“Questions about Tintoretto?”

“Yes.”

“Well…” Swan hesitated, unsure what to say.

“It would be a way to pass the time,” the man suggested.

“Yes.” This was presumptuous enough to irritate her, but on the other hand, she had in fact been searching for something to distract her, something to do in the aftermath, and nothing had come to her. “Well, I suppose.”

“Thank you very much.”

Lists (1)

Ibsen and Imhotep; Mahler, Matisse; Murasaki, Milton, Mark Twain; Homer and Holbein, touching rims; Ovid starring the rim of the much larger Pushkin; Goya overlapping Sophocles. Van Gogh touching Cervantes, next to Dickens. Stravinsky and Vyasa. Lysippus. Equiano, a West African slave writer, not located near the equator. Chopin and Wagner right next to each other, equal size. Chekhov and Michelangelo both double craters. Shakespeare and Beethoven, giant basins. Al-J i, Al-Akh al. Aristoxenus, Ashvaghosha. Kurosawa, Lu Hsun, Ma Chih-yuan. Proust and Purcell. Thoreau and Li Po, R m and Shelley, Snorri and Pigalle. Valmiki, Whitman. Brueghel and Ives. Hawthorne and Melville.

It’s said the naming committee of the International Astronomical Union got hilariously drunk one night at their annual meeting, took out a mosaic of the first photos of Mercury, recently received, and used it as a dartboard, calling out to each other the names of famous painters, sculptors, composers, writers-naming the darts, then throwing them at the map.

There is an escarpment named Pourquoi Pas.

SWAN AND WAHRAM

It was not difficult to spot the Titan, standing there by the city’s south lock door at the appointed hour. He was in form spherical, or perhaps cubical. As tall as Swan, and Swan was pretty tall. Black hair in tight curls like sheep’s wool, cut close to his round head.

Swan approached him. “Off we go,” she said gracelessly.