He threaded his way through the multitude, stopping to watch two women haggle with a vendor over the price of a fish.
Beasts! hissed Zorelli. Concerned only with eating!
With relief he fled the marketplace, exalted with his lofty perspective. And yet as he passed a bakery and inhaled the scent of freshly baked bread, he too felt a sudden pang of hunger.
Cursing his stomach, he emptied his pockets to pay for a roll and stormed away.
That night Zorelli paced his studio long after Marta had climbed into bed. A restlessness grew up inside him whenever he wasn’t swinging his hammer or exerting his files against stone.
He made up his mind to take a walk, stepped outside, and headed for the harbor. Angelina followed behind him.
“The night is black, is it not, Angelina?” The sculptor’s cat was black as well and had disappeared upon entering the darkness like a fish thrown back to sea.
“The moon has yet to rise,” said Zorelli. “But we know our way about, don’t we?”
Invisibly, Angelina followed beside him. It was late, and they were alone in the streets. Gradually the salt air grew stronger, and soon the two of them reached the docks and wandered out to the end of a wharf.
“The waters are still tonight, Angelina.” The waves lapped softly against the wharf. The few boats at anchor bobbed peacefully. Angelina sat and peered out to sea, sniffing the air with interest.
“And the stars!” The sculptor gazed up at the heavens. “Have you ever before beheld them so bright?”
“Never!” came a voice in reply.
At once Angelina hissed and fled. Zorelli whirled and found himself facing the flickering image of what seemed to be a man.
“A pox on the stars!” continued the voice. “Too bright for my liking. Aye, blinding, they are!”
Zorelli studied the speaker in wonder. He was short-legged and burly and missing an ear. Fitfully, he glowed and dimmed, as if he were made of starlight himself.
“You’re Zorelli, the stone carver, if I’m not mistaken.” His clothes were ragged and glimmered like their wearer, as if they were the dying embers of their former selves.
“And who — or what — are you?” asked Zorelli.
“What am I?” The apparition snorted. “Why, a ghost! What else did you take me for?”
Zorelli stared at the spirit in awe, his hands fluttering like moths. He wondered where Angelina had gone, and had he not been trapped at the end of the wharf he would gladly have fled as well.
“And what brings you — here?” the sculptor stammered.
“What brings me here,” said the specter, “is you.”
Zorelli stiffened. “What is it you want?”
“Your services, naturally.”
“What?” gasped Zorelli.
“I want to hire you. To fashion a statue.”
Zorelli gaped at the ghost in amazement.
“I’m prepared to pay, you understand.” He reached into a pocket and produced a coin purse.
“Twenty-five ducats now. Aye, and fifty more when you’re finished.”
Zorelli’s eyes lit. Seventy-five ducats! No more would he have to return to the quarry! He could live for months on such a sum. He found himself staring at the coin purse.
“How can I be sure that the money — is real?”
The specter grinned and shook the purse, causing the coins to jingle brightly in proof of their substantiality.
Zorelli smiled. “Well now!” he spoke up. “And what manner of statue had you in mind? Something for a garden? A nymph, perhaps?”
The spirit peered into the stone carver’s eyes. “I would have you carve the statue of me.”
“Of you?” Zorelli froze in astonishment. He stared at the specter shimmering before him, a quantity of phosphorescence poured into the mold of a man.
“Naturally, I’m accustomed to dealing with the living,” Zorelli fumbled awkwardly. With growing revulsion he took note of the spirit’s missing ear, his crooked teeth, and the long jagged rip down the front of his doublet. Had warm flesh belonged to him, he might have been taken for a beggar or a rag merchant dressed in his wares, and suddenly Zorelli wondered if the man was worthy of salvation in stone or deserved forgetting, like most of humanity.
The sculptor turned his eyes toward the water.
“If I might be so bold,” he asked delicately, “were you a man of any — influence while you lived?”
“I’m afraid I was,” answered the specter.
Zorelli jerked in surprise and relief. The man was of more account than he appeared. Stone would not be misused.
“I thought as much,” mumbled the sculptor. He felt embarrassed at having asked the question and was flooded with a sudden respect for the spirit.
“Then again,” said the ghost, “if you don’t have the time —”
“Not at all!” Zorelli interrupted. “I should be honored, of course, to accept the task. Why, sitting at home I’ve a fine block of marble. What size of a statue had you in mind?”
“Life-size,” the spirit answered gravely. “I wish to be shown just as I was.”
“Fine!” The stone carver beamed at having found himself a patron at last. “Naturally I’ll dress you in the finest attire, whatever you —”
“No need for that,” spoke the phantom. “I want to be shown in the clothes I have on. Aye, just as I looked that night.”
Zorelli gaped at the ghost’s worn-out shoes, wretched doublet, and rat-gnawed cap. “A man of influence, dressed in rags? Surely a fine, turbaned hat at the least —”
“As for the pose,” continued the ghost, “see that you show me cradling an infant. Aye, and holding a cup to its lips.”
Zorelli digested his words in dismay. He was accustomed to depicting his subjects triumphant, with swords upraised, in the midst of great deeds. But a man feeding an infant in his arms?
The sculptor tried to compose himself. “Your child, of course —”
“Not at all,” barked the spirit. “And at my feet, carve out a cat. Scrawny, with no left ear — just like me.”
Zorelli started.
“A true friend, he was. Found him here by the water one winter, and as soon as I saw he was missing an ear — why, I knew we’d understand each other and get along just fine.”
Zorelli stood facing his patron, dumbfounded. His earlier enthusiasm had left, replaced by a strange unease.
“Of course, I’ll need to sketch you,” he said, as if hoping to talk the ghost out of the project. “Make studies and drawings, you understand.”
The spirit noticed the rising moon and seemed anxious to retreat from its light.
“Tomorrow night, then. Here. The same time.”
He handed the coin purse to Zorelli, who opened it quickly to inspect the money. By the time he’d assured himself and looked up, his patron had disappeared.
The sun rose, devouring the frost on the ground, and Zorelli rolled out of bed.
Suddenly he remembered the ghost. He wondered if he had dreamed of the meeting. Then he reached for his tunic — and plucked out the coin purse.
He darted to a window and examined the coins. They were gold. He weighed one in his hand. It seemed to be real enough.
He hid the purse, then rushed out the door and down the street to a bakery.
“A loaf of bread!” the sculptor called out, above the din of the other customers.
A sow-faced baker fetched him a loaf. Cautiously, the stone carver held out one of the coins he’d received from the spirit — and watched in wonder as the man snatched it up, quickly returned him his change, and moved on.
For a moment Zorelli stood there, speechless, staring at the coins in his palm.
“And what’s the matter with you?” snapped the baker. “A complaint with my counting?”
“Not at all!” said Zorelli.
“Step aside, then! Let the customers through!”
Smiling to himself, Zorelli scurried home.
“And where
did you get money for bread?” asked Marta, eyeing the loaf in amazement.
Zorelli hungrily tore off a hunk. “Just where you would expect!” he replied. “I’m a sculptor. And I’ve been engaged by a patron!”
Victoriously, he marched into his studio.
“A patron?” Marta called after him. “Who?”
Zorelli stopped. She would never believe him.
“A man,” he faltered. “A man — of some note.”
He turned, relieved to find her absorbed in devouring a chunk of bread. Looking down at the piece in his own hand, he marveled that something so dense and substantial had resulted from so airy a being.
The sculptor filled his belly with bread, then sharpened his chisels one by one. He inspected his mallets, his rasps, his rifflers, his gouges and points, compass and square. Reverently, he cleaned his tools, then struggled with the block of marble, sliding it into the center of the room.
He gazed at it, patiently searching it for the proper pose of man, child, and cat. In his eyes the stone lost its solidity. It was fluid as quicksilver, a river of shapes. Pensively, he walked around it. From his stool, he stared at it for hours. He regarded it from near and far. And he waited for darkness to come.
“No shortage of stars in the sky tonight!”
Zorelli spun around. Down the wharf came the spirit, flickering as if concocted of fireflies.
“Aye, they pain my eyes, they do! If I had me a long-handled candle snuffer, such as would reach, I’d put ’em all out. Believe me I would. And hang a cloak on the moon!”
Zorelli stared at him, awed afresh to find himself in the employ of what was nothing more than the residue of a life, a cloud of ash, a burned wick of a man.
“You wanted to draw me,” spat out the ghost. “And I’m here. So let’s get on with it!”
The waters whispered. A seagull squawked. Zorelli produced parchment and charcoal and commenced to sketch by his subject’s own light.
He eyed the ghost’s teeth, crooked and sparse, leaning like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard. With mounting unease, he duly recorded his broken nose and the scar down his throat, longing for the smooth skin and noble features to which he was accustomed.
“As for your ear,” he spoke up with difficulty. “Naturally a hat, tilted to one side —”
“Never! I won’t have you covering it up. I want to be exposed for just what I am. Or rather, for what I was — that night.”
Distastefully, Zorelli sketched the ear, hurrying over its ragged border.
“Seventeen years it’s been that way.” The spirit gazed out over the harbor. “Aye, since I first took up with the Boccas.”
The Boccas! Zorelli brightened at the name. Spice merchants, they were, wealthy and refined. Zorelli himself had carved busts of the children, and he swelled with a sudden respect for his patron, as for all who lived in the world of the great.
“You were associated with the Boccas?” he asked.
“I should say! Seven years I served ’em.”
Zorelli sketched the ghost’s tattered doublet, wishing he could ignore the ragged tear that ran down the front.
“In what capacity did you serve?” asked the stone carver with a grin. “That is, if I may presume to ask.”
“Commerce,” said the ghost.
“Commerce?”
“That’s right.” He fingered his ear. “So to speak.”
Zorelli wondered at his patron’s meaning but hesitated to press him further.
“Aye, but that was long ago,” the spirit mused, scanning the water. “Even before I’d met Varentino.”
“The Varentinos, of course!” said Zorelli. He’d once carved a statue of Vito Varentino, the government diplomat. “A family of means,” boasted the sculptor. “And magnificent learning as well!”
He sketched his patron’s stumpy legs, imperceptibly lengthening them, as befitted a personage of his evident rank.
“It was the old man — Vito — I worked for,” said the spirit. “Back when he was stationed in Florence.”
“Truly!” Zorelli gawked, impressed. “And what, if I might ask, was your work?”
“Matters of state,” the ghost answered back.
“Really, now.”
“Right,” said the spirit. “In a manner of speaking, you understand.”
Zorelli sketched the ghost’s battered shoes, pondering his words. To whom was he offering shelter in stone? Trembling, he regarded the ghost’s tattered outfit, his broken nose and unsettling ear, and wished he’d never accepted his gold. But what was he to do — return to the quarry? After all, the spirit claimed to have been a man of influence while he’d lived, a point to which Zorelli clung like a cat.
“When can you have it finished?” asked the ghost.
“A month,” Zorelli replied. “At the soonest.”
“Fine!” He fingered the rip in his doublet. “Aye, a great relief it’ll be. Just remember — down at my feet, a cat. One-eared, and looking up at me. I want him to see for himself. See it plain.”
Zorelli rolled up his sheet of parchment.
“When it’s done,” said the ghost, “put it in a wagon and take the road to Rompoli, by night.”
The ghost set off.
“But wait!” cried Zorelli. “Where do I deliver it? And what of the payment? The other fifty ducats you promised!”
“I’ll meet you along the way,” said the spirit, and disappeared down the wharf.
Outside Zorelli’s door, sun followed storm. The trees dropped their leaves. Voices passed by. Of these, however, he remained unaware. The statue alone absorbed his attention.
All day and deep into the nights he labored, working by sunlight, then candles and lamps. He joyed in stretching his muscles again, exulted in swinging his ringing hammer. Streams of sweat ran down his throat as if he were stoking the sun’s own fires, and when he could work no more he fell into bed, exhausted and satisfied.
“What’s your opinion, Angelina?” the sculptor addressed his cat one day. He glanced from her to the cat he was carving. “A fine beginning, wouldn’t you say?”
Zorelli stepped back and studied the statue. The stocky form of the ghost had emerged, but the cat still lay hidden within the marble. The stone clung to the figure like a fog, and the sculptor reached for a chisel, took up his hammer, and returned to dispersing it.
“Tell me, Angelina,” said Zorelli. “Have you ever seen such a statue before?”
The cat remained still, asleep in the sun.
“Never!” replied Marta, looking on from the doorway.
She stepped into the studio and eyed the marble. “A statue — commissioned by a beggar in rags?”
Zorelli swallowed. “Marta, I assure you —”
“What then — a thief? Or a murderer, perhaps?” She smiled knowingly at her husband. “Do you take me for a fool? No such patron exists! Amusing yourself in marble, you are, and stealing the money you give me for food.”
“Marta, let me explain.”
“Explain?” She glared at the stone carver acidly. “All that I need to have explained is what possessed you to carve such a figure, and ruin a perfectly good block of marble!”
She swept out of the room, leaving the sculptor contemplating the statue and its subject.
Never, he mused, had he carved such a face. The barbarous mouth was that of a cutthroat. The eyes belonged to a hangman, or his prey. With each hammer blow he grew more afraid of the figure gradually being revealed.
And yet, Zorelli reminded himself, the man was acquainted with the wealthy Boccas, and the cultured Varentinos as well. And he certainly hadn’t lacked for money. Perhaps, he reasoned, all ghosts looked as grubby as this one — even the ghosts of the great.
He tried to drive the specter from his mind, picked up his hammer, and returned to work, musing on the power he possessed to fix the world’s memory on a man for the length of the life of stone. Pounding, scraping, sanding, polishing, he gloried afresh in his ability to rescue his
subjects from oblivion, securing for himself, parasitelike, a portion of their immortality.
Day by day the hammers became lighter, the chisels smaller, the files finer. Chipping gave way to grinding, then sanding, each tool removing the marks of its predecessor.
And then, one day, the statue was finished.
“Tell me, what do you think, Angelina?” Zorelli picked her up and approached the figure who held a cup to an infant, watched by a one-eared cat. “Come now, let me hear your opinion.”
Desperately, she jumped from his arms.
That afternoon the stone carver hired a pair of horses and a wagon, and with the help of three other brawny men loaded the statue into the back. When evening fell, he snapped the reins and headed down the road to Rompoli.
The night was still, the wintry air bare. The sky overhead was littered with stars. For an hour he drove among frost-stricken fields, wondering just where it was he was headed — when suddenly he sighted a shimmer ahead.
“Well met!” said the ghost, grinning as he approached the wagon. “You brought the statue, then?”
“There in the back.”
“Fine!” said the spirit. “Finally! Aye, a great relief it’ll be.”
He climbed aboard, glowing unreally, as if he were but a magician’s illusion.
“How much farther?” Zorelli asked.
“Oh, we’ve a bit of a ways,” said the spirit.
Zorelli gave the reins a shake, sharing none of his patron’s good cheer. He glanced at the ghost’s filthy attire and shuddered at the thought of how his patron must have stunk while he was alive. Even in stone such a man would draw flies. And yet, he claimed to have been of some importance. . . .
“You mentioned before your connection with the Boccas,” Zorelli spoke up hesitantly. “Engaged in the spice commerce, didn’t you say?”
“That’s right,” his companion answered back.
“Master of the countinghouse, were you? Or captain of a ship, perhaps?” The sculptor smiled hopefully.
“Not likely. The competition was my job.”
“The competition?”
“Right,” said the spirit. “Making sure no other pesky traders reached port with a load of pepper before us.” He reached absently for his missing ear. “And trying to stay alive in the bargain.”
Graven Images Page 5