“This belongs to my futurist moment,” then with a surge of mild disgust he had quickly hidden it, annoyed, only wanting to move on.
“They are magnetic. I can’t take my eyes off them, nor the mind,” she had replied instead, and didn’t know how to resist. She had gathered, turned them around and looked a long time. He, with gentle but firm impatience had taken them from her hands, and turned them to face the wall shaking his head without conviction:
“They are only my first attempts. Junk, really. Believe me.”
“It’s a new experience for me,” then timidly she had attempted to begin a conversation, trying to tear that blanket of immense embarrassment, “to be a model for a painter, I mean...”
She sensed that Cimarosa had not liked having the theme and even the model for inspiration for his creations imposed, however, she could not help but feel guilty without reason. Not even she liked the idea of being portrayed, she had already refused to be photographed! She didn’t dare to imagine how it would be to be looked at for hours by an artist.
What did Father Alfonso have in mind? He knows me, knows I hate portraits she thought, convinced that all of this could not be entirely coincidental.
“Do you think you will be able to do a good job, with me?” She bit her lip as soon as she had spoken. In fact she saw him lower his head and look her straight in the eye through the half-moon glasses that kept slipping off his nose. She realized then that she could be considered too brisk. He must think I’m a vain hen and a little stupid? She asked herself, but re-composing herself from that momentary bewilderment, gave him an intense look, direct and determined. The only answer she could get in return was a persistent, severe gaze. Cimarosa’s eyes were very blue, but impenetrable. A surly man, she was convinced then, and turned her back on him, she turned the paintings around that had been hidden by the painter and began to look at them with provocative insistence.
8.
Every time he saw her, he felt a jolt within, which went back to his first, loves, now clouded by time. Was it possible that at fifty years now passed a while, that he would be feeling the trembling knees of a child in love with his teacher? I must surely have become senile. He thought. From the first time he had seen Elvira’s white face framed by her long black hair, he had felt that sensation of lightness and palpitations, that he had only slightly sensed as a young man as he was involved in surviving economic hardships or in making a career. Elvira brought him back to the light-heartedness that he so much regretted, that of the early years of his crazy artistic adventure. Yet, he stiffened in her presence, afraid to seem ridiculous, or worse, inappropriate, showing her how happy he was to see her. He preferred to watch her silently, watch her move among his paintings, seeing her engrossed in looking at those paintings, his earliest works, the only ones that he had never wanted to sell, because he was so attached to them. She seemed to have some sort of stubborn obsession with those two paintings. Furtively she turned them to the light and stayed looking at them for a long time. And in the meantime he lingered to catch the scent of freshly washed hair, and furtively observe her delicate gestures and elegant movements. Too young and too sophisticated for a rough materialist like him. And yet...
“When you want, Elvira, I’m ready...”
9.
Elvira had no idea of what the actual work of a painter was. She had always imagined that a model should stay still to pose motionless in front of the painter who was intent on creating a portrait in tempera in broad brushstrokes. Instead Cimarosa was not working in that way. He had made her wear a white robe, in an Eastern style. He had asked her to keep her hair down and walk naturally around the room.
“Don’t mind me, I’m not here. But move, express yourself...”
“May I talk, while I’m moving?” she felt the impressive weight of that austere man, who seemed to be scrutinizing her severely.
“The bare essentials. Chatter distracts me from the important details. No, if you can, speak as little as possible.” A large canvas towered on an easel in the middle of the room, totally covered by a pale blue cloth. Elvira had imagined the canvas where her portrait in the guise of the Blessed Virgin would materialize. She imagined seeing herself changed into various colors, filled with paint as the poses followed each other, while instead nothing seemed to change on that canvas, and the cloth was left there, always with the identical folds, and without any perceptible movement. The only time she had dared to pry lifting the cover, Cimarosa had reacted badly, “Please Elvira, anything but not that.”
“Can’t I see the progress of the painting where I am the protagonist?” she asked him impertinently, marveling at herself for her impudence. “I work like this,” he ended the discussion quickly, shrugging his shoulders. Cimarosa hadn’t taken up brush or spatula. He had a notebook and a pencil in hand and nothing else. But for most of the time Elvi remained in his study, he looked at her in silence without moving a single muscle. At first feeling herself observed, studied so insistently made her feel deeply uneasy and led her to move badly, jerkily, almost as though an insect was stinging her. She passed her hands through her hair many times, touched her nose or rubbed her eyes. Observed, she also observed, but Cimarosa only sent her a penetrating look through the glasses that were always positioned on the tip of his nose. She finished up by thinking about those blue somber eyes and slowly became more relaxed, even daring. She moved the canvases as if they were candy, with delicacy and sensitivity but also with a childish greed. She took any one of them and stood looking at it for a long time. Absorbed, almost in contemplation. He was really a great painter. Each of his canvases transmitted something she didn’t quite know how to explain: a feast for the eyes, well being in the heart. Style and handling were relatively important and in any case she was not an expert. But she could not break away from those images, looking at them she felt good, they comforted her. She would gladly have wanted to be sucked into many of those paintings, live in them, perhaps hiding.
10.
“Landscapes, hunting, Bacchanalia, battles... but no portraits!”
“You’re right, so it seems...”
“But then, Mr Cimarosa why?”
“After all this time you could just call me Orlando, Elvi...” The proposal to move to a more confidential level in their relationship made her start with a joyous embarrassment. From the outset Cimarosa had treated her with friendliness, while she had never been able to use a more friendly tone, in relating to him. Perhaps the awe that art and the austerity that man displayed, prevented her. Being asked to be more direct made her feel more serene.
“All right, Orlando. Don’t change the subject though. Why did you...”
“Why did I accept an invitation, or should I say the imposition, from Alfonso to do your portrait? I owed him a favor.”
She had always wondered what strange bond had connected the Dominican friar with a strong-willed spirit and such a rough and impenetrable artist. Every time she had tried to ask about this friendship with Father Alfonso, his response had been to laugh and to joke unconvincingly, “Ah, how many evenings eating and drinking! And a spirited discussion about Christ, Marx and Fidel Castro! Those were the good times... Orlando has always been a good companion...”
She would never have dared ask Cimarosa. Only once, he had mentioned “A chance. A lucky meeting.” Then nothing more. But today he was opening up. She had hit the nail on the head. In fact there were no portraits of any kind, among his paintings.
“My mother never forgave me for having left a promising career at a multinational company to dedicate myself to a life of debauched wanderer. She talked about it like this, about my decision to become a painter.”
He was troubled by that confession. She hadn’t expected it at all, it was so immediate and bitter.
“She stopped talking to me, she no longer wanted to meet up with me. She refused even to see what I had created. Until one evening, tired from working late on a painting that had made me crazy and would not come out the wa
y I wanted, I went to get drunk at the bar. The intent was to drink until I passed out and to sleep for two days in a row. But a large man always went to that bar...”
“With a great black cape and a wide-brimmed hat!” Elvira interrupted him smiling.
“True. Alfonso can’t go anywhere without being noticed. Everyone knows Father Alfonso in the city. In short, he arrived; he sat down at my table, took a glass, and also began to pour a drink from my bottle. I asked him what he was doing and he, calmly, looked into my eyes with a look that I will never forget and told me, “I will drink half your poison. So you do not kill yourself, you will only become a little confused.”
From that night on we were inseparable for almost two years. In the end he knew everything about me, and I very little about him. Although he has never done...”
“Done what?”
“Converted me. I never gave him permission...”
“Father Alfonso eventually converts everyone...”
“Not me.”
“Father D’Auria knows how to wait. Maybe even up to the very last moment... he always manages to gather you up and collect your soul.”
“Possibly. Maybe he is just waiting for that moment for me to capitulate. Then we’ll see who’ll win!” said Orlando and laughed.
It was the first time Elvi had seen him laugh. And she was deeply confused. He was a handsome man, his face marked by a few wrinkles that made him appear austere and wise. And the sullen eyes that had always transmitted unease and embarrassment, now shone with an unusual light, she had not noticed before.
“And the favor? The one you had to return to him?”
“Alfonso is a great ball breaker. He’s always been like that. He does everything his way, and there is no way of preventing or convincing him. That was how he started breaking down my mother. He called her all the time, went to her, took her to Mass (pious woman, my mother, not like her son!) and in the meantime he talked, spoke. About me. My paintings, my art. And of my change. In short, to make it brief, he convinced my mother that painting had made me a new man, a man, if not pious, certainly better. And one day I saw them coming both smiling and tremulous to my first one-man show. My mother died blessing the art that had changed me. She died in peace.”
“Yes, that’s typical of Alfonso. He does these things,” Elvira was absorbed, thinking that in the end she also owed Alfonso a favor.
11.
“I never see you smiling. Why?” They were silent. One of those heavy silences that cut the air like a knife cuts the trunk of a tree where eternal thoughts are written. Elvira had looked him in the eyes but had to look down immediately. That look passed from one to the other.
“I loved a man. He has stolen my soul, Father.”
“Stolen the soul...” he had looked right into her eyes, entangling her in a devastating way. She had to look away and stare at the tip of her shoes, embarrassed, “You use big words, Elvira my dear!” He had added nothing, and he was silent. Waiting. She told him her story. Without ever stopping and he had never interrupted. Father Alfonso listened in silence. Leaning against the back of the chair, his hands crossed over his chest, his eyes closed, he seemed to be sleeping. But, she knew, he hadn’t missed a word.
They had known each other since high school. They had been friends, companions.
“He had a real obsession for me. Passionate about photography, he took my picture wherever we went, anytime or pose. And I felt safe, quiet, because he was my best friend, I blindly trusted him.”
From intimate friendship to becoming lovers, the step was the inevitable result. For Elvira, the first intense physical experience, the first man. Absolutely.
“I wanted to be the only one. I only dreamed of being his. God how I loved him!”
“Do not speak the name of God in vain, he has nothing to do with all this...”
“Excuse me, father...”
“Alfonso, just call me Alfonso...” At university they had gone to live together. Study during the day, passionate nights. So it had gone on for ten years. Time had flown over their heads, hadn’t seemed to notice them.
“He was my whole world. But I was not his.” The voice remembering him how as had been, was however firm, with no indecision or emotion. He had ambition, career dreams to achieve at all costs, and little desire to take unacceptable responsibilities. And to make a career, you don’t break with important friendships, the right relationships, and an engagement of that type that open doors and privileges.
“He went home without even saying goodbye. He picked up his things, taking advantage of my absence; he didn’t dare to tell me, or let me know he left me. I read about his marriage in the newspaper, and I never even tried to ask him for explanations. There is no need for explanations, in such cases.”
“I can imagine your loss, your pain...”
“He had even taken the photographs of me from the apartment. I wanted to have them back. Although there was nothing compromising about those portraits, I did not want them to stay in his hands. I called him at work. He told me he would have them delivered to me in some way so that we would not be forced to see each other for such a trite reason. Do you understand? Trite. He had gone, my best friend, without telling me anything, without giving me any explanation. He had stolen my soul and now he said it was something trite! I told him to destroy them and I never wanted to see him again.”
“He was a small man, Elvi. You were lucky.”
“I no longer want to love, Father. I’m no longer interested. I have decided to close my heart to every beat or shiver. What I want is to devote myself to someone forever. One who won’t betray, that won’t leave without a message. God is eternal. Eternally faithful...”
“What you really have to do is return to believing that you can be happy. But no one can convince you of that. Not even God. You will have to do it on your own.”
“Do you know, Father, I have never been portrayed in a picture since then?”
“Are you afraid your soul will be stolen?” Don Alfonso had smiled, shaking his head perplexed.
“Possibly. But I don’t know how to smile anymore, and in photos you have to know how to.”
“You will get back to smiling, you’ll see. The night only lasts until midnight... then the new day begins to be born again...”
12.
Orlando Cimarosa was completely amazed by the sensations Elvi’s presence transmitted to him. He had known for many weeks that only the sight of her face that night in the church had imprisoned him in a cage of thoughts. He could have safely avoided those hours of posing, which he had never been used to; it would have been enough to take a photograph to capture her. But the image he had in his mind’s eye and was desperately trying to capture was that contemplative expression, almost the ecstasy of a young woman in prayer during a special and private Mass. It was the candor, the purity, adoration and ascetic that he had photographed in her eyes and that he could not bring to the canvas. The presence of Elvira in his studio distracted him and at the same time crushed him. But what he had not foreseen was wanting to continue to experience those feelings, to desire her in silence. For this he had invented such a strange and unusual way to have her pose in his studio. He had fallen in love with that young woman, too young for him, too elegant and sophisticated, who filled his days. He did not want to let her go. Some time still, let her stay a few days longer he continued to ask Art. Just a few notes in pencil, some chiaro-scuro and nothing more. He said.
But every time Elvira left, he was taken by a sudden fury, and filled sheets and sheets, faces, bodies, passionate portraits, all inspired by her. Not one, however, remotely, evoked religion, chastity, and purity. They were painted in bright colors, flashes of fire and carnality, vortices of encounters and pagan dances, hunting scenes and bacchanals whose heroine was her, always her, Elvira. She had become his obsession. He had to draw her that way, to mortify the spiritual part, that part of her who was inspired to ascend through those pictures to bring her back to the earth, to
bring her back to concrete life, and most of all delude himself that he possessed her at least in a dream, at least through the madness of his imagination. And every day, when she reappeared at the doorstep of his studio, he saw her again wrapped in that silvery aura of spirituality and innocence, and he felt lost, again dispersed in the immensity of his feelings.
13.
How long did those poses have to continue? By now several months had passed. Was it possible that Cimarosa had lost his artistic talent? That he could not retrieve, or at least confess, he could not do it? He had never allowed her to look at the picture hidden under the blue drape, but she knew very well that the canvas was still completely white. She felt an inexplicable dissatisfaction growing within her. She was not bored or annoyed by the constant poses for the painter. Indeed, every morning she found himself running lightly towards Orlando’s studio and always ahead of schedule. There was something else she could not explain. Curious. She wanted to find out how he would interpret her. What he had seen in her. It had become an awkward expectation. Almost as if that picture that had never been painted depended on her. At the same time, she felt a slight affectionate transference towards that gruff and silent gentleman. But she did not see him as a father or a friend. A subtle addiction was insinuating in her, something that tied her to that man and whom she began to feel she could not do without.
Mysterious is the Heart Page 2
