“I’m not important.” I smiled wryly, looking off at the green-and-white facade of Santa Maria Novella, because it was something other than her to focus on, and maybe it would keep her from seeing the naked hunger in my eyes.
“That’s not what I meant!” she cried. “I’m sure you’re very important. When I talk about you and ask people about you—”
“Why do you ask people about me, Maddalena? What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything about myself. Anything. Just ask.”
“Please, signore, let me explain myself!” Maddalena shook her head, blushing furiously. “Ficino runs the Platonic Academy. People say you keep to yourself, other than to be with a few friends, that you stay out of politics, that’s what I meant about important.”
“I know what you meant.”
“The thing I want to know is, can you teach me, as a friend and only as a friend, remembering always that I am married and faithful to my husband?”
No, my body and soul and mind and every dram of my being screamed. “Yes,” I said aloud. I retrained my eyes on her and vowed, in that moment, to always say yes to her. If I could not give her the love I wanted to, I could at least give her the spaciousness of knowing her desires would always be fulfilled by me. Whatever desires she brought to me, that is.
Her beautiful face glowed and she laid her hand on my chest eagerly. Then she saw what she was doing and removed it with alacrity. “Thank you, signore! Can we start tomorrow? I’ll arrive after breakfast at your home. Is there anything I should bring with me? My husband has told me to purchase whatever I need for my studies!”
“Bring yourself. That’s everything,” I said. Her wide, mobile mouth turned up in a smile. She skipped off like a little girl, but then, nineteen wasn’t so old, even if any Florentine girl whose family could afford her dowry was married by then. Just then a group of children ran by chasing a wooden wheel. They were well fed and well dressed in good wool and all were laughing. As they raced past, one little girl turned toward me with her plaited blond hair flying out around her and her eyes alight with giggles.
“It’s too funny!” she said, pointing, but at what I couldn’t see. Then I realized that it didn’t matter what she was pointing at. Her words were a sign; one of the Gods wanted me to know that the joke was in play. As usual, I was the butt of it. It didn’t matter if I prayed. Beneath the surface of everything lay a tightly woven fabric of meaning. That was the ultimate joke.
FOR A FEW YEARS, Maddalena and I met once a week when she was in Florence. I didn’t see her when she went with her husband to his villa in the contado, a lonely time which could stretch to as long as a month. I started our work together with exercises in Latin, because most of the alchemical texts, including Ficino’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, were in Latin. Maddalena had a quick mind and within a year was better at the language than I was. If I fumbled with a declension, she teased me mercilessly. Of course, she had her rich old husband buying her manuscripts in Latin to supplement whatever I taught her, which was her secret weapon.
It was the same when I began to teach her about the zodiac, which I did even before Ficino completed my instruction. She grasped the metaphor of the signs, houses, and seven planets much more deeply than I did, literal as I was. We had a discussion about it one day while I showed her pictures of the constellations in an old bestiary Leonardo had given me as a gift.
“That’s Leo, the gorgeous lordly animal, it shows kingship,” I said, pointing. Maddalena stood at my elbow, leaning over my arm so I could stare at the soft white column of her slender neck. I was mesmerized by it, as I was by every curve and line of her flesh, and by the sweet eroticism which she wore as unthinkingly as a comfortable mantello.
“It shows the arena of life where the soul is magnificent,” she said. “You must think of what each sign and planet represents, Luca. The Archer shows where the soul is on a quest.”
“The Archer is a centaur with a good strong bow in his hands,” I said. “Mars, here, is the harbinger of war and destruction.”
“Mars is the principle of action,” she said, “whether that’s to build or to wreak havoc.” She tilted her head to look up at me out of the corner of her eyes.
“Venus is the goddess of love and beauty,” I said, trying not to sigh, because Maddalena herself embodied Venus for me. I grew erect and twisted my hips to hide it. I’d not been with a woman since Maddalena had reappeared. It wasn’t easy for a man used to frequent amorous interludes to find himself celibate, even if he chose that state. It was, after all, an unnatural state. Unlike the alchemist Geber, I believed that the flesh was to be enjoyed, with kindness and respect certainly, but also with appreciation. The earth was a feast full of delights, great paintings and beautiful women and succulent foods, and not to cherish those delights amounted to a great sin. After all, tragedy and suffering lurked around every corner, demanding their due.
“Venus speaks to the capacity for love and an appreciation of beauty,” said Maddalena.
“Too abstract,” I argued. “With that interpretation, you lose sight of the practical use of astrology: timing specific events! Venus strongly placed can show a love match occurring.”
“Luca, specific events are the least of what astrology signifies!” she said, straightening. Her silk dress sluiced over her like a sheet of water, skimming her lovely curves in a way that left me breathless. “The material world is under the rule of the stars, I mean astrological law, insofar as people are always seeking revelation, insight into the divine, and salvation!”
“If you want insight into the divine, go watch a boy tear the wings off a fly. If you want to know when specific events will occur, use astrology,” I said. “Astrology is significant insofar as it reads like a clock on a bell tower. The earth and heavens are woven together in a vast fabric, so it is below as it is above. But this is an impersonal phenomenon. Salvation for the individual is a big hoax with which one of the Gods teases us when He wants some amusement. If we’re lucky, it’s the kind God, and there is some gift for us amidst the suffering. If we’re unlucky, it’s the evil God, and only horrors follow.”
“No, Luca, you cannot believe that God is split this way, and mostly cold and uncaring!” Maddalena cried.
“How could I not?” I asked. “If there were one good God, how could He permit suffering and evil?” I moved to the other side of the table. Her fresh water and lilac scent aroused me almost to madness, and the desire would burn in me for hours, unabated. It was something I simply had to endure; only Maddalena could meet my need. I said, “How could you believe in one good God after what happened to you in Volterra?”
Somberly, she said, “I can’t fathom why events happen that ruin lives. I’m not that wise. But I know that this earth is impregnated with the divine in every instant. The earth lives and moves with God’s life, the stars are God’s living creatures, the sun burns with God’s power, and there’s no part of nature which is not good because all are parts of God.”
“Were you thinking that while the condottieri were raping you?” I asked, crudely and cruelly. I was ashamed of myself the moment the words had left my mouth.
Maddalena didn’t flinch. “Of course not,” she said. “I was a little girl hoping they wouldn’t kill me when they were done brutalizing me.” She stood out from the table and jerked her skirts up to her waist. She wasn’t wearing stockings and her slim thigh was bare. Her maid leapt up and shrieked in consternation. “Hush, he was there when it happened, he bound the wound!” Maddalena waved her to silence, then turned to me.
“I still have the mark from that day, where the condottiere carved into me as if I were a roast fowl, when he was finished using me.” She pointed and I stared at the thin, cruciform scar high up on her leg. Her beautiful leg. It saddened me again to remember little Maddalena cut into by the brutes who did Lorenzo de’ Medici’s bidding. I wanted to hold her and touch the scar with love and tell her how beautiful she was, how much I admired her for her honesty in rev
ealing herself. My tenderness threatened to overwhelm my restraint, so I lowered my eyes. She dropped her skirts. She said, “I thought this mark diminished me.”
“It doesn’t. It couldn’t,” I said grimly. I understood what it was to feel demeaned.
“That’s what Rinaldo says, too,” she said softly. “I showed him this when he asked me to marry him. Tears came to his eyes and he said it only made me more beautiful to him, and that he loved me more because of what I’d endured.”
“Rucellai isn’t a stupid man,” I conceded.
Maddalena smiled. “He’s a good man, and this scar gave me further proof of it. So something good came out of my having it. I think of that, how good comes out of evil, and how God is in all things, when I’m praying, and when I’m remembering that awful day. Sometimes when I’m praying I can feel something, something that doesn’t have words or maybe can’t be said in words, about God’s perfection in every moment, even those moments that wear cruel faces. Grace is acceptance of the love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear.” She looked down at the bestiary and traced the lion’s golden mane with one delicate finger. A sad smile curved her lips. “When the worst happens, as it does in many lives—someone is raped, a parent is killed, a child dies, everything that matters is taken away—that’s when we need our faith the most.”
“That’s when the cruel God is laughing.”
“God isn’t cruel, Luca mio, and there aren’t two powers at work in the universe, good and evil. There’s only one great goodness always at work. It’s the task of an open heart to affirm that goodness; that’s what we can do for God. After all, if Volterra hadn’t been sacked and I wasn’t hurt by those soldiers, would I have met you?”
I was almost unhinged by the heartrending sweetness of her question and didn’t trust myself to answer. If I spoke of our meeting, I would declare my love for her, and she had made it clear that she didn’t want that. She was loyal to her husband. Perhaps he even deserved her loyalty. My silence didn’t matter because she turned the page in the bestiary and inquired about the condition of the moon, in dignity or in its fall. She would soon become a far superior astrologer to me. I had taken up the study of astrology because I thought the stars would tell me which day I would succeed in turning lead into gold. Maddalena used it as, perhaps, it was meant to be used—as a map for the soul.
Finally, after studying Latin and some Greek and astrology, I planned to turn to the great texts of alchemy: the Corpus Hermeticum, which Ficino called Pimander; Lactantius’s Sermo Perfectus; Raymond Lully’s Ars Magna. I brought them out one day before she arrived. When she came in with her maid, I said nothing. I stood on one side of my reconstruction of Zosimos’s keratokis and waited. Maddalena looked at me expectantly, and still I waited. Finally she said, “I see the manuscripts; what are they?”
“Alchemy is the search for what not yet is, the art of change, the quest for the divine powers hidden in things,” I said in a solemn voice.
“What does that have to do with those manuscripts?” she demanded, her face shuttering in annoyance. I stepped away, hastily, in case she threw something at me. She’d done that once when I’d corrected her Greek conjugations in a way she didn’t like. She said, “I hope that’s Ficino’s work; I’m ready for it, after two years of Latin and astrology!”
“Tell him to give you this book,” boomed a familiar voice which I had not heard in a while, and I smiled. “Why is it taking so long to get to the good stuff? Have you asked him that?” said the Wanderer, his broad-shouldered body standing in the threshold. He trudged in and heaved himself down on the stool next to Maddalena. She scrutinized him thoroughly, and he met her gaze directly. After a few moments she reached out to touch his wild gray beard. He laughed and leaned back, avoiding her hand.
“How long did it take you to grow that?” she asked, unoffended.
“How long does any great work take?”
“That depends on the work,” she answered, her dark brows puckering. “It could be a few days, or hundreds of years. It could take a moment or a millennium!”
“Exactly!” he responded, straightening his patched gray tunic.
“So how long have you had?” Maddalena persisted, smiling at him with great charm.
The Wanderer grinned. “How long do you want me to have had?”
“Millennia, of course! Aren’t there legends about men who live almost forever, wandering the earth until the Messiah returns?”
“Until the Messiah comes,” the Wanderer answered slyly. “But your legends concern a shoemaker who offended the great rabbi Jesus on his way to his crucifixion, and thus the rabbi cursed him to walk the earth alone until the world ends.”
“I thought it came from the beloved disciple to whom Jesus said, ‘There are some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom,’” said Maddalena. “Which do you think it is?”
“That depends on whether you think the millennia are a curse or a blessing,” the Wanderer responded.
“Did you stable your beastly donkey, Wanderer?” I asked, changing the subject. I had not decided for myself if longevity was a blessing or a curse, and I had no stomach to hear the topic debated between the woman I loved and the mysterious, maddening Wanderer, who probably knew my origins but would only answer my questions with more questions.
“What, would I insult him that way? He’s downstairs in the foyer!” said the Wanderer. I didn’t know if he was joking, anything was possible with the Wanderer, so I made a frantic motion for the maid to run downstairs and check. The Wanderer grinned voraciously and handed me a thick, leather-bound book with shiny gilt edges.
“Summa Perfectionis,” I read. Then I yelped, realizing what I was holding. “Geber’s manuscript, his life work. You published it!”
“What’s important is that I brought it to you, to remind you of the goal of alchemy, and it’s not the creation of gold! Have you attended to yourself, are you ready to rectify the world?”
“What is this manuscript?” Maddalena asked. “How do you know about it?”
“Il Bastardo here knows many things. Have you told her about the consolamentum?” asked the Wanderer.
“The consolamentum? What’s that?” cried Maddalena. “Tell me, Luca!”
“It’s a transfer of soul or spirit, something like that,” I said, sighing. “It comes through the hands. I’ve given it to sick people to good effect.”
“When your hands grow warm and tingly and everything looks bright and soft,” Maddalena cried. “You gave me the consolamentum that day in Volterra, that terrible day! It made me feel better. Maybe it even saved my life.” She gave me a tender look, almost reluctantly, as if she couldn’t stop herself. I melted.
“There’s a donkey in the foyer!” screamed the maid from the stairwell. The Wanderer burst out laughing, leaning back on the stool with his black eyes dancing and his huge beard wagging like a furry animal on the run. Maddalena, who was like Leonardo in her eternal curiosity, leapt off her stool to go see.
I CHERISHED, in particular, one night that was a great victory for me, even though it also exposed me to the danger that ever dogged my steps. It occurred during a festival that Lorenzo sponsored to rebuild Florentine morale during the years following the Pazzi conspiracy. The revelry began in the morning, but I went at sundown, when the light turned crystalline and the sky purpled and grew fragrant like lilacs. Like everyone else, I wore a costume. I was dressed in the leathers of a condottiere. I had been invited to a few parties, at least one of which would surely have devolved into an orgy, but I preferred to be alone with my thoughts of Maddalena.
I bought a skin bag of wine from a vendor and walked along the banks of the pearlescent Arno, listening to lyres playing, flutes piping, trumpets blaring, drums beating, and squeals of laughter echoing off the stones. Bands of young nobles paraded the streets, singing ballads bawdy enough to embarrass a Neapolitan sailor. A pageant with horse-drawn tableaux designed by
Leonardo processed along the Via Larga; some of the lath and plaster tableaux with living actors were a re-creation of the story of the Three Magi and the Christ Child. This referred to the Medici, who saw themselves as the Magi of Florence.
I felt no urgency to watch the pageant, having discussed it exhaustively with Leonardo. He’d shown me his sketches for the tableaux from their inception. I’d even watched them being constructed to his exacting standards. So I walked in a leisurely way along the Ponte Santa Trinita, sipping my wine, wishing I were with Maddalena, feeling doubly lonely because I was not only a freak with a dubious past, I was also alone, unable to have the great love I’d been promised. Suddenly a woman in a gorgeously feathered, befurred, and bejeweled cottardita thrust herself in front of me. She had been running and she was out of breath.
“Hello, stranger!” She laughed. Her face was obscured by a fantastically plumed, and probably expensive, mask, and her hair was hidden under an outrageous hat that was the head of a wildcat. But I would have recognized the small, curving form anywhere. She giggled and I wondered how much she’d had to drink. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to me and kissed her thoroughly, despite her mask. Her lips parted and I pushed my tongue in, savored the grapey wine taste of her soft wet mouth. Every part of my being had yearned for a moment like this, and I took full advantage of it. She melted into me, her thighs embracing mine, and I nearly made love to her there, on the bridge. Finally I released her. Her scent of lilacs and lemons and crisp spring morning lay on my arms and chest like a magical mantello.
“That’s not what I meant.” She sighed.
“I know what you meant.”
“Do it again!” she said tipsily, stepping toward me. I was about to oblige her when a laughing group of people, all dressed as animals, surrounded us.
“Look, a soldier!” shouted Rinaldo Rucellai, who wore a lion’s-head hat and a lucco of golden-brown fur. I stepped away from his wife. “Have you killed anyone today, soldier?” he asked with drunken hilarity.
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