Pasquale's Angel Page 3

  Bells rang for the elevation of the host; following the masters of the confraternity (Rosso, who had forgotten to go to confession, had to stay behind), Pasquale and the other pupils lined up at the rail to take the sip of blood-red wine, the thin coin of the wafer of transubstantiated flesh. As Pasquale rose, with the wafer dissolving on his tongue, sweetening the ferruginous taste of the wine, he saw that Raphael was kneeling humbly at the end of the line, democratic amongst his school, as if he were only an ordinary man.

  The communion over, the prayers for the celebrants said and the dismissal intoned, people began to drift towards the back of the church, mixing with the layabouts and with the ordinary citizens who were waiting for the regular midday mass, which would begin as soon as this one was finished. The pupils were gathering up the banners. When he had wound up his own, Pasquale asked one of Master Andrea’s pupils to carry it back for him. He had seen Raphael walking down the aisle, conversing with a few of the masters.

  The pupil, a cheerful fellow by the name of Andrea Squazella, said, ‘God sees the sparrow fall, so Raphael might look on you, I suppose. But he’ll only see a sparrow.’

  ‘I would be more than that, I hope.’

  ‘I know of your ambition, but as for your talent…’ As Raphael passed by, Andrea grabbed Pasquale and said with mock alarm, ‘Steady, don’t faint. He’s only a man.’

  Raphael was of ordinary height, with a mild white face and curly black shoulder-length hair. His black tunic, doublet and hose were of the finest Dutch cloth, cut expensively on the cross. He was gesturing to underline some point. His fingers were as slim as a woman’s, and so long that it seemed that they had an extra joint.

  Pasquale breathed out when the little group had passed. ‘Only a man,’ he said.

  ‘There goes someone with a different opinion,’ Andrea said. ‘Master Michelangelo thinks your Raphael is definitely something lower than a man. A louse perhaps.’

  Michelangelo was making his way up the far side of the church, craggy head held high, followed by two of his assistants. He looked like a warship beating out of port ahead of a storm, escorted by a couple of sloops.

  ‘My master says that Raphael stole his ideas,’ Andrea said to Pasquale. ‘Raphael was secretly shown the Sistine Chapel after Michelangelo quit his work there, and as a result he immediately repainted the prophet Isaiah that he had been working on so that it seemed to be a collaboration, although not one Michelangelo knew about. Your Raphael is something of an improver rather than an improviser.’

  ‘If you mean that his inspiration begins where that of others ends, then mine begins with his,’ Pasquale said, and Andrea laughed and said he was shameless.

  ‘I’m desperate. How can I talk with him?’

  ‘Tell him you like his work,’ Andrea said sensibly. ‘Or better still, let my master introduce you. Go on, Pasquale! If you don’t stand near him you’ll have to shout, and one simply doesn’t do that. Even in a Florentine church.’

  Andrea was from Urbino, and considered all Florentines boorish, most especially in the way they chattered openly during mass, even on high days.

  By now, the party with Raphael in its centre was almost at the door. Someone stepped inside just as Pasquale hurried up, and it was as if a breeze had blown aside a screen of leaves, for the people around Raphael parted and moved back, leaving him to confront the newcomer.

  He was a portly, middle-aged man, dressed in a fashion more suitable to someone twenty years younger: a short grey cape spotted with sooty raindrops, and a white loosely laced shirt; an exaggerated doublet, fantastically puffed and slashed, of the kind favoured by Prussian students; particoloured hose. His hectic face still held more than a trace of the beautiful youth he had once been, in his profile and the sulky downturn of his full mouth. His curly hair was still thick; extravagantly arranged, it fell to his shoulders.

  Pasquale knew him at once: Giacomo Caprotti, nicknamed Salai, the Milanese catamite of the Great Engineer. He also saw that the man was drunk. He stepped back, but still Salai shouldered into him.

  ‘Don’t you know to mind your step,’ Salai said, ‘when your betters pass by?’

  Pasquale retorted, ‘I’m sorry, signor, but I fail to recognize the high opinion you have of yourself.’

  He would have said more, but one of Raphael’s assistants, Giulio Romano, a burly middle-aged man, caught Salai’s arm. He turned him aside and said in a whisper, ‘Not here. This is not the place.’

  Salai shrugged him off and straightened his sleeves. ‘Only too true, but I missed you at the tower and would pay my respects, if I am allowed.’

  Romano threw up his hands.

  Salai turned back to the others and said with a slurred eloquence, ‘A million apologies for having missed your little party. I went to the wrong place, which is to say where you used to hold your feast-day mass, when you meant something in Florence. How I searched to find this small church—charming in its way, I’m sure, but obscure. Actually, I’m not sorry at all, I’m only here to represent my master. He paid his money long ago, before he took up his real calling and left off daubs.’ Salai faced up to Raphael. He couldn’t quite keep his eyes focused. He said, ‘So, painter. For once the dog goes before its master, eh? I compliment you on your choice of dress, Signor Raphael, and those of your hangers-on. Somehow, in these circumstances, mourning appears appropriate. You funny little artists have had your day, even you, Signor Raphael. We’ll soon outshine you all in capturing the real light of the world.’

  Another of the assistants said, ‘If you bring a message from your master, speak it now. Master Raphael is too busy to trifle with the likes of you.’

  ‘Some love-affair no doubt. An affair of the heart, such as we read of in the broadsheets. Well, I’m not one to stand in the way of love.’

  Raphael laughed. He said, ‘You weren’t sent at all, were you?’

  Salai grinned broadly, as if enormously enjoying the fact that his bluff had been called. ‘Well, if it comes to it, no.’

  The second assistant said, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici was murdered in a church, I recall.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Giulio Romano said.

  Salai touched the pommel of the French rapier slung from his silver brocade belt. ‘Signor, I can step outside if it makes you feel easier. I’ll even wait while you arm yourself.’

  There was a moment of tense silence, for Salai was well known for his swordswork. The assistant turned red and looked away.

  ‘Go now,’ Romano said. ‘Go away, Salai. Not here. Not now.’

  Raphael said, with a benign smile, ‘You have your audience, Signor Salai. Speak your piece.’

  Salai bowed. ‘I hope I need not speak, Signor—no, Master Raphael. That’s the point. We are soon to be blessed by the first of the Medicis to step within the walls of Florence since the Republic was founded. A pity if that dainty footfall were to be lost in the outcry of scandal.’

  ‘I’m not afraid, Salai. Certainly not of any small mischief you can manage to whip up.’

  Salai winked and laid a finger alongside his nose in a coarse parody of intimacy. ‘And the honour of a certain lady…?’

  ‘That’s old gossip,’ Raphael said, even as the second assistant pushed forward, hand on the dagger thrust in his belt.

  Salai danced back, suddenly not drunk at all, coarse cunning and a kind of eagerness printed on his face. ‘That olive-sticker won’t do you much good, friend. I suggest you use it to clean your fingernails—they really shouldn’t match the rest of your costume.’

  Romano laid a hand on his fellow’s shoulder. The others of Raphael’s party, emboldened by this move, started to jeer and stamp. A few of the confraternity, Master Andrea amongst them, were shouting out too, crying shame, shame on the honour of Florence, that one of her citizens should insult one of her guests. Salai looked at them, then bowed, mockingly low, before turning and marching out through the door.

  Several of the older masters started to apologize to Raphael; off to the sid
e, Rosso was talking animatedly with Giulio Romano. Pasquale tried to push forward, but Raphael’s followers had closed around their master, and they moved as one body through the high doors of the church into the gloomy, rainy afternoon. When Pasquale dared follow, Master Andrea turned and said, not unkindly, ‘He’s here until the Pope leaves, Pasquale. You’ll have a chance to talk, I’m sure, but not now, eh?’

  Pasquale caught his sleeve. ‘What did Salai mean, when he raised up the matter of the honour of a lady?’

  ‘You know the kind of mischief the Great Engineer’s catamite likes to stir up,’ Master Andrea said vaguely. ‘Women are the root of all evil, some say. Or would say, if they were allowed…’ He set his four-cornered cap squarely on his grizzled head, shook out the wide sleeves of his tunic, and hurried after the receding party. A couple of pigeons detonated into flight from his path: angel-wings.

  Pasquale watched the pigeons a while, getting soaked in the gentle, polluted rain, until Rosso came out of the church. Pasquale saw his master’s white, anxious face, and said, ‘Shouldn’t you go with them, master? The dinner in honour of Raphael—’

  ‘Let the old men go and make pictures with their food,’ Rosso said. ‘I think we both need a drink.’

  3

  The bar which Pasquale and Rosso favoured was a low dive frequented by a sometimes explosive mixture of artist’s pupils, journalists and mercenaries. The landlord, a fat bullet-headed Prussian Swiss, had the habit of taking swigs from the drinks he served, and kept a hound the size of a small horse which, when it wasn’t flopped in front of the fireplace, wandered amongst the crowd trying to cadge titbits. The Swiss scrutinized each person as they came in, and if the new arrival was a passer-by he didn’t like the look of, or a regular he’d argued with, he set up a tremendous volley of oaths and insults until the unfortunate man was driven out. Otherwise he jollied his regulars along, attempted clumsy practical jokes that usually backfired, and created a little world outside the world. Surprisingly, there were few fights. If the Swiss couldn’t handle trouble-makers he set his dog on them, and needed no other weapon.

  The scandal of Salai’s confrontation with Raphael was already the talk of the bar. Pasquale regaled two separate audiences with his account, accepting drinks from his eager listeners. He was hoping to see Piero di Cosimo, but the old man wasn’t here. Increasingly, he retreated from noise, living more and more inside his own head. He’d spend hours gazing at patterns rain made on a window, or paint spattered on his filthy floor.

  Pasquale had taken him food a few days before, but Piero had refused to let him in, speaking only through the crack in the half-opened door. He was, he told Pasquale, engaged on an important work. He spoke as if asleep, paying attention to something only he could see.

  Pasquale said, ‘One day the stuff you take, the híkuri, will kill you. You cannot live entirely in dreams.’

  ‘There’s more than one world, Pasquale. You’ve glimpsed it once or twice, but you don’t understand it yet. You must, if you’re to be any kind of painter.’

  ‘I have yet to master this world. Let me in, just for a moment. Look, I have bread and fish.’

  Piero ignored this. He said wistfully, ‘If only I’d had you for my pupil. Together—what voyages, eh, Pasquale? Come back in a few days. In a week.’

  Pasquale tried not to sound exasperated. ‘If you don’t eat, you’ll die.’

  ‘You sound like Pelashil,’ Piero said. ‘No. She has the sense not to disturb me. She understands.’

  ‘I would understand, if you would let me. I need to be able to see…’

  ‘Your angel. Yes. But you’re not a real person, not yet. Don’t bother me any more, Pasquale. I need to dream now.’

  It occurred to Pasquale now, in the crowded noisy bar, that it was because of that conversation he had drunkenly persisted in asking Pelashil for more of the híkuri, the simple which Piero had brought back from the New World. He looked around for Pelashil, who usually worked in the bar every night, but couldn’t see her. He hadn’t seen her all evening, and for a moment wondered, because he was young and self-centred, if she had left in disgust at his behaviour, never to return.

  A group of loud and foul-mouthed Swiss cavalrymen had colonized Piero’s usual corner. The condottiere who had hired them was sprawled in the straight-backed chair Piero favoured, elaborating with vivid obscenity why he would never be fucked up the arse or fuck anyone up the arse either, Florence or not, while the rent-boy who sat in his lap pretended to be fascinated. ‘I mean, I like my dick sucked as well as any man, and I don’t care if it’s a woman or a man or a baby who thinks my come is her mother’s milk does the sucking. One of the best fucks I ever had was with an old granny that had lost all her teeth. But only Turks and Florentines fuck each other in the shit-hole, am I right or am I right?’

  The condottiere had a lean pock-marked face, with a moustache waxed to elaborate points. His fist twined a handful of the rent-boy’s hair; the boy winced and blew him a kiss, half-mocking, half-placatory. The condottiere glared around the room, little eyes glistening under beetling brows, perhaps hoping that someone would contradict him. No one did, for as the broadsheets never tired of pointing out, the citizens of Florence were intimidated by the foreign soldiers they employed. A little shameful silence hung in the room before the man laughed and called for more wine.

  It was Pelashil who served him. Pasquale’s heart turned when he saw her. After she’d refilled the condottiere’s pitcher he called to her, and she sauntered over. Pelashil of the insolent eyes, black as sloe-berries in a face the colour of fall leaves, broad-hipped in a ragged brocade gown, its sleeves ripped away to leave her muscular arms bare. Pasquale had slept with her once, last winter, and ever since had not been able to decide if it had been her choice or his.

  ‘I was in my cups last night,’ Pasquale said. ‘You’re not still angry, I hope.’

  Pelashil stepped back when he tried to embrace her. ‘Why do men always think only about themselves?’

  ‘You’re angry! What did I say? Don’t I have the right to know?’

  Rosso, who had been drinking steadily, stirred and said, ‘You offered to take her away, Pasqualino. Back across the sea to where the sand is white and the sea is blue and the women go naked.’

  ‘That’s what you’d like to think,’ Pelashil said, ‘but it isn’t anything like my home. Besides, I suppose you’d rather think of naked boys.’ She caught Pasquale’s hand. ‘The old man is ill again. You must go and see him,’ and she went off to fetch more wine, dodging the groping of a drunken soldier.

  Pasquale sat back down and drank more wine and thought again of Piero’s vague talk, and then of the way that, after he had eaten híkuri, separate moments had folded into a continuous sheaf, and of the blurring of pigeon-wings in rainy light. Angels and time…was their time the same time that men endured, moment to moment? Some notion, vast yet as fabulously fragile as a frost-flower, seemed to be creeping across his brain, threatening to fade to nought if he stared at it too hard. He thought that perhaps Piero would know what this revelation meant. Perhaps Piero would feed him another dried leaf of híkuri. He should go and see the old man, yes, but not yet. Not just yet. He needed courage to face the dilapidated claustrophobia of Piero’s room.

  Giambattista Gellia, a hothead leftist as famous for being a shoemaker turned tract-writer as for anything he wrote, was pushing through the crowd. The journalist, Niccolò Machiavegli, had just come in, and Gellia was pulling him towards Pasquale’s table, saying loudly, ‘Niccolò, you must listen to this. Someone who was there, at the root of the scandal.’

  ‘Often you need distance for the truth to emerge,’ Niccolò Machiavegli protested with a laugh. ‘Besides, I have already written my piece and left it to be set. In fact, I have to go back soon to check it over. Give me the peace of a drink uninterrupted by business, Gellia. Revolution may be your life, but journalism is only my profession.’

  ‘This young man saw it all—or so he says.�
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  ‘It’s true,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘And I see you have profited well from your luck,’ the journalist said, and smiled as the others around the table laughed at Pasquale’s expense.

  ‘It’s true!’ Pasquale insisted.

  Niccolò Machiavegli smiled gently. ‘I don’t need words, my friend.’

  Rosso said, ‘He’s right. You don’t need words, Pasqualino.’

  Pasquale said, ‘What about a picture?’

  ‘It is a rich irony that in all of that congregation of artists, no one thought to sketch the confrontation,’ Niccolò Machiavegli said, gaining another laugh.

  Rosso stood up, gripping the edge of the table. He had drunk more than Pasquale. ‘It’s a private matter,’ he said.

  ‘But it happened in a public place,’ Gellia said.

  Pasquale dug his elbow into Rosso’s hip and said in a fierce whisper, ‘We need the money, master.’

  ‘You do what you will, Pasqualino,’ Rosso said wearily. One of his black moods had suddenly descended upon him. ‘Do it with my blessing. I suppose it will all come out soon enough.’

  Gellia stepped out of the way as Rosso plunged into the crowd, moving towards the door. Pasquale said, because they really did need the money, ‘I will show you that I was there. You must forgive my master. What happened was a…shameful thing.’ He drew out the scrap of paper on which he had been scribbling during the first part of the mass, dipped the comer of his tunic in wine and would have wiped away the drawing he’d already made when Niccolò Machiavegli caught his hand.