Voices from the Past Part 91

Maturina scolds.

I think of those hungry days as apprentice, when eating was such a pleasure! I think of our kitchen, at Vinci.

Mother's. Fresh bread. Milk from that blue pitcher.

Paix, paix, Satan, allez, paix!

Machiavelli is here. Unexpected.

He is enroute to Paris to collect a bad debt. A man owes him 600 livres. I have offered money. Niccol is proud, too proud.

He has malaria and shuffles about in a great coat though it is warm. Last night by a studio fire he huddled in his coat. Perhaps Dr. Pedretti can help him. We'll see tomorrow. As we sat by the fire, sipping wine, he railed about politics at home--wretched deceptions. Scoundrels!

Most of his three days have been spent in bed. In his elegant clothes he bowed before the King. The two got along well. Lying and vying. Francis has offered one of his carriages for the trip to Paris.

Niccol has lost weight. He was always skinny but now he is a shadow of himself. He resents my paralyzed arm...says it is G.o.d who is to blame. Then laughed-or was it a sneer?

He thinks Amboise is a true haven.

He is wonderfully clever with his tongue, Latin, French or Italian.

Sometimes loneliness has embittered me.

Last night I asked Francesco to come to my bedroom, though it was late. He came and sat by my bed. He understands my sickness; and he also knows he is going back to his Vaprio.

It was a cold night. A fire burned in my fireplace.

Francesco wore his grey wool gown, stared at me sleepily, flames on his thin cheek bones, on his hands, bringing out their veins.

Cloux was forgotten as I talked of home and my mother and my first days in Florence, at the Verrochio, first days so different from Francesco's first days when Florence had more patina. I rambled on about Milan and my paintings and the siege and Milan's bombardment and deaths-pell-mell thoughts. Frances...o...b..ought cups of wine. For us this was a father/son relations.h.i.+p. We two had been father and son since we left Italy, since Francesco cared for me during the big snow at the monastery. It pleases him that King Francis often addresses me as "Mon Pere."

Ivory-faced madonnas...regal pomp...commissions that failed, commissions that succeeded...my flying wing...I was reliving my life! Francesco asked about the men who had posed for The Last Supper. Faces, thoughts, words...flooded. We talked about Peter and James and Matthew; we found drawings of Jesus and He seemed real in the firelight.

Francesco added two or three logs to the fire.

He brought in a wine bottle and refilled our gla.s.ses.

Wind gusted smoke into the room.

We talked about Paris and our trip there. I told him that Rome was far more interesting than Paris. I related the story of the mirror-man, at the Vatican apartment: that story involved me in anguish. I stopped talking, to listen to the wind.

We talked of fis.h.i.+ng in the Loire...when?

"Tomorrow," I suggested.

"It's tomorrow now," he said, laughing.

"How time gets away from us."

"Maturina will be rattling the breakfast dishes soon."

"Then you had better get some sleep."

"Good night, Mon Pere," Francesco said, and laughed that good laugh of his.

So, you won't paint again! Where you are going you won't hear the pestle grinding pigment. How insignificant my sketches, my trees, faces, water...as a boy I thought every sketch would open up the world a little more.

It was only a month ago I made the four small bronze horses, moulded the graceful contours of Andrea's face...it was only a year ago that...

I hate the body's frailty, that dead arm! Work was life, but no, there were hours to prowl the hills, to climb the Alps, to sit by the sea. Maturity came during those hours as well as during the hours of work. I remember, while painting The Supper...

I remember a little plant in the evening light, that frail light that shadowed the corolla. I remember a sorrel leaf, I remember a small fern. Small? What is small versus big? I should know.

A madonna in the evening light-her smile.

And the world shrugs.

Pigments reveal how I have erred...tell me green, tell me saffron, tell me royalty, tell me death.

And you, red chalk, speak!

Cloux

We think we are learning how to live but we are only learning how to die.