Voices from the Past Part 80

I stand at my studio window: there, below me, stretches the garden and the garden leads to the woodland and just inside the first fringe of trees is a stag.

From the chateau I watch the blue water of the Loire flowing by; the blue water changes to grey: the Seine.

I taste the antique taste of time and illusion: my telescope focuses on wayfarers: I see them in mirrors: years of princes, priests, soldiers, artists.

Maturina is Italy: toothless, sickly, yet eager to carry-on! Smiling, smelling of grease and herbs, she offers me her famous soup, her haricot beans, her red jam, her Vinci cheese.

Behind her, as she sets my table for supper, gawks a young Midi apprentice (a possum-faced individual). The Midian is talking about Brussels sprouts, how her mother used to prepare them. When she takes Maturina's place and her teeth fall out, she will be ready to impart her culinary skills to someone else.

Cloux

September 14

Suddenly, Francis appeared in my studio.

He was dressed entirely in black, his suit sewn with pin stripes of diamonds and pearls. We embraced warmly.

We had not seen each other for several weeks...

"What has happened to you?" I asked, shocked by his appearance, for his hair had been scorched and trimmed; his forehead was livid; his cheek was scarred by burns; his chin had been gashed.

"It happened at Romorantin," he said, laughing loudly at me. "Didn't you hear about the accident?"

"I heard something about an accident but I didn't know it was serious. I've been in Paris, with Francesco. What happened to you at the chateau?"

"Come, don't take it so seriously, Mon Pere. I'm all right. The scars will disappear. My hair will grow back.

I came to talk with you, to get away from the roisterers at the chateau... I need a little peace and quiet."

"But what happened to you at Romorantin?"

"Games...we were playing games in the field alongside the chateau. It was dark. I shoved a wicker basket over my head and one of my cronies set fire to it with his torch... I couldn't yank off the basket." Francis showed me his burned fingers. "This is what I get for playing the fool.

"Come...let's go into the studio, where you keep your fossils from the Alps. I want you to explain again how you have estimated the age of the earth from your sh.e.l.ls and ferns. I can't seem to grasp that the earth is as old as you say it is.

"Look at this rock, Maestro, with the snail imbedded in it. Where did you find it? Did you find it in the Argentiere Pa.s.s?"

"No, I found it when I climbed Monte Rosa, when I was making notes on the quality of light among the glaciers and snowfields. You see that snail came from the ocean...it's an ocean snail..."

Today the new barber trimmed my hair and beard.

He is chief barber for the King, a Corsican, red-faced, rotund, about forty; he seems in the prime of life. As he trimmed my beard he ranted about autonomies, puny city against puny city.

"War is a sewer," he kept repeating. "Man is c.r.a.p...he is great. But he must stop fighting." All very private, in his red-carpeted shop, mirrored, hung with dirks. One of many small rooms along a chateau corridor.

As I was about to leave, he said:

"I sing...you like music, I know... I sing for you... I am an exile too, but I sing."

His tenor voice was at its prime. He poured out song after song, as others gathered in the corridor and room to hear him.

(Tomorrow, he will extract a molar for Francesco.)

As I write in my studio, rain splashes across leaded gla.s.s and sputters on my autumn fire. I dictate.

Francesco nods at his desk; it is late, well after midnight.

Fame, in the figure of a bird, should be depicted as covered with little tongues instead of feathers.

Pleasure and pain are best shown as twins, back to back, since they are inseparable.

"No, no," Francesco objects. "I think we should write down important things."

I agree.

I pick up a paper and read about heat...fire...vapors...water sucked from the ocean.

Yes, I must discriminate. I have over a hundred treatises to work on...the days are pa.s.sing quickly.

"Let's stop for now... I know it's late. Tomorrow I will arrange fifteen figures, fifteen nudes, in sequence.

On the basis of those drawings I will make various comparisons, the horse with man, the legs of frogs with the legs of men."

Cloux

October 6, 1518

This is my second autumn at the chateau-cold, cold!

Windy. Bundled up, I walk. Maple, oak, chestnut, pine...lightning-scarred oak, crippled pine, friends... I walk alone or with Francesco or the King, paths for every direction. Alone, or with Francesco, I am aware of the past.

Tonight, at supper, by our studio fire, talking with Francesco, I talked about my maestro, Andrea.

"I was twenty, like you, Francesco. And I was always hungry-like you. Andrea was thirty-five then, maybe thirty-six...twenty...thirty-six. I was lucky to have him for maestro."