The Figures of Beauty (12 page)

A
FTER MY FATHER’S DEATH IN
A
PRIL
2010, and after I contacted his lawyers in Cathcart, a package was subsequently delivered to me through the agency of an associated Italian law firm. It contained details of my father’s estate, his will, and a letter that he had written—all to be handed to me by his legal representatives. He had been thorough in his preparations—though the absence of confusion did nothing to speed up any of the Italian agencies involved. We were still engaged with phone calls and faxes and meetings with lawyers by the time I decided I’d better get back to the weekly routine of African dancing in Casatori before I went completely crazy.

Casatori is fifteen kilometres up the coast, and this was the first class I’d attended after my father’s death. It had been a stressful period. There are many complexities that arise when someone arrives dead in a country that isn’t the one in which he has lived.

On the way home Paolo looked at me intently in the back seat. He switched the rear-view mirror back and forth between night vision and day a few times, as if selecting the best lens for his close-up. This is something Paolo often does when he drives us back. Smouldering intensity is pretty much Paolo’s default expression whenever he’s looking at a woman when Clara isn’t looking at him. I’ve come to realize it doesn’t mean anything, really.

Usually, on the way back, Clara looks to her right, out to the sea and the sunset as we head south on the Autostrada, back to Pietrabella. She loves this view. But on this occasion, even though his wife was paying him no attention, Paolo wasn’t trying to be Marcello Mastroianni. He was only trying to convey sympathy with his movie-star eyes.

He said, “I am sorry. But I must tell you. This is not something that is uncommon.”

Paolo says most people are anxious about flying to begin with, and probably they are out of condition, and maybe they had to run half a kilometre through a terminal with their luggage because they were caught in traffic on their way to the airport. This happens.

“This is modern life,” said Paolo.

Then they have to sit still. For hours. They can’t stretch their legs, which is usually the problem. There are always too many seats in what is always too narrow a fuselage.

It was odd, I thought, that someone who had spent so tiny a fraction of his lifetime on airplanes should die on one.

My father suffered, but not very much, from a genetic disorder that affected his feet and his calves. As he grew older his feet grew smaller. They turned in on themselves. His lower legs became slightly withered in relation to the rest of his body. The condition could be crippling, although in my father’s instance,
it manifested itself mostly in his difficulty finding decent shoes. Occasionally, he lost his balance.

The disorder’s chief irritant—at least in my father’s case—was the uncertainty that it stirred up around it. When he was in his late forties, its symptoms appeared to advance. But just as abruptly, and just as mysteriously, they retreated. Nothing changed until the year before he left for Italy.

That was when he noticed a numbness in his feet, as if they were always cold. His balance abandoned him at unexpected moments. He took a bad fall up at the pool.

It’s possible that this condition was a contributing factor to the catastrophe that shuddered through him somewhere high in the blackness above the North Atlantic. Or maybe not. But even if there was no actual physical connection to the blood clot that killed him, his problematic feet had a lot to do with why he was flying in the first place. He’d thought that the fall at the pool was a warning.

His doctor in Cathcart had not been a big help. “Things might stay as they are now for a long time,” he said. “Or they could get worse.”

My father considered this. “Like getting old,” he said.

“Much like,” agreed the doctor.

It was only the third time in his life that my father had travelled anywhere. He had flown once before to Paris in 1968 at the age of twenty—a typical North American backpacker on a typical summer adventure. Four months later he got on a plane for the second time, flying back across the Atlantic, returning to the town where he had grown up and where he would live and work for the rest of his life. And forty-two years after that, he took a flight from Toronto to Milan, accompanied by a statue, a briefcase of papers, a suitcase, a copy of the art historian Rudolf Wittkower’s last book, and a red Moleskine notebook that was
still open on Oliver’s tray table when the flight attendant noticed he hadn’t put it in the upright position.

He had a window seat. The couple to his left reported that they had taken sleeping pills and were not aware of what had happened until the landing preparations were announced.

Oliver was bringing with him a large, heavy, wooden crate that bore a resemblance to a casket—disturbing, under the circumstances. The statue had been air-freighted at unbelievable expense, and was wheeled toward me by two baggage handlers two hours after the Toronto flight had landed. I was still standing at the Alitalia counter at Malpensa, dealing with airline officials, ambulance attendants, and the police.

The contents were described as ornamental statuary. My father had written, “
The
Miracle
. Artist Unknown,” on the waybill. He always used the same fine-tipped, black ink.

The flight attendant had handed me his red notebook. The crew had been very thorough about his personal belongings. They’d found his pen under the seat in front of his.

“I wake from the same old dream.” This was the only entry. He must have written it somewhere before the dawn into which he was flying. “Archie is vacuuming the pool. It’s night. I am watching him from the water. I don’t know why the trip begins here. But it does.”

“N
EXT TIME YOU’RE ON AN OVERNIGHT FLIGHT
,” Paolo advised me, “look back at the people still in their seats when you are getting off. Particularly the older ones.” He paused. His deep brown eyes searched out mine in the rear-view mirror. “They might not be asleep.”

The African drumbeats stayed with us. The rhythms of our Casatori dance class mixed with the steady rhythm of the
Mercedes’s smooth passage. Clara and I agree that the glow from the weekly class sometimes lasts for days. Clara particularly loves the arm windmills and the hip-shimmying of the Afro-fusion movements. That evening she announced to several of the other women in the class that after being forced to sit in an office all week, she needs to go a little crazy. Nzegwhua, our teacher, overheard this. “Sometimes you move like a crazy monkey,” she said. Nzegwha’s sweet, gap-toothed smile made it difficult to know if this was a criticism. Clara looked uncertain for a moment, and then decided it wasn’t. She took my hand and swung it back and forth. “That’s us,” she said. “That’s who we’ve always been. We are the troublesome monkeys of the Casatori Afro-fusion Beginners Class.”

Now, in the front passenger seat, Clara was still staring westward, out to the darkening sea.

From the back seat I noticed for the first time that Paolo’s hair is thinning at his crown. I wondered if he knew this and I concluded that he didn’t. A bald spot would have been more artfully disguised had he known it was there.

I thanked him for his information. And then I closed my eyes. The hum of excellent radial tires lulled me. I was thinking about an artist’s model. He was locked in his pose. I was thinking of the difficulty of stillness and I was dreaming of dancing as I fell asleep. I didn’t wake until the Mercedes turned up the slope of Via Maddalena.

W
HEN MY MOTHER IS CARVING STONE
she says she doesn’t know what form she has in mind until she finds it. “Not knowing is the point,” she used to say. “It’s how we are when we’re born. And how we are when we die. We’re not so clear on things the rest of the time.”

I used to imagine that this was one of her vaguely mystical excuses for not having the patience to work things out more carefully, in advance. I am, by my nature, more organized.

The writing I do for my work at the Agency of Regional Tourism—cultural festival programs, press releases, and travel brochures—always begins with a detailed outline. Even the outlines go through several drafts, and everyone in the regional office has an opportunity to comment. I welcome criticism from my colleagues as an idea moves from proposal to outline to draft. It’s comforting to know exactly what you are going to produce before you produce it. But now that I find myself thinking so much about my father, I’m not sure that my mother’s approach isn’t the right one.

Customarily Pier-Giorgio does not take part in the time-consuming process of refining a proposal. He is a busy man. His views are only expressed when text is nearing its final form. This reservation of judgment does nothing to make our office more efficient. But it does confirm Pier-Giorgio’s position by making everyone feel as insecure as possible. His rejection of the text of “Michelangelo’s Mountains” came at the very last minute. We’d already booked the printer.

But I can’t say it was a waste of time.

Oliver liked “Michelangelo’s Mountains.” At least, he said he did. I brought it to him on the occasion of my first and only visit to Cathcart. This was in June 2009. And one of the few actual memories I have of my father doing something that didn’t involve talking to me is watching him read.

We were in the bathing pavilion of his strange, old swimming pool. It was evening.

I described Michelangelo as a broad-shouldered man with mournful eyes, big ears, callused hands, and a broken nose. I noted that
scultore
was a self-description Michelangelo often added to
his signature—even after he’d painted the Sistine ceiling.

In the brochure’s introduction I said that the act of carving spoke to Michelangelo about more than stone. “Michelangelo’s gift for uncovering the three dimensions of an object’s beauty was how he believed he reached the purpose of his soul.” That’s what I actually wrote. And that may have been the sentence that sunk us. I don’t think Pier-Giorgio read any further. He isn’t big on aesthetic theory.

The figures Michelangelo had in mind already existed perfectly, so he believed, in the quarried blocks. His job was to free the forms—which meant a great deal depended on what stone was chosen. That is why he spent as much time as he did in the quarries.

As my father read “Michelangelo’s Mountains” on that June evening in Cathcart, his only movement was his abrupt way of turning pages. He didn’t look up once as he read. In profile, his face was more finely featured than I’d realized. I could hear crows from somewhere on the hillside. There was just enough light.

The few days I spent in Cathcart, a year’s worth of my father’s handwritten letters, some papers, the red notebook he had with him on his flight, an old statue, and my mother’s indifference to historical accuracy are all I have to work with when it comes to remembering Oliver Hughson. This is much the way it is, I suppose, with more traditional families. Most people grow up with stories they don’t know they want to remember.

The package was delivered to me, by hand, by a law clerk employed in Viareggio. The clerk sat silent and motionless. I read in specified order: first, the will; second, a twelve-page accounting of the estate; and third, my father’s letter. “Don’t feel bound by this in any way,” he wrote.

So, naturally, I do. And I’ve come to think that the way my mother works stone is a useful guide to my obligation.

Nobody could have planned this. Nobody can guess at love’s unlikely connections. But it is by this unpredictability that our lives find their best surprises. This is what is strange.

J
ULIAN
M
ORROW MET
Grace and Argue Barton in the lobby of their Carrara hotel at eight o’clock in the morning. The outing had been planned the day before, during luncheon at his villa.

They had also begun, during that lunch, to talk of a landscaping plan for the grounds of Barton House in Cathcart—although Grace, for the life of her, couldn’t think who had first raised the subject. It seemed to her that it must have been Argue, although when she reflected on this, the notion seemed so out of character for her husband.

It was Grace who had pointed out the similarity of terrain.

“I doubt,” she said to Morrow, “that Cathcart and Tuscany are often spoken of in the same breath. But my husband’s house …”

She was looking at Argue Barton as she spoke, and when their eyes met she immediately corrected herself. “Our house,” she said with a smile, “is also tucked into a wooded hillside. It has the same orientation, if I am not mistaken.”

She could clearly recall Julian Morrow clapping his hands and saying, “Now there, that’s a wonderful idea.”

But from where, exactly, had this wonderful idea come?

“Here,” Morrow had said to them after their plates had been cleared and before the almond cake and coffee was served on his villa patio. He rose from the table. “Take your wine. Let’s go for a stroll.”

He had walked them slowly around the perimeter of his pool. “The artisans here are so skilled,” he said, “they could create exactly this … for you … in Cathcart.” The sweep of his hand included the pool and the walls and the hedge and the sculpture. “And you would be hard-pressed on a summer evening to know whether you were in Ontario or Tuscany. You would not be able to tell the replication from the original.”

“Ah, but we would know the statues were copies,” said Grace. “And that would rather spoil it.”

“Would it?” asked Morrow.

“Certainly.”

“Your figures would not be so beautiful as mine?”

Grace could tell that she was being made fun of. But she was willing to play along. “No,” she said, sipping the deliciously cool white wine.

“And your stone maidens would not be so lovely?”

“I fear they would not.”

“And the fountain? It would trickle inauthentically, I take it, into the pool.”

“I’m sure it would. Wouldn’t it, darling?”

Her husband, not attuned to the exchange, nodded.

“Then tell me,” said Julian Morrow. “How ‘antique’ do you think my ancient pool is?”

Neither Grace nor her husband were willing to hazard a guess.

Morrow was immensely pleased with this. “Some of these
figures are old. Quite old, actually. But some of these statues … some of these ancient statues are statues that I had made. I say
made
. They were made in Carrara, here, in my workshop, by my artisans … all of … fourteen months ago.”

His laughter boomed. “Can you imagine! Fourteen months! Some of these pieces are as venerable as that.”

He gestured toward the fountain.

“And I defy you to see any difference between a statue here that is four hundred years old. And one that is fourteen months. Not only do I get them confused myself, the more important fact is this: I don’t care. Imagine that. I do not care. New or old, they are born of the same tradition. They are carved the same way, in the same place, by the same families of artisans. They are made of the same stone. If you believe, as I do, that it is generations of craftsmen that produce these, and not the lone talent of a carver, there is no reason to prefer the later to the earlier. No reason whatsoever.”

He explained that the new statues’ convincing patina was not the result of their age. The smoky skein on the white stone and the golden burnish of its surface were caused, primarily, by three months spent buried in the corner of the work yard of one of Morrow’s Carrara studios. His men urinated on the carefully marked ground as often as possible. Morrow apologized to Grace for this explanation of so crude but effective a method of replicating the beauty of time.

Morrow was, by now, taking it as a given that the Barton project would proceed. He was thinking about the cost of freight. He was considering the possibility of dismantling some of the statues in his own pool when the time came and shipping them. He could replace them easily enough. It wouldn’t be the first time he had sold pieces from his villa to a client.

Of course, there was a protocol to follow. Grace and Argue
would have to talk it over. This was no small undertaking. Morrow would tell them to take their time—it was, after all, a sizable financial commitment. He’d known jobs that had been years in the planning. But as they were thinking it over, he would help them picture the terraced gardens and the paths and the fountains and the pool. He would hire a photographer—he knew just the man—to send pictures of his own estate to them in Cathcart. That would be helpful.

The landscape he envisioned would cease being something they wanted. He was an exceptionally good salesman. A pool surrounded by ancient statues would become something they owned but did not yet possess.

He would assist them. He would facilitate. He would find someone to oversee the job—someone good.

This would have a cost, of course. But these things do.

And he would show them the quarries from which the marble would come. Indeed he would—so he said to the Bartons. He guided them back to the table, now set with cakes and ices and a sweet wine to accompany their dessert.

“I wonder if you might join me tomorrow in a walk to the quarries,” he said. He was not entirely certain whether Grace would be pleased or distressed by his apparent disregard for her handicap. He suspected the former. “We shall go in the morning if you can.”

Grace and Argue looked at one another, trying to gauge their responses to the second unexpected invitation of the day.

“I like to make the climb from time to time,” Morrow continued. “It does my soul good. The mountains are a rare combination of delights. And the walk is always much more pleasant with company.”

He glanced at the sky. “The weather looks promising. I’m sure you’d find it an excursion of interest.”

“Oh, Argue,” Grace said, “it would be such an adventure.”