You came, he said.
Apart from the strange outfit, it was him. A track suit, of the type he never wore. His hair short, but still the monk’s beard. A little heavier, it seemed, absurdly.
I had to ask him what had happened—not in the car or with Andre, it wasn’t important. What had happened to us. I knew, but not with his words, his certainty. I wanted him to remind me why that horror.
It’s not a horror, he said.
He asked if I had received his letter. The letter he had sent after Luca’s death. I hadn’t even opened it, but then later I had. It had made me angry. It wasn’t even a letter. There was just the photograph of a painting.
You sent me a Madonna, Saint, what am I to make of a Madonna?
He muttered something, nervously. Then he said that in fact he should have explained to me carefully, but he hadn’t had time, in those days too many things were happening. He asked if I had kept it anyway, or what.
What do I know.
Do me a favor, look for it, he said. If you don’t find it, I’ll send it to you again.
I promised I would look for it.
He seemed relieved. He didn’t think he could really explain, without that Madonna. I found it at Andre’s, he said, in a book. But I didn’t even try to explain to her, he added, you know how she is.
I didn’t say anything.
You talked to her? he asked.
Yes.
What does she say?
She doesn’t believe it was you. No one believes it.
He made a vague gesture in the air.
I added that Andre was in the clinic when I spoke to her, and she was sorry because she would have liked to visit him, but she couldn’t.
He nodded yes.
Do you want me to tell her something?
No, said the Saint. Let it go. He thought for a little. Rather, tell her that I—but then he said nothing. That it’s all right like this, he added.
I couldn’t swear, but his voice broke slightly, along with a nervous gesture, his hand suddenly raised.
About the child—not even a word.
There was a set time limit for those conversations, and a guard whose job was to make sure it was obeyed. Strange job.
So we began to talk fast—as if pursued. I told him I didn’t know where to begin again—and that everything ripped by them I would now mend, but with what thread? I wondered what had survived that sudden acceleration of our slowness, and he understood that I couldn’t choose the actions, not remembering anymore which were ours and which theirs. Quickly I told him about the larvae, but also about the silence in the churches, and the pages of the Gospels I had leafed through, looking for the one for myself. I asked him if he ever had doubts that we had dared too much, without having the humility to wait—and if there was a step, in building the Kingdom, that we hadn’t understood. I looked in him for a nostalgia that I felt.
Then I said everything in one sentence.
I liked it before—before Andre.
The Saint smiled.
He explained to me then in his most beautiful voice—he’s an old man, in that voice. He told me the names, and the geometries.
Every footstep, and the whole road.
Until the guard took a step forward and communicated that it was time—but not meanly. Neutral.
I got up, put the chair back.
We said goodbye, a gesture and something whispered softly.
Then turned away, without looking back.
His certainty stayed in my mind—it’s not a horror.
What is it, then—I thought.
To get the Madonna in the envelope, the Saint had folded it in four, but neatly, the edges lined up.
It’s the page of a book, a big glossy art book. On one side there’s just text, on the other the Madonna—with the Child. It’s important to say that a single glance can take her in entirely—a letter of the alphabet. Even though the distinct things that figure in the painting are many—mouth, hands, eyes—and two things more distinct than the others: mother and child. But melded in an image that is clearly one, and alone. In the surrounding blackness.
She is a virgin—this should be remembered.
The virginity of the mother of Jesus is a dogma, established by the Council of Constantinople in 553, so it’s a matter of faith. In particular, the Catholic Church, hence we, believes that the virginity of Mary is to be considered perpetual—that is, in effect before, during, and after the birth. So this painting portrays a virgin mother and her child.
It should be said that it does so as if an infinite number of virgin mothers of an infinite number of children had been called there, from the far places where they dwelled, to meet in a single possibility, oblivious of negligible differences and singularities—called to a unique existence, of summarizing intensity. Every virgin mother and every child, therefore—this, too, is important. In a sweet gesture of the Madonna, for example, is gathered the whole memory of every maternal sweetness—she inclines her head to one side, her temple touches that of the Child, life passes, the blood pulses.
The Child’s eyes are closed and his mouth is open—agony, prophecy of death, or simply hunger. The Virgin Mother holds his chin with two fingers—a frame. The Child’s swaddling is white, the robe of the Virgin Mother crimson—her veil black, falling over both of them.
The absence of movement is total. There is no weight that must fall, no fold halted in some loosening, no gesture to bring to an end. There is no stopping of time, it’s not the gap between a before and an after—it’s always.
On the face of the Virgin Mother an unseen hand has pushed away every possible expression, leaving a sign that means only itself.
An icon.
If you stare at her for a long time, by degrees your gaze descends, following a path that seems obligatory—like a hypnosis. So every detail comes apart, and in the end the pupil is no longer moving, as it looks, but remains fixed on a single point, where it sees everything—the entire painting and all the worlds assembled in it.
That point is where the eyes are. On the face of the Madonna, the eyes. It was a standard of beauty that they should express nothing. Empty—they do not look, in fact, but are made to receive the look. They are the blind heart of the world.
How much mastery is needed to obtain all that. How many errors before reaching that perfection. For generations they passed down the work, without ever losing confidence in knowing how to do it, sooner or later. What urgency drove them, why so much care? What promise were they keeping? What was to be saved, for the sons of the sons, in the work of their hands?
The ambition that we learned—that’s what. A secret message, hidden in the back of worship and doctrine. The memory of a Virgin Mother. Impossible divinity in whom lay, calmly, all that they knew in human experience as torment and rift. In her they worshipped the idea that in a single beauty every contrary could be reassembled, and all the opposites. They knew that in the sacred one learns this: the hidden unity of extremes, and the capacity we have to call it up in a single perfect gesture—be it a painting or an entire life. Virgin and mother—they came to imagine her as repose, and perfection. They were not appeased until they saw her, produced by their mastery.
So the promise was kept, and the sons of the sons received in inheritance courage and folly. More than any moral inclination, and in a reversal of all the doctrines, what we received from our religious education was a formal model—a model obsessively repeated in the violence of the images that told us the good news. The same mad unity of the Virgin Mother lies in the ecstasy of the martyrs, and in every apocalypse that is the beginning of time, and in the mystery of the demons, who were angels. At its holiest, and most treacherous, it lies in our ultimate and definitive icon, that of Christ nailed to the cross—the reassembling of dizzying extremes, Father Son Holy Ghost, in a single body, which is God and is not him. We have made a fetish of a logical contradiction—we are the only ones who worship a dead god. And then how could we not learn, ab
ove all, this capacity for the impossible—and the ambition to close any gap? So, while they were teaching us the straight way, we were already spider webs of paths, and everywhere was our goal.
They did not tell us that it was so difficult. So we draw imperfect Madonnas, surprised not to find at the end those empty eyes—but sorrow and remorse instead. That’s why we’re wounded, and we die. But it’s only a question of patience. Of practice.
The Saint says it’s like the fingers of a hand. It’s just a matter of closing them slowly, with the force of a gentle grip—even if we had to put there an entire life. He says that we mustn’t be frightened, and that if we are everything, that is our beauty, not our sickness. It’s the reverse of horror.
He also says that there wasn’t a before Andre, because we were always like that. Therefore no nostalgia is due us, nor do we have available a way to go back.
He says that nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. So I returned to the actions I knew, finding them again, one by one. Last, I wanted to go to church, on Sunday, to play. There were other boys by now, a new band—the priest couldn’t do without, so he had replaced us. They were young, and didn’t have a history, if I can put it like that—there was perhaps one of them, on keyboards, who was any good. The others were boys. Anyway, I asked if I could join, with my guitar, and they were honored. It should be said that when they were thirteen they came to Mass to hear us—so you can understand the situation. One of them even tried, with his hair and beard, to look like the Saint. He was the drummer. Finally I sat there, slightly in the background, with my guitar, and did what I had to do. They wanted me to sing, but I let them understand that no, I wouldn’t sing. Being there and playing—nothing else mattered to me.
But I hadn’t played two chords of the entrance song when I felt everything rushing at me—how ridiculous my being there was, and how remote any sense of coming home. I was so old, there in the midst—in age, of course, but above all in lost innocence. I was able to hide behind the others; there was only me. The parents, from the pews, and the little brothers looked for me with their eyes, they wanted to see the survivor—and in me the dark shadow of my lost friends. It didn’t bother me, I had sought it, maybe I wanted just that, I didn’t want anything hidden anymore. It seemed to me that bringing everything to the surface was the first thing to do. So I let myself be looked at—I took it as a humiliation, sincerely there was no narcissism or any form of attention seeking, I experienced it as a humiliation, and to be humiliated like that, without violence, was what I wanted.
At one point the priest managed to mention that I had returned and that the whole community welcomed me, with joyful hearts. Many in the pews nodded yes, and squandered smiles, a happy murmur—all eyes on me. I did nothing. I was only afraid that applause would break out. But it should be said that these are polite people, who know the limits of what is appropriate—an art that is being lost.
Immediately afterward I was staring at the priest’s hair, during the sermon, and for the first time realized how it was combed. I should have noticed years ago, but in fact only that day did I really see it. Left long on one side, and combed over the other side of his head, covering the bald spots. So the part, where the hair divided, was ridiculous and low, almost just above the ear. The hair was fair, and combed with the necessary care. Maybe with a gel. Under it, the priest was talking about the mystery of the Immaculate Conception.
Nobody knows this, but the Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with the virginity of Mary. It means that Mary conceived without original sin. Sex has nothing to do with it. And I wondered what importance your hair could have, if you live with the prospect of eternal life, and the building of the Kingdom. How was it possible to waste time on things like that—he must have used a kind of hair spray, he must have gone out one day to buy it.
Because I hadn’t even learned mercy, or the talent of understanding, from our experiences. Pity for what we are, all of us.
I took advantage of the sermon—that priest was hypnotizing them, I began watching the faces, in the pews, now that they were no longer staring at me. So many people I hadn’t seen for a long time. Then, in one of the back pews, first I thought I was mistaken, but it really was her, Andre, sitting in the last seat next to the aisle—she was listening, but looking around, curious.
Maybe it wasn’t even the first time she had come.
I hated her now, because I continued to think that she was at the origin of many of our troubles, but undoubtedly at that moment I felt only that in the midst of so many strangers there was someone from my land, so far had the boundaries of my feeling shifted. However absurd, it seemed to me that on that strange raft there was also, then, one of my people—and the instinct to stay close.
But it was a moment.
So, when the Mass was over, I gave her time to leave. I said goodbye to the boys and went to the first pew, knelt down, and prayed, my face in my hands, elbows resting on the wood. It was something I had done often, before. I liked hearing the sounds of the people draining away, yet without seeing them. And finding a point inside myself.
I got up, finally, the velvety movements of the altar boys who were tidying the altar remained.
I turned and Andre was still there, sitting in her place—the church almost empty. I understood then that the story wasn’t over.
I made the sign of the cross and began to go down the aisle between the pews, my back to the altar. Reaching Andre, I stopped and greeted her. She moved over a little on the bench, leaving me room. I sat beside her.
Yet I was brought up to an obstinate resistance, which considers life a noble obligation, to discharge in dignity and fullness. They gave me strength and character, for this, and the legacy of their every sadness, so that I would store it up. Thus it’s clear to me that I will never die—except in fleeting acts and forgettable moments. Nor do I doubt that my going will be revealed as sharper than any fear.
And so it will be.
ALESSANDRO BARICCO is a writer, director, and performer. He has won the Prix Médicis Étranger in France and the Selezione Campiello, Viareggio, and Palazzo al Bosco prizes in Italy.
ANN GOLDSTEIN is an editor at the New Yorker. She has translated works by Primo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alessandro Baricco, Elena Ferrante, among others, and is currently editing the Complete Works of Primo Levi in English. She has been the recipient of several prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN Renato Poggioli prize, and an award from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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