Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

by Mathias Enard

  “We have been told that you have not used the engineers and draftsmen at your disposal, and that you haven’t been using the workshop we opened for you. Why? Is it not to your liking?”

  “Yes, my Lord, of course it is. It’s just too soon. As soon as I have some drafts ready, I’ll have the models made and will carry out the designs.”

  “That is good. We will wait for your results, then. Go back to work, and God be with you.”

  Michelangelo senses this phrase signifies his dismissal; he bows respectfully and Falachi takes him by the arm to lead him away. Still standing, they wait for a few seconds for Ali Pasha to give a final recommendation to Mesihi, a piece of advice that makes the page smile; if Michelangelo had understood Turkish, he’d have heard that the Vizier hoped his protégé hadn’t converted the architect invited by the Sultan to his own debauched habits, and that the delay in his work wasn’t because of too many visits to the tavern.

  Leaving the interview, stepping through the door from the council leading to the courtyard, Michelangelo is in a bad mood.

  Under every sky, then, one must humiliate oneself before the powerful.

  No more money.

  No more purse of aspers to cover his expenses.

  Not a penny of what had been outlined in the contract.

  Should one be led to believe that wealth and pomp call for stinginess?

  In the lingua franca they’ve worked out during their meetings, Michelangelo opens up to Mesihi, who is a little annoyed by the artist’s remark. No, Ali Pasha and Bayezid are neither miserly nor ungrateful. The sculptor has only to show him a single drawing and he’ll be showered in gold.

  He could even be received by the Sultan in person, a very rare privilege for a foreigner.

  On the square where the monumental entrance to the new palace stands, there is a large gathering and many drums; a herald is shouting; a troop of Janissaries is parting the crowd.

  “It’s an execution, Maestro. Let’s go on our way.”

  But Michelangelo wants to see. He who learned anatomy by dissecting rotting corpses in the morgues of Florence, who saw Savonarola die on the stake, is frightened neither by blood nor by violence to the body. He approaches, followed reluctantly by Mesihi.

  “This isn’t a spectacle for you to see, Maestro. Let’s go.”

  Michelangelo insists. He takes his place in the audience, in the front.

  The pale condemned man is dragged by his chains; the jailers gently get him to kneel. The man lets himself be manipulated, he seems already to be elsewhere; he bows down on his own, presenting his neck.

  The executioner approaches, the blade of his sabre shines for an instant in the sun. The crowd’s absolute silence lets the brief crack of the vertebrae be heard, the ripping of flesh, the dull thud of the head on the pavement and the fluid lapping of blood gushing onto the ground.

  Michelangelo closes his eyes for a second to commend the poor man’s soul to God.

  The executioner’s assistants gather up the remains with respect and wrap them in linen.

  Mesihi has turned his eyes away in disgust.

  Michelangelo is surprised by the condemned man’s docility.

  “They probably gave him some opium to relieve his suffering. Let’s go, now.”

  The sculptor, persuaded now that there’s nothing more to see, follows his guide.

  “Mesihi?”

  “Yes, Maestro?”

  “Stop calling me Maestro, please. My friends call me Michelangelo.”

  The poet, flattered and moved, quickly resumes walking so he won’t be seen blushing.

  In one of the pendentives in the Sistine Chapel, opposite the panel on which Judith is majestically carrying the head of Holofernes, David is getting ready to decapitate Goliath; his arm, in pure blue pigment, wields a broad scimitar parallel to the ground; a spot of light falls on his shoulder, twisted from the effort.

  Of course, Michelangelo is not now thinking of these frescoes, which he will bring into being three years from now, and which will earn him even more measureless glory; right now, he just has a bridge in mind, a bridge whose design he wants to finish as promptly as possible so he can receive his wages and leave this disturbing city, at once familiar and resolutely other, through which he nevertheless doesn’t get tired of strolling and gathering images, faces, and colors.

  Michelangelo works — that is, he draws in the morning, as soon as the dawn light permits him; then Manuel comes to read to him and he dozes off a little. Toward evening, he walks with Mesihi, whose company he appreciates as much as his beauty. He leaves him before nightfall, when the poet invariably goes to the tavern to get drunk until dawn.

  Michelangelo was not very handsome, with a forehead that was too broad, a crooked nose — broken during a brawl in his youth — bushy eyebrows, ears that stuck out a little. He couldn’t stand his own face, it was said. It was often said that if he sought perfection of features, beauty in faces, it’s because he himself lacked them completely. Only old age and fame would give him an unparalleled aura, like a kind of patina on an object that started out ugly. Perhaps it’s in this frustration that we can find the energy of his art; in the violence of the era, in the humiliation of artists, in rebellion against nature, in the lure of money, the inextinguishable thirst for advancement and glory that is the most powerful of motivators.

  Michelangelo is searching for love.

  Michelangelo is afraid of love just as he’s afraid of Hell.

  He looks away when he feels Mesihi’s gaze resting on him.

  Michelangelo is screaming. It’s the seventh time he’s been tortured. They press a red-hot iron to his legs; the pain keeps him from smelling the stench of burnt flesh. With a pair of tongs, they tear off part of his breast, some shreds of skin from his thighs and shoulders; they break his left arm with a hammer. He faints.

  They revive him by throwing buckets of ice water on him.

  He moans.

  He implores God and his torturers.

  He wants to die; they won’t let him die; the Inquisitor pours acid on his wounds, he screams again, his body is nothing but one immense spasm, a stretched bow of suffering.

  He can no longer even manage to groan, he is blind, everything is dark, painful, buzzing.

  The next day they carry him to the stake, to a square brimming with people, people full of hatred, happy to watch the execution, shouting encouragements to the executioner.

  He is overcome with fear, the panic fear of suffering and death when he approaches the pyre and he can hear the flames crackling beneath him, he is going to burn, he is burning, the noise of the blaze covers his desperate screams.

  He wakes up in a sweat, his mouth dry, just before his ashes are thrown into the Arno.

  It’s been a long time since he’s dreamt of Savonarola. Almost two years. The preacher’s death catches up with him sometimes, his face dilated by heat into an immense inaudible cry, his boiling eyes exploding, his outstretched hands where the bones show beneath the skin.

  Michelangelo shivers; he stares into the night and breathes in desperately, as if to swallow the light.

  On May 30, while his work is not making any progress — he isn’t happy with any of the numerous sketches he has drawn — Michelangelo receives a letter that had come from Italy along with Maringhi’s goods. He is surprised it’s not from his brothers; he does not recognize the beautiful handwriting — wide and authoritative — spread out over two pages.

  He trembles as he reads. He turns pale. He stamps his foot. He turns the letter over in every direction, turns red with anger, furiously crumples the missive into a ball, then unfolds it, rereads it; his terrible cry of rage alerts the dragoman Manuel, who arrives in time to see him tearing the letter up and sending all the things on his table flying with a sweep of his arm — ink, quill, charcoal, papers.

  Manuel prefer
s to run discreetly away when confronted by the artist’s fury.

  The monkey hides under the bed, terrified.

  So there it is.

  Some good soul has let Rome know of his presence near the Grand Turk. What had to happen has happened. They threaten to inform the Pope, they predict his ruin, excommunication, death even, if he does not return to the fold.

  This missive does not, however, come from the Holy Father. It is not signed. He should know that the Sublime Porte is at peace with the Italian states for now. The great empire is powerful. Michelangelo was hired honestly, as he could have been in Milan or France. Even Leonardo worked for the Sultan. This is a new cabal. He pictures the envious people still trying to destroy him, to humiliate him by keeping him from completing the great work that is waiting for him in Constantinople and that will earn him an ever more immense fame, throughout the whole world this time.

  They don’t want him to succeed. They want him to remain a little court sculptor, a servant, forever.

  He sees clearly which jealous architect could be behind this note.

  In the evening, when he joins Mesihi for their stroll, Michelangelo has calmed down a little; anger has given way to melancholy, which twilight over the Bosphorus and the long plaint of the muezzin do nothing to appease, quite the contrary. Mesihi had heard of that afternoon’s episode from Manuel, but he does not mention it. He notices that his companion suddenly seems tired, that he is even quieter than usual.

  They stroll through the city; Michelangelo is slightly stooped, drags his feet a little; his gaze, usually lively and curious, is fixed on the ground in front of him.

  Mesihi does not question him.

  Mesihi is discreet.

  He is content to walk a little closer to the sculptor than usual, almost touching him, so he can feel the presence of a friendly body.

  They head west, where the sun has disappeared, leaving a pink trail above the hills; they pass the grandiose mosque that Bayezid has just finished, surrounded by schools and caravanserais; they follow the crest a little, then go downhill before reaching the aqueduct built by some forgotten Caesar which bisects the city with its red-brick arches. There is a little square there, in front of an old church dedicated to Saint Thomas; the view is magnificent. The fires on the Pera towers are lit; the Golden Horn is lost in the meanderings of dark fog and, to the east, the Bosphorus outlines a grey barrier dominated by the somber shoulders of Santa Sophia, guardian of the gap that separates them from Asia.

  Michelangelo is thinking of Rome.

  He observes this foreign city, Byzantium lost to Christianity; he feels alone, more alone than ever before, guilty, destitute. In his mind he goes over the words and threats in the mysterious letter.

  Mesihi takes him gently by the arm.

  “Is everything all right, Maestro?”

  It annoys him to be treated like an old man or a woman, and he violently repels the poet’s hand.

  How could he have come here? Why hadn’t he been content to send a drawing, like that oaf Leonardo?

  If Michelangelo hadn’t turned his head away, Mesihi could have seen tears of anger shining in his eyes.

  Now he has to make a decision.

  He can’t risk everything he has built up till now — his career, his genius, his reputation — for a Sultan who hasn’t even deigned to meet him.

  He stood up to Julius II, that warrior Pope; he can easily stand his ground with Bayezid. But he hasn’t yet drawn the bridge. He still hasn’t had the idea he’s lacking. So he can’t claim his wages; to leave now would be not only to lose face, but also the wealth the Sultan is offering him.

  This unexpected wrinkle haunts him.

  Mesihi is patient; he remains silent for a few minutes, for Michelangelo to pull himself together, then he says quietly: “Look over there, Maestro.”

  Surprised, the sculptor turns around.

  “Look there, down below.”

  Michelangelo glances over the landscape disappearing into the night, without making anything out but the lights of the towers and a few reflections on the water.

  “You will add beauty to the world,” Mesihi says. “There is nothing more majestic than a bridge. No poem or story can ever have that strength. When they speak of Constantinople, they’ll mention Santa Sophia, Bayezid’s mosque, and your work, Maestro. Nothing else.” Flattered and touched, Michelangelo smiles as he watches the beacons guide the boats in their dance over the black waves.

  Maybe it’s because he’s worried and oppressed that Michelangelo agrees to follow the man from Prishtina to the tavern that night; maybe also because of the trust he has in that miscreant poet whose verses he doesn’t know. Maybe simply the spirit of this place won out over his austerity. So he follows close behind a Mesihi who’s disconcerted by his decision, contrary to their habits. Since the Turk would be ashamed to take the artist to one of those soldiers’ dives he’s fond of in the Tahtakale neighborhood, he decides to cross the city and go to one of the many taverns on the other side of the Golden Horn.

  On the harbor they easily find a ferryman and, after a brief crossing, they hurry under the Saint Claire gate, just before it closes for the night; the drinkers won’t be able to leave the neighborhood before dawn.

  Michelangelo already regrets his sudden decision; he’d have done better to go back to his room and continue his drawings, but the strange threatening letter has acted like an energizing wine once the shock and anger passed. He is not one to let himself be intimidated, not at all.

  This isn’t the first time some jealous individual has sought to harm him.

  Upon reflection, the fact that they know he’s with the Grand Turk no longer really worries him.

  Bayezid is the prince of a great European power, for now at peace with the cities of Italy. A pox on anyone who finds fault with that.

  You have to be able to follow something to the end.

  Mesihi is delighted at finding his companion smiling again; he projects his own desires onto the Florentine and attributes this change in mood to the prospect of drink. This improvised evening must be perfect. They have to eat, so as not to drink on an empty stomach, so they sit down at an inn where they are served a few slices of a roll of spiced tripe which they eat with noodle soup. The district’s population surprises Michelangelo again: Turks, Latins, Greeks, and Jews, from the Gate of Saint Anthony to the Gate of the Bombardes. Jews and Christians are free to settle wherever they like, the only restriction being that they can neither live nor build a place of worship near a mosque. Pera is not a ghetto. It is an extension of Constantinople.

  The two men walk past the swollen bastion of the former Genoese Galata Tower, beyond which the cemeteries stretch out; Michelangelo is surprised that, without any apparent danger, one can stroll on foot through the city at night. He thinks about his bridge, about that thread that will join these northern neighborhoods with the center of the capital. What a fabulous city will be born then. One of the most powerful in the world, without a doubt.

  He had come for the money, to surpass Leonardo and avenge himself on Pope Julius II, and now the task is transforming him, just as the Pietà or David transformed him. Michelangelo is shaped by his work.

  They walk southward down a slight slope. Mesihi has decided where he’ll take the sculptor; his steps quicken. He remembers Michelangelo’s emotion last week, faced with dance and music.

  Around the former Italian church of San Domenico, which was transformed into a mosque a dozen years ago, is the Andalusian quarter, where those expelled from Grenada have settled; the Sultan chased the Dominicans out of their convent to offer it to the refugees, in compensation for the brutality of the Catholic Kings.

  At a respectful distance from the religious building a nameless tavern is hidden, a low door in an old Genoese house, from which the fervor of melancholy oozes.

  Mesihi is recognized as soo
n as they come in. Several drinking companions stand to greet him; they bow to him as before a great personage. The room, its walls decorated with multicolored ceramics all the way down to a good meter from the floor, is strewn with deep cushions and scattered with oil lamps filling the atmosphere with smoke. They guess Michelangelo is a foreigner, from his high doublet and surcoat; a foreigner or a Frank from the neighborhood no one recognizes yet. They are seated in a comfortable corner and brought a little table with a copper tray, some tumblers and a pitcher. The Florentine thinks these people handle the drinking business well; he watches the guests alternating glasses of wine with scented water, which they sometimes mix together; cupbearers weave between the groups, elegantly pouring the thick fluid. The beverage is sweet, with a taste of herbs; the first two glasses are drunk quickly, to reach a state one will prolong by slowing down the rhythm.

  After the second glass, Michelangelo is perfectly relaxed.

  He observes the designs on the faience tiles, the faces in the shadows, the movements of the servants; he listens to the Andalusian Arab’s rough melody, which he is hearing for the first time, mingling with the singsong accents of the Turk.

  He who doesn’t frequent cheap Florentine restaurants, even less the Roman dives, feels strangely at ease in this ambiance that is neither overly wild nor too refined, far from the excesses of languor or splendor usually attributed to the Orient.

  Mesihi too seems happy; he is in deep conversation with one of his neighbors, a young man with a handsome face, dressed in the Turkish style with a dark kaftan and light-colored shirt, who came in not long after they did; from the gazes directed at him, Michelangelo understands they’re talking about him, and in fact, soon after, Mesihi introduces them to each other.

  The young man’s name is Arslan; he has lived for a long time in Venice, and, to the artist’s great surprise, not only does he speak a perfect Italian, tinged with Venetian, but he has also seen in the square outside the Palazzo della Signoria the David that has earned the sculptor so much glory.