The Second Mrs. Gioconda

by E. L. Konigsburg

  Leonardo’s smile faded. “No, Salai, I have not read as many books as they have. They are trained in the universities. I was a grown man before I learned Latin, and I had to teach myself. If I were to express an opinion to them, they could contradict it by citing Author A in Greek and Author B in Latin. It would not matter to them that my opinion was based upon observation. They believe nothing that they cannot read in a book.”

  The master’s smile had altogether left him. Salai, who had learned to read people long before he had learned to read books, wanted that smile to return. He cleared his throat and said, “Reading books does make people very opinionated. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that to be very learned in books means only to have an opinion on other people’s opinions.” He looked up and read Leonardo’s face and continued. “As soon as you finish teaching me how to read books, Master Leonardo, I’m going to make certain that I don’t read too many.”

  “I don’t think we’re in any danger of that, Salai.”

  “I don’t want to be like those guys. Why, they read books in three languages and have opinions in four.” Salai noticed a grin beginning to play around his master’s mouth. “Why, those guys,” he continued, “would rather read about a horse than go look at one.” The grin grew. “Why, those guys could get peed on by a horse, and they wouldn’t know how they got wet if they couldn’t look it up in a book. Why, those guys—”

  Leonardo threw his head back and laughed, that strange, quiet laugh of his that pushed the sounds downward, a laughter as private as his thoughts. That laughter was what Salai had worked for. He never bothered to finish his sentence.

  Until he had met Leonardo, Salai had never known anyone who lived by any principles other than superstition and survival. In his life on the streets survival had required that he be one thing in one situation and another in another. In his life in the studio he had quickly learned that superstition was out and that survival meant reading Leonardo’s moods and supplying whatever color was needed. He could turn blush pink in one situation, be yellow in another and true blue in a third. His makeup was a whole palette. The color he carried in largest supply was laughter.

  Salai could learn about the principles of art and learning, but he could not learn to care about them. He could pretend to care, as he pretended to care about the Latin or Greek issue. Yet it was not fair to say that Salai was insincere, for his very insincerity was sincere. And it was all stamped self-preservation. And with that instinct born of survival Salai knew that he was supplying Leonardo with something besides loyalty and shades of laughter, something that he could not define yet, but which he knew was seated somewhere in his attitude toward things that others—men of principle, men of wealth, men of learning—considered important.

  THEY STAYED in Pavia until Duke Ludovico called them back to Milan. Leonardo took Salai with him to the castle, where they were guided to a large room. The duke was sitting in a tub of water, a tray of fruit stretched across the tub, and a lady sitting on a chair by the side of the tub, feeding him grapes one at a time. Salai started toward the tub, but Leonardo pulled him back.

  “Is he naked under there?” Salai asked in a voice that for Salai passed as a whisper.

  Leonardo did not answer; he only tugged at the boy’s cloak, and Salai understood that he was to be quiet. Leo nardo bowed before the tub, and Salai, glancing sideways at his master, did likewise, staying down until Leonardo patted him on his bottom as a signal that he should rise.

  Ludovico lost no time in telling them what was on his mind. “My astrologers,” he said, “have told me that January is a good time for me to get married.”

  “Congratulations, sir,” Leonardo said. “Milan will rejoice to have its illustrious duke married at last. Those who love you are anxious that you produce an heir.”

  “My bride-to-be is of a noble and old house. Her sister is married to the Duke of Mantua, and her mother is a daughter of the King of Naples. They will, of course, attend the wedding. The wedding will be in Pavia, but the festival, Leonardo, will be held here in Milan. I need you to supervise the festivities. The festival will include a pageant, and we will have a parade.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will be clever, Leonardo.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What will you do that will be clever, Leonardo?”

  “I must think about it, sir. To plan quickly such an important event would not be wise.”

  “We don’t have years, Leonardo. This is not a project like the monument of the horse. This must be brought to a finish by January.”

  “But, sir, that the horse is not finished is not altogether my fault. I must remind you, my lord, that you have called upon me for many other jobs. I need only mention my work in Pavia to supervise the construction of the cathedral or my engineering work on your defenses outside the city or my designing machines for war, now..

  The duke raised a dark arm out of the water. “All right, Leonardo. I will tell you only this. For this festival I will spare no expense. I want a glorious pageant. Everything must be very impressive, Leonardo. I repeat: very.”

  “I will think of so grand a pageant, my lord, that your new wife will be convinced that she has married someone wealthier than the Pope.”

  “I’m not worried about convincing her of anything. Don’t worry about her. She is young, only sixteen. She knows that I am rich; everyone knows where money is. There are others that need to be impressed. There are others who must see how cultured I am. I want them to experience my excellent taste. Everything must be rich and plentiful and original and clever and reflect my excellent and cultured mind. You must do glorious things, Leonardo. I command it.”

  “All shall be as you wish, my lord,” Leonardo said.

  As they turned to leave, the duke started to rise from the water. Salai hung back. Leonardo tugged at his sleeve, but the boy would not budge. The duke, being concerned with drying himself and applying scented oils, paid no attention. “Hey, Leonardo,” Salai called. Leonardo pretended that he did not hear and started walking toward the door, hoping that Salai would follow, but Salai did not. “Hey, Leonardo,” Salai repeated. Leonardo continued walking, not turning around. “Leonardo, look!” Salai shouted, pointing. “He’s as dark as a Moor all over.” Leonardo, his face frozen, swung back around into the room and grabbed Salai by his collar and pulled him from the room. Salai kept stealing looks up at his master, knowing that he had done something wrong, but not knowing what. Leonardo walked rapidly out of the room and was halfway across the courtyard before he stopped.

  He then threw his head back and laughed, a genuine, peasant-style guffaw. “Dark as a Moor all over,” he said, and then broke into laughter again. “Dark as a Moor all over,” he repeated.

  “Salai,” he said, “I think that where the Lord gave most men a bump for respect, He gave you a hollow.”

  LEONARDO gave himself up entirely to plans for the festival. He quit making sketches of horses; he quit studying rivers and mountains; he quit studying mathematics and anatomy. He became for the time of the preparations a combination of magician and housewife.

  He invented a stage which revolved. (Magician.) When the workmen used up their supply of paint and attempted to finish the job with a new batch which did very nearly but did not quite match, he made them start all over again. (Housewife.) He designed costumes for the tournaments; one set of men were to look like Moors and another to look like Scythians. (Magician.) When in the rush of things the tailors took stitches that were too long, Leonardo ripped out the whole seam. (Housewife.)

  Salai was sent scurrying here and there, gathering materials and delivering Leonardo’s instructions. He visited his father and his sister and repotted to them that the chefs were designing cakes and pastries in the shapes of unicorns and dragons. “So you see,” he said to Dorotea, “in a castle you even eat works of art.” Dorotea crossed herself when Salai told her that.

  The boy enjoyed his duties. He never had the feeling that others ha
d—that they were being kept from something important to do the unimportant, menial jobs around the studio. Salai had a well-developed sense of unimportance. And now with the festival everything seemed less serious than usual, and less serious suited Salai as much as less important did.

  Strangely enough, Leonardo, who was very serious, serious about himself, serious about his work, enjoyed the preparations for the festivities, too.

  “Festival,” he explained to Salai, “is like lightning. It has no history, and it has no future. It lights up everything for a brief second. It passes. It leaves nothing of itself save its effect. The lightning itself is never there to be pawed over by future generations. A pageant, dear Salai, gives an artist a chance to zigzag through time like lightning, like a wild, irresponsible thing.”

  Salai listened to Leonardo, grateful to have him light hearted. Leonardo was usually so concerned with the future that he couldn’t relax in the now. Salai realized that a genius person like Leonardo should be concerned with the future, and he was glad that he was not a genius. Merely being quick and smart was perfectly all right with him. His life had always been a conglomeration of nows. He had never postponed a small happiness for the sake of a future larger one. Salai’s whole life had been a festival, a wild streak, an irresponsible zigzag in Renaissance time.

  “I hope,” Salai said, “that the duke’s wife has more than one head and more than one set of eyes in each of those heads. Otherwise, she will not be able to see everything that you have planned for her.”

  “These elaborations are not for her, Salai,” Leonardo answered. “Remember, the duke said that he is not worried about convincing her of anything. All this effort is for Isabella and for Cecilia.”

  Salai, who loved good gossip second to anise cookies, asked Leonardo to explain. And Leonardo, who also loved good gossip but pretended he did not, did. As they worked, he told Salai the story of how, after a ten-year engagement, the Duke of Milan came at last to set his wedding date.

  Ten years ago Il Moro had wanted to marry Beatrice’s sister, Isabella d’Este. Isabella was eight years old at the time, and Il Moro was twenty-nine, but word had spread throughout Italy about how beautiful and gifted was this first child of the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara. Il Moro decided to claim her and wait. He was in no hurry to marry. He had enemies and dukedoms to conquer while Isabella finished growing up. It was an altogether suitable match, so Ludovico rode to Ferrara and offered himself as a suitor. He arrived exactly two weeks too late. The Duke of Ferrara had just promised Isabella to Gonzaga, the son of the Duke of Mantua.

  Isabella’s father did not want the possibility of a connection to the wealth of Milan to pass him by. He knew that he could not withdraw his promise to Gonzaga, so he made a counterproposal to Il Moro. Why not, he asked, marry Beatrice, his second daughter, instead? She was but two years younger than Isabella; she was not as pretty nor as vivacious, but she carried the same noble blood in her veins; and he would guarantee that her dowry would be as large as her sister’s.

  Just as the Duke of Ferrara did not want to offend the Duke of Mantua, the Duke of Milan did not want to offend the Duke of Ferrara; war was always just an insult away. So Il Moro agreed to marry Beatrice. The Duke of Ferrara hoped that eight years from that day his two daughters would be married in a double ceremony.

  But that had not happened. Isabella had married Gonzaga a year ago, but Ludovico still had not claimed Beatrice. He found first one excuse and then another. Affairs of state, he claimed. But Beatrice’s father was no fool; he knew that the wedding had been postponed not for affairs of state but for an affair of the heart. Rumors of Il Moro’s love for Cecilia Gallerani had reached Ferrara, and the father of the bride-to-be hinted that he was equally prepared for a wedding or for a war. Il Moro suddenly consulted his astrologers and set a wedding date.

  There had never been any doubt in Milan that Cecilia Gallerani was Ludovico’s great love. In the nine years that Leonardo had been in Il Moro’s city, the only time that the duke had requested a portrait was the time he had asked the master to paint Cecilia. Leonardo had painted her holding an ermine in her arms, and he had succeeded in showing the bright, the self-assured, the amused look of the lady as reflected by the bright look of the ermine. Leonardo had painted her hands with great care, for what the face did not show of the lady’s character, those long, expressive, competent fingers did.

  “These exertions for the wedding festival are more for Cecilia and Isabella than they are for Beatrice. The duke wants the ladies to see what they have missed,” Leonardo concluded.

  As Salai listened to Leonardo, he busied himself grinding pigments. He noticed the other apprentices eyeing him. He knew that being a favorite of Leonardo exposed him to envy among his fellows. The others were jealous of any one who received an extra dollop of Leonardo’s attention. Thank goodness, he thought, that he was not talented, too. Salai gladly shared any information he received from the master, for neither jealousy nor a sense of privacy was well developed in him. But the apprentices wanted to learn from Leonardo himself. They suffered from an ailment common to the times: they took themselves seriously. Very seriously.

  Leonardo never spent a lot of time trying to develop their talents. When one of them ran into difficulty with some work, Leonardo usually picked up the appropriate tool—brush or knife or crayon—and quietly corrected the work, mumbling “like so” as he worked. Sometimes Leonardo would get so involved with the work he was correcting that he would stand at the easel a whole morning, brushing life into it, mumbling “like so” as the student watched and tried to make reasons and rules for Leonardo’s instincts. When pressed, Leonardo would tell them that he was writing a book on painting and that they would find all his reasons there. Leonardo demanded that his students be neat. They often complained to each other that to be Leonardo’s apprentice meant learning to keep one’s blues in a row separated from one’s greens and learning to interpret one mumbled “like so” from another.

  Outside of the studio, they never uttered a single complaint. In the court of Milan to be a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci was to be touched with grace, like being cardinal to the Pope in Rome. Those whose ambitions outran their talents liked it that way. Leonardo did, too.

  None of his pupils was greatly gifted. Salai least of all.

  Leonardo whose father had never married his mother, Leonardo who had gone late as an apprentice to Verrocchio, Leonardo who had no fortune of his own, Leonardo who had to count on the gifts of his hand and his head—this Leonardo never felt certain that he had a place. This Leonardo never felt comfortable in the presence of dukes or of university men. This Leonardo was not willing to allow his seeds to fall on fertile ground where they might grow, for this Leonardo was not willing to cultivate his own replacement.

  Leonardo kept his thoughts and his opinions to himself and to his notebooks. What he allowed to spill over, spilled over to Salai, that small desert of talent. Leonardo’s waters could nourish nothing there; there was no talent to cultivate, and no one to turn a hoe. Salai was clever, but he was not creative. He would never blossom into a great artist. Leonardo and Salai both knew that, and they both accepted it. Salai was the chosen because he was sensitive—which made him a good audience—and not serious—which made him no threat.

  THE VERY RICH and the very titled did not come to the studio. Leonardo went to them. One evening while frantically finishing preparations for the tournaments, Leonardo and Salai went to the house of San Severino. They carried with them the costumes of the Scythians. When they arrived, the footmen who were to take part in the tournament took off the clothes they were wearing and tossed them onto a couch and began to rummage around the assortment of garments, pulling out a pair of trousers and a jerkin that would fit. They tried on one thing and another and took time out to admire themselves and each other with each garment they added.

  “Ah, Master Leonardo, you are a genius.”

  “Whatever Leonardo touches turns into a work of art.”<
br />
  “Ah, Leonardo, you are much too smart for one man.”

  Salai stood aside and listened. This was not praise; this was talk. Talk, talk, talk. Taste with no mind of its own. These were words thrown at Leonardo as one throws seeds to the pigeons of the piazza.

  One gentleman named Francesco called to Leonardo. “I must see you a minute.” He pulled the master aside and engaged him in private conversation for a full five minutes. Leonardo nodded several times and smiled several others, but he said as little as he ever did. Francesco walked away from Leonardo and rejoined the group, “Oh,” he announced, “Leonardo quite agrees with me....”

  Salai sat there on the couch on top of the heap of jackets and listened to them. They were not worth Leonardo’s attention. But there he was, repeating the same answers to the same compliments. There he was accepting praise from this unrefined, uneducated bunch of men, no more grown up—except for height—than Salai himself. They were deaf men praising a concert. No. They were worse, for they could hear, but they would not. They were overgrown puppies standing between a saucer of meat and a mother’s teat: knowing that the saucer is full of nourishment but too lazy to chew, content to be told what is in the saucer as they continue suckling and telling each other how close they came to tasting solid food.

  So this was Leonardo’s audience. A flock of grackles: noisy, wearing glossy plumage, mindless. Leonardo deserved better; he deserved informed appreciators.

  Salai rested on top of that heap of jackets and rolled over to face the wall, to face away from them. As he turned, he heard the jingle of coins. His hands began to explore first one jacket and then another, and when he found the coins he pocketed them as quietly as he had explored for them. He stayed on the couch as long as he could. He stayed there until Leonardo called for him to help the men undress.

  It was Francesco who missed his money. Before he said anything he went over to the couch and searched in, around and under it. Then he hurried over to his host, San Severino, and whispered something to him. San Severino smiled and nodded. “It seems,” he announced to the group, “that Francesco has lost some money. Perhaps someone picked it up by mistake. Let’s do this,” he said. He pulled a small table into the middle of the room. “Let us all turn our backs to the table, face the wall and close our eyes. Then the person who accidentally picked up Francesco’s purse can return it, and he won’t be embarrassed. San Severino looked right at Salai as he said that. Salai returned his look, no blush, no blink. They started to turn to face the wall, and San Severino said, “I’ll count to thirty, and then we’ll all turn back.”