Voices from the Past Part 86

Cloux

February 2, 1519

Tomorrow there is to be a sumptuous banquet in the chateau, again royalty. Three hundred guests, I hear: Germans, Dutch, Austrian, Swiss, two or three British, a Greek potentate; the majority will be Parisians and the chateau people. I will have one of my puppets, dressed as a hunter, in fur cap, etc., relate my fable about the great elk of Scandinavia.

I have constructed a papier-mache lion-in yellow, black, and pink. He will walk a few steps down the center aisle of the banquet room, growl at the guests, then open his mouth to reveal a bouquet of white lilies.

Last week I was ill (my whole body ached), and I could not attend the masque ball.

At the ball, boxers fought in an arena, sawdust- floored; there were Swiss dancers and yodelers; sword swallowers performed: they are the rage now.

Michelangelo sleeps on my lap.

Cloux

February 11

Outside, as I write, a girl is singing, in the chilly, windy afternoon:

Chataignes piquantes!

Chataignes chatouillantes!

Que chatouillent la cuisse,

Mais qui piquent la poche!

Now I hear another child-an Italian, a boy of six or seven, way back in time, singing, as he runs an errand.

When I was a boy...it's true...I was happy: Mother made me happy: hand in hand we walked, at sunset time...she liked to sing as she worked in her kitchen...we sometimes sang together, "bread songs," she called them.

I made drawings for her, little gifts, on sc.r.a.ps of paper, a flowering geranium, a lizard, the figure of a clay dog...

Vinci...its hills, its sun, the trees, the caves, the rocks...they made me happy...grapes made me happy, the clairette, pinkish and very sweet; the yellow-green muscats, so fat...grapes, laughter...kindness...

I still taste those grapes on Maturina's table.

Cloux

In the afternoon heat, it was a long drive to Pliny's Villa, outside Rome. Enroute, I witnessed some of the wretchedness of Rome's slums; we were detained by waifs and by a number of mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded. My driver's glib humor, levelled at the poor, gnawed at me until we reached the villa among its cypress and olive. There I walked through derelict rooms, some with views of the Tyrrhenian Sea...summer rooms...winter rooms...dining rooms...library. I saw swimming pools, fountain, turrets, Numidian columns, Luna marble. The sea boomed and Pliny, the upright Roman, governor, senator, consul, killer of Christians, stood before me in his white toga:

P - I respect your portico mural but it must be finished by the New Year. Our banquet hall will be ready at that time...we are preparing festivities-you understand. Your unicorn motif is overdone in color...several sea creatures are neglected, it seems to me.

LdV - Then you are dissatisfied?

P - I wouldn't say that, but changes, changes might be made.

LdV - A matter of details, perhaps?

P - Correct. A matter of details. You are to consult with Valerius. He will...

LdV - And your payments? I must remind you...they're in arrears.

P - You will speak to Antonius, my secretary. This is a bad season...the harvests are poor... I have obligations...charities. It was exceedingly hot in Rome today...good evening.

And those walls, mosaics, turrets, frescoes, pillars, arches; what sort of luck had their artisans, fifteen hundred years ago? The opulence of Pliny...the opulent sea...millions of sesterces...banquets...Nero...Otho...t.i.tus... Can Rome become an art center?

After exploring the villa, I ate my bread and cheese by the sh.o.r.e, sitting on the sand. Sketchbook on my lap, I sketched seabirds and a torn sh.o.r.eline tree.

Kicking aside leaves from a mosaic floor, I visioned a mosaic: in my mosaic of green, brown and white were squared circles, spirals, nudes, sea horses.

A pretty girl pa.s.sed by, selling figs from a shoulder basket. I bought six, three for me, and three for the driver.

Cloux

Was it ten years ago, at Piombino, that green shadows sprawled across the walls of bayside houses, with sun, hot sun, on the bay? Sun on the moat of the town's doddering fortress, on the plumed helmets of its entry guards.

I made sketches at the harborside inn, made them on a long balcony table; I made harbor maps and drawings for a windmill; I added sketches of a spool-winding machine; I remember I evolved my machine for polis.h.i.+ng crystals. My sketchbook filled...my ellipsograph, my new perspectograph, a pair of improved compa.s.ses.

Yesterday, as I sorted these sketches, memories came back.

And here at the chateau, I must see to it that the pale, long-legged, crooked-nosed Frog finishes my bra.s.s compa.s.s. He has kept me waiting for more than a month- these dilatory French! Can the artist live forever-like a Pope!

At Piombino, a fisherman helped me locate fossils on the beach. A small lizard, a multi-veined leaf. What was the fisherman's name? Giorgio? Paolo? Doesn't matter. We became friends. Bearded rogue. Fat. In his rowboat, we sailed the harbor, weathering calms and wild gusts, in and out of bays, eating cheese and bread, sipping port, catching fish, his oars a pair of misshapen flippers.

With his tools, at his home, above the bay, I designed oars, shaped them, edged them with thin copper. When he tested them he found that he rowed with ease.

"Fine...Maestro, fine!"

Blue rowboat, blue bay.

We rigged a sail, a drab hunk but it worked. His name?

Not Paolo, but Rimini. Obese fishmonger Rimini. Excellent bread was baked by his young, mute wife. Bread, cheese, wine. Rimini often sang, with his Piombino slurring, sang as we drifted, sang and rowed. We sailed far away from the odious wars, from weaponry, forts, and death.