Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (22 page)

“Would you care for another whisky? Help yourself.” Carmo’s hands were trembling somewhat, but on the whole he was putting on a brave face. He tried to conceal the trembling by constantly shaking the ice in his glass. And, suddenly becoming very formal: “To come back to what we were discussing the other day in the restaurant. Those travel notes describing your Italian tour. I spoke about publishing them.” “I treated it as a joke. Don’t imagine . . .” “This type of book really isn’t much in demand these days.” “No need to explain. It was Adelina’s idea.” “Of course. How is she, by the way? Forgive me for not asking sooner.” “As far as I know, she’s fine. She must be back by now. Things have not been too good between us.” Carmo: “You don’t say? Anything serious?” “Difficult to tell.” Carmo, the man of experience, rather bloated and sounding pompous: “What do you expect? You know what women are.” “I know. At least I think I know.” No more was said about affairs of the heart. No further mention of my trip to Italy. We spoke vaguely about politics, we called Marcelo Caetano a few choice names. Carmo told me Tomás’s latest joke and then took himself off, much more composed, Sandra having been well and truly categorized and me prepared for the next separation.

I cannot see myself as an author. Now Sandra will no longer serve as an involuntary means of pressure, unconscious rather than involuntary. I am of the firm opinion that people should be judged by what they do, which explains why I have such a poor opinion of myself. But there are certain circumstances in which people are also what they say or have said. Once they speak, they compromise themselves more than they would care to in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of others. To speak is also to do, or at least to make a public declaration. Without Sandra as witness and judge, and also without Adelina, as I now realize, my book will not be written. Which is obviously not an excuse for not finishing the task. Now I am about to write the fifth and final chapter.

Fifth and final exercise in autobiography in the form of a travel book. Title: Lights and Shadows.

That one should go to Rome just to see the pope is a gesture I have come to respect. After all, I went to Arezzo just to see Piero della Francesca. And I could kick myself for having yielded to the pressure of time, which dissuaded me from making the detour through Borgo San Sepolcro, the artist’s birthplace, where some of his other paintings were seeking my attention. I seek and find resignation in the frescoes of
The History of the True Cross
in Arezzo’s Church of Saint Francis, which signal one of the happiest moments in the entire evolution of painting. Anyone who is only familiar with Piero della Francesca’s
Saint Augustine
in Lisbon’s Museum of Ancient Art will find it difficult to imagine the monumental splendor of the figures of the
True Cross.
Although extensively damaged, what remains of the frescoes dominates the bare patches where the color and design have disappeared, and they linger in one’s memory like a musical note which continues to send out echoes and infinite modulations.

But Arezzo is also the city itself, luminous and tranquil, built around a hill with the Duomo on top, which has two ceramic altarpieces, one by Andrea, the other by Giovanni della Robbia. And there I discovered a painter whom I had not come across before: Margaritone di Magnano, born in Arezzo in the thirteenth century, and whose paintings include an admirable Saint Francis in the Byzantine style. Arezzo remains one of my favorite Italian cities.

What can I say about Perugia, where I always arrive full of hope only to come away disenchanted, not because the city disappoints me in any way but because that essential spark of enthusiasm always fails to strike up between us? Yet here one finds the Fontana Maggiore in the center of the old Piazza dei Priori, with its delicate thirteenth-century sculptures still intact as well as all the surrounding buildings: the cathedral, the hall of the Palazzo Communale with its vaulted ceiling supported by massive columns, the Logge di Braccio Fortebraccio, the first example of Renaissance art to be executed in Perugia. No doubt the day will come (I owe it to myself) when this city becomes my second home. The rooms of the museum give me a sense of peace. There I reencounter the great Piero, a magnificent altarpiece portraying
The Virgin with the Holy Infant and Saints.
Above the altar hangs a painting
of The Annunciation
which is unspoiled by the artificial surround added at a later date. On the predella I observe an almost nocturnal scene: Saint Francis receiving the stigmata while another friar looks up with an expression of dismay and skepticism.

I visit Rocca Paolina, shiver with cold and feel sorry for the watchman, who is anxious to have a chat. The Rocca is an underground street with vaulted roof and houses on either side. There are shops which no longer function and ovens where bread is no longer baked. A gloomy place despite the lighting, and one emerges with a sigh of relief. Outside, in broad daylight, is the Corso Vanucci, swarming with boys and girls from the International University. Here you can hear all the languages of the world being spoken, and perhaps it is these noisy hordes of foreign students who come between me and Perugia.

Heading south, I arrive at Todi. There I lunch in full view of the astonishing landscape of Umbria, which surpasses even that to be seen from Assisi, incredible as that may seem. It was in Todi that I spotted an enormous electoral poster with the bold headline “
CORAGGIO FASCISTI.”
I felt as if a sudden shadow had clouded my face. I looked around me and the tiny square of Todi was transformed into the whole of Italy. I feared for Italy and for myself. I recalled the outcome of the recent elections and the number of votes won by the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, and this private pilgrimage through paths and belvederes, through the naves of churches and the rooms of museums, suddenly struck me as being futile and superfluous, without wishing to offend either myself or Italy. But Todi offers so much consolation.

Now it is time for Rome, the gigantic, the city whose doors and windows were made for men some ten feet tall, the city no visitor can hope to cover on foot, a city which tires one’s limbs and bones and (if you will pardon the heresy) leaves one weary in spirit. I must confess in all humility, I do not understand Rome. Yet I shall never tire of visiting the Museum of the Villa Giulia, where the archeological remains of southern Etruria are ingeniously set out and offer a salutary lesson in art and history. I submissively return to the Museo delle Terme, although Roman sculpture nearly always leaves me feeling somewhat melancholy; and I use every hour at my disposal to tour the Vatican museums, a challenge which defeats me from the outset because an entire lifetime would not be enough to satisfy my curiosity.

There seems little point in going down to the Sistine Chapel. To seek out Michelangelo and come face-to-face with hundreds of tourists looking up into the air and craning their necks in order to glimpse amid the shadows the creation of the world and of man, original sin, the great flood, the drunkenness of Noah—it is probably the greatest disappointment ever likely to be experienced by any serious art lover, unless he is fortunate enough to be allowed into the chapel at dead of night, which must be the only time the works of art in the Vatican are not on public view. So once having memorized the overwhelming impact of this titanic collection (a banal description, but I can think of no other), all one can do is to find a book with good illustrations and make a detailed study of the ceiling paintings and
The Last Judgment
on the rear wall, however poor a substitute it may be for the real thing.

I have no idea what Cairo has to offer by way of mummies, but I very much doubt whether any of them could be as impressive as the one kept here: the exposed head and face are swarthy, withered and wrinkled, but most distressing of all are the hands, also blackened, but terrifyingly well conserved, with white nails in a state of perfect preservation.

There is no end to the Vatican museums. One progresses through dozens of enormous halls and galleries, rotundas and rooms, always afraid at having left behind, perhaps forever, some picture, fresco, sculpture, or illuminated manuscript which might easily help us to reach a better understanding of this world and of our earthly existence.

One finds here, for example, a Roman copy of a statue of Socrates, with round head, short neck, curved forehead, flattened nose, eyes which not even the emptiness of marble can erase—the most strikingly ugly man in history, he who exhorted other men to renew themselves, he who was accused of “having honored strange gods and trying to corrupt youth,” charges which led to his untimely death. And these are the two eternal accusations against man. I take a quick look inside St. Peter’s. Behold the splendor and overpowering riches of a triumphant Church, but here, too, are the works of mankind, the crowning achievements of man’s genius and manual skills. On the right once stood Michelangelo’s
Pietà,
which some suspicious madman vandalized. The tourists, however, show no real displeasure, nothing more than passing irritation that an item should be missing from their guidebook.

A rapid tour of Naples gave me the impression of one great traffic jam, of a gymkhana of placid madmen (where was that verbal exuberance of the Neapolitans?). I also carried away the memory of the bay all lit up, which, seen from the balcony of the hotel, resembled a candlelight procession at a standstill all along the coast.

Naples is also the city where I came across the initials MSI scrawled across the walls and hoardings and on the park benches by the neofascists. It is also the city where street vendors who feel nostalgia for Il Duce sell ashtrays which portray Benito Mussolini looking Caesarean in full uniform, with rousing slogans advocating the revival of fascism. It is also the city where I was twice warned “in my own best interest” not to leave any valuables in the car.

But Naples, too, has its Museo Nazionale. I escape inside to take a look at what I missed in Pompeii or saw only fleetingly: the mosaics and wall paintings I only knew from well-meaning reproductions, which sadly lack that precious dimension achieved by means of deliberate irregularity in the case of mosaics and a rough finish in the case of wall paintings, which should be probed by one’s eye rather than touched by human hand. And this wealth of sculptures: very few of Greek origin, but an infinite number of Roman and Hellenistic statues, enough of them to populate another civilization, a resuscitated Pompeii, a peaceful Naples. On leaving the city, I lost my way. It was inevitable.

And now I am resting in Positano on the coast of Salerno, a place I declared “blessed” before discovering that this region of Italy is described in the official guidebook as
la divina costiera.
We are both right: the tranquility here is divine and blessed. And whom do I see but Melina Mercouri, yes it is she, wearing a straw hat and long dress, pale and thin, and in the company of Jules Dassin. I rouse myself from my torpor in the heat of the sun and invent this imaginary dialogue between us: “So, Melina, you are still exiled from Greece. So near, yet here you are, forbidden to enter your native land. How are things going there?” And back comes her reply: “And how are things going in your country?”

I return to my spot, gaze on the stagnant waters of this inner sea which could tell so many ancient tales, and repeat the question to myself: “And how are things going in your country?”

I
F THE DISASTROUS OUTCOME
of Carmo’s affair had not deprived me of any hope of publication (if there ever was such hope and it was not simply a question of my complying with the decisions of others), what would I have done with these pages? Would I have submitted them for publication as a little booklet, pamphlet, notebook or brochure? To be frank, I think of them as exercises in autobiography for my personal use, worthless without the interpretation I put on them later. As travel memoirs, as an aesthetic or purely touristic guide, they are of no greater interest than the timid gesture of a Sunday painter, than that explanatory phrase which is so personal and intimate that it immediately arouses stolid hostility in the general listener. So blessed be Carmo, blessed be Sandra, who, by pushing Carmo out of her bed (or, to be more precise, out of the hotel bed paid for by Carmo), pushed me out of the publisher’s catalogue before I ever got into it. They say God writes straight on crooked lines, but I suspect that these are exactly the lines He prefers, first to show His divine virtuosity and conjuring skills and second because there are no others. All human lines are crooked, everything is a labyrinth. But the straight line is not so much an aspiration as a possibility. The labyrinth itself contains a straight line, broken and interrupted, I concede, but permanent and expectant. This geometrical god of whom I have been speaking must have become incarnate in Sandra, have prompted the decision, given Sandra’s thighs their fill of Carmo, and so things obediently fall into their rightful place. Blessed be Sandra, blessed be Sandra, blessed be blessed Sandra.