Birds of America

by Mary McCarthy

  At this season, though, for ten minutes at a time the chapel would be almost empty, as though a tide had receded; the throng would rush off into the Stanze di Raffaello. When the Sistine Chapel was full, the “School of Athens” was practically deserted, and vice versa. An oceanographer might be able to chart these human tides and currents, which had a strange regularity of ebb and flow. During one of the longer ebbs, this morning, as Peter trained his pocket-mirror on the vault above, stopping now and then to consult his books of reference, he became aware of a short, vaguely familiar figure sitting on a bench against the entrance wall, beneath the Prophet Zechariah: Mr. Small, his adviser, but wearing the beginnings of a reddish beard, a turtle-necked jersey, baggy pants, boots, and a duffle coat. He looked like one of the older Beats on the Spanish Stairs.

  Peter for a minute was not sure it was him, and the professor gave no sign of recognition. Maybe that was understandable. From the point of view of the other, each of them was in disguise. In their previous encounters, he had been unshaven, tieless, in his sheepskin coat, whereas Small had been wearing a tweed jacket, a woolen necktie, and loafers. Now Peter was attired in the babbo’s new suit and had recently had a haircut and a shoeshine. It was as if they had exchanged clothes, like Leporello and Don Giovanni.

  Peter wondered whether he ought to speak. His adviser might be ignoring him on purpose. He might be here in Rome on some squalid adventure. Mysteriously, he was not looking at the frescoes; he was making notes on a pad. Every time a new tourist or group entered, he scribbled. You would have thought he was taking attendance. Now his eye was roving over some Italian schoolgirls led by their priest in a cassock. Humbert Humbert had been a professor too. But the little girls moved on, into the inner chapel, and Mr. Small’s scrutiny turned to some elderly American women with glasses around their necks. Maybe he had a rendezvous here, and the other person was late. Golly, what if he was working for the CIA? They met their contacts in funny places.

  Eclipsed behind a mass of turbaned Indians surrounding a lady guide, Peter considered this hypothesis. If you could believe Makowski, at least half the American professors doing “research” abroad were on the CIA payroll. He said one of them had tried to recruit him to write weekly reports on pro-Peking activities in the Institute of Oriental Languages. When Makowski (“for kicks”) made up his mind to play along, two agents took him, blindfolded, in a car to an apartment in the suburbs with the shades drawn, where they gave him a lie-detector test, which he flunked. That was the most believable part of the story, Peter had promptly decided, but now he began to wonder. … Makowski’s assignation with the Spooks had been guess where? At the Cluny Museum, in front of the “Lady and the Unicorn.”

  In the doorway, two young U.S. Air Force men, with crew cuts, seemed to be asking directions. Then they shouldered their way forward to the “Last Judgment,” which they stood contemplating, their hands on their hips. The professor followed in their wake and edged himself onto a bench at the far end, beneath the Prophet Jeremiah. Peter rose to get a better view. For all he knew, the Sistine Chapel, on account of Michelangelo, might be a well-known pick-up point for foreign queers. If he spoke, it might embarrass his adviser. On the other hand, it might be a kindness to let him know he was observed. Collecting his gear, Peter quickly installed himself opposite, below the Libyan Sibyl. “Hi, Mr. Small.”

  The professor raised his small pale eyes. “Why, it’s Levy!” he cried. “For the Lord’s sake, what are you doing here?” He appeared pleased and surprised to meet Peter, who politely took out his ear-plugs and joined him on the other bench. “Come out and have a smoke.” Peter shook his head. “This is my last day here, and I don’t want to lose too much time. You see, it was closed yesterday, on account of the holiday. And this morning I was late because of some Germans in my hotel.” “Germans?” “They moved in on the toilet so that nobody else had a chance. There’s only one toilet to the floor, and they had a big guy standing guard outside it. So I had to wait for American Express to open. It’s around the corner from where I’m staying. But I found out they keep the cans there locked. Some stupid new rule. You have to ask a clerk for the key.” Mr. Small evinced sympathy. He asked some questions about Peter’s hotel. Then he started taking an interest in the T.C.I, guidebook and the Itinerario Pittorico dei Musei Vaticani, which had slid from Peter’s lap to the floor. The professor picked them up and examined them. “Where did you find these?” he asked sharply.

  Peter began to tell about the secondhand-book cart, but Mr. Small, as though dissatisfied with this explanation, leafed through them frowning and pulling curiously at the red and green ribbons that were marking Peter’s place. You would think he had come upon some undecipherable Roman papyrus or scrolls from the Dead Sea. The T.C.I, volume with its folding maps and plans appeared to fascinate him. “It’s just the ordinary Touring Club guide,” Peter felt obliged to point out. “They have them for all the big cities and the different provinces. Like the Guides Bleus in France, only these give you better information.” The professor read aloud the date on the copyright page. “Nineteen-forty! Lordy me, couldn’t you find something more contemporary?” Peter had not noticed how old his treasured guide was. “ ‘Ristampato giugno 1957,’ ” he said, reclaiming it. “My mother used to go around with a pre-war Baedeker and a guy called Augustus Hare.”

  Mr. Small leaned his head back and let his eyes rest on the ceiling. “I never carry a guide or a map. Of course I’m a very visual person. If art doesn’t say something to me directly, without mediation, I’m not interested. When I visit the Sistine Chapel, I don’t need all that fine print to tell me what I’ve been experiencing. Wonderful colors, beautiful forms, marvelous light. You ought to get rid of that portable reference shelf. And these crowds here, contemporary, constantly changing, are just as exciting as any fresco.” The word contemporary was high on Peter’s aversion list, and it seemed to be a favorite with people who weren’t. The fact that his adviser thought he was being helpful did not lessen Peter’s annoyance. He hated being told how he could save his labor, which nine times out of ten only showed the other person’s ignorance. “You haven’t really seen the Sistine Chapel unless you’ve studied it,” he objected. “You just think you have. I made that mistake myself when I came here with my mother a few years ago. But there’s an awful lot going on in that ceiling. Like those putti holding up the pillars. You don’t notice them at first. They sort of emerge if you sit here long enough, like animals that will come out if you wait in the woods without making any noise. And those other putti on the tablets beneath the Prophets and the Sibyls. Look at that scowling one, under Daniel. He’s having a tantrum. That’s what’s so great about books. They make you see things you might have missed on your own. There are two kinds of putti, one flesh-colored and the other marble-colored. And they have different personalities.”

  Needless to say, Mr. Small had been unaware of any putti. He had not even observed the ignudi, those heroic pagan youths with laurel wreaths and prominent penises of whom Peter was particularly fond and who, to his eyes, practically whirled off the ceiling at you, like naked athletes playing a game of Statues. To cover up this oversight on the part of his adviser (“Where? … Oh, yes, of course”), Peter started discoursing about the spandrels. “See those triangles, over the windows. They’re supposed to show the ancestors of Christ. But there must be more to it than that. To me there’s something sad and almost sinister about them, sort of crouching in the shadows or just staring ahead into space. As though the light of Genesis had gone out or dimmed, like a bulb fading. Look at that young mother there, just above us, next to Jeremiah. Between him and the Persian Sibyl. She’s got on a pale-green blouse and a yellow skirt. Well, she’s cutting her skirt with a big shears. Why? For that, you’d have to know the story, and these books I’ve got don’t tell it. So if I want to understand, I need more books, don’t you see? Like the Bible.” He offered his adviser the mirror. “Can you make out the scissors? The other day a lady let me u
se her opera glasses. I forgot my binoculars in Paris.”

  Mr. Small handed back the mirror. “Primitive people often cut up their clothes as part of the mourning ritual. I believe it is still customary among orthodox Jews.” “I bet you’re right! Hey, you’ve got it, Mr. Small! What do you suppose she’s mourning?” “Perhaps the Babylonian Captivity. ‘By the waters of Babylon.’ But there’s no need to look for literal meanings in these accessories. We’re not interested in those old Bible tales; probably Michelangelo wasn’t either. He had to put them in to satisfy the Pope and his court. What he really cared about, being an artist, was form, line, color. For him, the whole cycle might as well have been an abstract design. Why make a puzzle out of it?” “You’re so wrong, Mr. Small,” said Peter, his voice rising. “Michelangelo wanted to say something. I haven’t got the whole message yet, but it’s there. If my stepfather was here, he’d agree with me. He teaches history of art. Maybe it was different in your day, but now they put a lot of stress on the iconography.” He felt slightly ashamed of invoking authority in a discussion, but Mr. Small seemed to be tickled by that feeble blow below the belt. He gave an indulgent laugh and stretching his arms wide embraced Peter in a sort of half bear hug, as if to say they were buddies despite their difference of opinion. “I’m aware of the new academicism. Entrenched interest groups resent the boom in museum attendance, the availability of cheap reproductions and color slides. They can’t accept the fact that art is now within the reach of the masses. In consequence, as one might expect, there’s a drive on to restrict the understanding of art, if not the actual experience, to a tiny coterie of privileged specialists and cultured dilettantes. They’d like to turn this wonderful spectacle over our heads into a private field of research, their own little hunting preserve—‘Trespassers Keep Out.’ Why, if they had their way, they’d institute screening procedures at all the great museums, to bar the vulgar public!”

  The idea in fact had crossed Peter’s mind. Looking down the chapel, he saw the usual maelstrom. Every corner was occupied by dark serried groups, reminding him of flocks of starlings, drawn up in formation around their leader. When they moved, a new flock settled. In the middle of the room, well-to-do Americans stood with their individual cicerones. On the bench Peter had left, one old man remained stationary, having fallen asleep—his white head nodded and jerked. A mother carried a tiny baby wrapped in a yellow shawl and sucking on a pacifier. In its father’s arms, another baby cried. On the far side of the cancellata, a German in Lederhosen opened a tripod stool and sat down where he could watch the lady copyist copying a Botticelli. There were nuns, priests in skirts, priests in trousers—cassocked priests, for some reason, favored a folded-arm pose when studying the frescoes. On the raised platform, for the pope’s chair, some student types were lying, using their coats for pillows. Every now and then a custodian in a gray uniform with gold buttons would clap his hands loudly to make them sit up. A girl in a tight sweater who looked as if she had gone to Bennington paced around with long gliding steps, her hands clasped behind her back and her long straight hair tossing, like the “lost” heroine of some neurotic ballet. A sort of permanent hum rose from the chapel—from so many people reading aloud from guidebooks and brochures—and competing with this natural human-hive sound were bossy guides rapping for attention: “Links, Gemälde Paradiso, recht, Inferno mit Teufels.” Along the walls, open compacts and hand mirrors flashed. People squinted, shaded their eyes, massaged cricks in their necks, bumped into each other. Two vague soft old ladies attached themselves to an English-speaking tour. “Do you folks mind if we listen in? We’ve wasted a whole half-hour here looking for the Michelangelos and we can’t seem to find them.” A student sat up and laughed coarsely. “Christ!” “Christ, yourself!” said Peter. “They probably expected to see statues. Why is that so stupid? In case you don’t know, he was a sculptor, primarily.” He turned to his adviser. “If I don’t wear my ear-plugs, I keep getting into arguments. That’s the effect this mob has on you.” The confused incessant movement and medley of tongues made him think of an air terminal where half the flights had been delayed. The Seers above looked down on a sort of Exodus or final Judgment of the tribes and peoples. Whatever Mr. Small thought, some authority, in Peter’s opinion, was going to have to separate the sheep from the goats.

  “I know screening sounds repulsive, but we do it in colleges, don’t we? You must do it in your own seminar when you limit the class to fifteen or whatever.” Mr. Small retorted that soon all education would be conducted by TV; the small hand-picked class, a vestige of the age of privilege, would be swept away. Peter groaned. “All right, then put all the art on TV too. Maybe eventually that will cut down on attendance, like with night baseball. But I can’t wait for that. I want to be able to look at art, live, now, while I’m young, before the Army gets me. Won’t you even admit there’s a problem? And actually it’s not so bad here as in some other museums, though the noise is worse. At least most of the stuff is on the ceiling. Think of the ‘Mona Lisa’ in the Louvre. It would take a giraffe to see it. Hey, maybe you could invent a periscope!”

  At that point, the custodian at his little desk shushed them. “Per piacere, signori!” “OK, see you later, Mr. Small,” Peter said hastily. He supposed the guides had the right to lecture at the top of their voices to the droves who were paying to be herded around by them, whereas he and his adviser, being unpaid, had a duty to be quiet. Mr. Small, however, was anxious to pursue the conversation. Peter yielded. “I guess we’d better get out of here, though,” he suggested. “By all means do,” a woman’s voice interposed. “Why are such ruffians admitted?” she went on in a loud whisper, evidently misled by Mr. Small’s slummy appearance and bearing out his description of the attitudes of the once-happy few. Peter led his adviser into the Borgia Apartments, which were usually empty. It puzzled him that this rather disagreeable teacher should be so eager to talk to him, unless he was just lonely, not knowing any Italian and without even a guidebook for company.

  But Mr. Small, it turned out, had method in his madness. He wanted to poll Peter for a study of tourism he was doing. “Tourism? You mean like here?” “The idea surprises you, does it? And yet tourism is all around us, a central fact of our mobile civilization, so much taken for granted that nobody has stopped to ponder on it.” That was so, Peter reflected. He supposed statistics got collected somewhere on how much of their income tourists spent abroad, what carriers they used, and so on. There were stories with tourists in them, poems with tourists in them, Steinberg cartoons with tourists in them. But if he were asked, now, to draw up a reading list on the subject, not a single “general” title, he realized, would come to mind. Not even a magazine article in some place like Harper’s. If he had seen one, he would have read it. Maybe Mr. Small was right that most people carried in their heads a “stereotype” of the tourist that it might be a good idea for research to dispel.

  What was really peculiar, though, and worth a study in itself was the fact that this rich research territory had not already been prospected. Even if the stereotype summed up all there was to say—that the average tourist was an omnipresent insecure guy slung with cameras and carrying drip-dry suits on hangers in a plastic bag—that did not normally deter sociologists, who, as the babbo said, could only “discover” things that everybody knew anyway. Peter would like to hear a Marxist explanation of the fact that a world-wide industry feeding millions of mouths—billions probably if you counted automobile workers, workers in aircraft plants, luggage-manufacturers, Eastman Kodak, Agfa, Zeiss, all the makers of film and cameras, doctors giving shots, manufacturers of life-jackets and throw-up bags, authors and publishers of travel books, whoever it was that made passports—had been overlooked by the so-called social disciplines until Professor Beverly F. Small came along and “happened” to have this brainstorm while sitting at the Deux Magots one Sunday morning idly watching the crowds and eating a croissant.

  Like Newton under the apple tree. No wonder he wa
s pale and excited. A foundation, naturally, was interested in the project and paying his expenses for a “dry run” in Rome. On the basis of that, he expected to get funding for three years’ research. At Easter, he would fly to Athens and cruise around the Greek islands. “Hey, that’s great, Mr. Small! You don’t need a helper, do you?” But his adviser had to be alone during the early stages of a project; he would be using his vacations to lay down guidelines for his students, who would take up the work next fall. In the fall, he hoped to fix it with his university so that he could travel with his advanced class on an extended field period. Or he might have to arrange a leave of absence.

  The financing sounded like the easiest part. If his grant ran out before the study was finished, it should be easy, he explained, to get additional subsidies from countries like Spain and Portugal, which needed more background on tourist-expectations in developing their reception facilities. Other backing should rapidly become available for a study of this magnitude. In Paris, he had been talking with some of the lesser airlines—Air India, Air Afrique, Aer Lingus, and the like: whatever he and his students discovered about the travel pattern would redound to their advantage in planning and promotion.

  “India! Africa! Do you think you’ll visit the game reserves, Mr. Small?” His adviser, who now resembled a mushroom, would certainly get a good tan. A doubt crept into Peter’s mind. “You don’t think you’re trying to cover too much territory? Maybe you should concentrate on something small. Like a Turkish fishing village that’s been written up in Holiday. Find out what happens.” Mr. Small snorted. Villages were crawling with au pair sociologists doing interminable “careful” investigations of the type Peter mentioned. “The impact of modernity on the folkways! All trivia! Who cares what happens in a village? Now that we have the computer, research must take broad new free forms. CinemaScope. The wide screen.” As he had explained in a memo to the foundation, the structuring of the study should emerge from the data itself; it was important to avoid methodological traps that determined the findings in advance. “For the present, I’m feeling my way, using aleatory techniques.” I.e., so far, he had just been going around Rome with a tape-recorder, interviewing people at the Trevi Fountain, on the Spanish Stairs, at American Express and Alitalia. This morning he had had his first setback. The Vatican guards had made him check the tape-recorder at the entrance, together with his camera and briefcase. “Isn’t that the limit? I couldn’t convince them that a tape-recorder is an essential piece of modern scholarly apparatus. They simply kept pointing to the checkroom and repeating ‘Guardaroba,’ as if they knew no English—a familiar dodge, of course.” He had then sought to telephone to the cultural attaché at the Embassy, to get him to use pull, but first he could not find a telephone and next he could not find a gettone, and finally the cultural attaché was giving a lecture to the Rotary in Siracusa.