How to be both

~ ~ ~

This boy is a girl.

I knew it.

I know it cause we sat on that poor specimen of wall (which will not last) until a much older woman, bent by the years, came out of the dwelling behind us making a great furore: she poked the boy in the back with the bristle end of a brush on a long wood pole and she shouted something and as we came away the boy made, I think, apology, very polite and in the unbroken undisguised voice of what can only be girl.

Also, this girl is good at dance: I am enjoying some of the ways of this purgatorium now: one of its strangest is how its people dance by themselves in empty and music-less rooms and they do it by filling their ears with little blocks and swaying about to a silence, or to a noise smaller than the squee of a mosquito that comes through the little confessional grille in each of the blocks: the girl was doing a curving and jerking thing both, with the middle of her body, she went up then down then up again, sometimes so low down that it was a marvel to see her come back up again so quick, sometimes pivoting on one foot and sometimes on the other and sometimes on both with her knees bent then straightening into a sinuous undulate like a caterpillar getting the wings out of the caul, the new imago emerging from the random circumbendibus.

Also, this girl has a brother: he is several years younger, of the same open countenance but also fatter, weller, much less shadowed at the eyes, and dancing can be as catchy as laughing and I was not alone in this knowledge cause into the room came this small boy with long and brown curling hair to dance the same dance very badly (boy I know anatomically cause bare as a bacchus cherub from the midriff down): he danced the dance badly and laughingly half naked round her till the girl, who could not hear him and did not know he was doing it till she opened her eyes and saw him, roared like a furious African cat, hit him over the head with her hand and chased him from the room, by which I gauged them sister and brother.

She started the dance again: she performed its strangeness with such deftness and attention that I was filled with verve by her taking of her own ups and downs so earnestly.

I’ve come to like this girl who will so solemnly dance with herself.

Right now she and I are outside the house that is home to her and the brother: we are sitting in a garden of shivering flowers.

Through the small window she holds in her hands we are viewing frieze after frieze of lifelike scenes of carnal pleasure-house love enacted before our eyes: the love act has not changed: no variation here is new to me.

Cold here and she’s shivering too: surmise she is watching the love act repeating like this to keep herself warm.

The little brother came out here too and by a single glance in his direction she both warned him and dismissed him: this is a girl with a very strong eye: he hasn’t gone far, he is behind a small wicker fence about as tall as he is, behind which there are tall black barrels hidden close to the door of the house and I think has some mischief planned: every so often he dashes out on to the grass in front of the fence and picks up a stone or twig then dashes back behind the fence and he has done this several times now without her noticing him once.

Girl, I remember it, the way the game of love makes the rest of the world disappear.

Best not to watch it through such a small window, though.

Best on the whole not to watch it at all: love is best felt: the acts of love are hard and disillusioning to view like this unless done by the greatest master picturemakers: otherwise the seeing of them being done and enjoyed by figurations of other people will always lock you outside them (unless your pleasure comes from taking solo pleasure or pleasure at one remove, in which case, yes, that’s your pleasure).

Now inevitably I am thinking of Ginevra, of most lovely Isotta, of silly little lovely little Meliadusa, and Agnola, and the others into whose company I came first in my 17th year the night Barto and I, having been to see the processions in Reggio, travelled back to the city and Barto took me to what he called a fine place to spend the night.

What do you think, Francescho, will we go and see the Marquis be celebrated becoming the Duke? Barto’d said.

I asked permission of my father cause I’d a longing to see a throng: he said no: he said it unblinkingly.

Tell him it’ll be good for your work, Barto said. We’ll go a journey and see history be made.

I repeated the gist of this to my father.

There’s much for a painter to see there, I said, and if you ever want me to get closer to the court and its workshops there’s much I ought to know, much I ought not to miss.

My father shook his head: no.

If these fail, Barto said, tell him you’re going with me and that this is an intelligent thing to let a painter do cause the more chance my family has to see your skill — you’ll draw the procession, won’t you — the more chance there is they’ll give you work when you’re fledged. And tell him you’ll be away for only one night and that my parents will give you your lodging in Reggio at one of our houses.

But your houses are nowhere near Reggio, I said.

Francescho, you’re green as an early leaf, Barto said.

There are a lot of kinds of green, even in just the earliest leaves, I said.

How many kinds of green are there? Barto said.

7 main kinds altogether, I said. And perhaps 20 to 30, maybe more, variations on each of these kinds.

And you’re all of those greens put together, he said, cause anyone but you would already have gathered and would never have needed to be told that I’ve other plans for us than our spending the night at Reggio. Look at you, you’re still calculating, aren’t you, how to make how many greens is it?

It was true: so he laughed and threw an arm round my shoulder and kissed the side of my head.

My sweet unassuming friend, taker of things, people, birds, skies, even the sides of buildings at their word, he’d said. I love you for your greenness, and it’s partly in honour of it that I want you to persuade your father to let you accompany me. So persuade him. Trust me. You’ll never regret it.

Well, Barto was always wise to how to go about such things, cause sure enough the thought of a Garganelli bed with his offspring tucked in its sheets made my father blink, pause, then say the yes we needed though he gave me plenty ultimatums about behaviour and even had a new jacket made for me: I packed some things, left early in the morning and met Barto: we got to the town of Reggio and we saw it all.

We saw more people than I’d ever imagined and all packed into the square of the small town and we saw the flags, we saw the white banners with the figures painted on them: we saw it all very well too from the balcony of the house of Garganelli family friends (who were off on a Venetian ship touring to the Holy Land, Barto said, so didn’t care who was on their balcony): there were horsebacked courtiers: there were boys waving and tossing flags high into the air and then catching them: then a platform came pulled by horses so white they must’ve been white-leaded: on the higher bit of it there was an empty seat, tall, painted and cushioned like a throne and 4 youths stood at each of its corners draped in togas, meant to be ancient Romans of great wisdom with their faces charcoaled to make them look old and we were so close we could see the drawn lines at their brows and eyes and mouths: below them on the lower bit of the platform were 4 more boys, 1 at each corner, holding tall banners with ensigns of the town’s and the new Duke’s colours, that made 8 boys altogether and a 9th one too sitting at the front, and all 9 dressed-up boys struggling to keep their balance cause there was nothing to hold on to when the man leading the horses stopped them and the platform rocked to a halt below us.

The 9th was a boy dressed as Justice: he sat at the foot of the throne: he was holding such a heavy-looking sword in the air that when the platform stopped he tipped sideways, knocked into the big set of scales in front of him and nearly toppled off the platform: but he didn’t, he righted himself by thumping the point of the sword off the floor of the cart: he shifted the fallen-forward fabric of his costume back up over his shoulder, used a graceful foot to tip the upended scales back to an evenness, got his breath and stuck the sword in the air again: everybody who saw it happen shouted hurray and clapped their hands, at which Justice looked mortified cause of the grimness on the face of the portly man who’d come to stand at the side of the platform facing the empty throne.

This man was glinting with gems: he was why we were here, he was the kindly generous charismatic Borse d’Est, the new Duke of Reggio and Modena, the brand-new Marquis of Ferara (and a pompous self-regarding fool, Barto said telling me the story doing the rounds of all the rich families who weren’t Ests, about how the kindly generous charismatic Borse had been giving the Emperor gifts over many months so that everyone would know he was kindly generous and charismatic and above all much more of a gift-giver than his brother, the last Marquis, who’d known a lot of Latin, lived a quiet life then died: on the day Borse first heard that finally the Emperor was to make him Duke of Modena and Reggio (though not yet of Ferara, damn it) his attendants had seen him jumping up and down by himself in the rose garden of the palace of fine outlook squealing like a child the words over and over I’m a Duke! I’m a Duke!).

There were gems all over the front of him: they caught the sun like he was wearing lots of little mirrors or stars or was covered in sparks: the biggest gem, bright verdigris on the front of his coat which was vermilion, was near as big as one of his hands by which he’d been led to the front of the platform, to Justice, by a very small boy-angel (swan-feather wings, very fresh off the swan cause there was still red seepage and a shine of gristle at the bone where it met the white of the fabric on the boy’s back).

Most illustrious Lord, the angel said now in a high clear voice.

The crowd in the wide square quietened.

The portly man bowed to the angel.

You see seated before you God’s own Justice, the angel said and his voice rang thin as a handbell above the heads of the people.

The portly man turned from the angel and bowed with great ceremony to Justice: I saw Justice not dare bow back: the too-heavy sword wavered above them both.

The angel squeaked again.

Justice who for so long now has been forgotten! Justice who has been held for far too long in blind contempt! All the rulers of the world have closed their eyes to Justice! Forgotten and disdained since the deaths of her guardians, the wise ancient statesmen of a better time! Justice has been so lonely!

The boy dressed as Justice brought his other hand to the handle of his sword and with both hands stopped it wavering.

But rejoice cause today, illustrious Lord, Justice is dead! the angel said.

There was a shocked pause.

The angel looked stricken.

Today illustrious Lord, the angel said again. Justice is. Dead.

The portly man stayed bowed: the angel’s eyes were shut, screwed up: the boys on the cart stared straight ahead. A courtier started forward from the rows of horses at the back of the platform beyond the empty throne: the portly man, without looking, raised his hand away from his side just a touch and the courtier saw and reined his horse in.

Still from his low bow the portly man mumbled something in the direction of the angel.

— Dedicating, the angel blurted. This seat. To you! Today Justice lets it be known to the world that above all others she favours — you! Justice bows — to you! Justice in her purity even declares that she is enamoured — of you! And rejoice again, cause Justice invites — you! To take the seat left empty by the deaths of the great wise ancients. The last just rulers of men. Cause Justice says, illustrious Lord, that nobody could fill this seat justly till now! This seat was empty and remained empty — till you!

The portly man, the new Duke, straightened up: his front glinted: he went to the angel: with his hand on the boy’s shoulder he turned him square on so they both faced the platform.

The boy dressed as Justice still holding the sword with 2 hands let go with one of his hands momentarily to gesticulate towards the empty throne then brought that hand back to the sword handle quick as he could.

The new Duke spoke.

I thank Justice. I revere Justice. But I cannot accept this honour. I cannot take such a throne. Cause I am merely a man. But I am a man who will do my best by my Ducal vows all my life to merit Justice’s honour and approval.

A moment of silence: then the crowd below us went wild with cheering.

Pompous arse, Barto said. Pompous Borse. Stupid crowd of fools.

I was inclined to join the cheering myself which was persuasive and echoed round the great square: also I’d heard that Borse was a man who liked to give gifts to favoured painters and musicians and I didn’t want to think so badly of him and sure enough the crowd seemed to hold him in favour and could such a festive crowd be so very wrong? The noise the people made in his honour was huge and the new Duke was so modest: the dressed-up boys on the cart looked soaked through by the noise of the crowd like they’d just been driven through a waterfall.

Only the angel with the swan wings didn’t look relieved: from above them as the new Duke bowed again to the crowd and the crowd went on cheering, I could see a redness at the angel’s shoulder and neck like the minium pigment which is a red that soon turns to black, it came from the hand of the new Duke gripping it hard enough to leave an imprint on it: but it is a hard thing in the world, to be modest, and must probably result in bruises for somebody somewhere along the line.

Come on, Barto said. We’re going hunting.

We drove to Bologna.

At the house of pleasure in his home city Barto was already so well known that 3 girls came towards us saying his name and taking turns to kiss him before we even got through its outer doors.

This is Francescho, he’s fresh from the egg. He’s my dear, dear friend. Remember, I told you. He’s a little shy, Barto said to a woman I couldn’t quite see cause she shimmered and the rooms were dark and full of so many women as dishevelled and disarrayed as enchantresses and there was a rich smell, God knew what of, and rich colours and carpets everywhere, underfoot, on the walls and even up there soft-coating the ceiling perhaps, though I couldn’t be sure cause the sweet dirty smells and air and the colours and presences made my senses spin and the floor act like ceiling as soon as we came into the inner rooms.

The woman had me by my hand: she took my coat off my shoulders: she tried to take my satchel from me but it had my drawing things in it: I hung on to it with one arm still in the sleeve of the coat.

She put her mouth to my ear.

Don’t be scared, boy. And look, don’t insult us, your pockets and purse’ll stay full, only ever minus what we’re worth or what extra you’d like to give us, you’ve my word on it, there are no thieves here, we’re all honest and worthy here.

No, no, I said, it’s not, I, — I don’t mean to –

but in the saying of all the words in my ear she’d near-carried me in her arms, she was powerfully strong and it was as if I’d no will of my own, to the door of another room, made me light as a leaf and swept me in like one and shut the door behind us, I could feel the door at my back but through a lace or a curtain or some thin carpet-stuff.

I held on to my satchel and felt for a door handle with my other hand but there was none I could find: now the woman was pulling me towards the bed by the strap of the satchel and I was pulling against the strap back towards the door.

What soft skin you have, she said. Hardly even sign of a beard (she put the back of her hand on my cheek), come on, you’ve nothing to worry about, not even paying cause the friend you came in with, it’s already arranged it’s on him.

She sat on the bed still holding me by the strap of my satchel: she smiled up at me: she pulled a playful couple of times gently on the strap: I held back polite the full length of it.

She sighed: she let the strap go: she looked towards the door: when I didn’t make a dash for it right away she smiled at me again a very different way.

First time? she said unbuttoning her front. I’ll take care. I promise. Don’t be scared. Let me. Of you.

Now she was holding the fall and weight of her own naked breast in her hand.

Don’t you like me? she said.

I shrugged.

She tucked the breast back in: she sighed again.

Jesus Mary and Joseph I’m tired, she said. Okay. Let me put myself together. We’ll sort this out. We’ll get you another girl. You and she can use my room. As you can see, the best room. So what do you like? Tell me. You like yellow hair? You like younger?

I don’t want another girl, I said.

She looked pleased.

You want me? she said.

Not that way, I said.

She frowned: then she smiled.

You prefer a man? she said.

I shook my head.

Who do you want, who would you like to fuck? she said.

I don’t, I said.

You don’t want a fuck? she said. You want something else? Something special? Your friend in here with a girl too? You want to watch? You want 2 girls? You want pain? Piss? A nun? A priest? Whips? Ties? A bishop? We can do it all, pretty much everything here.

I sat down on the bench at the end of the bed: I opened my satchel, unrolled the paper, got out my board.

Ah, she said. That’s what you are. I should have guessed.

The light in the room was candle-undulate: it was best over the bed where she now was, dark and prettily pointed of face against the bedclothes, her nose turning up at the end, her chin dainty: older than me by 10 years, or maybe it could even be 20: the years of love had worn her eyes, I could see ruin in them: the dark of the ruin made her serious even though she’d painted herself something quite else.

I moved a candle, and another.

You’re looking at me so, she said.

I am thinking the word pretty, I said.

Well, I’m thinking the same word about you, she said, and believe me, it’s not my job to have such thoughts. Though it’s often my job to pretend that I do.

And the word beautiful, I said. But with the word terribly.

She laughed a little laugh down into her collarbone.

Oh you’re a perfect one, she said. Ah, come on, don’t you want to? I’d like to. I like you. You’d like me. I’m good. I’ll be good, I’ll be gentle. I’m strong. I can show you. I’m the best here, you know. I cost double the others. I’m worth it. It’s why your friend chose me. A gift. I’m a gift. I’m the one who costs most right now in the whole house, skilled way beyond the others and yours for the whole of tonight.

Lie back, I said.

Good, she said. Like this? This? Shall I take this off?

The sleeve-ties fell as she unlaced them ribboning over her stomach.

Stay still, I said cause the breast in and out of her clothes was now perfect curvature.

This? she said.

Relax, I said. Don’t move. Can you do both?

Like I told you, I can do anything, she said. Eyes open or closed?

You choose, I said.

She looked surprised: then she smiled.

Thank you, she said.

She closed them.

By the time I’d finished she was sleeping: so I had a sleep myself there on the bed by her feet, and when I woke the beginning of daylight was coming through the gap in the shutter through the window hangings.

I shook her a little by the shoulder.

She opened her eyes: she panicked: she clutched for something under her pillows down the back of the bed. Whatever she’d felt for was still there: she relaxed, lay back again: she turned and looked at me blankly: then she remembered.

Did I fall asleep? she said.

You were tired, I said.

Ah, we’re all tired in here at this end of the week, she said.

Did you sleep well? I said.

She looked bemused at my politeness: then she laughed and said

Yes!

as if the very thought that a sleep had been nice was astonishing.

I sat on the edge of the bed: I asked her her name.

Ginevra, she said. Like the queen in the stories, don’t you know. Married to the king. What elegant hands you have, Mr —.

Francescho, I said.

I gave her the piece of paper: she yawned, barely glanced.

You’re not my first, she said. I’ve been done before. But your kind, well. You yourself are a bit unusual. Your kind usually likes to draw more than one person, no? People in the act, or —. Oh.

She sat up: she held the picture closer to what morning light there was in the room.

Oh, she said again. Haven’t you made me look —. And yet it still looks —. Well, — . Very —.

Then she said, can I have this? To keep, for myself I mean?

On one condition, I said.

You’ll finally let me? she said.

She threw the sheet back from herself and patted the bed beside her.

I want you to tell him, I said. My friend, I mean. That you and I had a really good time.

You want me to lie to your friend? she said.

No, I said. Cause we did. Have a good time. Well, I did. And you just said yourself, you slept well.

She looked at me disbelievingly: she looked down at the drawing again.

That’s all you want for it? she said.

I nodded.

Then I went to find Barto in the lobby which in what daylight came through the cracked-open shutters was very different from its night self, stale, stained, patchy, signs of a fire gone wrong all up one wall: Barto was sitting in an anteroom with the house’s Mistress, she was older than anyone I’ve ever seen done up in white frills and ribbons, 2 servingmen filling a small cup with something, one pouring, the other waiting to hold it to her lip: before we left Barto kissed her white old hand.

Barto looked stale and stained and patchy too, rough as masonry and his clothes were creased, I saw when we came out of the house of pleasure into the sun.

I can’t pay for you every time, Barto said on our way to get breakfast. Especially not Ginevra. When I’m earning or I inherit I’ll treat you again. But did you have a good time? Did you use the time well?

Hardly slept, I said.

He clapped me on the shoulder.

The next time we came (cause I started to spend a couple of nights a month, my father believed, cultivating the possibility of the patronage of the Garganelli family), Ginevra met us at the door: she winked at Barto and put an arm round me, took me off to one side.

Francescho, she said. I have someone special to meet you. This is Agnola. She knows what you’ll like and how you like to spend your time with us.

Agnola had long waved gold hair: she was strong at the thigh as a horsewoman though young: when we got into one of the shuttered rooms with the curtained walls she took my hand and sat me down matter-of-fact at a little table, then stood above me in a most shy way and said,

you know Mr Francescho the picture you made of Ginevra? Would you care to make another picture like it, but this time of me, for remuneration?

which I did, this time the body naked on the bedcovers to show the symmetrics, cause the great Alberti, who graced by coincidence the year of my birth with his book for picturemakers, notes the usefulness of such study of the human body’s system of weights and levers, balances and counterbalances: when I’d finished and the drawing was dry she took it, held it to the candle light, looked hard at it, looked at me to see if she could trust me, looked back at the paper again: she put it down on the bed and went to open a hidden hole in one of the walls: she got a little purse out of it and paid me a number of coins.

Then she and I lay down on the bed and closed our eyes and she woke rested, the same as Ginevra (I did too, to find I was in her arms and most content and warm, it was most pleasant), and she thanked me for both the picture and the chance to catch up on her sleep.

You’re a rare client Mr Francescho and I hope you’ll choose me again, she said.

I left with the coins in my pocket and bought Barto and me both our breakfasts that day.

So I went about my apprenticeship with my father and my brothers all that week thinking I was on to quite a winning thing working freelance at the house of pleasure.

The time after that it was the girl called Isotta, who was black-haired and dark-skinned, not much older than me, and who sat demure on the bed while we discussed and agreed the drawing of her and the price she’d pay then when I turned my back to get my paper and tools out of my satchel sneaked silent up the bed like a cat and turned me and kissed me full on the mouth when I didn’t expect it and had never expected such a thing to happen with any tongue ever, to me, and then she surprised me more by slipping (at the same time as she kissed me, hard yet soft and full at the lip, both) a hand down inside the front of my breeches: the fear that went through me then when she did this and I knew that any second she’d know me truly was 100 times stronger than the feeling released by the kiss, and both were the strongest things I’d felt in all my years alive.

But what she did to me next with that hand made me feel something 1000 times stronger than any fear, and when I comprehended that this girl was now all delight, when I felt delight go through her at what her hand had found there and then when I opened my eyes and saw for sure this delight on her most handsome face, well, I understood this, then: that fear is a nothing in the world, a paltry thing, compared.

I knew it, she said, as soon as I saw you. And I saw you the first night you came here, though you didn’t see me. And I saw you the next, and I knew both times, and both times I wanted you for me.

She kissed me again, and had me out of my clothes in no time: in no time she’d taught me the rudiments of the art of love and let me practise back on her generously: after which, I moved to the end of the bed and she stayed among the pillows and I caught her on the paper in a form both sated and ready, still tensile as a bowstring drawn back ready for its arrow, yet also as well made and completed as the circle drawn by Giotto in the legendary true story.

I gave her the work at the end as payment for the lessons: she looked at it, pleased: she kissed me back into my clothes, buttoned me up, tied me in and sent me on my way now new, all shining and courageous.

What’s got into you? my father said cause all I could think of all that week was flowers for breath and flowers for eyes and mouths full of flowers, armpits of them, the backs of knees, laps, groins overflowing with flowers and all I could draw was leaves and flowers, the whorls of the roses, the foliage dark.

The next time I came to the house there were 3 new different girls all whispering in my ears at the door the promise and request of their lessons in love in exchange for my drawings (though I made sure to finish the night again with Isotta, which became my practice while she worked in that city and I visited the house she worked in).

The time after that though, Barto and I rang together at the door and there were 8 or 9, maybe more, I couldn’t count them, women and girls of varying ages, their faces all round me as soon as we entered.

Francescho, Barto said in my ear, it seems you’re quite the lover.

At which I knew (since far more of them had run towards me than to him) that I’d have to be a little careful: even a true friend finds a friend’s talents wearing if they come too close and I loved Barto with my whole heart and really didn’t want ever to cause him offence.

But art and love are a matter of mouths open in cinnabar, of blackness and redness turned to velvet by assiduous grinding, of understanding the colours that benefit from being rubbed softly one into the other: the least that the practice will make you is skilful: beyond which there’s originality itself, which is what practice is really about in the end and already I had a name for originality, undeniable, and to this name I had a responsibility far beyond the answering of the needs of any friend.

This is all in Cennini’s Handbook for Painters, as well as the strict instruction that we must always take pleasure from our work: cause love and painting both are works of skill and aim: the arrow meets the circle of its target, the straight line meets the curve or circle, 2 things meet and dimension and perspective happen: and in the making of pictures and love — both — time itself changes its shape: the hours pass without being hours, they become something else, they become their own opposite, they become timelessness, they become no time at all.

The great teacher Cennini also advises spending as little time as possible with women, who will waste the energies of a picturemaker.

I can honestly say, then, that in my training I spent what always transformed into no time at all with women in that pleasure house in the years of my youth.

The Mistress of the house, though, caught at me one morning by the elbow: she was more than 75 years old and she walked with 2 sticks and a helper, but precious stones caught light all over her white clothes like she’d just been out hobbling through a rainshower of them, one of which shining little stones she detached from its place sewn on to her sleeve with her canny old fingers unpicking the stitch and pressed into my hand, saying:

You. I’ve had 5 women leave here cause of your pictures. What’s your name? That’s you. Francescho. Well, listen, little Francescho, whose name I hear whispered up and down my stairs and whose pictures I see being passed around and fussed over all through my house. That’s 5 girls and women you owe me.

I protested that there was no way a set of pictures done by me and given as fair payment to her girls meant I owed her anything.

The old woman pressed the jewel harder into my hand so its edges near cut me.

You little idiot, she said. Have you no idea? They look at your pictures. They get airs and graces. They come to my rooms and they ask me for more of a cut. Or they look at your pictures. They get all prowessy. They decide to choose a different life. And all the ones who’ve gone have left by the front door, unprecedented in this house which has never seen girls go by anything but the back. Don’t you understand anything? I can’t have that. You’re costing me. So, it follows. I must ask you to stop frequenting my house. Or at least to stop drawing my girls.

She left a space for me to speak: I shrugged: she nodded, grave.

Good. But before you go, she said. This jewel. The one in your hand. It’s yours. If you’ll do me.

So I did her picture,

after which she gave me the jewel as agreed, and the next time I came to the house she took me aside and gave me a front door key she’d had her locksmith make for me.

In all these ways I gained yet more understanding of what the great Alberti, who published the book that matters most to us picturemakers, calls the function and the measure of the body, and also of the truth of the great Alberti’s notion that beauty in its most completeness is never found in a single body but is something shared instead between more than one body.

But I also learned to disagree with my masters.

Cause even the great Alberti was wrong when he wrote in disapproving terms that it would not be suitable to dress Venus or Minerva in the rough wool cloak of a soldier, it would be the same as dressing Mars or Jove in the clothes of a woman.

Cause I met many female Marses and Joves in the house and many Venuses and Minervas in and out of all sorts of clothes.

None of them earned anywhere near her true worth in money: all of them suffered misuse, at the very least the kind of everyday misuse you hear any night through the walls of such a house, and though these women and girls were the closest thing alive I ever met to gods and goddesses, the work they did would first pock them on the surface like illness then break them easy as you break dry twigs then burn them up faster than kindling.

Ginevra I heard died in one of the blue sicknesses.

Isotta, my darling one, vanished.

I liked to think she went by her own choice.

I liked, after I heard she’d gone, to see her in my head fine and hearty in a small town or village, living in a house that was strong at the roof under vines and figs and lemon trees in a noise of the good unruliness of a mob of her own children: most of all I liked to think her smiling with her eyes and mouth both (which means love) at a lover or friend or at least at someone whose money she shared equally.

Agnola I heard years later was found in the river tied at the hands and feet.

So I understood plenty of dark things too, learned plenty of things that were the opposite of pleasure, at the pleasure house.

Then the end of my time there did come, after all, in our 18th year of age cause Barto had commerce with Meliadusa, young, new to the house, new to the work, who’d had me the fortnight before, first, on her arrival, and had let it slip with her guests the next few times after me that what she expected in this house was something better: to be brought to good climax regardless of what they wanted, then to be allowed to sleep for a bit, and finally to be given, in exchange for the night’s work, a very fine drawing of herself.

She told Barto laughingly about it a fortnight of work in the pleasure house later when she found it very funny that she’d been so misconstruing and that the reality of life in the pleasure house was so other.

It wasn’t all she laughingly told him.

Barto sat opposite me on the grass: it was early morning: carts were coming into the city to market behind him: he rubbed at his jaw: he was solemner than a bear: he’d maybe had a bad night, bad supper, maybe bad wine.

What? I said.

Be quiet, he said.

He leaned forwards, took one of my boots in his hands: he untied the laces and straps: he took the boot off my foot: he untied the boot on the other foot: he took it off me: he stood my boots to one side: he unsheathed his knife from his pouch: very careful with the blade not to cut me in the skin and the blade cold where it touched me, he nicked its point through my leggings at the ankle and cut in a circle all round first one, then the other.

He peeled the legging-stuff off each foot: he placed both pieces to one side: he took my bare feet in his hands: then he spoke.

Is it true? he said. You’ve been false? All these years?

I have never not been true, I said.

Me not knowing, he said. You not you.

You’ve known me all along, I said. I’ve never not been me.

You lied, he said.

Never, I said. And I have never hidden anything from you.

Cause there’d been many times when Barto’d seen me naked or near-naked, by ourselves swimming, say, or with other boys and young men too and the general acceptance of my painter self had always meant I’d been let to be exactly that — myself — no matter that in 1 difference I was not the same: it was as simple as agreement, as understood and accepted and as pointless to mention as the fact that we all breathed the same air: but there are certain things that, said out loud, will change the hues of a picture like a too-bright sunlight continually hitting it will: this is natural and inevitable and nothing can be done about it: Barto had been challenged by someone, concerning me, and he had been humiliated by the challenge.

You are other than I thought, he said.

I nodded.

Then the fault is with your thinking, or with the person who has changed your thinking, not with me, I said.

How can we be friends now? he said.

How can we ever not be friends? I said.

You know I marry in the summer, he said.

That you marry makes no difference to me, I said and this is the last thing I said that day to him cause he looked at me then with eyes like little wounds in his head and I understood: that he loved me, and that our friendship had been tenable on condition that he could never have me, that I was never to be had, and that someone else, anyone else, saying out loud to him what I was, other than painter, broke this condition, since those words in themselves mean the inevitability, the being had.

His hands were cold and my feet in them: he put my feet down on the grass, stood up, touched his chest where his collarbone was (cause my friend was quite the dramatist always) and turned his back on me.

I looked down at my own feet: I looked at how my taken-off boots held the foot shapes even though there weren’t any feet in them: I searched around for the legging-stuff after Barto left but I couldn’t find it: so I pulled my boots back on my bare feet, strapped and tied them on.

I walked round Bologna for a bit: I had a look at some churchwork, some that was finished and some being done in the early morning light, cause I was a painter before I was anything else, including a friend.

Then I went home to my father in Ferara and told him our chances of Garganelli patronage were over.

What did you do wrong? he shouted,

cause first he was furious: then he was all pride puffed up, all no child of mine will prostitute itself: in his fury my father looked old to me for the first time, so I took off my boots and looked at my feet which had blistered from the walking all day with nothing between skin and leather: the blisters were like little balls of unclear glass surfacing in the skin of me: how would I paint such opaqueness? What kind or what making of white would it take?

Even as I thought it I felt white all over at the loss of my friend and thought that I’d never know other colours again.

Funny to think of it now, that bleak evening: cause the biggest patrons of my short life were after all to be the Garganelli family, and the reason I couldn’t find the legging-stuff was that my friend Barto had rolled it in his hand and put it in his pocket and taken it as souvenir, as he told me years later sitting on the stone step by my feet while I worked on the decoration for the tomb of his father in their chapel.

Girl: do you hear me?

cause although it seemed to be the end of the world to me –

it wasn’t.

There was a lot more world: cause roads that look set to take you in one direction will sometimes twist back on themselves without ever seeming anything other than straight, and Barto and I were soon friends again: no time at all: many things get forgiven in the course of a life: nothing is finished or unchangeable except death and even death will bend a little if what you tell of it is told right: we were friends until I died (if I did die ever, cause I remember no death) and I trust that he remembered me lovingly till the day he died himself (if he did, cause I have no memory of such a thing).

I am watching the girl watch an old old story, the performance of love through a too-small window: yesterday it was the theatre of saints, today it’s love: albeit love performed for an audience: but an audience is only ever really interested in its own needs regardless, whoever you were or are, Cosmo, Lorenzo, Ercole, School of Unknown Painters of Ferara Workshop: I forgive.

Cause nobody knows us: except our mothers, and they hardly do (and also tend disappointingly to die before they ought).

Or our fathers, whose failings while they’re alive (and absences after they’re dead) infuriate.

Or our siblings, who want us dead too cause what they know about us is that somehow we got away with not having to carry the bricks and stones like they did all those years.

Cause nobody’s the slightest idea who we are, or who we were, not even we ourselves

— except, that is, in the glimmer of a moment of fair business between strangers, or the nod of knowing and agreement between friends.

Other than these, we go out anonymous into the insect air and all we are is the dust of colour, brief engineering of wings towards a glint of light on a blade of grass or a leaf in a summer dark.

Let me tell you about the time I was seen, entered and understood by someone I was acquainted with in my life for 10 minutes only.

I’m walking along the road and I pass a fieldful of infidel workers dressed in the white that marks them as worker and makes their skin all the darker: they’re ploughing and planting: I go past freely on my way.

Further on down the road someone springs out from a copse of trees: he’s one of the working men, far enough from the field to seem a touch fugitive. I pass quite close to him: his white clothes are ragged, but less from poverty, I see as I come closer, than from what seems the strength of his own body, as if it can’t help but break through: his sleeves are frayed by the strength of his hands and forearms: his knees have made holes in the cloth, being so strong: the line of dark hairs above his groin sits visible: his eyes are reddened by work.

When I’ve gone a little distance this man calls after me, a word I don’t know.

When I don’t stop, he calls the word again.

It is a benign word as well as a pressing one: something in the sound of it stops me and turns me around on the road.

He is standing in the shade of the copse, perhaps so as not to be seen, maybe more for a rest from the sun, cause I can see even from the distance I’m keeping that nothing about him fears a foreman or overseer: nothing about him fears anything.

Did you mean to call after me? I say.

Yes, he says

(sure enough there’s no one else on the road).

Tell me again, I say, that word. The word you were calling me with.

I was calling you a word in my language, he says.

An infidel word? I say.

He smiles a broad smile. His teeth are very strong.

An infidel word, he says. I don’t know the word for it in your language.

I smile back. I come a little nearer.

What does your word mean? I say.

It means, he says, you who are more than one thing. You who exceed expectations.

He asks me if I can help him. He tells me he needs a twist.

A what? I say.

A —, I don’t know the word, he says. I need to bind my clothes around me, I need a binding thing, for here.

He gestures around his midriff.

You mean a belt? I say. Something to tie?

(cause his shirt is flapping open on him except for one clasp at the collarbone, and it’s March, a cold beginning to the month).

I have a length of rope in my haversack, bought in the market in Florence from a man that told me it was a lucky rope from a hanging and quartering (cause if you carry a hanging rope, it means you’ll never yourself be hanged, he said): it’s a good length and a fair thickness and will probably do: I walk back towards him as he comes towards me: I hold out the rope to him: he looks at it, takes it, weighs it in his hand, then smiles at me as if to pay me with the smile.

When you’ve nothing, at least you’ve all of it.

I have never seen such a beautiful man.

He sees me see this beauty in him and it makes his nature rise.

In the copse of trees at the side of the road there I put my mouth to him and play him like the muse Euterpe plays her wooden flute: then both: he has a smell and a taste about him of grass, clean earth, bread, sweat: he makes redness at the eye a sign of something other than tiredness: he makes calloused hands a means of greater feeling when they go beneath clothes.

We stood up after and I was covered in grass and earth, so was he: he dusted me down: he picked one grass piece off my shoulder and smiled a goodbye, put the piece of grass between his teeth, slung my rope over his shoulder and walked back openly to the fields and the work he’d left.

It was all: it was nothing: it was more than enough.

Fine.

As if the girl knows I’ve come to the end of my story she shuts the love window down dark: the poorly performed love-acts disappear: I think they have not cheered her cause she seems very doleful.

She sits with the shut window on her lap.

We watch a blackbird, with 4 other blackbirds of both male and female type, chase a bird that’s not a blackbird to stop it eating with them at a bush loaded with berries the red of which is the red which the great Cennini in his handbook called dragon’s blood, good for parchment but not for long.

The girl gets up and crosses the patch of grass: halfway across, the brother behind the wicker divide shouts something in their language at her: she calls something back at him, something longer than a name or a stop it, something more like a game or a spell and she walks past the wicker heavy-browed and dismissive: then she’s under a deluge of twigs and little stones and rubble, he is standing on a ledge or barrel and he has them all on a little spade and is throwing them first one lot then the next in the air so they land all over her like it’s raining little stones and sticks: she stops: instead of being angry she laughs out loud.

She stands with her arms out and away from herself and from nowhere her misery is vanished, she is laughing like a child: then she puts the window down on the grass and dives behind the wicker fence, she fells her brother and drags him out on to the grass and the earth, both laughing and rolling on the ground and she tickles him into even more hilarity.

It is a fine thing to see a sudden happiness like that.

She is lucky in such a brother and such a love: between me and my brothers, even though there was nothing between us but air, there were invisible divisions thick as the walls of her room.

Back in that room, the room with the bed in it, back comes the sadness: she sits behind the veil of it for many whole minutes then she shakes herself to her feet and takes off her dusty shirt, shakes the dust and stuff off it out of the window: she shoulders the shirt back on, leaves its buttons unbuttoned and sits on the bed again.

There are many made pictures, all true to life in their workings, on the 4 walls of this room.

The south wall, along which the narrow bed runs, has a picture of 2 beautiful girls seen walking along like friends do: one has gold hair, one has dark but the dark of her hair is sunlit to lightness — both the heads of the girls are: they are walking along a street with awnings: it’s a warm place: their clothes are mosaic gold and azzurrite: the girls are in conversational commerce and look as if between sentences: the goldener one is preoccupied: the darker-headed girl turns her head towards her in a most natural gesture in open air and so she can see the other better: her looking has about it politeness, humility, respect, a kind of gentle intent.

The picture is by a great artist surely in its patchwork of light, dark, determination, gentleness.

The west wall has a large picture of 1 singularly beautiful woman: her eyes look straight out: there is something just beyond you, it says, I can see it and it’s sad, puzzling, a mystery: this is a very clever thing to do with eyes and demeanour: one of her arms is tight around her neck holding herself, at least I think it is her own arm, and this means the curve of her hair (which is coloured between dark and light) round her face makes her face look like the mask that means sadness in Greek ancients: she is sorry I think: I think on behalf of victims: cause she is a figuring of St Monica I guess from it saying underneath in words that chance to be in my own language M O N I C A V I C T I M S.

Behind the head of the bed the whole east wall here is all pictures, lots of pictures, of yet another woman: it is the same woman in all the pictures with the same laughing eyes: there is love in their arrangement, they are an overwhelm in this arrangement, they fall almost into and over each other: but the woman in these pictures is not the woman from the picture palace: no, this is a dark and different lady who has this warm demeanour and a finesse too about her clothes and her body in them which I admire: there are many portraits of her and at different ages like the spill of a life straight on to a wall: there are some done in greys of a small child I also take to be her.

On this last wall, the north wall, on which I can see there has been some dampwork done and plastering which has an air of recency, there is 1 picture: it is the study the girl took with her magic box tablet of the house we sat outside on the poorly made wall and were looking at until the woman with the bristles came and dispatched us.

She fixed this study of this house — the windows, a door, a gate, a high bush, the front façade — on to the wall by her bed with the earnestness I sense central to her nature.

Then she sat on the bed and stared into it with a like earnestness almost as if she wished she were of the size to enter it bodily.

Better to have a much bigger picture, lifesize and detailed, to look to with such intent.

A painter could make a larger one from a small study with ease: if I had materials or even just one arm, I’d

like when the court of the Duke of Modena and Reggio, the Marquis of Ferara, Borse (whom I’d seen those 10 and more years ago serenaded by the tiny swan-blood angel of Justice) put out a call for painters to cover the walls of the palace of not being bored with lifesize pictures of him and his world.

This longing came I think in part from the fact that his father had had a Bible made before and to rival it Borse had wanted a bigger better one of his own, filled full of tiny miniatures, a thousand small pictures of holy things and people including some pictures of local scenes: I see him in my mind’s eye, Borse, sitting regarding these pages one day, each picture beautiful, each a masterpiece less than the size of the palm of his hand, and finding himself thinking how if he had such pictures made large enough, say they were the size of his own substantial body, then he could be seen by all the townspeople and all the neighbouring dignitaries to walk about inside a Bible of himself: and what better time to do such a thing than now since he was finally to be made first ever Duke of Ferara too which he’d waited for all these years, and by the Pope himself no less.

So he had a new upper floor built on the old palace his ancestor Alberto built way before any of us: the palace was quite far from the middle of town but with a new big hall in it for feasts and dancing and round that hall’s walls was where he wanted painted a whole year of his own life, month by month, to show the people who’d live in the future what a good ruler he’d been.

So in my 33rd year, when I’d been in Venice and Florence and learning my trade and had made good money in Bologna and also a name in Ferara by my work at the palace of beautiful flowers, Mr de Prisciano the Falcon looked my horse and myself and my torch bearer up and down and assigned me for my talent 3 whole months of Borse’s painted year, a season to myself alone, March, April, May, in fact the whole east wall: other lesser painters from the court workshop were to collaborate on the other months: it was a winter — spring job, cause the new building was brick not stone, which meant less time in the making: but as fast as you can go is best for fresco in any case.

I got the blues and golds from Venice cause skills are nothing without good materials and good materials and skill together will make for a kind of grace (and also for good payment in the end).

We stood in the new hall.

(Cosmo wasn’t there.)

I knew none of the workshop workers: compared, they were mere boys: their eyes on me let me know they knew my reputation.

(Cosmo’d had a private tour of the room on a different day. Cosmo’d been instrumental in the design.)

Francescho, this is your assistant, the Falcon said.

The boy at his side looked 16 years of age and had the demeanour of a pickpocket.

(Cosmo had more assistants than Cosmo had family: most of the people in this room had been assistant to Cosmo one time or another.)

I waited till the Falcon moved off to speak elsewhere.

Were you ever assistant to Cosmo? I asked.

The pickpocket boy shook his head.

Good, I said. Cause if I’m not here and Cosmo ever tries to touch my wall, I want you to refuse him. Tell him it’s by order of the Marquis, he’s not to touch my wall.

Is that a lie? the pickpocket said slanting his eyes at me.

Yes, I said.

I’m a very bad liar, the pickpocket said. I need paid extra for lies.

I’ll pay you what you’re worth, I said.

But what about when I’m working on my own bit of wall? the pickpocket said. Cause if they think I’m any good, I’m to be let to do my own work maybe on August or September too. What if he comes in and I’m so busy I don’t see him?

Not see Cosmo come in? I said. Then you’ve really never seen Cosmo.

Oh, you mean him, the pickpocket said. I know who you mean. I’ll lie to him for nothing.

The Falcon told a boy in court clothes to climb on to a chair and stand on the mixing table in the middle of the room: then the Falcon positioned himself beneath the boy, who dipped his head and his knee to put his ear closer to the Falcon then stood straight up again in an instant on the table.

That way, I needn’t, the Falcon said.

THAT WAY I NEEDN’T, the boy shouted as if through a horn and in a voice unexpectedly deep for such a small boy.

Raise my voice, the Falcon said.

RAISE MY VOICE, the dipping boy said.

In this way the Falcon let us know us what would be expected of us.

The walls will be THE WALLS WILL BE. Divided from left to right DIVIDED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT. Except here and here EXCEPT HERE AND HERE. Where there’ll be WHERE THERE’LL BE. Gracious city scenes GRACIOUS CITY SCENES. The scenes will be THE SCENES WILL BE. Scenes of the Dukedom SCENES OF THE DUKEDOM. Of good architecture OF GOOD ARCHITECTURE. Scenes of shows and jousts SCENES OF SHOWS AND JOUSTS. And here will feature AND HERE WILL FEATURE. The Papal visit THE PAPAL VISIT. By which the beloved BY WHICH THE BELOVED. Marquis will be made MARQUIS WILL BE MADE. First Duke of Ferara FIRST DUKE OF FERARA. In celebration IN CELEBRATION. Of this historic OF THIS HISTORIC. Event in our town EVENT IN OUR TOWN. The walls of this room THE WALLS OF THIS ROOM. All the way round ALL THE WAY ROUND. Will tell this story WILL TELL THIS STORY.

The Falcon held up a hand and moved round to the other side of the table: the boy on the table stepped over to be behind him again and dipped down to hear: the Falcon gestured to my wall: down up, down up.

THE YEAR BEGINS HERE. IT BEGINS WITH MARCH. THEN APRIL HERE. THEN MAY HERE.

The boy resembled a drinking bird: the Falcon came round the table to face the north wall: the boy dipped

(later I put this boy in my month of March: I attached a lewd monkey to his lower leg)

the boy rose.

JUNE TO SEPTEMBER, the boy said. HERE, HERE, HERE. OCTOBER TO DECEMBER. HERE AND HERE. (He turned to face the west wall with the Falcon, then spun round to the south.) JANUARY IS HERE. FEBRUARY IS HERE. THE WALL SECTIONS AND MONTHS. WILL BE DIVIDED. FROM EACH OTHER. BY PAINTED PILASTERS. BUT WITHIN EACH SECTION. THERE WILL ALSO BE. ANOTHER DIVISION. CAUSE EACH MONTH. WILL BE DIVIDED. TOP TO BOTTOM. INTO 3 PIECES. AT THE TOP. THE MYTHICAL GODS. ARRIVE IN CHARIOTS. WITH THE SEASONS. MINERVA, VENUS, APOLLO. MERCURY, JUPITER, CERES.

Vulcan, and so on, the Falcon said waving his hand (cause he had no notes with him and had forgotten his order of gods).

VULCAN AND SO ON, the boy said.

At the top of the new wall we were to paint lifesize gods arriving all through the year: at the bottom we were to paint lifesize scenes of Borse’s year, with the seasonal work of a common year and the illustrious Borse always at its centre.

In the middle, though, between these, there was a broad blue sky space planned.

(When I heard this I was pleased, cause I’d quality azzurrite from Venice.)

As if floating in this blue, like clouds, the Falcon wanted a frieze of astrologicals: he wanted 3 figures for each month, one symbolizing each 10 days.

GOD TAKES PLEASURE, the boy announced. AS WE KNOW. IN GIVING US THINGS. ARRANGED IN 3s. SO TO CORRESPOND. EACH MONTH WILL BE. SPLIT INTO 3. GODS THE TOP. SKY IN THE MIDDLE. EARTH DOWN BELOW. EACH BLOCK OF SKY. AT THE CENTRE. OF EACH MONTH. WILL ALSO BE. SPLIT INTO 3.

The gods, the stars, the earth, the Falcon said.

THE GODS THE STARS THE EARTH, the boy on the table shouted at us. THE GODS THE STARS THE COURT. THE GODS THE STARS OUR PRINCE. GOING ABOUT THE WORLD. A WORLD HE’S MADE. PEACEABLE AND PROSPEROUS. IN HIS GENEROSITY. IN HIS SPLENDOUR. IN HIS WHITE GLOVES. THE SEASONS FRUITFUL ROUND HIM. THE WORKERS HAPPY ROUND HIM. THE PEOPLE FULL OF JOY. ABOVE THIS, SKY. ABOVE THAT, GODS. IN TRIUMPHANT ARRIVALS. ON THEIR CHARIOTS. SURROUNDED BY. THEIR ASSOCIATED SYMBOLS. AND USUAL ATTRIBUTES. THE DESIGN FOR THIS. CAN BE FOUND. IN THE ANTEROOM. BEHIND THE EAST WALL. STUDY IT CLOSELY. DO NOT DEVIATE. FROM ITS INSTRUCTION. OR ITS EXAMPLE. OR ITS DEMONSTRATION. IN ANY WAY.

And for this, the pickpocket at my side said. We’re to be paid. Only 10 pence per. Bloody square foot.

I made a note to myself to ask the Falcon about my rate of pay: the Falcon, when the speech was done, put his arm round my shoulder and took me over to show me my own wall.

Borse departing on hunt — here, he said. Borse dispensing justice to aged loyal infidel — here. Borse presenting gift to Court Fool — here. St Giorgio day palio — round about here. Gathering of poets — up there. Gathering of university scholars, professors and wise men — up over there. Representation of the Fates — here. Spring image, fertility kind of thing, use your imagination — that area there. Apollo — there. Venus — there. Minerva — there. All in chariots. Minerva will need unicorns. Venus will need swans. Apollo will need Aurora driving and he’ll need a bow and arrow. He’ll also need a lute and the delphic tripod and the snakeskin.

I nodded.

Illustrate the gods from the poems, he said.

I will, I said none the wiser.

Now, he said. The decans. For the 3 decans of each month, check the schema in the anteroom. For instance, as the schema shows, and this is very important, Francescho. The first decan of Aries should be dressed in white. He should be tall, dark, powerful, a masterful man of great good power in the world. He is to be the guardian not just of the room but of the whole year. He should be standing next to a ram to symbolize the constellation. And next to that please put a figure which stands for youth and fruitfulness, holding, say, an arrow, for skill and for aim. A self-portrait maybe, Francescho, your own fine face, what do you say?

He winked an eye at me.

And over here, April, one of the decans should hold a key. Make the key large. And over here … and here … on and on he went, and one should have the feet of a camel and one should be holding a javelin and a baton and one should be holding a lizard, and …

There was no space left in all the requirements for asking about payment.

But I knew my work would speak for itself and bring when done its own due.

I began with May and Apollo: I worked hard on the horses: I invented 4 falcons all sitting on a birdframe: I added the bow and the arrow but had to give a standing girl minstrel the lute (cause Apollo’s hands were already full with the bow, the arrow and the black hole of the sun which I made a little like a black seed, a burnt walnut or the anus of a cat, which is what the sun looks like if you look too long at the sun).

What was a delphic tripod?

I painted a 3-legged stool with a snakeskin draped over it.

When he saw it, the Falcon nodded.

(Phew.)

I painted all the citizens of the Ferara court, not as they looked now but as an infinite crowd of babies swarming out of a hole in the ground as if conjured from nothing, replicating by the second and all as naked as the day they were born, their teething rings around their necks on cords their only jewels and adornments, their arms cordially through each others’ arms as they went their passeggiata.

When he came up on the scaffolding and saw this the Falcon laughed out loud: he was pleased enough to drop his hand to my breeches to take hold of me where something or nothing should be.

Ah! he said.

I’d surprised him.

He sobered.

I see, he said.

But he put his arm round my shoulder in a brotherly way, and I liked him all the more, the thin scholarly Falcon.

You caught me out. It’s not at all what I expected after the dishevelled state of my maid when you came to my house that day, he said

(cause when I’d come to his house and drawn for him the running torch bearer, and the girl at the door had been sent finally to assure me of employment and dispatch me, I’d asked her could I borrow her cap just to have a look at and she’d taken it off, then I’d backed her gently further into the house off the street so no one could see us and I’d asked her kindly to take off some other things for me just to have a look at, which she smiling did, then I’d kissed her cause I should in the places bared, which she’d liked and had kissed me back and before I’d left she’d tied the cap sweetly in jest about my head and said you make a very handsome girl, sir).

So you’re a little less, Francescho, than I believed, the Falcon said now.

A very little thing less only, Mr de Prisciano, I said, and no less at all when it comes to picturemaking.

No, you’re talented, true, all the same, he said.

Exactly the same, I said. No less.

I said it with passion but he wasn’t listening: instead he slapped the side of his own leg and laughed.

I’ve just understood, he said. Why Cosmo calls you it.

(Cosmo? talks of me?)

Cosmo calls me what? I said.

You don’t know? the Falcon said.

I shook my head.

That Cosmo, when he talks of you, calls you Francescha? the Falcon said.

He what? I said.

Francescha del Cosso, the Falcon said.

(Cosmo.

I forgive.)

A mere court painter, I said. I’ll never be. I’ll never do anyone’s bidding.

Well but what are you right now, the Falcon said, but a court painter?

(It was true.)

But at least I’ll never knowingly choose to be in the pay of the flagellants, I said

(cause I knew Cosmo to be making a lot of money with the images asked of him by some).

The Falcon shrugged.

The flagellants pay as well as anybody else, he said. And have you seen his St Giorgio for the cathedral organ? Francescho. It’s sublime. And — didn’t Cosmo train you? I thought you’d been apprentice to Cosmo.

Cosmo? Train me? I said.

Who then? the Falcon said.

I learned by my eyes, I said, and I learned from the masters.

Which masters? the Falcon said.

The great Alberti, I said. The great Cennini.

Ah, the Falcon said. Self-taught.

He shook his head.

And from Cristoforo, I said.

Da Ferara? the Falcon said.

Del Cossa, I said.

The brickmaker? the Falcon said. Taught you this?

I pointed down to my new assistant, the pickpocket, filling the time between plastermaking and colourgrinding by doing the drawing work I’d set him of the pile of bricks I’d made him fetch in from the gardens: I look back at my rich court babies pouring out of the hole in the stony ground into life as if the whole world was nothing but theatre and them its godgiven critics.

Since I was infant I’ve lived, breathed, slept brick and stone, but you can’t eat bricks, you can’t eat stones, Mr de Prisciano, which is why –

(and here I got ready to ask for my money).

— on the contrary, the Falcon said. Best way to get birds to hunt well, no? Is to feed them stones

(cause it’s true that this is what falconers will do to keep a bird hungry and sharp, they’ll fool it into thinking it’s been well fed by giving it pellets of stone so that when the hood is removed and the bird out working it’s surprised by its own hunger which makes it sharper-eyed than ever in finding prey).

But it was a dodge to my question and he knew it, the Falcon: he looked askance, ashamed: he looked to my army of babies instead.

Infantile sophisticates, he said. Bare of everything, seen for what they are. Good. And I like your Apollo. Where’s the lute? Ah. Yes. And I like very much the grace of your minstrels. And — these — oh. What’s this?

The gathering of poets you wanted, I said, in the top corner, as required.

But — is that — isn’t it — me? he said.

(It was true I’d painted unasked a likeness of him, in with the poets: I sensed he’d prefer to be seen as a poet rather than a scholar.)

What’s that I’m holding? he said.

The heart, I said.

Oh! he said.

And this’ll be, see, here, heat, I said. As if you’re examining a heart off which heat is rising like breath from a mouth on a cold day.

He coloured: then he gave me a wry look.

You’re a politician, Francescho, he said.

No, Mr de Prisciano, I said. A painter, by the work of my arms and hands and eyes and by the worth of the work.

But he turned his back very quick then in case I asked about the money again.

On his way down the ladder backwards he looked back up at me.

Keep it up, he said.

Then he winked.

So to speak, he said.

(One night I came through the curtain over the month room door, it was only midnight, not late, a good damp night and very few others working cause I preferred it when quiet, but as I came down the room I saw by the shadows the swing of a torch up on one of the platforms at the far end of the room: I stayed in the dark by the foot of the scaffolding: the Falcon, I could hear, was somewhere up there speaking to someone –

Veneziano, yes. Piero, certainly. Castagno, maybe some Flems, certainly a bit of Mantegna, Donatello. But as if, your Grace, the work’s soaked itself deep in them all but then washed itself new and clean and come up with a freshness like nothing I’ve ever.

Your Grace.

Yes, the other said. I’m not sure I like the way he’s done my face.

There’s a charm, the Falcon said. A great, I don’t know what else to call it. Likeableness.

Must never underestimate charm, the other said.

Lightness of spirit, the Falcon said. Not got from anyone. Not Piero. Not Flemish.

The women’s clothes are very fine, the other said. But am I well starred throughout? The auspices? And how like the gods? I mean in inference?

Very, your Grace, but very human all the same, the Falcon said. A rare thing, to be able to do gods and humans both, no?

Hm, the other said.

Look at this woman and this child here, just standing, but in such a choreography, the Falcon said. It’s motherhood. But it’s more than motherhood. It’s as if they’re in a conversation, but a conversation made of stance.

And does this particular painter do any more of me? the other said.

Yes, your Grace, the Falcon said

and I heard them move on the platform and I ducked into the shadow of the wall.

Who is he, then, the lad? the other said then as the ladder beneath him creaked.

Not a lad at all, your Grace, the Falcon said.

I held my breath.

— full-fledged painter, well over 30 years, the Falcon said.

What’s his looks like? the other said.

Youthful in demeanour, sir, the Falcon said. Girlish, you might say. Youthful in the work, too. Freshness all through it. Freshness and maturity both.

What’s he called? the other said.

I heard the Falcon tell him –

and not long after, since the Falcon had liked Cosmo’s St Giorgio so much, I figured him into the fresco again, this time in the month of March (the part of the wall my work was at its best), this time as a falconer with his clothes winged up like the falcon on his hand and the torch bearer drawing he’d liked and I sat him on a horse with a stance a bit like Cosmo’s Giorgio: I made him young and vigorous: I gave him a tasselled hunting glove: above all I made the balls on his horse good and large.)

Painting the months took months.

I made things look both close and distant.

In the upper space I gave the unicorns translucent horns.

In the lower space I gave the horses eyes that can follow you round the room, cause those are the God eyes and whoever has them in a painting or fresco holds the eyes of whoever looks at the work, and this is no blasphemy, merely a reasserting of the power of the gaze back at us from outside us always on us.

I painted the differing skies of May and April and lastly March (cause I progressed from May to March and grew more used to the plaster from each to each, which made the work flourish): I dared paint, in Venus’s upper space, with its groups of lovers standing in their 3s, women openly kissed and touched by men (to enrage any visiting Florentines who hate to see such goings-on).

Throughout I did as the great Alberti in his book suggests the best picturemakers should always do and included people of many ages and kinds, plus chickens, ducks, horses, dogs, rabbits, hares, birds of all sorts, all in a lively commerce in and about a variety of landscapes and buildings: and, cause Alberti asks in his book that as a reward for my pains in writing this work, painters who read it might kindly paint my face into their istoria in such a way that it seems pleasant I did this too and painted him into it in the gathering of wise men in the goddess Minerva’s space: cause those who do good work should always be honoured, which is something both the greats Alberti and Cennini agree on. As a symmetric to the wise professors I placed on the other side of Minerva’s chariot, where the Falcon wanted the Fates to sit, a gathering of working women and included every woman’s face I could remember from the streets and workshops and the pleasure houses: I arranged them round a good loom and gave them well-made cavework as a landscape behind them.

I painted my brothers.

I painted the figure of my mother resplendent.

I painted a ram with the look of my father.

In these ways I filled the Marquis’s months with those who had peopled my own on the earth.

But when I did, as can happen when you work to picture someone in paint, as soon as I’d painted them into the skin of the fresco they stopped being the people I knew: this happened especially in the colour blue meant for sky, the place between the gods and the earth.

A picture is most times just picture: but sometimes a picture is more: I looked at the faces in torchlight and I saw they were escapees: they’d broken free from me and from the wall that had made and held them and even from themselves.

I like very much a foot, say, or a hand, coming over the edge and over the frame into the world beyond the picture, cause a picture is a real thing in the world and this shift is a marker of this reality: and I like a figure to shift into that realm between the picture and the world just like I like a body really to be present under painted clothes where something, a breast, a chest, an elbow, a knee, presses up from beneath and brings life to a fabric: I like an angel’s knee particularly, cause holy things are worldly too and it’s not a blasphemy to think so, just a further understanding of the realness of holy things.

But these are mere mundane pleasures — I’m tempted to hire a small boy, stand him on a table and have him shout those words MERE MUNDANE PLEASURES — beside the thing that happens when the life of the picture itself steps beyond the frame.

Cause then it does 2 opposing things at once.

The one is, it lets the world be seen and understood.

The other is, it unchains the eyes and the lives of those who see it and gives them a moment of freedom, from its world and from their world both.

And I wasn’t slave to this work for much longer myself cause when I neared the finish of the month of March it was the month of March, near New Year: one day all the assistants and the workshop painters were standing in a huddle in the middle of the room: there was passionate talk, it was about the infidel uprising, I reckoned from up on the scaffolding (cause there’d been an uprising for more food and money among the field workers, 10 men beaten cause of the actions of 1 man, and rumour that some of the 10 were near death and that the 1 who organized the rising was already cut in pieces).

But no, the talk was nothing to do with infidels: what they were arguing so passionate about down there was their latest request to Borse for better pay.

Master Francescho! the pickpocket shouted up the side of the scaffolding.

Ercole! I shouted back down without turning.

(I was touching up the Graces.)

Let us sign your name, the pickpocket shouted up, to this petition alongside ours!

No! I shouted down

cause they had petitioned twice for more money already and the second time, instead of giving them more, Borse had had them all (me too) presented with his medal, the one with his head on one side, Justice on the other and the words on it: haec te unum: you and she are one.

It was a pretty medal and had an appearance of value, but Borse had had so many given out all over town (and not just here but in his other towns too) that they fetched very little at market.

But Borse was well known for his generosity: didn’t he pay his favoured musicians handsomely? Didn’t he cover Cosmo in precious stones?

True, so far I’d been paid the same rate as the others, but it was an oversight, I knew.

I intended to write to the Marquis directly and point out the oversight.

Cause I knew myself exceptional (the only painter here not working to Cosmo’s cartoons, the only one brought in from outside beyond the court workshop): and when the wrong money first came I had asked the Falcon to intercede: but the Falcon had looked at me, doleful.

Did you not get your medal, then? he said,

by which I knew he had no power in this matter.

The Falcon had liked his St Giorgio a lot: I could see he liked himself as a man of action as well as a poet cause he’d flushed up red to the back of his ears.

But he’d shaken his head at the madmen from the madhouse that I’d painted running behind the horses and donkeys as if part themselves of the palio, their straitjacket tabs flying out behind them: he’d shaken his head again at the distant view of the Marquis’s hunt — the Marquis and all his men on horseback heading straight towards the edge of the abyss, a dog looking coolly down into it (the abyss I’d made by painting a crack in the foreground architecture, a perspective I took great pride in).

One picture I’d made in particular made the Falcon turn pale.

Here, he was saying. No. This can’t stay. You have to change it.

He was pointing at the first decan for March, at the place where he’d asked for a powerful guardian man and I’d painted him one, in the shape of an infidel.

Something like this is bad enough as it is, the Falcon was saying. Bad enough by itself. And on top of this you ask me to go to him to get you more money? Francescho. Can’t you see? Haven’t you eyes? He’ll have you whipped. And if I ask for more money he’ll have me whipped too. No, no, no. It’s got to come off. Cut it out. Start again. Redo it.

I cowered inside my skin: I was foolish, I’d end up unpaid and dismissed and be poor for a year: I’d never get work at the court again and I was badly out of pocket cause the golds and the blues had cost half a year’s money: so I readied myself to ask the Falcon, what would he like me to paint there instead?

But when I came to speak, instead of any of these words I heard myself say only

no.

The Falcon next to me gave a little start.

Francescho. Redo it, he said again.

I shook my head.

No.

That can’t stay either, he was saying pointing at the Graces up in the Venus space. That Grace there. Make her lighter. Far too dark.

I had given the Graces fashionable hairstyles: I had given them fleeting bodily resemblances, Ginevra and Agnola both facing, Isotta with her back to us: I had painted them holding apples and painted some Vs in 2 spindly trees to catch and repeat the shape of the place on the facing Graces where all human life and much pleasure originates: I had placed 2 birds in each spindly tree: everything rhythmic: even the apples and breasts were resemblances: it was the Grace I’d made like Isotta that had caught his eye: but even she, beautiful as she was, barely held his eye cause I saw that he couldn’t not look, kept looking again and again to the infidel in his white work rags in the space of the best blue.

Then — a miracle — something shifted in the Falcon, changed in the way he stood beside me.

I saw him shake his head again but in a different way.

He called for more light.

More light came.

He put his hands round his face.

When he took his hands away I saw that the Falcon was laughing.

Such audacity. Well. It’s true, you’ve done exactly what I asked you, he said. Though I didn’t ask for such beauty. Well, let’s see. I’ll, I don’t know, I’ll fix it. I’ll redirect him to the figure of the old man here bending the knee to him like he wanted. Borse giving out justice to an aging infidel.

Thank you, Mr de Prisciano, I said.

But, in turn, do me a couple of kindnesses, Francescho, the Falcon said. Make the bending man a shade darker at the skin to show the new Duke’s justice as bigger than any expectation. But I’m warning you. Don’t be any more of a fool. Francescho. Do you hear? And lighten up the colour of that Grace, the one with her back to us. And we might, we just might, get away with it.

Get away with it: as if I had planned a hidden satire or a sedition: but in all honesty, when I looked at my own pictures they surprised even me with their knowledge: cause at the same time as I’d been painting these questioning things I had been telling myself that the Marquis would be just, he’d naturally know and honour my worth and reward me properly for it, of course he would, even if I pictured him and his hunt all clipclopping as if blind towards a crevasse: cause the life of painting and making is a matter of double knowledge so that your own hands will reveal a world to you to which your mind’s eye, your conscious eye, is often blind.

The Falcon was shaking his head at the infidel: he was no longer laughing: his mouth fell open: he put his hand to his mouth.

And if he asks anything, he said with his hand still over his mouth, I’ll tell him, I don’t know, I’ll say it’s, it’s –

A figure from the French Romances, I said.

A figure from a little-known French Romance, the Falcon said. One he’d never admit to not knowing. Since we all know how well he knows them all.

Then he’d looked me in the eyes.

But I can’t get you any more money, Francescho, he said. Don’t ask me again.

Well then, I’d write and ask myself, direct, I thought as the Falcon descended the scaffolding: I did not need an interceder.

Master Francescho! the pickpocket called now from below.

Ercole! I called back down.

I was reworking the Graces, paler reminders now: give, accept, give back: but adequate Graces, still substantial: I’d sliced them out and replastered and repainted but I’d kept them human, made them all Agnolas like a triplet of herself 3 different ways.

Forgive me! the pickpocket shouted.

For what? I shouted back.

For signing the letter on your behalf! the pickpocket shouted up

(cause there had been murmurings among the assistants and workshop painters that they were being refused more money precisely cause I hadn’t signed, cause I hadn’t asked for more with them the times they’d asked before, which might make it look to the Marquis, they said, like I believed 10 pennies a square foot enough pay).

But not by my name, Ercole? I called back down.

But yes by your name, the pickpocket shouted up. And I can well do your hand, Master Francescho, as you know. We need paid. And the more of us asking, the better.

I brightened the apple of the farthest right Grace.

Ercole! I called down.

Yes, Master Francescho? he called up.

I leaned over the scaffolding and spoke quietly direct.

I no longer need an assistant. Pack your things. Find another master,

cause I knew it was simply a mistake, my mispayment, and Borse a man who cared above all things for justice: hadn’t I painted his head there underneath the very word justice carved in stone under a fine garlanded stone arch in a lunette that resembled his own double-faced medal? and beneath that a scene of him dispensing justice to grateful townspeople? He cared about justice more than anything (perhaps cause his own father, Nicco, as we all knew, the same way we knew the legends of the saints and all the holy stories, had a reputation not just for favouring illegitimate sons but for unspeakable unjustness having decided in a temper that his second wife, the beautiful one, and his firstborn son, the handsome one, had fallen in love with each other, for which he had them both beheaded in a dungeon then buried somewhere, nobody knew where): Borse cared so much about justice that in the anteroom on the other side of this wall on which I was brightening the apples of the Graces he was having a room made where he planned to try small matters of civic justice and we all knew he’d commissioned stucchi of Faith, Hope, Fortitude, Charity, Prudence, Temperance, but that he’d asked the French stucchi master most specifically for 6 Virtues only and to leave Justice out cause he was himself Justice, Justice was herself him, and when he was present in the room then Justice was present too since Justice had Borse’s chin, his head, his face, his chest and moreover his stomach.

Good work, good pay, as the great Cennini says in his Handbook for picturemakers: this is a kind of justice too that if you use good materials and you practise good skills then the least you may expect is that good money will be your reward: and if it so happens that it isn’t then God himself will reward you: this is what Cennini promises: so I’d write to the Marquis: I’d write now on the eve of New Year or tomorrow on New Year’s Day cause it’s a time of generosity (and maybe it was true, maybe the generous Borse did believe, cause I’d not signed my name on the other petitions, that I did think 10 pennies enough).

I saw sadness in the pickpocket’s back below: you can tell many things from a back: he was packing away his tools and things in his bags: who knew, maybe if Borse were to read a letter from me he’d not just right the error for me, he’d maybe be persuaded to be more generous to those lesser workers too, with a bit of luck and justice, though they’d need the luck, not being as worthy of it as me.

(I am small, sitting on stone in the smell of horse piss holding in my hand the shrunken head with the wing stuck out of it: the thing in my hand is the start of a tree, with a bit of luck and justice.

Luck, I know, is to do with chance happening.

But what’s justice? I call at my mother’s back.

She is on her way to the barrel full of linens.

Fairness, she calls over her shoulder. Rightness. Getting your due. You getting as much to eat and as much learning and as many chances as your brothers, and them as much and as many as anyone in this city or this world.

So justice is to do with food then, and with learning.

But what’s a fallen seed from a tree to do with any of it? I call.

She stops and turns.

We need both luck and justice to get to live the life we’re meant for, she says. Lots of seeds don’t get to. Think. They fall on stone, they get crushed to pieces, rot in the rubbish at the roadside, put down roots that don’t take, die of thirst, die of heat, die of cold before they’ve even broken open underground, never mind grown a leaf. But a tree is a clever creation and sends out lots of seeds every year, so for all those ones that don’t get to grow there are hundreds, thousands that will.

I look at how over by the brickpiles there’s a straggle of seedlings in a clump, seedlings not even as tall as me: they look like nothing at all: I look up at the roof where the 3 thin twiggy arms are proof that a seed’s taken root at the gutter: that’s luck: But justice? And I am not a seed or a tree: I am a person: I won’t break open: I haven’t got roots: how can I be seed or tree or both?

I still don’t see how justice is anything to do with seeds, I call.

You’ll learn, she shouts back from in the barrel trampling the linens again.

In a moment I hear her singing her working song.)

Master Francescho?

The pickpocket.

Aren’t you gone yet? I called down.

I’ve one last thing to say before I go, the pickpocket called. Can I come up?

The pickpocket had learned good pillars from me: he’d learned good rocks and bricks: he’d learned the drawn bow of a curve and the perspective behaviour of straight lines and he’d learned how lines brought together like woven threads will make a plane: I’d let him do some buildings in the lower space of May and some work on the workers there going about their daily business.

He wasn’t yet 20 years old: his hair still fell over his eyes: he was good at colour and at mixing thicknesses of lime and plaster: he had the understanding that a fresco needs a wall and that at the same time the skin we apply to a wall is as sensitive as our own skin and becomes as much a part of that wall as our skin is a part of us.

I caressed the lip of a Grace: he clambered on to the platform and stood behind me and watched me work.

I know you have to let me go, he said. But you should have signed the letter. You should have signed the first 2 we wrote. It was wrong of you not to. So I signed you this time. It was for the good of us all that I did it. And Master Francescho, you should know this too. The Marquis won’t be persuaded to give you any more money than us. You’ll get 10 pennies per foot. He won’t give you anything more.

He will, I said. It’s a mistake. Cause above all Borse is fair. When he hears he will sort his mistake.

He won’t, ever, the pickpocket said. Cause you should know, Master Francescho. That he likes the boys. Not the girls.

I split the lip of the Grace.

I dabbed the split away: I steadied myself on the wood.

And I should tell you too, the pickpocket was saying behind me. That when we were working on the month of May I heard him ask the Falcon to bring you to him, in the way he likes the new boys and men to be brought, cause he likes to be entertained by talent and he likes a talent to belong to him. And I heard the Falcon refuse him. Which is why you were never called to serve him in that way. But it’s not the Falcon who told him anything about you, Master Francescho. The Falcon knows your worth. Now, I’ll go if you still want, though I don’t want to. But I’ll wish you a fruitful New Year.

Behind me I heard him get back on the ladder: when I turned I saw him waiting, just his eyes and the top of his head above the platform: it was comic and sad both: but the fear I saw in his eyes let me see there was something I might do.

I’ll have a bet with you, Ercole, I said.

You will? he said.

His eyes looked relieved.

I crouched down near his head.

I bet you the worth of 5 square feet of this fresco that if I write to him and ask him direct he’ll give me what I ask, I said.

Okay, but if I lose that bet, the pickpocket said coming back up to sit on the platform. Though I know full well I won’t, but just in case. If I do. Can we agree that I’ll pay at the assistant rate? And if I win, that you’ll pay at the Master Francescho rate?

Go down and grind me some black, I said, just in case I find I’ll need it.

(Cause black has great power and its presence is meaningful.)

Black? the pickpocket said. No. It’s New Year. It’s holiday. I’m on holiday. Anyway, I’m sacked.

Make it deeper than sable, I said. Get it as deep as a lightless night.

I wrote on the Friday: I delivered the letter myself by hand to the doorman of the palace.

On the morning of the first Sunday, 2 days into the new year, the palace was cold and near-empty: I came up the stairs to the month room alone and I took the knife to March.

I peeled off the wall a small portion under the arch between the garland and Borse giving out justice to an aging infidel: it came away complete like marzapane off a cake.

I layered on the thin new undercoat: I went home to bed cause I planned to be working all night.

That afternoon I packed my things into my satchels except my tools, my colours and a good piece of my mirror.

That evening, alone again in the long room, I lit the torch: the faces round me flickered their hello: I climbed to the lower level by the garland and the cupids.

I layered the second skin over the hole in the picture below.

I replaced the lunette of Borse with a profile portrait like the one on the Justice medal: haec te unum: but I turned him so everyone who’d seen the medal would see he was looking the other way.

I placed next to the figure of Borse at the heart of the crowd waiting for justice a hand — with nothing in it.

Under the word JUSTICE written in the stone where the Est colours were I used black.

Above the black I whited out the letters till all you could read was ICE.

I held the mirror up to my own eyes.

Then it’s down off the scaffolding and out of the palace of not being bored, out on to the street and up on to the back of Mattone and off on the hoof at speed down the streets past the smoky ghetto, under the palace tower, past the half-made castle and through the town gates for the last time cause I’d never be back and such leaving takes only a matter of minutes when the town of your birth is a small one easily passed through.

(Just a year and a half after that, as it happened, and just 6 days after the Pope made him Duke of Ferara at last, Borse would turn, blink, fall down dead, dead as an arrowed bird, the months of his year still circling regardless the walls of his palace of not being bored.)

When the town was as distant over my shoulder as the far towers in the landscapes in the work I’d just covered that wall with

(for not enough money to pay for the blues and the golds, never mind other colours)

when the morning light was up, when I’d reached the first rise of land to let the plain lie down behind me, I stopped.

I calculated my loss.

My pockets were near-empty.

I would have to hope for work.

A bird sang above me when I thought it.

I’d be fine: my arms and hands were good: I would go to Bologna where I’d friends and patrons, where there was no laughable court.

I heard through the birdsong something behind me and turned and saw a raising of dust on the line of road in the flat land: there was a horse far back, the only horse in the whole morning: no, not a horse, a pony, grey, and when it got near enough I saw someone on its back with his too-long legs sticking out at the sides: when the pickpocket drew up level with me the pony he was on was so small I looked down from a godheight.

Master Francescho, he said over the cough of the pony all out of breath from the speed it’d been made to go and the bags on its back full of all the pickpocket’s worldly.

I waited till he’d got his own breath himself, as covered in dust as the pony: he wiped his face with his sleeve: he readied himself to speak.

That’s 5 square feet you owe me, he said. To be paid at the higher rate.

Here I am again: me and a girl and a wall.

We are outside the house of the girl’s beloved and sitting by the poorly made wall: this time she is not sitting on it: she is sitting on the ground on the paving.

We have been here now many times.

I am not so sure it is a love though any more cause one of the times we were here the girl, staring with a face full of hostility, almost so that I believed she might spit like a snake, was approached direct by the woman we saw in the picture palace who came out of her house and crossed the road: and although the woman spoke to her the girl simply sat on the paving stones and looked, saying nothing, though her face was all irony, at the beautiful face of the woman: then quick as a magic trick she took out her tablet and made a study of the woman with it: the woman put her hands up over her face: she did not want a study made: she turned like that and went back inside the house: a minute later though the woman stood looking out her window at the girl across the road: at which the girl held up her tablet again and took a study of the woman in the window: the woman drew a curtain down: then the girl took a study of her doing this too, and then one of the blinded window: then the girl stayed cross-legged on the ground watching the house until the dark came down: only then she stood up, shook her limbs which will have been cold and stiff from the sitting and went.

And the next day, back again, she and I and the paving stones.

We have done this visit many days now: so many that the north wall of the room she sleeps in is covered in these small tablet studies: each study is the size of a hand and the girl has arranged them in the shape of a star, going towards its points the lighter of the pictures and the darker ones going to the centre.

The pictures are all of the house, or of the woman coming and going from it, or of other people who come and go: they are all from the same view, from in front of the poorly made wall: there are differences in the hedge leaves and tree leaves and as the season has shifted she has caught the differences in light and weather in the street from day to day.

The much older woman, the one the years have bent, who lives in the house to which the poorly made wall belongs, came out every day at first to shout things at the girl.

The girl said nothing, but on the third day simply moved from sitting on the wall to sitting on the paving stones in front of it.

The much older woman shouted then too: but the girl folded her arms over her skinniness and looked up from the ground with such calm and resolve that this older woman stopped shouting and left her in peace to sit where she chose.

One day instead the old woman said kind words to her and gave her an awning on a stick to keep rain off (there has been much rain in purgatorium): that same day she brought a drink with steam coming off it and refreshments made of biscuit for the girl: on another colder day a woollen blanket and a large throw-over of a coat.

Today there will be blossom in the study the girl will make cause the trees in the street round this house she is looking so hard at have the beginnings in them of some of the several possible greens and some, the blossoming ones, have opened their flowers overnight, some pink along the branches, some loaded with white.

Today when the old woman came out of her house she brought nothing but for the first time sat down on her own poorly made wall behind the girl in silence and companionable.

There are bees: there was a butterfly.

That blossom will smell good to those who can smell blossom.

How the air throws it into a dance.