Last Tales (5 page)

“No doubt,” said His Eminence, “clemency here might set a dangerous precedent. But the country—and the royal house itself which possesses some of his works—is in debt to Allori. This man has often by his art restored men’s faith in themselves—maybe men should now have faith in him.”

He thought the matter over and continued: “It is said that the master—do they not call him the Lion of the Mountains?—is deeply loved by his pupils. We might find out if he has really been able to awaken a devotion which will defy death. We might, in his case, make use of the old rule which will allow a prisoner to leave his prison for a specified period, on the condition that he produce a hostage to die in his stead, if he does not return in time.

“Allori,” said the Cardinal, “last summer did me the honor of executing the reliefs on my villa at Ascoli. He had with him there his beautiful young wife and a very handsome young disciple, Angelo by name, whom he called his son. We might let Leonidas know that he can obtain his freedom for a period of twelve hours, during which, as he wishes, he can take leave of his wife. But the condition will be that this young Angelo shall enter the prison cell as he himself leaves it, and that it will be made clear to both the old and the young artist that at the expiration of the twelve hours, at all events an execution will be carried out in the prison yard.”

A feeling that in the circumstances it would be correct to decide on something unconventional made the powerful gentlemen with whom the matter rested accept the Cardinal’s suggestion. The condemned man was informed that his request had been granted, and on which conditions. Leonidas sent word to Angelo.

The young artist was not in his room when his schoolfellows
came to bring him the message and to fetch him to prison. Even though he had not paid any attention to the sorrow of his friends, it had nevertheless upset and distressed him, since at this moment he himself conceived the universe as perfect in beauty and harmony, and life in itself as boundless grace. He had kept apart from his fellows in a sort of antagonism, just as in respect and commiseration they had kept apart from him. He had traveled afoot the long way to the Duke of Miranda’s villa to see a recently unearthed Greek statue of the god Dionysus. Still without really knowing it, he had wished and resolved to have a powerful work of art confirm his conviction of the divinity of the world.

His friends thus had to wait for him a long time in a small room high above the narrow street. When the chosen one finally entered, they pounced on him from all sides and informed him of the sad honor that awaited him.

So little had the master’s favorite understood the nature and extent of the misfortune that had befallen himself and all of them, that the messengers had to repeat their tidings to him. When at last he comprehended, he stood petrified for a while, in the deepest grief. In the manner of a sleepwalker he inquired about the sentence and the execution, and his comrades, with tears in their eyes, gave him their answers. But when they came to the offer made to Leonidas, and the prisoner’s request for Angelo, light returned to the young man’s eyes and color to his cheeks. He asked his friends, indignantly, why they had not informed him at once—then without words he tore himself from their grasp to hasten to the prison.

But on the doorstep he stopped, seized by the solemnity of the moment. He had walked a long way and had slept on the grass, his clothes were covered with dust, and he had torn a rent in one sleeve. He did not wish to appear before his master like this today. He lifted his big new cloak from the hook on which it hung, and put it on.

The warders in the prison knew in advance of his coming.
He was led to the condemned man’s cell, and let in. He threw himself into his master’s arms.

Leonidas Allori calmed him. To make the young man forget the present, he turned the conversation round to the stellar heavens, of which he had often talked with his son, and in the knowledge of which he had instructed him. Soon his great gaze and deep, clear voice lifted his pupil up there with him, as if the two of them, hand in hand, had slipped back many years, and were now speaking together all by themselves in a lofty, carefree world. Only when the teacher had seen the tears dry on the pale young face did he return to the ground, and he asked his pupil if he was indeed prepared to spend, in his place, the night in the prison. Angelo replied that he knew he was.

“I thank you, my son,” said Leonidas, “for giving me twelve hours which will be of boundless importance to me.

“Aye, I believe in the immortality of the soul,” he continued, “and perhaps the eternal life of the spirit is the one true reality. I do not know yet, but I shall know tomorrow. But this physical world around us, these four elements—earth, water, air and fire—are these not realities as well? And is not also my own body—my marrow-filled bones, my flowing, never-pausing blood, and my five glorious senses—divinely true? Others think that I am old. But I am a peasant and of peasant stock, and our soil to us has been a stern, bountiful nurse. My muscles and sinews are but firmer and harder than when I was a youth, my hair is as luxurious as it was then, my sight is not in the least impaired. All these my faculties I shall now leave here behind me, for as my spirit goes forth on new paths, the earth—my own well-loved Campania—will take my honest body in her honest arms and will make it one with herself. But I wish to meet Nature face to face once more, and to hand it over to her in full consciousness, as in a gentle and solemn conversation between friends. Tomorrow I shall look to the future, I shall collect myself and prepare myself for the unknown.
But tonight I shall go out, free in a free world, among things familiar to me. I shall observe the rich play of light of the sunset, and after that the moon’s divine clarity, and the ancient constellations of the stars round her. I shall hear the song of running water and taste its freshness, breathe the sweetness and bitterness of trees and grass in the darkness and feel the soil and the stones under the soles of my feet. What a night awaits me! All gifts given to me I shall gather together into my embrace, to give them back again in profound understanding, and with thanks.”

“Father,” said Angelo, “the earth, the water, the air and the fire must needs love you, the one in whom none of their gifts have been wasted.”

“I believe that myself, son,” said Leonidas. “Always, from the time when I was a child in my home in the country, have I believed that God loved me.

“I cannot explain to you—for the time is now but short—how, or by what path, I have come to understand in full God’s infinite faithfulness toward me. Or how I have come to realize the fact that faithfulness is the supreme divine factor by which the universe is governed. I know that in my heart I have always been faithful to this earth and to this life. I have pleaded for liberty tonight in order to let them know that our parting itself is a pact.

“Then tomorrow I shall be able to fulfill my pact with great Death and with things to come.” He spoke slowly, and now stopped and smiled. “Forgive my talking so much,” he said. “For a week I have not talked to a person whom I loved.”

But when he spoke again his voice and mien were deeply serious.

“And you, my son,” he said, “you, whom I thank for your faithfulness throughout our long happy years—and tonight—be you also always faithful to me. I have thought of you in these days, between these walls. I have frevently wished to see you once again, not for my own sake, but in order to
tell you something. Yes, I had got much to say to you, but I must be brief. Only this, then, I enjoin and implore you: keep always in your heart the divine law of proportion, the golden section.”

“Gladly, gladly do I remain here tonight,” said Angelo. “But even more gladly would I tonight go with you, such as, many nights, we have wandered together.”

Leonidas smiled again. “My road tonight,” he said, “under the stars, by the grass-grown, dewy mountain paths, takes me to one thing, and to one alone. I will be, for one last night, with my wife, with Lucrezia. I tell you, Angelo, that in order that man—His chief work, into the nostrils of whom He had breathed the breath of life—might embrace and become one with the earth, the sea, the air and the fire, God gave him woman. In Lucrezia’s arms I shall be sealing, in the night of leave-taking, my pact with all these.” He was silent for a few moments, and motionless.

“Lucrezia,” he then said, “is a few miles from here, in the care of good friends. I have, through them, made sure that she has learned nothing of my imprisonment or my sentence. I do not wish to expose my friends to danger, and they shall not know, tonight, that I come to their house. Neither do I wish to come to her as a man condemned to death, with the breath of the grave on me, but our meeting shall be like our first night together, and its secrecy to her shall mean a young man’s fancy and a young lover’s folly.”

“What day is it today?” Angelo suddenly asked.

“What day?” Leonidas repeated. “Do you ask that of me—me who have been living in eternity, not in time? To me this day is called: the last day. But stay, let me think. Why, my child, to you, and to the people around you, today is named Saturday. Tomorrow is Sunday.

“I know the road well,” he said a short while later, thoughtfully, as if he were already on his journey. “By a mountain path I approach her window from behind the farm. I shall pick up a pebble and throw it against the windowpane. Then
she will awake and wonder, she will go to her window, discern me amongst the vines, and open it.”

His mighty chest moved as he drew his breath.

“Oh, my child and my friend,” he exclaimed, “you know this woman’s beauty. You have dwelt in our house and have eaten at our table, you know, too, the gentleness and gaiety of her mind, its childlike tranquillity and its inconceivable innocence. But what you do not know, what nobody knows in the whole world but I, is the infinite capacity of her body and soul for surrender. How that snow can burn! She has been to me all glorious works of art of the world, all of them in one single woman’s body. Within her embrace at night my strength to create in the daytime was restored. As I speak to you of her, my blood lifts like a wave.” After some seconds he closed his eyes. “When I come back here tomorrow,” he said, “I shall come with my eyes closed. They will lead me in here from the gate, and later, at the wall, they will bind a cloth before my eyes. I shall have no need of these eyes of mine. And it shall not be the black stones, nor the gun barrels, that I shall leave behind in these my dear, clear eyes when I quit them.” Again he was silent for a while, then said in a soft voice: “At times, this week, I have not been able to recall the line of her jaw from ear to chin. At daybreak tomorrow morning I shall look upon it, so that I shall never again forget it.”

When again he opened his eyes, his radiant gaze met the gaze of the young man. “Do not look at me in such pain and dread,” he said, “and do not pity me. I do not deserve that of you. Nor—you will know it—am I to be pitied tonight. My son, I was wrong: tomorrow, as I come back, I shall open my eyes once more in order to see your face, which has been so dear to me. Let me see it happy and at peace, as when we were working together.”

The prison warder now turned the heavy key in the lock and came in. He informed the prisoners that the clock in the prison tower showed a quarter to six. Within a quarter of
an hour one of the two must leave the building. Allori answered that he was ready, but he hesitated a moment.

“They arrested me,” he said to Angelo, “in my studio and in my working smock. But the air may grow colder as I get into the mountains. Will you lend me your cloak?”

Angelo removed the violet cloak from his shoulders and handed it to his teacher. As he fumbled at his throat with the hook, with which he was unfamiliar, the master took the young hand that helped him, and held it.

“How grand you are, Angelo,” he said. “This cloak of yours is new and costly. In my native parish a bridegroom wears a cloak like this on his wedding day.

“Do you remember,” he added as he stood ready to go, in the cloak, “one night, when together we lost our way in the mountains? Suddenly you collapsed, exhausted and cold as ice, and whispered that it was impossible for you to go any farther. I took off my cloak then—just as you did now—and wrapped it around us both. We lay the whole night together in each other’s arms, and in my cloak you fell asleep almost immediately, like a child. You are to sleep tonight too.”

Angelo collected his thoughts, and remembered the night of which the master was speaking. Leonidas had always been a far more experienced mountaineer than he himself, as altogether his strength had always exceeded his own. He recalled the warmth of that big body, like that of a big friendly animal in the dark, against his own numb limbs. He remembered, further, that as he woke up the sun had risen, and all mountain slopes had become luminous in its rays. He had sat up, then, and had cried out, “Father, this night you have saved my life.” From his breast came a groan, wordless.

“We will not take leave tonight,” said Leonidas, “but tomorrow morning I shall kiss you.”

The jailer opened the door and held it open, while the towering, straight figure stepped over the threshold. Then the door was once more shut, the key turned in the lock, and Angelo was alone.

Within the first seconds he felt the fact that the door was locked, and that nobody could come in to him, as an incomparable favor. But immediately after, he fell to the floor, like a man struck by, and crushed beneath, a falling rock.

In his ears echoed the voice of the master. And before his eyes stood the figure of the master, illuminated by the radiance of a higher world, of Art’s infinite universe. From this world of light, which his father had once opened to him, he was now cast down into darkness. After the one whom he had betrayed had gone from him, he was completely alone. He dared not think of the stellar heavens, nor of the earth, nor of the sea, nor of the rivers, nor of the marble statues that he had loved. If at this moment Leonidas Allori himself had wanted to save him, it would not have been possible. For to be unfaithful is to be annihilated.