The Art Society’s competition recently gave a prize to a young lady with an exceptionally deft hand. Miss Hilda Olson’s winning entry was such a detailed copy of Löfgren’s paintingGirl with Flowers in Handthat the painter could not tell his own work from the copy, and to Topelius’s delight, he can vouch not only for Miss Olson’s skills but for her character too. The Olson family used to spend their summers in the same area as the Topelius family, and Miss Olson herself used to play with his own children. She was a quiet, serious child who never complained about wet petticoats if it started raining but thanked the Lord for taking care of her thirsty plants.
A woman for an assistant. A remarkable thought, though not entirely out of the question, and von Nordmann is happy to admit that in the art of illustration women’s work is often more precise and detailed than that of their male colleagues. His daughters are all skilled with a pencil and paintbrush, and if the world were different, their gifts would have carried them into careers as nature illustrators just as Arthur’s should have done. It wasn’t an altogether impossible thought. Of course, the subjectsof women’s paintings are often different to those of scientists, but if Miss Olson could paint children and flowers, there was nothing to suggest she could not turn her attention to insects too.
The botanical gardens in Helsinki can be a bleak, barren place on January mornings: the pathways lined with hesitant young trees, hay blackened by the winter jutting here and there through the snow. Von Nordmann takes in the view in front of him and sighs. Helsinki is certainly no Yalta, though Miss Olson does not appear to notice the Gardens’ modesty and studies the greenhouses most keenly. The professor notes her demeanour. If the lady so wishes, we can visit the palm house, he begins, but only if you do not care too much for your attire: in the frozen weather, the gardeners have to keep a fire burning in the boiler rooms around the clock, lest the palms and vines shrivel and shed their leaves. The hot smoke is then channelled into the palm house through a complex system of flues. This ingenious system creates artificial tropical conditions within the glass walls, keeping the plants alive through the cold, dark winter months, but the system is not perfect. The palms remain alive, but anyone visiting them must put up with the smoke, which makes one’s eyes sting and leaves an unpleasant smell on one’s clothes. Olson glances at her simple skirt and laughs in amusement: she would be only too happy to see the palms.
The professor shows her the Gardens’ rarities, their exotic,long-leaved plants, the like of which she has never seen before, and after walking around the greenhouses they retire indoors for a hot drink. She stirs honey into her tea and savours its sweetness. Her own honey ran out before Christmas, and she cannot afford to buy any more. Work has been hard to come by, and since Topelius passed on the message that the professor might have some work for her, she has been sitting at home waiting for word to come.
Word eventually did come, and here she is, sitting on the professor’s couch with a cup in her hands. Von Nordmann tells her of his plans to develop the Gardens, he talks about the weather and Olson tells him about her family and work. The professor’s tone is jovial, but she notes how carefully he weighs up her every word, and she does her best to give a good impression. Yes, she did study at the drawing school, but it is hard to find work as an artist. She has designed a few board games for Edlund’s publishing house, which he sells in his bookshop, and which earn her a modest income, but for the most part she makes a living by teaching English and translating short stories and articles from England and the United States. She learned the language from her father, who was a sea captain and spoke many tongues, a skill that he passed on to his children.
When talking about her father, her voice quavers slightly, but she continues, explains that her skills as an artist come from him too. Captain Olson understood not only ships but beauty too, and when he returned from his journeys, he showed the children sketches of far-off towns and lands in his notebook. While her father was away, the family hung his drawings on thewall in the children’s room and imagined themselves on mountainsides, dreamed of his life in bustling squares. In return, they drew their father pictures of events in the home, and when she heard the familiar steps coming from the porch, Hilda would run to meet him, notebook in hand, and show him drawings of the kittens that had been born under the stairs and the birds nesting in the eaves.
Von Nordmann likes the fact that Miss Olson sits so calmly. Many would be nervous at an invitation to see the professor, but she looks him in the eye and answers his questions directly and without any fuss. It makes the professor think of his own wife. Anna Helena’s father was a jeweller, a man whose clients were among the highest-ranking noblemen in the land. He too learned the ways of the nobility and gave his children an excellent education: Anna Helena understood etiquette, she dressed impeccably and spoke more languages than many a scientist or man of letters, though there are always those to whose mind no amount of style or learning can ever remove the shame of being a craftsman’s daughter. But von Nordmann did not allow such condescension to disturb him. Anna Helena knew she was a better wife to her husband than any finicky noblewoman who would have had conniptions at the thought of a long and bothersome expedition, and when her shoe sank into the mud on an unknown path in the Crimea, they giggled like children, and von Nordmann knew that he had taken the only possible woman as his wife.
Anna Helena’s father taught her to recognise precious rocks and the wonders hidden within them, and she saw the samebeauty in her husband’s work too. She was not repelled by the contents of fish guts, and when von Nordmann showed her theDiplozoon paradoxumshe gripped his hand, and he knew that she understood what he was trying to say.
TheDiplozoon paradoxumis an extraordinary creature. The flatworm begins its life alone, but once it finds a mate, the functions of the two individuals become conjoined. From that moment, they continue their lives as one, fusing together so that separation is no longer possible. When one dies, the other cannot go on living, and when Anna Helena left this world, von Nordmann lay down in his bed and waited for death to come. He remained there for four days and four nights, but on the morning of the fifth day there came a knock at the door, and to his astonishment he realised he was still alive. A confused courier stood timidly at the threshold, apologised for disturbing the house during this period of mourning, but explained that von Nordmann’s publisher had asked him to deliver the plates he had promised, and he got up and, admonishing himself, began to mix his paints: as a husband, he was not worthy of the flatworm.
Anna Helena’s last wish was that their children be brought back to Finland. To that end, von Nordmann accepted the invitation that the Imperial Alexander University had extended many times and took up the professorship in zoology and botany, turned his back on the university libraries and scientific palaces of the great metropolises and returned to Finland. Never again will he be happy, of that he is certain, but this notwithstanding, life in Helsinki is a pleasant surprise. He is given the practical,comfortable house designed by Engels in the grounds of the botanical gardens in Kaisaniemi, where he can escape his grief by delving into work. Some thirty years earlier, the great fire of Turku destroyed the work of previous generations, and he must begin putting his collections together from scratch, laying the foundations upon which to build a new garden. He undertakes fundraising trips, writes to his colleagues and acquires seeds and saplings, classifies and catalogues them, and gazing into his microscope, he momentarily forgets all about human sorrows.
Miss Olson places her cup on the saucer, and the clink of porcelain brings von Nordmann back to the salon. He has to force himself to shake off his woes – these days they seem to stalk him like a needy cat – but she takes another sip of tea and allows the professor to compose himself. She recognises her own sadness in his eyes, allows him to linger in his memories, and does the same.
When Hilda realised that she wanted to draw, to study, to learn how to construct images and to mix colours, her father was not unduly shocked, he did not start talking about the benefits of marriage or a woman’s duty, and instead he paid for her art studies. But alas he did not live to witness Hilda’s joy when she was accepted into the drawing school. Tuberculosis cut his life short, too quickly and yet too slowly, and she tries to banish the images that begin to appear in her mind, his skeletal, emaciated figure, the sheets spattered with blood.
The pause in their conversation has lasted too long. Miss Olson’s attention is inevitably drawn to the silence, but she does not glance furtively around, trying to find an exit or a way backto their original conversation, and instead remains in her chair, calm and alert. The moment does not feel awkward and, grateful for this, von Nordmann decides to get to the point.
What does Miss Olson think about spiders? The professor’s expression is expectant, and she realises that the question is an important one, that much depends on her answer, but she has never given spiders much thought. She dusts their webs from her room, but their life and character are a mystery to her. Eventually, she simply states that all God’s creatures are interesting and beautiful. This appears to suffice, as the professor stands up and beckons for her to follow him.
The professor’s study smells of mahogany and plants pressed between sheets of paper. Lining the walls is a series of glass cabinets containing insect charts and catalogues of plants, and hanging above them are brightly coloured maps with the winding routes of expeditions marked across the continents. A room full of the strange and fascinating, the weird and wonderful, but Olson’s attention is drawn to a contraption on the desk. The professor notes her gaze and is thrilled: his microscope is truly the finest in the realm.
As a young researcher, von Nordmann financed his studies by illustrating other people’s work. He examined the creatures that researchers had brought back from their expeditions and replicated them through the glass walls of preserving jars, trying to bring their faded colours back to life. The Russian ambassador himself commissioned some illustrations from him, and when he saw von Nordmann’s plates, von Alopaeus was so thrilled that he gave the young researcher a very rare gift indeed.
The Chevalier microscope is a miraculous contraption, a device whose mirrors have been sanded and smoothed by a renowned family of Parisian opticians to make them thinner and sharper than was ever thought possible. Von Nordmann could scarce believe his luck: he had managed to acquire theMicroscope Achromatique Universel. He placed a perch under the lenses, and all of a sudden he saw other animals within this animal, worms, shellfish and spores clinging to the gills and to the inside of the guts, and whenever he opened up a fish, the microscope revealed new, tiny beings, nature within nature. Von Nordmann picked up his pen, started writing and later published a study featuring illustrations with a level of detail that had never been seen before, revealing to his readers the wonders of the egg pouches of water fleas, the double-tailed spores of theHenneguya zschokkeiendoparasite and the hooks of theDiplozoon paradoxum, which it uses to latch onto its host’s gills.
But time is cruel. Living matter degrades, and retinas are no exception. Von Nordmann turns the cogs and cleans the mirrors to bring his subjects into focus, but the images remain blurred. The colours become fainter all the while, and before long the eyepiece shows nothing but a thick, soupy fog. The microscopic world disappears, scarpers out of reach, but he cannot stop now, he has taken it upon himself to classify all the spiders in Finland, to present to the world the arthropods hiding in the forests and ditches and their tiny, extraordinary bodies. There is much to do, but try as he might, the fog will not lift.
The brass tubes of theMicroscope Achromatique Universelgleam in the pale afternoon light, and Hilda Olson steps closer inquisitively. She admires the device, it is like a jewel or a strange statue, and when the professor asks whether she would like to try it out, she does not hesitate but sits down and waits for instructions. Von Nordmann shows her how to adjust the magnification and prepares a sample for her. He places a dish under the eyepiece, and Miss Olson grips the dial and turns.
She looks at the body of the money spider. The professor lets her get used to the sight, allows her to enjoy the moment when small becomes large for the first time, but he cannot contain himself for long and fetches some drawing equipment. Miss Olson nods and picks up the pencil, looks into the microscope then at the paper in turn, and von Nordmann watches as she sketches the spinnerets and the chelicerae, traces the marbling across the spider’s abdomen, its tiny dark eyes, and when she lowers her pencil, every last cilium is just as it should be.
Von Nordmann has Miss Olson’s grey irises and sharp pupils at his disposal, and not a moment too soon. A scintillating letter is waiting on his desk. The botanist Christian von Steven has written, saying that he is ready to bequeath his personal plant collection to the Imperial Alexander University. Von Nordmann has seen von Steven’s study, its flower presses and leather-bound trunks containing the vascular plants of entire continents, almost one hundred thousand specimens in total, another scientist’s life’s work now just within reach. All he has to do is fetch the specimens and transport them to Finland, a long and expensive trip, but he has already applied for funding and plans to put the time to good use by examining the spidersof the Ukraine and southern Russia on the way. In order to do so, he will need the help of an illustrator. They must set off very soon, lest somebody else snatch the opportunity from under their noses, and as he watches the money spider come into view on the paper, he puts his doubts to one side. He comes up with a contract, and to his relief Miss Olson’s salary requirements are eminently reasonable. All in all, the day has surpassed all his expectations, and when he goes to bed that evening and waits for grief to return, it does not, and he falls asleep with a grin on his face as he thinks of all the consternation his new assistant will surely cause.
History is replete with scientists who have enlisted the help of a wife or daughter, but to take on an unknown woman as an assistant – that is quite something. If von Nordmann were less renowned, many might think his decision unseemly, but his reputation is pre-eminent enough to keep wagging tongues at bay, and any conversations along the corridors of the university are held only in whispers. Meanwhile, the professor’s daughters are left shaking their heads. They love their father dearly, but at times he is inappropriate to the point of exasperation, though the melancholy he has suffered since Arthur’s death would leave even the most discerning of men susceptible to reckless decisions. But what’s done is done, and now they can do nothing more than show him that the family supports him in his decision.
The professor’s daughters invite Miss Olson for a visit. Matilda and Maria await the meeting in a mood of distinct trepidation, but when Miss Olson steps through the door, theirburden is lightened. She is dressed in a practical black frock and greets the professor’s daughters courteously but amiably. Miss Olson, too, is nervous about the meeting. If they wanted to, the professor’s daughters could make her life very difficult and might even implore their father to rescind his offer. Miss Olson greets the women cordially, nervously fidgeting with her skirt.
By the time they have drunk their coffee, she has won the daughters over. She is a down-to-earth woman, there is no doubt about her honour, and it turns out that she is exceptionally good company too. She gives Matilda’s children a game she has designed, and as Matilda examines the playing board, Hilda notices that she has the same joviality as her father. Maria’s horses get stuck at Foul-Mile Hill. She has to return to the start of the board, but the die favours Matilda. She climbs aboard a steam ship, travels all the way to Tornio and is the first to get back to Helsinki. Matilda is giddy with excitement as she moves her piece over the finish line. Hilda congratulates her on her victory, and they agree to another round once she returns from her expedition.
Work takes Miss Olson and von Nordmann to Yekaterinoslav and Simferopol, then through Serbia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Moldova and Odesa, though they are less interested in cities and cathedrals than in what can be found beneath the rocks and leaves. Von Nordmann teaches Miss Olson to find the webs of garden spiders and the crab spiders hiding in among flower petals. First, they shut these arthropods into glass jars, then Miss Olson places the jars in a holder attached to her easel and waits. Initially, the spider cowers at the bottom of the jar, gathers its legs beneath itsbody and plays dead, but when no predators appear it becomes curious, stretches out its legs and starts exploring the walls of its glass prison. And at that moment, Miss Olson makes a quick sketch. She records the spider’s shape and colours, reproduces any patterning, and once the drawing is ready, she removes the lid, fills the jar with ethanol, and the arthropod’s life comes to an end.
In the evening, she draws the spiders for a second time. She pulls the deceased creature from the liquid and pins it out in something approximating a natural position, just as the professor taught her. Von Nordmann sets up his microscope, and Miss Olson uses it to draw another image, this time a detailed anatomical enlargement. She draws the tubular heart that only a moment ago was pushing colourless blood through microscopic arteries, she sketches the differences between the sexes, the palpal bulbs and the epigyna, and when the sketch is ready, she colours it using the drawing she made from the live animal as a model. The dead and the living merge into a single, detailed image on the paper, and through her eyes von Nordmann can once again see the spider in all its grandeur.
The sun is slowly setting, dyeing the hillsides overlooking the garden. Miss Olson tries to commit the view to memory. Surely this is what Paradise is like, five hundred fruit trees, vineyards as far as the eye can see, thousands upon thousands of flowers. VonSteven’s garden is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. The elderly botanist smiles broadly upon hearing her praise. When von Steven first arrived at Nikita, it was a small scrap of a village, but he has conducted one sample-gathering expedition after another. His rickety carriage and shabby horse are a familiar sight to the local villagers, who gently tease him about his dishevelled appearance. He does not own a proper pair of boots, though even the lowliest farmhand has such things, but the villagers’ laughter merely warms him, and he leaves them to gather their harvest in peace. He has collected the rarest and most fascinating plants from Russia and the Caucasus, and now his own garden is beyond compare.
Von Steven’s garden and manor house have become a Mecca and a guesthouse for botanists, and now he finally has the pleasure of hosting his old, long-awaited friend. He invites von Nordmann and his assistant for a delicious dinner in his arboretum, and after the meal von Nordmann shows his friend the spider drawings from their journey. Von Steven admires the images, and when he hears that it was Miss Olson who painted them, he proposes a toast to her, and the professor raises his glass too. Hilda shakes her head in amusement, and she is filled with a warm, bubbling joy.
She has loved every moment of this journey. For once, she can concentrate solely on her drawings; the professor has bought her a quire of thick rag paper that will not curl at the edges or yellow in the sunshine, a set of excellent watercolours, brushes with tips of pine-marten fur, making her work an absolute pleasure. More importantly, her paintings are useful. With her brushes, she can make visible that which normally goes unnoticed, and she isproud at the notion that with her help the professor will add another small stitch to the great fabric of science.
It has been a hot day. The warmth lingers under the trees, and though it has been a long journey, von Nordmann and Miss Olson are in no hurry to retire for the evening. If one goes to bed too early here, the heat will make anyone longing for sleep toss and turn in their sheets, so they wait until the evening has cooled, sit beneath the trees and enjoy some chilled drinks. Von Steven shares some of the latest botanical advances with von Nordmann, and as he is talking, a spider lowers itself from a branch and lands on his jacket shoulder. He asks Miss Olson to identify the species, and to her satisfaction she correctly identifies it as the European garden spider; she remembers copying its white marbling onto paper. Von Steven congratulates von Nordmann on his assistant, then turns to Miss Olson. The young lady knows her spiders, but does she know how the arthropods first came into being? Miss Olson shakes her head, and von Steven assumes a comfortable position and begins his story.
