The Chapel

by Michael Downing

  “They have a spare at the basilica, courtesy of St. Anthony,” I said. “Do you think Ed explained what Eremitani means in the English part we missed at the beginning?”

  “Hermit,” T. said, and he handed me a photocopy he’d plucked from a rack in the vestibule on our way in. “But these hermits couldn’t shut up about Scrovegni.” He was leading me to the back of the church, and when I glanced guiltily toward Ed, I saw a couple of priests following us. “They even wrote to the pope in 1305, complaining about how fancy the Arena Chapel was looking, so the powers-that-be forced Scrovegni to scrap his plans for a big bell tower.”

  “1305?” I was thinking of Mitchell’s many chronologies. He had always assumed that Giotto did not finish frescoing the chapel until after Dante had begun to write The Inferno. “Did those hermits happen to mention the state of the interior? Had Giotto finished painting in 1305?”

  T. shrugged off my question. “I think the proposed bell tower was their big gripe. The Eremitani had been here since 1260-something and didn’t like competition.”

  “You should be giving this lecture.”

  T. stopped at the back of the church and turned around. “I’ll tell Ed there was a medical emergency.” The two priests zipped right past us, their heads bowed. Ed had moved to the edge of one of the two chapels that bulged out of the nave on either side, forming a modest transept, anticipating the familiar crucifix shape of later churches. T. said, “These monks hired Mantegna to fresco that little chapel at some point in the 15th century.”

  “Mantegna who painted the Foreshortened Christ?” That famous view of the shrouded, ashen body of Jesus seen from the end of the marble slab on which he is laid out is unforgettable.

  T. nodded.

  I didn’t add that I only knew the painting because it hangs in a museum in Milan, and I had a postcard of it in a bin at home, courtesy of Mitchell.

  “Mantegna is also credited with the first painting that applied the mathematically worked-out theory of perspective,” T. said. “That masterpiece is in a church in Florence, by the way—in case you ever have the chance to get there.”

  “Perhaps Francesca will send me a postcard,” I said, which sounded more like a rebuke than I’d intended. T. looked as surprised by my tone as I was, but I didn’t offer an apology, and I couldn’t explain it. I just knew everything in my past was in tumult. The ground of my life had been shaken, and I didn’t want to outrun the spreading fault lines and fissures. Whatever was happening, I wanted to let it catch up with me, overtake me. I had spent thirty-five years persuading myself to keep going, stoking my faith in the power of the next day, the next phase, the next promotion, the next graduation, the next book club, or concert series, or grandchild to vindicate my perseverance, to make something whole and smooth and strong of my married life. I no longer believed in the annealing power of the future. I couldn’t see why I should go to Florence and Assisi and Rome and Venice just to get to Cambridge. “I want to see this Mantegna,” I said. “As you would say, we’re here now.”

  “Mantegna, unfortunately, is not,” T. said, turning to the door. “Apparently there are some fragments of the fresco that they pieced together into a re-creation, but this whole structure is ersatz. The original was blown to bits during World War II air strikes.”

  “By whom?”

  “I’m guessing someone with a plane. We’ll ask Ed.” He held open the door but stuck out his foot to stop me before I went outside. “Considering his performance, probably best not to ask Ed about bombing.”

  THE DAYLIGHT WAS STARTLING, AND THE PALE BLUE OF afternoon was overrun with puffy clouds—as implausible and silly as the painted sky above the altar inside. T. and I agreed that we needed a drink before we had a drink with Ed. Around the block, across the street from the low profile of the Eremitani cloister, we spotted two white metal chairs and a tippy white table about the size of a dinner plate. T. went inside and soon returned with two tumblers filled with something precisely the color of orange Kool-Aid.

  He said, “He claims it’s just called a spritz. I’ve seen them all over town.”

  I said, “Is it fizzy?”

  T. raised one of the glasses to his nose. “Fizzyissimo,” he said and sat down. “It’s something called Aperol, which looks suspiciously like Campari with a dye job, and some prosecco, and sparkling water.”

  After a few sips, I said, “This makes me very happy.”

  T. said, “At this guy’s prices, we can afford to get ecstatic.”

  Our little street wasn’t much of a thoroughfare. A few cars cruised by, and three dark-haired girls in white short-sleeved blouses and pleated blue-plaid skirts came close and then disappeared into a doorway. That was enough for us for a long time, and then my phone rang. I saw that it was Lewis, and I turned it off.

  “Not urgent,” I said.

  T. gulped down his drink. “I have to make a call, too. Ten minutes or so?”

  I watched him wander away toward the church. The sun had slipped right into his path, so I had to use my hands as visors. His blue back got darker and smaller with each step, not disappearing but becoming something compact and dense, something I could hold in my hand, the essence of T.

  A young waiter came out of the café and smiled sympathetically. He had a mop of curls, and he was wearing a butcher’s apron over a T-shirt and blue jeans. I shook my head to let him know I’d had enough. He left me alone.

  I pulled out my phone, but I didn’t dial immediately. I didn’t know what I wanted Lewis to say, and I’d had just enough to drink to believe my desire would influence his response. While I dithered, the waiter returned. He nodded in the direction T. had taken, and from behind his back he produced a white saucer with an almond biscotti glazed with a thin strip of chocolate on the bottom. Then he handed me a small wax-paper bag.

  “To take away,” he said.

  I realized he was feeling sorry for me. “I’m okay,” I said. “He’s coming back. Really.”

  The waiter smiled knowingly. “My gift, okay?” He turned back toward the café.

  “Orange and chocolate,” I said. “Perfecto.”

  He hesitated, then slowly said, “Per-fet-to.”

  I said, “Per-fet-to?”

  “Si, perfetto. Preciso.”

  What the heck? I said, “Perfetto. Perfetto.”

  He laughed. “Essato!” He left it there and went back to work.

  I made the call. Lewis was delighted to speak to me, delighted that I had enjoyed my abbreviated stay in Italy, and delighted to be able to accommodate my request. Anna, too, was delighted, just delighted.

  Something I said must have struck a less delirious note because Lewis flattened out his voice and asked if I could bear to go over a few practical details. As Anna and Francesca would not be traveling back from Rome to Venice via Ravenna, he was preparing a refund for me for that leg of the trip. I assured him that was not necessary. He insisted it was already being processed. “I don’t suppose you have any of your paperwork right there in front of you?”

  I assured him I didn’t.

  “Why would you?”

  The silence that followed was long enough that I thought we might leave it at that. I hadn’t scrutinized a bill or a bank statement since Mitchell had gotten sick. This was not a matter of incompetence. In fact, it had been a point of pride. I had always been the bookkeeper and tax accountant in the house, and when Cambridge Trust offered to digitize our accounts and organize the whole operation online, I signed up immediately. When paying attention to Mitchell’s care and comfort became a full-time occupation, and when missing him was all I could do in the course of a day, it was a relief to know the credit cards and the cable bill were being paid. Right to the end, Mitchell had grave doubts about the stability of the paperless world, and as long as he lived he accumulated enough ballast for both of us.

  Lewis said, “Perhaps it would be better if I had this conversation with your daughter.”

  “Oh, no.” I was prepared to wri
te Lewis a check, not to call Rachel. She had managed all of the arrangements with EurWay for the last three months, including my many false starts, so I guessed that Lewis might have some sense of her impatience with my indecisiveness. “I’m afraid my daughter has resigned her post as trip advisor,” I said, aiming for a confidential tone of voice. “You’ll have to deal with me.”

  “A pleasure, I assure you,” Lewis said. “This is a minor matter of accounting. The refund will be issued as a credit on your charge card.”

  “That makes it very easy for me. Thank you.”

  “The amount refunded for hotels in Ravenna and Venice will not match the amount on the original statement from us.”

  “Taxes and processing fees,” I said, trying to make it clear I was on top of this.

  “Quite,” Lewis said, “but the differential largely reflects your choice to downgrade from A-Prime to Category B accommodations. We will refund at the lower rate, of course.”

  I said, “Quite.” Apparently, sometime after Mitchell died, Rachel had decided to address my concern about the extravagant expense of a monthlong Italian adventure. I had raised the financial aspect only once, a few weeks after the diagnosis. Maybe I was being miserly, but I was imagining years ahead with Mitchell in and out of hospitals, second opinions and experimental drug therapies not covered by insurance, and when I’d added up the first EurWay itemized estimates, and the unforeseen add-ons and why-not dinners at overpriced restaurants with Michelin stars that might mean something to someone who mattered in Mitchell’s office, I suggested to him that we could choose less luxurious hotels. I had said all of this to Mitchell, but I had never complained about the costs to Rachel. To me, at the time, Mitchell had said, “We’re worth it.”

  “And one more detail, if you can manage it,” Lewis said.

  I said, “Of course.”

  “Very well. Unless you would prefer we handle this as two distinct transactions, we will roll in the credits owed you for the other hotels, as well, which were in-process this week.”

  “The Category B savings all over Italy,” I said.

  Lewis said, “Quite.”

  “Rolling it all into one refund makes good sense,” I said. “You’re being very gracious about all of this. Thank you.”

  “Delighted,” Lewis said. “Delighted.”

  I hung up before he said it again. While I waited for T. to return, one of the three plaid-skirted girls reappeared from a doorway. She stood still, facing the street, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. A third-story window opened above her, and the other two girls stuck their heads out. One of the girls upstairs yelled, “Fottiti!” The loner on the street didn’t move. The two girls in the window yelled a few more times and then disappeared. A couple of seconds later, a little red canvas knapsack with long, loopy straps flew out the window. It looked like a parachute failing to open as it fell and thudded in the gutter. She still didn’t move. Finally, I heard the window above her slam down. She picked up her bag, stuck her hand inside, and pulled out her phone, which she shook and held up in front of her face, as if it were a snow globe. She slung both straps of her red bag over one shoulder, and as she crossed the street, and maybe all the way home, she said, “Porco dio, porco dio, porco dio.”

  T. AND ED WAVED FROM THE FAR CORNER, NEAR THE church, and as I headed up the street to join them, T. took hold of Ed’s shoulders and bent toward him. Ed dropped his gaze, as if T. was saying something Ed didn’t want to hear or didn’t believe. When I got near enough to eavesdrop, T. backed off. For a moment, nobody seemed to know what to do.

  Ed turned to me and said, “At my request, we are going to pretend that lecture never happened.”

  T. said, “What lecture?”

  It was clear this was not what they had just been discussing. “Oh, Ed,” I said, “are you that displeased with how it went?”

  T. said, “How what went?” To Ed, he said, “Which piazza?”

  Ed said, “Piazza dei Signori. It’s the one behind Fruitti.”

  T. led us out to Corso Garibaldi, and after he zigzagged across a couple of intersections, he cleared a path through a wide pedestrian mall clotted with window-shopping and gelato-eating tourists and a separate, fast-moving, steady stream of dark-suited pedestrian commuters that eased around the tourists like a river around rocks. Ed stayed by my side, his hand hovering protectively behind me.

  Within a few blocks, the public space opened up, and the building facades acquired granite columns and marble porticos roped off from the confusion for after-work drinkers and early diners. “This is really beautiful here,” I said.

  “This is the edge of Piazza del Erbe,” Ed said, pressing his hand to my back to turn me into the dark, arcaded sidewalk of a narrow street bordered by smaller shops and dozens of tiny restaurants, each with about four tables, ten waiters, and forty happy customers. I’d lost sight of T. “There are some really good places to eat in these blocks,” Ed said, “and the top-tier bars and cafés.”

  “Let’s get out of here, then,” I said.

  “I owe you a drink at a decent bar,” he said apologetically. “But I’m addicted to these crackers with little crispy bits of kale that they make at this one place near San Clemente, a sweet little church.” He suddenly stopped walking as a blast of short beeps from a horn echoed around us.

  A woman with long hair flew by on a pale-blue scooter, and as she passed, we saw a helmeted little kid on the back holding to his mother’s waist for dear life. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

  Ed leaned in and said, “What are you thinking?”

  “When you’re unhappy, everything seems exemplary.”

  Ed said, “And when you’re happy?”

  “How would I know?”

  Ed put his hand behind my back, and we veered off to the right again. “I apologize for the hike,” he said. “I’m indulging myself—another symptom of unhappiness.”

  I said, “What does porco dio mean in English?”

  “Literally? God is a pig,” he said, smiling. “Did someone say that during my lecture?”

  “I heard it on the street,” I said, “not from a nun.”

  “It’s not really foul. It’s an all-purpose curse,” Ed said. “Or more of a cosmic complaint, like goddammit.” He stopped again. “That’s actually a perfect example of what I was trying to get across today; that was the tone I was aiming at. I mean, it was not for nothing that Dante wrote about heaven and hell in the vulgate, in the vulgar Italian of silk merchants and moneylenders and carpenters, not Church Latin. That same impulse turns up everywhere in 1300 in the art—something coarse, or bawdy, or just the sense of bodies pushing through the veils of mystery and mystification.”

  “Like Chaucer,” I said, aiming for something old and familiar.

  “Right,” Ed said. “Like Boccaccio. Not sex jokes and toilet humor—I mean, there was plenty of that, but there was something else, something aggressively human. And happy to be human, not ashamed of themselves. Oh, E., you know all of this.”

  I didn’t. And until that moment, I didn’t realize that Ed was genuinely ashamed, embarrassed by his performance. Whom had he hoped to impress?

  Ed said, “It’s the difference you see when you look at those golden Byzantine icons of the Virgin, or the saints in early Gothic paintings, and they’re elongated and impossibly thin and angular, and then you see what Giotto did in the Arena Chapel—people with thighs and heavy hands and big heads.”

  “People like us,” I said.

  He sheepishly shook his big head.

  I was staring at T., who was standing at the sunny end of the arcade, looking absurdly tall and lean and serene, like an elegant Byzantine portrait of St. Somebody of Constantinople. From his point of view, Ed and I must have looked like a couple of barn animals in Giotto’s manger scene. “I wanted to use words to do what Giotto did with colors and light and shadows,” Ed said. “That’s exactly what I wish I’d said today. I didn’t get it right, did I? But that’s what
I was aiming at, not another sermonette with footnotes by a Jesuit with an ivory tower up his ass.”

  “Nobody mistook that lecture for a sermon,” I said.

  Ed said, “What did T. say about it?”

  “We both have a million questions for you,” I said.

  “I see,” Ed said.

  Had I understood earlier that T.’s reaction was all Ed really cared about, I would have happily lied about it. But we had caught up with T., and Ed took the lead, and T. fell into step beside me. He told me Shelby and Anna were hoping to meet us for dinner in about an hour, and then we turned into Piazza dei Signori, a big enclosed square, hemmed in on one side by the colonnaded balcony of the old Carrara family home, a block-long white granite palace centered on a bell and clock tower. By comparison, the little brick-front church where Ed was headed looked inconsequential, like one more of the many little row houses that lined the rest of the piazza. Ed waved to us from an unoccupied table he’d found in the middle of a fenced-off corral, one of dozens of ad hoc patios lining the perimeter of the piazza. The crowds spilled out so far from the storefronts that it was impossible to tell which café you were patronizing when you got to your seat. It was six-thirty, and as far as I could see, everyone in Padua was required by law to stop on the way home for an Aperol spritz. The orange cocktails glowed in the late-day sun like votive candles. T. casually said we should come by some morning for the famous open markets, as if we’d both rented villas for the summer season.

  We sipped our spritzes, and Ed ate most of the kale crackers, politely leaving the ashtray of olives for me and T. to enjoy. For the better part of an hour, we didn’t speak. We just exchanged smiles, turning to acknowledge an especially well-groomed passerby or a waiter with a hot plate of something we wished we’d ordered. But every time I turned my head, I sensed that I was seeing through a frame into the wider world beyond.

  “Do you see someone you know?” I felt Ed’s warm hand land lightly on my forearm.

  I said, “Déjà vu,” which was almost true. Ed’s curious smile, the half-illuminated faces and shadowy bodies spread out around the widening spill of white tables behind him, the dim crimson facade of San Clemente at the edge of the piazza—I was seeing everything as if I were still standing in Giotto’s chapel, staring into the open sky above the figures in the foreground of one of the frescoes, seeing us in their future. The past, the landscape of the life I had lived, was altered, unfamiliar, as I saw it now. But this inverted perspective seemed fragile or tenuous—a fleeting sensation that dissipated even as I attempted to describe it to myself.