Michelangelo's Ghost

by Gigi Pandian

  “I was sorry to hear about your husband,” I said softly.

  “I got your condolence card. I wasn’t expecting that. Not after I ignored you for so long. I’ve followed your career proudly though.” Her lips were dry and devoid of color, but warmth radiated from her smile. For the first time since I’d arrived, I felt that she was glad she’d invited me. She motioned for me to take a seat on a wicker couch and poured me a glass of water from a carafe resting on a mango wood side table adorned with carvings of elephants.

  “It’s good to see you, Lilith.”

  “If you’d written back to me sooner—”

  “I had to change my email address and phone number after amateur treasure hunters across the world got them. I only read emails that come into my old inbox when I have extra time.”

  “So it was your colleague who pressured you into calling me,” Lilith said as she handed me the water. She didn’t pour a glass for herself, but lifted a clay coffee mug to her lips. The ice cubes that clinked and the glassy look in her eyes told me she hadn’t given up old habits.

  “My colleague?”

  “He didn’t prod you into calling me?”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “What was the fellow’s name? Krishnan. That was it. Naveen Krishnan.”

  I groaned. “Naveen?” After such a relaxing drive, the name of my backstabbing colleague was the last thing I wanted to hear.

  “His bio was listed next to yours on the history department’s website. Unlike yours, his had a link to his email address and phone number. I called him and told him how important it was for me to reach you. He was quite attentive.”

  I groaned. “I’m sure he was.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Naveen Krishnan and I don’t collaborate well.” Whatever important information Lilith was about to tell me, my rival already knew.

  I steadied my breathing. I was getting ahead of myself. I didn’t even know what Lilith thought so important that she got in touch after all these years.

  Lilith barked a laugh. “Don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone else about what I’m telling you. Don’t you know me well enough to know that? I simply told him it was important I reach you.” She lifted the mug to her lips and took a long sip. The look of relief on her face confirmed my suspicions that it was stronger than water.

  “What exactly is it that you’re telling me?”

  “I’ve done it,” she said. “I’ve found something big. Something that will redeem my reputation. I know you all think I’ve been chasing the ghost of that first discovery in my twenties, but I’m not crazy, Jaya. I’m not. This time, the ghost is real.”

  Chapter 3

  My expectations shrank to a speck smaller than the tip of my stilettos. I’d heard Lilith’s claims before.

  Seven years ago, Lilith Vine had been a professor at the university where I was a first-year graduate student. She’d been granted tenure based on a notable discovery in Sri Lanka that she’d made while she was a PhD student. Following a clue in the novel of an early 19th century British soldier who fought in the Kandyan Wars, Lilith discovered an ancient religious text that had been preserved in a small temple.

  It was clever research for a young historian studying religious history. She used fiction as a primary source for her historical research, realizing that much of what’s recorded as fiction is based in fact. The combination of diligent research and creativity had led her to the connection nobody else had drawn.

  That early success had gone to her head. She wanted to capture the fleeting feelings granted by fame and prestige. Instead of focusing on her work, she flitted from one project to the next, publishing fantastical ideas with nothing to back up her assertions. Because a reference in a pulpy novel had led her to a real-life discovery, she gave too much weight to potential facts in fiction. The more she struck out, the more she drank. She’d once been a draw for the university, but soon became a laughingstock. She was giving historians a bad name—and they noticed.

  Even though tenure meant she couldn’t be fired, she was given the least desirable teaching assignments and was shunned by her colleagues, making her life miserable. Lilith didn’t have many options. She’d burned all of her bridges except one. She got an offer from a small university in northern California, and she wanted me to follow her there, offering to be my advisor in her new position.

  A big part of me was drawn to Lilith. Her passion for her work was contagious. I had chosen my graduate program in part because of Lilith’s interest in early trade routes across South Asia. That’s why I said yes—before thinking better of it and reneging.

  It was that false hope I’d given her that made me feel guilty. It’s one thing to respectfully decline an offer. It’s another to give someone hope before ripping it away from them. When other professors came to me and told me I’d be throwing away my career by following her, I listened to them. I picked the responsible, safe path. I chose to believe what everyone else told me: Lilith Vine was a crackpot.

  It was the right decision to stay and work with Professor Stefano Gopal, but at the same time I’d wondered if Lilith had been unfairly judged. And I’d wondered what I might miss out on by choosing the safe road.

  Looking at Lilith’s earnest, drawn face, I asked myself the same questions yet again.

  She picked up a leather-bound book. The dimensions were slightly larger than modern letter-size paper, and the cover was faded and dusty. There was no title, so I wondered if it was a ledger or diary. Whatever it was, it was old. The tremor in Lilith’s hand as she held it up was barely perceptible. I wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t visibly annoyed her.

  “This,” she said, waving the book in her hand, “is a sketchbook from 16th century Italy.”

  “You’re studying art history now?” It was a perfect example of why she couldn’t be trusted.

  She waved off my question. “What do you know about Renaissance Italy?”

  “About as much as a college freshman. Which is why I don’t pretend to study it.”

  “Don’t be so narrow-minded, Jaya. Art and religion are inexorably linked. I thought you had an imagination. That you were different. That’s why I thought we’d make such a great team.”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  “All right,” Lilith said with a sigh. “The least you can do is humor me by hearing me out before you leave.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. The look on your face. It’s how they all look at me.”

  I realized I’d been sitting with my arms crossed stiffly across my chest. I relaxed the tense posture. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “I don’t care what you meant. Just listen.” She paused and took another swig. “I’ve discovered the missing artwork of a man who was a protégé of Michelangelo.”

  “The Michelangelo? The Sistine Chapel? David?”

  “The one and only. Lazzaro Allegri was an artist hailed as a genius who might have rivaled the master—until he disappeared.”

  She sat back and waited for my reaction. Was I supposed to be intrigued by the fact that an artist had “disappeared”? It was the 16th century. Poor Lazzaro probably ate a tainted piece of meat or fell out of a window.

  “I’m not a Renaissance historian,” I said. “I’m flattered you thought of me after all this time, I really am, but why exactly did you bring me here today?”

  “I found out where Lazzaro Allegri went when he disappeared. The artist abandoned his patronages in Italy. He went to India.”

  In spite of my better judgment, she now had my full attention. So much so that I nearly kicked over a stack of books piled next to the couch.

  “Michelangelo’s protégé,” Lilith continued, “who applied Renaissance painting techniques to Indian subjects over five hundred years ago. This is a magnificent tr
easure, Jaya. Do you realize the significance?”

  “It would be a big deal,” I agreed. My research on trade between Europe and India didn’t delve much into art, but my advisor Stefano Gopal had been interested in the lack of artistic collaboration even when other aspects of culture melded.

  “That’s an understatement. This is bigger than anything I’ve seen discovered in my career.”

  More importantly, unlike many of Lilith’s “discoveries,” this was something I could believe truly existed. A missing connection in history that Stefano and others had always assumed existed but never been able to prove. “A Renaissance master who worked under Michelangelo,” I said, “who created paintings that bridged Europe and Asia.”

  “For the second time in my life,” Lilith said, raising her glass toward the thick wooden beams of her sloping ceiling, “I’ve found the truth that nobody else knew how to find. I need your help to prove it.”

  I looked into her desperate eyes. What had I gotten myself into by coming here today?

  Chapter 4

  “This sounds enticing,” I said, and I meant it. Stefano Gopal would have been salivating if he’d been there with me. “But I don’t know anything about Italy. I’ve never even been there. Surely there’s someone better equipped to prove the paintings’ value and validate your work. Professor Gopal wouldn’t steal your work, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I don’t trust that man,” Lilith said. The sudden coldness in her voice made me shiver. “You are not to tell him what I’m about to tell you. Do you understand?”

  I imagined her rapping my knuckles with her cane if I were to disagree. “I won’t say anything.”

  “Besides,” she said with a wave of her hand and a smile on her face, “even if I trusted him, he’s not who I need. You are. You’re someone who knows about European trade with India in the 1500s, when Lazzaro Allegri lived. But of much more importance to me is that you’re a historian with an imagination. That’s why I wanted to take you with me when I moved universities. I wasn’t wrong about you. Your discoveries have proven me right.”

  My insides twisted. I was betraying her all over again by giving her hope today, then letting her down. “I can’t help you, Lilith. I wish I could, but I’m really not the right—”

  “Tell me, what’s your guess as to how an Italian nobleman found his way to India?”

  “Are you distracting me or testing me?”

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  I closed my eyes and remembered Lilith as she was when she was leading my first-year seminar. “What are the dates?”

  “1528 to 1550. Lazzaro Allegri was in India for more than two decades before returning to Italy.”

  “He returned? I thought you said—”

  “I’ll get to the reason why in a moment. But first…” She let her unfinished sentence dangle in the air and motioned for me to answer her question.

  I thought through the possibilities. “He could have been a missionary. A lot of Catholics went to India around that time. More were Portuguese, but I think there were some Italians. But I doubt that’s what happened in Lazzaro’s case. You said he was a painter. Italian artists and architects were in high demand. Or the marble trade could have put him in touch with Indian patrons. Many sultans at the time were great patrons of the arts.”

  “I knew it was right of me to contact you. You let your imagination guide you. Most historians would have refused to answer that question before doing more research.”

  “My imagination fails me now,” I said. “If you’ve found Lazzaro’s lost paintings, why get in touch with me? If you want someone who can help you figure out how to safely get them into the right hands, I know someone who’d be good to talk with. Two people, actually.”

  “Let me show you something. Be a dear and bring me that banker’s box from the side table.”

  I obliged as Lilith continued talking.

  “Lazzaro combined the Italian religious iconography common in Renaissance paintings with Indian people and settings,” she said. “He sent only two of his numerous paintings home, but in a country and time when popes were a combination of royalty, rulers, and rock stars, you can imagine how they were received.”

  “Not well.” All of Lilith’s furniture looked either fragile or antique, so I set the cardboard box on the red and gold Persian rug at her feet.

  “His paintings were considered blasphemous at the time. Ideas were changing in Italy, but it was still early in the Mannerist movement, and papal circles weren’t yet as accepting of pagan icons. That came later. That’s why he realized he had to hide the rest.”

  “As I told you, I don’t know much about Italian history. I don’t see why you need me to help examine the paintings.”

  “That’s the problem, Jaya. I’ve only found proof of their existence.”

  “Wait, you’re saying you didn’t locate the paintings?”

  “Not yet. That’s why I need you and that imagination of yours.”

  I thought about the first “treasure” I’d discovered. A lost treasure from Mughal India that I found through a local legend from the Highlands of Scotland. Even though the riches were from the era of my historical expertise, my existing knowledge wasn’t enough to find the solution. Teasing fact from fiction, much as Lilith had done years before me, was the key.

  “I think you’d better start at the beginning,” I said.

  Lilith smiled and nodded. She knew she’d captured my imagination. “This spring, I was reading a paper by Wilson Meeks. You know the name?”

  “I read a book of his on trade routes. Well-researched, but difficult to get through. It was great bedtime reading, because it put me to sleep.”

  “My sentiments exactly. An excellent researcher, a lackluster storyteller. But I noticed something interesting in this paper. It included an excerpt of a letter Italian nobleman Felix Rossi had written to a friend in 1570. He was complaining about the recent death of his blasphemous cousin—”

  “Lazzaro Allegri.”

  “Indeed. The nobleman’s wife was Lazzaro Allegri’s niece. The letter’s author, Rossi, considered Lazzaro’s paintings of India abominations and wanted to gain favor with the Pope. But his wife valued her family’s history. A footnote in Wilson’s paper led me to the rest of the letters. Rossi’s wife insisted on saving her uncle’s artwork, rather than destroying it as other members of the family wanted. You see what that means.”

  “Lazzaro Allegri’s masterpieces were saved.”

  “They’re out there, Jaya. Waiting for us to find them. Don’t you see? He was misunderstood—just like I am. Like both of us.”

  “You’d think the Michelangelo connection would have made up for the perceived blasphemy. Michelangelo was one of the artists who was appreciated during his lifetime, right?”

  Lilith cleared her throat. “Their connection wasn’t well-known.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know how set in their ways scholars can be.” She spoke tersely, the frustration rolling off her tongue. “Because Michelangelo was known to be difficult to work with, most Renaissance scholars dismissed evidence that Lazzaro was his protégé.”

  “Right.” I studied Lilith’s pursed lips. This was exactly the type of false conclusion she’d drawn countless times that had wrecked her career. “How exactly did you make the connection?”

  “I’m not wrong about this, Jaya.”

  “And why the urgency?” I asked. “You said this was urgent and you wished I’d called you sooner, but all this happened almost five hundred years ago.”

  “You don’t know about Wilson?”

  “He hardly seems the type to steal your idea.”

  “I wish it were that simple. Wilson Meeks had a bad heart. He suffered several heart attacks in recent years, and his health was deteriorating more rapidly this year. Once you and I did
more digging, I thought we might have more questions for him about his research.”

  A smile touched my lips. “You mean since he cites a hundred references in a ten-page paper, he’s a walking encyclopedia.”

  “Quite. Unfortunately, we no longer have that option. He’s dead.”

  My mouth fell open. “What happened?”

  “Weren’t you listening? He had a bad heart.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. And I’m sorry I didn’t get your email sooner. But even if I had, and we’d set out together in search of Lazzaro’s paintings, what could Wilson have told you? You said yourself this lead was just a footnote to his work. It’s not the most important question.”

  Lilith’s glassy eyes sparkled. “I think I know where your mind is going, and you’re absolutely right. Tell me what you think the real question is.”

  “What makes you think Lazzaro’s paintings are a treasure that’s been safeguarded for four and a half centuries?”

  “That, my dear Jaya, is why I brought you here today.” Lilith leaned forward and tapped her cane on the lid of the box. “Open the box.”

  Chapter 5

  Lilith’s box sat on the passenger seat of my roadster. With what I’d seen inside, I felt like I should pull the seatbelt across it. In the scheme of history, the contents of that box were much more valuable than my own life.

  I couldn’t quite believe Lilith had entrusted me with her discovery, but she’d insisted. She told me she’d traveled to Italy to find Lazzaro’s treasure over spring break, but hadn’t been able to put the last pieces of the puzzle together. She’d come home without the paintings, but with the clues needed to find them. Which she’d entrusted to me. Based on how difficult the trip through rural Italy had been, she knew her body was too frail to try again. In spite of her reticence to share her findings with others, the time had come. She was passing the torch to me.