the wind, forgetting the bitter cold. “The color! That vulgar industrial orange, always shuttling back and forth, a bruise on the city, permanently violating our eyes! No doubt we have some thoughtless administrative council or other to thank for this. Because that color, it was chosen, that’s what’s most incredible. The worst orange possible!” He’d made a face, giving his lips all the space he could, so he could talk even faster. “And there are hundreds and hundreds of those buses. Their ceaseless parade at rush hour makes for a real disaster; all the beauty of the city and the streets weaving through it collapses! Yet there were other solutions! Blue, for example. Or lemon yellow! Imagine, little splashes of sunlight outlined in white, how charming . . .” So instead we took a taxi, which would cost twice the price because of going out of town.
When we reached the abbey, after Robert, timidly hanging onto my arm, had painfully climbed the twisting little stony road leading to it, we’d found the door locked. “Closed for restoration,” read the sign, according to which this had been announced in the press. I repressed a sudden urge to laugh. The old man, still out of breath from the strain of climbing, just couldn’t understand, didn’t want to believe it, squeezed his eyes shut to focus and pull himself together. “It would do no good to ring and bang on the door and shout, they’ll never open up! They’ll remain deaf to even the most legitimate plea. It’s an obsession with them, vows of abstinence, silence, inappetence—they’re closed every chance they get. I know them, Carmelites, Carthusians, or the others, they’re all the same: the Rule, period, the end. It probably makes them giddy just to put a notice in the parish chronicle—all that publicity! What a hassle!” Now he was smiling. Because he couldn’t be roaring all the time, especially considering the problems he had with his lungs and arteries, which he’d briefly described during our climb. “Well that’s it for the frescos! They’re done for now! Anyhow, in a manner of speaking. We’re going to have to brave the cold again to get back to the city. But it will do us good, and as long as it doesn’t rain . . .” I thought it best after his earlier diatribe not to suggest the bus. He was enormously stubborn; he’d never have been willing to contradict himself in my presence.
So back we went on foot! An hour and a half, to reach his neighborhood. Robert took advantage of it to talk about a lot of things, very fast, with an occasional long silence in which to catch his breath or gather his thoughts. He was bothered by the notion that Mannerism could somehow function as the memory of painting. Of course, later, Michelangelo’s terribilità and the refined and gentle venustà of Raphael and Leonardo would all attempt a similar combination of forms, an alliance of perfections. And future generations too took pleasure, even wallowed in the joy of harvesting the most successful elements from past painters’ styles and putting their various models together—hands from here, faces from somewhere else, a body. Surely if you took from geniuses only the details of their excellence, it would have to lead to the definitive maniera, absolute harmony. If this had been peculiar to the Mannerists, yes, it would be possible to talk about their being explicitly preoccupied with memory. “It’s no accident that the history of art has become a discipline in modern times, by means of Vasari in particular. But frankly, painting as memory, I think that’s true of all movements, every period. People don’t paint without the aura of the past around their hands, their eyes, without their muscles being stretched and their gazes sharpened by the energy of how things have been seen. No, the difficulty lies precisely in that this memory is only an aura, a diffuse energy, and not an obstacle, an excessively intense memory that gets in the way of seeing. The so-called imaginary museum—that’s something we all carry around in our heads; some of these museums are enormous, some less so, composed of different things, but always there, fodder for every observation, every perception. One has to reach a point where this comes easily and doesn’t get in the way of anything or make one act blindly. That’s the essential, critical thing: memory has to swim, it has to dance. Otherwise, you’re nothing but an erudite scholar, a big, fat water bag in which everything just stagnates, you turn into a lifeless tub growing more and more putrid with age, only letting a few soft bubbles rise to the surface, plok plok. Now the thing I’ve always admired about Pontormo, and a few—very few—others as well, is his madness. That crazy power of his, taking off, blasting off, going as far as he could go in his work, in his life, and roaming around there in the stratosphere, oblivious of others, their conventions, their vague enthusiasms. Do you understand? That’s what’s essential: being in his painting, his own, exclusive and all consuming. Which is why memory becomes secondary. In any case, it’s there. Besides, just where does Mannerism lead? To an optimal form of representation? To a better rendering of reality? Not at all! There’s been plenty of criticism of the Mannerists for following models to such an extent that their work became artificial. But, so what? Art becomes art, art engages in the questioning and exploration of itself. That’s it, being in one’s painting: making up complications, contradictions, and confronting oneself there, really working at it. The way opens up, it digresses. Then, the Baroque!”
He was completely carried away, he couldn’t help it. Names, titles. His head held all those paintings, clear and distinct. I was reaching a point of saturation, groggy with ideas, so many new things. We’d gotten as far as Manet and he was waving his arms to emphasize what he was saying. His lines! His color! The Impressionists, the nineteenth century were scheduled to come later in my project, toward the end, when I’d begin to think for myself and to glimpse systematic connections. At this point it was premature; I couldn’t follow the parallels he sketched out, opening great parentheses to bring everyone up again and again, Poussin, Bernini, Tiepolo, Goya, Delacroix. I wasn’t listening anymore, merely nodding in agreement or indicating surprise here and there so he wouldn’t notice that I was distracted, and, above all, would keep on going . . . Cézanne, Manet again, so long as he kept going his voice would keep me safe from those awful moments in which I might be expected to ask a question. Now it was the writers’ turn, a stunning parade. Then copyists too, who had their own madness, which managed to insinuate itself into texts, adding something new. Manipulating words, technique transcending technique, hypotyposes, anacoluthons. There were so many unfamiliar terms in Robert’s lecture, all filled with mystery, and so many allusions, references, all linked in a harmonious flow.
Finally we arrived. After walking such a distance the old man must have had more than enough. I left him abruptly, impatient to go and pour this miraculous loot into my machine and finally be relieved of the burden of Robert’s erudition.
Chapter V
“Your nutty old man called. He’d like to see you, tonight. Wants to know if you could drop by? After eight o’clock, but before midnight. Eight o’clock would be best.” It was Monday. Mattilda seemed exasperated. Robert, his knowledge, my files. What would that leave her? If I didn’t love her anymore I needed to tell her; it would probably hurt less than seeing me always running away from her, vanishing, either not there or exhausted. I found time for my old man: I willingly relinquished entire workdays to him. But for her just Saturday afternoon, and Sunday—nothing more. How long was this going to go on?
When Mattilda was really annoyed, she was no longer able to hide her sadness; the momentary severity of her eyes couldn’t contain it and her voice kept cracking. The headlong nature of our sexuality bothered her. She’d have preferred the opposite: taking pleasure slowly and cleverly, combining rhythms, postures, getting to the heart, the very heart of the act. Yet now, silently disillusioned, this was what she got, these scraps of love, taking them for lack of anything better.
I’d explained, I don’t know how many times, that this wouldn’t last, afterward we’d enjoy life, we’d make up for it, but for the time being I needed help from her rather than reproaches, we had to make some sacrifices. In fact, the thing that had made Mattilda so furious was that the day Robert and I had wanted to go visit that abbey, I’d gotten up without batting an eye, not once complaining; whereas if I’d been going somewhere with her, whether off on vacation or just with her to the university, I’d have made a huge fuss, I’d have refused to wake up so early in the morning. She felt under attack and she was vaguely envious too, blaming the old man for petty things. She’d be a wreck over trivialities. She had, however, no reason to hate Robert; their only contact
