by Matt Rees
Caravaggio withdrew his hand. ‘I can handle him.’
‘It isn’t just him. It’s his brothers and his father and everyone in this neighbourhood who ever got a job from them or who ever asked them to take an enemy into a dark alley and leave him there with his guts around his ankles.’
Caravaggio moaned and puffed out his cheeks.
‘People say I’m crazy, Michele, and I admit there are times when everything goes red, you know what I mean.’ Onorio leered. ‘But you’re taking a big risk. You’re my friend. I can’t let you do it.’
‘Be there with me when I fight him.’
Onorio stepped back. Caravaggio’s neck shivered, trepidation and passion and wild disturbance streaming through every muscle. His whole frame was in motion, even as he held himself still. He felt as though he had risen above his own body and watched it, all his actions under the control of some other power.
‘Dear friend, I’ve seen you throw rocks at men from only a couple of paces and club them on the head with the flat side of your sword.’ Onorio pursed his lips and blew. ‘But fighting Ranuccio? You shouldn’t even joke about it.’
Caravaggio quivered in the lightless doorway. Night had come in full to the Evil Garden. He merged with it until he was unsure if he had stepped into a dream where he took on powers beyond those of a human.
‘You can’t just paint over a killing, Michele. Pentimenti, repentances you call them, the changes you make to the angle of an arm or the line of a neck on the canvas. A fight with a man like Ranuccio can’t be repented. It’ll end in blood.’
Caravaggio’s breath trembled. He was coming back from the phantom unreality, descending back into his body, displacing the blackness of night from his limbs.
‘I’ll stand with you, if it comes to violence,’ Onorio said. ‘But do me a favour and don’t do it. I’ve a wife and five children to consider.’
‘All right,’ Caravaggio whispered. The night was around him, but no longer in him.
‘Leave Ranuccio to his whores.’ Onorio laughed. ‘Syphilis will take care of that dickhead. Pay him the money.’
‘You’re right. I’ll pay him.’ They embraced, laughing.
Two men passed beyond the doorway, moving with purpose down the Corso. ‘It’s little Prospero and that bugger Gaspare.’ Onorio called out, ‘Hey, Prosperino.’
The men turned. They were short and brightly clothed. Prospero was a Lombard like Caravaggio, a decade older and thick in the hips. He wore a full beard that ran grey along the jaw.
‘Michele, I’m pleased to see you out and about.’ Prospero’s bulging eyes were set almost in the sides of his narrow head. His mouth looped from ear to ear beneath a long upper lip, like one of the ancient grotesques he copied into his paintings from the walls of Rome’s catacombs, a face ready to laugh at the filthiest of jokes. He reached up to slap both hands onto Caravaggio’s shoulders. ‘If you’re strolling on the Corso, it means you’re not in jail and I won’t have to bail you out again.’
‘The night is young. Give him a chance to get some trouble started.’ Onorio took the end of Gaspare’s moustache in his fingers and pulled upwards. ‘Did that hurt, little finocchio?’
Gaspare smoothed his moustache back into the horn shape he liked. ‘Just a bit.’
‘Write me a poem about it, then. Your poetry is painful to hear, so its subject should be pain.’
Gaspare smiled, blinking as though at some deep, private pleasure. The skin beneath his eyes and at the sides of his nose was red and flaking. ‘Here’s a rhyme: If Onorio tries to touch my moustache, I’ll take his fat ass and give it a thrash.’
They applauded and Onorio shoved the poet playfully.
‘Bravo, the bullshit Boccaccio of the ribald remark.’ Prospero invited Gaspare to give a bow. ‘Now, come on, lads, Fillide’s entertaining a few discerning gentlemen at her place on the Via Frattina. Who’s up for whores, gambling, song and dance?’
Fillide twisted side to side in counterpoint to her skirt. She held the scarlet taffeta before her and let it rustle in accompaniment to her laughter. At the neckline, white lace ruched in two concave descents to meet in a point between her breasts. She had arranged it so that the upper third of her dark areola showed through. ‘What do you think, ragazzi?’
Onorio went for a bottle of wine on the table. ‘All that red cloth. You look like a cardinal with big tits.’
‘Maybe it was a cardinal who bought it for her?’ Prospero reached up to give the courtesan a light kiss on the cheek. With a dip of his neck, he scratched his beard over her cleavage. ‘One of her gentleman clients?’
She clipped her knuckles against the crown of his head.
Caravaggio entered with Gaspare. Scipione recognized Fillide’s portrait. Did he buy her these rich clothes? he wondered. He surveyed the room, apprehensive, as though the hedonistic Cardinal-Nephew might be reclining voluptuously on a divan.
A silver candelabra dripped wax onto the Oriental carpet spread across the table. The paintings and wall hangings floated in darkness. In the far corner, a heavy white curtain shrouded the side of the bed. A convex mirror at the foot of the mattress disclosed the elongated form of a reclining man. He wore a loose white shirt and red hose and he rested on one elbow, attentive to the newcomers. He caught Caravaggio’s stare in the mirror. At first, his face was like a dangerous animal at bay, then a scornful recognition leeched out of it.
‘The one who gave you that dress –’ Caravaggio spoke directly towards the mirror ‘– is no gentleman.’
The man on the bed flicked his index finger against his earlobe twice. You faggot.
A black-haired woman came from the kitchen. Her skin was so pale the candle painted it like red cadmium on a new canvas. She carried a tureen of boiled mutton.
Gaspare helped her set it on the table. ‘Allow me, mia cara Menica,’ he said.
‘Are you going to write a poem about how you’d like to stick your boiled meat in her soup dish?’ Fillide took Gaspare’s chin in her left hand. Her ring finger hooked upwards, its unnatural angle a memento of a dislocation by a rough client. ‘Spare us, eh, Gaspare.’
Fillide’s round face had the slight fatness of a girl. Curling at the temples, her amber hair glowed against her skin. A fresh rose pink bloomed along the flesh of her collarbone and in the hollow at the bottom of her neck. Her underlip was so full that it alone would have made the fortune of any other courtesan. She had been Caravaggio’s Judith and his St Catherine. She was the Magdalene he was working on now. As she doubled over in harsh laughter, he thought her more human than the paint he had spilled for her. But only just.
Menica came to Caravaggio and stood on his feet with her arms around his neck. Stretching up on her toes, she brought her mouth close to his ear. ‘Ranuccio’s on the bed, Michele. He was talking about a fight – with you.’
He stroked Menica’s cheek. Her skin was growing rough after her six years as a whore. Kissing her forehead, he called across the room: ‘Prudenza was looking for you at the inn, Ranuccio.’
Onorio stiffened and reached for his dagger. Fillide glared at Menica. A taut laugh came from the bed as the curtain drew back.
Ranuccio swung his feet to the floor. He scratched inside his hose and found something that he flicked away with long slim fingers. His beard and hair were brown with yellow highlights, like straw rotted to damp silage. He reached for the bottle in Onorio’s hand. ‘Give it up, Longhi,’ he said. He gave another tug before Onorio let the bottle go.
‘It’s funny, see.’ Ranuccio held Fillide from behind, smelling her hair. ‘This one tried to cut Prudenza up.’
‘What do you expect?’ the girl said. ‘I found you naked in the strumpet’s bed.’
‘ “Whore, I’m going to scar you everywhere,”’ Ranuccio bellowed in a mocking falsetto. ‘You should’ve heard her, ragazzi. She was a fury. “You dirty whore, I want to cut you. I want to cut you.”’
Caravaggio interrupted their embrace. ‘You’ll leave her b
e.’
Ranuccio slipped his hand slowly out of Fillide’s dress and moved her aside. ‘You owe me, painter. Remember your debt?’
‘He’ll pay you.’ Onorio slapped Fillide’s backside. ‘But now let’s have some music and a dance.’ He picked up a Spanish guitar from the corner and tossed it to Caravaggio.
As Caravaggio tuned up, Ranuccio peed loudly in a bucket beside the door. With the first notes of ‘Ti parti, cor mio caro’, he hauled up his hose and moved over to Fillide. He kicked into the villanella with a showy step and took her with him. Gaspare rounded Menica, courtly and stiff. Onorio pulled Prospero laughing to his feet and they spun across the boards.
Caravaggio picked at the strings and sang the old Bolognese song in a clear, deep voice:
To part from you, my dear heart
Leaves me with bitter tears
And my soul without you
Cannot be healed.
Ranuccio whistled and nuzzled Fillide’s neck. That buffoon would reel about like this to a funeral dirge, Caravaggio thought.
Do not leave me,
Oh my dear heart,
For your faith.
Ranuccio slowed his step and drew Fillide to him.
If you want to leave me
Remember to return.
I cannot remain alive
One hour without you.
Do not leave me.
Ranuccio and Fillide went to the bed. She pushed him onto the mattress and climbed on top of him, pulling the curtain shut.
Onorio stamped and clapped. ‘Play louder, Michele.’ Caravaggio lifted his voice above the grunts and cackles from the bed.
Their love-making was soon done and the curtain drawn back. Ranuccio drowsed contentedly. Fillide arranged her breasts and her neckline. Menica spooned out bowls of meat for Gaspare and Caravaggio. The stew steamed with the aroma of nutmeg and cloves and cinnamon.
‘I have a mind for some poetry now,’ Fillide said.
Gaspare bowed. ‘Your heart lies on the bed, but your soul deserts it, following love and poetry to me, my Lady Fillide.’
‘I meant some of your poetry. Not a codswallop rehash of Petrarch. I hate that weepy old milksop.’
‘Hear, hear.’ Ranuccio slapped his hand against the wall.
Discomfited that a mere courtesan had noticed his plagiarizing, Gaspare cleared his throat. ‘You recall the painting our friend Michele did a few years ago? Love Victorious?’
‘The little Cupid smiling like he was game for anything?’ Onorio twisted the cork from a new bottle and set it to his lips.
Gaspare took up the pose of an actor declaiming, and recited his madrigal. It warned that Caravaggio’s representation of love was so true that it was like the real thing – in its most extreme form.
‘Don’t look, don’t look on Love,’ he concluded. ‘He’ll set your heart on fire.’
‘Not bad.’ Onorio belched. ‘You ought to publish it.’
‘It was published in Venice two years ago.’ Gaspare put a hand on his hip, affronted. ‘I presented you with a copy of the book.’
‘I don’t recall it.’
Prospero nudged him. ‘It’s the one you put on the table in your bedchamber to make your pisspot just the right height.’
Gaspare raised his hand, but Menica caught at it.
Onorio’s pout quivered with vicious humour. ‘Michele, does love turn your heart to ashes, as in the words of our companion, the great poet of the Most Serene Republic of Genoa?’
Caravaggio put the guitar on the floor. His eyes were wide and staring, as though he observed the phantom of something dead approach him. ‘Love?’ He reached for the wine and took a pull. ‘Do you really think that’s what sets me on fire?’
The morning light found its way deep into his brain, as if it were the stiletto of the stealthiest assassin. Caravaggio groaned.
‘Time we were going, Michele.’
He opened his eyes. Vermilion slivers of the dawn shimmered through the motes of dust. Rubbing his face, he stood, caught at his head, and gasped.
Onorio slapped his cheek lightly. ‘A good night, wasn’t it, cazzo?’
The curtain on the bed was only half drawn. Fillide’s pale breast bore a livid scratch, no doubt from her companion’s attentions during the night. Ranuccio snored beyond her. Prospero rose from his couch, picking at his scalp and wiping the lice against his hose.
‘Come on.’ Onorio gestured for haste. ‘Let’s be off.’
The air of the early morning was clear, free of the foul odours that would rise from the littered ground in the day’s heat. Prospero blew a kiss at an old woman hauling a basket of figs towards the market in the Campo de’Fiori. ‘Who can be unhappy in Rome?’ The little man was missing a few teeth from tavern brawls. Those that remained shone through his ginger beard. ‘Well, late sleepers don’t catch any fish. I’m off, ragazzi.’ He shambled towards the Corso.
Onorio picked up a fig that had dropped from the old woman’s basket and rubbed it against his doublet to clean it. As he chewed, he put his arm across Caravaggio’s shoulder. ‘You didn’t pay him.’
Caravaggio took the remainder of the fig and ate it. ‘Once I started on the wine, it slipped my mind. Anyway, maybe he forgot.’
‘Michele, this isn’t you. You get carried away by your anger sometimes. God knows I wouldn’t crucify a man for that. But don’t pretend that you want a fight with this thug.’
Caravaggio’s smile was reluctant. ‘If I’m to take advice on my comportment from you of all people, cumpà, I must be way off track.’
‘Stay at home and work.’ Onorio slipped his hand under Caravaggio’s arm. ‘Is it money you need? I can lend you the ten scudi for Ranuccio. To get him off your back.’
‘I’m not short.’ Caravaggio pulled a leather purse from his doublet and shook it. ‘Plenty in here.’
‘Then in the name of the Blessed Virgin, pay the bastard.’
Caravaggio’s lips tightened, as though he felt a familiar pain. He gripped Onorio’s forearm and his grin opened up. ‘You’re right. I’ll find him at the tennis courts this afternoon and give him the money.’
‘I’ll see you there.’ Onorio wagged a finger and shook his head with relief. ‘You know I wouldn’t have stood by and let you fight the Tomassonis alone, bello.’
‘I know it.’
‘I’m going to Santa Maria della Consolazione. The masons are coming in to replace some of the stonework. I’d better be there to oversee it, or they’ll be dropping marble down the hill as if it were the criminals who used to be tossed off the Tarpeian Rock there. Come and see the work.’
‘No, I have a model coming to my place. Ciao, cazzo.’
Caravaggio’s mouth was dry and his belly grizzled at him for food. Below the Trinità dei Monti, he stopped in the Tavern of the Turk. He drank off a mug of thin beer and took a hunk of dark bread and half an onion. He came out onto the piazza at the foot of the slope under the Trinità, rubbing the cut surface of the onion on the bread to flavour it. He chewed hard as he went up Via del Babuino.
Rome roused itself around him. A heavy-set old carpenter who had modelled for his St Peter crossed the street, on his way to his workshop in the Via Margutta. He hefted his toolbox against his thigh and waved to Caravaggio. ‘Michele, what’re you painting now?’
‘Salve, Robbè. I’m doing a Magdalene with her sister Martha.’
‘You don’t need an old bald fellow with a white beard and a big strong chest to model for you again?’
Caravaggio pointed beyond the piazza to Santa Maria del Popolo, which housed his Martyrdom of St Peter. ‘Everyone knows I already crucified you.’
His appetite was satisfied and he wanted to get home to prepare his pigments for Prudenza’s arrival. On the right of the canvas, he had painted Fillide as the Magdalene in the moment of her conversion. He wanted to balance his composition with Prudenza as Martha, inquiring and cajoling her immoral sister. He looked forward to telling Fillide that she would be dis
played in the gallery of the great Aldobrandini family alongside the woman whose face she had tried to scar. He would paint until the afternoon, then take the money he owed to Ranuccio – at the tennis courts or at Fillide’s rooms. I’ll throw the money at him, he thought, so he knows I don’t believe he won it fairly. He’ll understand that it’s beneath me to fight a man such as him. That alone will be worth ten scudi to me.
At the burnt sienna towers of the Church of Sant’Atanasio, he cut onto the Via dei Greci, into the Evil Garden. The low morning sun struggled to drive the night from the narrow street. A pair of beggars knelt at the rough grey step of a small house, their fingers steepled, beseeching charity. The young woman in the doorway held a three-year-old boy on her hip. The boy was naked, half wrapped in a towel, as though the beggars’ call had interrupted his bathtime.
Caravaggio approached, watching the girl. The house was dark behind her. Daylight seemed to penetrate the street just for her, illuminating the eggshell clarity of her neck and chest. She crossed her bare feet and lifted onto her toes, pivoting from her hip to swing the boy as she listened to the old woman’s story. She let her head drop to her left so that her chin touched her collarbone, as she looked down upon the kneeling woman with compassion and reassurance.
He recognized her. It was the maid who had been cleaning the floor at del Monte’s palace. She’s turning her hips the opposite way to her shoulders, he noted, as though she knows about the contrapposto pose. She has found the grace of classical form without anyone having to teach her an academic term for it.
Caravaggio leaned against the wall by the threshold. The plaster had come away beside the chipped travertine of the doorway, exposing the brick beneath. He smiled and was surprised by how little calculation there was in his open look.
The girl seemed confused, recognizing him from the palace and wondering no doubt how he came to be at her door. The boy in her arms reached out for her sleeve. She kissed his brow and whispered to him.
