by Mark Helprin
"Oh," Nicolò said, unable to say more, because he was too busy breathing.
"Its true. Anyway, death awakens lawyers. They'll get busy when I go. I've left precise, typewritten instructions. I even say what to do with my suits, my papers, and the little things I have in my desk.
"Almost everything is to be burned. You live on not by virtue of the things you have amassed, or the work you have done, but through your spirit, in ways and by means that you can neither control nor foresee. All my possessions and all my papers will be burned in the pine grove behind my house.
"There I have a metal cage to prevent the flight of cinders large enough to set other things on fire. It's against the municipal code to burn refuse in the center of Rome, but I've taken care of that. I have an envelope addressed to the local inspector and one for his supervisor. I have written a carefully composed ode, in perfect terza rima, begging a single indulgence. When I realized that they might not care for my poetry, I thought to enclose twenty-five thousand lire for the inspector, and forty thousand for the supervisor."
"Ten thousand would have done it. Why so much?"
"Because inflation is not unknown in this country, and I may live longer than I expect. Though why I would want to is a mystery. I'm so cautious and conscientious that I feel entirely free to die. If I die on this road, just keep walking. They'll find me. Everything will be taken care of properly."
"You think you're going to die?" Nicolò blurted out between breaths. "I think I'm going to die."
"Don't worry," Alessandro said, infuriating him. "I'm still quite fit. I think you probably misinterpreted my gait. Since the war, I've slowed down a bit, and lately I've had to use this," he said, knocking the cane on the road, "but I've rowed on the Tiber, except when it has been bone dry or in flood, for forty years. I row in the heat and in the rain. I've been rammed by motorboats and attacked by swans. I've seen conquering armies march in on the bridges above me, and then, some years later, march out. I've even been on the river in the snow, and seen it hissing onto the water next to me as my oars swept past, as if I had been not in Rome, but in England. I try not to overdo it, but I'm not feeble like many men my age."
"I can see that," Nicolò responded, sweat glistening on his forehead. "You give another impression," he continued. "The way you dress ... it makes you look like a sugar cake."
"What do you mean?" Alessandro asked, looking down at his clothes.
"It's all white. And your hair's white. You look like a priest in summer, or an ice cream man."
"An ice cream man!"
"Well, that's what you look like. You look so delicate I thought you were about ninety or a hundred."
"A hundred?!" Alessandro was not pleased by such flattery. "In twenty-six years, maybe, when you're forty-three, I'll be a hundred. And the suit isn't white. It's a light cream color. You see?"
"Looks white to me."
"It's hard to make distinctions in starlight. Wait till the full moon rises."
"How do you know it's going to be full?"
"Among other things, it was full yesterday except for a tiny splinter. Tonight, it will be perfectly round. That's why I'm walking so fast."
"You walk fast when the moon is full?"
"Just outside Acereto is a high ridge. Over there," he said, pointing ahead and to the right, to a dark hill that rose higher than the others around it. "There, in the evening, when I don't get thrown off the bus, I can see the sun set over the sea—though at this distance the sea is a line as thin and blue as a tentative stroke in a watercolor. And you can see Rome as it lights up, faintly at first, but then like a city that's burning. To the east are half a hundred mountain ridges. In the dusk their undulations make them look more like the sea than the sea itself.
"If we can move fast enough we can be there when the moon rises. First it will be orange and amber, like Rome on the opposite side, glowing like the remnant of a bonfire.
"For a moment the amber moon to the east and the amber city to the west will seem to be mirror images, and from the height of the ridge we'll watch them face one another as if they were two cats on either side of a fence. Then, as the moon comes up in ten thousand colors, we can have a drink and eat some chocolate—it's better than watching a movie."
"Is there water up there?" Nicolò asked. "Even now, I'm thirsty. It's because you walk so fast."
"No, there isn't any water up there. It's too high, but I filled a wine bottle that I found. At the top of the ridge, we can drink the cold water of Acereto. We'll need it because we will have worked so hard."
"Where is it?"
"In the briefcase on your back. Part of the reason you're breathing so hard."
"You found a bottle with a cork?"
"I found a bottle, but it has no cork."
"How do you know the water hasn't spilled?"
"I have observed you carefully," Alessandro said. "Since we left Acereto you have not been upside down for a moment. Don't walk on your hands."
"All right," Nicolò promised. He was known among his friends, and at the factory, for being able to walk on his hands.
"Remarkable thing," Alessandro said, "the moon rising. Especially when it's full. It's so gentle, so round, and so light. Every time I see the full moon rise, I think of my wife. Her face was bright and beautiful, and if it had any imperfection it was that it seemed too perfect, especially when she was young.
"I walk fast because I want to see the moon rise. And I want to see the moon rise because ... I've already told you. Come, it won't wait for us, but it will be there."
They walked on steadily. Nicolò found his breath. He tucked his shirt carefully into his pants and brushed his hair back from his eyes as if he were going to be introduced to someone. And as they walked, he reminded himself now and then that he was not to walk on his hands.
"NOT A single cloud," Alessandro said as they sat down on a flat rock at the summit of the ridge toward which they had been walking. "For three hundred and sixty degrees, and all the way to the top of the sky, it's as if clouds had never been invented."
The darkness spread away from them on all sides. Even the whitened road curved into a little bow on the summit and then was hidden as it continued down along the ridge. They had left the road and climbed for a minute or two to reach a ledge at the very top of a hill around which the world had been draped like a swirling fluid that has suddenly frozen.
"There's Rome," Alessandro announced, "the color of an ember, but sparkling like a diamond. The dark ribbon you see is the Tiber cutting through the light, and those white flakes, like mica, are the large piazze.
"If you look west you'll see a tranquil line just beyond the hills. That's the Mediterranean. You can tell it from the sky, for, although they are the same color, in the narrow band of the sea are no stars. The distinction is faint, because the atmosphere dims the stars as they approach the horizon, but if you look hard you'll see."
"I don't see," Nicolò declared. "I don't see stars out there, only above." He strained and squinted, moving his head to and fro.
Happy to have beaten the moon to the top of the hill, and to have a lovely lair from which to capture it as it rose, Alessandro might have ignored Nicolò's inability to see the stars near the horizon, but half a century of explanation and elucidation would not let him. "Look straight up," he commanded.
"Where?"
"There." He pointed toward Rigel, his favorite star. "Count the stars that you can see in a space the size of a coin."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"They stand on top of each other."
"What do you mean, 'they stand on top of each other'?"
"They're too blurry."
"They don't look like pinpoints?"
"No, they look like someone spilled paint."
The old man pulled from one of his jacket pockets a rigid leather case that he snapped open in a well practiced movement of his left hand. "Try looking through these. They may make things sharper."
Nicolò took a pa
ir of gold-framed spectacles from the bed of velvet upon which they had been resting, and put them on. He turned his head back to Rigel, and, for the first time, he saw the stars.
"And those must be all wrong for you," Alessandro said. "Yet, an improvement?"
"Yes! The stars are deep in the sky, and I can see them one by one."
"Have you never had spectacles?"
"Never. I don't need them." He paused. "I do need them."
"Was it because they were too expensive?"
"No. In the clinic I could have gotten them for free. They make things sharper, but girls don't like them."
"Who said?"
"Everybody."
"I've found it to be just the opposite, and as for the opinion that girls are less pretty if they wear glasses, that's only for apes. Many times, the thick spectacles of a young girl have been the barb of the hook she sinks into my heart. Even these days, I'm entranced by the nearsighted ones who sit in the front row and stare at me through concentric rings of sparkling crystal. And when they're slightly cross-eyed, it's that much better."
"You're crazy."
"A marvelous invention, entirely compatible with physical beauty."
"They were invented?"
"Do you think they grow in the wild?"
"Who invented them?"
"A Florentine, Alessandro di Spina. Spectacles even have a patron saint, Saint Jerome, because in Ghirlandaio's portrait of him they hang from the edge of a table as if they were the commonest things in the world. It was Raphael, however, who made them famous, in his painting of Pope Leo the Tenth, the four-eyed son of Lorenzo de Medici, the one who expelled Martin Luther."
"I don't know any of those guys," Nicolò said.
"That's all right. I don't either."
"Except Saint Jerome. I know the saints."
"That's good. Whose day is it today?"
"I don't know."
"I thought you did."
"Not like that I don't. You think the Pope knows?"
"I'd bet on it."
"So what saint?"
"I'm not the Pope, but today is the ninth of August. Saint Romanus, I believe. He was a Byzantine."
Nicolò, who had never heard the word Byzantine, said, "That's too bad."
"Where's the water?" Alessandro asked. "And the chocolate."
"My father says that if you eat too much chocolate, you turn black."
"That's undoubtedly true," Alessandro answered. "After all, chocolate comes from Africa, and Africans are black. But what about Switzerland? A lot of chocolate comes from Switzerland."
"So?"
"Are the Swiss black?"
"They're not?"
"Well what do you think?"
"I don't know," Nicolò offered, obviously confused. Taking the water bottle from Alessandro's briefcase and placing it carefully on the flat slab, he asked, "Is Switziland in Africa?"
"You mean Swaziland?"
"Switziland?" Nicolò insisted.
Alessandro felt his heart pounding against his chest. His breath came slowly. "What did you say?" he asked.
Nicolò struggled to envision the world. "Which is the one that has an ocean, Africa or Peru?"
"Let's start closer to home," Alessandro said. "First, name the countries of Europe."
"What are they?"
"I'm asking you."
"Asking me what?"
"What are the countries of Europe?"
"They're countries," Nicolò said.
"Name them."
"Italy, of course..."
"Excellent."
"France."
"Yes."
"Germany, Spain, Ireland, and Mahogany."
"Mahogany?"
"It's a country, isn't it? It's in Brazil."
"It isn't, but keep going."
"Is Germany a country?"
"Yes, but you've said it already."
"There are more?"
Alessandro nodded.
"Is there one called Great Dane?"
"When you get back to Rome," Alessandro said gravely, "you must look at a map. Haven't you ever seen a map of the world?"
"Yes I have, but I don't know what it says. I can't read."
"You can't read at all?"
"No, not even my own name. I told you, I never went to school."
"You have to learn to read. They'll teach you at the factory."
"They say I have to read before I become an apprentice, and they say they'll teach me. I'm supposed to go to a place in Monte Sacro. It's okay. I can do numbers. I can do numbers very well. Look! The moon."
Alessandro turned to the east. His cane clattered down upon the rock as he caught sight of a tiny orange dome, rising coolly, unlike the molten sunrise, from behind the farthest line of hills.
The arc rapidly turned into a silent half circle, spying upon them with its old and tired face. It had about it the air of being intensely busy, as if its occupation with the task of floating in perfect orbits had made it justly self-absorbed.
"The whole world stops as this stunning dancer rises," Alessandro said, "and its beauty puts to shame all our doubts."
It is like a dancer, Nicolò thought, as the perfectly round moon began to float airily above the silhouetted hills it had begun to illumine. "So smooth," he said.
"Without saying anything, it says so much," Alessandro continued. "In that sense, it's better than the sun, which is always holding forth, and butting at you like a ram."
Because of Alessandro's spectacles, Nicolò was able to see that the moon had mountains and seas. His sudden apprehension of the moon, so close and full, riding over them like a huge airship, endeared it to him forever. For perhaps the first time in his life he was lifted entirely outside himself and separated from his wants. As he contemplated the huge smoldering disc he was easily able to suspend time and the sensation of gravity, and a sort of internal electricity overflowed within him. It came in waves, and grew stronger and stronger as the moon glided from orange and amber to pearl and white. And then, after only a few minutes, the soul that had taken flight returned to a body in which the heart was pounding like the heart of a bird that has just alighted from a long fast flight.
"What happened to me?" he asked, with a convulsive shudder.
"When I was your age," Alessandro said, "I had already learned to compress what you just experienced into bolts of pure lightning."
Nicolò didn't know what to think, so he stared ahead.
"When a great sight comes to sweep you down, fight it. It will take you, for sure, but keep your eyes open, and you can beat it, like molten steel, into beams of light.
"I used to take long walks in the city, and when I was able to immerse myself in a cross-fire of beautiful images I would ignite just as you did. It has many names, and is one of the prime forces of history, and yet it keeps itself hidden, as if it were shy.
"A favorite trick of mine, that I have since abandoned, was to concentrate the overflow upon the horses of the carabinieri to make them rear up on their hind legs and whinny. They're very sensitive to human feelings, and when they know that you are greatly moved they will often react in sympathetic fashion."
"How did you do that?"
"It wasn't hard. I had to be all worked up, but when I was young I was like a perpetual lightning storm. I would concentrate upon the horse as if he were the emblem and paradigm of every horse that ever was or ever will be, and then throw the current across the gap.
"The horse would turn his head to me and draw it back, widening his eyes. Then he'd shudder as if a sudden chill had come over him. At that point I'd open the gates to let the power sweep out all at once, and he'd rear and cry out the way horses do, with a sound that seems able to pierce through all things.
"I'll never forget the surprise of the carabinieri, the fall of their coats, and the banging of their swords as they stood rigidly in the stirrups so as not to be thrown. They were never angry. After the horses had expressed themselves so completely, they and their riders alw
ays seemed to regard each other with awe. More often than not, as I passed I would hear the rider saying to his agitated mount, 'What got into you? What has moved you?' You could see them patting the horses' necks to calm them down.
"I don't do it anymore. I'm not sure I could.
"But the moon, what a lovely thing. To see it makes me very happy. My wife's face, especially when she was young, would have been perfect—in the sense that she could have been a star in films—had her eyes not been so full of love. When she smiled," he said, indicating the cool glow that had begun to climb steeply into the sky, "it was as lovely as that."
"This is how you've never left her," Nicolò said.
Alessandro made a curt bow, closing his eyes for an instant. "In this and in many other ways, but they are not enough. My symbols, my parallels, my discoveries, cannot even begin to do her justice and cannot bring her back. The most I can do is to make the memory of her shine. So I touch lightly, ever so lightly, seeking after gentle things, for she was gentle.
"Now look at the apposition," he said, drawing himself up from what might have made him falter, "of the moon on one hand, and the city of Rome on the other.
"Rome still looks like catacombs of fire, and will remain this shattered and amber color throughout the night, although as morning comes the whiter lights will leave the field more and more to the strings of amber streetlights. But the moon, as it moves, has already run through a number of scenes. First it was a farmers fire, almost dead in the field, ruby red. Then it ripened through a thousand shades of orange, amber, and yellow. As it gets lighter it sheds its mass, until somewhere between cream and pearl, halfway to its apogee, it will seem like a burst of smoke that wants to run away on the wind. Then do you know what happens?"
Nicolò moved his head back and forth.
"It gets as white and hard as glacial ice. It dazzles so that you can barely look at it—and all the weight comes back until it seems like one of those huge chandeliers that, at the opera or in palaces of state, in being so high, sharp, and heavy, tend to discourage people from standing underneath them.
"With the city off to one side and the moon directly above, I hope I don't walk crookedly, like a Dutch milkmaid with one bucket at the end of her yoke and the other balanced on her head.