Twelve O'Clock Tales

by Felice Picano

  “Wishes have we none,” said the second, somewhat larger and brighter, garbed as though in palest silver. He looked upon her, Miriam thought, as a man looks upon a maid.

  “Strangers though you be, and exceeding beautiful, and bound as I am to hospitality, I must tell you that I am but a virgin, unwed, with no knowledge of mankind, and I cannot fulfill your desires.”

  “Desires of that kind have we none,” they said together. “Look upon us more carefully, Miriam.”

  Miriam looked more carefully as instructed, and now it seemed to her that the messengers were neither men, as she had first thought, nor women, as she secondly believed. And as she looked further she understood then that these strangers were not like her people who trod upon the ground, but of another, higher, order of beings, wafted by air.

  “Our need is but to speak to you, Miriam,” the first one said.

  “Messengers are we,” the second quickly added. “We bring you tidings of great joy!”

  “Surely, then, it is my mother, Anna, you seek,” she modestly replied, and turned, basket in hand, to go fetch her. “She whom you met before must be whom you seek again.”

  “Stay.” The messengers seemed to be before Miriam, though she’d not a second before turned to walk away from them. “Stay,” both repeated. “Sit here by us and hear what we have to say.”

  As he spoke he waved his hand toward her and she became as though asleep while awake, tranquil while alert, as though by strange enchantment.

  The messengers spoke not. Pictures, instead, saw Miriam then before her eyes, moving and flowing, not as in life exactly, nor as in a dream. She recognized her mother Anna, then as a maiden her own age now, meeting with these same strangers who were unchanged in age. She saw how they three encountered, stayed to speak, and how after speaking to Anna, how the messengers touched her belly with a wand of purest silver. As one messenger touched her, the other looked upon a small silver tablet that floated with numbers and words Miriam had never before seen, that flowed with them as a stream flows with water.

  Conference between the messengers took place then, and agreement, and once more Anna was touched in the belly with the wand, which this time glowed blue as the Sea of Galilee’s waters. Miriam’s mother, then still a girl, was told to go unto her house and speak to her mother of the farmer Jebu, whom she favored, and who favored her, and thereto arrange a wedding with the family of Jebu. For greatness now lay within Anna’s womb, placed therein by the messenger’s wand, to be seeded by Jebu alone, and to be extracted when the time was right.

  All this Miriam saw and understood, although the images flowed quickly and before her in the air freely, without wall or floor to back them up as did the images upon tesserae and muralae of the Greeks and Romans in their homes and temples in the cities of white stone that she had once seen. All this Miriam heard and understood, albeit the images were as insubstantial as the smoke from an incensed fire of thyme and rosemary.

  “You, Miriam, child,” spoke the first messenger aloud, “you yourself were the greatness that your mother Anna bore by the seed of Jebu. And as she bore you, so shall you bear even greater greatness.”

  Then Miriam anguished, for she was only a maid, the least of her siblings, whom they mocked for how their mother spoiled her and whom they chided for her uselessness in vineyards and fields, by virtue of her slenderness and her grace.

  Seeing her distress, the messengers spoke: “Fear not, Miriam. Blessed are thou among your sisters, and blessed will thou be among all the Daughters of Israel.”

  Then she was touched with the silver wand at her belly, and it glowed golden as the roof of the synagogue at Galilee and she felt calmed by its touch and was not afraid.

  “Blessed are thou doubly now, Miriam,” said one messenger.

  “And blessed now is thy womb,” said the second messenger. “For though a virgin, you will bear a child.”

  “Blessed will this child be, beyond all measure,” said the first messenger, “and among all women, will you be honored and revered.”

  “By this touch,” the second messenger said, “is the seed of our Lord implanted into your belly,” and he pointed upward, “Our Lord, whose residence is there, is thus given unto you alone, of all womankind.”

  “Bear and raise this child,” said the first messenger, “and be amazed by him, for he will not be as other children, but he will be as the sun dancing among the stars.”

  Miriam heard them and she was amazed, but also was wrought with sorrow.

  “Messengers!” she cried. “Assist me now, for there is nothing I would better wish than to raise the son of a great Lord. But surely the Laws will be against me for being a virgin giving birth. The wicked will mock me and the Pharisees condemn me and stone me as such.”

  “Fear not, Miriam,” said the first messenger. “For in the town of Galilee lives a man to whom we have appeared in dreams. He has agreed to take you in marriage.”

  “Know then that man is named Johosephat, and he is a carpenter, respected, and withal honored by his neighbors. Two days hence shall he come to your village and ask for your hand in marriage.”

  “But will this man not then become husband to me at the marriage night, so that I am no longer a virgin?” asked the girl, for such she had heard such from her sisters and their friends.

  “Fear not, elderly is he,” said the second messenger.

  “Elderly. Also unmoved by women’s beauty is he,” said the first messenger.

  “Beloved by mankind is he, and loving mankind alone,” said the second messenger.

  “Alone, among the Sons of Israel, this Johosephat shall be, helping to raise the son of our Lord in these heavens, exactly as our Lord desires.”

  “This our Lord has decreed,” they said together.

  “Long have we waited, long have we sought such a husband and father. None else will suffice if the son of our Lord is to become the man required.”

  “Then such a man shall be a welcome husband to me,” said Miriam, acquiescing, “as he shall be a welcome father to your Lord’s son. But…tell me of your Lord.”

  “This we cannot do. But we may tell you of the son you are to bear.”

  “Blessed shall he be among all men,” they intoned together.

  “And necessary, alas, for mankind has fallen into error and misrule and he is needed to correct them as a schoolmaster corrects a poor student, yet not with a rod, but with his teachings.”

  “Like his father above in these Heavens, his son shall love mankind.”

  “He shall become a Rebbe, and preach the love of men for each one another.”

  “He shall teach that wives are not chattels, that chattels are but meaningless. That peace and love rule the earth.”

  Then Miriam was filled with great joy.

  “But know you, Miriam, that when comes the thirtieth day of the third month of the thirtieth and third year after his birth, that your son shall return to his Lord father.” Both pointed heavenward: “For so it has been decreed.”

  “Fear not that day,” said the first messenger, “though it seem terrible!”

  “Fear not how the great events then unfold,” said the second messenger.

  “For they are mysterious. They are the work of our Lord, and of us, his Messengers upon this Earth of yours, and not to be understood yet.”

  And there was music about them and Miriam felt the love of the great Lord within and without her. And she rejoiced greatly.

  So the messengers moved aloft and entered their star and it was gone as though in a twinkling. Miriam returned to her home, with arms full of sweet and bitter greens, and she seemed to her mother much changed.

  Two days passed and a visitor arrived, gray bearded, with fine sandals of kid. His name was Johosephat, and he was a carpenter from the town on the sea, as decreed. Miriam’s father Jebu and her mother Anna gave him due hospitality, although he was but a cousin’s cousin. And all were taken by him immediately, as was Miriam, for he was gentle and given
to laughter.

  And so were they wed, old and young, and so did all take place as the Messengers from out of the Star had once decreed, and many years later, Miriam told this story to young Andrew, the last and dearest love of the son she had borne for the great Lord of the heavens. Andrew heard her words rapt and together they grieved the loss of her son so recently killed upon a tree, and yet they rejoiced his long presence among them.

  Then Miriam succumbed to the lot of all men and women, and Andrew, snowy haired with years, entombed her as befit a notable woman.

  Until he too passed on, Andrew could be seen wandering the vineyards of Jebu’s descendants, looking to the skies over the fields. Some said he awaited the coming of one more great star.

  Absolute Ebony

  On a hot and stifling Roman night in the middle of the fifth decade of our century of the Steam Engine, a desultory tête-à-tête between two markedly different Americans was enlivened by a sudden barrage of knocking and shouting several floors below at the level of the Via Ruspoli. The younger-seeming of the two men went to the wide ledge of the window and, peering down, reported that two rough contadini were attempting to gain admission to the pensione.

  “Leave them, William,” his friend replied, with the same torpor and indifference he had displayed during their reunion dinner—fragments of which now littered the uncovered trestle table in the large, gloomy dining chamber. “The housekeeper, good Antonia, will see to them.”

  “Shall I go, then?” William asked. “Would you like to rest?”

  “All I have is rest in this infernal city during this most dreadful summer. No. Stay. Your talk and natural high spirits bring me much comfort.”

  Although his companion had reason to doubt the exact veracity of these words, an acquaintance that extended some years back to their childhood across the ocean obliged him to remain.

  Even before William had set forth upon his European journey, he had known of his friend’s various misfortunes and the consequent disordered mental condition they had apparently imparted.

  A man in the prime of his life, Michaelis, as he called himself and was so known now, had been an artist of such extraordinary promise that a lifetime of the greatest renown and most elevated rewards had once appeared to be his natural birthright.

  As a lad, his talent in draftsmanship and the application of aquarelles had been so precocious as to attract the notice of the venerable Charles Wilson Peale. Under such tutelage, an inherent genius for the plastic arts was both nourished and coordinated. Upon the death of the old master, the young heir to his aesthetic mantle had but one course left open to him: Leaving the young Republic, he set off to conquer Italy, art capital of the world.

  Michaelis’s arrival in Rome a decade earlier had initially been embroidered with accolades no less ringing than in the land of his birth, as well as with patronage of the highest order. He worked long hours, fulfilling many commissions in the spacious fourth-floor apartments on the Caelian leased by an indigent Contessa who’d been driven by penury to reside with more prudence than style outside the city gates. Nor was the young artist’s life one only of labor, no matter that the toil was satisfying and conducive to earning others’ admiration.

  The handsome and confident youth was early sought out by representatives of the highest cultural circles the capital could offer: not only painters and sculptors, but poets, musicians, and eventually scientists and philosophers of great lore and subtlety and abstruseness. From these intellects, Michaelis had learned the rarefied art of exploring the ideal; and from their examples, he had conceived a new possibility: that of useful relationships between the ideal and his own, entirely material work.

  There were lighter matters to counterbalance such sobriety in the young man’s life: teas, salons, dinner parties, balls, riding out on the Campagna every fair day; churches with frescoes to be copied and studied, palazzos with paintings to be inspected. Nor was the fair sex absent or indifferent to Michaelis. Several ladies of varying age, rank, and nationality had secretly given their hearts to the dashing artist upon the first or second meeting. In turn, Michaelis had selected his lady from among the four handsome daughters of the Anglican minister, unofficial director of the English-speaking community in the Italian city.

  Because the young woman, although apparently sensible and reciprocal in her regard of the artist, was below the age of consent at the time of their first meeting, more than six years would pass before their engagement could be consummated. When at last they did wed, Michaelis’s happiness was unsurpassed. He had recently completed the commission of a large mural for the reception chamber of one of the most powerful prelates of the Roman church. His work was never in such favor, in greater demand. His fame and that of his colleagues and circle of friends spanned the Continent. And his Charlotte was the flower of his existence.

  Such extreme content was to last but eight months. During a trip to the Campagna, the Signora Michaelis was suddenly taken with a fever. Fragile by constitution, she succumbed within a fortnight.

  As was to be expected, Michaelis was utterly distraught. His great disappointment in Charlotte’s death caused a melancholia that only deepened long after the natural period of mourning had been protracted. His clerical father-in-law of so short a duration listened with growing anxiety but was able to offer little real balm to the young artist, who set out to lay blame for his romantic misadventure with a liberal trowel, involving not only human but also superhuman personalities. Once the minister had been exposed to Michaelis’s more bitter imprecations, he found the artist to be dangerously heretical.

  One year passed, then another, and Michaelis found himself still unable to renew his previous connections, or, more important, to return to that labor which had once been the very mainspring of his life. Previously esteemed for his flights of fancy and unforced humor, he was shunned now by friends for the various perorations of gloom he evinced at the least provocation. Former companions fell away, visited infrequently—solely as a duty.

  At one time the joy of all who beheld it because of its bright, noble evocation of youth and hopefulness, Michaelis’s painting too underwent a transformation consonant with his much altered sensibility. He began to espouse a new theory of art: that color itself was an aberration of the senses, a snare, and an illusion. He declared that all colors ought to be resolved into a more coherent system. Studying earlier theoreticians of chromatics, Michaelis found that half-truths and errors constituted the greater part of their writings. Finally, and by some never adequately explicated chain of reasoning, he declared that only by a subtle, yet complete, mixture of the chromatic scale would color be true both to the mind and to the senses.

  When he picked up his brushes and palette again, at last, his tints began to darken, his hues became scarcely distinguishable from each other; reds diminished to deep indigoes, brilliant cobalts became muddied midnight navies. His skills were as evident as before—indeed intensified, more discriminating colleagues attested. But few sitters wanted portraits so dark, so evidently color-saturated that a brace of candelabra were needed to illuminate even the penumbral foreground, and where details of feature and attitude were as transitory to the viewer’s eye as a taper’s flicker in a dungeon.

  Baffled patrons soon began to eschew his studio. Patronage dwindled. Michaelis’s once brilliant renown was distorted into that of an eccentric, or worse: a fraud. That his new work was mocked and scorned only confirmed his private belief that he had discovered the long-hidden truth of art. He applied himself with renewed vigor to elaborating the darkening of his palette, the complex obscurity of his vision. Bitterness and poverty soon seeped into and throughout his existence. Voluntary seclusion, loneliness, and desolation of any joy in human activity coarsened his courtesy. Mistrust, misanthropy, and a growing sense of the growing enmity about him soon silenced him.

  Thus had William found his friend, and thus Michaelis remained throughout his visit, despite all efforts to rouse him and elevate his spirits by the re
collection of shared youthful joys and follies. Nor was William persuasive in suggesting alternative courses of action to a future even Michaelis himself now could foresee as one of deepening decline. The American pleaded for his friend to return with him to the less somber environs of their mother commonwealth, and to the more wholesome memories and occupations the voyage home would surely entail. But the painter could not entertain the idea of leaving the locale of his greatest happiness—and of his most utter devastation.

  Sadly, William acquiesced, again scanning the haggard appearance of his friend, which once had bloomed so vigorously, as though he too were an artist and wished to memorize each cruelly imposed new distortion of feature for a future portraiture.

  Michaelis’s continued silence and his companion’s own resultant silence became suddenly intolerable. William had just stood back from the table to signal his intention to depart, when there was a knocking on the apartment doors, which, while less clattering than that earlier heard, had a more portentous resonance due to the echoing of the high-ceilinged rooms.

  His host bade William stay a minute more while he answered the summons. From the outer corridor, William heard the housekeeper’s rapid sputter of Italian, followed by his friend’s morose accents in that same tongue, soon intertwined with another lighter voice, speaking in a dialect of the language.

  Michaelis reentered the room with an astonishing alteration of demeanor, and energetically gesturing, he ushered inside the two grimy contadini William had early seen without. They gazed about them with hesitancy and awe at the apartment’s size and elegance, for even in his squalor, the artist remained a great man. The artist, meanwhile, cleared half the table and asked the men to set their parcel down and open it.

  When the moldy cloths had been flaked off and the peasants served flagons of wine, Michaelis touched and fondled a rough stone-like object, the size and shape of a three-pound loaf of freshly baked bread.

  William was as perplexed by his friend’s sudden transformation of mood—hectic, ruddy, enthusiastic—as he was by the object itself.