[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Whatever the case, Cosimo, our capo, our true leader, had loved this place and given to itmany many treasures, but most of all perhaps its marvelously proportioned newbuildings.His detractors, the whiners, the ones who do nothing great, and suspect all that isn't in astate of perpetual disintegration, they said of him, "He even puts his coat of arms in theprivies of the monks.His coat of arms, by the way, is a shield with five protuberant balls on it, the meaning ofwhich has been variously explained, but what these enemies actually said was: Cosimohad hung his balls over the monks' privies.Eh! That his enemies would be so lucky to have such privies, or such balls.How much more clever it might have been for those men to point out that Cosimo oftenspent days at this monastery himself in meditation and prayer, and that the former Priorhere, who was Cosimo's great friend and advisor, Fra Antonino, was now the Archbishopof Florence.Ah, so much for the ignorant, who still to the day five hundred years from then tell liesabout Cosimo.As I passed under the door, I thought, What in the name of God shall I say to thesepeople in this House of God?No sooner had that thought popped out of my sleepy head and, I fear, my drugged andsleepy mouth, than I heard Ramiel's laugh in my ear.I tried to see if he was at my side.But I was blubbering and sick again, and dizzy, andcould make out only that we had entered the most tranquil and pleasing cloister.The sun so burnt my eyes that I couldn't thank God yet for the beauty of the square greengarden in the center of this place, but I could see very starkly and sweetly the lowrounded arches created by Michelozzo, arches which created gentle colorless and humblevaults over my head.And the tranquillity achieved by the pure columns, with their small rolled Ionic capitals,all of this added to my sense of safety and peace.Proportions were always the gift ofMichelozzo.He opened up things when he built them.And these wide spacious loggias were his stamp.Nothing would erase the memory for me of the soaring dagger-tipped Gothic arches ofthe French castle in the North, of the filigreed stone peaks everywhere there that seemedto point in animosity at the Almighty.And though I knew I misjudged this architectureand its intent - for surely, before Florian and his Court of the Ruby Grail had taken holdof it, it had been born from the devotions of the French and the Germans - I still could notget the hated vision of it out of my head.Trying desperately not to heave up my guts again, I relaxed all my limbs as I saw thisFlorentine enclosure.Down around the cloister, down around the burning hot garden, the large monk, a bear ofa man, beaming down at me in habitual and inveterate kindness, carried me in his burlyarms, while there came others in their flowing black and white robes, with thin radiantfaces seeming to encircle us even in our rapid progress.I couldn't see my angels.But these men were the nearest to angels that the world provides.I soon realized due to my former visits to this great place - that I was not being taken tothe hospice, where drugs were dispensed to the sick of Florence, or to the pilgrims'refuge, which was always swarming with those who come to offer and pray, but up thestairs into the very hall of the monks' cells.In a glaze of sickness in which beauty brought a catch in my throat, I saw at the head ofthe stairway, spread out on the wall, the fresco of Fra Giovanni's Annunciation.My painting, the Annunciation! My chosen favorite, the painting which meant more tome than any other religious motif.And no, it wasn't the genius of my turbulent Filippo Lippi, no, but it was my painting,and surely this was an omen that no demon can damn a soul through the poison of forcedblood.Was Ursula's blood forced on you too? Horrid thought.Try not to remember her softfingers being pulled loose from you, you fool, you drunken fool, try not to remember herlips and the long thick kisslet of blood slipping into your own open mouth."Look at it!" I cried out.I pointed one flopping arm towards the painting."Yes, yes, we have so many/' said the big smiling bear of a monk.Fra Giovanni was of course the painter.Who could have not seen it in one glance?Besides, I knew it.And Fra Giovanni let me remind you one more time that this is FraAngelico of the ages had made a severe, soothing, tender but utterly simple Angel andVirgin, steeped in humility and devoid of embellishments, the visitation itself takingplace between low rounded arches such as made up the very cloister from which we hadjust come.As the big monk swung me around to take me down the broad corridor - and broad itwas, and so polished and austere and beautiful to me - I tried to form words as I carriedthe image of the angel in my mind.I wanted to tell Ramiel and Setheus, if they were still with me, that look, Gabriel's wingshad only simple stripes of color, and look, how his gown fell in symmetrical anddisciplined folds.All of this I understood, as I understood the rampant grandeur ofRamiel and Setheus, but I was blubbering nonsense again."The halos," I said."You two, where are you? Your halos hover over your heads.I sawthem.I saw them in the street and in the paintings.But you see in the painting by FraGiovanni, the halo is flat and surrounds the painted face, a disk hard and golden right onthe field of the painting the monks laughed."To whom are you speaking, young SignoreVittorio di Raniari?" one of them asked me."Be quiet, child," said the big monk, his booming bass voice pushing against me throughhis barrel of a chest."You're in our tender care.And you must hush now, see, there, that's the library, you seeour monks at work?"They were proud of it, weren't they? Even in our progress when I might have vomited allover the immaculate floor, the monk turned to let me see through the open door the longroom crowded with books and monks at work, but what I saw too was Michelozzo'svaulted ceiling, again, not soaring to leave us, but bending gently over the heads of themonks and letting a volume of light and air rise above them.It seemed I saw visions.I saw multiple and triple figures where there should only be one,and even in a flash a misty confusion of angelic wings, and oval faces turned, peering atme through the veil of supernatural secrecy."Do you see?" was all I could say.I had to get to that library, I had to find texts in it thatdefined the demons.Yes, I had not given up! Oh, no, I was no babbling idiot.I had God's very own angels atmy assistance.I'd take Ramiel and Setheus in there and show them the texts.We know, Vittorio, wipe the pictures from your mind, for we see them."Where are you?" I cried out."Quiet," said the monks."But will you help me go back there and kill them?""You're babbling," said the monks.Cosimo was the guardian patron of that library.When old Niccolo de' Niccoli died, amarvelous collector of books with whom I had many times spoken at Vaspasiano'sbookshop, all of his religious books, and maybe more, had been donated by Cosimo tothis monastery.I would find them in there, in that library, and find proof in St.Augustine or Aquinas ofthe devils with which I'd fought.No.I was not mad.I had not given up.I was no gibbering idiot.If only the sun coming inthe high little windows of this airy place would stop baking my eyeballs and burning myhands."Quiet, quiet," said the big monk, smiling still."You are making noises like an infant.Hhhhh.Burgle, gurgle.Hear?Now, look, the library's busy.It's open to the public today.Everybody is busy today."He turned only a few steps past the library to take me into a cell."Down there." hewent on, as if cajoling an unruly baby."Only a few steps away is the Prior's cell, andguess who is there this very minute? It's the Archbishop
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]