The Medici Boy

by John L'Heureux

  “Ser Paolo at your service,” he said and squinted at me. “I was unaware . . . I do apologize . . . I was pissing . . . the smell . . . it is a problem of control . . .”

  The air was close and fetid. In truth the room was stale with the smell of old clothes and wet paper and over all the strong sharp smell of urine. Ser Paolo’s skin was very white, like the belly of a fish, as if he had never been exposed to light. I wondered if he slept here.

  He waved me inside the office, a narrow room with a table and two chairs and many wooden cases stuffed with notebooks and account books and the bits of paper that accumulate in any place of business. Some of the oldest of these documents were of rolled parchment, yellow as butter, with wax seals still attached. Some had ribbons dangling from the wax. Some were recent, with no seals at all. A small window at the top of the rear wall admitted what little light there was in the room.

  Surely this could not be the headquarters of the Ufficiali di Onestà, a powerful branch of the government of the Republic. The Onestà had as its commission to protect the purity of convents and monasteries and—a more recent commission—to prosecute sodomy. And this airless room was their headquarters? This could not be.

  I made as if to leave.

  “Sit, sit!” he said, and put on a pair of spectacles the better to peer at me. He saw at once that he had mistaken me for someone of importance—my red cappuccio, a gift from Donatello, had misled him—and thus he had wasted his apology on a nobody. He looked startled at this and his tone cooled noticeably.

  “Your business here?”

  A young man had gone missing and I was looking for him, I said. His name was Mattei, he was a bit wild, and I wondered if at some time in the past week he might have been arrested on suspicion of loitering.

  “Loitering,” he said, and readied his notebook and his stylus. He paused to caress the cover of the book and to lay the place-ribbon straight along the binding. “By loitering”—he squinted up at me—“by loitering you mean . . . sodomy?”

  “I only ask,” I said.

  “Your name?”

  “Luca di Matteo,” I watched, anxious, as he wrote it down. He wrote slowly and with care, his tongue between his teeth.

  “Di Matteo. Mattei. He is your son?”

  “No relation,” I said, “it is a common name.”

  “It is a common name. Alas, it is true.” He asked what trade I plied.

  I paused. “Engraver,” I said. “Assistant to a goldsmith.”

  He wrote ‘engraver,’ slowly, as if it were a great labor. “Employer?”

  “Whoever will hire me.” He squinted, displeased, and overcome by folly I said, “The great Lorenzo Ghiberti.”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise and wrote down “Lorenzo di Cione Ghiberti” and underlined the name.

  “Well!” he said, and puffed out his cheeks. He looked exactly like a frog.

  I was eager now to leave but that was not possible. The interrogation, once begun, must go on until he was satisfied. He continued to ask questions and I responded with lies and he wrote down everything I said. Your residence? I am a visitor from Prato. Then you should ply your trade in Prato. Your residence here in Florence? I made up the name of a rooming house in Santa Croce. Near the Basilica, I said, in the area of the stables and the bake houses. Your interest in this boy? He is the son of an acquaintance; I am inquiring on his behalf. By name? He is a merchant in Prato. Of what name exactly? I drew a deep breath: Ser Lapo Mazzei. And then, improvising, I said the boy goes by Mattei to spare his father shame. Ser Lapo Mazzei was an important merchant, known even in Florence, and he recognized the name at once and entered it in his book. He asked more questions and I answered them, some truly, some not. He squinted at me and wrote down what I said, his tongue fixed between his teeth.

  When he had exhausted his store of questions, he asked once more what it was I wanted. He seemed truly to have forgotten. I repeated that I was looking for a boy called Agnolo Mattei who may have been arrested. He shook his head and, to my great surprise, he smiled. “No,” he said.

  “No? It is certain?”

  “No one has been arrested since before the Christmas feast. Our laws, like all the laws of our great Republic, are better kept than punished. Public decency is our first priority.”

  I did not know what he meant so I said nothing.

  “We want no more burnings at the stake. If your friend Agnolo is a practicing sodomite and if he confesses voluntarily, he will be pardoned. If he is denounced by someone else, however, we may decide to take action against him.” He spoke gravely, reciting a lesson. “That is how we proceed: we value honor first and then denunciation. Onestà is not a name only. It is a promise.”

  “No. Yes. I see.”

  “And do you wish to confess anything yourself?” He squinted and leaned forward, his stylus poised above the page.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Do you wish to denounce?”

  I told him I did not wish to confess or denounce. I was done. I was grateful.

  All at once he bent forward and clutched at his stomach. His pale skin grew whiter still. “Go then quickly,” he said, “because I must piss again. It is a sore affliction.” As I moved to the door, he said with urgency, “Go. Only go!”

  I could hear the gurgle of urine in the night jug as I closed the door behind me and, with a huge sense of relief, I left to his ledgers and his piss pot the Conservatore di Legge Ser Paolo Ruggiero del Pagone. I made my way quickly along the dark corridor and up the stairs and out again into the world of air and light. Ser Paolo Ruggiero, farewell, farewell!

  * * *

  IT WAS FREEZING outside but the clean air was welcome and, though I was greatly agitated to have told so many lies—and all of them written down by a government agent—I was much relieved to be able to report to Donatello that Agnolo had not been arrested. I had this on the authority of the Conservatore di Legge himself.

  “He has simply gone away then.”

  “It would seem so,” I said.

  “With his soldier.”

  I said nothing.

  “I had thought that was behind him.” He laughed, ironically.

  “It may be he will come back.”

  “Then damn him!” he said. “Let him rot in hell and his soldier with him.”

  I was not prepared for his response.

  “If he comes back, turn him away. I will not see him. I will have nothing to do with him.”

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  With that he went to his work table and for an hour or more he sifted through the pile of commissions. Some were for work under way and some for work that had long since been abandoned. He set about rearranging them in their order of importance. “Prato,” he said.

  “We have been neglecting Prato. Tell Pagno to come and talk with me at once.”

  “My lord,” I said.

  He removed the wet cloth from the bozzetto of the David and stood for a moment gazing at it. He touched the shoulder and let his finger drift down the arm to the hand that held the stone. He moved that same finger to the helmet of Goliath and pressed hard against the severed head. I turned away, embarrassed, but I looked back in time to see him lift a hammer and take aim. With a single great blow, he shattered the perfect bozzetto in a hundred pieces. He stepped hard upon the shards of clay and ground them to dust beneath his foot. He was mad with rage, surely, but I studied him keenly and to my eye he appeared calm.

  That was the moment when I realized, with a terrible tug at my heart, that it was not just a sexual attraction Donatello felt for the boy. He was—fatally—in love with him.

  “Clean away this mess,” he said and then he went outside to tell Pagno di Lapo to begin carving the child angels for the cornices of the Prato Pulpit.

  CHAPTER 19

  AT LAST DONATELLO could rest. And so could I. Agnolo, that poisonous child, had disappeared, Pagno di Lapo was joyfully occupied carving his two putti for the Prato Pulpit, and Alessand
ra had just given birth to our fourth boy, Giovanni Marco by name. He had his mother’s deep green eyes and broad forehead and her full mouth. He was perfect. It is true that too often during these years I looked lightly upon my good fortune in having Alessandra for wife and four fine boys to better me in carving . . . for surely they would be more gifted than I. I loved them with a full heart, Alessandra most of all, but I never told them so and I have lived to know the full taste of that regret . . . Still, here was a time to rest, as Donatello rested, free at last from that terrible sting of the flesh.

  All of us had long speculated on that sting and wondered just what form it took and who was its chief object. During my earliest years in the bottega I had worried that Michelozzo might be the lover of Donatello. Michelozzo had become—after Alessandra—the center of my life. He was a great artisan, a man of strength and integrity and it pained me to think he might, even for a moment, even once only, act the sodomite. It was unthinkable. He and Donatello shared work and they shared a house and I could not help fearing they shared a bed. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between fear and knowledge.

  Later, after the burning of Piero di Jacopo, my fear became more immediate. Sodomy among distinguished men was not unheard of and, in truth, among the great artisans, it was not uncommon. Moreover it was noised about that Michelozzo was not the first of Donatello’s lovers, that Brunelleschi had been there before him. Nearly thirty years earlier, at a time when I was still the squalling brat of the wool dyer and his wife, the young Brunelleschi had, in a fit of anger, gone off to Rome to explore the ruins of ancient temples and to unearth the secrets of architectural perspective . . . and, some said, to live in sin with Donatello. The stay in Rome came about in this way.

  In 1401 the Officials of the Florence Cathedral—the Operai—declared a public competition to select the artisan who would make a set of bronze doors to celebrate the passing of the Black Pestilence of 1400. The doors, which were intended for the north side of the Baptistry, were meant to rival the great south doors of Andrea Pisano. Artisans from Florence and Siena and Assisi competed, five finalists were chosen, and each was given a year to submit a bronze panel depicting Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Though there were thirty-four judges, they quickly agreed on the final two competitors: Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. In the end, the votes of the Operai were evenly divided between the two and so the judges offered the commission equally to Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, splitting the work and the money between them. Brunelleschi, insulted and on fire with rage, refused the commission altogether and went off to Rome to dig through the ruins. While he studied the inner life of statues and sought out the secrets by which the ancients turned public buildings into works of art, he practiced as a goldsmith to support himself. Donatello was nine years his junior—a passionate sixteen—when he went with him to Rome.

  I say “passionate” of the young Donatello because a year earlier he had been arrested in Pistoia for fighting with a German named Anichinus Pieri, wounding him with a large stick that caused much bleeding. It is not true that this was a lover’s quarrel. It was a case of two boys proving they were men. A court document of 24 January 1401—Donatello kept it; I have it by me today—warned “the Florentine” that he would be fined one hundred gold florins should he again violate the peace of Pistoia. Donatello found this an excellent time to go with Brunelleschi to Rome. He went there as an apprentice goldsmith and returned two years later as a master craftsman.

  So there were Brunelleschi and Michelozzo to consider, but most mysterious of all was Donatello’s love of Pagno di Lapo. Pagno was a middling sculptor—he had no sense of how a body occupied space and whenever he attempted a putto, for instance, the result was always a miniature man, malformed and ugly. And yet Donatello insisted he was a sculptor of talent. Was he deceived by passion? Was it the fascination of his red hair and those eyes that were now blue and now green depending on his malice at the moment? “Piccolo mio,” Donatello called him at thirteen and, despite his low chin, Pagno had grown into a handsome young man, tall and of some physical strength, with a quick wit and a sharp tongue, and he moved as silently as a cat. He was forever enticing Donatello but, at a mere touch on his shoulder or a tousling of his hair, he would resist and pull away. I saw it happen but I did not understand.

  I did not understand any of these attachments at that time, though in my old age I have come to have some sympathy for them. Love robs us of our strength—of mind as well as of character—and we cease to know who we are. In truth we become strangers to ourselves. I did not know it then, though Pagno knew it and so did Alessandra, but I was just such a stranger to myself.

  Over the years I had become a spy and I had perfected my spying skills by watching Donatello at work. That intense stare, that ability to exclude from sight everything that was not the focus of his vision, had—in a worldly way—become my own. Nothing escaped my notice, not Michelozzo’s glance at Donatello, not Donatello’s suppressed smile, not the heartstrings’ jump of pleasure or delight that showed subtly on the face. I was a spy, and I was good at seeing the intent of things. I could hear the words they only meant to say, the touch that they intended, the dangerous thought left unformed in the mind. I do not exaggerate.

  When Agnolo entered our lives, spying became for me an obsession. He had ruined Donatello and ruined the David and he had ruined me.

  But now, gratia Dei, he was gone. And we could rest.

  “YOU HAVE CHANGED,” Alessandra said, “You’re a different man.” She was nursing Giovanni Marco and her face was peaceful though her voice was firm. I had come to recognize that tone. She was about to deliver hard truths that she felt were needful for her to say and good for me to know. “You begrudge Pagno his high favor with Donato.” She let that hang in the air for a while and continued to suckle the baby. She began to sing him a lullaby.

  She was the picture of motherhood. She had grown more beautiful and more plump with each new birth, her green eyes soft, her hands delicate. She could have posed for the Virgin with Child.

  “Pagno is only what your jealousy makes him,” she said. “He is of no importance.”

  Giovanni Paolo sat on the floor at her feet twisting a bit of red yarn in knots while the two older boys were building a fortress with small wooden blocks I had made for them and painted to look like stone. Donato Michele at eight years was too old for this, but he played at knights and soldiers to entertain his brother. Donato, the oldest, was ever the giving child. Franco Alessandro, two years younger, was not. Still, here was a lovely family picture . . . until Alessandra spoke once more.

  “Jealousy is beneath you.” She paused. “You are better than that.” She paused again. “You are better than him.”

  I was ashamed and angry and so I began to play with the loose ends of wool on her loom. Alessandra did weaving by the piece—fine wool, chiefly, though sometimes rough silk—and she was paid well for her work. This was illegal, of course, but everyone did it and we were always in need of extra money. Even then, more than thirty years past, it cost a fortune to raise four boys.

  “Don’t play with that,” she said. “You’ll throw me off.”

  Finally I said, “I am not jealous of Pagno.”

  “Of Pagno and of poor Agnolo too. It’s as well that he’s gone off . . . to wherever he’s gone.”

  “He’s corrupt.”

  “You’re obsessed by him. He is in your mind like a poison.”

  “He is not.”

  Alessandra looked at me in that way. I lowered my eyes. She took the baby from her nipple and laid him across her breast. She tapped him—pat, pat, pat—and he coughed up a small mess on her shoulder, gave a heavy sigh of satisfaction and fell asleep. Of a sudden I was overwhelmed with love for her.

  * * *

  LONG AGO, IN our first year of marriage I asked her how it could be that we had made love so many times without conception and yet, once we married, she conceived immediately. I was wondering aloud and, if she was offended, she d
id not say so. She explained about the weed called daucus carota . . . and I now include this information as part of my confession to lighten the burden of listening to my sin. This is not advice, it is an explanation only, and my reader is free to pass it on to women who may find it useful or you may keep it for your own delight, an odd thing, good to know in itself.

  The daucus carota is an acrid weed, a kind of wild carrot that grows by every roadside, and in late summer it produces a white lacy flower. In fall, you take the dried seeds of the flower and you grind them to a pulp, a greenish mess that is foul-tasting but very effective. You cannot swallow the seeds whole; they will do no good. You take one teaspoonful of this paste and you swallow it after sex and you will not conceive. No one knows why, but chemists say it causes slipperiness in the woman so that the man’s seed cannot take hold. And later, when you want to conceive, you simply stop taking the daucus remedy, and if you are in all other ways healthy and of good disposition, you will conceive. It is as simple as that. Is this not a good thing to know?

  Alessandra and I had married for love—or what we took to be love—and, as sometimes happens in marriage, we continued to feel love for one another even after the pleasures of the flesh had become a common, if necessary, thing. Many marriages exist on nothing more than physical pleasure snatched here and there in moments of desire or demand, and so we considered ourselves fortunate to have found in each other someone who shared our loneliness and need and that feeling of not knowing who we are or why we are here.