The Second Mrs. Gioconda

by E. L. Konigsburg

  Even two major projects, the Last Supper and the horse, were not enough to occupy all of Leonardo’s mind; some part was always searching. He said to Salai one day, “I understand that the people of Flanders skim across the ice by attaching the bones of animals to their boots. Please send a message to Benedetto Portinari that I would like to talk to him; he has just returned from Flanders. He can tell me which bones.”

  Salai, aware that he had sold one of Leonardo’s sketches to an artist employed by Mr. Portinari, objected, “Oh, boss, why waste your good time with a dull man of business?”

  “Mr. Portinari is the least dull of businessmen, Salai. Summon him.”

  “I’ll find out for you and bring back the information instead of Portinari.”

  “I want to talk to the man. Now go. Arrange a meeting.”

  Salai hoped to catch Portinari while he was busy, too busy to answer a message from Leonardo. Salai watched the merchant’s house a whole morning. He saw four men enter and he waited a quarter of an hour after that before approaching the door and asking to see Mr. Portinari.

  “Messer Portinari is in conference,” the servant said. “Who shall I say wants him?”

  Salai never ceased enjoying the effect he had on his fellow servants when he mentioned the name of his master. He recognized that servants of the lowly were regarded as lowly. He knew that he need only drop the name of his master to raise himself higher than this fellow at the door. “I am sent by my master, Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Oh, yes. Master Leonardo. Oh, yes. Yes. Certainly. I will tell Master Portinari immediately.”

  The man disappeared for only a moment. He returned with Mr. Portinari at his side. The merchant rubbed his hands together. “Oh, yes. Yes,” he said. “Tell your master that I shall be there immediately. Run.” He turned back and glanced impatiently toward the room from which he had come. “I have only a small matter to attend to. Some men to dismiss. It will take me only a minute. Run along now, boy.” He started to reenter his house when he turned back suddenly and smiled at Salai. He reached into his purse and handed him a coin. “Here,” he said. “For you. I appreciate your bringing me the message.”

  Salai sauntered back to the workshop, thinking, flipping the coin. He knew that his career as a salesman of Leonardo’s ideas would come to an end shortly. Very shortly. That very morning. He could see how Mr. Benedetto Portinari was going to love telling Master Leonardo da Vinci that he had long been an admirer of his and how a certain artist he knew had obtained a certain drawing of the master’s and how that artist had made him a fine work in the style of the master. No masterpiece, certainly, but a fine work indeed. Faced with facts instead of suspicion, Leonardo would have to call a halt to Salai’s business. Salai imagined the whole scene, and he laughed to himself. Amusement always filled the pockets of his brain before melancholy had a chance. Salai smiled as he thought of how eager the man, the rich merchant Portinari, was to meet the master face to face. If Portinari were so anxious, so would others be. He, Salai, could begin a new business. He could arrange audiences with Leonardo as bishops arranged them for the Pope. He would do it for the pompous instead of the pious. He would do it so that they could tell friends and relatives and strangers what the great mind of Leonardo had revealed to them.

  Yes, he could do it.

  Yes, he would do it.

  For a price.

  After Mr. Portinari left Leonardo’s studio, Leonardo called in to him. “Close the door,” he said. “There is something I must discuss with you. A matter of business.”

  Salai closed the door and walked over to his master. He was prepared to tell Leonardo that he would never again rent out the master’s sketches. He was not only prepared to make a promise, he was also prepared to keep it. Small matter. He had already mentally listed the names of clients for his new enterprise, the selling of audiences.

  THE MONTHS became space surrounded by a thin shell of years. Passing time was an adversary to Leonardo, but to Salai time was a container for events: some colored bright, others pale and a few dark. His father died. Dorotea needed his help more than ever, but that was a shallow responsibility, easily borne.

  The times were strange. There was a worship of both art and war, a worship of both creation and destruction. And Master Leonardo da Vinci embodied both. Where, other than in the person of his own master, could someone find a man who could devise the most outrageous machines of war and in the same notebook, sometimes on the same page, create a tender picture of a mother and child?

  Salai probably understood Leonardo better than anyone. He never searched for understanding; it came to him by observation and acceptance. He had an acceptance of people and situations and a sufficient lack of self importance to allow himself to observe any situation by blending into it. He could be solemn; he could be gay. He could be honest; he could be dishonest. He could be coarse; he could be well-mannered. He never had a particular self-image that he wanted to present.

  But Leonardo did. Leonardo chose to set himself apart—above and apart. He was never comfortable when people and emotions got too close; a human situation could show him to be less than perfect.

  Leonardo’s need to be elevated before an audience combined with the general worship of art to make Salai’s sale of audiences brisk and profitable. Salai regarded his profiting from this combination of the times with Leonardo’s temperament as part of his obligation. To his master. To Beatrice. And to himself. His curls and his disposition remained sunny.

  Threat of an invasion by France seemed more likely than ever. The bronze that had been promised to Leonardo to cast the horse was needed for cannon. II Moro sent the metal to Beatrice’s father, his ally.

  Despite the threat of war, Beatrice had continued to accumulate jewels and gold and silver plate. The accumulation became so immense that it was stored in oak cupboards for which Leonardo had to design special locks. What had once been elegant and selective had now become merely vast. And Beatrice’s manner of dress was now fancy and fussy.

  Salai could not understand what had happened to his friend. He seldom saw her now; there were no opportunities for him to observe and to allow his instincts to lead him to an understanding. Why was she accumulating goods like a warehouse? Was she too tired to be selective? Why was she covering up her plain outer self with jewels and ribbons? Was she too tired to make her plainness invisible?

  Late in the summer of 1496 Salai began to see Beatrice come often to the chapel of St. Marie delle Grazie. Whereas before it had been her habit to come for holy days, she was now making daily visits.

  Leonardo was hard at work on the refectory wall; he had solved all the problems of composition and was now left with the job of making his idea take form, a job as much of hand as of mind.

  One day in early autumn, as Salai saw Beatrice’s carriage approach the chapel, he waited outside for her. When she emerged, he asked her in the name of their old friendship to allow him to show her the wall. Leonardo had quit work for the day, they would be alone, and he was anxious to know her private opinion. They had exchanged only the most casual remarks since that day of the horse. He wanted to know if Beatrice would consider the Last Supper a great work of art.

  Beatrice stood before the wall a long time. She walked from left to right, from St. Bartholomew to St. Simon and back again from St. Simon across Saints John and Andrew to St. Bartholomew. She was deep in thought. Her thinking filled the room. Even the rustle of her gown and the clink of her necklaces seemed muffled by her thoughts. At last she spoke. “No one who sees this will ever be free of Leonardo’s vision. From this time on every painter of the Last Supper will be a follower.” She studied the wall further. “No one,” she said, “can see this painting and be but different for having seen it.”

  Salai, who had been studying Beatrice as she had been studying the painting, said, “You are different, my lady.”

  “There! You see,” Beatrice said, throwing up her hands in mock exasperation, “it has happened to me alread
y.”

  “That is not the different I am referring to.”

  “Then you must be referring to my form. I am different. I am about to become a mother again.”

  “That, too, is not the difference I mean.”

  “I am older. Age makes a difference.”

  “I would say, my lady, that the difference is that Beatrice is not now happy and that she once was.”

  Beatrice, who had kept her eyes on the painting as they bantered, turned to her young friend. “How can you say that?”

  “Your gaiety is too loud. And so is your dress. Both are covering up something.”

  Beatrice stared at Salai. He was now taller than she was, and she tilted her head up and fastened her eyes on his. He boldly answered her glare. At last she spoke, “You were more fun, Salai,” she said, “before you learned to think.” Then she lifted her gown, ever so slightly, and walked out of the refectory.

  Il Moro, too, was impressed with Leonardo’s work on the wall. The master returned from a meeting with the duke with a new vineyard and a new commission. The vineyard, a fine one outside the walls of Milan, was an expression of thanks. The commission was for a portrait. II Moro requested that Leonardo paint one of Beatrice’s maids, a certain Lucrezia Crivelli.

  “When are you to start?” Salai asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Salai accompanied Leonardo to Madonna Lucrezia’s apartment. Duke Ludovico was there, waiting, smiling. When Salai saw how the duke looked at the young lady, he knew why Beatrice looked as she did; he knew why Beatrice’s gowns had grown loud. His duchess was making a pitiful attempt to muffle the sounds of a heart in the process of breaking.

  Ludovico pressed Leonardo to make short work of the portrait. “I do not want to find gray in her hair before it is finished,” he said, running his hand affectionately over her smooth dark head.

  Leonardo allowed Salai to paint in the background. He worked on modeling her face and ribbons. He allowed some of his other apprentices to add finishing touches to Lucrezia’s hair and gown and jewelry. All was completed in short order.

  Beatrice came to the studio one night and tapped at Salai’s window. “I want to see it,” she said.

  Salai did not need to ask what; he led her to the portrait. She stepped back and raised her lamp and looked. She then stepped forward and traced a ribbon with her finger, almost absent-mindedly “The plumage looks brighter than the bird,” she said. “I also think the plumage looks borrowed, like a chicken wearing the feathers of an ostrich. She will fade before her ribbons do. I can wait.” She then turned from the painting and said, “You see, Salai, there are advantages to having had good lessons in being second choice.”

  “Leonardo hates fussiness in women’s dresses. He had no appetite to paint her plumage. He allowed two of his apprentices to help dress her—gown and jewelry.” Salai then pointed to the band over the lady’s forehead. “I did that. How do you like it?”

  “You have done an excellent job, Salai. Mona Lucrezia looks like a very well-dressed, mildly intelligent cow.”

  “Why don’t you let the master paint your portrait? You would be such a challenge, my lady. Leonardo loves to paint faces that reveal the soul, and all your beauty is inside.”

  Beatrice smiled, a smile both warm and knowing and cold and knowing. “I will not have him do my portrait,” she said. “Instead I would have him paint me an arbor of green. In the dead of winter then, I shall have the centralheated bathroom to warm my body and the bower of spring green to warm my soul.”

  “What will you do about Mona Lucrezia?” Salai asked.

  “I shall attend dances and the theater. And I shall play games with my children. I shall be very, very gay. And I shall pretend that I do not mind being second. That, Salai, is what I do best.”

  FOLLOWING that evening visit to the studio Beatrice began once again to invite Salai to her chambers in the evenings. Salai liked her as much as ever; their understanding and their ages had once again caught up with each other.

  She now seemed to wear gaiety and cheerfulness more than she seemed to be them. She had sometimes to remind herself to laugh.

  After she had seen the portrait of Lucrezia, Beatrice had simplified her dress, and Leonardo mentioned to Salai that he thought that their duchess was becoming beautiful. “She is beginning to have the look of layers,” was the way he put it.

  There was a habit of laughter among the three of them, and because Beatrice needed it, they kept that warm and lively. Beatrice made the Christmas season as gay as all her Christmases past. She gave Salai a bolt of velvet cloth to make into a cape, and he understood that there was enough for a gown for Dorotea. He gave to Beatrice a copy of one of Leonardo’s drawings, one done by his own hand. He wanted her to have something that was as much like him as it could be. The drawing was that—an impious treatment of something very good. Beatrice accepted the drawing with a thank you and a smile. She did not comment on its artistic merit. Both of them knew it had none, and both of them knew that it was the thought between them that counted.

  On Monday the second of January, the Duchess Beatrice went to church, waving and smiling at the people she passed in her chariot. She stopped in the studio and told Salai that there would be theater and dancing in her rooms that evening. “My husband, the duke, will attend, and I intend to dance quite a lot. The sight of me and this bobbing belly might remind my husband of what an entertaining creature I am.”

  The evening did not turn out that way at all.

  At eight o’clock Beatrice was suddenly taken ill. II Moro rushed to her side and carried her to her bedroom. Three hours later she gave birth to a dead baby boy, and an hour and a half after that—just as a new day began for all of Milan—all the world ended for Beatrice, its duchess. She was twenty-two years old.

  Salai sat stunned in the courtyard of the castle. He had just recovered his lady; they had only begun something newer and richer. He walked around the courtyard, trying to collect himself, trying to think of some way to break the news to Leonardo. At dawn he went to the studio. Leonardo was up, sitting at a desk, studying a book of mathematics.

  Salai told him what had happened. Leonardo looked up from his book, but he did not look at the boy. He waited for Salai to finish, and then he resumed his reading, saying, “I have heard.”

  “What’s the matter, Leonardo? You cannot say that you have heard. Didn’t you understand? Our duchess is dead.”

  “I heard.”

  “Is that all you can say? I heard. Is that all she means to you?”

  “Death is the ultimate product of life.”

  “How can you talk about death when I am talking about Beatrice? How can you talk about a process when I am talking about a person?”

  “Do you expect me to shave my head and take all my meals standing?”

  “No. Oh, Heaven forbid that you, you superhuman, Heaven forbid that you should care for someone more than you care for your work.”

  “I cared for Beatrice.”

  “You cared for Beatrice! You cared!” Salai screamed. “You care more for ideas than you care for people. You are a machine, Leonardo da Vinci. You are an idea machine. You are a frozen man, and all your paintings are frozen ideas, and you are a stiff, stuffy, conceited—You are nobody’s friend—You aren’t even—” Salai’s voice grew louder and louder, and he began to choke on his own words.

  It was then that Leonardo rose from his chair and guided the young man to bed.

  THE GOOD fortune of Milan died with Beatrice. II Moro would not leave his room and he would not receive visitors. He fasted, and he shaved his head. After three days he emerged dressed in black, the color of his conscience. He continued to wear black, and he ate all his meals standing. He made rich contributions to the Church and to the hospitals. Every Monday and Thursday he shared a simple supper in the refectory with the Dominican brothers. There he looked upon the wall where Leonardo had frozen the moment, “One of you will betray me.”

  The French
were making obvious their plans for invasion. II Moro named Leonardo as chief engineer and assigned to him the job of studying the fortifications of the city.

  Each day Leonardo left the studio before dawn; Salai heard his preparations to leave, but the boy stayed in bed until he heard the door close. Thus, both man and boy had time alone to recover from the outburst that had dampened their seven years together.

  Salai would get up from bed with nothing to do. Doing nothing was suddenly difficult. It never had been difficult before. He had always conducted his own small business if he had no jobs to do for Leonardo. People were still willing to pay him for an introduction to Master Leonardo da Vinci, especially since the Last Supper had been completed. He could have made a nice income from the visitors from Florence alone. They came to Milan hungering after art; many of them could not be convinced that what was in Milan was better, but everyone of them would pay well to meet Leonardo. The Florentines were anxious to see him, if for no other reason than to carry home the notion that their men of genius were better. As if there were such a thing as a degree of genius. There were different kinds of genius, but there was no degree. It or not it. Salai could introduce no one to Leonardo these days. He was never in the studio, and Salai had lost his appetite for it.

  Salai needed money as much as ever. Dorotea was planning to marry Carlo the blacksmith, and she needed a dowry.

  Salai thought that perhaps now was the time to leave Leonardo. He could earn a living by making copies of the master’s work. He could return home and open a small studio there. He could once again live the simple life that his father had lived and that Dorotea still did. He would welcome a life away from ideas, a life filled with good soup and bread and no questions needing answers.

  He went home.

  Dorotea stood when he entered the house. She always did; and as long as his father had had strength to do so, he had, too. Dorotea always served him first and best, even when his father was still alive. He had always enjoyed coming home to such treatment. But now that he had decided to stay forever, his sister’s attitude made him feel awkward.