20 (40 page)

In that city, he made a mosaic called La Navicella in the portico of St. Peter's, a mosaic of Christ walking on water.

He listened, open-mouthed. The lady-in-waiting approached and grabbed the pail from him.

In Padova, he painted the Scrovegni chapel, where I myself have prayed, and there is an imitation of it at the pilgrims' church in these savage mountains.

The lady-in-waiting handed the pail to a manservant.

In Assisi, he painted San Francesco's life.

The manservant poured the milk into a large metal flask. The servants watched their lady speak.

He painted the great poet Dante from life.

The manservant thrust the pail back to him.

As she turned to go, Bartolomeo de Bartolai bowed his head and asked the lady,
And, please tell me, on these journeys, what kind of materials does the artist Giotto pack into sacks and transport?

The pilgrim backed away from him, wrapping her cloak around her, covering her mouth and her nose, and said,
What do you think I am, a book?

————

He had seen what a book looked like, he had seen people with their noses looking down into books. So when she said to him, What do you think I am, a book? he was stung, humiliated. He did not know how to understand her insult. He knew that she was not a book; a book is an inanimate object. A book is made of paper, which is made from trees, and the trees come from forests in the mountains because all of the great forests of the plains have been leveled. No, she was not a book, she was a woman with raven hair visible at the edge of her hood.

————

But he remembers to this day what the humbly clad pilgrim said, what he overheard: Giotto painted Dante from life. Bartolomeo de Bartolai does not understand this expression. How else would he have painted him? From death? No, because a painting or mosaic comes from an idea, and an idea is alive. Something you hear or see or smell or touch or taste puts a picture into your head, and this causes you to put down a mark. She was trying to impress them with her knowledge of the world down there, of how far she had travelled, then became offended because she was asked a question she could not answer: What materials does Giotto use? Of course Giotto painted Dante from life; he painted everything from life, a goat with splayed hooves, a shepherd with a tattered hem.

————

Of course, Bartolomeo de Bartolai knows what a book is. He has seen them at the villa of the Signore. He was shown a page once, during the month of August, when he and his father were summoned to the villa. They were asked to move a wardrobe from one room to another. They hoisted it with great difficulty and carried it on their backs across the hall into another room. The Signore was
not sure where he wanted it placed, so he went upstairs to ask his wife, the lady from Ferrara for whom he had put in glass windows. They set down the wardrobe, and while the Signore was gone, Bartolomeo de Bartolai gazed around the room at the polished marble floor with its swirling of onyx and pavonazzo purple and umber.

In the corner, Bartolomeo de Bartolai saw a strange piece of furniture. As tall as his waist, it stood on a single leg, like a crane, a
gru
. There was a tray at the top made of two pieces of wood that fit together and lay like a bird's open wings. A book rested on top. The Signore's voice and footsteps were still upstairs, and Bartolomeo de Bartolai peered down into the open book, careful not to breathe on it.

One page was a wall of marks. One page was a drawing. The drawing was this: two circles side by side. Inside the circle on the right was a form with a rounded back, the profile of a monster with a single eye of ultramarine. Inside the other circle was a pair of curved claws that reached up toward the monster.

The Signore swept in and saw him looking. His father raised a hand to cuff him, but the Signore stopped him and said to Bartolomeo de Bartolai, Do you like my book? I bought it in Venezia for three
scudi.
You can buy any book you want in Venezia; it is where most of them are published. In that city, a man is free to think his own thoughts and ideas circulate freely. The thoughts of the reformers are openly discussed. Some doubt the existence of hell, some deny the Trinity.

He pointed to the book and placed an index finger on certain marks, pronouncing the words
Orbis Descriptio.

This is a map of the world. He pointed to the circle on the right. This is the Old World, and this blue oval is the Mediterranean. We are the Old World.

Then, he pointed to the circle on the left. This is the New World. The Arctic, the territory of Florida, the Terra Incognita of the interior, which all belongs to Spain. Below, America of the South.

Bartolomeo de Bartolai would like him to point out other places, for example, where is Fiorenza? He would like to see where Giotto has travelled. But instead, the Signore says: I have decided after all to put the piece of furniture back into the room where it was originally. On the way out, the Signore tells them that behind the stables there is an old pine board from a table top which they are welcome to take.

At twilight, that evening, he went back down to the villa. He walked
through the villa's forest-garden, where the Signore planted pine trees so they formed the letters V and L, the initials of the Signora. In a corner of this walled forest-garden was a heap of discarded objects, and there Bartolomeo de Bartolai found the pine board.

For months the board has lain untouched in the corner of the stable; he is afraid to make a mark on it, does not want to spoil it.

————

Each night, he walks out to the stable, seeking a respite from the house where his great-grandmother sits on a mat in the corner and moans and rocks, her eyes wide and staring at nothing. His grandmother feeds her chestnut gruel with a wooden spoon. The great-grandmother spits the food back out. The grandmother clears her mother's lips with the edge of the spoon. His grandmother grabs the wrist of whoever is nearest, whoever is passing by, whoever is most alive. In springtime, his mother sings of the harvest,
The day laid on the threshing floor is flayed
. She sings love songs all day long. His father bends his head under the granite lintel as he passes through the doorway; his shoulders brush the frame, though he is not a large man, and he slams the door shut. His grandmother grabs him by the wrist and his mother sings. In the day, he takes his cloth hat from the bench and follows his father out the door. He goes off into the field, and watches after the five thin sheep and the three emaciated goats.

In order to pay for grazing rights for a season, when he was a boy, his mother cut his hair. She pulled it tight, away from his head, cut it close to the scalp. Then she sold it to a pillow merchant passing through. After she cut his hair, he would run down the path into the field, where everything was blurred from tears, and he pointed out the grass to the beasts, showing them which blades to eat.

————

As he stands up to go out to the stable, he carries a lantern because darkness comes early. They begrudge him oil for the lamp. His mother says, Where do you think more oil will come from? You think it will seep out of a crack in a stone? His father says, When a spark turns into a ball of fire what will we do then? This is the discussion every night, every night at dusk, when his uncle and great-uncle, his grandfather's brother, get ready to tell
the stories they have told again and again, the same ones, how a grave robber dug up the bones of San Sisto in Rome and tried to sell them to priests all the way up into the mountains, but no one believed him, and, desperate because he was high up in the mountains in winter and without any money, he sold them to a wealthy old woman, who bought the bones with one gold
genovino
and a sword and a bundle of candles, and as soon as he handed the relics to the old woman, he was turned into a pillar of stone, and she had a chapel built right there. He does not want to hear any more of these stories, he has heard them every night of his life: how the poor young man found a key that let him into the princess's heart, how the charcoalmaker's son solved three riddles. He begs them for oil for the lamp. His mother accuses him:
spende fina i capei;
he would spend even the hair on his head. At the villa of the Signore, the lanterns burn all night long, yet they accuse him of being profligate for trying to extend the day.

His father hollers, And if you start an inferno? His mother hollers, If we run out of light? Then his grandmother grabs his wrist and holds it up to them and says, You cut his hair, you sold it, now give the child some light.

If he could, he would write the master Giotto a letter. Tell him that he is ready to come down and work in his shop, to mix plaster, to clean paintbrushes. If only to rake, with a wooden pitchfork, the stall where his horse sleeps at night.

————

In the stable, he cleans a spot on the dirt and lays the panel on the ground.

We are isolated, but we hear things. We are remote, but we see things.

He hears rumblings of what goes on below; the sounds echo up three valleys, the Valley of the Scoltenna, the Valley of the Dragon, the Valley of Light, and by the time the sound makes its way up into the mountains, after having bounced off mountain walls, it is only a faint echo. The sounds arrive belatedly, sometimes centuries later. He has heard the priest speak the word, FRACTUM. This is the way the sound comes up, in pieces. After something has already happened to fracture the whole into pieces.

He spills out the pieces of terra-cotta and broken glass and sifts through what he possesses.

————

What do you think I am, a book? He hears the words again and again. I have never left these mountains, but I know something of other places because people travelling through bring word, the itinerant monk, the copper seller, the merchant who buys flock and hair. They carry up messages from down below, and this is how it is possible to know something of other places. I have seen certain things with my own eyes, like the frescoes at the pilgrims' church, the saint sleeping in the mountains, ten angels wailing in the sky.

In his head, he continues to fight with Martín de Martinelli, ten years gone, thinks of how Martín de Martinelli said to him: Wake up! Raise up your eyes!

And how he replied, I have been taught to keep my head bowed and not to swagger, to not be a braggart and spendthrift like the prosperous shepherd who sees a little of the world, sells his fat sheep down on the plains, and comes back with coins in his pockets, blaspheming and knocking over tables in the tavern. I have been taught to be simple, honest, laborious. Labor is honor. All I have ever seen are heads bent over and down; look at the way everyone's shoulders are curved.

Look up, said Martín de Martinelli.

And Bartolomeo de Bartolai answered, You look up and you see misery. You see how the lords overrun one another's territory, spreading disaster, spreading strife. You see how brigands steal anything that glistens. How soldiers bring contagion and take away flour. You see starving mothers who leave infants to die on the mountainside so that the ones at home survive.

And Martín de Martinelli replied, The days of a peasant's false humility are over. Do you not see that a new day is coming which will do away with antiquated ways? Do you not see that there will be new systems to classify, new instruments to understand the world?

Bartolomeo de Bartolai asked him, Does it bring comfort to think that there will be instruments to measure cold and heat, that will measure the strength of wind and the weight of air? Will they not take away the hours of the day, the days in their merciful order? The seasons that make this life, with its empty stomach and lesions, bearable? Will it not take away the calendar that begins with the feast day of the Blessed Virgin and ends with the feast day of San Silvestro? Would you have me break this whole?

Martín de Martinelli said, I would not have you break anything. I am not here to cause you to do anything. I can only say what I am going to do: I am leaving. I am not going to remain up here, my stifled voice vibrating against the vocal cords. Do you know how it is when you have a great sadness, a great anger, and try to make no sound? Do you know how it is when you hold it inside your throat? Of course you know, because you are a mountain dweller, made of stone, and you think you can outlast the pain without opening your mouth.

Bartolomeo de Bartolai answered, I notice no such pain.

Martín de Martinelli said, If a dog catches his paw in a trap, and the paw is cut, it yelps and howls, and then, if the dog survives, and the wound heals, he becomes accustomed to the pain and merely winces each time he puts his weight upon the paw.

————

He must turn away from the admonishments; he must turn away and try to recall something else. Something beautiful. A mosaic. On the other side of the river above Ardonlà are the ruins of a fortress that sits on a steep bluff. Below it is a cave. The entry way is hidden among bushes and rocks along the riverbed. The passageway opens into caverns where Christians hid when they fled into the mountains. They were followers of Sant'Apollinaris of Ravenna. They built an altar in a cave, and, on the vault, they made a mosaic like the ones they had left behind. When it became safe, they built their altars above ground, and the ones below were forgotten. The forest above was cleared and a landslide buried the cave's entrance.

————

He saw the mosaics only once. He was a child. He was taken there by his great-grandmother who is now being fed like a baby. She was not afraid of wolves or bears, and she took his hand and led him there. He was not afraid because she was not afraid. She was bent over as she walked beside him, leaning on her wooden walking stick, which was shaped like the letter T. She told him she was going to show him where a saint was buried, told him that no one else remembered, that they were too afraid to look. As she walked, she became transformed and stood up straight; she threw away her walking stick. She moved like a goat from one rock to another and she was
not afraid of slipping on a wet stone. All the lines were erased from her face; her blue eyes were lights; she balanced on one rock, and then another, along the bank of the river.