The Woman in the Painting
This will pass, I told myself. This will be over soon.
I had no choice but to watch and wait. My father wiped at his palms repeatedly. It seemed as if, by touching me, he believed he’d sullied himself. He studied his hands with horror. I was unclean, a contagion. He went over to the water butt, thrust his arms in as deep as they would go, then tried to wash the imagined taint away. Water sloshed around, cascaded over the sides, formed pools on the floor.
I hurried to mop it up. I shouldn’t have.
‘Should have weighed you down with stones when you were a baby and thrown you in the Tiber!’
My father got hold of my hair. He plunged my head into the butt. It was no Tiber but he was going to have a good go at weighing me down in the next best thing.
My nostrils stung. My eyes screamed. My lungs burst. My arms were splashing, thrashing, now crashing against the sides. Heavy hands pinned me down, under the water. Every muscle in my body fought for survival as I bucked and bolted against the blackness. Heavy hands gave way. My head reeled backwards. I spluttered and gulped at the air greedily. Dirty-tasting water gushed out of my nostrils, got pushed up at the back of my throat. I collapsed on the newly sodden floor, gasping.
My father was wiping his hands on his dirty overalls by the time I looked up. His nose wrinkled as if at a bad smell. He picked up a jug full of wine and slugged it back before pointing a finger at me in condemnation. Hope, rekindled in my soul by the meeting with Raphael, was all but extinguished as I sat in the pool of clay water on the floor. My hair dripped. My nose ran. And my father hadn’t finished with me yet. He put the jug to his lips once more. Red wine trickled down his chin until it could trickle no more. He slammed the jug down, angry it was empty.
He turned to face me and snarled.
‘I cast you out upon the Burning Plain.’ This thinly veiled reference to Sodom made me shiver. I’d been with my father when we’d heard street preachers speak out against sodomy enough times to know what his opinions were on the matter. And also to know what he’d do if he ever found one of his own sons was a sodomite. But who could have told him? Giacomo. My brother Giacomo must have told him. My encounter with an older boy last summer came back to me, bringing with it feelings both happy and sad. It had seemed so right until Giacomo caught me and tarnished what I’d done with ugly words. I dragged myself up, opened my mouth to speak but no sound came out.
It wasn’t Giacomo.
Father put a hand in the pocket of his leather apron and pulled out … no. It couldn’t be. It was. ‘I’ll have none of Sodom under my roof.’ Father had my precious book in his hands, the one where I wrote down all my hopes … and secrets. He waved it around, nodding, his features ugly with disgust. It was my words Father had read. I had given myself away. I froze. He spat on the book before tearing it apart, scrunching page after page, then stamping each one into the filthy floor.
Outward silence belied my inner turmoil. Anguish raged and roared within my head, along with the watery memory of a story I’d heard (could it only have been that morning?) of a young, pretty boy and his gruesome demise. He’d been of Sodom too. Mutilated faces swam towards me. I pushed them away. But I could do nothing to stem the flow of tears that scorched my cheeks with searing rivulets of shame-coated anger. My father knew, knew what I was. I saw it in his eyes that burned into my flesh like hot needles. And I was the one who had told him by writing about it in my diary.
‘And now you can’t pay for your keep. When I found this last year …’
My heart missed a beat. He’d known about this last year and had said nothing. Until now. Why now? It was the money. It had to be. He didn’t care what I was as long as I could carry on putting coins into the family coffers. I should have told him about Raphael first. I still wanted to tell him. There was still a way back for me.
‘I-I-I … Pl-pl-pl … Y-y-y …’ But try as I might the words wouldn’t come. My senses had been flushed away, deaf to his cruel words though they continued to flow out of him like vitriol, blind to his hateful looks though he still tried to stab me with wild eyes. And though bony fingers seized me once more I could feel no pain.
I came back to myself some time later. I was sitting in the filthy street. Cast out, again. My head waterlogged, my soul crushed. My jacket had been flung out after me. The clouds had moved in and were lying heavy over Rome. And I had nowhere to go.
Chapter 6
I stumbled through the narrow streets, holding my jacket with its four metal buttons close to my chest. Traders hawked their wares, donkeys dragged their fat carts through narrow alleyways and street boys chased round stray goats and chickens, throwing the occasional stone at me. Men loitered. Prostitutes laughed. And dogs barked at people slumped in the shadows. I had nowhere to go. After walking round and round I slumped in the shadows too. I had arrived at my destination: this was nowhere.
I sat against a wall, my legs under me. I stared blankly into space for some time. Discordant thoughts ricocheted violently off the walls of my mind. Though seated, they made me dizzy. I closed my eyes.
I must have fallen asleep. I don’t know for how long but it must have been for a good few hours because by the time I woke up night had started to paint the street a darker shade of evening. It had also lured out a different sort of Roman. When my eyes had adapted to the lack of light I recoiled. Men still loitered, though more numerous than before, and several of them eyed me with interest. And now more desperate prostitutes laughed, forced and raucous, hoping to catch one of the many bawdy soldiers as they thundered past looking for another tavern to frequent. Everything seemed louder and more lurid than before. I’d woken up to a nightmare.
It was also starting to get cold. I put my jacket on.
A torch was lit a little further down the street. It drew my eye. And it was then I noticed a boy, propped up diagonally opposite. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was probably not much older than me though he looked as if he’d been suffering for all eternity. Even in the dull light he looked drawn. Sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, his entire body sucked in, his skin shrunken cloth on a skeleton, stick-thin legs splayed out before him like the roots of a tree. He was filthy – the torchlight could not disguise it – and his clothes were all rags.
I rubbed my face as if to clean it, dropped my hand to cover the bloodstained rip of my shirt so as to hide it. Knots of wealthy men and women threaded their way through and around, the strange, the louche, the destitute, and the desperate. Rapt by and wrapped in conversation, they chatted about some diversion they wanted to see or some person of note a friend of theirs once saw. They were oblivious to the loitering men and the excited prostitutes with their high heels, ribbons and bells. And I watched as one after the other, they stepped or tripped over the poor boy slumped against the wall. No one turned, stopped, or looked at him. Not one of them. The boy with the sunken eyes was invisible. Fitting, I thought to myself. A nobody. In nowhere. Just like me.
As tempestuous thoughts clouded my mind once more, I didn’t see the dark, short man slide past me. I wasn’t supposed to. He wore a black cloak, the hood pulled far over his head, obscuring his features. Only when I heard the invisible boy cry with fear as a wide column of black towered over him did I register the hooded man’s ominous presence. A chill ran through my already cooling blood. I felt the threat. People continued to walk past, unaware or uncaring, it was hard to say; even a person like me, whose mind was shouting ‘No,’ found myself unable to act.
I watched as the sinister figure crouched down. My body was numb with the icy coldness, though my mind still raced. ‘No! No! No!’ it was screaming. A man dressed in dark hose and patterned tights tripped over me. I waited for the rebuke or apology. Neither came. Only a laugh interrupted the flow of his conversation as he regained his footing. I watched as he walked away, the sight of his legs blocking my view of the hooded figure and the bag-of-bones boy.
The legs moved on. Now when I looked for the boy all I could see was the shifting hem of a black cloak. The sinister figure still had his back to me but was now standing erect, the voluminous folds of his garment drawn like a curtain around his prey. The hem slithered suggestively though the air was still.
I sensed evil was afoot. I wanted to stop it. But …
I looked around. There were so many people, all blind to what was happening in plain sight. They did nothing. Why should I? The memory of Margarita came into my mind unbidden, how she’d come to my aid. Then I realised. This boy could be me. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the day after.
An instinct as quick and flaming as lightning scorched through me. It freed my ice-bound limbs, melted my snow-packed voice.
‘W-w-w- … LEAVE HIM!’ I failed to say one thing, managed to say another. It was the black cloak that froze now. I got to my feet.
The people walking by flowed away from me, on the whole undistracted from their conversations, though aware something was amiss. I’d attempted to throw a great boulder into the centre of their consciences; I’d succeeded in creating only the most imperceptible of ripples. But as the dark column turned his hooded head in my direction it seemed I had done enough.
Cruel eyes burned out of a shrouded face and stared at me. My heart went cold once more. I waited for the devil to come over and rip it out. Instead he placed something around the boy’s neck, and seemed to force something into his mouth. Then he swept around, the edge of his cloak flying up like wings.
I watched as he disappeared into the night.
*
‘Come.’
His name was Luca and I would never have befriended a boy like him. But I was on the streets. My circumstances had changed. And for these few hours at least I had a heightened sense of life. And death. Desperation was settling in my veins as well as the cold.
Sometimes vile events can make the good seem insubstantial and trivial. Or so it seemed to me then. My good fortune on meeting Raphael seemed ludicrous. No longer real. Terrible things had happened to me since then. My father had disowned me, and my descent into the underworld of Rome had been rapid. Absurdly so. Until that evening, I’d only known of its existence through a series of cautionary tales, not unlike the one Giulio had told us that morning in Sebastiano’s studio. Far-fetched fictions to frighten, about those who’d strayed from the right path.
I dragged my feet along Rome’s bloodstained gutters and dark passages. I was damned. The world inhabited by Raphael no longer existed for me. I followed Luca. It was my only choice. What’s right and wrong never really changes, I know. But I was learning fast that the colours often run between the two in an all too imperfect world.
*
Luca didn’t speak much. I walked behind him through labyrinthine lanes, accepted the food scraps he offered me that he picked up from outside rowdy taverns. I did not care about colour or taste; I snatched them from him and forced them down my gullet, thankful to be eating. We passed a man selling cooked rabbit. My insides ached at the smell of it. I was still hungry. To my surprise Luca stopped and held out his hand to the vendor. He exchanged a coin for the meat. I looked at him but, like a guilty man, he would not look me in the eye and he placed his free hand on top of his shirt as if he didn’t want me to see what was under it. When the transaction was over the vendor walked one way and we walked another, Luca the proud owner of a cooked rabbit.
‘Wh-wh-wh-where did you …?’ My stuttering voice was accusing.
‘You’re on the streets now,’ he said, as if that was answer enough.
‘B-b-but …’ I pushed.
‘Don’t you go giving me any fine words and fancy morality,’ he snapped, cutting me dead. ‘Keep ’em. I don’t want ’em.’
We carried on in silence.
‘We are nearly there,’ he said.
‘Where?’ I asked, but he did not answer.
Up ahead I saw an arch. It was as if Luca could see our destination beyond it while all I could make out was night as black as pitch. I walked carefully over uneven ground. A line of moonlight had traced its way around a dark cloud. It caught ripple tips as feral boys threw stones into water, tiny twinkles of light cascading out. We were near the river – a place I would never usually visit after dark. It smelt dank, dangerous.
The talk of that morning came back to me of a mutilated body that had been recently pulled from the tangle of riverweed. With that in my already gloomy mind, I jumped at every rustle of a leaf, every lapping of the water, every snapping of a twig underfoot, even when it was my foot the twig was under. I would have jumped at my own shadow if I’d had one. Thankfully Luca had the good sense to walk away from the feral stone-throwers. I followed him. He stopped near some bushes. We sat and ate the rabbit.
The sound of an animal scurrying towards us gave me a shock.
‘Throw the bones in the river,’ Luca said. The animal ran over my feet. It made me start. It plunged into the water. My hand rummaged through the dark to find Luca’s. I heard another animal run and jump. Then another. And another. ‘A rat,’ he whispered. ‘Only a rat.’ I clung on to his thin hand. It was cold. I took off my jacket, wrapped it around his shoulders, and moved so close to him that I could feel his breath on me. I rubbed his hands in mine, stroked his face with my fingers, put my hand inside his tattered shirt. My fingers found a pendant hanging down upon his soft, hairless chest. He raised it up to show me. In the moonlight I could make out the image of St Bartolomeo. So that was what the dark figure had placed around his neck.
‘I didn’t want it,’ Luca said, taking the pendant from around his neck and offering it to me, a sudden tremor in his voice. ‘He forced it on me. Take it, please!’
My instinct was to accept it and hurl it in the river along with the rabbit bones. But as I went to do so Luca caught my hand in his and guided my palm to his heart. To be this close to another human being strengthened my soul. Fear at the sight of the pendant had disappeared. I moved my fingers to a nipple. He didn’t pull away. I didn’t want him to.
Chapter 7
I was awoken by the cold the following morning. I opened my eyes, wondered where I was, looked around. I was on the banks of the Tiber. My jacket had been placed over me like a blanket. I pulled it on. A solitary silver button was hanging by a thread. Three were missing. Luca. Bit by bit the events of the day before came back to me. I breathed in sharply. Strange to think the skeletal waif of yesterday was the same boy who had made me feel so alive last night and was the same boy who had stolen three of my four silver buttons. And now he had gone.
But so had the clouds of the day before, and the bright light made me want to hide myself away. I moved out of the spring morning sun, into the shade of a nearby bridge. I sat down, legs pulled up, chin resting on my knees. I felt despair as I looked at the mud-coloured water of the river. I imagined myself lost in its depths, and as I did so green tendrils rose up to greet me, waving back and forth across the liquid surface. They looked enticing as they beckoned me, over and over. I closed my eyes, but there my father’s words tormented me as I pictured Luca’s face.
I forced my eyelids open. But there was to be no escape. Watery arms were still there calling me to them. I thought of the cool release they might provide. A cessation of this agony. No more worries about money. No more guilt about family. No more shame, no more fears about who I was.
‘This is it,’ a comforting voice whispered inside my head, ‘this is where you’re going to die.’ A physical urge pushed me to the river’s edge. This would be my choice. Soon I would be free, wrapped in loving green arms in a soothing watery bed.
I walked into the shallows. The bottom of the river was slippery. I proceeded carefully. The water lapped around my ankles, my calves, my knees. I welcomed its coldness as it took my breath away. I remembered Luca. He too had made me breathless for a few precious moments. I walked further in. I longed for the river to wash away the memory of his touch. Soon the agony of the burning plain would be extinguished forever. Sodom would be no more a part of me.
Slowly the fire raging within my head subsided and Luca’s face receded the deeper I went in. But the voices still plagued me. ‘You don’t belong here!’ ‘You’re not one of them.’ Voices. They swam round in my head. Familiar. Harsh. But then, a kind voice broke its way through.
‘Pietro! It’s Pietro, isn’t it? What are you doing down here?’
I heard the voice again. ‘Pietro! You’re in far enough. Don’t go any deeper. What are you doing?’ For a moment I thought it too was inside my head. But then a hand grabbed at my shirt. It pulled me back. The voice came again. ‘Do you have a wish to die, you fool of a boy? What are you playing at?’
I turned around to see the cross face of Margarita Luti. The feisty girl from the workshop, the gentle girl who had come to my aid. When was it? The previous day? It seemed a lifetime ago. Margarita Luti. A good person. Perhaps the only one who would be pleased to hear about my chance meeting with Raphael. But did I even care about that anymore? I’d been through so much. I couldn’t imagine how I would ever get back to what I’d thought of as my life. I fell back into the water. My head went under. I floundered for a while, splashing and spluttering, until this time my saviour threw an arm around my neck and dragged me to the riverbank. I crawled out and lay panting on the ground.
‘Lucky for you I came up here to wash!’ she said. ‘Most people like to go further down where it’s not so dangerous. But it’s too public for me there. Near the bridge, it’s more private.’ She went silent for the briefest of moments. She pulled down her sleeves, brushed down her skirt to make sure her ankles were covered. ‘You daft bugger!’
I cringed at the word but saw from her face that she meant nothing by it. She sat herself next to me, not caring if she soiled her skirt. She pulled me to her. Though my heart thumped in my chest I allowed her to cradle my head in her lap like a baby’s. I started to cry like one. I owed my life to her. ‘You daft little sod!’ she said.
*
When I woke up the blue of the sky had deepened but there was a chill in the air. My head was still in Margarita’s lap and despite my clothes and hair now being dry my bones felt damp. I gave a little shiver. I pulled myself up to sitting and mumbled an apology. ‘You should have woken me.’
‘I couldn’t. You were so peaceful. And I reckoned you needed the sleep.’
I twitched uncomfortably, my eyes staring down at the damp earth upon which we were sitting. ‘Well, thank you. Thank you again.’ I looked up at her. Kind eyes met mine.
She ruffled my hair like she’d done before.
‘So what happened?’
‘I … I … I …’
‘There’s no need to say a word,’ she said. ‘I can see you’re not made of the same clay as other men.’ I had a vague memory that she’d said I was like her only the day before, which I preferred. The mention of clay made me think of my father. It made me feel uneasy. Exposed. Unloved. ‘Now come with me.’
I pushed myself to my feet and followed her. I had nowhere else to go.
*
We went back up on the road. The sight of a band of men stopping well-dressed nobles caused me to clutch my one remaining silver button tightly in my grimy palm. Margarita laughed. ‘We’ve got no need to be frightened of them. Look at us. We’ve got nothing to detract from the glory of God. Not a bauble, bead or shiny buckle between us. My, you’ve even lost most of the buttons from your jacket.’
It was the sumptuary police, and they were having a word with a well-dressed woman. Margarita was right. We had nothing on her. The three rows of pearls and one gold chain that she wore around the fleshy cushion of her neck were impossible to miss. I looked at her clothes – a black velvet gown with an embroidered edge. Expensive. From her belt hung a large purse of crimson velvet embellished with tiny pearls. The sumptuary laws were strict – a citizen could not wear clothes or jewels that were overly ostentatious and that might be seen to distract the human eye from what should be its sole purpose: the contemplation of God. This woman was clearly flouting them.
We crept past. Not a soul, sumptuary or otherwise, turned to look at us.
‘Pass that necklace over to us. It will help feed the poor.’
‘But this is an outrage.’
‘As is your wearing such shows of wealth around your neck.’
‘You cannot take it.’
‘We can and we will …’
‘Being poor is not without its benefits,’ Margarita whispered. ‘Dressing like this,’ she said, taking her clean but well-worn skirt into her hands, ‘always grants us safe passage. And don’t worry about her.’ Margarita had mistaken my expression of alarm for concern. ‘Somebody will come by and pay off her fine soon enough. And think how she’ll have swelled the coffers of the Vatican in the process so that the Pope and his humble cardinals can carry on living like kings and princes. Sumptuary laws indeed! Out of one pot and into another.’
I followed Margarita over the Ponte Sisto, glancing down at the Tiber with relief. Life was drawing itself back into me as I breathed in the air. It tasted pleasant and sweet. I prayed it would stay that way. We trailed our way around winding lanes, full of pedlars, traders, carts, mules and assorted livestock. Stone-faced women barged into us, who, on contact with Margarita, changed from grumpy, old harridans to warm-hearted mothers. They gathered her to them and smothered her with their fulsome bosoms before rushing off in pursuit of their real offspring, who were weaving around the ankles of all and sundry.
This world was opening itself up, welcoming her in. She grabbed hold of my arm. She was taking me in with her. The smell was of spices, raw meat, cooked meat, cheese, unwashed bodies: a heady concoction. Sounds came from within buildings as well as without. Shouts, cries, laughter, singing, braying, tweeting, lutes playing.
‘Look out!’ At the sudden call from above, a space cleared in the street below. Margarita grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away just in time. Slop! The contents of a chamber pot steamed in the hastily made clearing. I glanced up to see an unkempt woman retreating from the balcony, offending chamber pot, now empty, in hand. ‘That’s mad Lavinia,’ Margarita explained. All human life was here. We were in Trastevere.
We made our way along Via Santa Dorotea. Progress was slow. This was Margarita’s neighbourhood – that much was clear. Everyone greeted her and wanted to find out how she was, where she’d been, and what she was doing with me. ‘I saved him from drowning in the river.’ She laughed, patting me on the shoulder. ‘Who would believe it?’ Certainly not them. They laughed back, shaking their heads. We carried on.
The sun was sinking in the sky and my stomach was empty. It was a long time since I’d had the rabbit. Margarita stopped under a wooden sign that swung ever so slightly in the evening air. Close by a cart had pulled up, sacks piled up on the back of it. A stocky man with a round belly was standing as if on guard, arms crossed, before his precious cargo. He pulled up his belt. It slipped back down.
I nodded at the portly fellow. He smiled at Margarita. He looked me up and down. I’d been expecting deference from this working man. As I followed his eyes over my ripped, bloody shirt, my mud-stained hose and my wild hair I understood why on this occasion I hadn’t got it. I looked as if I’d been dragged along the bed of the river, rolled along its bank, then given a good beating. His eyes lingered on the button dangling by a thread from my jacket that I held in my arms. He wouldn’t be describing me any time soon as a fancy man, though he was attracted by my one remaining shiny button.