes, railroad ties and chicken mesh, which has been welded, pushed and pounded into roughly the right shape prior to this finishing work. The whole thing is then covered in travertine plaster, the surface barely concealing each nail head. That way it has the same shape as the model.
It takes days for each piece, weeks for a whole sculpture. When they get it all set, the same machine is used to check the finished piece for accuracy. Actually molding the original model is the least of it.
That first day Mr. Taqdir finished the work in clay and got his assistants started on the lumber-and-steel monster with the afternoon not half done. Before we left we could see the posture and frame of my mother emerging from the chaos of railroad ties and bent pipes, wadded masses of chicken mesh stuffed in amongst beams to fill out her figure, her spine and limbs defined by the crude lines of thick timber and scrap iron left over from the construction of the buildings. Soon it will be "smooth as the elephant," as Mr. Taqdir says, the twists and ties of metal tucked in and hidden beneath its thin plaster shell. And then it will be ready, rolled out along the railway and positioned atop its pillar facing the bay. Winged Victory.
6 SEPTEMBER 1914
Dear Robert,
The weather is glorious here. Odd, isn't it? I'd been told a war was on. I've dug a fine ditch and may lie quite calm in the dusk watching the ocean of stars wash across this black night sky. I see in the paper the Queen's stepped down from the Palace to take a tour of a small handful of model trenches. Nothing so posh here, though we've the option of adding any rooms we care to dig out from the dirt. Which reminds me to ask, again, after that piano I requested not so many weeks ago. Where is it? I've built a music room in the second trench, carved from the mud and lit by a simple skylight (I pray it doesn't rain), and all I've been able to do is sing.
We're under some lovely strafing now. Probably I've given us away with my noisy pen scratches. That spit of orange fire from the machine gunners is a wondrous sight. It fairly jumps out into the black. Provided one's not hit, it's worth the poke of the head just to catch a glimpse.
Six hours at the cutting table today, a brutal sight. I don't fancy much more of that on the morrow.
On bright busy days, watching Mother work, say, at our late-afternoon
Mother looked at him benignly. She had placed her foot on a tangled wad of gummy paper and was busily pawing at the ground, trying to rid herself of the garbage.
"Fascinating, Mr. Taqdir," she said breathily, drawing her datebook out from her mammoth handbag. "I'm in awe. We must, however, set a schedule." Mother put her pen to paper, awaiting word from her new employer. But he just smiled.
"The working begins now," he told her. "We will discuss timetables when it's time. Never hurry to go, I will be saying. One thing and then the next."
Mother pushed the datebook back deep into the folds of her ruglike purse, giving Mr. Taqdir a brisk smile.
Men in dirtied white coveralls worked in bunches around one or another mammoth construction, teams of seven or eight at each station, translating life-size clay models into giant sculpture by means of a three-dimensional pantograph. There must have been a dozen such machines all told, swinging this way and that, setting the surface dimensions of each piece, all working in the vast airy expanse of the open warehouse, white walls and plaster dust all around.
The pantograph has a stiff iron finger maybe three feet long extending out from a mechanical frame. By moving this finger over the surface of the model and touching it down at each important point of relief, the sculptor causes a corresponding part to define the same surface in immensely exaggerated proportions.
(Mother helped me with this part.)
At that other end, several men record these positions by pushing nails into a monstrous tangle of wood and steel pipes, railroad ties and chicken mesh, which has been welded, pushed and pounded into roughly the right shape prior to this finishing work. The whole thing is then covered in travertine plaster, the surface barely concealing each nail head. That way it has the same shape as the model.
It takes days for each piece, weeks for a whole sculpture. When they get it all set, the same machine is used to check the finished piece for accuracy. Actually molding the original model is the least of it.
That first day Mr. Taqdir finished the work in clay and got his assistants started on the lumber-and-steel monster with the afternoon not half done. Before we left we could see the posture and frame of my mother emerging from the chaos of railroad ties and bent pipes, wadded masses of chicken mesh stuffed in amongst beams to fill out her figure, her spine and limbs defined by the crude lines of thick timber and scrap iron left over from the construction of the buildings. Soon it will be "smooth as the elephant," as Mr. Taqdir says, the twists and ties of metal tucked in and hidden beneath its thin plaster shell. And then it will be ready, rolled out along the railway and positioned atop its pillar facing the bay. Winged Victory.
6 SEPTEMBER 1914
Dear Robert,
The weather is glorious here. Odd, isn't it? I'd been told a war was on. I've dug a fine ditch and may lie quite calm in the dusk watching the ocean of stars wash across this black night sky. I see in the paper the Queen's stepped down from the Palace to take a tour of a small handful of model trenches. Nothing so posh here, though we've the option of adding any rooms we care to dig out from the dirt. Which reminds me to ask, again, after that piano I requested not so many weeks ago. Where is it? I've built a music room in the second trench, carved from the mud and lit by a simple skylight (I pray it doesn't rain), and all I've been able to do is sing.
We're under some lovely strafing now. Probably I've given us away with my noisy pen scratches. That spit of orange fire from the machine gunners is a wondrous sight. It fairly jumps out into the black. Provided one's not hit, it's worth the poke of the head just to catch a glimpse.
Six hours at the cutting table today, a brutal sight. I don't fancy much more of that on the morrow.
On bright busy days, watching Mother work, say, at our late-afternoon
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