Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

“But we can still see each other, when you come back here?” she said.

“I think it’s better not to,” he replied, as gently as he could but with a growing discomfort. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. It’s better if you just forget all about me. It was a dream; a lovely dream, but nothing more than that. Besides, sooner or later your husband will find out, and then everyone around will know about it. What will happen then?”

“Maybe he’ll throw me out,” she said with a smile. “Maybe I’ll have to come and live here.”

It was the look of alarm on his face, a slight disgust at the idea that came through the carefully constructed regret and understanding, that did all the damage. Elizabeth’s face turned stony, and she stood up from the little table in his kitchen.

“I see,” she said.

“Please,” he began, but she waved him away.

“Don’t say any more. There is no need to. I don’t intend to embarrass you, or make your life difficult. As you say, it would be best to forget it ever happened. I’m only sorry I misunderstood.”

“So am I,” he said, but could make no contact with her. She left a few moments later, and Julien breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. The next day he packed a little bag and pedaled to Avignon, for all other forms of transport had vanished as if they had never existed.

Someone knew where he was; one of his letters had been received somewhere and had been passed on, in that mysterious way of organizations, into other hands, for in late February 1941 a letter was delivered to the post office at Vaison and was held there until he came in one day to see, again, if there was any soap; one of his neighbors had said there was some, and though he found the country life suited his temperament, he did like to wash properly.

He bought his soap, one precious bar of it, then called in at the post office and was given his letter. Marcel wanted him, needed him. The idyll was over; it was time to return to life. He was being asked to work for the new government. As he told Elizabeth when he announced he was going, he did not know when he would be back, or what he was wanted for.

A QUESTION OF civilized values, he told himself. A question of whether or not one is to take a stand and insist that, despite the times, barbarism must not hold sway. How do we justify calling ourselves civilized, after all? Is it the books we read? The delicacy of our tastes? Our place in continuing a line of belief and of common values that stretch back a thousand years and more? All this, indeed, but what does it mean? How does it show itself? Are you civilized if you read the right books, yet stand by while your neighbors are massacred, your lands laid waste, your cities brought to ruin?

Do we use the barbarians to control barbarism? Can we exploit them so that they preserve civilized values rather than destroy them? Was the old Athenian right, that taking any side is better than taking no side?

THE QUESTION CAME to Manlius’s mind as he sat on his horse and looked at the devastation all around. His farm, one of the outlying dependencies to the north of his villa, had been attacked two days before. A band of brigands had come, murdered some of the tenants, and carried off the rest.

So he told himself, for he clung to some hope. But he soon learned it was worse than that, much worse. As he sat and looked, he saw a movement in the copse to the left; he sent off some of his bodyguards to investigate and they swiftly returned, leading a young boy with a rope around his neck. He was about seven, and he was crying in terror.

“Stop that noise,” Manlius ordered. “Give him some food if he needs it, if it will shut him up. Then bring him back to me when he is quiet.”

He turned away, got off his horse, and continued to walk around the burned-out buildings. Already he was beginning to suspect the truth. The damage was too neat, too orderly. Too little had been destroyed.

The boy was still crying. Manlius became itchy with his impatience to have confirmed what he already knew. He took his whip off the saddle and prepared it.

It took a long time to get even the basics out of the whining, blubbering child. But eventually he confirmed the bishop’s suspicions. This had been no raid. His tenants had simply walked out, taking everything of use and value—his property, all of it—and marched off to the north, where softer conditions and better land had been promised them amongst the barbarians. They had had over a day’s start and would be hurrying. They’d taken oxen and carts and donkeys and goats, all the supplies and tools he had lavished on them.

The worst of it all was that he had, as always, most earnestly asked their leader at the last tax collection whether they had any complaint or wish. He had professed utter contentment; desired no better master.

He had not said, however, that he desired no master at all.

“This cannot continue,” the bishop said to himself. “It cannot go on.”

He was about to gallop off, when one of his bodyguards called him. “Sir, the boy . . .”

Manlius looked at him kneeling on the ground, quiet now.

“Cut off his hands and give them to him in a bag. Then let him follow his family. Let him be a burden to them from now on, not a help.”

He turned his horse, then hesitated. “No,” he said. “We cannot waste anything these days, however justly. Bring him with you and put him to work in the granary. There’s more than enough to be done there.”

PISANO HAD MADE progress, but his vision of the Magdalen was lacking, as empty and as vacuous as something concocted by Matteo. It infuriated him to be so delayed, as in all other respects his work was coming along well. He had been painting for nine months now, and was pleased with himself in all respects except for this one element. He had completed three frescoes, Sophia Cures the Blind Man, Sophia Converting the Elders, and Sophia Turns Back the Invaders, using the face that he had glimpsed once in the market in Avignon. Once only, a few seconds, but it was enough; the woman who so unsettled Olivier was so obviously Saint Sophia that her face was impressed forever in his mind. He did not need to see her again. And now he was hard at work on Sophia in the House of Mary Magdalen, and it was this that was causing him such grief. He journeyed to and fro, sometimes spending weeks at a time at work, often returning to Avignon and passing days or weeks in idleness, summoning the resources to go back once more. The work made him irritable, so did the idleness. Olivier began to find him tiresome, and longed for the day when he would once more pack his bags, load up his donkey, and head off, grim and determined, to do battle once more.

The Magdalen would not come. What he had, he had done from memory, and a strange forgetfulness came over him as he tried to recall her features. So he gave up once more and returned to Avignon. He was often to be seen wandering the streets. Pausing and making sketches of faces flitting past. Only once did anyone remark on this and draw attention to his strange behavior. It was in the open space near the ramparts, marked down for building but not yet filled up with new houses, the fruit trees still there, the little stalls where merchants sold bread and fruits to women of delicacy who were wont to parade in the evening with their maids and mothers even in winter, for the evenings were not so very cold. Isabelle de Fréjus was there, walking up and down, and there also was Pisano, sitting on the ground, pretending not to look, sketching away to get her face just so, pitched at an angle he had seen once before and which, he knew, would be perfect for the representation of the Magdalen descending from her boat with her entourage. It was not her face that he wanted, merely its expression, but he studied her carefully nonetheless, staring at her in a way that, sooner or later, was bound to attract attention.