Pilgrim

by Timothy Findley

  Dancing bears, caged bears, pitted bears and baited bears. These were Leveritch’s constant companions—and he, from time to time, was one of them. At the worst of times, he was attacked by dogs—so he believed—and during these incidents he had to be restrained. Jung had once been intrigued by the poor man’s predicament, but now, having treated him for three months, he found his sessions with Leveritch exhausting. Too many dogs.

  “What time is it now?” he asked.

  “Not quite one. Stop fretting. Eat. You must take time to live.”

  Jung raised his empty spoon and lowered it.

  Emma watched him, feigning interest in the garden beyond the windows. It will be all right, she thought. It will be all right. It will pass.

  Bears and dogs and butterflies. Men who should be dead but who wouldn’t die. Women who lived on the Moon. This was the life he had chosen and she must keep him alive to live it. The worst of it—moments like this—would pass. He was overworked and overwrought, and over…what? He was overextended—that was the word. His reach had exceeded his grasp. But still, he was there—and watching him proudly, she thought: he will find his way through. He always has.

  10

  DREAM:

  Perhaps there was music. It seemed so. Someone singing.

  Leonardo went to the windows, his doublet loosened, all its buttons undone and the ties of his shirt hanging free. The ribbon was gone from his hair and his belt thrown aside.

  His back was firelit, the wine-coloured velvet of his doublet streaked with orange as if the flames were fingers and had scratched him.

  Come here.

  Gherardini hesitated.

  Come here. I want to show you something.

  What?

  Come and see. Come along.

  Gherardini remained rooted beside the table, staring down at the drawings of the nude young man. My brother. Was this how it happened? A seemingly casual invitation—come here—and the lamps beginning to gutter, the firelight reaching out across the floor and the smell of iris root, rosemary and oranges on everything.

  Gherardini made his way to the window. Leonardo’s arm, all at once, was around his shoulder.

  There. You see? The Mass is over.

  Cloaked and hooded figures were pouring from the open doors of Santa Maria Novella.

  Leonardo’s arm descended to Gherardini’s waist.

  I’m tired. You must help me.

  I don’t know how.

  What a feeble thing to say. Of course you know how. Leonardo leaned forward and kissed the young man’s lips. As he did this, pulling Gherardini closer, his free hand fumbled with the strings of Gherardini’s doublet.

  Gherardini pulled away.

  I have a knife.

  Leonardo stood back amazed, but smiling.

  A knife?

  Yes.

  You must be crazy. What have I done? What have I done I haven’t done a dozen times before?

  You don’t understand. I’m afraid.

  But you’ve never been afraid. Never. Never. Not of me.

  You don’t understand! I’m not…

  Not what? Not in love with me?

  Leonardo laughed.

  Gherardini glanced at the Piazza. The dog was dead. The mourners had dispersed. The doors of the church were closed. The fires still burned, but all the people sitting in their light were already bending into sleep. Nothing human showed in their collective silhouette, which might as well have been a view of hills and mountains seen from a distance.

  Leonardo’s hand fell once again on Gherardini’s shoulder.

  I always began by taking you from behind. Remember? Standing. Just like this.

  He pressed himself insistently against Gherardini’s back and forced the fingers of his free hand into the boy’s mouth, crooning.

  There, there, there. You like this, yes?

  His lips pressed hard against Gherardini’s left ear. With his left hand, he pulled away the boy’s doublet, dropping it to one side, reaching at once for the strings that bound Gherardini’s hose to his waist.

  You smell just the same, the voice said. Your hair, your neck, your skin.

  Leonardo took Gherardini’s hand and laid its palm on his own erect penis.

  DON’T!

  Gherardini spun on Leonardo and struck him in the face.

  Leonardo struck back and the force of the blow caused Gherardini to fall.

  Leonardo reached down, lifted the boy to his feet and tore his shirt away.

  Gherardini’s hands flew up in self-defence.

  Leonardo struck him twice in the face. Twice—and then again.

  The boy’s arms were crossed, his elbows pressed against his chest. Leonardo’s voice was barely audible.

  No one says don’t to me. No one. Get on your knees and beg my forgiveness.

  The boy sagged.

  I’m sorry.

  Say it again. And properly.

  I am sorry, Master.

  Stand up.

  Gherardini could not move.

  STAND UP!

  Leonardo seized the boy’s hair and dragged him to his feet. Then he took him by the arm and pulled him to the table, where he threw him down and, seizing his hose, stripped it off, boots and all, and flung it into the fire.

  Gherardini moved one hand to his groin. He closed his eyes.

  It was too late.

  Leonardo had already seen and turned away.

  Gherardini sat up.

  “I tried to tell you,” she said. “But you wouldn’t listen.”

  11

  Jung read this at midnight, sitting in his study wearing pyjamas and robe. Blindly, he reached for his cheroots, freed one from the case and struck a match.

  Barely aware of what he was doing, he lifted the lighted match towards his lips and only just managed to stop himself before he put it into his mouth.

  “Agh!” he said. “Dammit all!”

  Standing, he filled his tumbler with brandy.

  You’re behaving like a drunkard, Carl Gustav.

  Who cares? I need it. Besides, I’m perfectly sober.

  Setting oneself on fire is hardly an act of sobriety. My, my…One whole tumblerful of brandy. You won’t be sober for long.

  Leave me alone.

  You drink too much, Carl Gustav. You oughtn’t. Such a fine mind…

  “Oh, for God’s sake leave me alone!”

  Jung’s words rattled the windowpanes.

  Who are you talking to, Carl Gustav? There’s no one here but thee and me.

  Ghosts.

  There are no ghosts.

  If you say so.

  I say so.

  Jung sat down and drank. Then he glanced at Pilgrim’s infuriating journal with its infuriating story written out in his infuriating hand insinuating infuriating horrors about one of the greatest men who had ever walked the face of the earth and doing it all in a manner so calm and unreflective that it read like pornographic dictation taken down in a courtroom.

  And now, this. One more twist.

  “I tried to tell you,” she said.

  She said. She said. She said.

  All along it’s been about some god-damned woman!

  Now, now. Nothing wrong with women. Why don’t you go on reading and find out who she is?

  I don’t want to know who she is. She’s a god-damned imposter.

  There’s that word again, Carl Gustav. You really shouldn’t descend into these tirades. They’re unbecoming.

  I don’t care. I don’t god-damn well care!

  Clearly. But you should. You’re slipping. By the way, it hasn’t gone without notice that, while you read, you developed what we used to call at University a wandering hand. You recall the phrase? Description of a young man’s self-absorption—politely referred to as self-abuse.

  I didn’t touch myself. I only made an adjustment. It was uncomfortable.

  Are you going to smoke that cheroot?

  Yes. Absolutely.

  Jung reached out, placed t
he cheroot in his mouth and lighted it.

  To paraphrase your famous friend—ex-friend—Doctor Freud: sometimes a cheroot is just a cheroot.

  Stop that. This is not phallic.

  That’s what I said.

  You were implying…Listen. I am not aroused by the seduction of young men. End of insinuation.

  But she’s not a young man. She’s a young woman.

  I’m still not aroused.

  Then you’re not normal.

  “Oh, please shut up!”

  There you go, talking out loud again.

  Very well. Since you won’t leave me alone, I shall now continue reading and I will discover exactly what’s going on in this god-damned journal—and why!

  Silence.

  Except for the riffling of pages.

  Then, a sound of satisfaction.

  Here.

  A gown of sorts—more than likely a costume…

  A gown of sorts—more than likely a costume—was thrown in her direction. She was told to put it on and reminded in a tone that verged on disgust that Leonardo had no interest in her body unless he chose to study it for anatomical reasons.

  Wear that.

  The girl stood up as best she could and turned her back on him. She had never been exposed in such a fashion to a man’s gaze.

  The gown perhaps had been worn by one of Leonardo’s young men at Carnival before the advent of Savonarola. It was blue and covered with stars—the stars cut from paper, silvered and pasted on the fabric in patterns that echoed the constellations: Orion’s belt at the waist, the Pleiades across the breast, Cassiopeia’s Chair all down the back and around the hem, the Milky Way. If she had not been so afraid and so tired, she would have admired it—spoken, even, of its apparently joyful nature. But not now.

  Instead, once she had draped herself in this unlikely garment, she turned and directed her gaze at the figure who now stood, rigid, staring out of the window.

  Finally, she lifted her head.

  Will you allow me to speak?

  Silence.

  Let me tell you who I am. Why I have come here as I have…

  Her voice faltered. Her hands held the gown more tightly.

  Leonardo neither moved nor spoke. The only sound came from the fireplace. An angry crackling.

  I beg you, let me try, at least, to explain. And to tell about Angelo.

  Finally, one word was uttered, tight-lipped.

  Speak.

  And the story was told.

  Angelo was my twin brother.

  Our father…

  It doesn’t matter why—but I hated him. There’s no point trying to disguise the fact or to hide it. There it was—my hatred. It remains. It became a kind of stone in my hand. All my life, I hated men. Hated them—all but one. My Angelo.

  My Angelo. My angel.

  An angel from Hell! And how I loved him for it. Worshipped his wickedness. His wildness. His delight in mischief.

  That was really all it was. A delightful—a delicious sense of mischief. Let’s have some fun! he would say.

  And one of our ways of having fun was dressing up in one another’s clothes. He was—oh!—so beautiful. He made a lovely girl.

  Not lovely. No. That isn’t good enough. His beauty was so remarkable, he could sit dead still in a group of other “girls” and command a whole roomful of men. He delighted in this game. He made a far, far better girl than I—and I made a far, far better boy than he.

  It is true. It was true.

  There was something in the way we played the game that brought the perfect other into focus. Perhaps it was not even conscious. It was just the way we were.

  It was not until we started wearing one another’s clothes that I understood the liberty men must feel wearing hose and doublet. I could move, at last!

  And, oh! To see oneself! Not to be hidden. Not to be masked.

  To be seen!

  There, before me in the glass, were my legs! My feet!

  They were beautiful—elegant, shapely—and visible!

  Whereas, from Angelo’s point of view, when he dressed as me it gave him an opportunity to hide, and to move at his own pace—not to feel compelled to run in order to keep up. Not to be forced to adopt a manly pose.

  At first, it was only a game—and truly a game. No one saw us but the looking-glass. And no one knew but the clothes themselves.

  And then, one day when we were dressed as one another, a kind of craziness took possession of us. It was as though the game itself was daring us to play it before an audience. It was springtime—the wild time when anything mad and wonderful can happen. The swallows were returning and the air above Florence was alive with them—thousands—thousands of them, all of them circling above our heads and all of them calling down: come out! Come out and dance with us in the sky! All the windows had been opened and all the trees in the gardens were in bloom and Angelo said: it is time for us to show ourselves in the streets.

  “But people will notice,” I said. “They’ll know.”

  “How? How will they know? Most of them will be strangers—and anyone who’s met us will assume I’m you and you’re me.”

  He pulled me towards the glass and made me stand beside him.

  “Look,” he said, “and tell me. If you didn’t know—would you know?”

  This made me laugh. And it became the motto of our game: if you didn’t know—would you know?

  I confess. It was true. Even I could believe I was seeing myself beside myself.

  And when I saw myself that day—whenever that day was—I felt a waking-up—a surge of self-assurance I’d never known before. A surge of swagger, if you like, that I’d never felt as Betta. Never. But as Angelo, inside myself I felt myself become my self as never before. It was here—just here in the solar plexus—and it made a knot and it gave off waves of power that as a girl—a woman—I had never known.

  Our palazzo is on one of the steeper hills looking down on the city. It was an easy walk to the Campo di Santa Maria Della Salute, where everyone tended to gather and from which we could see the river. Angelo kept telling me to slow down. I was so excited, I could barely contain myself.

  The streets, whether wide or narrow, were always crowded, but now there was such an abundance of people, dogs and horses it seemed the whole of Florence was suffering spring fever.

  “You’re walking on the wrong side,” I told him. “You should be on my left and two paces behind me.”

  Angelo turned to me and curtsied. “Forgive me, Signor,” he said. “It will never happen again.”

  We made the adjustment just as we entered the Campo.

  There were street musicians playing on the porches of Santa Maria Della Salute, but we could barely hear them for the choirs of swallows and the festive crowd. All the dogs had decided to bark and the sound of this was joyous instead of alarming.

  I never, never, never wanted to return to womanhood. I could run, if I chose. I could leap on the balustrade and shout out verses. I could clap another man on the back and receive his hand in return. I could show my leg and lift the skirts of my doublet to expose my backside to the world—and none would know I was not a man.

  Presently, I became aware of a voice that was near enough behind us to make itself heard above the others.

  “There’s a back for you,” it said. “A Donatello back. A David.”

  A man was speaking.

  “Yes,” said another voice—a younger voice. “A good back and decent shoulders. Enticing.”

  “You know him?” asked the first voice.

  “I might, if I could see his face. He does have a certain familiar look about him.”

  Both voices fell silent.

  Who had they been talking about?

  Whose back? Whose Donatello back?

  I glanced to my left, past Angelo’s profile—my mirror-self—and I saw that a small knot of men and youths was gathered there.

  Amongst them—and seemingly the centrepiece of their group—was a tall,
red-headed and bearded man in a velvet hat. He was staring right at me.

  I had never felt the impact of such a glance before that moment. Clearly, he was smitten with me—but with a hint of danger, somehow, playing through his gaze, as if one moment he wanted to bed me and the next to strike me—in the way a person might strike an insolent youngster.

  I felt a shiver go down my back. My neck froze. I could not look away. It was both astonishing and dreadful—thrilling and frightening. I couldn’t tell what I was feeling, because no single feeling except a sense of awe would settle. My mind flew into pieces and I seemed to have no knowledge of how to recollect them.

  The man was surrounded by six or seven youths of extraordinary beauty and arrogance, who glanced at me and forced themselves to look away. It was enough that their master had seen me—for the man was, undoubtedly, somehow their master. They were like graceful Borzoi hounds—long-legged and maned with luxuriant, curling hair. Three or four older men—though younger than the master—stood closest to him and one of these was known to me. Antonio Pelligrini, who was the son of one of the merchants in my father’s guild.

  Would he recognize us in our reversed roles—or would he simply remark on our similarity to the children of a certain silk merchant?

  I took a step away from the iron rails and sought the shadows of the arches. But to no avail. He had seen us both and he knew us.

  Yet, it was me he named.

  He gestured in my direction and I heard him say to the master: “that is young Angelo Gherardini. He is with his sister, Elisabetta.”

  I wanted to shout out: I am his sister! That one there is Angelo!

  And I wanted, too, to shout at the master with the hungry eyes: stop looking at me like that! I want to be left alone!

  But of course I said nothing. Not a word.

  Antonio Pelligrini turned his back on me in order to speak more privately to the master, but this did not prevent the master from continuing his perusal of my whole being—inch, I could see, by inch.

  I saw him finger his beard—consider his answer—then shake his head. When this was done, he took Antonio’s arm and led him away. They were followed by their clutch of brilliant youths. “Who were they?” I whispered to Angelo. “Who can those men have been? And the man in the hat—who was he?”