“It’s a joy to see two artists like you together,” says Arslan.
Mesihi is perhaps even more flattered than Michelangelo.
“Let us drink in honor of this meeting, which cannot be by chance. I’ve just arrived from Italy, where I went with some merchants; this is my first evening in the city. I haven’t seen the capital for two years, and it’s a happy omen to find you here.”
So they drink.
Then come music and song; Michelangelo has the immense surprise of seeing the same singer from the week before, who walks into the middle of the circle of guests, accompanied by a lute and a tambourine with cymbals, and intones a muwashshah, about the lost gardens of Andalusia, flowers, and a fine rain of love and spring. Michelangelo turns slowly to Mesihi and smiles at him; he guesses his friend has prepared this surprise for him and has led him on purpose to the tavern where the fashionable singer was performing.
Michelangelo is again fascinated by the singer’s grace, by the sad joy of the melody; he listens with only a distracted ear to Arslan’s explanations. This time, he is convinced it’s a woman, because of a slight swelling of the chest, visible when she breathes.
The guessing game amuses him just as her beauty seduces him, despite the strangeness of this unknown music.
What’s more, it seems to him that the singer is directing complicit glances at him, perhaps because she has recognized him, the only guest dressed in the Frankish style.
The audience is moved to tears; it is overwhelmed by the memory of that vanished land, with its box hedges, the softness of its snow.
Since he has no idea what the kingdom of Grenada could have been, or its fall, or the violence of the Catholic Kings, Michelangelo interprets this fervor as an excess of feeling.
The five silver anklets around the slim leg, the dress with its orangey tints, the golden shoulder and the beauty spot at the base of the neck will show up in a corner of the Sistine chapel a few years later. In painting as in architecture, the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti will owe much to Istanbul. His gaze is transformed by the city and otherness: scenes, colors, forms will permeate his work for the rest of his life. The cupola of St. Peter is inspired by Santa Sophia and Bayezid’s mosque; the library of the Medicis is inspired by the Sultan’s, which he visits with Manuel; the statues in the chapel of the Medicis and even the Moses for Julius II bear the imprint of attitudes and characters he met here, in Constantinople.
Unlike last week, when too many emotions intermingled with wine put him to sleep like a child in the presence of Ali Pasha, tonight the alcohol renders his perceptions more powerful and increases his pleasure.
He would like to know this singer, male or female.
He who has always put desire off till later, who sees love as a divine song separated from the flesh, something that has passed into poetry like the arm’s movement into marble, for eternity, he trembles to approach this moving form, perfect, other, undefined.
Mesihi and Arslan note his confusion; the former is a little jealous, the other amused. The singers and cupbearers are there to charm and seduce.
Arslan says a few words to Mesihi in a low voice; the poet seems to hesitate an instant, distressed, but appears to adjust to the young man’s ideas, even though he barely knows him.
Arslan offers to continue their evening at his place, a stone’s throw away, and to invite the beautiful Andalusian woman (if she is indeed a woman, and if she is Andalusian) to sing and dance for them alone, in honor of the great Florentine artist.
When they reveal the idea to Michelangelo, he is delighted. So they drink one final glass as they wait for the end of the song; the tavern is crowded, noisy, smelly; the sculptor lets himself give in to the sweet derangement of all his senses. Never has he been so far from Florence and his brothers, so far from Rome, the Pope, the conspiracies of Raphael and Bramante, so far from his art.
Arslan has discreetly made arrangements to organize the continuation of the evening’s entertainment by sending someone to warn his servants, so that supper can await them; then, just as discreetly, he engaged the singer through the tavern keeper and settled their bill of five akçe with resounding, tumbling silver pieces.
Mesihi is mistrustful; a shadow of jealousy, true; nevertheless, the unusual prodigality of this stranger is suspicious.
Arslan’s amiability to the sculptor borders on obsequiousness.
Mesihi has suffered from yielding the object of his love to other embraces, abandoning it to other gazes; this subtle and original poet, master in the rebirth of Ottoman poetry, whose verses will inspire hundreds of imitators, sacrifices his passion in mournful generosity. He who has possessed the bodies and hearts of the most elegant beauties in the city, who has described them in a versified catalogue worthy of Don Giovanni’s, full of tenderness and humor, has set his own happiness after the artist’s.
Michelangelo smells as bad as a barbarian or a slave from the North who’s just been captured; his face is unsightly, far from the ephebes of Shiraz with their Indian beauty spots; his voice is full of anger and without refinement, his hands hard, worn by the chisel and hammer of his art; but despite everything, despite it all, his force, his intelligence, his brute perseverance, the keen song you can guess in his passionate soul, all of these things hopelessly attract Mesihi — but the sculptor doesn’t seem to notice.
Downstairs, in the large room scantily illuminated by iron candelabras, the poet sits, glass in hand, exchanging every now and then a few unremarkable phrases with an amused Arslan, but dares not imagine what is happening upstairs, where Michelangelo wanted to go rest, joined immediately, at a sign from their host, by the Andalusian singer.
The night is well advanced, but it still has two or three hours left before it dies; already dark lines are surrounding Mesihi’s eyes. He can’t help but be angry at this Arslan who has appeared like a djinn in a fairy tale to take him away, with his machinations, from this disheveled Frank whom he desires so strongly.
He begins to recite some verses.
A Persian poem.
I don’t stop desiring when my desire
Is fulfilled, when my mouth wins
The red lips of my beloved,
When my soul expires in the sweetness of her breath.
Arslan smiles, he has recognized the inimitable Hafez of Shiraz, which is confirmed by the last couplet:
And you will always invoke the name of Hafez
In the company of the sad and the brokenhearted.
Almost complete darkness.
Only a candle outside the room casts a little light through the half-open door.
Michelangelo guesses, more than sees, the contours of that slender body, lithe and muscular, that lets its clothes slip to the floor.
He hears its bracelets tinkling when the dark shape approaches him, preceded by a perfume of musk and rose and warm sweat.
The sculptor turns over, huddles at the edge of the bed.
She sang for him, this shadow, and now here she is next to him, and he does not know what to do; he is ashamed and very afraid; she stretches out against him, to touch him; when he feels her breath he shivers, as if the night wind, come from the sea, suddenly chilled him.
A hand rests on his upper arm; he stops trembling; this caress is burning.
He doesn’t know which of their two pulses he feels beating so strongly through these fingers.
A warm wave of hair travels over the back of his neck.
Eyes closed, he imagines the young man or woman behind him, elbow bent, face above his own.
He remains motionless, rigid as a pointer.
Finally I’m going to tell you a story. You have nowhere to go. The night is all around you, you are locked up in a remote fortress, prisoner of my caresses; you do not want my body, fine, but you can’t escape my voice. It’s the very ancient story of a country that today has disappeared. Of a fo
rgotten country, a Sultan who was a poet and a Vizier, his lover.
There was war, not just between Muslims, but also against the Christians. They were powerful. The Prince lost battles, he had to leave Córdoba, abandon Toledo; his enemies were everywhere. His Vizier had been his tutor; now he was his confidant, his lover. For a long time, they improvised poems together in gardens, by fountains; they got drunk on beauty. One time, the Vizier saved the city by suggesting to the King of the Franks that he play chess for the city: if he won, they’d give him the keys, if he lost, the siege would be lifted. They used beautiful jade chessmen, from the other side of the world. The Vizier ended up winning and the Christian King left for the north, taking the chess board away as his sole booty.
One day, as the Prince and the Vizier were enjoying themselves by the river, a young female servant delighted them with her witty repartees, her immense beauty, the refinement of her culture and her poetry. The Sultan fell madly in love with her and took her off to his palace. The former slave he turned into his queen.
She was so beautiful and so refined that the Prince turned completely away from his minister, whom he now consulted only for affairs of state. The Vizier suffered; he mourned the loss of the Sultan’s attentions, and at the same time burned with a secret love for the inaccessible wife of his King.
He went away, of his own volition, appointing himself governor of a remote fortress.
The sadness of lost pleasures, the memory of the time of poems and songs, joined in his heart with the terrible desire to possess the beautiful princess, out of revenge, out of love.
Desperate, he decided to join forces with the Christians to seize hold of the capital and make the sublime slave his own.
He committed treason without remorse.
He placed his armies at the service of the Franks.
Together they laid siege to the city.
The Sultan, crushed by his friend’s defection, locked himself up in his room without resolving to fight. He composed a poem, which he himself set forth in calligraphy and sent via messenger to the rebel Vizier.
The shadow of pleasure is always above me:
This cloud of absence weeps the wine that intoxicates me.
For me your weapons strike the sweet blows of love,
I give you this kingdom, so that you cannot lose it.
Moved to tears by this declaration, the Vizier decided to betray a second time; he turned his army against the Christians by surprise and, after a bitter battle, entered the city as conqueror.
He set down his weapons in front of the Prince as a sign of submission.
The Sultan invited him to his room that very night.
He took the Vizier in his arms tenderly, then, without hesitation, he drew out his sword and ripped him open from shoulder to chest.
The Vizier expired on the floor; he did not hear his friend’s words:
You did not know how to rise to the height of love
And like the falcon take what was within your reach
The prey was yours, you let it go
Lovers are cruel if they see the beloved weaken.
This battle I have won, I lose.
This ground I defend will be my wilderness,
And the souls of those I have slain,
My wardens for eternity.
You have listened to this story? It is true, take care. You refuse my caresses. I could have a sword too. I could slice you in half for your scorn. I am here and you reject me. You’re sleeping, who knows. You’re breathing gently. The night is long. You don’t understand me, perhaps. You let yourself be lulled to sleep by the accents of my voice. You feel as if you’re elsewhere. You are not far away, though. Not very far from your home. You are where I am, you know it. You will come there; perhaps someday you will face the fact of love like the Vizier. You will give your passion free rein. Make up your mind, like the bird of prey. Make up your mind to join me among these dead stories.
Michelangelo will not talk about this night in the quiet of the bedchamber beyond the fresh water of the Golden Horn, not to Mesihi, not to Arslan, even less to his brothers or, later on, to the few lovers he is known to have had; he keeps this memory somewhere in his painting and in the secret of his poetry: his sonnets are the only uncertain trace of what has vanished forever.
As for Mesihi, he will express his suffering more clearly; he will compose two ghazals on the burning of jealousy, a sweet burning, for it fortifies love by consuming it.
He spent the night drinking, alone when their host withdrew in turn, conquered by fatigue; he saw the Andalusian beauty discreetly leave the house at dawn, wrapped in a long cloak; he patiently waited for Michelangelo, who avoided his gaze; he took the exhausted sculptor to the steam baths, convinced his torn-apart soul to submit to his hands; he bathed him, massaged him, rubbed him fraternally; he left him to doze off on a warm marble bench, wrapped in white linen, and watched over him as he would a corpse.
When Michelangelo emerges from his torpor and shakes himself, Mesihi is still by his side.
The sculptor is full of dazzling energy, despite the alcohol ingested the night before and the lack of sleep, as if by ridding himself of encrustations and filth he had gotten rid of the weight of remorse or overindulgence; he thanks the poet for his care and asks him to be kind enough to accompany him back to his room, for he wants to get back to work.
As they cross the Golden Horn, Michelangelo has a vision of his bridge, floating in the morning sun, so real that he has tears in his eyes. The edifice will be colossal but not imposing: delicate and powerful. As if the evening had opened his eyes and transmitted its certainty, the drawing finally appears to him.
He returns almost at a run to set this idea down on paper, lines in ink, shadows in white, highlights in red.
A bridge that has risen up out of the night, molded from the material of the city.
Buonarroto,
I received your letter and I understand you. Forgive my not writing more, know that I’m overwhelmed with work. I am going to work day and night to finish my labors and join you as soon as possible.
I’m thinking of Giovan Simone and the money, soon I’ll find some arrangement, if God gives me life.
For now you can go see Aldobrandini and ask him for an advance on the price of the dagger. He will not be disappointed. Never has anyone seen such a fine one, I swear it.
Pray for me,
Your Michelagnolo
Four low arches support an arc with such a gentle curve that it’s almost imperceptible; they rest on sturdy pillars whose triangular cutwaters cleave the water like bastions. Supported by an invisible foundation that barely reaches above the waves, a majestic footbridge gently joins the two shores, reconciling their differences. Two hands placed majestically on the waters, two slender fingers that touch each other.
The Grand Vizier Ali Pasha is astonished.
Bayezid will be delighted.
Michelangelo has submitted his sketches and drawings to the model-makers and engineers; he has supervised the realization of scale models and large plans to present to the Sultan. As a remarkable honor, the sculptor is invited to reveal his work himself to the sovereign. The question of the buttress and the road traffic has yet to be resolved, matters that regard the shehremini and the mohendesbashi.
The Florentine has fulfilled his contract: he has projected a bridge over the Golden Horn, bold and political; far from Da Vinci’s technical prowess, far from the regular curves of Constantine’s old viaduct, beyond the classics. All his energy can be found in it. This work is like David; his strength and calm can be read in it, along with the possibility of a storm. Solemn and graceful at the same time.
The day before the presentation to the Sultan, Mesihi and Michelangelo went to the Scutari arsenal to pick up the dagger ordered by the wealthy Florentine Aldobrandini; sharpened and polished, in a box lined
with red flannel, the black damask steel is extraordinarily beautiful. Caressing the blade with his finger, the sculptor thinks it will be hard for him to give it away when the time comes.
Absorbed by his work, Michelangelo hasn’t thought much about the night spent at the home of the obliging Arslan; Mesihi hasn’t mentioned it either, for other reasons. He feels his passion for the artist devouring his heart; during their daily strolls, in the evening, when the cool breezes rise from the Bosphorus to fill the city, he profits from the walk to hold his friend’s arm at times and, once he has dropped him off at Maringhi’s, he invariably goes to the tavern, where he drowns his sadness in wine until dawn. His relations with the Vizier, his employer, are strained; he is blamed for his absences; often, when Ali Pasha sends for him to write a letter or inscribe a firman in calligraphy, he can’t be found, and then all the dives in Tahtakale have to be searched to unearth him.
Mesihi senses that Michelangelo does not look at him with the same warmth that Mesihi feels for the Florentine; Michelangelo is sometimes harsh, cold even, with a harshness and coldness that only sharpen the poet’s passion even more, and he would pay dearly for one night with the artist, like the Andalusian beauty. But he respects the distance there is between them. He also respects Michelangelo’s sobriety and his passion for work, whose wonderful results he has just discovered, at the same time as the Vizier.
Tomorrow, the models and drawings will be brought before the Sultan. To prevent any public disappointment, Ali Pasha has already shown a drawing to the sovereign in secret, and has been assured of his agreement. The ceremony planned for the next day will be a confirmation.
Michelangelo is eager to receive his earnings and get back to Florence.
To Maestro Giuliano da Sangallo, architect to the Pope in Rome
Giuliano, as a sign of my friendship I’m sending you these cross-sections and elevations of the Santa Sophia Basilica in Constantinople, which I received from a Florentine merchant by the name of Maringhi; they are extraordinary. I hope you will profit from them.
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants Page 6