Unaccustomed Earth

In November, wandering through the National Gallery, she met a man. She had been admiring "The Arnolfini Marriage" by van Eyck, lingering in front of it after a cluster of people had passed. It was an oil painting of a couple in a bedroom holding hands, with a small dog standing at their feet. The man wore a fur-trimmed purple cape and an overly large black straw hat. The woman wore an emerald-green gown that trailed like a heavy curtain onto the floor, some of the material gathered up in her left hand. She had a white veil on her head and looked possibly pregnant. Sudha wasn't sure. There was a window behing the man, with a piece of fruit, an apricot or tangerine, on the sill. On the wall hung a convex mirror that reflected everything in the painting.

"Come closer," the man standing next to Sudha said, ushering her a few steps forward so that no one could cross their line of vision. "Otherwise you can't really see." He started talking about the mirror, how it was the focal point of the painting, capturing the floor and the ceiling, the room and the world outside, and then she saw that it reflected not only the couple but also a pair of men standing in the doorway, peering into the room just as she was. "One of them is van Eyck," the man said. "That's what the inscription above the mirror says. It's Latin for 'van Eyck was here.'"