Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  ‘Not entirely clear, no,’ she says.

  He exhales and regards the roof-beams, readying himself for another bout of education, but at that moment Robert comes up the stairs, carrying a loaf of bread.

  ‘Enter Roberto,’ Gideon announces. And then, to Claire: ‘I thought we might go for a picnic. Acceptable?’

  4.6

  In Gideon’s car – an ancient butter-coloured Mercedes that’s in museum-quality condition – they drive up to Gerfalco. There’s a perfect picnic spot just below the village, says Gideon, and he leads the way, leaving Robert to carry the food and drink in three plastic bags. The perfect spot is a curving slope of grass with a screen of trees behind it – a natural belvedere, giving a long and wide view to the north. There’s a tree stump on the slope, on which Gideon – taking charge – arranges the plastic beakers (one each for wine, one each for water), having first given Trim his dish of meat scraps and biscuits, and his water bowl. Onto heavy plastic plates he distributes portions of three different cheeses, plus ham for himself and Robert; there are three fat peaches; he cuts wedges of thick-crusted bread with a horn-handled knife; he has brought a salad and a little bottle of dressing, a recipe devised by Mrs Fava, of which the crucial ingredients are honey and coarse-grained mustard.

  ‘See our tower?’ says Robert, pointing into the far distance.

  ‘Where?’ she asks, then she sees it: like a stalk of slightly darker straw sticking up from a bale. The distant hills in the heat resemble clouds of thick smoke; villages look like scattered chips of stone; in the foreground, when you look closely, there is every shade of green, from almost black to silvery jade.

  Gideon removes his Panama prior to taking off his jacket, then his shirt. His belly is creamy silicone and he has breasts that make her think of puppies’ muzzles. Noticing her glance, he regards his torso; with the fingertips of both hands he lifts a belt of fat and lets it fall. He smiles, as though impressed by the rebound. ‘I sing the body electric,’ he chortles, and does it again; the quivering extends from waist to armpit. She offers him her sun lotion. ‘Very kind,’ he says; he squirts too much of it into a palm and slathers it on; he applies it to his face as though splashing his skin with water. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says to her, laughing, ‘the back can fend for itself.’ He replaces the hat on his head, puts the plate on his thighs; he eats, appreciatively surveying the land below.

  Prim in his spotless white polo shirt and jeans, and his neat soft moccasins, Robert sits higher up the slope, crossed-legged, paperback in hand. ‘What are you reading?’ she asks him.

  ‘On the Eve,’ he answers, showing her the cover.

  ‘He loves his gloomy Russians,’ Gideon tells her.

  ‘Turgenev is not a gloomy Russian,’ Robert corrects him.

  ‘Well, I haven’t heard much in the way of laughter,’ Gideon replies. Ignored by Robert, he asks Claire: ‘Have you read Turgenev?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ she says. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t read novels.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Really?’ he responds, in a shriek of delight. ‘You don’t read novels? Neither do I,’ he announces, hands outspread as if inviting her to rush over for a hug. ‘Why not, in your case?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never have.’

  ‘But you read a lot.’

  ‘I don’t know about a lot.’

  ‘And what do you read?’

  ‘Biographies. And history. Some history.’

  ‘So no time for make-believe, is that it?’ he suggests, approvingly. It seems to be a jibe aimed at Robert, but Robert continues to read, as unperturbed as a deaf man.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it like that,’ she says. ‘It’s just I’ve never been able to lose myself in a story, I suppose. Perhaps I don’t have the imagination. I don’t know.’

  ‘I know what you mean about losing yourself,’ says Gideon. ‘You do have to give yourself up to a novel.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ murmurs Robert, turning a page.

  ‘No, you do,’ says Gideon. ‘You have to give yourself up.’

  ‘No more than you do when you’re listening to Bach,’ says Robert quietly; he gives the impression that he’s had to make this point a hundred times before.

  ‘Not quite the same thing,’ says Gideon, in a similar tone. And then, to Claire: ‘But when you were growing up, you didn’t read stories then?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Your parents didn’t read to you?’

  ‘Oh yes, when I was small. But that was different.’

  ‘Yes. Of course,’ he says. He turns away and gazes towards Castelluccio, in a way that suggests reminiscence. After a minute he says to her: ‘And have you got JFK with you now?’

  ‘I have,’ she says, opening her bag to show him.

  ‘Well, I’ll let you get on with it,’ he says, as if apologising for detaining her; he takes from his jacket a sketchbook and pencils.

  For almost an hour nothing is said, except ‘Thank you,’ as her glass is replenished. Then Gideon closes the sketchbook, with sufficient firmness to ensure that they take note.

  ‘Can I see?’ she asks.

  He angles the sketchbook towards her, and turns four or five pages. Trees cover the pages – sketches of individual trees, with just two or three lines for each trunk, a smear of graphite or a flock of tiny ticks for foliage.

  She is impressed, both by the exactitude and by the productivity, but she says: ‘You don’t paint many landscapes. I looked at the website, and there weren’t many landscapes. Which strikes me as strange. Living here, I mean. With all this.’

  ‘I don’t paint any landscapes,’ he says, and she sees Robert smile into his book. ‘If by “landscape” you mean a transposition of the terrain. An image of what’s in front of us. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘In that case, I don’t paint landscapes.’ The tone is that of a teacher – a complacent one – shepherding a student towards greater precision.

  ‘I swear I’ve seen one or two,’ she says.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Gideon insists.

  ‘But there are landscapes in your paintings,’ she counters. ‘I’ve seen them.’

  ‘But there’s always something else. The land isn’t the subject. I don’t have anything to say about it, and it doesn’t have anything to say to me. I’m a humanist. That’s my subject – humanity. The meaning of it. Landscape on its own doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Unless you’re Cézanne,’ Robert interjects, barely opening his mouth; his eyes stay trained on the page.

  ‘But you do paint it,’ Claire persists. ‘You’ve painted this landscape. I recognise these hills. This one, and that one over there,’ she tells him, pointing to Poggio di Montieri.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ answers Gideon, ‘but what about the rest of the scene? The hills are on the horizon, but what’s in the foreground?’ He seems to be expecting her to recall a particular painting photographically. ‘It’s made up. I’m not trying to reproduce what’s here. The hills are an element. These trees’ – batting the sketchbook with the back of a hand – ‘might be other elements. I combine them, in my own way. I invent. Each element is real, but when I put them together I make something that’s ideal. Do you see? I eliminate the accidents. That’s what Poussin did. Lorrain. The artists I admire. They observed; they recorded; and then they invented. Paintings that merely show you what’s there are a waste of time and material. They are redundant, superfluous, tautologous. Nature is not the standard of art; art is the standard of nature.’

  Robert gives her a look over the top of his book: a raising of the eyes and a sympathetic pursing of the lips. Half turning in Robert’s direction, Gideon calls out: ‘I hope you’re getting all this down, Boswell.’

  ‘Not missing a word,’ Robert responds, reading.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense to me,’ says Claire. ‘People have accidents. Hills and fields don’t. A hill can’t
be an accident.’

  ‘In the context of a work of art, it can,’ says Gideon, with a smile for her naivety. Sweat, coloured by sun lotion, is coursing down his belly like droplets of melting wax. ‘Of course, there is an order here,’ he goes on, indicating the hills. ‘There’s a profound order. When you look, you see it. The shape of ferns, the shape of branches on a tree, the branches of your lungs. River systems. They follow the same patterns. Fibonacci we’ve talked about. But Mandelbrot too – you know him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, when you get home, look him up, and follow the trail. Fractals and so on. Fascinating. So there is an order, as you say.’

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’

  ‘OK, but there is an order. The problem is, however, that the order is not readily apparent. Things get in the way. It’s my task, or part of my task, to make it apparent, and I make it apparent by changing what strikes my eye. I invent in order to be true. I misrepresent what appears in order to represent what is really there. Do you see?’

  Robert has put down his book and is looking up at the sky; his cheeks puff out, and he exhales with a pop.

  ‘I think so,’ she says, but all she’s thinking is that she wishes he’d put his shirt back on.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ says Robert.

  ‘And may be some time,’ adds Gideon, self-amused.

  ‘Anyone care to join me? I’m going up to the ridge.’

  ‘You joke,’ says Gideon. ‘It would kill me. Or is that the idea?’

  ‘Claire?’ asks Robert. ‘Trim?’ The dog regards him, but does not move from Gideon’s side.

  As soon as she and Robert are out of range, she mutters: ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ says Robert, straight-faced.

  ‘He doesn’t half go on, doesn’t he? Was there any need for the lecture? That was something about nothing, wasn’t it? Or have I missed the point?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say it was something about nothing. But he does go overboard sometimes.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘And what Gideon knows about fractals could be written on a blade of grass,’ says Robert. He indicates a path that rises steeply through trees. ‘That way OK with you?’ he asks.

  Nothing more is said about Gideon on the walk up to the ridge. Robert walks quickly, a few paces ahead, glancing back occasionally to check that she’s keeping up, which she is, apparently with ease; concentrating on where her feet are falling, she has a surging sort of stride, as if pushing her way through entanglements.

  At the ridge there are dozens of loose rocks; she sits on one and wipes her brow with a forearm; he sits on another, five or six yards away. ‘Great view,’ she says; she takes a swig from the water bottle and passes it to him. He names the villages they can see, and points out the puffs of vapour rising from the borax fumaroles – the soffioni – at Travale; perhaps, he suggests, they could take a look at them tomorrow or the day after. ‘Maybe,’ she answers; in the sunlight she can’t make out what he’s pointing to. He starts telling her about the geology of the area, but soon stops himself. ‘Too many lectures for one day,’ he says.

  ‘Not at all,’ she replies, but she doesn’t ask him to continue. She closes her eyes, and smiles as a breeze reaches the hill. For another five minutes they sit in silence, then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees her wipe her brow again and he looks at her and sees that she’s whisking what may be a tear from under an eye.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks.

  ‘Fine,’ she responds.

  ‘Shall we go back?’

  ‘In a minute,’ she says, and a minute later they return to Gideon, with Claire leading the way.

  Gideon is asleep beside the tree stump, with his face in its shadow; his mouth is ajar, and one hand is crumpling the crown of his Panama, which rests on the summit of his belly. He resembles a vast meringue.

  Taking care not to wake him, Claire retrieves her book and settles herself higher up the slope, equidistant from Robert and Gideon. She is reading about the New Hampshire primary when Gideon, without moving a limb, calls out: ‘Claire?’ He sounds like a man calling into a cave for someone who might have strayed into it.

  The surprise almost makes her drop the book. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she protests. ‘We thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he says, still recumbent, hand on hat, eyes closed. ‘Rehearsing, not sleeping,’ he says.

  ‘Rehearsing for what?’ she asks, seeing that Robert isn’t going to.

  ‘I fancy the idea of being left here when I finally expire. You know, like the parsees. Towers of silence and all that. Providing sustenance for buzzards and whatever other wildlife happens to drop by. Eco-friendly and philosophically sound. Better than hiding the process from view, I say. Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras,’ he burbles to himself, smiling blindly skywards.

  Robert sighs; he starts to gather the plates and beakers into the carrier bags. To Claire he says: ‘What he really wants is a damned great marble mausoleum. Carrara stone. “Gideon Westfall” in finest neo-Roman lettering.’

  ‘But all I’ll get will be a slot in the local cemetery. A drawer with a little lid on it.’

  ‘And a rose brought weekly by faithful Carlo.’

  ‘I should hope so.’

  ‘I’ll put in an appearance as well,’ says Robert.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Might arrange a job-share with Luisa.’

  ‘I am grateful,’ says Gideon. ‘And let’s not forget our loyal Trim,’ he adds, and his hand goes out to the dog’s head, which nudges the hand to invite stroking. ‘Every day in the graveyard, in broken-hearted attendance. The Greyfriars Bobby of Castelluccio.’ Gideon smiles broadly and opens his eyes. He sits up, presses the dog’s head lightly in his hands, bestows a kiss on its brow. Then he looks at Claire, with an expression of sudden seriousness. ‘Siena,’ he says to her, hands thrust towards her in a gift-offering gesture. ‘I need to spend some time with a painting in Siena. I’m going tomorrow. Lunchtime. I thought you might like to come too. Not to see the painting, necessarily. Might not be your kind of thing. But to spend an afternoon there. I won’t lecture you, I promise. And if you want to explore on your own, that’s fine. Think about it. No obligation.’ He stands up, slowly, like an inflatable figure being pumped full of gas. He puts on his shirt, buttons it, brushes off the scraps of grass, with the air of a man who has accomplished something.

  4. 7

  Daniele da Montieri, otherwise known as Il Beccafico, was born in 1428, probably in the village of Gerfalco, in the comune of Montieri. The earliest written record of his life states that he is the third and youngest son of Piero, a worker in the Montieri silver mines. A brother, Marco, died in the mines in 1441 or 1442; of the other brother we know nothing, and neither do we know anything of Daniele’s mother, other than that she bade farewell to him on the second day of July in the year 1444 and never saw him again in this life.

  Many years later, when Daniele was imprisoned in the Palazzo del Podestà, it was noted that he had suffered for many years from a ‘debility of the limbs’. This condition may explain why, instead of joining his father in the mines, he became an apprentice to a dyer. He was working for this dyer when, in the summer of 1444, the painter Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo came to Montieri, in connection with a commission for the church of San Giacomo. It was outside San Giacomo that the painter had an encounter with Daniele that made a deep impression on him: the boy, having been presented to the artist by the dyer, proceeded to demonstrate an unusual talent, by inscribing on a wall, with a stick of charcoal, a perfect circle, a perfect square and a perfect equilateral triangle. He also, in conversation with the artist, demonstrated a remarkable knowledge of pigments and other aspects of the painter’s craft. Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo informed the boy’s father that he would have employment for Daniele in his workshop in Siena, and it was soon agreed that, a month later, Piero would send his youngest son to the city.


  The misadventure on the road to Siena is the second episode in the known life of Il Beccafico. He travelled in the company of a cousin – a saddler by trade – and a mason from Gerfalco. Each carried little more than a bundle of clothes and the food and drink he would need for the journey, but the boy was also carrying two coins, which his mother had given him and sewn into his cloak, along with a coin that belonged to his cousin. By sunset they had reached the hill of Poggio ai Massi, where they passed the night. At dawn they set off, and an hour later two men rode up to them. One dismounted, sword in hand, and asked the three travellers to display their property. The bundles were opened on the ground: nothing of any value was revealed. The swordsman searched the shabby trio for purses, and found none. He made them hold out their hands: there was not even a ring to steal. His companion called them a pitiful crew, and signalled to the swordsman that he should remount. As he did so, the robber looked at Daniele, who had not spoken since the horsemen had appeared, and saw something that made him approach the boy again. He ordered Daniele to open his mouth; grasping his jaw roughly, he peered in. ‘You have something,’ the man said, and Daniele, who had been told by his mother repeatedly that he should always tell the truth, answered that he had three coins, of little worth, sewn into the neck of his cloak. The robber removed the cloak and felt around the collar. He examined his face, as though to determine if this were a fool or a brave young man, then returned the cloak to him, with the coins still inside. He commended the boy for his honesty and wished him well.

  The robbers rode away, but when they had ridden no more than two hundred paces the three travellers, gathering their scattered belongings, could see that a disagreement had arisen between the pair. The riders halted to continue their dispute, then the one who had stayed in the saddle turned round and came back. He stopped by Daniele, held out a hand for the cloak, ripped its collar to spill the coins into his palm, and returned it to the boy, without a word. Daniele was beaten by his cousin, for being the most stupid creature in Christendom, and left to continue to Siena alone. So severe had been the beating, the journey took him three more days instead of one.