Seiobo There Below (27 page)

They could not have said if they reached Passignano that evening, because if the first two days had rattled their bodies, the third, between Arezzo and Passignano, destroyed their souls, that is to say, first they became insensible, then later they revolted, namely, that with the cart continuously throwing them around here and there, at first they were despondent, then they announced things could not go on like this, this was not travel, but inhuman torture, and was strictly prohibited in letter and in spirit by the Republic of Florence: these two feelings alternated for hours on end, as all the while the road, without pause, tossed them about mercilessly, beat them, thrashed them, crushing their willpower completely, but then they rebelled again, and then again just resigned themselves to the whole thing, and gave themselves over to fate, because it was one and the same, for if rebellion was followed by acquiescence, then acquiescence was again followed by rebellion, so that at such times they stopped the coachman, but all they accomplished was that the cart stopped, which meant however that it did not move, namely that in a carriage that is not moving, there is no end of suffering, all four of them knew this, and the coachman kept repeating it too, so that then the whole thing just started again from the beginning, they piled back into the cart, got back into place moaning and groaning, hanging on, and let themselves be shaken, thrown, beaten again — until the next spell of acquiescence — but then after a while they couldn’t stand it anymore, and once again mutiny reared its head; the next time, they did not clamber down, but in the strictest sense of the word they fell off the cart, every bone in their bodies ached so much already, they couldn’t move a single limb, they lay in the fragrant grass like the dead, enumerating the wildest ideas, that they would proceed from now on by foot, that each one would sit upon the back of a bird, that altogether they would not go any further and stay here in the grass alongside the road, and they would all just die, but at this the coachman began to urge them on, really, stop this already, there’s just a little way left, they would be there right away, look at the horses, they are also properly worn out and they’re not lying down in the grass, so stop this already, really you’re all like children, get up right away, climb back into the cart and take the rest of the trip like men, later on in Passignano you can have a rest, so that Passignano became a variation of Paradise in their minds, Passignano, Passignano, they repeated before every turn in the road so that when the turn in the road did not reveal Passignano, they were thoroughly embittered, and they began to curse the coachman, then the two horses, then this rotten road, then the Romans who had built it, and then all the travelers of the past millennium who with their wheels had carved such deep ditches into the road, then the rains, the winters, and the sunshine, in a word everything and everyone that had ruined the Via Cassia to such a degree; finally, just as much as they could, they cursed the maestro, so that when evening came, and darkness descended upon them, and they were ready to nail the coachman up onto a cross — where the hell was this damned Passignano already — but just at that moment when the horses were being driven very quietly, and back there in the bed of the cart they had begun to talk in undertones about how Giannicola would now stab the coachman with a dagger, the coachman said, well, there’s Passignano already, but he said it so softly, that they really almost stabbed him by mistake, what’s that, they yelled out from behind, Passignano, I’m telling you, gentlemen, it’s Passignano, the coachman shouted out in a rage now too, because he had noticed the knife, and he gestured forward into the pitch-dark blackness, the knife was returned to its place, and they just stared fixedly ahead so they could finally see the end to this torture, to see that they had finally arrived just as the coachman had said, that they were in Passignano, and when the cart turned in they just motioned to the innkeeper, they motioned something, which could have meant anything, somehow they were led to their lodgings, there they collapsed, and immediately within the blink of an eye all four were asleep, so that when Aulista was startled awake after one hour, every molecule in his entire body was hurting so much, he was so exhausted, that he simply couldn’t bear to sleep, and after he had first seen Saint Bernard and Saint Francis, the maestro immediately appeared somewhere above his pallet, and that made him come to his senses somewhat, and he looked at the maestro above his pallet, and he tried somehow to fall back asleep, but couldn’t, then he was able to, but not even for a half hour, because his eyes sprung open again as if it were already dawn, it was, however, not dawn but still late evening and in addition he was starting to come back to normal consciousness, that is after the maestro, Saint Bernard, and Saint Francis had began to vanish, and the pallets had begun to regain their own true dimensions and form, there inside was one tiny little window, out of which Aulista watched the heavens playing into dark blue, he sensed a gentle breeze that occasionally blew across him toward the sleepers, and there suddenly came into his mind one of the panels under preparation, which, fastened to the back of the cart, was now being transported, that altarpiece, commissioned by the clerk of Perugia, Bernardino di ser Angelo Tezi, and which they had begun perhaps six years ago, and that inasmuch as it would be finished one day, would be placed in the church of Saint Augustine in Perugia in the Tezi family chapel named after Saint Nicolas of Tolentino, the commission of course had been arranged years ago, but they had gotten nearly nowhere with the picture, only the gesso and the imprimatura were ready, and they had finished the underdrawing a long time ago, that is the sketched-out composition of the painting was already recognizable, a predella below, above it in the middle of the picture a little ciborium, and as a matter of fact in the middle of the picture, above, was the Virgin Mother in the heavens as She was being held by three cherubinos, with little Jesus in her lap, and beside her to the left was San Nicola da Tolentino, to her right was Bernardino da Siena, and all those who were seeing this as a vision: down below, to the left of the ciborium, Saint Jerome was kneeling, and on the other side, Saint Sebastian, this picture now flashed through Aulista’s mind, as did that afternoon, when in the still sufficient light the maestro painted the lower garments of the Virgin Mother with ultramarine, but then suddenly stopped painting, and flung out the comment that they should daub a deep blue spot with azurite onto the edge of the sleeve, which was still just sketched out but not painted, and they should finely inscribe there MCCCCC, namely that according to the desire of the family this picture would be placed in the chapel exactly at the turning point of the quattrocento and the cinquecento — which of course did not occur, Aulista now thought — and with that the maestro left the workshop, and since then hadn’t even touched the picture, and here he was now lying awake from exhaustion, and instead of resting he was seeing the blue of the garments of the Virgin Mother, that glimmering, that wondrous, that inimitable blue, the likes of which he had never seen in any painting by any other Italian painter and this blue, now, as he lay almost completely awake in the sleeping quarters of the inn, made him think, and made all the maestro’s colors come into his mind, as the green and blue and crimson blinded him, indeed, in the strict sense of the word, what blinded him was the dreadful strength of these colors, as each picture was finished, and they stood around the panel, or the fresco, so as to look at it, to view it as a completed masterpiece, with a fresh eye, so that the entire workshop could look at it together, just to see if as a whole the work truly was satisfactory, and it could be said that it was final, that it could now be delivered, really, Aulista now remembered, he was nearly blinded by this extraordinary ability of the maestro to work with colors, because this was the secret focal point of his work and his talent, he now added to himself, and he looked through that narrow little window slit at the evening heavens above Passignano — the astonishing
sharpness
of the colors, he thought, and with what overpowering strength, the green and the yellow and blue and crimson, placed next to each other, for example, on four draperies loosely thrown upon each other, the viewer was raised into the heavens, that is, Aulista noted to himself, the maestro ravished people with his colors, well, but the maestro can still create these colors even today, the thought wracked him, and sleep finally deserted him, for surely that unfinished picture back there, tied up there to the back shaft of the cart, that blue piece of fabric in it, as it spilled across the knee of the Virgin Mary, that was
the same
blue, that was
the same
color that was in the Santa Maddalena and Madonna della Consolazione and the altarpiece in Pavia and on the Madonna painted for the Pala dei Decemviri, and in the Lamentation over the Dead Christ for the Order of the Poor Clares and all the other innumerable depictions of the Christ and the Madonna and Jerome, but if that’s where things stand, Aulista thought amid his snoring colleagues, if the problem is not with the proof of the greatest ornament of the maestro’s talent, with his colors, then with what, that is the question, he said to himself, speaking aloud now, because although he wasn’t conscious of it, he clasped his hands underneath his head, and fixed his gaze onto the ceiling, then in a single moment complete wakefulness was succeeded by the deepest sleep, although even the next morning he had not forgotten his nighttime thoughts, so when after a mutual attempt on the part of the coachman and the innkeeper to awanen them — lengthy yet in the end yielding results — and the assistants finally succeeded in shaking themselves into their pantaloons, and had consumed some warm panada and climbed back up onto the readied cart, like martyrs onto their stakes, starting off for Perugia, Aulista even brought up the topic; however, there wasn’t really anyone to mention it to, for the others were still so badly off from the trials of yesterday and the day before, that they shouted him down just as much as they could, just as rudely as they could, only much later on, when after a while the road became somewhat better on the bank of the lake, and the last flask was brought out, which made them a bit more cheerful, they thought of Aulista and immediately began pestering him, what is it, Aulista, are you delirious, are you so worn out, that you can no longer bear the tortures, and you spend all night thinking about the maestro’s colors? — you’re looking kind of feeble, pretty boy, Francesco said to him sneering maliciously, and he took a swig from the flask, I don’t even know how the maestro let you leave his side, and why you didn’t travel on horseback with him, he should have made an exception for you, and so on, right up until the old injurious accusation, with which his colleagues had badgered him ever since he had shown up at the workshop, that namely he was the maestro’s particular, very own favorite, and only because he was the one who posed as a model of Saint Sebastian for the maestro one time back then, and this crude banter, as so many times already, if they wanted to get out of some kind of difficult rut, led to their just not being able to stop, and the jeering just went on and on; the cart, however, shook and tumbled and swerved just like before, but their attention was absorbed by the subject of Aulista’s relationship with the maestro, so that this time too he wasn’t spared, they just kept on talking, the jibes, each one more malicious, more crude than the last, just kept on coming and there was nothing that could stop them, they were simply not capable of getting off this topic; he however was aching all over just as they were, he was just as eviscerated as they were by the sufferings of the last three days, so that he asked them, just asked them, and in the end weeping he asked them to leave him alone already, well but it was exactly this, the sight of a man bursting into tears that threw more oil onto the fire, and they attacked him, causing even deeper wounds, calling him a feeble woman, and the only help for Aulista, as always in such cases, was that he suddenly closed himself off, sunk into himself to such an extent as to become unapproachable, he spoke not a single word to them, he no longer took any notice of them, he wedged himself between two rolled-up carpets, and just waited for them to stop already, as eventually happened, because after a while there was no more pleasure in the thing, and Francesco, pointing at the Trasimeno, told the tale, related already at least a hundred times, about his adventure with some whore from Florence, who sometimes was called Pantassilea, and sometimes Pomona, and sometimes Antea, thus they went along the northern shore of the Trasimeno, and as they passed beyond it, everything began to be a little more easy, because they knew that now Perugia would follow, that there in the distance Perugia was waiting for them and the coachman said to the horses that surely it was very good, and if the gentleman assistants were finally in such a good mood, but that it would be good for them to conserve some energy for the last stretch as well, and he was really right, because in the falling twilight when they truly had reached the base of Perugia, perhaps the most difficult part of the journey followed, namely that they had to somehow get the cart up to the Porta Trasimeno on the notoriously steep route, accordingly they all had to get down, the coachman held and jerked the reins from the ground, while the others, putting their shoulders to the sides of the cart pushed the entire thing up, because this upward route toward the gate was not only very difficult for the two horses, who were nearly totally enervated, but even going on foot alone would have worked up a proper sweat in the travelers returning home; the coachman was worried about the horses, and the assistants were worried about the load on the cart, which until now had escaped damage; then their strength gave out, and it became increasingly obvious that they were hardly pushing the cart, the coachman yelled, because he was afraid, with good reason, that the exhausted company and the weakened animals would suddenly just give up, and then the entire thing would plummet back down, back down to the foot of the city, and then not only would the cart burst apart into matchsticks, not only the load, but his two beloved horses would be finished off as well, which he would not be able to bear; so he just yelled at the assistants to start pushing already, for God’s sake, they were already almost halfway up, but it seemed nearly a hopeless task for these five and the two horses to get the cart up to the gate, so the coachman could do nothing else then to commandeer the company with some incredible luck up to the big turn in the road, where he then wedged stones behind the wheels of the cart, and ordered them to take a rest, the assistants, gasping for breath, collapsed onto their knees, the horses’ legs trembled, no one spoke a single word, there they rested for perhaps a quarter of an hour, until the assistants looked at each other, and then at the coachman, then at the horses, and as if in some mute pantomime, they agreed all at once, fine, the last stretch would somehow have to be made in one go; the coachman positioned the four assistants next to the supporting stones, then he cracked the whip above the two horses just as much as he could, he tugged at the reins, and at the same time the assistants grabbed the stones from underneath the wheels, so that the wheels would turn more easily in the right direction; the horses just pulled the cart, the coachman yelled, the whip cracked, although the coachman was very careful to make sure that the strap didn’t even touch the haunches of the two horses, and in that way they finally reached the gates of Perugia, and they finally stepped through the Porta Trasimeno, and when at last, gasping for breath they stood, beyond the gate, on the beautifully paved Via dei Priori, Francesco simply could not stop, he just kept saying, just saying, well, my friends, I wouldn’t have believed it possible, I wouldn’t have believed it at all.