by Lisa Rochon
“For example, I believe you need only travel to a woman’s bedroom,” he said, lifting his brush nonchalantly, “to witness one of His greatest miracles: the birth of a child.”
He needed to say this, to raise to the surface the awful thing.
Rising from the chair, she did a slow turn around the room, her gown brushing the wooden floor. He saw how she clenched her hands, how her face darkened, instantly stricken. They had both experienced loss. But he had buried his sorrow for a long time. Madonna Lisa reminded him what it was to feel pain.
“A miracle, yes, that is true,” she said slowly, her back rigid. The orange peels curled in her hand. “Or a nightmare. Women die in birthing beds. And babies, too, blue in the face when they are brought into the world.”
“Your child did not die at birth.”
“No, not at birth,” she whispered. “Piera was four years old. Her fever—her cheeks burned my fingers. She was limp and couldn’t breathe anymore.”
“And you have mourned the loss deeply.” He thought of a sonnet Dante had written: One day Melancholy came to me and said: “I want to stay with you awhile”; and it seemed to me she brought Sorrow and Wrath with her as companions.
“I was not fully aware of her condition.” Her face contorted for a second before she regained control. “Of anything, really.” And then the wretchedness came hurtling across her face. “I was real before I started playing a role—this—” she said, waving her hand toward the city. “Before marrying,” she clarified.
“Tell me the best memory of your childhood.”
“How could I? There are far too many!”
“Tell me a story, Madonna. I am all ears.”
She relaxed back into the chair, seemingly grateful for the way he had released her from the pain, and smiled. Finally, she spoke: “Allora . . . I would ride my horse through the hills near Caprese and my father would ride with me. Where the gnarled olive trees and terraced vines cut their shapely lines down the slopes and the cypresses point like feathers to the sky.”
“Away from the city.”
“Always. Our family—my grandfathers and great-grandfathers—owned much land, many manors in this area. Before they traded away their nobility and their claim to the land to become citizens of Florence. We liked to ride in the autumn, after the olive harvest. One afternoon the skies grew dark and the clouds curled into strange shapes. I remember they spread like juniper bushes in the sky. The wind picked up and the howling became so strong we could barely hear each other’s voices.”
“And were you frightened?” he asked, noting the shape of her body, its geometry, her torso ever so slightly twisted from the hips.
“We found refuge in a hunting lodge. It looked abandoned. We crawled in through a window and I made a fire for us in the hearth.” She inhaled deeply. “My father had dried boar in his sack. I fried our bread in garlic and lard, and we ate our fett’unta piled with the meat. He wrapped his gambeson around me and we slept there that night. That was when I felt the most love for my father. His name was Antonmaria.”
Leonardo nodded. My own father is dying, he thought. He had heard whispers in the marketplace: “The notary is unwell.” On his deathbed, a few streets away from this monastery. Had he ever felt love for his father, the way he did for his mother, who had likely ceased to exist long ago? His father had told him it was better to think of her as one of the unlucky peasant girls who died young, as was so often the way.
Against the shadows of the studio, he noted the skin of Lisa’s face; it shone immaculate and golden. Her body had become a lantern with a flame flickering inside. He crossed to her, gently moved her right shoulder to angle backward, then eased her chin in the opposite direction. Contrapposto. Interesting.
She settled into the position, rested her right hand atop the left. “I want to breathe again,” she said simply.
He nodded and waited patiently for her to go on.
“Eight years married to a man twice my age. Five children. My daughter Piera dead.”
He saw that she was speaking these words for the first time, pushing them out of her as if they were poison, something she needed to let go of, like judgment and shame.
Chapter 29
Suffering slowed her down. So did thinking about her suffering and how she wanted to stop thinking about it. She needed to escape her weary thoughts. Take an axe to the bark of a tree and hack away the hungry worms.
At the edge of Agnella’s village plot, Beatrice found solace in a thicket of red raspberries. In the evening, when the winds lifted and the sky deepened to a polished black, she would sit on the dirt and examine the shape of the leaves, the hoary thorns running the length of the stems. Imagining herself as a bee, she would taste the bitter white berries before hovering her mouth over the tender ripe ones, nipping them free with her teeth, allowing them to melt on her tongue.
Someday, when it was safe again to leave Agnella’s home in Settignano for Florence, when Pisan marauders finally tired of wrecking people’s homes, she would take a raspberry branch to Leonardo. “Something you might like to draw,” she would say to him, handing him the branch, with its difficult textures.
Agnella and Michelangelo had tried to heal her with soap and their easy banter. She liked being with them; she liked how they poured water into each other’s cups, and their gentle silences within the imperfect stone walls. From her corner piled with sheepskins, she took pleasure in watching Michelangelo, the breadth of his shoulders, the deep worry lines between his eyebrows.
One evening at dusk, the moon not yet visible in the sky, Agnella brought her a bowl of chicken soup. Crossing her legs, Beatrice took the broth and asked, “Can I have salt?” Michelangelo rose from his seat on the bench and delivered the pinch bowl to her. “Is there no bread to dip in my soup?” she complained. She was feeling petulant and wanted to test her friends to see how far she could push them before they would break. They ignored her and sat back down on the bench. “I liked myself better when I was younger,” she said, louder than was necessary. “Before the troubles. The Pisans. My father.”
“Hard times,” said Michelangelo, and she heard him shifting his weight, dragging his boots against the floor.
“Then my mother. I think I was thirteen when she left.”
“No longer a child,” he murmured, leaning over his drawings.
“That’s when my childhood ended,” said Beatrice, sighing deeply, quite aware that Agnella and Michelangelo were exchanging exasperated glances. Rising to her feet, she placed her soup bowl quietly on the wooden table. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s time. I would kick me out of here if I were you.”
Agnella’s irises flicked purple in the darkening room. “Let me tell you something, Beatrice,” she said. She sipped from her own bowl of soup. “Michelangelo and I do not agree on everything.”
“Dead right,” said Michelangelo. He scuffed his boots on the floor. “But we agree on certain things. One is, knock before coming into my studio.”
“The other is that it’s easy to get to know somebody’s lightness,” said Agnella. Michelangelo looked up from his drawing. “But it’s far more interesting to understand their darkness.”
“Without the darkness, my art would be dead,” said Michelangelo. He pointed a finger at Beatrice. “Same for yours.”
She felt the truth in his words, for she had already traveled more than once into deep sadness. “I think I’ll do some drawing,” she said, sidling up to the table and slowly arranging her skirts on the bench.
Michelangelo and Beatrice often sat at the end of the wooden table, hunched over their drawings. He had presented her with a quill pen that Agnella had cut from a goose feather, and shown her how to tip black ink into it. Although it was unspoken, he had become her artistic mentor. He was training her on drawing the folds of cloth wrapped around people or angels, something he insisted she master before moving on to figure drawing. She liked deepening the shadows by darkening the crosshatching with fine lines dra
wn with her new pen. He would lean over and borrow the quill to show her how to deepen or extend the strokes of a figure wrapped in drapery. When he returned the quill, he slipped it back between her fingers and closed them gently around its slender tip. They were divided by culture—he of a noble name, she of refugee parents—and separated by age, Michelangelo being nearly twelve years older. But his kindness, and his body, made her long badly for him, and she found herself staring at him while slowly caressing her neck with the white feather. If he looked up from his drawing, she would be forced to leave the table and go outside to throw rocks at the sky. This happened several times every day.
Agnella stood to clear their soup bowls. “You need to set aside some of your wildness,” she advised, scooping slop from the day’s meals into an iron pail for the hens.
“My wildness? It’s the warrior in me that keeps me alive.” Beatrice’s thoughts darkened, clouding with the faces of men preying on her in the piazzas of the city, touching her, clawing at her clothing.
“Your recklessness might have killed you many times over. It’s a wonder you’re still standing.”
“All those men who like to hate. They get to be the heroes and I have to cower.”
Agnella moved from the slop pail to grind olives into a paste. She threw some thyme into the mix and spread the black tapenade onto a slice of bread, still warm from the wood-burning fire.
Beatrice took the offering and bit into it, moaning loudly with pleasure. “I need a long cutting knife to defend myself,” she said through her stuffed mouth. Her eyes pleaded with Agnella. “Why not give me one? I need it more than I need your fancy clothes.” Agnella had found her a new guarnello to replace her ripped and faded dress, and had given her one of her own embroidered linen cloaks, retiring Beatrice’s old quilted gambeson to the cellar for safekeeping.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be less independent. These unsettled times demand it. Stay close to me or Michelangelo.”
“You think of me as a child.” And she turned away to pout, hunched over her drawing, shutting down further conversation.
* * *
She gave herself tests for walking out beyond the house, down the road, past the church, and back again to the safety of Agnella’s refuge. At first, that was all the courage she owned. Michelangelo accompanied her on the farther walks, nodding to the locals and asking about their families, their children, the rates for their stonework. Unbidden, he would hum a tune, singing a simple melody, usually the same one, with a sprinkling of words such as “La pietra serena brilla” or “La Madre e Il Bambino.” She could not believe they actually belonged to a song. More likely he was thinking about the sculpting that awaited him back in Florence. But his half-verbal songs were oddly comforting, and so she found herself humming along, singing the words a few seconds after he did.
One day, they scrambled through the dense oak forest, ferns and periwinkles grazing their legs, and descended to the riverbank so she could show him the clearing she loved, where she caught fish with her hands and admired the streaks of color reflecting from the stones. “Will you swim?” she asked, looking at him with a wicked half smile. Without answering, he dropped his clothes and, naked, walked into the river. She protested at first, erupting in nervous laughter, shocked that he had taken up her dare. But then she found herself standing naked next to him. Suddenly, she wanted everything she had repressed for days living together under the same roof. She wanted to explore his tongue and touch him the way she had the peasant boys, under cover of vines cascading from the trees. Nobody would know. Not even Agnella. She would take her chances with him, this man who liked her, who liked men, too.
Gripping his shoulders, feeling wonderfully, wildly, no longer like a child, she held steady against the current of the river and kissed him fully on the mouth. She felt his need, his hunger, liked the way he lifted her up against his pelvis as if to test their faith. The moment felt suspended in the air; they were both breathing hard, and they clung to each other, their naked bodies slick. But then his hardness went soft and she removed her mouth. They dressed on the bank of the river in awkward silence. Never again, she thought. She had seen him with the naked model behind the canvas curtain. He liked her to a point, but not the way he enjoyed other men.
They returned to Agnella’s and hid their intimacy—and their shame—by being extra helpful with the chores. She eyed them suspiciously, then looked at her bracelets and seemed to be muttering a long, repeating prayer.
“I am traveling to Florence in a few days,” she announced over dinner, looking from Michelangelo to Beatrice. “Work demands it and so does my pocketbook. I can take you with me.” She looked directly at Beatrice. “Now, let’s see to getting the knots out of your hair.”
* * *
So it was that weeks after discovering the charred mattress in her battered family home, Beatrice agreed to return to Florence. They rode together in the wagon, the three of them, Michelangelo jumping out near the Duomo while Agnella and Beatrice traveled on to the Convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli. Beatrice had sold jars of olive oil to the nuns before, and she knew that the women operated a celebrated printing press, the second to be started in Florence. Two Dominican brothers supervised, Agnella had told her, but all the talent rested with the women. “Their elegant stenti attracts a dedicated and sophisticated following,” she said, helping Beatrice down from the cart. “They set type for works by Plutarch, Plato, Augustine and Petrarch.”
Even with a heavy basket hoisted on her hip, Beatrice stopped to look over the convent. She felt as if she was seeing it for the first time. It was built of local stone, its oak doors the only interruption of texture in its broad, austere facade. She had never paid attention to that before. Maybe, she thought, buildings expressed rhythms the way musical compositions did. Next to the convent stood the Church of San Jacopo di Ripoli, a genteel work of architecture, welcoming to all, its three archways framing a generous portico. A large cobblestoned courtyard introduced the set piece of architecture like a magnificent carpet rolled out to the public. Seeing it all together, she felt a sense of calm come over her, and she was glad to be back within the glorious city.
Beatrice put a hand behind her back and waved Agnella away. She was an olive oil vendor, all business—no need for a chaperone. Her hair shone below her freshly made garland of olive leaves and pink roses.
A big woman with florid coloring greeted her at the front door of the convent. She was wearing a long linen gamurra dyed in a modest earthy brown. “Beatrice,” said Sister Francesca, the abbess, beaming a smile at her. “It has been a long time. Come in. Shut the door.”
“Abbess!” a voice called out from somewhere inside the convent.
“That will be Sister Camilla,” said the abbess. “We’re putting the final touches on Boccaccio’s Decameron.” She cast a glance heavenward. “Camilla is obsessively, compulsively detailed.” She looked again at Beatrice. “You have changed. I barely recognized you. You look fine today.”
Beatrice looked at the floor, feeling shy. She was suddenly pleased that her ragged guarnello and her father’s old jacket had been replaced by a linen dress dyed azzurro, the color of a clear blue sky. One of her hands rested on the pleats below her breasts. She caught the ribbon between her fingers, glad for its color, the pale yellow of parsnips.
“What treats have you brought us today?” asked the abbess.
“Lemons as sweet as oranges. Olive oil, apricot oil, lavender oil.” She gestured to the basket with her free hand. “I pressed them with my neighbor.” This meant Agnella. During their days together in Settignano, she had inspired Beatrice to offer more variety to her customers, and had shown her ways to perfume her olive oils.
Agnella had taught her something else: the difference between grieving and mourning. At least, Agnella saw a difference: “Grieving is a boat filled with water that’s about to sink. Always on the brink of tipping over.” Beatrice had been helping to feed the chickens, patting each one as they tottered forw
ard to eat kitchen scraps from the palm of her hand. She might have looked only half-interested, dipping her head to receive feathered tickles from the birds, but she was paying careful attention to the healer’s words. “Mourning is a boat that’s already overturned so that everybody can see the ruin. The people you trust can help right it again.”
“I will purchase one of each, Beatrice,” the abbess said now. “But come with me.” She motioned inside the convent. “Have you ever seen what we do here?”
Beatrice had not. She had never before been invited to. Perhaps a fresh change of clothing helped people improve on their kindness. She followed the woman into the dark corridor, with its polished terrazzo floors. The stone walls glowed with a scrubbed, soapy finish. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the sound of Sister Francesca’s long gamurra dragging on the stones. It was a relief to step inside, away from the smells of the city and the morning sun beating down on the cobbles.
From the far side of the printing room, the abbess and Beatrice watched Sister Camilla at work. Her hands floated above the metal letters, looking for signs of imperfection. She leaned closer, making delicate adjustments to the blocks set within a shallow bed of saffron-colored sawdust. Natural light from south-facing windows flooded the room. Two other nuns, grim-faced and sweating, held a large oiled sheet, the tympan, to weigh down the letters.
The abbess approached and leaned carefully over the iron hand press.
“Final approval?” whispered Sister Camilla.
“I’ve given you that three times already, Sister Camilla.”
“Yes, but the final approval is always the most painful.”
Sister Francesca peered intently at the work. A minute passed. Then another. Nobody spoke. A length of blond hair escaped from her cotton coif, and she pushed it away impatiently. Finally, she said, “Bless this, our humble offering lifted up to you.” She and the other nuns crossed themselves, kissed their fingers and swept their hands heavenward.