Requiem

by Antonio Tabucchi

  He disappeared while I finished my cocktail and set to thinking. I really wanted to see the painting again. How many years was it since I’d last seen it? I tried to work it out but couldn’t. Then I remembered those winter afternoons spent in the museum, the four of us, and the conversations we’d had, our meditations on its symbolism, our interpretations, our enthusiasm. And now here I was again and everything was different, only the painting had stayed the same, and it was upstairs waiting for me. But will it have stayed the same or will it have changed too? I mean, isn’t it possible that the painting could be different now simply because my eyes would no longer see it in the same way? That was what I was asking myself when the Barman at the Museum of Ancient Art returned. He came over to me very nonchalantly and winked. Right, he said, it’s all arranged, the guard is Senhor Joaquim, he’s waiting for you. I got up and paid the bill. The cocktail was really delicious, I said, thank you, I feel much better now. The Barman at the Museum of Ancient Art shook my hand. Goodbye, he said, I like people who know how to appreciate cocktails, and remember, if you’re ever in Harry’s Bar, ask for Daniel and say Manuel sent you.

  When I got to the room, the guard gave me a nod of recognition, I thanked him and said I wouldn’t be more than an hour, he said not to worry and I went in. To my great disappointment I saw I wasn’t alone, for right in front of the painting stood a copyist, with easel and canvas. I don’t know why but it displeased me to have company, I would like to have seen the painting on my own without other eyes looking at it, without the slightly discomforting presence of a stranger. It was perhaps because of that feeling of unease that instead of standing in front of the painting, I went round to the other side to study the back of the left-hand panel, the scene that shows Christ being arrested in the Garden. I tried to concentrate on the scene, perhaps in the rather absurd hope that the man would fold up his easel and leave. If you want to see the painting, you’ll have to hurry up, said the man from the other side, the museum’s about to close. I peered round at him and gave a faint smile. The guard was kind enough to let me stay another hour, I said. The guards in this museum are all very kind, said the man, don’t you think? I came out from behind the painting and went over to him. Are you making a copy?, I asked stupidly. A copy of a detail, he replied, as you can see, that’s what I do mainly, details. I looked at the canvas he was working on and saw that he was reproducing a detail from the right-hand panel that depicts a fat man and an old woman travelling through the sky mounted on a fish. The canvas was over six feet across and three feet high, and the effect of blowing up the Bosch figures to that size was most odd: the monstrous size seemed to emphasise the monstrousness of the scene. But what are you doing?, I asked in a shocked voice, what are you doing? I’m copying a detail, he said, can’t you see?, I’m simply making a copy of a detail, I’m a copyist and I make copies of details. I’d never seen a detail from a Bosch painting reproduced in those dimensions, I explained, it’s monstrous. Perhaps, replied the Copyist, but some people like it. Look, I said, forgive me being nosy, but I don’t understand, why do something like that?, it doesn’t make sense. The Copyist put down his brush and cleaned his hands on a rag. My dear friend, he said, life is strange and strange things happen in life, besides the painting itself is strange and causes strange things to happen. He took a drink of water from the plastic bottle he’d placed at the foot of the easel and said: I’ve worked really hard today, I can afford to take a break and have a bit of a chat, you know this painting, are you a critic? No, I said, just an amateur, I’ve known this painting for years though, there was a time when I used to come and see it every week, it fascinates me. I’ve been looking at this painting for ten years, said the Copyist, and working on it for ten years. Really?, I said, ten years is a long time, and what have you done in those ten years? I’ve painted details, said the Copyist, I’ve spent ten years painting details. It really is strange, I said, forgive me but I do find it strange. The Copyist shook his head. So do I, he said, the whole story started ten years ago, at the time I was working at the Town Hall, in an administrative job, but I did a course at the School of Fine Arts and I always liked painting, I mean, I liked it but I had nothing to paint, I had no inspiration, and inspiration is fundamental to painting. It certainly is, I agreed, without inspiration painting is nothing, the same with the other arts. Well, anyway, said the Copyist, since I had no inspiration but enjoyed painting, I used to come to this museum every Sunday and amuse myself by copying one of the pictures here. He took another swallow of water and went on: One Sunday I set to painting a detail from the Bosch, it was a joke really, it could have been anything, but because I like fish I chose the ray in the central panel, just above the gryllos, see?

  Gryllos?, I asked, what does that mean? That’s what the torso-less creatures Bosch painted are called, said the Copyist, it’s an old name that was rediscovered by modern critics like Baltrusaitis, but in fact it’s a name that dates from Antiquity, it was Antiphilus who coined the word, because he used to paint creatures like that, creatures without a torso, just a head and arms. The Copyist sat down on the tiny folding seat in front of the painting and said: I’m tired. Then he took out a cigarette and lit it. Joaquim has closed the room now, he said, and I could really do with a cigarette. What happened next?, I asked, you were telling me about the Sunday you painted the ray. Right, he said, I started painting it partly as a joke and partly because I had an idea I could sell it to a restaurant, I’d occasionally sold paintings of fish to A Fortaleza, perhaps you know it, it’s a restaurant in Cascais, it does Portuguese and international cuisine, and it has a splendid panoramic view over the bay, I still do the odd painting for them, but much less often now, anyway, it’s a fabulous restaurant, they serve a steamed lobster which is out of this world, if you ever go to Cascais make sure you go there. He took a card out of his pocket and gave it to me, it was a card from the restaurant. It’s closed on Wednesdays, he added. I looked at the card and asked: Anyway, what about this ray you were painting? Well, he said, I was painting the ray and I’d nearly finished it, it had turned out really well and I was just folding up my easel, when a foreign gentleman who’d been watching me work, came over and said to me in Portuguese: I want to buy your painting, I’ll pay you in dollars. I looked at him and I said: I’m sorry, but this painting is for a restaurant in Cascais. I’m very sorry, he said, but this painting is going to my ranch in Texas, my name’s Francis Jeff Silver and I have a ranch in Texas the size of Lisbon, I have a house without a single painting in it and I’m mad about Bosch, I want that painting for my house. The Copyist stubbed out his cigarette on the floor and said: That’s how it all began. I don’t understand, I said, how does the story go on? It’s simple, he said, the Texan started commissioning more paintings from me, details, what he wanted were enormous copies of details from The Temptations, like I said, the Texan has a house full of them, all six feet across, last summer I went there, you know, he invited me over and paid my fare, you can’t imagine what it’s like, the house is huge, there’s a tennis court, two swimming pools and the house itself has got thirty rooms which are almost full now of these vast paintings of details from The Temptations. And what about you?, I asked, what will you do now? Well, said the Copyist, I’ve asked the town hall if I can take early retirement, I’m fifty-five now and I don’t enjoy administrative work, the Texan pays me enough to live on and I reckon I’ve got another good ten years of work to do, he wants details from the panels on the back as well, so I’ve still got a lot to paint. So you know everything there is to know about this painting, I said. I know this painting like the back of my hand, he said, for example, you see what I’m painting now?, well, all the critics have always said that this fish is a sea bass, but it isn’t at all, it’s a tench. A tench, I said, that’s a freshwater fish, isn’t it? It is indeed, he said, it lives in swamps and ditches, it loves mud, it’s the greasiest fish I’ve eaten in my life, where I come from they cook a rice dish made with tench which is just swimming in greas
e, it’s a bit like eels and rice only even greasier, it takes a whole day to digest. The Copyist paused briefly. Anyway, he said, these two characters are off to meet the devil mounted on this greasiest of fish, do you see, they’ve obviously got some devilish rendezvous, they’re certainly up to no good. The Copyist opened a small bottle of turpentine and began carefully cleaning his hands. Bosch had a perverse imagination, he said, he attributes that imagination to poor old St Anthony, but in fact it’s the painter’s imagination, he was the one who thought up all those ugly things, I don’t think St Anthony would ever have imagined them, he was a simple soul. But he was tempted, I pointed out, it’s the Devil feeding his imagination with all those perversions, Bosch painted the storm in the saint’s soul, what he painted was the saint’s delirium. There’s something else too, said the Copyist, in the old days this painting was thought to have magical powers, sick people would file past it hoping that some miraculous intervention would put an end to their suffering. The Copyist saw the surprise on my face and asked: Didn’t you know that? No, I said, I didn’t actually. Well, he said, the painting was on show at the hospital run by the order of St Anthony in Lisbon, it was a hospital that cared for people with skin diseases, mostly venereal in origin, and a ghastly affliction, a sort of epidemic erysipelas, which they used to call St Anthony’s Fire, in fact people in the country still call it that, it’s a really terrible disease because it appears cyclically and the area it affects becomes covered in horrible blisters, which are really painful, but it has a more scientific name now, it’s a virus, it’s called herpes zoster. My heart began to beat faster, I became aware I was sweating and I asked: How do you know all this? Don’t forget I’ve been working on this painting for the last ten years, he said, it holds no secrets for me now. Then tell me about this virus, I said, what do you know about it? It’s a very strange virus, said the Copyist, it seems that we all harbour it inside us in its larval state, but it only manifests itself when the organism’s defences are low, then it attacks with a vengeance, only to go into a dormant state again until the next attack, it’s cyclical, you see, I’ll tell you something, I think herpes is a bit like remorse, it lies dormant within us and then, one fine day, it wakes up and attacks us, then goes to sleep again, only because we’ve managed to suppress it, but it’s always there inside us, there’s no cure for remorse.

  The Copyist began putting away his brushes and his palette. He covered the canvas with a cloth and asked me to help him move the easel over against the wall at the back. Right, he said, I think that’s enough for today, mustn’t overdo it, my client wants the painting by the end of August, I think I’ll make it, what do you reckon? I’d say you had loads of time, I replied, you’re pretty far advanced, it’s almost finished. Will you be much longer?, asked the Copyist. No, I said, I don’t think so, I think I’ve seen enough of this painting, and besides today I’ve learned things about it I never would have suspected, it has a meaning for me now that it didn’t before. I’m off to Rua do Alecrim, said the Copyist. Great, I said, I’m going to Cais do Sodré to catch a train to Cascais, we can walk part of the way together.

  VI

  “SOMETHING YOU PUT on your finger and the noise the telephone makes?” said the Ticket Collector on the train, any idea what that could be? He sat down opposite me and showed me the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. How many letters?, I asked. Four, he said. “Ring”, I said, it must be “ring”. Of course! exclaimed the Ticket Collector, I don’t know how I didn’t get that. Crossword clues are difficult to guess when they use puns or plays on words, I said, they’re always the hardest.

  The carriage was empty, in fact the whole train appeared to be empty, I must have been the only passenger.

  You’re lucky to have time to do the crossword, I remarked, there’s no one on the train today. Not now, he said, but on the way back it’ll be hell. We were passing through Oeiras and he pointed to the beach packed with people. You couldn’t see the sand, just bodies, like a huge flesh-coloured stain covering the beach. It’ll be hell, he said again, there’ll be all kinds of people, boys and girls, cripples, blind people, children and pregnant women, grandfathers and grandmothers, it’ll be hell on wheels. Well, I said, that’s Sundays for you, everyone goes to the beach. It wasn’t like that in my day, said the Ticket Collector, we used to spend our holidays in cool places, we’d go to the country, go back to our villages and visit our parents, that’s what we called going on holiday, not any more though, everyone wants to get a tan, they can’t get enough of the heat, they spend all day on the beach frying like sardines, and the sun’s not good for you, it causes skin cancer, there’ve been articles about it in the paper, but no one cares. The Ticket Collector sighed and looked out of the window. We were at Alto da Barra and you could see the Torre de Bugio standing in the middle of the sea. They drink Coca-Cola too, he added, they spend all day drinking that muck, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on Oeiras beach on a Monday morning, but it’s covered in caricas, like a carpet. Caricas?, I said, I don’t know that word. Bottle tops, said the Ticket Collector, caricas, is what country people call them. Oh, I said. And then I asked: Do you mind if I smoke?, there’s no one else on the train. Feel free he said, smoke all you want, I’ll have one too. We both reached for our packs of cigarettes at the same time, I offered him one of mine and he offered me one of his. What do you smoke?, the Ticket Collector asked. Multi-filter, I replied, you can’t buy them in Portugal, they’re very mild, it’s almost like inhaling air, it says on the packet “activated charcoal filtration system”, which means it hasn’t got much nicotine or tar, but it’s still rubbish, smoking causes cancer too, it’s worse than the sun. Everything causes cancer, replied the Ticket Collector, even being unhappy, I had a friend who died of cancer because he wasn’t happy. He took the cigarette I was holding out to him and gave me one of his. I smoke Português Suave, he said, I used to smoke Definitivos, but you hardly ever see them now, people’s tastes have changed completely, even in cigarettes.