The Chapel

by Michael Downing

  T. said, “Exactly how big is the Arena Chapel?” He was snapping the edges off a kale cracker.

  Ed said, “About sixty by thirty. Why?”

  I said, “Feet?”

  He nodded. “And just about sixty feet high.”

  I said, “How can it be so small?”

  T. waved his paper napkin so it opened to a thin square and laid it on the table. “I don’t see why those Eremitani were so upset about it,” he said.

  Ed said, “Well, if Scrovegni had been allowed to build the side chapels he’d planned, and the bell tower at the altar end, he would have been real competition for the monks. A bell was a way of calling all pilgrims, calling for alms, and attracting other paying customers. Plus, Scrovegni had Giotto, the most famous painter in Italy, running around on scaffolding, making everybody else’s painted heavens and hells look like yesterday’s news.”

  In one corner of his napkin, T. placed a little rectangular shard of his cracker. “Let’s say this is the Scrovegni Chapel.” A bit below that, he formed two larger rectangles into a cross. “And this is the Church of the Eremitani.”

  Ed said, “Maybe a little closer.”

  T. said, “I’m not working to scale. Where was the old Roman Arena?”

  Ed said something to a passing waiter, who handed him a red felt-tip pen. He drew a big U at an angle on the napkin. The right arm ended at the chapel, and the Church of the Eremitani was outside that line.

  T. said, “Were the monks mad because they were outside the arena?”

  “No. They’d chosen their site. They were mad because Scrovegni had outdone them—and by an order of magnitude. I think they realized they were going to be living in the shadow of Enrico Scrovegni, a moneylender, and the son of a moneylender, for all time.”

  T. put his finger on the cracker chapel. “This couldn’t have cast much of a shadow.”

  Ed said, “You know how it feels when you’re in a crowded theater and the guy in front of you is tall, much taller than you? There’s nothing you can do about it, but it’s annoying. And then he doesn’t take off his hat. You ask him, and he doesn’t just refuse to take it off, he sticks a big feather in his cap.” Ed looked around but didn’t see what he wanted. “The chapel was Scrovegni’s fancy hat, and the bell tower was the feather he wanted to stick in it.” He looked around again but gave up. “If either of you can catch somebody’s attention, order a biscotti.”

  I bent down to my red bag. I felt like Merlin when I pulled out the gift from my curly-haired waiter and handed it to Ed.

  T. said, “I’m a little peckish, too. Do you have a panini press in there?”

  Ed pulled the biscotti from the wax-paper bag and placed it at the open top of the U-shaped Arena he had drawn on the napkin. “Perfetto,” he said. “Before he built the chapel, Enrico built himself the biggest, fanciest house in Padua. It was torn down by Napoleon’s troops,” Ed said, tilting the biscuit to make it fit properly, “but this biscotti is the palace Enrico built for his wife and kids, an arching mass of marble and gold-leaf wrought iron and who knows what all. From the front, it was a long crescent of imperial columns—massive and opulent and galling to everyone in the neighborhood.”

  “So Giotto was an afterthought.” T. shoved the Arena Chapel closer to the palace on the napkin. “I see. Like Charlemagne, Enrico added a little palatine chapel to heighten the majesty of his domestic arrangements.”

  Ed nodded.

  T. pulled out his phone and took a picture of the arrangement, and then he divided the palace into three equal lengths, which we ate.

  I said, “Have either of you been to the Gardner?” All the talk of palaces had made me mindful of Mitchell’s favorite museum in Boston, which had been built to resemble a Venetian palace. Hidden among the crowded confabulation of Italian paintings and drawings, Asian artifacts, and precious who-knows-what stacked up in corners of every room were several rare early editions of Dante with lavish illustrations and illuminations.

  Ed said, “You mean the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?”

  T. said, “Not to put too fine a point on it.”

  I said, “There’s a painting by Giotto there.” It was a tiny tempera painting on a board washed in gold, so easily overlooked amidst the grandeur and glamour of the Renaissance masterworks that Isabella had propped it up on an easel draped in red velvet. While Mitchell attended lectures on Michelangelo’s appropriation of Dante’s poetry, I stared at that painting of the baby Jesus suspended between the arms of his mother and a bearded priest alongside a few long-robed attendants at a temple simply rendered as a kind of four-poster gazebo. I was as confounded by my affection for it as I was delighted by its miraculous presence, seven hundred years after its creation, right where I needed something beautiful to call my own.

  T. said, “Is it a fresco?”

  Ed said, “No. The Gardner Giotto is a wooden panel painting. One of only a handful in existence. It’s a version of one of the frescoes in the chapel.”

  I said, “My little Giotto is here in Padua?”

  “The original,” Ed said. “It’s commonly called the Feast of the Circumcision.”

  Mitchell had called it charmingly naive—his admiration spiked with condescension. I swallowed a lot of those Harvard cocktails. I said, “I think the Gardner painting is actually The Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple.”

  Ed said, “They presented him for circumcision.”

  T. said, “Why?”

  Ed said, “Jewish custom.”

  “Thank you, the doctor of theology,” T. said, “but I wasn’t talking about foreskin. I was speaking to E.” He ate the last olive. “Why did you ask if we’d been to the Gardner?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just somewhere I’m always happy to be.” I wanted to anchor this day in the deep past so it wouldn’t float away when I did, so I might find it tucked in under that velvet-covered easel if I ever managed to rouse myself from my sofa and visit the Gardner alone.

  “I was there once, when I was rather young,” T. said. He didn’t explain why he’d been in Boston or pinpoint his age at the time. I didn’t ask.

  These elusive facts didn’t register as secrets or mysteries. Any mention of his life before we met made him seem remote, as if his past was a sealed-off space, not contiguous with the present. I wasn’t even sure I’d recognize him there. Of course, I didn’t know who I thought I was—drink in hand, chumming around with a couple of unmarried men, handing out free trips. And T. never asked me to square any of that with the last thirty-five years. Sometimes, I felt we had woken up in adjacent tombs, relieved to discover a companionable neighbor who didn’t expect to be invited inside for tea and sympathy.

  “What I remember is that beautiful courtyard in the middle of the museum with the mile-high glass ceiling,” T. said, “all of the windows looking out as if onto the Grand Canal—but actually looking in on the other exterior walls.”

  “Inverted,” I said.

  “That’s exactly right.” T. smiled, remembering what it was like inside the courtyard. “It inverts your expectations. Every window opens onto a view of an interior life. I remember that courtyard glowing with light. And it was surrounded by darkness at eye level—those low-ceilinged, narrow cobblestone arcades.”

  I said, “Roman arches.”

  T. said, “Where would we be without them?” He stood up, looked at his watch, instructed Ed to walk me over to the Piazza dei Fruitti in about fifteen minutes, and then left to meet Shelby and Anna and accompany them to our dinner reservation.

  After a few silent minutes, I thanked Ed for the all-day pass for the Arena Chapel. I was eager to see the antecedent for the little Giotto panel I so loved. Evidently, I was not leaving until Wednesday.

  “Don’t throw that pass away,” Ed said, staring at the clock tower. “It’s good till December. They got your dates mixed up with my dates. Maybe we can plan a reunion.” He sounded deeply sad, or maybe T.’s departure had pulled the plug on h
is hope of something more for the evening. I urged him to join us for dinner, but he said he was due back at the basilica for a dinner with some visiting priests, who’d also attended his lecture. “I’m debating whether I have time for one more drink,” he said. “A bracer.”

  “Was it important, the lecture? I mean, to you.”

  “I just have to get through dinner. After that—well, I’m mostly surrounded by Franciscans at St. Anthony’s, and they take vows to be kind to dumb animals. It should be fine.” He stood up, and we angled our way into the adjoining piazza, where I surprised myself by spotting the restaurant from the night before. Ed stopped well shy of the yellow awning. He rested his hand lightly on my elbow. “Evenings like this,” he said, but when I turned to him, he let go of his hold on my arm. “Goodnight, E.,” he said.

  “Goodnight, Ed,” I said, and I watched him wend his way through the incoming hordes, head bowed, shoulders hunched, his hands clasped behind his back, looking like the much older man he might one day be.

  I didn’t see any of my familiars as I approached the restaurant, but a man in a black suit and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar waved and yelled, “Ancora?” He was bald—the gleaming top, back, and sides of his head shaved to within a freckle of his life—and he had a pair of black plastic eyeglasses balanced above his forehead, which made him seem officious, someone who might demand to see my passport. I said I’d prefer to wait, and he said, “Si, si, si. Ancora tonight, signora, you join us.” He was older than I was, or he looked older than I felt at the moment. Before I could explain that I was meeting friends, he led me past several open seats to a table for four. By the time I spotted T. in the distance, a waiter had delivered four tall, narrow juice glasses and a bottle of Chianti—classico, he assured me, smiling at someone over his shoulder while he filled my glass to the rim. As Shelby ushered Anna through the rope gate to the table, I bent my head to the glass and sipped out an inch or two of the wine to prevent any settling-in spills.

  T. slid his way quickly to my side and said, “Ed called. He’s under the impression that I promised to dine with him at the Inquisition. Shelby said the tour bus leaves for Vicenza tomorrow morning at eight, so if you are still talking to me, I’ll meet you for breakfast at eight-thirty.” He handed me a photocopy of something folded in half. “I printed this at the hotel. Promise me you will rescind your offer to Anna and come to Florence. She’s got six children. I’m certain she’s good at dealing with disappointment.” He shook hands with the bald man, and he was waving good-bye as Shelby eased Anna into a chair. I unfolded the page he’d handed me and then slipped it into my bag so it wouldn’t get stained.

  Shelby and Anna agreed that they weren’t very hungry, so we only ordered two pizzas. We were all dressed as we were when we’d met at the chapel in the morning, and the only news any of us had was Shelby’s report on St. Anthony’s Basilica, which might have accounted for the cheerlessness of our attempts at conversation. Or maybe T.’s decision to dump us had dampened everybody’s expectations for the evening.

  Anna asked me several stilted questions about hobbies and magazine subscriptions, and I finally figured out that she was hoping to buy me an appropriate thank-you gift. To relieve her of that burden, and to save myself the problem of what to do with a needlepoint kit, I asked if she would take one picture of each city she and Francesca visited. I’d remembered the fun they seemed to be having with a camera at the back of the bus when we left Venice. Anna said, “Francesca is the photographer in the family, but I suppose I can ask her to do that,” turning my request into a gift tax.

  Shelby said, “It seems loud here tonight.” She had been occasionally massaging her temples, and I could feel a migraine coming on, too.

  I said, “The air is lovely, though.”

  “It is very crowded,” Anna said, ignoring me. “Maybe we should have had dinner at the hotel.”

  The pizzas arrived. One was a simple classic—basil, tomato, and cheese—and the other featured a big mound of baby arugula at the center, lightly dressed in something spicy, which disappointed Shelby, who had expected roasted red peppers.

  Shelby said she wasn’t hungry, and she pulled out her knitting.

  Anna poked her fork under the arugula in a couple of places, as if she suspected the greens were covering up a burned patch or a hole. She seemed to be offended by the presentation.

  I pulled off a slice, rolled up the sides, and took a giant bite. It was my new favorite pizza of all time. “There’s something sweet in here,” I said, still chewing. “Maybe raisins?”

  Anna said she preferred her salad in a bowl on the side. “I suppose I’m old-fashioned,” she added.

  Even Shelby looked surprised by the sharpness of Anna’s tone.

  I realized then that Anna was offended by me, or by Francesca’s willingness to accept the gift from me, or else she felt my readiness to give away my place had devalued the trip her children had given her.

  I was the only one eating, and though I was not eager to find out how long it would take for this conversation to shift into an open confrontation, I was not leaving before I polished off the arugula pizza. I asked about St. Anthony’s tongue. Shelby said it was displayed in something that looked a lot like a sterling silver medieval knight’s helmet with the face guard open. “And the tongue is black,” she said.

  “I voted for Obama in November,” Anna said. “Did you?”

  Shelby gracefully looped this dangling thread into the evening. “I think it’s safe to assume we three were all on the side of the saints in that election.”

  I nodded and ate another piece of pizza. My history with our president was a little more complicated. Mitchell had been an early Obama enthusiast, and during the primary season he was initially amused and then offended that I nullified every check he wrote with a check of my own to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It hadn’t been easy living in Cambridge, surrounded by liberals congratulating themselves for finding a candidate whose very existence made it noble and righteous and imperative not to vote for a woman.

  When the check came, I insisted on paying. Shelby offered to split it, but I persisted, and she thanked me. To my surprise, Anna didn’t object. She seemed pleased, as if the offer was an acknowledgment of something she’d been waiting for me to admit. “Even if it’s not a lot of money, it means a lot to me,” Anna said. “You’ve been very kind.” I think she really believed I was a dowager with a debit card perpetually refilled from Harvard’s $30 billion endowment.

  Instead of the waiter, it was the bald man who brought me my credit-card slip to sign. While I was digging for my eyeglasses, he tipped the plastic pair off his head and offered them to me. They worked.

  While I signed the receipt, Anna said, “Do you know him?”

  The bald man said, “Si, si, si, we are old friends.”

  I looked up at him. I expected him to look pleased with himself, but his smile was tentative and hopeful, and it undid me, or undid a button somewhere inside me, somewhere near enough my heart to make me feel grateful—and a little nervous. I slid the glasses to end of my nose. I said, “Grazie.”

  He said, “Prego.”

  I said, “Really.”

  He said, “I know.” He narrowed his gaze and his smile faded, and then, very softly, he said, “Permesso,” and, with both of his hands, he lifted his glasses from my face. He bowed and went to tend to the indoor customers.

  Anna said, “Thank you again for dinner,” and slid her chair back from the table.

  Shelby leaned toward me and said, “The bald man—you two were having a moment.”

  “Oh, Shelby,” I said, and then I surprised us both by kissing her on both cheeks. “I am going to miss you.”

  She stood up, nodded toward Anna, and whispered, “Are you regretting your decision?”

  “No,” I said and stood up. The sun had disappeared, and in the endless twilight of that early June evening, the crowded piazza was streaked with crenellated shadows shot through with p
ale, flickering flames. It was thrumming with life. I turned back to say something to Shelby, but she had moved away to guide Anna through the maze of tables.

  I wanted to shout to Shelby. I wanted to call T. and Ed. I wanted to rush into the little restaurant and beg the bald man to join us. I wanted us all to run to the west, catch the sun where it was, and hold it up. I didn’t want anything to happen next.

  V

  I woke too early on Tuesday. The morning sky was slate gray, and I vaguely remembered a pounding rainstorm in the middle of the night. Something had washed away my good mood. From the window in my room, I saw evidence of the downpour puddled around the ductwork on the black roof below. I briefly lay down on the bed again. I looked around the room. For the umpteenth time, I noted that the red desk chair and the red chair by the door were not an exact pair. I got up and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, a mistake, and then sat at the desk. There was a black metal safe under the desk, attached to a fiberboard shelf with two bolts I could’ve loosened with a pair of nail clippers. I returned to the window, put my hand on the white vinyl lever, and thought the better of it. Whenever I twisted that lever, I couldn’t tell if the window was going to swing out on its gate latch or flip up from the sill like a tropical shutter.

  All of this, and the surprising puffiness of the pillows (good), the mysterious way the overhead light switched off (annoying), my resolve not to turn on the TV (harder than yoga), and I still had a hundred inane thoughts to think.