The next year, November 2019, as in years gone by, it was dark and the sun never shone but only low on the horizon. Daytime in November in Amsterdam and the bicyclists would not stop pedalling in the hegemony of two wheels in the seventeenth-century city.
Vivi walked the dark curves by the water to the Rijksmuseum, approached the magnificence of the stone structure, entered the stone tunnel, down the stairs into the brightly lit main floor, her pupils dilating, then upstairs into the temporary exhibit of Rembrandt-Velázquez. On for a few months, only until late January 2020. She was excited to see the pairings of paintings, the duets these guys would play on the walls.
The moment she saw Vulcan’s Forge by Diego Velázquez, 1630, was a moment like an event, a swerve in her bloodstream. Fiv
