Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

by Mathias Enard

  tell them of battles,

  kings, and elephants

  also by mathias énard

  COMPASS

  Copyright © 2010 by Mathias Énard

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Charlotte Mandell

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Originally published in French as Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d’éléphants by Actes Sud in 2010

  Published by arrangement with the French Publishers’ Agency

  The drawing by Michelangelo on p. 6 is from the Archivio Buonarroti, copyright © 2018 Associazione MetaMorfosi, Rome.

  The drawing on pp. 134–135 is by Pierre Marquès, copyright © Pierre Marquès.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First published clothbound by New Directions in 2018

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Énard, Mathias, 1972– author. | Mandell, Charlotte, translator.

  Title: Tell them of battles, kings, and elephants / Mathias Enard ; translated by Charlotte Mandell.

  Other titles: Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d’elephants. English

  Description: New York : New Directions, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018021250 (print) | LCCN 2018026918 (ebook) | ISBN 9780811227056 (ebook) | ISBN 9780811227049 (alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475–1564—Fiction. | Bridges—Fiction. | Golden Horn (Turkey)—Fiction. | Istanbul (Turkey)—Fiction. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PQ2705.N273 (ebook) | LCC PQ2705.N273 P3713 2018 (print) | DDC 843/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018021250

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

  Tell them of what thou alone hast seen, then what thou hast heard, and since they be children tell them of battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but omit not to tell them of love and suchlike.

  Night does not communicate with the day. it burns up in it. Night is carried to the stake at dawn. And its people along with it — the drinkers, the poets, the lovers. We are a people of the banished, of the condemned. I do not know you. I know your Turkish friend; he is one of ours. Little by little he is vanishing from the world, swallowed up by the shadows and their mirages; we are brothers. I don’t know what pain or what pleasure propelled him to us, to stardust, maybe opium, maybe wine, maybe love; maybe some obscure wound of the soul deep-hidden in the folds of memory.

  You want to join us.

  Your fear and confusion propel you into our arms; you want to nestle in there, but your tough body keeps clinging to its certainties; it pushes desire away, refuses to surrender.

  I don’t blame you.

  You live in another prison, a world of strength and bravery where you think you can be carried aloft in triumph; you think you can win the goodwill of the powerful, you seek glory and wealth. But when night falls, you tremble. You don’t drink, for you are afraid; you know that the burning sensation of alcohol plunges you into weakness, into an irresistible need to find caresses, a vanished tenderness, the lost world of childhood, gratification, the need to find peace when faced with the glistering uncertainty of darkness.

  You think you desire my beauty, the softness of my skin, the brilliance of my smile, the delicacy of my limbs, the crimson of my lips, but actually, what you want without realizing it is for your fears to disappear, for healing, union, return, oblivion. This power inside you devours you in solitude.

  So you suffer, lost in an infinite twilight, one foot in day and the other in night.

  Three bundles of sable and mink fur, one hundred and twelve panni of wool, nine rolls of Bergamo satin, the same quantity of gilt Florentine velvet, five barrels of saltpeter, two crates of mirrors, and one little jewelry box: that is the list of things that disembark with Michelangelo Buonarroti in the port of Constantinople on Thursday, May 13, 1506. Almost as soon as the frigate moors, the sculptor leaps ashore. He sways a little after six days of difficult sailing. No one knows the name of the Greek dragoman waiting for him, so we’ll call him Manuel; we do, however, know the name of the merchant accompanying him: Giovanni di Francesco Maringhi, a Florentine who has been living in Istanbul for five years now. The merchandise belongs to him. He is a friendly man, happy to meet this hero of the republic of Florence, the sculptor of David.

  Of course Istanbul was very different then; it was known as Constantinople; Hagia Sophia sat enthroned alone without the Blue Mosque, the east bank of the Bosphorus was bare, the great bazaar was not yet that immense spiderweb where tourists from all over the world lose themselves so they can be devoured. The Empire was no longer Roman and not really the Empire; the city swayed between Ottomans, Greeks, Jews, and Latins; the Sultan was named Bayezid the second, nicknamed the Holy, the Pious, the Just. The Florentines and Venetians called him Bajazeto, the French Bajazet. He was a wise, tactful man who reigned for thirty-one years; he loved wine, poetry, and music; he didn’t turn his nose up at either men or women; he appreciated the arts and sciences, astronomy, architecture, the pleasures of war, swift horses, and sharp weapons. It is not known why he invited Michelangelo Buonarroti of the Buonarrotis of Florence to Istanbul, though certainly the sculptor was already enjoying great renown in Italy. Some saw him at the age of thirty-one as the greatest artist of the time. He was often compared to the immense Leonardo da Vinci, twenty years his senior.

  Mhat year michelangelo left rome on a sudden impulse, on Saturday April 17, the day before the laying of the first stone of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica. He had gone for the fifth day in a row to request that the Pope deign to honor his promise of additional money. He was turned away each time.

  Michelangelo Buonarroti shivers in his wool coat; the spring is timid, rainy. He reaches the borders of the republic of Florence as the clock strikes 2 a.m., Ascanio Condivi, his biographer, tells us; he stops over at an inn thirty leagues from the city.

  Michelangelo rails against Julius II, the warlike, authoritarian pope who has treated him so poorly. Michelangelo is proud. Michelangelo is aware that he is an artist of great talent.

  Knowing he is safe in Florentine territory, he turns away the attendants the Pope has sent after him with orders to bring him back to Rome, by force if necessary. He reaches Florence the next day in time for supper. His servant gives him a thin broth. Michelangelo curses the architect Bramante and the painter Raphael, those jealous types who, he thinks, have served him a bad turn with the Pope. Pontiff Julius Della Rovere is a proud man too. Proud, authoritarian, and a miser. The artist had to pay from his own pocket the cost of the marble that he went to pick out in Carrara to build the papal tomb, an immense monument that would sit enthroned right in the middle of the new basilica. Michelangelo sighs. The advance on the contract signed by the Pope had been spent on furs, travel, and apprentices to quarry the blocks.

  The sculptor, exhausted by the journey and his troubles, a little warmed by the broth, shuts himself away in his narrow Renaissance bed and falls asleep sitting up, his back against a cushion, because he is afraid of the image of death the outstretched position suggests.

  The next
day, he waits for a message from the Pope. He trembles with rage when he thinks that the pontiff didn’t even deign to receive him on the day before his departure. Bramante the architect is an imbecile, and Raphael the painter a pretentious ass. Two dwarfs who flatter the outrageous haughtiness of the crimson-robed one. Then Sunday arrives and Michelangelo eats meat for the first time in two months, a delicious lamb, cooked by his neighbor the baker.

  He draws all day, runs through three red chalks and two graphite pencils in no time at all.

  The days pass, and Michelangelo begins to wonder if he has made a mistake. He is hesitant to write a letter to His Holiness. Get back into favor and go back to Rome. Never. In Florence, the statue of David has made him the hero of the city. He could accept the commissions they won’t fail to give him when they learn of his return, but that would unleash the fury of Julius, by whom he is employed. The idea of having to humiliate himself once more before the pontiff whips him into a frenzy.

  He breaks two vases and a majolica plate.

  Then, having calmed down, he begins drawing again, mainly anatomical studies.

  Three days later, after vespers, writes Ascanio Condivi, he receives a visit from two Franciscan monks who arrive soaked from the pounding rain. The Arno has swollen a lot over the past few days; people are worried it will flood. The servant helps the monks dry off; Michelangelo observes the two men, their robes spotted with mud at the hem, their ankles bare, their calves thin.

  “Maestro, we come to give you a message of the highest importance.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Michelangelo thinks amusedly that Julius II has very mediocre envoys.

  “Through your brother’s directions, Maestro.”

  “Here is a letter for you, Maestro. It is a singular request, coming from a very high personage.”

  The letter is not stamped, but sealed in foreign characters. Michelangelo cannot help but feel disappointed when he sees that it does not come from the Pope. He puts the missive down on the table.

  “What’s it about?”

  “It is an invitation from the Sultan of Constantinople, Maestro.”

  We can imagine the artist’s surprise, his little eyes opening wide. The Sultan of Constantinople. The Great Turk. He turns the letter over in his hands. Vellum is one of the softest materials there is.

  Sitting on a boat in the winds of the Adriatic, Michelangelo is having regrets. His stomach is tied in knots, his ears are buzzing, he is afraid. This storm is divine vengeance. Off the coast of Ragusa, then off the Morea, he hears Saint Paul’s phrase in his head: “To learn how to pray, you must go to sea,” and he understands. The immensity of the watery plain frightens him. The deckhands speak a frightful nasal slang that he only half understands.

  He left Florence on May 1 to take ship from Ancona, after six days of hesitation. The Franciscans came back three times, and three times he sent them away, asking them to wait some more. He read and reread the Sultan’s letter, hoping that a sign from the Pope would in the meantime bring an end to his uncertainties. Julius II must have been too busy with his basilica and his preparations for another war. After all, serving the Sultan of Constantinople would be a fine revenge on the bellicose pontiff who had him thrown out like a beggar. And the sum offered by the Great Turk is astronomical. The equivalent of 50,000 ducats, five times what the Pope paid him for two years of work. One month. That’s all Bayezid is asking for. One month to plan, draw, and start work on a bridge between Constantinople and Pera, the northern district. A bridge to cross what is called the Golden Horn, the Khrusokeras of the Byzantines. A bridge in the middle of Istanbul’s harbor. A construction that will be over 900 feet long. Michelangelo half-heartedly tried to convince the Franciscans that he was not qualified. If the Sultan chose you, that’s because you are qualified, Maestro, they replied. And if your drawing doesn’t suit the Great Turk, he will reject it, just as he has already rejected the one by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo? Go after Leonardo da Vinci? After that oaf who scorns sculpture? The monk, without realizing it, immediately found the words that would convince Michelangelo: You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal, like your David.

  For now, leaning against a wet wooden rail, the peerless sculptor, future painter of genius, and immense architect, is nothing more than a body, twisted with fear and nausea.

  All these furs, then, all these wool panni, these rolls of Bergamo satin and Florentine velvet, these barrels and crates, landed after Michelangelo on May 13, 1506.

  An hour earlier, passing the headland of the palace, the artist glimpsed Santa Sophia, the basilica, a broad-shouldered giant, an Atlas bearing its cupola to the summits of the known world; during the landing maneuvers, he observed the activity of the port; he watched the unloading of oil from Mytilene, soap from Tripoli, rice from Egypt, dried figs from Smyrna, salt and lead, silver, bricks and lumber for construction; he ran his eyes over the hills of the city, glimpsed the ancient seraglio, the minarets of a large mosque taller than the top of the hill; he looked especially at the opposite shore, the ramparts of the Galata Tower, on the other side of the Golden Horn, that estuary that looks so little like the mouth of the Tiber. So that’s where, a little further upstream, he is supposed to build a bridge. The distance to cross is huge. How many arches should there be? How deep can this arm of the sea be?

  Michelangelo and his luggage settle into a small room on the second floor of the Florentine merchant Maringhi’s shops. They thought he’d prefer to board with his compatriots. His Greek dragoman is staying in a tiny room in a neighboring building. The room where Michelangelo Buonarroti unpacks his luggage looks out onto a passageway with beautiful stone arcades; a double row of windows, very tall, almost meeting the ceiling, distribute a light that seems to come from nowhere, diffracted by the wooden slats of the blinds. A bed and a chestnut table, an ornate walnut wardrobe, two oil lamps, and a heavy, round, cast-iron candelabrum hanging from the ceiling, and nothing more.

  A small door hides a water closet tiled in multicolored faience that Michelangelo has no use for, since he never washes.

  Michelangelo owns a notebook, a simple notebook he made himself: some leaves of paper folded in half, held together with a string, with a cover made of thick cardboard. It’s not a sketchbook, he doesn’t draw in it; nor does he note down the verses that come to him sometimes, or the drafts of his letters, even less his impressions of the days or the weather outside.

  In this stained notebook, he records treasures. Endless accumulations of various objects, accounts, expenses, supplies; clothes, menus, words, simply words.

  His notebook is his sea chest.

  The names of things give them life.

  May 11, lateen sail, storm jib, topping lift, halyard, unfurling.

  May 12, gasket, capstan, floor timber, gangway, keelson.

  May 13, 1506, tow, tinder, tinder box, wick, wax, oil.

  May 14, ten small sheets of heavy paper and five large ones, three beautiful quill pens, one inkwell, one bottle of black ink, one phial of red, some graphite, a lead holder, three pieces of sanguine chalk.

  Two ducats to Maringhi, skinflint, thief, cutthroat.

  Fortunately the crust of bread and the coal are free.

  For the first three days, Michelangelo waits.

  He rarely goes out, and mainly in the morning, not daring to wander away from the immediate surroundings of the stores of the Florentine who’s hosting him. Manuel the translator accompanies him, offering to show him around the city, to visit the Basilica of Santa Sophia or the magnificent mosque that the Sultan Bayezid has just had built on a hill. Michelangelo refuses. He prefers his accustomed stroll: make a tour of the caravanserai, reach the port, walk alongside the ramparts up to the porte della Farina, as the Franks call it, look for a long time at the opposite shore of the Golden Horn, and
return to his rooms. His guide follows him, silent. They hardly speak. Michelangelo for that matter speaks to no one. The artist usually takes his meals in his room.

  He draws.

  Michelangelo does not draw bridges.

  He draws horses, men, and astragals.

  He draws horses, men, and astragals for three days in a row, until the Grand Vizier finally sends for him. The Ottoman delegation is made up of a young page, a man from Genoa named Falachi, and a squad of janissaries wearing crimson turbans. They settle the sculptor in a grey and gold araba with a dashing harness; two spahis trot in front of the procession, to make way; their scimitars bump against the horses’ flanks.

  In the carriage, the page Falachi makes conversation; he explains how honored he is to find himself by the sculptor’s side, how happy he is to meet him, and describes how impatient the court is finally to meet the immense artist who will carry out such a noble task. Michelangelo is surprised to discover a Genoese so close to the Grand Turk; Falachi smiles and explains he is a slave of the Sultan, captured at an early age by some corsairs, and that his position is an enviable one. He is powerful, well respected, and, if such things matter, rich. Manuel the Greek nods his head; Michelangelo opens the curtain covering the carriage window and watches the streets of Constantinople stream by to the rhythm of the convoy, often slowed down by porters or groups of traders. Warehouses overflowing with merchandise, wooden houses, Mohammedan churches whose clear terraces above the porches open eyes of light onto the body of the city.

  The visit will be brief and short on protocol, Falachi explains. The Vizier chiefly wants to introduce Michelangelo to those who will help him in his task, and to settle some administrative details that are nevertheless important. He will then be installed in a studio where he will find everything necessary for the exercise of his art — draftsmen, model-makers, and engineers.