The Architect's Apprentice

by Elif Shafak

  ‘How about the others?’ Sinan asked.

  ‘I can’t go either,’ said Jahan. ‘Who would take care of the elephant?’

  He wasn’t exactly telling the truth. Another tamer could easily substitute for him, should the master arrange it with the palace officials. Yet Chota was only one of his concerns. He needed to stay close to Mihrimah. Lately she had been visiting the menagerie more often, wearing a troubled look in her beautiful eyes, as if she had something to tell but couldn’t.

  ‘My parents are old,’ said Nikola. ‘It’d be hard to leave them for that long.’

  All heads turned to Davud. He sighed. ‘I can go, master.’

  Sinan gave an appreciative nod and said, to no one in particular, ‘If any one of you changes his mind, let me know in a few days’ time.’

  The following afternoon, Mihrimah did not come to see the elephant. Nor the one after that. Instead Hesna Khatun arrived with the latest news from inside the seraglio.

  ‘Don’t wait for her,’ she said. ‘Your Princess is getting married.’

  ‘What are you saying, dada?’

  Her whole body suddenly convulsed with an asthma attack; she took out a pouch and inhaled its contents. A sharp smell of herbs wafted in the air. ‘Don’t call me that. Only she can.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Jahan, ignoring all pretence at etiquette.

  And she did. Mihrimah had been betrothed to Rustem Pasha, a man of forty winters and infinite ambition. No one liked him, but the Sultana did, and that was enough.

  After the nursemaid left, Jahan worked on a new design, swept the barn floor, washed the troughs, burnished the elephant’s armour, applied oil to the elephant’s skin, destroyed the design he was working on and started another, greased the hinges on every door, made another sketch and destroyed it immediately, and forgot to feed Chota.

  The menagerie was engulfed by gossip about the wedding throughout the entire evening. At midnight, Jahan could stand no more, and he sneaked outside. His legs and arms throbbed with tiredness, and his chest with a pain he had not known before. He walked until he reached the walls separating the menagerie from the inner courtyard, and once there, not knowing what else to do, made his way back again. He arrived at the lilac tree she had sat under as he had told her the story of Chota’s birth and their journey from Hindustan.

  The tree glowed in the dark, as though it were a gateway to a better world. He put his ear to its trunk, trying to hear what the earth was telling him. Only silence. Stubborn, scabby silence. The wind picked up, the air got chilly. A fog of sadness fell over the palace. He continued to sit, waiting for the night’s cold to envelop him, numbing his senses. It didn’t work. He still felt. It still hurt.

  The next morning he sent a letter to his master. A short message.

  Esteemed Master,

  If you still wish me to go, I will gladly accompany Davud to Rome.

  Your humble apprentice,

  Jahan

  Rome, the city where memories were chiselled in marble. The day they arrived it was raining – a drizzle as light as a caress. Slowing down their horses to a trot, they rode aimlessly for a while. Each face was unfamiliar, every street more baffling than the previous one. Occasionally they passed over a bridge, under an arch – round or lancet – or through a piazza teeming with pedlars and their customers. Jahan could not say what he had expected, but the city was large and lively beyond his ken. He and Davud, rigid and ill at ease, wove their way through the crowds. As they came upon the ruins of an ancient forum, they stopped and stared in awe. They saw friars wearing robes of black, mercenaries marching in pairs, beggars looking no different from the beggars in Istanbul. Women wore perfume pendants round their necks, and they cared to cover neither their hair nor their bosoms. Davud, blushing up to his ears, averted his eyes every time they ran into a gentlewoman with puffy sleeves and her handmaids. But Jahan looked, secretly. By mid-afternoon they reached the address Simeon the bookseller had written down. They found it with ease after asking a couple of passers-by, who directed them, albeit with a hard stare, to the Jewish quarter.

  Leon Buendia’s shop in Rome bore an astonishing resemblance to Simeon Buendia’s shop in Istanbul. Here, too, was a house on a cobbled, cluttered street; a faded, ancient wooden door; and, behind that, room after room of books and manuscripts. Here, too, lived an elderly man with oversized ears and flaring eyebrows, perhaps not quite as ill-humoured as his brother.

  ‘Simeon sends his regards,’ Jahan said in Italian when they had been ushered in, seated around a table and offered a sweet paste of almonds.

  ‘How is my little brother doing?’

  Jahan said, ‘Working, reading, grumbling.’

  Leon broke into a smile. ‘He was always a surly one.’

  ‘He wants you to move to Istanbul,’ Jahan commented.

  ‘He thinks it’s better over there. I’d like him to settle here. We’re mortals. Decisions are sheep; habits, the shepherd.’

  Jahan was reflecting on this when Davud said: ‘We’d like to visit Michelangelo.’

  At this the bookseller shook his head. ‘I have enormous respect for your master. But you must understand that’s not easy. Il Divino accepts no one. After two years, he’s still grieving.’

  ‘Oh, who died?’ Jahan asked.

  ‘His brother, first. Then, his favourite apprentice. That destroyed him.’

  Jahan could not help but wonder how long their master would mourn if something happened to one of them. Meanwhile, the bookseller said that the apprentice, whose name was Urbino, had been with Michelangelo since he was fourteen years old. For twenty-six years the two of them had been inseparable. Such was the master’s devotion to his talented apprentice that in the last months of the latter’s illness he had not allowed anyone else to take care of him, nursing him day and night. After Urbino’s death, Michelangelo, always a peevish man, had become resentful, ready to explode at the slightest bother.

  ‘Il Divino doesn’t like people. The few he does, he loves too much.’

  Jahan arched his eyebrows. Their master wasn’t like this. Sinan neither loathed nor shunned people. Balanced and well-mannered, he was kind to all. Yet perhaps there was a short distance between accepting everyone and not being too keen on anyone. If so, wouldn’t it be better to assist a master who was unkind to everybody except you than a master who was kind to everybody including you?

  Leon continued, ‘Il Divino’s dislike of human beings is reciprocated, surely.’

  ‘He’s got enemies?’ Davud asked.

  ‘Oh, indeed. There are those who worship him and those who loathe him. Even God doesn’t know which side outnumbers which.’

  Leon said Il Divino already had plenty of rivals when he took over, unwillingly, the construction of San Pietro. Since then his admirers and adversaries had doubled. Although he had utilized much of Bramante’s plan, he openly disparaged his predecessor, which had not helped to endear him to his enemies. ‘He said Sangallo’s design was badly done, poor in light. He said it’d make a good meadow.’

  ‘Meadow?’ Jahan asked.

  ‘For grazing. He said Sangallo’s design was for dumb oxen and sheep who knew nothing about art. That didn’t go down well with those who were fond of Sangallo.’

  Jahan sighed. Here, too, his master differed. For the life of him he could not imagine Sinan pouring scorn on another architect, dead or alive. He said, cautiously, ‘We heard the Pope backs Michelangelo.’

  ‘Well, true. If it weren’t for His Holiness, the artist would be torn to pieces,’ Leon remarked, shifting in his chair and, momentarily, blocking the candlelight. Just as his face sank into shadow, he said, ‘Your master must have enemies, too.’

  Davud and Jahan looked at each other. It was a strange thing to say, yet so true.

  ‘He does,’ Davud said, giving the smallest of nods.

  Leon told them that at the head of Michelangelo’s foes was a man named Nanni di Baccio Bigio – architect and sculptor. ‘Strange, isn’t it
? The more like kindred a man seems, the more likely he is to become your enemy.’ No sooner had Leon uttered this than his face crumpled, as though he realized he had said too much. He squirmed in his chair.

  Watching him, Jahan said, ‘We’ve tired you. We’d better leave.’

  ‘I’d have liked to put you up, but …’ Leon said, drawing in a breath.

  There was a curfew in the Jewish quarter, he explained. Once the gates were locked, no one could go in. If they had visitors, they would have to inform the authorities. Having no intention of burdening the old man with their presence, they asked him to recommend somewhere where they could stay. Leon called his servant boy, who seemed to be about eight years old, and instructed him to take the Ottomans to a guest house, where, he said, they would be among fellow artists.

  Thus they were on the streets again, pulling their horses by the reins as they trod behind the lad. They passed by wealthy houses with glass on the windows. They crossed markets where they saw pigs roasting on spits. Jahan had a suspicion the boy was not taking any shortcuts. Not because he wanted to show the city to them, but because he wanted to show them to the city. They were so obvious in their garments. Once, as Jahan turned back to talk to Davud, something, an intuition more than a concrete sight, stopped him cold. He feared they were being followed. He glanced left and right, unsure. Finally they arrived at a two-storey house that reeked of sausage and sweat. Their room and their pisspot they shared with three others – a painter, an anatomy student and a gambler.

  The first thing next morning, they went to Il Divino’s house. Finding its location was easy. Even children knew where the great man lived. Getting through his door, however, was beyond the bounds of possibility. They introduced themselves to his assistant, explaining they had been sent by the Ottoman Chief Royal Architect. In return, they were told, politely but firmly, that Michelangelo did not wish to see anyone.

  ‘Who does he think he is?’ Davud bellowed once they were out of earshot. ‘He’s belittling us.’

  ‘You heard what everyone said; the man doesn’t even see his own Pope.’

  Davud clucked his tongue. ‘I tell you, these infidels need a lesson. They can’t treat us like this.’

  In the ensuing days, they visited churches, as Sinan had asked them to do. The lime in Rome was of a warm shade, albeit inferior in nature. The locals mixed it with a brownish substance called pozzolana to produce mortar. When dry it turned fine and powdery, and they used it profusely in their building works; but over time it became covered by an ugly mould. Jahan and Davud took notes, sketched the buildings. Many times they became lost in a maze of alleyways, only to find themselves staring in wonder at a basilica. But it was the construction of San Pietro that impressed them beyond anything. A circular shrine in the cold morning light, elusive and enticing like the remains of a dream slipping away. It was far from being finished, but, having studied every model they could lay their hands on, they were able to fathom how massive and majestic it would be – the base, the drum, the dome and the cupola. Its smell of stone, sand and newly sawn wood would cling to their robes and stay with them.

  Jahan thought that there were two main types of temple built by humankind: those that aspired to reach out to the skies and those that wished to bring the skies closer down to the ground. On occasion, there was a third: those that did both. Such was San Pietro. As he stood there watching, completing the structure in his mind’s eye, he had the strange sense that here, too, was the centre of the universe.

  The labourers were waiting for a delivery that had been delayed due to bad weather in the south. This was fortunate for Sinan’s apprentices, because it enabled them to walk around without being seen by too many. Positioning themselves on a hill, they completed dozens of drawings. The lower choir walls, the giant pilasters, the crossing piers, each an ode to perfection.

  Every day without exception they went to see Michelangelo, only to be stopped before they crossed the threshold of his house. The same apprentice – a painter and a nobleman of some kind – stood sentinel by the entrance, bent on not allowing anyone in. His name was Ascanio. Jahan had never met an apprentice so protective of his master.

  ‘Il Divino is not a man of this world,’ Ascanio said, staring at them intently. He explained how his master spurned his meals, surviving on pieces of bread. ‘Even if you poured upon his head all the scudi in Rome, he’d still be living in penury.’

  ‘Why live poorly in the midst of riches?’ Davud said.

  ‘Simple. He’s not interested in earthly trinkets.’

  Davud seemed determined to rub Ascanio up the wrong way. ‘Is it true that he sleeps in his boots and never takes a bath?’

  A flush of crimson crept over Ascanio’s cheeks. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear. This city is cruel.’ He said Michelangelo’s friends in Florence had called him back, but, out of his love for his art and because he was a man of his word, he had not abandoned Rome. ‘Do they appreciate it? Not even a crumb of gratitude! The more you give them the more they ask. You know what my master says?’

  ‘What?’ Jahan duly asked.

  ‘Greed puts gratitude to sleep.’

  What Ascanio didn’t say was how the townsmen fretted that Michelangelo would die before he finished San Pietro. In old age his spirit was low, his body frail, though his mind was sharp as a blade. He suffered from sundry other ailments – trapped wind, a pain in the abdomen and kidney stones so severe he could barely take a piss sometimes. Jahan wondered if his master, too, feared death. A diligent and dedicated craftsman such as Sinan might have a hard time accepting his mortality. He raised buildings that would remain, while his own transience loomed more heavily in his heart each passing day. It was a thought that came and went. He would remember it again, years later.

  One afternoon, after another failed attempt to see Il Divino, they entered an eatery that smelled to high heaven of smoke and grease. They ordered eel pie, roasted quail and some sweet called torrone. That was when Jahan noticed a stranger watching them: his cap pulled down to his nose, his face half hidden.

  ‘Don’t look. Somebody is following us.’

  ‘Who?’ said Davud, instantly turning around.

  The man sprang to his feet, pushed away his table and darted outside as if possessed. Sinan’s apprentices exchanged a puzzled glance. Davud said with a shrug, ‘He must have been a pilferer. He knows we are foreigners – probably wanted to nick our money.’

  On the tenth day, they visited Michelangelo for the last time. Ascanio had left on an errand and not yet returned. Another apprentice had taken his place, someone younger and, seemingly, kinder. They introduced themselves as if this were the first time and asked the apprentice to inform his master of their presence. To their surprise he nodded amiably and went inside. In a little while he came back and said that Michelangelo had agreed to see them. Trying not to show their astonishment, they followed him. It dawned on Jahan that Ascanio might have never asked Michelangelo whether he would like to see them, certain that Il Divino did not want to be disturbed. Apprentices who regarded their masters like their fathers tended to be overprotective, he decided.

  They were ushered into a large room. A clutter of paints, canisters, chisels, hammers, scrolls, books and clothes was scattered about. Most windows were covered with heavy, bright-hued curtains to block the noise from the street, giving the entire place an aura of unearthliness. In the midst of the jumble stood an elderly man, stiff and slender, working on a sculpture – a male head and torso – by the light spilling from candles made of goat’s tallow. He had another burning candle strapped to the metal band on his head. He was neither tall nor solidly built, except for his shoulders, which were broad, and his arms, which were muscular. Small and dark were his eyes, solemn and sallow his countenance. His nose was flat, and, as for his beard, black bristles streaked with white, Jahan did not find it impressive. It was his hands that he was drawn to – long, bony fingers, pale at the tips; chipped and chewed fingernails covered in dust
and dirt.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us,’ Jahan said, bowing.

  Without turning around, Il Divino said, ‘I once got a letter from your Sultan.’

  ‘That must have been the late Sultan Bayezid,’ Davud ventured.

  Ignoring the remark, Michelangelo said, ‘You don’t make sculptures. How you can call it idolatry, I’ll never understand. But your Sultan was generous. I was keen to come. It would have been my grandissima vergogna.* It wasn’t meant to be.’

  Gruff and throaty, like a man used to living inside his mind, he spoke so fast that Davud and Jahan had trouble following him with their limited Italian. He asked, ‘How is your master?’

  Only now remembering why they had come here in the first place, they presented the letter Sinan had entrusted to them. Wiping his palms on an apron dirtier than his hands, Il Divino broke the seal. When he finished reading, there was something in his eyes that wasn’t there a moment ago – a kind of restlessness.

  Davud told him they would be happy to carry any message he might wish to send to Sinan. Nodding, the artist strode to a table piled with oddments of all sorts. Shoving things on to the floor he cleared a space for himself and sat down to compose a letter, his forehead furrowed in thought.

  Not knowing what to do meanwhile and not having been asked to sit, Jahan and Davud inspected their surroundings. On a workbench stood two models, both of San Pietro – one wooden, one clay. They noticed Michelangelo had redesigned the facade and got rid of the portico. He had also changed the shape of the main piers bearing the dome. The small windows were gone, replaced by fewer but larger windows that invited more light.

  A crash pulled them out of their trance. Michelangelo, having finished his letter, was searching for his wax. Frustrated, he had pushed aside a couple of scrolls, breaking a flask.

  They looked under books, in drawers, over boxes. At long last the lost item was found under a cushion, half crushed from being stepped on. Michelangelo melted the wax, put his seal on it, tied a ribbon round the letter. He must have seen their interest in the San Pietro models, for he said, ‘Sangallo took years to complete his design. I’ve done mine in fifteen days.’