The Memory Palace

by Mira Bartók

  “Gospel music? What kind of music is this?”

  “Dance and clap your hands kind of music,” I say. “You’ll like it.”

  At the concert, it is clear that Italians do not understand gospel, at least not these Italians. It’s a wealthy Florentine crowd, women in furs and gold jewelry, men in Armani suits. No one claps along; everyone is too polite. No encores, nothing. If this were a black church on the South Side of Chicago, we’d all be dancing in the aisles. What’s the matter with these people? All of a sudden I am homesick and tears are streaming down my face.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Paolo.

  “No one danced,” I say, for lack of words.

  How can I explain? I tick off a list in my head of lost people and things: mother, sister, friends, grandma, house, Robert, Ginger, the snapdragons in Grandma’s backyard, the Armstrongs from across the street, my old friend Cathy, the Field Museum, Lake Michigan, everything is up for grabs. Paolo puts his arm around me and kisses my face. “Leave your bike,” he says. “You can pick it up tomorrow. I’m taking you home.”

  In the driveway at Cerreto, we make out in his car for over an hour, like teenagers. What am I doing? He is a married man. I’ve never taken drugs, gotten rip-roaring drunk, stolen anything, not even candy from Kresge’s five and dime when I was a kid. Now I’m kissing someone else’s husband. All I want to do is hurl myself into a different life as fast as I can, away from what incessantly gnaws at my heart.

  “Come to Venice with me,” he says, when I gather my things to go inside. “I have to buy some antiques. Please come. You’re an artist; you can help me pick things out.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I say.

  “Don’t think too long. I’m going soon.”

  The next day I return to town to get my bike and drop off another faux-antique watercolor at Emilio’s. “Have you ever made an icon?” he asks.

  “No, but I could.”

  “Wait, I have a better idea. An illumination with gold leaf. Can you do gilding? I’ll get you the vellum but you pay for the gold. Make a big initial, any letter you want. Something medieval or early Renaissance. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  “You sure you know? I’ll pay you a lot more for this kind of thing.”

  “Fine. Thanks, that’s great. I can use the money.”

  “Don’t show anyone, though,” says Emilio. “I’m paying you under the table. Let’s just keep it a secret, agreed?”

  “I’m good at that,” I say.

  Back home in Cerreto, I am in the kitchen reading a book about illumination, one of Cerreto’s new kittens, Puline, upon my lap. I can smell Gabriella’s cooking from upstairs, where I plan to go for dinner. Lately, I eat there almost every night. I’ve just thrown a log in the fire when Elsa walks in the room.

  “Well, are you going to Venice with that man?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  She lets out a little snort. “He’s married, huh?”

  “Yes,” I say, and return to my book.

  “Men only want one thing, so it’s best to use them as you like. That’s what I do. You should do the same.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “I don’t bother with Swedes or Germans. Especially American men. They’re crybabies. I only sleep with Italians. Southern Italians. I have a Neapolitan soul.”

  Here we go again, I think. Neapolitan, my ass. “I have work to do,” I say, then add, “By the way, I put my name on the answering machine. There are three of us living here, not just two.”

  Later, in my studio, I consider the art of illumination; illumination, derived from the Latin, illuminare: to illuminate or enlighten. What is luminous to me is that I need to make my picture absolutely perfect so Emilio will give me more work. I only have enough money for two more months in Italy, and then what? Go back to Chicago, where my mother probably is? I look out my window at the stars. You can barely see the moon in the city, let alone the stars. I want to stay. But I’ve never used gold before or painted on vellum or parchment. Emilio will pay for the vellum but I’ll have to buy the gold leaf, a burnisher, gesso, and other expensive things.

  Illumination originally meant the application of minium, red lead, to decorate a piece of religious text written in black ink. But over time, artist-scribes applied raised and highly burnished gold, embellishing codices with delicate and meticulously painted letters and miniature scenes. They did it to honor God but also to help the reader find his way around the text. The first illuminated manuscript I remember seeing was at the Cleveland Museum of Art with my mother. It was Queen Isabella’s Book of Hours, made in fifteenth century Spain. I remember the pages on display were of Christ’s crucifixion, but what drew me to the book wasn’t the pious scene at the cross but the rich gold border surrounding it, decorated with flowers, butterflies, and birds. Each tiny bloom, wing, and beak looked so real and was rendered in such detail I felt I could crawl right inside the page.

  Puline purrs at my feet while I read about how to make something gold: First I outline my drawing in ink, next I paint on gesso where the gold will go. When the gesso is dry, I breathe on the raised letter or design to moisten it so it can receive the thin sheaf of gold I carefully lay down with tweezers. After I apply each layer of gold, I breathe on it and burnish the surface until it glistens in the light. The painting comes after illumination. But what should I paint? I could make the letter M for my own name just in case I have to let it go. I will make a beautiful floriated letter, surrounded by an intricate border of flowers and birds, deer and exotic beasts. It will be a historiated letter, like one from an ancient Book of Hours where inside is a miniature scene from a story. In the background I’ll paint blue hills and a winding river, a garden, and a sky dotted with birds. Something full of beauty and longing, like Maria Callas singing in my grandmother’s basement, like my mother’s hands wavering above ivory keys.

  After several drawings I am ready to start. Emilio had seen my final sketch and liked it. But when I think of Emilio touching my art with his long yellow fingers, I cringe. I imagine him handing my delicate painting over to a couple of rich loud Americans. Then I hear his voice in my head: If it’s good I’ll give you a thousand dollars. But it has to look old. A thousand American dollars will buy me two more months at Cerreto and food. Massimo from upstairs always says that Florence is a putana, a mercantile city only interested in selling her soul. Have I become one of her own?

  The day I stop at Emilio’s studio to collect money for the vellum I’ve bought, he’s not there. Without the money, I can’t afford to buy gold. I pull out his business card to see if his shop address is on it. When I get to his store, the place is closed. Something in the window catches my eye. It’s my first Art Nouveau painting of the dancer. I’m happy it’s on prominent display. Then I see the sign. antica & autentica, circa 1900.

  Have I been making forgeries?

  Had he told me but I was too stupid to understand? “Are you sure you know what I’m saying? I’ll pay you a lot more for this kind of thing.” The gerbil wheel in my brain starts spinning: If I turn him in he can do the same to me. They’ll send me back. And he’ll blame me. Tell the police he bought art from me that I said was old. He could play dumb. What should I do? What if he calls, wants to know about the picture I promised?

  Later that night, I am thinking of Robert when the phone rings. I jump to answer it but hear Paolo’s voice on the answering machine and decide not to pick up. Suddenly I hear a sound like thunder coming from somewhere below the house. My first thought is that it’s a bomb. With all this talk of war in the news—Iraqi bomb threats in American schools, the pipe bomb that went off at the American discothèque in Arezzo, only an hour from here—what’s next? I tell myself it must be the water heater or gas tank or something else. It couldn’t be a bomb.

  The TV and lights go off with a pop. I try the phone. Dead. When I hear the second big ka-boom I grab my sweater, passport, and Puline. What if t
here is an explosion and the house catches on fire? The trees could go up in flames. We have no water here; this isn’t a city, there’s no fire station, no truck of heroes heading to my house to save me. No one is home on the farm; even Sabina, Alfredo, and his mother aren’t home. Where has everyone gone? I stand outside in the cold damp night, clutching the small cat to my chest, waiting for someone to drive up the hill and take me home, give me hot milk and honey, read me a story, and put me to bed. But where is home? And whom am I waiting for? It starts to rain. I stand in the driveway and wait until I am thoroughly soaked and feel ridiculous and tired, then go back inside and crawl into bed.

  The week before Christmas, Paolo tells me he has bought me a little gift. We are in his shop and his son stops by to say hello. His son is eighteen now, handsome and tall. He is only five years younger than Robert. “He’s a good boy,” says Paolo, watching his son wave goodbye from the door.

  “He might go to war, you know,” I say. “He might get drafted to Iraq.”

  “You are too serious sometimes,” says Paolo.

  On the way to the restaurant, we pass a tall man from Senegal in a thin jacket, selling handbags on the street. The man calls out to us, “Gucci! Gucci! Armani! Vuitton!” His wares are spread out on a shabby old blanket, probably the same one he covers himself with at night. Does my mother sleep on the street like that? I haven’t told a soul here about her, her illness, about how she could be dead and I wouldn’t even know.

  I want to talk about my mother to someone, anyone, but instead I turn to Paolo and go on a rant about how poor immigrant men from Senegal have to sleep ten to a trailer in Florence and have no legal rights. I tell him that I am now illegal too, unless I get a legitimate full-time job or get married. Imposter, says my mother’s voice inside my head. You are the imposter now. You are a forgery. You’re not even real.

  “I’m tired,” says Paolo. “Can we talk about something else?”

  I am tired too.

  Later, alone in my room, I take out the print Paolo had given me the first day we met. It smells like his shop, like sandalwood and a faint hint of mold. Is the picture of Hermes, god of dreamers, nomads, and thieves? Or maybe it’s the Fool from the tarot, blindsided, ready to step off a cliff. Where to next? I ask myself. Should I stay or should I go? And if I stay, will I have to forge a life that isn’t true?

  I never call Paolo again or stop by his shop. He phones me once but I don’t return his call. One afternoon I see his son near the Duomo. I pull my hood down so he can’t recognize me, and feel full of shame. I never call Emilio again either. I avoid walking past his studio and his store. I avoid crossing the river altogether, for everyone seems to know you there, everyone watches who comes and goes. I end up getting a job teaching art history at the American School in Florence and resolve to make my $1,000 the old-fashioned way. With my first paycheck, I buy a small packet of gold leaf and tuck the delicate sheets away for another time, for an illumination of my own, not someone else’s.

  In January, America bombs Baghdad. I miss my sister and my grandma, who, by the time I see her again, probably won’t remember my name. I miss my mother too and am convinced she is sleeping on a park bench in the snow. I watch Baghdad blow up each night on the television, buildings exploding into bursts of green light. If you didn’t know it was a war, you’d think the night-vision sky looked magical, like the Night of the Shooting Stars. Despite the bombing, the streets are filled for some reason with brides; Baghdad defies the West with the oldest ritual in the world. After a month of this, the school I teach at and every other American place closes because of bomb threats. Then one morning Elsa bursts into my bedroom at five in the morning, screaming at me because Puline, the cat, had vomited on her newspaper the night before. In my half-sleep state I think she’s my mother; I pull the covers over my face so she can’t get to my neck. I want to go home.

  The only airline flying out of Florence during the First Gulf War is Yugoslav Airlines. There is one condition if you want to leave the country on their plane. You have to spend four nights in Belgrade as a tourist, even though Yugoslavia is about to go to war too and everything is shut down. At the airport, armed soldiers are crawling all over and customs takes an eternity. Something bad is about to happen and I hope I am gone by the time it does.

  I spend all four days sequestered in an ugly state-run hotel taking naps and trying to figure out what to do when I get to Chicago. My last night before I fly back to America, I turn on the television to watch the news. On the screen is a BBC special about starving Kurds displaced by the American-Iraqi war. American helicopters fly low to the ground and drop frozen chickens onto a swarming crowd. Some chickens hit the heads of old men and young mothers holding babies. The men and women fall to the ground as if they have been shot. There aren’t enough chickens to go around and the camera pans to a fight starting up between two groups of hysterical men vying for a few frozen birds covered in sand.

  I turn the TV off, sick of war and all the heartache in the world, sick of myself. I go down to the hotel restaurant to eat. Will this be the last year I go by my old name? I want someone to say it, Myra, to call out to me so that I’ll look up. But there’s no one here I know. When the waitress brings me my tea, I hold the slice of lemon up to my nose to breathe it in. I know the next day I will land in wintry Chicago without a place to live, my mother homeless and trying to track me down. I will have to change my name, find a job, and start over again, maybe in a new city. But for the moment, when I close my eyes, I smell the grove of lemon trees at Cerreto heavy with fruit; I smell the rich russet earth, the chestnut trees and pines. I promise myself I will never live anyplace ugly and dangerous again.

  Someday, I will live in a quiet green place, off a winding country road. My house will be small but warm, and the rooms awash with light. The floor will be terra-cotta red. My studio will be like the simple room of a scribe, filled with pots of paints and sheaves of paper-thin gold. There will be an arched window in the room with luxuriant vines. Outside, I will have a small, enclosed garden, dense with vegetables and flowers, lavender, basil, and rosemary, the herb of remembrance. And if I look out the window at just the right moment, the garden will be illuminated in the golding hour of the day.

  On Love and War

  I recently made a rough map of the Arab world, including a scene of the last conflagration in Afghanistan—the latest Great American Witch Hunt. In my day, they went after the artists and writers, the union organizers and Communists. Now it’s people with turbans. Someone’s always fighting someone, somewhere. I remember young men from school, going off to war. I remember Lester Goodman who I loved, the only boy I ever loved. Lester took me to concerts, to plays. Lester and I, we could have had a life. When Lester came home from the war I had already met the bastard father of my girls. Some boys from my neighborhood didn’t come home. They say they died there fighting but I think the U.S. government sent them to the camps. They did it to the Japanese, why not American Jews? I was lucky. I could have been somebody’s lampshade. Thinking of that old Kashmiri song: Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar, Where are you now?... Whom do you lead on rapture’s roadway far, Before you agonize them in farewell? Never have I kept The Enemy at bay, nor have I been lucky in love or war.

  12

  Isn’t one’s true abode any wild place, any firestorm or night of discontent...?

  Gretel Ehrlich, Islands, the Universe, Home

  A Hand and a Name

  I am a refugee, my mother wrote in her diary from 1992. I’m looking for my children and the key to my home. In the fall that year, my mother wrote her first letter to me after her disappearance two years before: Dear Daughter, Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Four more years till the Year of the Rat then eleven more to go. Baruch atah adonai, elohenu melech ha’olam. One may think an enemy has passed, but how can one be sure? I was traveling in Israel at the time, but she thought I was still living somewhere in Europe: My only motherly advice to you in travel, s
he wrote, is to bring your own linens, towels and especially washcloths. And consider purchasing a World Atlas and Almanac. By the way, the people here in Chicago are not friendly.

  From her diaries, I learned that when my mother moved to Chicago, she began studying geography and several languages, including Italian, German, Hebrew, and Spanish. She also reviewed the Russian, French, and Yiddish she already knew. It appeared that she was planning on tracking me down overseas. She drew maps and labeled each country in four different languages and made charts with pictures of things she wanted to remember the words for, such as mother, daughter, and lost. She filled out a passport application but got stuck in the place where they asked for her birth date. She wrote 1926, the year she was born, then crossed it out and wrote in 1940, then crossed it out again. My mother was also reading a book called How to Locate Anyone Anywhere Without Leaving Home. She hired a private detective to hunt me and my sister down, paid him $200, then changed her mind, and hired a different man. She also cut out the weather forecast each week from a section in the Chicago Tribune called “Weather for Travelers” and kept track of the rise and fall of the dollar in the rest of the world. Should she stay or should she go?

  After I returned from Italy in the winter of ’91, I signed a contract with HarperCollins for a children’s book series on world cultures, based on the work I had done at the Field Museum. My sister begged me to change my name. Our mother could find us through my books once they came out in stores. The day I went to the courthouse in Chicago, the judge asked me to declare why I was changing my name. “I’m a writer and have decided to take my pen name as my own.” How easy it was to lie, make up a different identity with a new Social Security card, new credit cards and picture IDs. What if I had told the truth: “I am changing my name because I don’t want my mother to find me. I don’t want to take her in and support her, keep vigil all night so she doesn’t set my furniture on fire. I am changing my name because I am selfish. I want to be an artist. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.” When I returned from the courthouse a bouquet of flowers was waiting for me from my sister with a note: A rose by another name will still be sweet.