Patina novel9/6/2023 ![]() ![]() We observe so intensely as to learn what questions to ask of things, and to then respond in a way that feels respectful and technically sound. But what nonconservators do not see is the way that our work is always a negotiation with the surface. Our best work is meant to be nearly invisible, and we in turn should recede into the background, forgotten. Images show us hunched over surfaces, tiny paintbrushes and metal tools in hand, or squinting through microscopes at square millimeters, working for years on the same objects with the aim of making them look like we had never been there in the first place. And yet, there would be only words, no things.Ĭonservators are expected to have a level of patience that borders on the extreme. The stories do not come before-or without-the surface. The stories we tell come from the surface. I had wanted to say, but this is not how conservators work! We need to look. ![]() But the archives, I’d been told, were available. Sitting dumbstruck in the dusty courtyard in front of the Government Museum, I considered the strangeness of the situation: a conservator who could neither touch nor see objects up close, only view them through an impenetrable barrier of glass. The Indian gods always win, as does Indian bureaucracy. Instead, I was like the demonic creature Siva tramples on in his gleeful, whirling dance, the embodiment of human ego. I had expected to spend months examining ancient bronze surfaces, teasing out stories from the corrosion clinging to the god Siva’s swirling hair as he danced the destruction of the universe. Despite all the assurances printed on colorful letterhead and witnessed with florid signatures, I was told that physical access to the ancient and medieval bronzes I had come to Chennai (it was Chennai now, no longer Madras), India, to study was not possible. The savoring of something’s concentrated goodness on the tongue and in one’s memory. But I had forgotten that first meaning, the preservation of the granular sweetness of something after it has ripened, even rotted. The soldier tried to conserve his energy for climbing the high hill.” 1 As a conservator of ancient objects, I find myself in that second guise, almost militaristically bent on saving up the life of things from some impending and yet still-distant hardship. Under “conserve,” the entry says, “Conserve (1), n. When I hold it, I feel only the weight of the gift of words, and the promise of the love of words, passed from my grandfather’s hands into mine. I’ve opened the book and inhaled, but can detect nothing. ![]() “Careful,” I say, “be careful with it.” My son says it has a good smell. And yet they sometimes pull the Junior School Dictionary off the shelf and splay it open. By comparison, this little book, itself an ancient relic, has little to offer them. Inexplicably, neither does “love.” Or “story.” This slim book of (not enough) old words sits on our bookshelf, dwarfed by a glossy twenty-two-volume set of the 2019 World Book that my children now consult. The term “patina” does not appear in this dictionary. Did my grandfather foresee this for me? But there’s also a Spanish bull and fighter, and a tiger, none of whom I’ve met in person, so I can’t believe too much in signs. ![]() The illustrations on the cover are eerily prescient there’s an ancient Greek pot (now a research interest of mine), and a relief from Abydos, Egypt, where I worked for several years on excavation. I carry the volume with me still, thirty-eight years later, its fraying spine detaching from the book block, the edges of the pages curled and dirty with use (fig. I imagine carting this volume across the oceans, from Madras (it was still called Madras then) to Bethesda, Maryland, the frontispiece emblazoned with my grandfather’s nickname for me, underlined in scarlet ink and stopped with a period. My grandfather must have bought me the Junior School Dictionary soon after it was published, because my mother and I left India in 1982. ![]()
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