Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

‘I will do that,’ said the young Duke, with enthusiasm. ‘The coopers shall go to work, the rogues. This moment!’

‘Not so fast, Magnificence. Let us consider. Where is the cooper that could make such a cask? Where is the tree that could yield such a stave for such a cask? Big pebbles, little pebbles, gravel, charcoal, sand … Yes, reinforce it at the bottom and construct it in the form of a truncated cone. Still, it crushes itself and bursts itself asunder by its own weight. No, Magnificence. Stone is the word. This must be made of stone. And –’ said Leonardo, smearing away a design on his tablet and replacing it with another – ‘between every layer, a grill. To every grill, certain doors. Bronze doors. The grills, also, should be of bronze. As for the pipes – they had better be bronze. A valve to control the flow of the water, a brass valve. Below, a tank. Yes, I have it! We erect this upon … let me see … fourteen stone columns twenty feet high, so that, since water must always run down to level itself, it would be necessary for your servants only to turn a screw, to open a spring of pure water, gushing out of a bronze pipe in twenty places at once in your palace, as long as the tank were full. I have also an excellent idea for a screw, designed to shut off the water entirely or let it in as you will, wherever you will, either in a torrent or in a jet no thicker than a hair’s breadth. In this case, of course, your Magnificence will need a more powerful pumping engine….’

The young Duke asked: ‘What do you want all those bronze doors for?’

Leonardo said: ‘Magnificence, you have seen the pebbles in a stream.’

‘Naturally.’

‘You have seen them, and you have touched them no doubt?’

‘Well?’

‘They are slimy, are they not? They are covered with little green plants, you will have observed?’

‘Well, well?’

‘So will be the big pebbles, little pebbles, gravel, charcoal and above all the sand in your Magnificence’s filter. Slime and green stuff will choke it, or make it a source of even more noxious water than ever before. Hence, the bronze doors. Every month the stones, charcoal, sand and so forth, are raked out and the empty places refilled with fresh stuff.’

The young Duke did not know what to say. He was uneasy. Turning an enormous seal on the forefinger of his right hand he muttered: ‘This is all very well. I have the greatest respect for your knowledge, and all that. But … stone, bronze doors, bronze gratings … I mean to say, bronze pipes, and God-knows-what made out of brass. You know all about these things, of course. But seriously, I really think we’d better let it drop….’

‘If you liked the pipes could be simply lead. The gratings would have to be copper, of course, but in about thirty or forty years …’

‘Thirty or forty years!’

‘What is thirty or forty years?’ asked Leonardo, with a smile, combing his great beard with his fingers. ‘If you build, build for ever. Long after you are dead, Magnificence, by what will you be remembered? The fight you fought with Colonna? The bad portrait of you which you hired poor little Ercole to paint? Oho, no, no, no! Your descendants will say: “Ah, that was the Duke who washed the water here in Abruzzi and cured his people of their belly-aches.” Therefore I say stone of the hardest and bronze of the toughest. I know, Magnificence; I know.’

‘You know everything, Leonardo.’

‘I know a little of everything, and not much of anything – with the possible exception of the art of painting. Of that I know something. Yes, I know a certain something about painting pictures. But what is that worth? Little, Magnificence – so little! Your wall, upon which I smear my blood and tears, will fall. The bit of wood that I give my life to cover with pigments will warp, Magnificence, crack and rot. I grind my colours and I refine and refine my oils, and hope and hope for a few years more of life, as Leonardo da Vinci, when I have gone where I belong. But mark my words! One cup of sweet water out of your river down at Abruzzi – one cup of water, pure water, in the belly of a grateful ploughman – will make you immortal, and you will be remembered long after my colours fade. Simply because of a cup of clean water, Magnificence! So I talk in terms of hewn stone and mighty bronze, thinking of that cup of good water.’

The Duke found his opportunity to change this subject. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Now that you mention it. Speaking of colours, and what not. You are the man who painted that picture of the Madonna Lisa, are you not? I mean the wife of Francesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi del Giocondo – that one. Yes, of course you are.’

‘Yes,’ said Leonardo.

The Duke said: ‘Remarkable man that you are! To-day you make drains. Tomorrow you cast cannon. The day before yesterday you make a sort of Icarus Machine, so that a man can fly like a bird. Ah … can you? Did it?’

‘No, Magnificence, not yet.’

‘It would not surprise me if you could transmute metals. They say that you are something of an alchemist. Can you turn base metals into gold, Leonardo?’

‘I have never tried.’

‘Try! try! Who knows? They tell me that the Valentinois has a learned doctor from the Lowlands who——’

‘The tank,’ said Leonardo, making a diagram, ‘could be of copper, lined with——’

The Duke said: ‘Yes, yes, yes, of course. Monna Lisa was a Neapolitan, or at least she was from the South. Yes, she was a Gherardini. Do you happen to know whether she was related to the Florentine family of that name?’

‘No,’ said Leonardo de Vinci, ‘I know only that she married del Giocondo – he bought a picture of Saint Francis from Puligo. I have seen worse pictures. He is something of a connoisseur, Giocondo.’

‘I saw your picture,’ said the Duke. ‘Between ourselves, it’s not at all bad. La Gioconda is by no means a bad-looking woman. She’s his third wife, you know.’

‘I know. Her predecessors were Camilla di Mariotto Ruccelai, and Tommasa di Mariotto Villana. They both died within four years.’

‘Ah, yes. There are some queer stories about that,’ said the Duke.

‘But to return to the tank, Magnificence.’

‘To the Devil with the damned tank! Tell me, Leonardo – what was she always grinning about?’

‘Madonna Lisa? She never grinned, Magnificence. She smiled, yes. Grinned, no.’

‘You must have been alone with her for a long time.’

‘Never for a moment,’ said Leonardo. ‘Never for one little moment. There were always waiting-women, secretaries, musicians, dress-makers, and frequently the lady’s husband.’

‘A jealous man, that,’ said the Duke.

‘Yes. He is going the way to hell, as I nearly did, trying to find the bottom of a bottomless pit.’

‘She always struck me as deep,’ said the Duke, ‘ever so deep – deep as the sea. D’you know what? She isn’t by any means what you could call a beautiful woman. But, the few times I met her, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I am not,’ he said, curling the point of his red-blond beard between two fingers, ‘I am not altogether undesirable as far as women are concerned, and in any case … well, I should have … however, there was something about that woman that froze me. In a way, she frightened me. She never said anything. You know, I suppose, that if I want to be amusing – if I go out of my way to be sprightly and entertaining – I could make St Bartholomew roar with laughter at the stake. Well, d’you know what? With the Madonna Lisa I had no success whatever. I believe you must have heard that I tell a tolerably good story. I told her three of the raciest and best I ever knew. There was never anything but that strange little pinched-up smile. You caught it perfectly, Leonardo. God knows how you did it, but you caught it. I stood and looked at the picture for nearly five minutes, and I said to myself: “Aha – he has caught it. There is the smile. There she is. There is La Gioconda to the life. What is she smiling at? She might be the Mother of God or she might be the Devil’s Wife.” And a sort of cold shiver went up and down my spine. Fortunately, at that time I was … anyway it was lucky for me that I had a certain other distraction just then. But one or two gentlemen I know completely lost their heads over her. Yet I am of the opinion – tell me what you think, Leonardo, because you have seen all the beautiful women in the world and know everything – in my opinion the Madonna Lisa is not beautiful.’