by Olivia Fane
‘I didn’t know that he had been,’ said Josiah.
‘Then I shall tell you the allegory of the cave,’ said Thomas, momentarily turning towards his pupil to kiss him on his temple. ‘Plato believed that human beings were like men living in a cave, who never even suspected the existence of another realm of sunlight, and who mistook shadows for real objects.’
‘How’s that possible?’
‘It’s quite elaborate, as far as I remember. They’re held prisoner, they can’t move their heads from left to right, there’s a fire at the back of the cave and a low wall somewhere in the middle of it, behind which people crawl up and down holding up a range of objects whose shadows are reflected on the wall of the cave – so that’s all the prisoners are capable of seeing, that’s their sum reality and they don’t question it.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Josiah.
‘Perhaps there’s another, truer reality out there which we can’t grasp. Some would say, if you can’t grasp it, it can’t exist. They used to call themselves “logical positivists”.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘Pure arrogance. There are minds in Cambridge, for example, which think in lines so rigid they even manage to reduce infinity to a man-made proposition, useful in mathematics but otherwise defunct. And they have no conception of a truth which is not pure logic, with its meaningless dependence on Aristotelian syllogisms. If all boxes are red, and x is a box, then x is red, that sort of thing. And if your mind is full of that, where do you go next?’
‘To a deep pool somewhere?’ ventured Josiah, only half-listening.
‘You’re right! Down to your very bones, you’re right!’ Thomas was impressed, and kissed Josiah on the top of his head. ‘We humans find simplicity hard going,’ he said. ‘But you’re right, we should give it a go.’
So out came the large-scale map; out came the red pen to draw over footpaths they might take and pools they might swim in; out came the trunks (last worn, in Thomas’s case, six years previously) and out came (and Thomas remembered the slight unease he felt both in buying and packing it) the suntan lotion. Josiah, meanwhile, had deliberately forgotten to bring his own school swimming trunks, imagining he would rather be naked if push came to shove; but strange to say, the more intimate these two became, the more aware they were of the feelings of the other, and Josiah knew that his nakedness alarmed Thomas and he kept it to himself. Inevitably they lay on the bank in the heat of the day, and yes, they did massage the cream into each other’s backs: Thomas on Josiah – perfunctorily, and to the point; Josiah on Thomas – with a little more feeling, a little more awareness of the contours of his back, for this was the first skin he’d been let loose on. They also sat in dappled shade, reading and eating gorgonzola, and Josiah took Thomas’s fingers into his mouth and licked them clean, and so easy were they with each other, that Thomas laughed, even in his heart.
‘What does sex feel like, Tom? What does it feel like to have sex with a woman?’ Josiah asked late one afternoon. The pair had been swimming all morning in a deep pool about seven miles from their chapel. The water was a pale verdigris; Thomas said that was probably because of the high copper content in the soil (Thomas knew everything). Then they’d both fallen fast asleep, lying outstretched by the water, and Josiah had been dreaming erotic dreams that he was trying to place.
Thomas considered. ‘It feels secret and dangerous. It’s good.’
‘You said once that you said it disappointed you.’
‘Did I? I meant, I think, not the physical experience itself, which is pleasant, Josiah. The experience as a whole is difficult to get right.’
‘I want to know about the physical experience. I want to know what it feels like to be inside a woman. Can you describe it?’
‘Of course you’ve felt… sexually aroused?’
‘Oh yes. But by what? By Woman? By Man? What I feel barely has an object. Or at least, everything is its object. If that poplar over there came to life I would desire that tree.’
‘I was thinking myself what a handsome tree that poplar is.’
‘Do you think desire can just be free-floating?’
‘I do, I think you’re right. I think it can have any object at all. The desire for God, knowledge, beauty, the desire for possession, the desire to hold onto someone, or something – doesn’t desire give us the illusion, at least, that our lives have meaning? Doesn’t desire have a necessary journey built within it: here I am, and there I wish to be? Isn’t that feeling the very core of what makes life worthwhile?’
‘I desire you,’ said Josiah quietly, sweetly; Thomas took his hand and kissed it, but was keen to turn desire into something noble.
‘I’ve often wondered whether to introduce you to Plato’s Symposium. Socrates suggests that all desire is ultimately the desire for Beauty Itself, the Platonic Form of Beauty – we talked about Plato’s Forms the other day, they inhabit the realm beyond the shadows. Do you remember the cave allegory?’
‘I don’t desire you because you’re beautiful, Tom.’
Thomas ignored the look Josiah gave him, and launched forth into a further salutary lesson.
‘My point exactly! I’ve often thought there are two kinds of desire, one with a small d and one with a capital D. The small d is barely worth discussing. It’s about good health. It’s about fitness to procreate. It’s about evolutionary biology.’
‘What if you’re homosexual? What if you desire someone of your own sex?’
‘Are you looking for a merely physical experience?’
‘You mean, do I desire with a small “d”?’
‘Yes, do you?’
Josiah said seriously, ‘I do want a physical experience.’
‘But as part of something bigger, surely?’
‘Not necessarily.’ But when Thomas looked crestfallen, he added, tactfully, ‘So tell me about desire with a big D.’
‘You make it sound ridiculous.’
‘Or desire with a big P.’
‘Josiah!’
‘Come here, Tom.’
‘No, no I won’t.’
‘Then I shall come to you.’
Josiah rolled over and lay his hand over Thomas’ stomach, spreading out his fingers over the dark hair above his swimming trunks.
‘You’ve caught the sun,’ Josiah said, ‘You’re looking good.’
And with that Josiah tentatively moved his fingers under the elastic of the trunks.
‘You’ve got an erection,’ he said.
Thomas pushed him away and snapped, ‘Get off me, you idiot.’
They slept like a married couple after a row that night, hands by their sides, looking up at the ceiling. At five a.m. Thomas got up because he was hot and anxious and needed to get out of there. He walked for four hours, in a rage at himself, at Josiah, and at the world, and it was with the world he was the first to make his peace with, because Tuscany at dawn placates even the sternest souls.
The dew was heavy and wet, luminous in the soft light, and Thomas walked through seven valleys that morning, pausing only once to drink at a stream. Here were the valles reductae of Horace and Virgil, a classical landscape undamaged for two thousand years, and by the time Thomas had reached the top of the seventh hill, the sky was a brilliant, deep, blue, the dense low-lying mists beneath him finally beginning to disperse. Thomas sang out to the beauty of it, ‘Salve!’ so that anyone who saw him would have though him quite mad, though Thomas felt himself touched by some primordial joy.
As he walked back down the hill towards the chapel, he could make out Josiah fetching water from the stream, but his pleasure at the sight of him was soon pushed aside by the unhappy memory of the day before. So he approached the scene sullen, even angry, and Josiah offering him a cup of tea didn’t move him at all.
But Josiah was a clever, perceptive boy, and had spent half the night working out how he might raise himself up in Thomas’ estimation once more. He endured the froideur between them with grace; he humbly hand
ed him his cup of tea and they sat together in silence while they sipped at it. And then (timing was everything!) he lay down his gauntlet. He’d been preparing the question since Thomas deserted him, and he asked with great earnestness, ‘Why did the Romans write such a lot of poetry about farming?’
The question proved quite irresistible.
Thomas’ eyes lit up. He didn’t reply immediately, but paused to consider it, as a gourmet might enjoy every nuance of a truffle. And finally, what with the loveliness of the prima luce and Josiah’s pretty, pouting mouth, the Latin quite spilt out of him: “Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, Magna virum! Translate, Josiah, translate!’
‘Greetings!’ translated Josiah dutifully.
‘And whom is Virgil greeting?’ asked his master.
‘Tell me again,’ said Josiah, so happy to see Thomas quite himself again.
‘Look about you! This early light, how deeply green the land, how blue the sky, and look, over there, acanthus, myrtle, cypress trees! The land of Italy, Saturnia tellus, Saturn, the ancient God of the land, and more precisely the land of Italy! Virgil wrote those lines two thousand years ago, and even our little chapel here might have been built over one dedicated to Ceres, Saturn’s daughter – that letter of Pliny we read only a month ago…’
‘When he’s ordering marble columns to embellish his own little temple to Ceres.’
‘When he’s building her a portico.’
‘No, he’s building a most beautiful statue for the goddess, and a portico for men!’ corrected Josiah, victoriously.
‘If you’re so clever, why is the land called “magna parens frugum, magna virum”?’
‘Great parent of fruits, great parent of men. I don’t know.’
Thomas was thinking very hard now; he put down his tea and began to pace up and down.
‘“Parent”, hmm, I’m not sure about the word “parent,’’’ he said. ‘What happened to it? There’s something rather managerial about the word, there’s no love in it. The Latin word, “parens” is a doing word, the present participle of “pario”. It means, “giving birth to” or ‘creating’, and you see, it actively goes on all the time, and it’s a warm word in the Latin, like “mother”. So how about a translation like, “Great mother of the harvest, great mother of men”, because that is the point, and it answers your question, too. The earth is the mother of farming, and the mother of civilization. Farming is about creating order out of a wilderness, it’s about imposing man’s will on chaos and making something good come of it. In fact, you could say that poetry was an attempt to do the same. They are both an act of creation.’
‘My father used to say the very opposite. Sometimes he’d take me bird watching in the Fens. He used to say, “These farmers are destroying everything.”’
‘But in the beginning,’ said Thomas passionately, ‘the impulse was good and true; if you like, it was “authentic”, it came from the heart of man. Over time that authenticity has been taken over. Our minds have taken our hearts and bodies hostage. We believe nothing if it’s not couched in terms of acreages and yields and the like. We like facts and figures and measurements, ever since the Enlightenment numbers are the only language we have faith in. One day the world will be like one enormous graph, they’ll even find a way of measuring happiness. But a long time ago farming was not so much a business as a way of understanding nature, it was an authentic response to nature, it was living with nature. Tomorrow, Josiah, I shall take you to the Palazzo Pubblico, and there, painted on a few walls and commissioned by the Nine Good Men in medieval Siena, Man’s very soul will be revealed to you, not as something divided and categorized into public and private, heart and reason, but something unified and true – something simple, didn’t you want simplicity, my dear, darling boy?’
So on the next day they forsook their simple life and went back into Siena. Golden dirt was being spread all over the Campo, and flags were flying from every window; even though there were still four days to go till the Palio, the air was thick with anticipation: there were horses being led round the track, already decked out in the colours of their contrada – a horse might lose its rider during the race and still win, but losing its elaborate headdress meant instant disqualification – and each of them had a group of followers dressed in medieval costume, gaudy waistcoats and caps with dyed feathers, or belted doublets and hose. There were musicians, too, lutenists and flautists and children in embroidered smocks and flouncy skirts playing on their recorders – and even the anachronistic throng with their digital cameras and mobile phones pointing at them barely detracted from the possibility that here before them were glimpses of the real Siena.
‘You see why I love this place,’ said Thomas, inadvertently taking hold of Josiah’s hand on the steps of the Palazzo Pubblico. ‘The Nine Good Men who built this Palace for the People of Siena, instigated the Palio as well. Such order! Such passion! All in the one breath. You see the Torre del Mangia, Josiah? The bell it housed was the voice of the Commune. It rang at dawn, to signify the lifting of the night curfew, and then again at midday, when everyone would stop work for lunch and a siesta; in the evening, it used to announce the sunset…’
‘It sounds awful,’ said Josiah. ‘It would be like living in a factory.’
‘Ah no, order is a good thing. And they didn’t have watches, remember. And order brings with it security, and security, freedom. And the people knew that, they understood it in a way that we’ve lost sight of. There’s a balance to be struck, it’s true, but the Siennese struck it. Come, I’m taking you to the Sala dei Nove. If you forget everything else about Siena, what you are about to see you must hold in your heart forever, till you die! Do you promise me that?’
‘I promise,’ said Josiah obediently.
The Palazzo Pubblico in the Piazza del Campo is one of the most graceful Gothic buildings in all of Tuscany: its ground floor rooms are light and large and gracious, and contain countless treasures, but Thomas was a man with a purpose and he took Josiah by the hand without so much as pausing before any of them, until they had climbed the broad marble staircase and reached the Council Chamber of the Nine Good Men. There was hardly space to stand among the tourists gazing respectfully up at Ambroglio Lorenzetti’s frescoes describing the Effects of Good and Bad Government, but Thomas said, ‘There would have always been people crammed in here. This room isn’t about one to one communing with great art, it’s about people, it’s about how to live together well.’
Thomas happily closed his eyes for a moment or two, imbibing the communal breath, and talked as though he were the only man in the room.
‘Now, imagine it’s 1350. We’re just regular townspeople, I’m a blacksmith, you’re my apprentice. And we’ve heard about these astonishing frescoes, which are going to tell us everything we need to know about justice. We’re illiterate, you and I, but these frescoes have been commissioned by the Nine Good Men for the Commune of Siena, and everyone has been encouraged to come and have a look at them. In fact, let’s walk into the room again, let’s start right at the beginning.’
Josiah was smiling, not just at Thomas who had drifted onto another plane, but at everyone about him, as though he were apologizing for his eccentric companion, and he said, ‘I’m with you, Tom.’
Thomas was transported right back; Josiah followed. The Vices greeted them (the sight was almost shocking): Tyranny enthroned in black, a female demon with horns and fangs, toasted them with a golden cup; and her acolytes are Cruelty, an old woman strangling an innocent child; Betrayal – there’s a lamb on his lap with a scorpion’s tail; Fraud, a handsome woman till you see her claws; Fury, half-man, half-beast; Division, a lady sawing herself in half; and there’s War beside her, head to toe in armour. There are equally vicious women hovering at Tyranny’s head: clawed Avarice, holding her coin-press, Vaingloria with her mirror, and horned Superbia rising above them all, Pride herself with sword and crooked yoke, who will never bow down for the good of all, but only looks to herself.
Below them all Justice, a pathetic figure being dragged along the ground by children, lies bound and powerless, her scales broken – ‘See what happens, Josiah, when Tyranny usurps the throne of Justice!’ cried Thomas, with as much feeling as a Good Man of Siena. ‘The Ministers who serve the Tyrant serve only themselves! Yet some of these vices we pretend are virtues; we pretend that the avaricious create money, that vanity serves beauty, that pride in oneself makes us happy, when all it does is separate us from our fellows. Deception is considered a social nicety, Division the best way of running a Court of Law. No one knows what virtue is anymore, no one cares about goodness, whether in others or in themselves. Goodness is passé.’
The crowd looked towards the Englishman: some amused, some irritated, some positively angry. But Josiah enjoyed his outburst, he even felt rather proud of him, and flicked his fringe in appreciation.
‘The thing is, Josiah, that we’re born knowing about justice. Yet somehow it’s considered polite to forget. If justice is our first instinct, that nothing is fair is our first lesson. And then it’s a hard and necessary journey to find her again, because we have to nurture the goodness in us first. Justice is not justice which puts rights before duties, which puts the self before the common good. That’s Aristotle for you, and Plato. It’s Cicero too, and Thomas Aquinas, in fact it’s everyone, it’s all of us, it’s a fact, it’s out there, it’s an absolute.’
‘But who’s to say what the common good is?’
‘Plato’s Republic, I shall lend you a good translation the moment we get back to England. Or do you think the time is right for you to begin Greek? Have you ever thought you would like to learn Greek? The world is ours, my dear boy. But look, we’re not finished yet!’
