The City Below

by James Carroll

  "Wow," he said, turning slowly, taking it in. His voice echoed.

  "Come on. I'll show you Michelangelo." She pronounced the name with a short i, like mick.

  Joan's shoes clacked on the slate floor as she crossed toward one corner of the courtyard and disappeared in the shadows of the portico. Squire followed, though he'd have preferred to linger in the bright hall. They went up a narrow, turning staircase to the second floor, then down a corridor, away from the courtyard, and into a small, windowless gallery so dark it was impossible to see.

  Joan said, "Wait here a moment" When she had gone, Squire had the feeling someone else was in the room with him. He was sure of it. A large figure was standing against the wall a dozen yards in front of him.

  Suddenly the room filled with light The ceiling here was entirely glass too, but instead of being open to the sky, light bulbs were hidden behind the smoky glass. Joan had turned them on.

  The figure in front of Squire was a statue, a naked man ten or twelve feet tall. His face was twisted back, one arm was wrenched behind, the other was across his breast, tugging at a cord that bound him. With his contorted face, he was a man in agony of some kind, so real the thing was hard to look at. His penis, flaccid and defeated, was at the level of Squire's eye.

  He looked away. On the walls to the right and left were ornately framed drawings and prints, all showing human figures, men and women both, seated on thrones or in clouds, robes draping them casually or leaving them half naked. One drawing seemed familiar: it showed Mary holding Jesus, and even before Joan returned and told him, he recognized it as a sketch for the Pietà.

  "What do you think?" she asked from behind him.

  "I'm amazed. Nobody ever told me they had Michelangelo in Boston. Of course, it figures it would be over here."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What the hell, Harvard." He shrugged. "It's one way a wop can go to Harvard—by being Michelangelo."

  "That's a parochial reaction, if you don't mind my saying so."

  "True." He laughed. "I'm of the parochial school."

  "That's an act, Nick A routine of yours, and it's wasted on me. I've seen your house. I've seen the Manseau in your dining room."

  "Didi's in charge of that stuff. Now this"—he approached the statue—"would look great in our entrance hall."

  "It's a plaster cast Not original. You wouldn't tolerate it."

  "How true." He drew close enough to read the plate on the pedestal. " The Dying Slave. Jesus, he really nailed the guy, didn't he?"

  "Yes."

  Joan came and stood beside Doyle. They regarded the sculpture in silence. Finally he said quietly, "Would you tell me about it?"

  "We have this, even if it is a cast, because Michelangelo was a sculptor, a carver of marble statues. All his drawing and painting imitated the roundness of sculpture."

  "Who has the original?"

  "The Louvre. This is paired with a second statue, The Rebellious Slave."

  "That's the one I'd like to see."

  "Come here then," she said, walking to a long glass cabinet that lined one wall of the room. A dozen drawings were displayed. "This is the tomb of Julius II, as Michelangelo designed it Here ... and ... here we see his drawings of the slaves. One dying ... see? And one rebelling."

  Squire studied the drawings. Statues of various figures, some standing, some seated, were posted around the elaborate door of a tomb. Of the dozen drawings, three, no four, featured the pair of slaves. The second slave was looking up from his bonds, defiance in his face.

  Joan said, "When he'd carved the slaves, they were never placed at the tomb. We don't know why."

  "Maybe the kings were—"

  Joan's head jolted. Was he kidding? "Pope, Nick. Julius II was a pope."

  Squire stared at one of the drawings impassively, but the color rushing into his skin showed his embarrassment.

  "These statues turned up in Paris, because of Richelieu probably. After 1789, the French celebrated them as symbols of the revolution. Especially The Rebellious Slave, naturally. Look at it I wish you could see that statue, the original. It vibrates with energy, with life. Like David or Moses. The wonder is that it does not speak."

  "Saying 'I refuse.'" He looked at her. "Saying T resist'"

  If she caught his reference, she would not show it. Her face was lit with admiration for the statue. " Terribilità is the word Michelangelo's contemporaries used for this. The sublime, we would say."

  Squire turned back to the plaster cast "This one is dying because he gave up."

  "I don't know if that's the case."

  "I can feel it."

  "To be alive is to rebel, is that what you believe?"

  Squire laughed. "If I was a slave, maybe. Before this busing shit in the Town, what was there to rebel against? My life was simple. Still is, really. My work, my family, my neighbors..." He opened his hands toward her, as if what he was saying were the most natural thing in the world. "And now you."

  "Me?" Joan put her hand on her breast, mugging, Scarlett O'Hara. "Little old me? My goodness, I'm just too honored for words." She laughed.

  But he stared at her, right through the pose of her snappy derision.

  The color in her face became ashen. She turned and walked toward the door, the noise of her heels resounding in the gallery. He watched her body, wasp-hipped, the motion of her legs and ass under her dress, the line of her underpants.

  He stayed where he was until the light went off again. All of Michelangelo's presentation sketches, and even the slave behind him, ceased to exist Then he joined her in the corridor. "'The guard,' you said. Where's the guard?"

  Joan looked around, listening. "The other wing, probably. The basement There are two, but it's a big place."

  Joan started for the stairwell they had come up, but he saw off to his left what he was looking for, a thing to stop her with. At the far end of the corridor that ran along the balcony overlooking the courtyard stood another massive statue. This one was black and dramatically set off by a sequence of frames: the doorway of the room it was in, the line of pillars and arches, and the Gothic vaulting of the ambulatory leading to it A woman. Nude.

  "What's that?"

  Joan stopped and looked where he was pointing. "Aristide Maillol," she answered. "A bronze."

  "Your field?"

  "No. France. This century."

  "Can we look?" Without waiting for an answer, Squire started walking. Here, along the balcony, with the light washing in from the courtyard, the floor was not slate but antique tiles, uneven underfoot.

  "This could be Venice or something," he said.

  "Have you been to Europe?"

  "I have business now and again, but only in Holland. Not a big art country."

  "Van Gogh. Rembrandt."

  "Sidewalk Sam. Hey, what can I say? My interest is flowers. Dutch tulips. Bulbs."

  She did not reply.

  He said, "Our footsteps echo so loudly because, in this part anyway, no one else is here. Like that tree in the forest."

  "Which tree?"

  "But the museum is empty, right? Except for us and the guards someplace."

  "I guess so. There could be somebody in the offices upstairs, but probably not on a Sunday."

  "I thought Sundays were like big days for museums."

  "Not Harvard." She spoke ironically. "This art isn't for the public. This art is for us."

  "Hey, privileges of the elite."

  "Believe it or not, it's an issue for some of us. We're trying to—"

  "I could get used to this." Squire began to waltz ahead of her with his arms outstretched, a graceful dance of circles.

  Despite herself, Joan smiled.

  Unlike the dark gallery of the Michelangelo, the room in which the Maillol stood was illuminated by a skylight, and the statue was positioned to take advantage of it: a female figure eight feet tall, arms clutching a bronze towel behind, chest thrust forward, a heaviness in the breasts and thighs, the round rise of
her abdomen, a looseness of the parted lips which alone made her seem to be offering herself.

  He said, "Now I see why the slave is dying."

  Joan circled around behind the statue, making a show, perhaps, of her expertise. She said, "Don't you see how static she is, how detached? Where is the energy we saw in Michelangelo?"

  "She seems pretty content with herself, I guess." Doyle stretched to his full height. "Except for those lips. Look how they're parted. Did you notice that?" He began to reach a finger up to the statue's face.

  "Don't," Joan said.

  He looked at her. "Don't what?"

  "Don't touch."

  He held his position, his finger a few inches from the bather's lips.

  "It's a rule," she said.

  "Like, don't steal?"

  "Yes. Because your skin has oil in it The oil marks the bronze imperceptibly, but nevertheless."

  Squire withdrew his hand and slowly began to circle around the statue, his eyes on Joan. They were surrounded by impressionist works— Renoir's Seated Bather on one wall, Pissarro's Montmartre on another— and a second piece of sculpture, an exquisite small naked dancer by Degas. Women's bodies, glowing in the love of the men who'd made them.

  He moved silently, because in this room the floor was covered with a flat-gray carpet. The huge bronze loomed between them, an abstraction of the female form, an abstraction also of negritude. A glistening black curve, the line of the buttock, disappeared in the hollow of the small of the woman's arching back.

  Joan studied Terry's brother as he came toward her, a mystified chill running through her. If he'd been a Michelangelo come to life, she'd have felt this very sense of inevitability. Why has it taken so long?

  When he was next to her, he brought his finger to within inches of her lips. She thought he was going to ask permission, but what he said was " Terribilità. Is that how you say it?"

  "Yes."

  He put his finger between her teeth then, and she bit him until she tasted blood.

  They pressed their bodies together. When they kissed, their tongues fought each other. As they sank to the floor, she pulled her face away.

  "I can't."

  "We'll hear the guard if he comes."

  "I can't," she repeated.

  "Why not?" he answered, with a freedom that gathered her up, releasing her for the sexual urge. Quickly he was on her. She pulled at his clothing as frantically as he pulled at hers.

  Once she almost called him Terry, and then realized it The thought of her husband—of how the feel of this man's weight was both like Terry's and entirely different—did not check her passion, but made it seem the fulfillment of promises Terry's body had made, but never kept.

  Squire was massaging her with his fingers. "Oh," she said as she became still more aroused. "Oh." She took his face firmly between her hands and made him look into her eyes. "What is this?" she whispered.

  "Sex," he said.

  "Oh, Nick." She hugged his neck as he continued touching her with his fingers. She was coming. Coming.

  Yet, in her mind, he was hurting her with what his expertise implied. He was an awful man, awful. She knew it, yet blanked it out "God..." This approaching storm of sensation, could it be hers? Who cares? she asked as it lifted her. It's wrong, she told herself. Wrong. She didn't care. She gave herself over to the swelling sea of her body.

  "Oh stop!" she cried.

  She pushed him up. He resisted, but she forced him halfway off her, out of her. "I'm not wearing my diaphragm," she said with a gasp.

  "It doesn't matter." He was so calm, indifferent even to their witnesses, the paintings and statues surrounding them, a man who did not care if it was blasphemy, holding one of these goddesses in his arms. "Let it go, Joan," he said quietly.

  "No," she said, "I can't." She pushed against him, but knew, of course, it was futile to do so. He did not take no for an answer. Wasn't that clear from the start? Wasn't that what drew her in? How had she let this happen? She was aware of his hands pinning hers, of her head whipping back and forth, a wild gesture of refusal. Any other man she'd ever known, she could have closed out right then. But he knew exactly where the opening was, not just between her legs, but between what she wanted and what she didn't want at all. He pushed into it, the genius, the bastard, the fuck. "No," she said again, while her body opened to him.

  15

  TAILLIGHTS FLASHED on the gleaming, sand-colored surface of the tile ceiling as the automobiles ahead hit their brakes. Traffic slowed suddenly, all the way back from the point where the Sumner Tunnel emptied into the maze of downtown Boston.

  "Shit," the driver said, but under his breath so that only Terry heard him, and not the two passengers in back. When Terry glanced back, the senator was going over his speech, pencil in hand, marking pages Terry himself had given him. Bright rolled his one good eye, a self-mocking bit of Stepin Fetchit. Facing forward, Terry watched the tunnel ceiling again. Up ahead it was awash in red, as if the tile had cracked and was leaking, not harbor water—here was his strange thought—but blood.

  Along the right side of the roadway was a narrow catwalk, separated by a railing. As the traffic slowed nearly to a stop, Terry leaned out his window toward a tunnel cop standing by his booth. The cop held a walkie-talkie. "What's up?"

  "Big crowd the JFK Building. Protest march."

  Now when Terry glanced rearward again, Senator Kennedy was looking right at him. "Is that us?"

  "Yes."

  A cloud moved across Kennedy's face, settling there. The traffic continued inching past the cop, leaving him behind. Terry saw it when, stooping, the cop had recognized the senator, and had put his handset to his face. That single gesture, to Terry's surprise, pulled the cord on an inner alarm. His stomach lurched, the emotional equivalent of a fire whistle, and it became his complete purpose to get that alarm suppressed again, for himself and for Ted. He touched the driver's elbow.

  "When we get out of the tunnel, go right on Endicott Street. We'll come up on the building from the North Station side."

  "Right."

  The four sat with eyes fixed on the red lights of the tunnel ceiling; when traffic opened up ahead, the red would disappear. It never did. Cars crawled along, braking all the way. Kennedy, after lighting one of his putrid cigarillos, turned back to his speech, three pages inside the black binder, five minutes' worth, maybe six. When Terry had handed the binder to him at National Airport, Kennedy had opened it, flicked the pages, and said, "This is it?"

  They'd been standing in the VIP lounge at Eastern.

  "Four hundred words, Senator," Terry had said. "Gettysburg was less than three hundred."

  Kennedy had looked up sharply. "At a graveyard."

  "To the people you'll be talking to, that's what Boston is, the site of a battle with no winners, only losers. A speech can change what people think and do, and what they feel. Sometimes a speech has to."

  "The Gettysburg Address, huh?"

  "Why not?"

  Ted Kennedy had found Bright's eye then, and to Terry's chagrin they had laughed—laughed, he knew, at him. He had broken the great rule, invoking Lincoln. In their speeches they could do that, but never, never in their talk among themselves.

  Now, from his corner in the rear seat, under his cone of light, Senator Kennedy said in a detached voice, "They're going to hate me for this."

  "They already hate you," Bright said.

  Terry whipped around. "No, no, they don't. That's ridiculous. These people love you, Senator. That's the point That's why you have to be the one telling them—"

  "That they're wrong."

  "That's not the main point You're reminding them what being Irish means, how the doors open in this country, how the last thing we want is to be a closed door for someone else."

  "The Irish open doors." Kennedy snorted, elbowing McKay. "Irish doormen."

  "In fact, Senator, that's exactly right Your family has opened doors for—"

  "But on busing they are wrong. That's
what I've come to tell them. Tell them to their red Irish noses. They're dead wrong."

  Terry was afraid suddenly that Kennedy's mocking, angry tone meant he wouldn't do it The cloud in Kennedy's face, Terry realized now, was fear.

  "Yes, Senator. That's what you're saying."

  "Because no one else will say it except the Globe, Anne Cabot Wy-man, Thomas Winship, William O. Taylor—Boston WASPs."

  "That's right."

  Kennedy closed the folder. "Just wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. Jesus Christ" He looked away from Doyle, pretending to find something of interest in the grimy tile wall of Sumner Tunnel. He inhaled deeply on his cigarillo. A moment later he said softly, "I wanted to see David, but we won't be up here long enough. Ethel said he's not doing so great."

  "We set him up in the office," Terry said. "He and a couple of other Harvard kids come over twice a week. I'll keep my eye on him."

  "I'm going to tell his mother that Keep Bright posted, will you."

  "Yes, sir."

  A few moments later, their car came out into the sunlight The car swung right, past Martignetti's, onto the border street of the North End, leaving the bulk of traffic creeping onto expressway ramps. They shot into the Italian neighborhood, past a barber shop, a row of stoop-fronted tenements, and a butcher shop with lamb and pig carcasses hung to drip above the sidewalk, blood again.

  Two blocks along, Endicott Street wedged into North Washington, and at the next intersection stood Boston Garden. Terry felt Blight's hand on his shoulder. "Jumpers. Remember?"

  "Christ, yes," Terry said. "All those bobby sox."

  Bright said to Kennedy, "Terry and I massed an army of kids here for your brother, election eve."

  "Big difference, his hometown rally and mine."

  Bright poked Terry again. "Where are the flowers?"

  Blight's touch, and that awful reference, made Terry feel coldly certain that he'd made a terrible mistake in forcing these men here—like the mistake he'd made years before.