Voices from the Past Part 72

Francesco has never read the Travels of Marco Polo, but he is reading the book to me; he reads in the afternoons, maybe when the warm sun is in our western windows, maybe at the pergola, if it is pleasant. Sometimes, when I am tired, he reads to me by candlelight, beside my ducal bed.

I respect Marco Polo. I believe what he wrote. He was no millioni. He was fortunate to find a Rustich.e.l.lo to record his story. Perhaps Francesco is mine. When I visited Polo's prison cell in Genoa someone showed me the painstaking calendar he had chiseled into the wall beside his cot...Chinese characters along the top section of the calendar-a dragon underneath.

In Florence, in Andrea's home, I read Polo's book and dreamed of crossing the Lop Desert on camelback; I imagined visiting the Khan's great cities; I dreamed of sketching palaces, temples, courtiers. I wanted to climb lofty mountains; I thought of mapping rivers.

I told this to Francesco; he smiled and nodded. India?

China? Tibet? For him they are words. He thinks only of his Italy, his Vaprio. I am afraid he considers that I have stolen years from his homeland by keeping him here.

He writes his mother and father faithfully; when there are lapses in their correspondence he is troubled.

Alas-Salai and Tony have left me!

At Cloux they have spent less and less time at their painting on their own or under my tutelage. They have become infatuated by the King's women-the prost.i.tutes.

Finally, in desperation, I urged them to return to Florence. Tony has serious family problems and is needed.

Salai plans to build a house for himself, on my vineyard property. I will miss them... I will miss them! They have been an important part of my life! Francesco is pleased there will be no more rivalry and friction. Yet, apart from that, ours was a sad farewell, lingering, the wind blowing about us harshly. It was our last good-bye, I know. I know. They promise to write to me. When are letters alive!

NOTE-Baron Sabran visited me last week. We strolled about the chateau, and he related another of his wild boar stories as he glanced over some of my paintings. I enjoyed his visit, his chattiness, his effort to be friendly.

Today, I hear that he has pa.s.sed away: Time...today's friend, tomorrow's enemy.

Cloux

How well I remember:

I was riding with other hors.e.m.e.n, perhaps a dozen of us, Duke Lorenzo on his favorite mare, both of us a little to the front of the Medici pennants, flags, and jousting gear. As we approached the Duke's stables at a canter, he leaned toward me, and said:

"He's yours, Leonardo... I know you like him! Tell the stable boys where you want to have him kept."

A smile, no more.

Cheppo was a three-year-old, four-gaited, almost as distinguished in bone and muscle as Cermonino, yet wider across the withers. I sketched him, studied him, studied him as I had studied Cermonino. Cheppo had a way of shaking his mane, flopping out his upper lip-nuzzling. He was a competent beggar: if I failed to remember a treat he would squeeze me against the stable wall and regard me sadly. Once I was in the saddle he was obedient, alert.

Cheppo had been Lorenzo's favorite. Certainly no one else could have given him more competent training than the Duke. I was so pleased to have him and spoiled him, until I left for Milan-never to find another his equal.

My mirror writing came naturally; it began as a boy; I have always been ambidextrous; yet my left hand's skill surpa.s.ses that of the right. There were reasons for my mirror writing: for abbreviations and symbols, the prying of idle apprentices, the intrusion of rivals, the circ.u.mvention of blabbers. It also satisfied me personally-esthetically.

Tonight, I am alone, writing: the manor house is still.

It is raining hard, and has been raining hard throughout the day. The fire in the fireplace is comfortable. The lamps are well trimmed.

As I sat at my desk, continuing the journal, someone tried to pry open the door lock. Metal on metal. I waited. Again I heard the intruder. The rain beat on the door; the door shook. I heard the lock give. Picking up a broken easel leg I waited, in case the lock gave way. The man outside coughed. He shuffled about, then left.

Perhaps I should get a dog.

Devotion is the best quality, human devotion and devotion to one's art. Certainly my devotion to Francesco-trust and affection-has been reciprocated.

And, when I am dead, he will remember me. That is what artists need-men who care. If there are those who care, it is as if one's atelier continues on and on. And, if the apprentices think along the guidelines already laid down, that is another continuation, another defiance.

One of these days, Francesco will return to his Vaprio, to paint. He may set up a studio in Milan. Perhaps there will come a time when he places a canvas and sits on his stool and paints my beard, thinning hair, protruding eyebrows, strange nose and strange eyes.

He will say to himself:

"That's how the old man looked, at Cloux.

"Shall I paint on open window behind him...shall I paint some rock formations in the distance?"

Although the King and his court go out of their way to befriend me I could not tolerate this voluntary exile, this foreignness, this remoteness, were it not for Francesco. When he is away, at the chateau, in the village, in Paris, traveling somewhere, I am at a loss. I glance about: where is he? When will he return?

Often, when Cecchino comes back from one of his rambles, he has a gift or two, a plant, a seed, a leaf, a rock...he tells me what happened, details. He's good at verbal paintings. Excited sometimes. No matter. He may have sketches to show me, charcoal, pencil, chalk.

"This is something you must take a look at, Maestro...here, this face? Isn't it Greek, the nose, the forehead? And this gypsy woman, what about her? And this fellow...ever see anyone dressed like that? And this fountain..."

He sits on a bench beside my easel.

"We must ride to Paris...we must visit Cluny...the churches...there's a great Van Eyck...and Chambord...now is the time to visit Chambord, when the court's away...we ought to see how your ca.n.a.l and irrigation jobs are coming along...remember, Sr. Migliarotti is pretty lazy..."

Francesco hopes to make me feel like I am thirty years old.

It is May and I am in the Amboise garden, soaking up the noon sun, courtiers milling about on the many paths; yet I am alone, with my sketchbook, to write, to think.

And I am thinking about Francesco, how he arrived at my studio in the pouring rain. Drenched. He had ridden from Vaprio. I don't forget that rain, that stormy Florentine afternoon, that eager, wet face of his, his mud-spattered horse, his servants' horses, how they looked in the street, as Francesco spoke to me. Cold, very cold, even for April. Tiled roofs were choked with rain. Drowned cobbles. Leaves and mud.

But there he was at my door, bowing, smiling.

"Maestro da Vinci...I want to be your pupil."

That was seventeen years ago. Was he only fifteen? It doesn't seem possible he was so young. He was my favorite from the start. I love Salai as a son, but this young man, this gracious young man, is friend and ardent disciple. Painter! When I have been his guest at Vaprio, I am honored. Francesco's father and mother make their villa a place of rest. I know. I have fled there, from the condottieri. I am always protected by the Melzis.

His illness upset the studio.

"Melzi's sick! Francesco's sick!"

Fever day after day, hands like ice, coma. Shivering though his apartment was sunny. I thought he might have malaria. The plague. I called in the best doctors; I sent for Francesco's father. His uncle came instead. Other doctors came. And in his delirium, Francesco painted a large canvas, with a flock of white birds in the sky, carrying a blue tree. October, November-bad months for sickness. But by December he was up, skinny, hungry, forever hungry.

And there was his father's grat.i.tude to me, his uncle's grat.i.tude, as if I had been the physician. That summer, as Francesco convalesced at Vaprio, I vacationed there.

The family purchased my portrait of A Boy. That rolling land, the swift Adda, those ca.n.a.ls, the villa gardens with their Roman statues and roses...roses...the women in the gardens, picking roses. But I have written about this before? ...I am getting forgetful.