“Did he look at it?”
“Not while I was there.”
“I hope he’s not too suspicious.”
Sandro shrugged. “What does he know for sure? That the nuns found a book of dirty pictures, that’s all. A book that you read—how do the French say it—with one hand.”
“Do you think he’ll read it with one hand?”
Sandro laughed. “I’d rather not picture it.”
*
This worry out of the way, I set to work. I’d already made out my worksheet:
Sonetti lussuriosi di Pietro Aretino. Roma, 1525.
Owner: Convento di Santa Caterina Nuova.
Provenance: Shelf number on flyleaf indicates that the book
is from the library of Cosimo I at Certaldo, which
supplied the bulk of the volumes brought to Santa
Maria Teresa Nuova by Lucia de’ Medici as part of her
dowry. No similar markings on the prayer book with
which it was bound
Description: Bound together with the Preghiere cristiane preparate da Contessa Giuliana di Montepulciano, Venezia, 1644.
8vo, 120 X 18.5 X 22mm, slightly out of square
16 engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi
Embroidered textile binding; velvet covering fabric
(embroidered with metal thread in four different
configurations) has suffered irreparable water damage
Beech boards (1.5mm thick), badly warped, broken at
corners; All sewing cords broken
Paper of good quality, external pressure on book kept water
out of the center of the text block, needs thorough
cleaning, mending needed on several signatures
The Aretino volume consists of two signatures only, on
good quality Venetian paper. The Preghiere cristiane
consists of 14 signatures, A-N6. The pagination of the
third signature is irregular (the compositor evidently
placed the sheet upside down in the press before it was
folded).
Notes: The following calculation appears on the recto of
the first leaf:
Per scudi tre d’oro22:4
Per altre10
Per altr[e]49
Per grandoppia di Spagna14:16
Several notes in pale brown ink, some indicating
approval (posa belltssima, bella comp[arazion]e);
others noting similarities to other drawings and
paintings.
Ink sidelinings by some of the sonnets (black ink)
Binder: unknown
End leaves: one plus pastedown at beginning; two plus pastedown at end. Watermark: a large free fleur-de-lys.
Treatment:
remove text block from cover (completed)
remove boards and lining papers (completed)
remove endpapers (completed)
clean entire volume
wash
repair tears in second and third signatures and on final two signatures (Aretino)
recover original boards (w.?)
finishing?
The decision to bind the two books together again was a difficult one. There was no intrinsic reason to do so, and yet the yoking together of such unlikely bedfellows, from different historical periods, appealed to me for two reasons: First, the fact that they had been bound together was not a simple accident, it was an integral part of the book’s history; and second, the fact of the conjunction seemed to me to embody the central paradox of the human condition. Who was I to terminate such a longstanding union of spirit and flesh? I suppose there was a third reason, too: aesthetically the result would be more pleasing, for the Aretino by itself was only thirty-two pages, more like a pamphlet than a book.
On Christmas Eve a great crowd gathered in the piazza, like the crowds that once gathered to hear the great medieval preachers or to see the jousting tournaments put on by the Medici, presided over by the beautiful Simonetta, who was the inspiration for Botticelli’s most beautiful figures, and in fact for a whole new type of female beauty. Sandro and I watched the festivities from the window of his apartment. At ten o’clock the pope appeared, in a closed car. He addressed the crowd briefly and then proceeded to the Duomo, where he was going to celebrate midnight mass for the alluvionati, the victims of the flood. In a little while the crowd thinned out, and we went out for a hamburger at a fast-food restaurant, behind the central market, which had just reopened. Sandro had invested a lot of money in this restaurant, so we didn’t have to pay for our meal, and it was nice to have an ‘amburger con tutti.
On Christmas morning we opened our presents—a scarf and a new wallet for Sandro, jade earrings and a necklace for me—and then wandered around the city. European cities really know how to close down. Stores, bakeries, delicatessens, butcher shops, restaurants are all covered by solid metal grates like garage doors. Familiar streets take on a strange, guarded look.
The Italians have a saying that hit home as we wandered around the empty city: Natale con i tuoi e Pasqua con chi vuoi, Christmas with your family, Easter with whomever you want. I suddenly wanted to call home, where Christmas was going on without me, so we went to the post office. I was a little apprehensive because I hadn’t written to Papa, except for one postcard, and I hadn’t called either. But then, I’d been planning to be home for Christmas, so there hadn’t been much point in writing.
I told the girl at the counter that I wanted to call the United States, gave her the number, waited in a glass booth for her to put the call through. There are time clocks on the wall with the numbers of the booths on them so you can keep track of how long you’ve been talking. Sandro chatted with the girl for a bit and then stepped into one of the booths himself.
When I heard Papa’s voice I started to choke up a little.
“Hello?” he said. “Hello? Hello? Margot, is that you?”
“Papa, it’s me.”
“Are you all right?”
“Oh, Papa, I’m so happy. I’m in love, really in love. Head over heels. Can you hear me all right? I don’t want to say it too loud.”
“Where are you?”
“At the post office.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning here. Why? What time is it there?”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“Oh Papa, I thought it would be afternoon. Is it Christmas yet?”
“It’s still Christmas Eve. I’m filling the stockings. I gave yours to Molly’s boyfriend. His name’s Tejinder and he’s from the Punjab. He’s a Sikh and he wears a turban.”
“Do you like him?”
“He seems like a nice guy.”
“Did you get my card?” I’d sent him a card of the Martini Annunciation.
“It’s on the refrigerator.” There was a pause. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
“He’s an Italian.”
“Married?”
“No, Papa. Well, yes, but he’s getting a divorce. He’s from the Abruzzi. He’s the head restorer for the whole region of Tuscany. He’s working on the frescoes in the Lodovici Chapel in the Badia. You remember the Badia? The monastery, where they had the foosball game in the cloister? It’s still there.”
“I remember the foosball game, but that’s about all.”
I could see him sitting at the kitchen table, filling the big red stockings with raisins and dried apricots and paper clips and rubber bands and ballpoint pens and nonsense toys.
“What are your plans? I mean, are you coming home or what?”
“We’re going to the Abruzzi at the end of January to see Sandro’s parents, and then to Rome.”
“Have you written to your boss at the Newberry? He call
ed here the other day. He’s been back for a while, and, to tell you the truth, I don’t think you’ve got a job anymore.”
“Listen, Papa. I’m working on a really important book here, it’s a wonderful opportunity professionally, really. I’d never forgive myself if I passed it up.”
Another pause. “I thought you couldn’t get a divorce in Italy?”
“It’s an annulment. It’s the same thing. You’ll see. Don’t worry, Papa, I’m all right, I’m fine. I’ll write to you, Papa, I really will. I have to go now.”
“I’m thinking of putting the house up for sale.”
“The house? Our house?” Sandro had finished his call. I could see him talking to the girl at the counter. “Where will you live?”
“I might go to Texas,” he said. “Raise avocados.”
“Have you talked it over with Meg and Molly?”
“Sort of. But it didn’t come clear to me till tonight. Maybe it’s time to move on. Try something else.”
I had to resist an impulse to scold him. “Do you know anybody in Texas?”
“Some of the growers, some of the shippers. I’ve done business with them for years over the phone.”
“Well, Papa, I don’t know what to say. I’m pretty amazed.”
“You don’t need to say anything. We’ll just see what happens.”
“I’ve got to go. Take care of yourself, Papa.”
“You take care of yourself, too.”
“Papa, I love you. Tell everyone I love them. The dogs, too.”
“They miss you. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Papa. Good-bye.”
When I got out of the booth, Sandro was on the phone again. I was so preoccupied with Papa’s news that it didn’t occur to me till we went to bed that night that I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t gone home for Christmas.
Except for the finishing, there was nothing I couldn’t do, with my own tools and a little Yankee ingenuity, right in Sandro’s apartment. I rigged up my own sewing frame and sent Sandro to Santa Caterina to collect a small nipping press. I told him to say that Signor Cecchi, the binder in Prato who had been so generous, needed it back. The nipping press would have to double as a backing press. Backing boards, thread, leather—a piece of gorgeous dark red morocco—and glue I was able to find in Florence.
If I were to describe an ideal day, it would be this: up early, out for fresh bread and fruit, drink caffelatte with Sandro, boiled egg for me, say good-bye to Sandro; work on the Aretino until noon (wash and clean every page, mend every tear, pare down leather), salami and cheese and pane toscano for lunch, with maybe a small glass of Chianti; lie down on my back for an hour and relax till my mind becomes perfectly calm, like the smooth surface of a pond, so that it can reflect the divine radiance (I picked up this idea in Santa Caterina); resume work; take a long walk with no destination in mind; sit on orange crate by window and watch piazza till Sandro comes home; mess around, go out to dinner, talk about the day’s work, come home, mess around some more, read, sleep.
I stuck to this routine, more or less, till the middle of January, when it was time to finish the Aretino, which I was going to do in Signor Cecchi’s workshop in Prato. On my walks I sometimes visited Sandro at the Pitti Palace where damaged paintings—many of them bandaged up—were laid out in the Limonaia like patients in a hospital ward, or at the Badia, where preparations were under way for detaching the frescoes from the wall of the Lodovici Chapel, an operation called a strappo. Sometimes I walked up to Piazzale Michelangelo, and sometimes I took the bus up to Fiesole and took my favorite walk to Settignano, where I’d stop at the Casa del Popolo for a glass of wine before taking the bus down to the city. Home. I was a cittadina, remember?
I persuaded Signor Cecchi to let me use the gold-tooling equipment that I would need to finish the binding. These tools are both delicate and expensive, and normally I would no more have asked him if I could use them than I would have asked him if I could use his toothbrush. But when I explained the circumstances and showed him the book, he understood perfectly and even offered to do the work himself, gratis. Perhaps that would have been the sensible thing to do. He’d had much more experience than I, and he showed me some examples of his work that were strikingly beautiful. But I wanted to do it myself. He understood this, too, and promised to assist me in any way he could.
His workshop was beautiful. His tools were beautiful and absolutely clean, his brass typefaces were of the highest quality, and the gold he used was deep XX, which is superior to the more commonly used red or green gold. I settled on a design that featured a few simple ornaments.
The morocco I selected had a prominent grained surface, and I spent a morning polishing it with a warm polishing iron, smoothing out all the irregularities. In the afternoon Signor Cecchi helped me select the type and set it up in pallets: I preghiere cristiane preparate da Santa Giuliana di Arezzo. After much agonizing I had decided to use Preghiere cristiane rather than Sonetti lussuriosi for the title on the spine.
The aesthetic problem I’d set myself was to incorporate the curve of the Santa Trinità bridge into the design of the front cover, but as Signor Cecchi pointed out, because of the limitations of the tools, long curves like the ones I had in mind tend to look thin and weak unless properly supported. We settled at last on two rectangles, one enclosing the other, surmounted by four of the Michelangelesque curves, one on each side, with simple floral ornaments at the four corners. There was a technical problem, too. The curve is a complex one. When the bridge was rebuilt after the war—it had been blown up by the Nazis—the engineers could not find a formula to express the curve mathematically, and I wasn’t having much luck figuring out how to express it with finishing tools either. But Signor Cecchi came up with the solution. I would have to use a very small fillet—a tool not unlike the wheel used to cut a pizza into slices or to trace the design on a dress pattern onto the fabric—to describe the long, flat part of the curve, and then finish off each end, where the curve starts to curl in on itself like a spring, with two separate gouges, which are bronze tools designed to stamp out different-size arcs.
On Monday the sixteenth of January I did the blind tooling, that is, I marked up the cover of the book using a bone folder for the straight lines and a paper pattern for the curves and the ornaments. Then I blinded the design into the leather with heated tools. I’d been practicing the curves for several days on some scrap leather and was feeling confident, but I proceeded slowly and cautiously nonetheless—because I was afraid of burning the leather—and probably took four hours to do what Signor Cecchi might have done in thirty minutes.
I washed the cover in vinegar and set it aside to dry. Everything had gone well—the lines had gone down where I wanted them to go, and I hadn’t burned or cut the leather—but I was exhausted from concentrating so hard, and I was nervous about the gold, too nervous to eat the sandwich that Signora Cecchi brought for me. I mixed up a batch of fresh glair from egg whites and vinegar and put it aside to settle while the book dried. It was the gold work that would reveal, to the trained eye, the difference between the amateur and the professional craftsman; it was the gold work that would justify (or expose) the risks I’d taken in binding the book myself, and especially the risk posed by the Santa Trinita curve. I was beginning to think I should have been satisfied with a simple diaper, a small repeating overall pattern, that is. But by the time I reached this point in my thoughts, it was too late, for the book was almost but not quite dry: time to begin.
I used a very fine brush to paint the design with a thin coat of glair, let it dry, and applied a second coat.
Signor Cecchi returned from his lunch and came to have a look. Unlike some of the teachers I’d had in the past, he didn’t make me feel self-conscious about every move I made. He was more like an insurance policy than a teacher, more like a safety net.
He closed and locked the doors to the workshop
and stopped up the cracks under the doors with strips of foam rubber cut to size. When you’re working with gold leaf there must be absolutely no drafts whatsoever.
I rubbed some Bath brick into the gold cushion to make it easier to cut the gold cleanly; then I rubbed both sides of the gold knife on the cushion. The knife must be absolutely free of grease or the gold will stick to it. My guess was that the blade of Signor Cecchi’s knife had never been touched by human hands.
I opened the book of gold—double-thick pure gold—slipped the blade of the knife under a leaf and turned it over onto the cushion. I blew on it lightly, in the center, and it detached itself from the blade and settled flat on the cushion, where I cut it into the thin strips that would be laid over lines of the design. I dabbed a small piece of cotton in a smear of coconut oil and rubbed it over the surface of the design and then over the back of the middle finger of my left hand. I picked up the first piece of gold with the back of my finger—the gold sticks to the grease—held it over the straight line at the top of the cover and blew lightly. The gold settled into place on the cover, directly over the line. I did the same with the second and third pieces. The fourth piece cracked, and Signor Cecchi told me to put a second thickness directly over it.
By the time I had half the pattern covered I was exhilarated. It was as if I could will the gold into place almost without touching it.
When the entire design was covered I used a clean piece of cotton to press the gold down firmly into the grooves of the blind tooling. I went over the entire surface several times until I could feel each line clearly and distinctly beneath my fingertips.
Signor Cecchi had lit the finishing stove, but the stamping tools weren’t hot enough yet, so I had a little break. I told myself that I’d worked with gold before and that nothing I did could do real damage to the book, but I desperately wanted to get it right. I didn’t want any blurred impressions. I didn’t want the gold to flake because the tools hadn’t been hot enough, or to have a frosted look because they’d been too hot or because I’d pushed down too hard or too long. And above all I wanted the long graceful curves to look like long graceful curves, not a bunch of separate curves that had been cobbled together.
The Sixteen Pleasures Page 18