Oil and Marble

by Stephanie Storey

  Lisa dipped low in her skirts and trailed her hand in the river. She seemed much different out in nature than she did locked in her husband’s gaudy music room. Inside, she was quiet and stationary, but outside, her hands fluttered, her hair danced in the breeze, her skin glowed in the golden sunlight.

  “Here,” he said, pulling a pen and ink drawing out of his notebook and handing it to her. “This is a drawing of the countryside I made when I was not yet twenty years old. I was attempting to precisely replicate every geological and biological detail.”

  Lisa held the drawing carefully, as though it were a crumbling handwritten copy of the Gospel retrieved from the Holy Land.

  “But now,” he continued, “I see something more than scientific renderings of trees and rocks. When I look at the picture today, I see undulating rivers and mountains interweaving like knots. The lines don’t have definite endings or beginnings. Nothing is clear or separate. Everything is connected. If one path is blocked off, the line isn’t dead but flows in another direction. No matter the obstacles, nature finds another way.”

  “It’s like language,” she said, handing the sketch back. “There are an infinite number of ways to say the same thing. You’re never stuck simply because you can’t think of the right word. A language can always find another way, whether it’s Southern Italian, Tuscan, French, Spanish, Latin …”

  Leonardo laughed. Not only was the lady literate enough to quote Cicero, but she spoke French and Spanish, too?

  “They no longer call you a traitor, but a hero,” she said, turning to face him.

  “Last year, I was bitten by a tarantula, my lady, but the poison is now gone and my senses returned. I choose Florence as my master, now.”

  “I am”—she dipped her eyelashes—“flattered.”

  “I did it so you would feel safer. I don’t expect forgiveness.”

  “My husband will wonder where I have gone …” Lisa curtsied. “Do you have enough?”

  “Enough what, Madonna?”

  She pointed at the notebook hanging off his belt. “You have stopped sketching me. Have you stopped painting me as well?”

  “No.” His hand twitched over his sketchpad. Did he dare snatch it up and do a quick study of her? “I could always use more.”

  Turning and walking away, Lisa called back over her shoulder, “Come to the house tomorrow. I’ll be waiting.”

  Michelangelo

  Michelangelo grabbed onto a ledge and pulled himself higher. His metal tools clanged on his belt. His breath clouded in the cold air. His clumsy work boots pushed into the side of the cliff. He was scaling a mountain made of pure marble, so tall that it towered over Florence like a tree soars over a blade of grass.

  He climbed up to the tip of an enormous marble nose, rising four stories above him. It was part of a giant face carved into the side of the mountain. The sculpture was so large it could be seen from the streets of town, across the countryside, and far out into the seas. The leg was as tall as Il Duomo, the upper lip as high as a man, and the nostril was a cave large enough to house his whole family.

  He dug his chisel into the concave divot just below the figure’s nose. This job was enormous. It would have overwhelmed any other man. But he carved and carved and carved, digging so deep that his arm started to disappear into the mountain. The stone began creeping up his limb, his muscles turning as hard as rocks, his skin becoming white as marble. He was turning into the mountain. But the transformation did not scare him. It exhilarated him. As the white rock spread up his body and inched closer and closer to his head, he took a deep breath, as though preparing to dive under water. In a few seconds, he would become pure marble.

  A hand grabbed Michelangelo’s shoulder and yanked him off the mountain. Skin ripped from rock. As his body morphed back into flesh, pain shot up his legs and spine. He clung to the mountain, hoping the giant would come to life and save him, but the stone did not stir. His fingers slipped. His toes lost their grip. He tumbled off the mountain with a scream.

  “Michelangelo,” a voice called from the distance. Was that the voice of the mountain, begging him to stay? It wasn’t fair. He still had so much more work to do. But he kept falling, his arms and legs flailing in the open air. He couldn’t help the mountain. He couldn’t even help himself.

  His eyes opened. Granacci looked down on him.

  “You’re alive,” his friend exclaimed.

  Michelangelo’s heart thumped wildly. His hands and legs shook. Air caught in his windpipe, and he coughed violently.

  “Grazie, mio Dio. I thought you were …” Granacci wrapped a blanket around Michelangelo’s shivering body.

  Michelangelo rubbed the back of his sweating neck. He had not fallen off a peak. He was in the shed, lying on the cold, hard floor. There was no mountain looming, only David. It had all been a dream.

  “It’s amazing.” Granacci sighed, staring up at the statue in awe.

  Michelangelo hadn’t allowed anyone inside the shed in months. No one had seen David recently, but there he was, alive as any man. Every detail was perfect, every flexing muscle, every finger and toenail, every bone showing through his delicate skin, every twitching muscle in his determined and anxious face. The only thing left for Michelangelo to do was to polish the surface, still covered in rough cross-hatching marks. It would take him months to work the marble into a high gleam, but when he was finished no one would see any indication of his labors. It would look effortless. Michelangelo tried to pick up his head and tell Granacci about the polish, but he was too exhausted. His eyes closed again.

  A deep blackness, dark as a womb, enveloped him.

  When he opened his eyes again, Granacci was stirring a pot of steaming soup over the fire in the corner. The aroma of tomato and garlic made Michelangelo’s guts churn. His stomach heaved, but nothing came out. “You need to eat.” Granacci held a large cup up to Michelangelo’s cracked lips.

  When had Michelangelo last taken a drink? Eaten a bite of food? Had it been hours or days or weeks? He couldn’t remember. He breathed in and detected an earthy, dirty, rainy scent in the air. Was it autumn? What month was it? What year?

  Granacci pulled Michelangelo’s feet into his lap and untied his boots. The laces, caked in the mud of marble dust, cracked and broke. “You need to take care of yourself, mi amico.” Granacci pulled off the first boot.

  Michelangelo howled. His toes and heel burned as if Granacci were ripping his limb in two. He grabbed his scorching foot in his hands. His foot was raw and bloody, with patches of missing skin. It burned as though he were standing in a pile of coals.

  Granacci groaned. “When was the last time you took these off?”

  He winced as Granacci wrapped a sheet around his bloody foot. He didn’t have the energy to tell Granacci not to worry. Sometimes, when he didn’t remove his boots for weeks, his skin came off with his socks. It was nothing. The skin always grew back.

  “This is no time to be sick,” Granacci said. “The pope is dead.”

  “The pope died a long time ago,” Michelangelo mumbled. At least he could still remember that. The day in the piazza with his brother. The wailing mourners. The dirge sung by Buonarroto’s beloved.

  “Not Alexander. The new pope. Only three and half weeks in office, and he’s gone.” Granacci muttered a quick Hail Mary. Then, “Some say he was poisoned.”

  Nausea washed over Michelangelo. A new pope, already dead? Maybe poisoned?

  “Now Cesare Borgia is on the run with half of the papal army. No one knows what he’s going to do next. He’s unhinged. Of course, people fear he will come here,” Granacci said, lowering his voice. “You must be well in case we have to flee. Everything is chaos.”

  Everything is chaos, Michelangelo repeated silently to himself. His hands tingled and burned. His vision waffled between lightness and darkness. “I keep burning in the shadows,” he whispered.

  Granacci forced soup into Michelangelo’s mouth, but the hot liquid only made his throat burn wor
se, so he opened his lips and let the soup dribble onto the floor. “That’s it. I’m getting you help.” Granacci hopped up, grabbed Michelangelo’s arms, and started to lift him over his shoulders.

  “No,” Michelangelo groaned and reached back for David. The statue wasn’t finished. If Goliath marched up now, he would defeat the shepherd boy. Michelangelo couldn’t leave David alone. He was alive as long as David was alive. If David died, he would die, too.

  “Stop that. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Let me down.” He tried to kick, but he didn’t have enough energy to fight, so instead he grabbed Granacci’s fine brown hair and yanked out a fistful.

  Michelangelo struggled free and hit the ground with a thud. “I won’t leave you,” he whispered and crawled back over to David. A cough rattled his chest. Collapsing, Michelangelo curled into a ball. He shivered. Then a line of black appeared at the top of his vision and lowered like a shade until it closed completely.

  Leonardo

  The maid left the library to fetch more water. The swishing of her skirt grew quieter as she disappeared down the hallway.

  Lisa waited a moment, then leaned in. “But what if he doesn’t wake up? Would you finish the statue?” she asked, resuming the conversation they had been having half an hour before. Leonardo had been coming to her house to sketch her for weeks, but Lisa still refused to speak openly in front of her husband or their servants. When others were in the room, she lowered her gaze and her hands dropped motionlessly into her lap. As soon as they were gone, however, her eyes danced in the light, her hands fluttered, and her lips moved fast, desperate to keep up with the flood of words tumbling from her brain. To have a real conversation, they had to wait until the household staff, children, and her husband were all out of the room. That happened rarely, and when it did, lasted only a few moments. They had to talk fast.

  “I’ve never been one to waste my time pondering answers to questions that haven’t been asked yet, my lady, unless they are my own.” The city was abuzz with gossip about Michelangelo’s mysterious malady. Was it a fever, a demonic possession, the plague? And if the sculptor didn’t recover, what would happen to the city’s precious Duccio Stone? Would it be thrown into the rubbish pile, or might the Master from Vinci bring it to completion? No one had officially asked Leonardo to step in yet, but the rumor was swirling. “Regardless of who finishes it,” he said, “I hear Soderini is determined that it not be installed high up on the cathedral’s facade, as originally planned, where no one can see it. He wants it down on the ground, which is a shame.” With quick strokes, he sketched the soft curve of Lisa’s cleavage. Today was the first day she had let her silk scarf slip off her shoulders. “If it did hang up there, the weight of the damned thing might eventually bring it down and it would drop from the sky like a dead bird.”

  “Don’t look so gleeful at the prospect,” she said with a teasing smile.

  “Why not? I would be happy if there were one less piece of art vying with my city hall fresco. You’ll be pleased when you see it, my lady. It will give no glory to the violence of war.”

  “Good. The desperate brutality of men grasping for power is one of the universe’s great idiocies.” She dropped her voice and added, “You don’t think Pope Julius poisoned Pope Pius, as they say, do you?”

  “I’ve seen many men tumble from grace.” He slid his chair a bit closer and leaned in. She leaned in, too. “When I was painting my Last Supper, I scoured the streets of Milan, searching for the best model for each figure. For Jesus, I found a beautiful young man on the rise in his life and profession. He had a glowing complexion, beautiful hair, vibrant eyes. For the disciples, I chose a graceful lad for John, a bearded old priest for Thaddeus, and so on. But Judas. Judas eluded me. I couldn’t find a wretch damaged enough to stand in for the traitor. Until one day, after two years of searching, a friend told me he had found my Judas: a thief locked away in the local jail. I went to his cell, and sure enough, that criminal was precisely what I needed. His face was lined and angry. His complexion, dark and mottled. His hair, ratted. That man was ravaged. As I sketched him, the thief looked up and said, ‘You don’t recognize me, do you? You have drawn me before.’ I looked more closely and do you know what I saw?”

  Lisa shook her head, her eyes wide with anticipation.

  “My lady, that was the same man I had used as the model for Jesus, before drink and sin destroyed him.”

  “The same man,” she whispered. Her lips stayed open with wonder.

  “Fallen angels are much more human than rising ones, and the pope is, above all else, human,” Leonardo said, capturing her parted lips on his sketchpad. “However, if a hunter on horseback kills a basilisk with his spear, the venom contaminates the spear and will kill not only the rider but his horse.”

  The swish of a skirt approached again.

  “What?”

  “Such tentacles of evil, if they are true, could infect the entire papacy. You should understand that. You read history.”

  Lisa’s eyes darted down to her lap. “I don’t,” she said, and blushed. “Read history, or anything else.”

  Leonardo’s brow knotted. “But you quoted Cicero the first day I came to the house.”

  The maid came back into the room. “I forgot the jug.”

  Lisa’s blank stare returned. Her fluttering hands fell silently into her lap. Her hands were so smooth and unlined. In comparison, Leonardo’s own hands were chicken’s feet, bony and wrinkled and too thin. Just one more reminder of his age. He was fifty. She was twenty-four. She had an entire lifetime in front of her, and those hands were proof of it.

  The maid picked up the jug and then tapped back out of the room.

  Lisa did not wait for that swishing skirt to reach the end of the hall. “You don’t honestly believe I can read Latin,” she said, challenging him.

  Yes, Leonardo had believed it. Usually he questioned everything, but he had trusted her. “Why would I ever doubt a lady of your eminent stature?”

  “Stature, indeed.” Lisa laughed. Her hands accented every word. “Duchesses and queens envy my position.”

  The swishing skirt approached.

  “Perhaps I wanted to believe a merchant’s wife could read Latin,” he whispered as the skirt swished away again.

  “I am a wife and a mother and I cherish those things about myself. I must content myself with pretending.”

  Leonardo picked up his chair and planted himself next to her. She started, but did not move away. He could feel the heat of her skin and the smell of lavender in her hair. This was the closest he had been to her since their sittings had begun. “Look here.” He held his sketchpad between them and flipped through some of his drawings. “Through the years, I have identified ten types of noses, eight kinds of lips, and seventeen eye shapes. I also keep records of chins, cheekbones, foreheads, and patterns of wrinkles. I study how each facial feature changes in response to emotions. In reaction to fear, a nose might crinkle or twitch or flare out wide. In shock, a mouth could sag, form a circle, or purse tightly. Jaws clench and cock to the side. And the eyes either shine with intelligence or they don’t.” He looked up and held Lisa’s gaze. “The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes in the precise details of its subject and only reflects back the truth. Whether you can actually read or not is irrelevant. You have a spark of brilliance in your expression that cannot be hidden.” He gently laid his hand on top of hers. She inhaled sharply. “You and I, we are the same,” Leonardo said. “We are both unlettered.”

  “You read Latin.” She pulled her hand away from his.

  He tilted his head to the side. “Not well. And I had to teach myself. A bastard son, even of a wealthy, respectable father, cannot be allowed to have a proper university education. It would upset the order of things,” he said, with more bite than intended. As much as he tried to pretend it didn’t bother him, his outcast status still felt like a pin pricking the soles of his feet. “When I was in my thirties
, I copied Latin words over and over again to learn.”

  “But you could already read and write Italian. And you had access to books. Paper. Pens. If someone caught you copying, they would not strike your face, but instead might help you understand. For me, it is impossible.”

  Impossible. Leonardo hated that word. He wished he could banish it from the world’s vocabulary. Calling something impossible guaranteed it would never happen, because no one ever strived to do something impossible. What would be the point? It was impossible, no matter how much work went into it. No. People only kept striving for things that were possible; the irony was that the very act of striving made those things more likely to happen. Thinking something was possible was a self-fulfilling prophecy, just as thinking something was impossible made that so. Most people would think human flight was impossible, but to him, flying was just a goal he had not yet realized. But he didn’t want to argue, so instead he said, “Latin is overrated. Learning by observation with your own eye is far superior to reading the thoughts of others. You should always experience the world for yourself and draw your own conclusions. That’s the only way to bridge the gap between the scholars and the rest of us.”