Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

by Mathias Enard

  Little by little, sitting crosslegged on his cushions, Michelangelo feels overwhelmed with emotion. His ears forget the music, or else perhaps it’s the music itself that is plunging him into this state, making his eyes tremble and filling them with tears that will not flow; as it was on that afternoon at Santa Sophia, as it is every time he touches Beauty, or approaches it, the artist shivers with happiness and suffering intermingled.

  Next to Michelangelo, Mesihi observes him; he sees him overcome by this pleasure of the body and soul together that only Art, or perhaps opium and wine, can offer, and he smiles, happy to discover that the foreign guest is moved by the rhythm of the androgynous jewels to which he keeps his eyes riveted.

  After the visit to the Basilica, Michelangelo wanted to rest a little, not without first giving an order to his team, which Manuel hurried to transmit: I absolutely have to have the plans and diagrams of Santa Sophia, the sections and elevations. There is nothing easier, he was assured, but to what purpose? The sculptor remained evasive. Then he withdrew into the sobriety of his room, absorbed by paper and pen until the always surprising voices of those human church bells on top the minarets confirm for him, along with the shadows lengthening on his page, that the sun has just set. He had written two letters, one to his brother Buonarroto in Florence, to give him instructions about his younger brother Giovan Simone, and the other to Giuliano da Sangallo in Rome, mail that he will entrust the next day to the merchant Maringhi. No sooner had he folded them up than Manuel knocked on his door to announce the visit of Mesihi of Prishtina, who wanted to invite him to a private concert; afterwards, they’d drink and dine, if they were so moved. Michelangelo hesitated, but the gentle insistence of the interpreter and poet as well as the possible presence of the Grand Vizier Ali Pasha in person made up his mind.

  So he let himself be led by foot through the warm city streets. Shops were closing and craftsmen were finishing their work; the perfume of rose and jasmine, augmented by evening, mingled with the sea air and the less poetic effluvia of the city. The sculptor, still dazzled by his afternoon visit, was surprisingly talkative. He explained to Mesihi how much Constantinople reminded him of Venice, which he had visited ten years before; there was something of Santa Sophia in St. Mark’s Basilica, something that expressed itself confusedly, stifled by the pillars, something the artist couldn’t really describe — perhaps just the illusion of memory. Mesihi asked him about Rome, about Florence, about the poets and artists; Michelangelo spoke of Dante and Petrarch, unsurpassable geniuses of whom neither Manuel nor Mesihi had ever heard; of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the sorely missed patron of the Arts who had transformed Florence. The conversation moved on to Leonardo da Vinci, the only person Manuel and Mesihi could cite; Michelangelo tried to explain to them that the old man was detestable, ready to sell himself to any purse, to help any army at war, with ideas from another time on Art and the nature of things. Mesihi told how at the beginning of his reign, Sultan Bayezid had been at war with the Pope because of his brother Djem, the renegade rival, who had taken refuge in Italy, in Rome at first, then with the King of Naples, and how that war had been followed by another one, with the Republic of Venice. The Empire had only maintained peace with the ruling powers of Italy for a few years.

  They arrived at a barred door in the middle of a tall windowless wall, a door in which a Judas hole quickly opened. A servant led them into a courtyard garden lit by torches. In a room with a wooden ceiling that overlooked this courtyard, cushions and rugs had been set up. The guests were served scented drinks and chilled fruits. Then other guests arrived; among them the Vizier Ali Pasha and his inseparable Genoese page; they greeted Michelangelo with a detachment the artist thought humiliating.

  The concert began, the sculptor was moved, and now he is unsure about applauding the female or male dancer who has just finished his or her extraordinary show. But he restrains himself, seeing that the audience is content to resume its chatter without any mark of admiration. Mesihi turns to him and asks, smiling, in his strange Frankish, if the spectacle was to his taste. The Florentine passionately agrees, even though he has never been interested in music, probably because music at home is nothing but a sad activity for monks, and dance the work of trained bears or peasant revelers.

  Incapable of following the discussions in Turkish, Michelangelo, still trembling with emotion, continues his contemplation of the dancer (he is more and more convinced that it’s a man and not a woman) who has sat down crosslegged among the musicians, a few feet away. He only looks away, embarrassed, when that beauty smiles at him. Fortunately he doesn’t need to hide his embarrassment. Mesihi has got up, in the murmuring of the spectators. Standing, he begins to recite some verses: a harmonious, rhythmic melody of which Michelangelo only understands the assonances. The lute accompanies the poet at times; sometimes the audience punctuates the ends of the verses with long, drawn-out ahs, sighs, admiring murmurs.

  When Mesihi sits back down, Manuel vainly tries to translate what they’ve just heard; Michelangelo grasps only that it was about love, drunkenness, and cruelty.

  In the bewildered solitude of someone who knows nothing of the language, the codes, the customs of the gathering in which he is taking part, Michelangelo feels empty, the object of attentions that he doesn’t understand. Mesihi is sitting next to him again; Ali Pasha provoked the tumultuous joy of the assembly by uttering — almost singing — these mysterious words, Sâqi biyâ bar khiz o mey biyâr, followed immediately by an effect: a servant distributed blue-tinted cups, Manuel explained the obvious, Come, cupbearer, get up and bring the wine, and with a magical step, with a gesture that made the heavy copper vase seem to weigh nothing, the light-bodied male or female dancer filled the glasses one after the other, beginning with the Vizier’s. Michelangelo the genius trembled when the loose fabric and tense muscles came so close to him and, although he never drinks, now he brings the cup to his lips, in a sign of gratitude to his hosts and in homage to the beauty of the man or woman who served him this thick, spiced wine. A cypress when standing, he or she is a willow when, leaning over the drinker, the cupbearer tilts the container from which the dark liquid flows, gleaming red in the lamplight, sapphires vying with rubies.

  The guests formed a circle, the musicians kept themselves apart. The dancer sits down to become a singer again when the glasses are empty. Fascinated by the powerful voice that soars so easily in the treble range, Michelangelo is not listening to the translator’s explanation as he exhausts himself commenting on the song. This second intoxication — of the gentleness of the features, the ivory teeth between coral lips, the expression of fragile hands placed on knees — is stronger than the heady wine he swallows in great gulps, in the hope that he will be served again, that this so-perfect creature might approach him again.

  Which is what happens, and happens again between song after song for hours on end until, conquered by so many pleasures and by wine, the sober Michelangelo dozes off in the hollow of his cushions, like a child rocked too well.

  A maestro Giuliano da Sangallo, architetto del papa in Roma

  Giuliano, I learned from one of your letters that the Pope has taken offence at my absence and that His Holiness is ready to put up the money and do everything we had agreed upon, that he desires my return and wants me to have no doubts.

  Concerning my departure from Rome, the truth is that I heard the Pope saying, on Holy Saturday, over lunch, speaking with a jeweler and the master of ceremonies, that he didn’t want to spend a penny more on stones, large or small: which surprised me greatly. Before leaving him, I asked for what I needed to continue my work. His Holiness told me to come back on Monday: I went back on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, all in vain. Finally, on Friday morning, I was led away, or rather chased away, and the one who threw me out told me he knew who I was, but that he had received his orders.

  So, since I had heard the aforementioned words on Saturday, and seen their effect, I became fu
ll of despair. But that was not the only cause for my departure, there is also another affair, which I don’t want to write down here; suffice it to say that, if I had remained in Rome, they would have erected my tomb before the Pope’s. That is the reason for my sudden move.

  You write to me now on behalf of the Pope, and no doubt you will read these words to him: may His Holiness know that I am more than ever ready to finish the work. It has been over five years now that we have been in agreement on the sepulcher, it will be in St. Peter’s and as beautiful as I promised: I am sure that, if it is done, there will be no equal to it in all the world.

  I beg you then, my dearest Giuliano, to send me the reply.

  Nothing else.

  This day, May 19, 1506,

  Your Michelagnolo, sculptor in Florence

  The sober Michelangelo dozed off nestled in his cushions and wakes up alone and full of misery in his wooden bed. Shreds of a nightmare seal his lids shut. He vaguely remembers that Mesihi and Manuel brought him back in a carriage or a sedan chair and threw him onto his bed. Shame grips him. He clenches his teeth. Pulls at his beard to tear it out. The pain of remorse is so great that he takes refuge in prayer. Dear God, forgive all my sins, dear God, forgive me for being among infidels, dear God, free me from temptation and keep me from evil.

  Then he gets up, staggering, as when he disembarked from the boat a few days before; he decides to go back to Florence as soon as possible. No doubt he is afraid; perhaps he sees the furious Pope leaning over him, threatening excommunication; he thinks of the Last Judgement: he will join Mohammed in one of the circles of Hell, where he will be torn limb from limb and disemboweled for eternity, in the midst of devils and demons.

  But wasn’t it the Pope himself who provoked this departure? Didn’t God will it? Didn’t His Holiness have him chased out like an undesirable, and what’s more without paying him? Only his brothers know he’s in Constantinople. He has been hiding his visit for now and has his other letters postmarked in Florence, through the merchant Maringhi, whom he has asked for the greatest discretion. Even if they know he’s no longer in Tuscany, they’d think he was in Bologna, Venice, Milan, even, but certainly not with the Great Turk.

  Just this once won’t hurt, the sculptor goes to the bathroom and, as much to wash away his anxieties as to erase the effects of the heavy wine from the night before, he splashes his face with freezing water. Then, having regained his calm, he knots a piece of cloth around his head like a turban, out of habit, as artists do to protect themselves from marble dust or pigment spatters. Did he do this because he was thinking of the sculptures on the tomb of Julius II, out of simple habit, or to ward off the effects of a migraine, as if his heart were beating faster in his brain dulled by wine, which stiffens the neck as thoroughly as starch? Probably all of those reasons at once.

  When someone knocks on his door, the sculptor is sitting at his table, sketching from memory the ankles and calves of the cupbearer from the night before with swift, thin lines; he couldn’t remember his name; Mesihi told him something about where he came from, his distant origins, which he forgot too. He regretfully raises his eyes from his drawing.

  “Mesihi of Prishtina is here, Maestro.”

  The visit is announced by the merchant Maringhi’s servant, who brings him a broth of innards and a piece of bread.

  “I’ll come out and eat downstairs.”

  He puts on a tunic and shoes, emerges onto the gallery, walks to the stairway and reaches the courtyard. Mesihi is waiting for him, sitting on a stool in the shade of the tall fig tree. The sky of Istanbul is extraordinarily blue that morning, pure color spread all the way out to the stones of the caravanserai, right against the leaves of the tree, with their green so dense.

  The servant pulls up another stool, a wooden crate, two dishes of steaming bouillon, a piece of brown bread, and a few sprouts of spring garlic.

  Mesihi rose when he saw Michelangelo approaching and greeted him gracefully. Elegantly dressed, with a brilliant smile and a towering silhouette, the poet took care to add a little makeup to his eyes, probably to hide the effects of debauchery and lack of sleep. In the absence of the dragoman Manuel to communicate, the two men have to be content with the rudiments of Frankish that Mesihi knows. Michelangelo tries to speak slowly and to articulate; this language probably reminds Mesihi of the Italian merchants of his childhood, the Dalmatian intonations of his mother, a Christian captured in Ragusa. They speak neither of Art nor of poetry or architecture, but of how the soup tastes, the loveliness of the day; for different reasons, neither one mentions the night before. Lunch over, the servant brings over a copper pitcher and pours water on their hands.

  Joined by a draftsman and an engineer, the great artist and the Vizier’s favorite poet leave the storerooms of Maringhi the Florentine to go to the port.

  Michelangelo notes the names of the merchandise even though he does not know the names of the vessels of all sizes that carry them, in a hurry to deposit their cargo and make room for other crafts — oil from Mytilene, soap from Tripoli, rice from Egypt, molasses from Crete, cloth from Italy, coal from Izmit, stones from the Bosphorus.

  During the rest of the morning, on the quays around the gate in the city’s ramparts and as far as the middle of the harbor where they are ferried in a skiff, Michelangelo and the engineers observe and measure. The Florentine sculptor contemplates the landscape, the fortified hill of Pera on the other side of the Golden Horn, the glory of Stambul facing him; the surveyors calculate the exact breadth of the arm of the sea, show the artist the precise place planned for the bridge. They discuss units of distance, Florentine or Venetian cubits, Ottoman kulaç and endazeh; finally they disembark on the other shore, that district so steep that the towers defending it seem parallel to the slope.

  Strange beings, these Mohammedans, so tolerant of Christian things. Pera is populated mainly by Latins and Greeks, there are many churches. A few Jews and Moors from far-off Andalusia stand out mainly by their dress. All those who refused to become Christian have recently been ejected from Spain.

  The visit over, the measurements taken, the artist expresses the wish to go back to Constantinople to start drawing again.

  It begins with the proportions. Architecture is the art of equilibrium; just as the body is ruled by precise laws — length of arms, of legs, position of muscles — a building obeys rules that guarantee its harmony. The arrangement of things is the key to a façade, the beauty of a temple stems from the order, the articulation of the elements with respect to one another. A bridge will be the cadence of the arches, their curve, the elegance of the pilings, the wings, the deck. Recesses, glyphs, ornaments to mark the transitions will indeed be there, but already, in the relationship between vaults and pillars, everything will be expressed.

  Michelangelo has no ideas.

  This work must be unique, a masterpiece of grace, like David, like the Pietà.

  Sketching out his first drafts, he thinks of Leonardo da Vinci, so unlike him, as if they were living in two eras separated by an infinity of eons.

  Michelangelo stands gaping on his platform. He cannot yet see this bridge. He is drowning in the details. He has only a little experience in architecture; the sketches of Julius’ tomb are his most architectural work to date. He would like Sangallo to be with him. He regrets having agreed to take up this challenge. He is upset. The risk is enormous. They might not only know he’s here, but they could get to him too. He doesn’t doubt for an instant that the Pope’s iron hand, or deadly Roman conspiracies, could strike him wherever they see fit.

  A giant bridge between two fortresses.

  A fortified bridge.

  Michelangelo knows that ideas come to you through drawing; he keeps outlining shapes, arches, pilings.

  The space between the ramparts and the shore is small.

  He thinks of the old medieval bridge of Florence, that frog surmounted by crenellations an
d peopled with butcher shops stinking of corpses, narrow, closed in on itself, it lets you see neither the majesty of the river, nor the grandeur of the city. He remembers the blood flowing in the Arno in rivulets when the animals are slaughtered; he has always had a horror of that bridge.

  The amplitude of the task frightens him.

  Leonardo’s drawing obsesses him. It is vertiginous, but flawed. Empty. Lifeless. Lacking ideals. Decidedly Leonardo takes himself for Archimedes and forgets beauty. Beauty comes from abandoning the refuge of the old forms for the uncertainty of the present. Michelangelo is not an engineer. He is a sculptor. They sent for him so that a form could be born from matter, be drawn, be revealed.

  For now, the matter of the city is so obscure to him that he doesn’t know what tool to use to attack it.