by Rudy Rucker
“I’m still in a cloud of stink,” said de Vos. “If we cross a stream, let’s stop so I can have a proper wash.”
They proceeded up the mountain, with the sun growing brighter. They heard the rushing of a stream, and another sound, the music of—a bagpipe? The path bucked up and turned a corner, bringing them into a level little spot in the side of the mountain. A stream flowed along the far side of the glen. In the middle of the flat spot was a big, slanted rock with a gallows mounted on it: two square-cut beams rising four times the height of a man, with a stoutly braced crosspiece on top. There were a dozen men and women in the glen, sweaty and dirt stained, dancing to the music of a bagpipe.
“They’ve taken down the alchemist,” said de Vos. “Perhaps they’re his friends or relatives?”
Dirt was mounded high upon a single fresh grave. Bricks scattered to one side attested to the weight the executioners had used to smother the old Marie. Seemingly the mourners had cut down the hanged Joseph and buried him with his wife. They’d erected a makeshift cross upon the grave, hallowing the earth where the unfortunate old couple lay.
The little company continued their piping and dancing. They smiled, in a solemn kind of way, but they didn’t try to speak to Bruegel and de Vos. While de Vos bathed himself in the stream, Bruegel sat to one side, seeing.
Owing to the slope of the rock, the far leg of the gallows was longer than the near one. This had the odd effect that, if Bruegel imagined the rock to be flat, the farther leg seemed closer. This gave the gallows a twisted, illogical appearance, as if produced by a clumsy painter’s mistake in perspective. Yes, the gallows seemed part of a Crooked World, an apparition that should dissolve in the light of day.
Bruegel opened his senses, feasting upon the details of the moment: the shapes of the thick round tree trunks, the leaves spotted with bright sunlight, the little river in the plain below, and here in this glen, the dancers and the grim instrument of execution. The sane daily world was so different from the Crooked World of the gallows.
How odd to think of the two fresh corpses beneath the disturbed earth and bricks, the two old people dead down there. Up here, the breeze and the sunlight and the music continued. Death was close and real; there was no cure for it but to live as deeply as one could, no answer but work and love.
Bruegel saw a quick darting movement at the top of the gallows: a magpie, black on top and white below. It let out a melodious trill, quickly answered by a second magpie perched on a stump below. A married pair, two wise old birds, hopping this way and that, singing and pecking, letting out little spurts of white shit with the twitches of their tails.
Now de Vos came back from his ablutions, clean and happy. He and Bruegel headed farther up the mountain. The music of the bagpipe followed them for quite some time.
Two
The Tower of Babel
Rome, July 1553
Bruegel loved the colors of Rome. Though some buildings were bare stone, most were covered in stucco and painted a particular shade of red or yellow. The Roman red was a dusky rose and the yellow was a pale orange with the slightest hint of green. After repairing a patch of any wall, the Romans seemed to paint it with whichever of the two tints lay closest to hand, so everywhere there were pink shapes on yellow walls and yellow forms atop the pinks.
The sky was a hot, glowing blue never seen in the Low Lands, and, wonder of wonders, there were palm trees growing in some of the squares. Bruegel itched to get out his little pouch of watercolor pigments and try mixing up the hues brought out by the warm autumn sun.
But the first order of business was to try to find the studio of Giulio Clovio, a successful artist who’d been recommended to Bruegel by Mayken Verhulst. Mayken was the widow of the Master Coecke with whom Peter had apprenticed. She was an artist herself, and something more than a mentor to the young Peter.
Their parting was still clear in his mind, Mayken in the tall brick Brussels house Master Coecke had bought, with upper floors for his workshop’s studios. Mayken’s hair had been, as always, in a messy bun, and she’d had paint on her fingers. She’d been smiling at him, seeing him just as he was with her clever blue eyes, while her daughter, young Mayken, crawled around under the table imitating a lost pig she’d seen in the street earlier that day, and then attacking Bruegel’s ankle as if to bite it. He’d drawn a picture for the merry little girl, and then he’d been on his way. Bruegel’s highest dream was to have a house, studio, wife, and family like Master Coecke’s. Yet he found himself unwilling to paint in the polished, Italianate style of the Master’s that sold so well.
It took them all day to find Clovio’s workshop, using their Latin to ask directions, mostly from the ubiquitous ecclesiastics, the fluent de Vos doing most of the talking. The Italians seemed a handsome race, well formed and with smooth warm-toned skin. Their rapid speech and lively gestures made Bruegel think of tropical birds. He and de Vos got lost over and over, not that it much mattered to either one of them, surrounded by this architecture, these people, and these sun-hot colors, the whole city a crowded canvas come to life. Bruegel’s big nose was filled with smells of brick, dust, and stone, of saffron, cinnamon, and anise, of jasmine, magnolia, and gardenia, of modern corruption and ancient decay.
He found Clovio’s studios on the top floor of a yellow building in an old part of town, across the Tiber from the Vatican, not far from the Colosseum. Sweating with the heat, Bruegel and de Vos climbed four flights of stairs and knocked on the door, a handsome piece of oak with a bronze Turk’s head for a knocker. A grinning olive-skinned youth answered; he was an apprentice, with his hands stained from grinding paint. He introduced himself as Giampietrino and ushered them in through the cluttered apartments.
The first room was filled with paintings, drawings, banners, rugs, tapestries, and vases, all very smooth and polished in the high Italian style, very like the kinds of work prized by Bruegel’s dead Master Coecke. In the next room were exotic items from the East: intricately tooled cushions, screens of gilded leather, Arabian tankards, Moorish weapons, bows, shields, and a spiky black suit of armor that reminded Bruegel of a cricket.
They passed a kitchen with rich smells that set Bruegel’s empty stomach to growling. The lady of the house was in there, busy giving orders to a stout cook and a slender young woman with a graceful neck. This was Giulio Clovio’s dwelling as well as his studio. It would have been nice to go into the kitchen, to taste the food and talk to the girl, but Giampietrino led on.
The next room was filled with dusty white copies of classic statues, one whole wall a glorious disorder of plaster casts of busts and friezes. Bruegel stopped to stare, enjoying both the art and the smell of unfamiliar spices that had followed him from the kitchen. The sculptures were arid, but not without interest. Many of the busts had names engraved on them; it was remarkable to see these ancient Romans’ names and physiognomies preserved for the ages by the transforming power of art.
“Cows!” smiled de Vos, pointing to some garlanded cattle skulls depicted in an ancient frieze. The humble cow was part of classical Rome, and now Bruegel was part of Rome too, transported all the way here from the Low Lands. He noticed a particularly evil-looking fellow among the busts, the inscribed name Massimino meant, he reasoned, “Biggest Smallest.” Bruegel himself, was he to be big or small?
“This way,” urged Giampietrino, and now they entered a corner room to find Giulio Clovio, a vigorous older man with curly gray hair and a round, cleanshaven face. He was working on three miniature paintings at the same time, using the last light from the setting sun. Using an exceedingly fine brush, he repeatedly moved down the row of paintings: touch, touch, touch.
“I am Peter Bruegel, student of the late Master Coecke,” said Bruegel in his slow, stiff schoolboy Latin. He’d been mentally preparing the words all afternoon. “And this is my friend Martin de Vos. We are artists of the St. Luke’s Guild in Antwerp. We have come to visit Rome. Mayken Verhulst told us to visit you. Can you help us?”
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bsp; “Mayken mirabila,” said Clovio, his Latin very vulgar and smooth. “The lamented Coecke often spoke of her to me. A vigorous wife and a paragon of talent. She paints miniatures, what could be nobler? Coecke showed me two of her works that he carried with him, a picture of a windmill and a portrait of the artist. Your Mayken has a kind face and a very human brush. The Master Coecke always smoothed his images too much for my taste. He was too Italian even for me. His works resemble porcelain.”
“Sane,” agreed Bruegel, and then he tried to say more. “I learned from Mayken as well as from Coecke. I can paint miniatures too.” He leaned over to peer at Clovio’s work. The miniatures were on ovals of ivory, perhaps four inches high by three inches wide, painted with incredible detail and delicacy. They were identical portraits of an old man wearing an intricately chased silk cassock. The portraits had a very immediate and lively look, indeed, the triply depicted old man looked so stern and irritable that one almost imagined his lips would twitch to spit out some withering remark.
“Portraits sell the best,” said Clovio. “Closely followed by nude goddesses and startled nymphs.”
“Who is this you paint?” asked Bruegel, pointing at the miniatures.
“Our good Pope Julius the Third,” said Clovio. “Cardinal Farnese ordered these as presents for his three mistresses.”
“You know the Pope and the cardinals personally?” marveled de Vos in his smooth Latin. “Are they good or are they evil?”
“They’re Romans.” Clovio laughed and swept his hand through a complicated curve. “Crooked and devious. Rotten to the core.”
“Aren’t you Italian too?” asked Bruegel.
“I was born in Croatia,” said Clovio. “One is very honest there, I’m sure. But by now I’m a Roman too. You can meet Cardinal Farnese for yourself later this week. And I’ll tell you something, boys, he’s the one to get you in to see the Sistine Chapel. Even in the Low Lands you’ve heard of Michelangelo, no?”
“The engraver Jerome Cock saw Michelangelo’s ceiling on his trip to Rome,” said de Vos in a hushed voice. “He said it blinded him, made him lay down his paintbrush forever.”
“Non timeo,” said Bruegel, meaning, “I’m not afraid.” Bruegel’s Master Coecke had often spoken of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, and Bruegel was bound and determined to see them himself. Why else travel all this way? A cow in Rome must surely see the sun.
“I’ll ask Cardinal Farnese.” Clovio put his hands on his hips, looking at his two young visitors with some amusement. “Two parasites in search of a host, eh? Leeches! Blood worms! Cow birds! Why do the Flemings come to Rome, but no Romans go to the Low Lands?”
Giampietrino, busy grinding paint at one side of the room, let out a guffaw at his master’s badinage.
“We’ll be no trouble,” said de Vos. “We can sleep on cushions or on the floor, Master Clovio. We hardly eat at all. Perhaps we can do some work for you? Or trade you something?”
“It’s my pleasure to aid young artists,” tut-tutted Clovio, still looking them over. “Think nothing of it. But what would you trade me? What do you have?”
Bruegel took off his jerkin and reached down into the flat pouch of the lining. He pulled out his drawings and the two watercolors he’d managed to do, hoping for just an opportunity like this.
“I admire that one,” said Clovio, immediately pointing to the best, a watercolor of Lyons.
“Please accept it,” said Bruegel, flushing with pleasure. He handed over the painting with a low bow. It had been too long since he heard the praise of a Master.
“This is worth a good week’s room and board for the two of them, don’t you agree, Giampietrino?” said Clovio, holding the picture out at arm’s length. “An artist can always learn something new, even an old dog like me. Look at our Bruegel’s perspective. He paints like a bird high up in the air. He has the cosmic landscape style of the fine Flemish masters. And how about you, de Vos, what’s your style?”
“I don’t have any pictures with me,” confessed de Vos who, grasshopperlike, had accumulated nothing during their travels. “But I can make something for you. I’m very handy with the human figure. I can limn a most plausible Christ.”
“Maybe I can get you boys a commission,” said Clovio. “De Vos could paint a Christ, and Bruegel could paint the background.” He studied the view of Lyons some more, smiling at it. “I’d like to see Bruegel at work.”
“A mountain lake?” suggested Bruegel. “I’m full up to here with Alps,” he added, touching the base of his throat. “They filled my soul. An Alpine lake as a miniature, Master Clovio?”
“You would fit the Alps onto an ivory disk?” said Clovio with a laugh.
“I can’t paint in miniature,” interrupted de Vos. “We should make a nice big picture. It’ll be worth more to your patrons.”
“You’re wrong there,” said Clovio with a hint of annoyance. “The smaller the painting, the more refined is the art. Let’s suppose your ‘nice big picture’ will be worth enough to lodge you gentlemen for two more weeks after the first,” he continued. “And after three weeks—basta!”
A sweet voice called from the kitchen. Dinnertime! Bruegel and de Vos sat down with Clovio, Clovio’s wife, Beatrice, the apprentice, Giampietrino, the young woman from the kitchen, and the cook, Sophia, a large ill-tempered woman whose few words sounded like shouted curses. Beatrice had a melodious voice, though Bruegel could only guess at what she was saying. He had the feeling she was strict; there was a forbidding vertical line between her eyes.
The young woman, whose name was Francesca, had to keep hopping up to get things from the kitchen. At first Bruegel thought she was a maid, but then he figured out that she was Giulio and Beatrice’s unmarried daughter. She seemed a bit odd. With a sense of foreboding, he noticed that de Vos couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
The food was interesting. First there was a great mound of slippery strings of dough called spaghetti, accompanied by some kind of meat in a thick brown sauce and a mass of wilted bitter vegetables resembling celery and spinach. Then there was a big bowl of sweet, creamy pudding and a slab of soft, blue-veined cheese. Clovio poured a generous amount of red wine during the meal and de Vos of course got stinking drunk.
At the end of the meal, de Vos slid his hand up under Francesca’s skirt when she leaned across the table to carry the great pudding dish out to the kitchen. Francesca gave a yelp of surprise and dropped the dish onto the table, breaking the bowl into several big pieces. She picked up a shard with a great blob of nutmeg-scented pudding upon it and flipped the pudding into de Vos’s face, where it stuck. And then Francesca started laughing uncontrollably. The cook shouted, the mother said something curt in Italian, and Clovio’s face clouded with fury. A moment later Giampietrino was showing Bruegel and de Vos to a small guest room off the front room.
“You sleep now,” said Giampietrino.
“I love Francesca,” mumbled the sodden de Vos, clumsily scraping the thick custard from his face and licking it off his fingers. Several rooms away, Francesca’s laughter was still going on. De Vos made as if to start back out the door to look for her.
“Don’t bother her,” cautioned Giampietrino with a stern wag of his finger and slipped out the door, closing it tight behind him. When de Vos started fumbling with the door handle, Bruegel grabbed him by the shoulders and flung him onto the bed.
“You. Stay. Here,” Bruegel hissed at de Vos. He was sitting upon de Vos with his hands around his neck. De Vos was too drunk and too surprised to do much of anything. He looked up at Bruegel with such a bewildered expression that Bruegel almost felt sorry for him. But the memory of the lost gold coin had blossomed up fresh in his mind. “If you get up, I’ll kill you!” added Bruegel, clenching his teeth and giving a sharp squeeze to the hapless de Vos’s throat. Everything in the room seemed red, everything but de Vos’s pale, trembling face, still sticky with custard. He was trying to say something, but Bruegel couldn’t hear him.
And
then Bruegel caught himself and let de Vos go. De Vos groped about the bed, found one of the pillows, pulled it over his head, and fell asleep.
In the morning Bruegel felt ashamed for getting so angry. He must have looked like an underworld demon, throttling his traveling companion. He woke de Vos and apologized to him, but de Vos professed not to remember the threat. So then Bruegel went over the events a bit, pointing out what a good situation they’d found here and imploring de Vos not to ruin things.
On stepping out into Clovio’s apartment, they found their host slicing up a melon with a sizable knife. He was still in a choleric state over de Vos’s insult to his daughter.
“I’m of a mind to put you two rustics out on the street,” exclaimed Clovio as soon as he caught sight of them. “You misapprehend what it is to be an artist. I’m a family man, not a libertine. I paint here and I have a drink with my meals, but this isn’t a brothel.”
De Vos flushed and seemed on the point of making things worse. But Bruegel spoke before him. “Forgive my friend’s conduct last night,” said Bruegel. “He has but a weak head for wine. I can assure you that he’s quite overcome with remorse.” Bruegel paused to glare at de Vos, who for once kept silent. And then he continued. “I’ve so been looking forward to working with you, Master Clovio. Master Coecke often said that Giulio Clovio has no equal. Be patient with two young Flemish artists abroad. Let us learn from you.”
The old artist nodded and set down his knife. And then de Vos made proper amends, beginning with Giulio Clovio and ending with Francesca, who was once again sitting quietly in the kitchen. Francesca gave no particular sign of knowing what de Vos was talking about; today she seemed quite dull and withdrawn. Bruegel had a vague memory of having heard her laughter continuing well into the night.
