Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

By instinct he took the pose of his old master Lorenzetti, leaning against a wall, sheets of precious, expensive paper on a plank of wood, charcoals in his pocket where they could be found quickly if one broke. He did his best to be discreet, but it was impossible to remain there for long without being noticed. Too many young women and their chaperones passed by, sneaking a little look at the paper as they passed, then whispering to their friends. It was an event now; Avignon was a huge city, its streets normally full of entertainments, jugglers and dancers and penitents and musicians, vendors of all sorts of goods, beggars and mendicants, but the imminent threat of the plague had closed down most diversions. The smallest novelty was now seized on and subjected to ceaseless comment, and a young, handsome painter directing his attentions at Isabelle de Fréjus was too much of a curiosity to pass unnoticed.

In due course, Isabelle marched straight over and, with a boldness that often marked her, demanded to see what he was doing, together with an explanation. It was an encounter witnessed by everyone, who gathered around quite openly to hear what they hoped would provide much diversion. Pisano had his speech ready; he had prepared it for use many months before when he began his furtive thefts of other people’s faces, but had never before had occasion to use it.

“Dearest lady,” he began, “I must beg your pardon for acting in such a way. I am a painter, engaged in a work of the greatest importance, decorating a church with the lives of a saint and of the Magdalen. I wish to depict the Magdalen as she was, famed for her beauty, kindness, and sanctity, and yet have no model in my mind of how to do so. Then one day, a friend whose name I will not—need not—mention, told me of a lady he knew whose loveliness was such that heaven itself could scarcely contain anything of greater merit. I scoffed at him for a fool, and he led me into the street one day when you were passing.

“Once I had seen you, I fell on my knees before him, in the mud though it was, and begged his forgiveness for having doubted his word, rebuking him only for his restraint in his descriptions of you. For I saw in your beauty my Magdalen, and ever since, I have been unable to work. Your face appears in my mind whenever I try, and in my dreams I know that this lady must have had something of your charms.

“And so I have sneaked around like a beggar these last few days, with my paper and charcoal, snatching a little sketch here and a likeness there. It is unforgivable in me, I know, but a heavenly command cannot be ignored so easily.”

A little round of applause greeted these words, limited only by the fact that Pisano’s accent was so execrable that some of his phrasing was lost. It didn’t matter; he was playing with her, enjoying the attentions of a beautiful woman. It was meaningless; he would have said the same to any pretty girl he was caught sketching; someone whose face was worth sketching deserved such compliments, and would be forgotten the moment the next presented itself for study.

But Isabelle frowned, and tried to disguise her pleasure. “I would have thought, sir, that if my face was so much in your mind then you might have been able to remember what I looked like without following me around like a puppy dog. Or perhaps your mind is so weak it cannot hold an idea for very long?”

Pisano grinned at her. “This friend of mine tells me that the apprehension of true beauty is hard. We may approach it, and feel it, but we are too corrupted to keep it within us for long. This is my great tragedy, for however much I look, and however much I sketch, all I can take with me when I leave your presence is the palest reflection, as inferior to your beauty as man himself is below the beauty of the angels.”

An easy reply, for Olivier had once talked to him of his manuscript, and used such an example to try to explain what it meant—or what Gersonides thought it meant. From then on, however, Pisano was on his own and had to do the best he could. He disguised the sudden drop in the quality of his eloquence by deciding it was high time that he was overcome with remorse and shame at his impertinence. This allowed him to give ever shorter replies and pack up his paper.

“May I see this sketch you have done of me?”

He was ready for that, as well. He had worked up a little miniature in colors, a few inches square, and a fine thing; it was oval, and around the bottom he had carefully written her name. It ended up in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon, eventually, after passing through many hands before it was acquired at a sale in Paris in 1885. Isabelle gasped as she saw it.

“Keep it, my lady, if you wish. For now I have seen the original close up, I realize how feeble my hand is and cannot bear even to look at it.”

Can anyone really resist the flattery of image-taking? Can, in particular, a young girl of scarcely eighteen, conscious of her appeal and disenchanted with her husband, remain cold when given a portrait that—despite Pisano’s false modesty—was remarkably good considering the primitive nature of portaiture at the time, complimenting at the same time it remained true to the original? She ran home and put the little picture in a missal, where it remained until long after her death, and every time she prayed she opened it at that page and gazed again.

Was it in any way surprising that, as she prayed and looked and remembered, all at the same time, imagining that this was how she existed in the young Italian’s heart, she was certain that at last she had fallen in love?

THE PLAGUE REACHED Avignon the following month, at the beginning of March 1348, when even near the Mediterranean there is little enough to be cheerful about, and when months of winds have already sapped the vitality of all those exposed to them, wearying their bodies and enervating their souls. The most likely direction was from Marseille, a sailor or a priest or a trader on a boat carrying the infection with him, then traveling inland, up the river to present a petition at the curia or hawk his wares around the market or merely return to his family. Had it not been this unknown person, it would certainly have been another the next day or the next week, for no place was immune; everywhere was touched sooner or later.

The records for the city are slim, but it is certain that almost everyone knew that the pestilence was coming. Travelers’ tales from the Levant, from Sicily, and from Genoa or Florence had traveled a little bit faster than the plague itself, just fast enough to frighten or alarm, but not fast enough to allow anyone to do anything. And there were many who felt that nothing should be done, in Avignon of all places. Such a visitation was manifestly the will of God, his chastisement to a worldly city, a sinful church, and a corrupt population. Some felt almost a satisfaction at the prospect of punishment, as confirmation of their condemnation; others even prayed for such an event to sweep away the foul stench of worldliness and bring men back to God and their senses. Every cataclysm is welcomed by somebody; there is always someone to rejoice at disaster and see in it the prospect of a new beginning and a better world. Equally, however much an act of God, there is always someone ready to take responsibility for any event or, failing that, to have blame thrust upon them.

As the plague first broke out in the rue des Lices in one of the poorest parts of town—a grim street of leaky hovels that the nearby monastery wished to demolish if it could evict the occupants—and the first victim was an ordinary day laborer, the arrival of the death initially passed largely unnoticed. Not until twenty were already dead did the first priest come to the scene, and it is to his credit that, though his flesh crept and he was stricken with terror, and even though he had to leave for twenty minutes to throw up in the street outside, nonetheless he returned to the bedsides of those within and did his duty. What he saw was so revolting he could not believe he was truly looking at a human being. The body was so covered with eruptions and pustules all its form had been lost, the face had disappeared, leaving only a gaping mouth streaming with pus and blood, that still managed to cry out in agony. The stench of corruption and decay was unlike anything he had ever smelled before, gripping his guts and making him retch. His name was Rufinus, and even though he was a man of no other virtue and, indeed, was generally hated in his parish for his idleness and greed, this one act should be recorded of him. It was a noble deed, and the better for being performed in abject terror rather than in tranquil confidence. For Rufinus conquered fear, and the example he set was not so often emulated in the weeks to come. Moreover, his courage would have been tarnished had it come from confidence in divine mercy, for such magnitude was denied him; within fifteen hours he felt the first hideous pain that announced imminent death to its victim. Twelve hours after that he was dead, having suffered such agonies that his final release was, at last, a true manifestation of mercy.