Postcards from New Zealand: Day Five

Today, we went to see Jim to ask him whether we can park our car by the empty flat when we're in town. He must be 80 or thereabouts; his house is older—one of the oldest in Auckland—and he gave us a tour. He didn't much want us to park our car by the empty flat, but he did show us the secret room behind the kitchen, where a spice rack is actually a cleverly masked Dutch door. The room was filled with half-finished canvasses, for Jim is a painter, and his art hangs all throughout the house. He caught me gazing at a Byzantine Madonna and Child he had on the wall by the stairs, and said, "Oh, but that's not a painting, of course," perhaps flustered that I preferred it to his own Fauvist oil mashings.