Seiobo There Below

5. CHRISTO MORTO

He was generally not the type who walks with banging steps, he was not the resounding, military, lock-stepping Hussar type; yet because he liked the leather soles of his shoes and the heels of the leather soles to last a long time, the soles and the heels were fitted with proper old-fashioned shoe taps, which, however, echoed to such a degree, with every single step he took, in the narrow back street that it was becoming increasing obvious with each meter that these shoes, these black leather oxfords, did not belong here, not in Venice, and particularly not now, not in this silent neighborhood, during this total siesta; he did not, however, want to return and change them; and he might have tried to walk more softly on the old paving stones, only that he couldn’t, so that he felt continuously, passing before each house, that inside, the occupants inside were flinging curses upon him: why couldn’t he just go away and die somewhere, and what was he doing outside anyway, and especially a character with such damned well-shod black oxfords; he stepped with his left foot, he stepped with his right foot, and that was enough, he already took it as a given that the tranquility of the siesta had come to an end within these buildings with their closed façades, cloaked in muteness, because here outside — thanks to him — the silence had been broken; there was not a God-given soul in the little alleyways, not even a tourist, which was rare indeed, so that there were only the Venetians, there inside, with their failed attempts at a siesta, and him, here outside, with his solidly-made oxfords, so it seemed that only the two of them existed in the exact center of the sestiere of San Polo, in this sweet and narrow labyrinth this afternoon — he could practically hear the curses breaking out from behind the closed wooden shutters: off to stinking putrid hell with you, with those wretched black oxfords — but in this he was mistaken, for it was not only the two of them in the sweet and narrow labyrinth of the sestiere of San Polo: there was someone else as well, who at some point just appeared behind him, lagging considerably behind though in any event trailing after him with more or less the same speed: a thin gangly figure in a light-pink shirt, but of such a light pink that it stood out immediately as this very light pink flashed now and then at a turning point behind him; he didn’t know when he had been joined by him, he had no idea when he had begun to be followed, if indeed he was being followed, but somehow he sensed right away that yes, when he had set off from the San Giovanni Evangelista, where he had stayed for one night at the address of San Polo 2366, in the Calle del Pistor or the Campiella del Forner o del Marangon, he definitely was not behind him, indeed not even — he tried to recall — when he cut across the Campo S. Stin in the strong sunlight toward the Ponte dell’Archivio, or still yet, he suddenly reflected, it was possible that this figure had already been waiting for him when he stepped out through the courtyard, open to the heavens, of the San Giovanni Evangelista, and came out of the entrance of the house with its elegant, useless entrance arch designed by Pietro Lombardi, to make his way toward the Frari; it was possible, it flashed through his mind, even very possible, and he felt that at the mere conjecture that someone wanted to attack him, his stomach convulsed into a knot, and he began to feel cold, as he always did when he was afraid; he stopped at the end of the square that opened up before the Ponte dell’Archivio, like someone trying to find the right way, someone who is ruminating — as is often the case with foreigners in Venice — if it would really be a good thing to cross this bridge now or instead to turn away; and he did ruminate, but really just so that his shoes would stop making that huge clattering and he could gaze back — and he did gaze back — and the chilly sensation in his body was transformed from the chill of an uncertain anxiety to that of a decidedly sharp fear, and he had turned away already, in his echoing black oxfords, toward the Ponte, wishing to cross it hastily, but what does he want? — his step quickened in fright — to rob me? beat me? strike me down? stab me? — ah, somehow no, he shook his head, somehow the whole thing was not like that, the character behind him did not particularly give the impression of being a robber or a murderer, instead it seemed as if he, the visitor to Venice, was the one leading him, pulling him, drawing him onward with the clattering of his painfully echoing oxfords, or as if this otherwise rather laughable figure couldn’t resist the clattering of his shoes, a figure who was moreover bent like the letter S, with collapsing legs, a rump thrusting backward, a crooked back, and a head that sloped forward, yes, he said to himself, passing along by the Ponte dell’Archivio, no he doesn’t want to rob me or murder me, this character in the pink shirt was simply not a robber or a murderer, but of course he could have a gun on him, who knows; he fretted on and on, walking with unflagging speed, in no way displaying how much he was afraid, he went further along the Fondamenta dei Frari toward the square, all the while understanding what was happening less and less; in the first place, why he was so afraid; this figure coming after him clearly wanted something but that was still no cause to be so afraid; he was, however, very afraid, he admitted that, and this acknowledgement was made even more tormenting by the fact that he was freezing, at the same time sensing that the situation was ridiculous, because what if it emerged that it was all just a misunderstanding, that this figure wasn’t even there because of him, but just by happenstance, such happenstance often occurs, and finally there was no one on the streets, but no one, not a single soul; it could be natural that he too was headed for the same place, and with the same gait, for he had noticed in the meantime that the beanpole had not come closer, but was always on his trail; he did not lag behind, but neither did he draw near, there was always just one street-corner between them as they proceeded onward, or none at all, he noted, his heart in his throat, because right now in fact it was as if that distance separating them were somehow a little less, a little shorter — he attempted to estimate just by how much — until now, that is, there had always been one corner between them, regardless of the distance from one corner to the next, but now, here, on the Fondamenta there was unequivocally no corner at all between them, that is to say that Pink-shirt was, beyond a doubt, approaching, which caused his stomach to clench into an even tighter knot; he’s chasing me, he said to himself, and at that word he shuddered, he grew chill, or he was freezing from fear, he couldn’t decide which; yet he was also frightened now by the very fact that he had to fret over such things; what was going on anyway, he had no idea, there was something in the whole story, something unreal, something unlikely, some misunderstanding, some mistake that he, who had practically just arrived in Venice, and who had just stepped out of the pension’s entrance, was being pursued by someone, the whole thing was just not right, no and no, he kept repeating to himself, then he stopped in front of the entrance to the Frari with an unexpected idea, like someone who is looking to see when it will be open again, he stopped, to bring everything to a head, and to see what the other was doing, indeed, not even waiting for what step he might take, proceeding beside the entrance to the Frari; then, he went to the other end of the church and there — the enormous building was buttressed with a supporting ledge, which, as it were, stood out from the smooth façade about one meter above the ground so that you could sit down on it — he too sat down, because the sun was shining there, he collected himself and sat down as one who is interrupting his journey for the sake of taking in a bit of sunshine; but misfortune had already found its recipient, as on the far side of the Campo dei Frari a little café, the Toppo, was open in spite of the siesta, even though there was not a single customer; the sunlight did not reach over there — in any event he could stop there, indeed, so that when he sat down in the sunlight by the wall of the Frari — the other sat down in a chair in the shade under a sun-umbrella, as if having decided to take a drink in the city, in this brief tranquil interval, and it was precisely here, on the ever more tranquil Campo dei Frari this afternoon that, in a word, nothing, but nothing came to light; until now, the thought that the beanpole had followed him accidentally had seemed a possibility, and perhaps he was looking for nothing more than a place open for business where he could just sit down, where he could rest those tired legs of his, collapsing with each and every step — it could have seemed a possibility if he, here and now, sitting on the ledge of the wall of the Frari, had been capable of believing in it, but he did not believe it; on the contrary he took it as a given that as he sat down, the other, too, sat down right away, as if their movements were synchronized; he had betrayed himself — I am being followed, he concluded decisively, and although he wasn’t aware of it, he nodded at him; the sunlight began to work his chilled hands, from which the conclusion could be reached that fear (one clearly fully justified!) had made them so, but besides all this it still was a little chilly outside, you could feel it in the air, it was only April after all, and in mid-April it could certainly happen that from one hour to the next, in these places in the city not exposed to sunlight, it would suddenly turn cool, everything changes quickly here, including the weather, he sat on the protrusion from the wall, he warmed himself in the pleasant sunshine, all the while, naturally, not for a moment taking his eyes off his pursuer, who sitting on the other side of the square was just now placing his order with the café proprietor, when for no particular reason at all something came into his head, a newspaper article, as it happened, which had nothing to do with anything — most likely his brain was fatigued in the midst of these fearful states and had wandered off — sitting on a small but splendid eighteenth-century marble table in the proprietress’s sitting room of the pension where the mail of the occupants of the house was kept, there was a newspaper he had seen, in which he read a little about what Benedict XVI had recently said, but it was not necessarily the article itself that drew his attention, but the headline, and it was this that had remained in his memory, and because of this, his attention now slipped, wandering off, back here to that moment — even if his gaze remained fixed on the other over there, as he sipped his coffee, for it seemed that no sooner was the order given than it was fulfilled; almost in the exact moment of the order a cup of coffee appeared on the little table beneath the sun-umbrella — slipped back to the headline, which read something like this:

HELL REALLY EXISTS

and below which it was repeated that, according to Benedict, who had recently spoken at a convocation in a northern district of Rome, it was an error to think, as more and more people did, that hell was just a kind of metaphor, an emblem, an abstraction; because, reported Benedict, it has a physical reality — this, the article on the front page of the Corriere della Sera, was what came into his mind, what an impossible situation, he thought, sitting two hundred meters away from me is someone who has followed me, someone who is watching me, and here I am, beside the Frari, with this idiotic thing in my brain, I’ve lost my mind; he tried to pull himself together, but he couldn’t because it then came into his mind that while John Paul II was of the opinion, as the Corriere stated, that heaven and purgatory were not really extant, Benedict went so far, continued the reporter, as to state with full emphasis at this convocation in the north of Rome that it was possible that heaven and purgatory did not really exist, but that hell did, moreover in the concrete physical sense, where the word, that is to say physical, had been set in italics, there in the daily mail of the occupants of the house on the little marble table; but what could this possibly mean, he thought, but only this much: well, let’s just stop here, what is this, so there’s no heaven, no purgatory, that’s fine, to hell with the whole thing, that’s fine — but he did not continue the thought, as suddenly a feeling arose that he was flirting imprudently with danger, a danger that possibly didn’t have any basis, but if this were not the case, then he was, with complete utter carelessness, flirting with it; he jumped up suddenly and set off for the narrow alleyway that ran alongside the apse of the Frari, but just as suddenly regretted doing so, turning back to the Campo dei Frari, and quickly crossed the square on the near side — in opposition to his plan, that is to say, actually, contrary to his intended direction, he turned into a back alley just as narrow and dark and damp and chill, in order to draw attention away from where he was really going, but he nearly ruined it, it shot through him; he nearly revealed against his own will where he was going with those resounding steps of the black oxfords, he nearly betrayed to his pursuer his destination; he himself hardly understood how he could have been so rash, but it’s fine now, he thought, calming down a bit, there is no way anyone could now tell where he was headed, which, as senseless as that might have seemed, still could be the case; that is, not to reveal where he was headed, inasmuch as there was no question whatsoever of pursuit, inasmuch as it was, however, a question of pursuit; it will all soon come to light, he kept looking backward in the alleyway; and so, as to allow that chance to occur, he stopped, trying to discern if he heard steps in the quiet that suddenly sprang forth from the silencing of his own hard-soled shoes, but he didn’t hear anything, only a small breeze struck him, coming in both directions from the damp walls; in any case, because he had to know if that character was on his trail again, he slowly began to move backward in the alleyway, cautiously, on tiptoe lest the shoe taps betray him yet again, and hiding his body behind the wall, he leaned out, looking out onto the square, but there was no one sitting on the other side at the little table beneath the sun-umbrella, on the contrary, he was nowhere on the square, he had disappeared, had been absorbed, evaporated, he stated to himself, and stayed there for a few moments longer, until he could cut across the small intersections without his heart jumping into his mouth — as he reflected, for a while, Pink-Shirt could pop up in front of him at any moment, surprising him at any one of these little intersections — but as one intersection came right after the next, and nothing of the sort occurred, he slowly began to calm down; he stopped, he listened, then after he turned and went back toward the Campo dei Frari, he found the square in exactly the same state as before, that is to say completely deserted, he now had the courage to turn definitively into his own alleyway, so that taking it he could reach the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which was his goal, he went to the end of the Salizzada S. Rocco, which now did not seem as narrow as it had a moment ago, when no one at all was walking there, perhaps because now, as he turned into the alleyway, he caught sight of a few pedestrians who were already approaching from the opposite direction, from the San Rocco to the Frari, that is to say in the opposite direction to himself; in any event these few encounters, as each stray pedestrian passed by, felt as if someone were shaking him by the shoulders, saying wake up already, it’s all over, it was just a bad dream, don’t worry about it, that was his mood as he reached the Campo dei S. Rocco where nearly the whole of the little square was filled with sunlight, and there to the left stood the marvelous Scuola Grande di S. Rocco, for whose plan we can thank a certain master builder of the name of Bartolomeo Bon, although for the entire building itself — in other words the entirety of the San Rocco in all of its full glory — our thanks are due to Sante Lombardo and Antonio Scarpagnino, so that after 1549, Giangiacomo dei Grigi had nothing to do but finish it, that is to create the gestures still missing from the structure, so that it could stand in all of its beauty resplendent before the visitors, just as it stood today before him, who even at first went toward the iron gate of the plot of land facing the building and stood there, and turned around to gaze at this creation which in the opinion of all Venice-goers responds to the most exalted and perfect architectonic conception — simply to give himself over not only to the wonder, as he had already stumbled upon this, amazed, when he had been here for the first time, but to his memories as well, because it was, as a matter of speaking, about this too; it was for the sake of this that he had come to Venice, for the sake of this one single building, because once, when he had come here for the first time, he had been so overpowered there inside that in fact he had shuddered; he stood in the sunlight and looked at the elegant façade of the San Rocco, but his gaze strayed again and again to the entrance, where he himself would step inside, as he had stepped inside once before, but not now, he composed himself; now, for the time being, he had to catch his breath, free himself from the horrifying dream of just a few minutes before, to expel from his head this entire nightmarish pursuit, because really, looking at it from here, he thought — amid the smaller crowds of people that already, at the end of the siesta, were inundating here and there between the entrance and exit points of the tiny square — it seemed completely impossible that someone would start pursuing him as soon as he stepped out of the doorway of the pensione, some guy in a pink shirt, a ridiculous gangly sort with his strange S-shaped body, his collapsing knees, his head dangling forward, how could he even have imagined it, and even more so that this figure had targeted him, it was really totally absurd, he decided, because why the hell would anyone be looking for him in Venice, where he knew virtually no one, what reason could there possibly have been for anyone to trail him among the tens of thousands of tourists, especially him, who in the whole God-given world had no ties at all to Italy, let alone Venice, and moreover, he was not one of those who kept coming back here again and again, in pursuit of so-called illusory pleasures, giving himself over to the blank drift of superficial and frankly idiotic raptures — he was not in any way like one of them!? — actually he did not truly admire Venice: as far as he was concerned, Venice reminded him too much of a woman, for him, there was in Venice a kind of immoderate feminine delusion and fraudulence, no, this city was not his cup of tea, though of course he could not deny that it was truly beautiful, that there was in Venice an unparalleled beauty, this strange city — from the Ca’Doro to the San Giovanni e Paolo, from the San Marco to the Accademia, the Hotel Giorgione to La Fenice, and so on — but admiration was denied to him and he did not love Venice, he was instead afraid of it, the way he would be of a murderously cunning individual who ensnares his victims, dazing them, and finally sucking all the strength from them, taking everything away from them that they ever had, then tossing them away on the banks of a canal somewhere, like a rag; yes, this was how he now saw this laughable situation; he didn’t even come here very often, in the course of his long life this was the second time he had been here, and now, he thought, smiling at his own fears, what a crazy, terrifying, perhaps excessive, if he could put it that way, fantastical start, he was fortunate, he added to himself, completely relaxing now in the midst of the crowd, that he didn’t have to go to the Ca’Foscari or the Palazzo Ducale, nowhere at all, he didn’t have to budge from here, and a vaporetto wasn’t much so that he didn’t have to pay a lot; if he wanted, apart from the S. Rocco, he didn’t have to see anything of Venice — just the one single thing he had traveled here to see; the visitation of which was more important to him than his entire mediocre, senseless, barren, and superfluous life.

He began with Titian, because first of all Cavalcasalle had done so, then Fischel and Berenson decisively, then Suida with doubts, and finally in 1955, a certain Coletti reached the definite conclusion that the creator of the painting was none other than Titian, yet this attribution, if the word itself applies, can be accepted only with the same difficulty as that which followed afterward; above all, if we look at it from today, the principles employed were just as baseless as what was stated afterward; in any case Signor Pignatti came along and announced — twice to be exact, in 1955 and 1978 — that all of this Titian-attribution was a mistake, for the analysis of the painted surfaces as well as the dolcezza in the use of color made it clear that it was the circle of Giorgione that could be thanked for the canvas, a view as surprising as much as it was incomprehensible, for he, that is Giorgione, was at that time not considered a religious painter, no pictures of his on sacral themes have survived; the only one we know originating from him on any such motif, the “Castelfranco Madonna,” is a work commissioned to this mysterious genius by Amateo Constanzo for the burial of his son Matteo; in a word, utter confusion dominated the question of who painted the picture, a confusion that was finally crowned by the commencement in 1988 of a mutually reinforcing war of hypotheses, which was begun by Mauro Lucco, who stated: well, my honored ladies and gentlemen, please forgive me, but the painting almost certainly originated from the brush of Giovanni Bellini; let us place it side by side with the work entitled “The Drunkenness of Noah,” which can be seen in Besançon; and after this there was no stopping, Michel Laclotte came along, pointed his short index finger at the “Cristo morto nel sepolcro” and said “Bellini,” and then Anchise Tempestini stepped in, and finally Miss Goffen, and they said “Bellini,” just as did the postcards of scandalously poor quality displayed on the tables behind the ticket counter, unambiguously indicating with no discussion, with not even one tiny question mark at the end, the great Bellini, despite the fact that by then scholars had at their disposal the expert opinion of the distinguished Hans Belting, who considered the authorship of the given painting by Titian as self-evident, and moreover in such a fashion that he was the only one who did not make any argument but simply referred to “the painting by Titian” and that was it; so that the uncertainty could have been absolute had not the Confraternita — containing more than a few Bellini-proponents — closed the matter for once and for all, declaring Giovanni Bellini as the author of the picture, so that after this point no one raised the question again, the matter seemed to be closed and it very well could have remained so, in this atmosphere of mutually exclusive attributions, had not the art historian of the Confraternita, Dr. Agnese Chiari, been troubled by something about this valued treasure of S. Rocco, and not brought it to the attention of Dr. Fatima Terzo, who shortly before the turn of the millennium had paid a visit here from the Vicenza branch of Banca Intesa, that is from the Palazzo Leoni Montanori, she had said that there’s something else here, among all the sensational Tintorettos: a little picture, the whole thing no larger than 56 by 81 cm., clearly belonging to the imago pietatis tradition as posited by Belting and hence referring back to the Byzantine heritage; it was in such poor condition that it deserved a little attention; Dr. Chiari glanced meaningfully at Dr. Terzo, who was responsible for all cultural matters at the bank, while she arranged for her to see in more tranquil surroundings, in the little camarilla on the second floor to the right, what was at play here; it could, she repeated with an innocent face, do with a little repair, because it’s very beautiful, isn’t it, asked Agnesee Chiari, and let the protective brocade fall before her guest in the narrow space of the camarilla, beautiful, replied Dr. Terzo in astonishment upon seeing the picture, so that afterward, with no further discussion, the picture turned up in the hands of the master Egidio Arlango, and the always risky undertaking of restoration work began, the chief goal of which, for Agnese Chiari and the Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, was to bring to a halt the evident disintegration of the picture, its physical stabilization, declared Dr. Chiari to the council members at the voting colloquium of the Confraternita, because truly, in the upper and lower sections of the work, where the canvas had been stretched onto its frame, and was thus at its tautest, serious damage was visible, even to the naked eye, so now, when Mr. Arlango examined it more carefully with his magnifying glass, to note in the inventory where exactly the most serious problems lay, and of what character they were, it became obvious that if no intervention were made, the work would begin to crack apart within a few years at these given spots, the paint would chip off, and hence the damage caused by the long delay would be irreparable; but in the restoration workshop of Mr. Arlango they found other problems as well, here a patch where the strength of the color had waned, there a crown of thorns that had lost its outline, then the faded Greek initial letters on both sides of the head, and the generally dark, seemingly homogeneous background itself, which already cried out with its countless fissures for the hand of Mr. Arlango; so that of course for all of them — the Banca Intesa, Mr. Arlango, and Dr. Agnese Chiari — the undeniable overriding intention was to repair the artwork and halt its further decay; thus, for all of them, but particularly the ambitious art historian, a much more deeply hidden goal was at work: to know, that is to decide through the means of restoration, who was in fact the true painter, and particularly so that they could say it was without doubt Tiziano, or without doubt Bellini, or without a doubt Giorgione, and the San Rocco collection would be enriched by a major artwork of clear attribution, so that Dr. Chiari came to look at the restorer’s workshop nearly every single day, to ask: Giorgione? Tiziano? Giovanni Bellini? — Mr. Arlango, though, did not reply for a long time; in addition, Mr. Arlango, with his squashed-together face, was a person of fairly disagreeable aspect, perhaps because of his physical deformity or perhaps because of something else, he was decidedly humorless, unfriendly, and taciturn, an individual who disliked strangers coming into his workshop; he didn’t even pause to answer if someone asked a question but only spoke when it was truly necessary, and in this case it was certainly not necessary one bit, because nothing had been determined, and how could anything have been determined anyway; when they had photographed the painting from all angles, with the greatest possible caution, and had begun to remove the canvas from the frame — even figuring out how to perform this task took a week to decide — then the examination of the frame itself followed, and Dr. Chiari realized that she had to deal with Mr. Arlango in an altogether different manner, that it would be better to let him work undisturbed, to reduce the number of her visits; indeed, she asked for his advice as to when it would be good to come back, to which of course the broadest smile possible appeared on Mr. Arlango’s sour face as he happily announced, Come back in a year’s time, then abruptly turning away from Dr. Chiari, he addressed himself to another painting, as he began to dig away with a tiny scraping knife at the joists of the frame, his back turned toward her, and the broad smile of a moment ago became a prolonged smile of satisfaction displaying his yellow teeth; this smile lasted for quite a while, this inimitable gaiety practically affixed to his sour face, so that the yellow teeth stinking of nicotine only disappeared beneath the chapped lips in Mr. Arlango’s squashed-together countenance when he heard, over the sounds of the knife scraping against the frame, someone leaving the studio and closing the door quietly behind herself.

Mr. Arlango could have said that, contrary to all expectations, the picture was not at all in as bad a condition as would have been expected at first sight, and he could have said that this was due to the picture’s already having been restored five or six decades previously; for if, within the internal parlance of Mr. Arlango, this earlier restoration could be termed philistine and irresponsible, it was nonetheless helpful, very helpful, that the original canvas had been backed up against and then stretched onto another canvas, and the reinforced picture had been placed again upon a frame; they, however, had made use of three unacceptable procedures, as it happened; for one, Signor Arlango muttered to himself, they did not take into account how the paint was cracking and peeling away from the canvas; two — he counted to himself on his fingers — they retouched, indeed repainted the right eyebrow of Christ our Lord, the hair of Christ our Lord, and the shoulder of Christ our Lord; and three, grabbing his thumb, index and middle fingers and squeezing them together in rage, they had simply smeared the surface of the painting with some cheap junk, some kind of lacquer-like substance, which in the course of time had oxidized and yellowed, and with that, the fate of the picture was sealed, because that for the most part ruined it, more precisely — and with the increasing inner force of his words he punched into the air — they falsified the original effect of the painting, chopping up and finally destroying the picture itself, because this had caused the entire artwork to change, which is unforgivable on the part of a restorer, whose business it is precisely to give back to the work the spirit of its original creation, but these ones, Mr. Arlango motioned with his hand resignedly, they could not have been restorers, a restorer would never do such a thing, methods such as these are used only by amateurs, by dilettante art-bunglers, and pronouncing these words — dilettante art-bunglers — Mr. Arlango calmed down; because when in the course of his work he came into contact with dilettantes, he pronounced his judgment, named them for what they were, and that was that, he was finished, no longer bothering with the matter, only with how to render them harmless, if it was still possible; at such times as now, he fell into deep concentration, looking at the picture for hours on end, thinking through what was to be done, what work must be completed, in what order it should proceed, what materials to use, what examinations to be performed — then he set to work, and at such times it really was not desirable to disturb him, for that matter it was not desirable to disturb him in general, as Dr. Agnese Chiari had already experienced in her own case; so she couldn’t have known what was going on in the workshop, nothing about the examinations, about what materials were being used, what working methods, and in what order they were being performed — so when the day arrived, that is to say when the examinations had begun and the picture was under the illumination of a special X-ray machine, the result was so surprising that even Signor Arlango hardly dared risk not informing the client, because he knew what was at stake, and it was hardly incidental — to establish, in other words, who was the artist — although looking at the picture closely, it had already been clear to him, from the nature of the draftsmanship as well as the varying quality of the details, that the work was the result of the effort of not one, but two artists; but he himself was quite surprised as — in the course of X-raying the picture, perceiving the difference in the pigments as well as the layers of imprimatura and gesso lying on top of each other, trying to determine their quality, condition, and kind — he glimpsed the name, the signature painted in the usual manner of the cinquecento onto the wooden board itself, it was placed deliberately — or in any event, before the painting of the work had begun — into the pictorial space: then he no longer hesitated, he notified the Confraternita to send someone, for he had something important to show them on the picture, so that after Dr. Agnese Chiari from the San Rocco had arrived once again, Mr. Arlango merely placed the picture behind the X-ray device, chased his guest out of the workshop, pressed the remote control in his hand, withdrew the slide, and developed it, and only then did he call the guest waiting in the corridor back in, sat her down in a chair, but said nothing to her, altogether he said not one word, only snatched up the X-ray image now hanging from a string tautened across the workshop window and handed it to her, withdrawing wordlessly to his work table, and he made as if he were scraping away at something again; but all the while he was observing the client, who looked at the picture for a while in silence, then got up from her chair, coming closer to see better in the light, but there was no doubt: in the upper left-hand corner of the X-ray image was written legibly the name VICTOR and on the other side BELLINAS, and Dr. Chiari just looked, and she didn’t want to believe what she was seeing, because it just couldn’t be, and she just looked, looked at the name, her gaze now fixed on Victor, now on Bellinas, it wasn’t possible that this almost nameless nobody could have. . it was unimaginable, nobody was going to believe her, but still the board of San Rocco, all waited with bated breath for her ceremonious announcement: my dear colleagues, it has been determined, to the exclusion of all doubt, that the creator of this work is Tiziano, or my dear colleagues, now there is no doubt whatsoever that the picture was painted by Giorgione, or possibly, I have the pleasure to inform you that, due to the result of our investigations, the creator of this exceptional work shall no longer be the subject of uncertainty, for it has been demonstrated that the author is Giovanni Bellini and no one else — except that it was someone else, Agnese Chiari now thought to herself, and consternated, thought it best to sit back down in the chair, because the name was finally so clearly legible, Victor Bellinas, who was none other than Bellini’s — the great Bellini, Giovanni’s — most indefatigable assistant, about whom — Dr. Chiari tried to call forth from her memory — we know almost nothing, so insignificant was he; of course, there are perhaps one or two pictures that can be attributed to him, “Crocifisso adorato da un devoto” in the Carrara Museum in Bergamo, and maybe a few others; a fresher memory of a painting, perhaps of two young men, loomed forth from Dr. Chiari’s memory, but in reality he was not known as a painter, only a painter’s assistant, to whom Bellini left part of his estate, that is after the loss of his wife and the decease of his son, and he did not marry again, he had no heirs, for his bad relationship with his brother Gentile, as well as his even worse relationship with his father Jacopo, was common knowledge at the time, so for him it would have seemed most fitting to adopt this faithful, industrious, trustworthy assistant, this Vittore di Matteo, as he was originally called, to adopt him simply as his grandson and bequeath to him the most valuable of what would remain after he was gone, that is to say the workshop, counted as the most illustrious in Venice in 1516, when Bellini died; this was bequeathed as an inheritance to the disciple of Venice’s most famous painter as the chief asset along with, Agnese Chiari thought to herself — it now seemed, one or two unfinished pictures; she now rose from her seat and, as the master restorer continued to scrape away exhibiting the greatest possible indifference to the matter, she went over to the picture again, looked at it more thoroughly, and perhaps not so accidentally reached the sudden conclusion as the workshop’s master had reached at the very beginning, for she now saw at once that the head, well, it was somehow different from the whole, ravishing in and of itself, while everything else seemed to have been painted in a completely divergent, greatly inferior fashion: it was a flash, but Agnese Chiari understood instantly that the head was Bellini’s, and the rest had been completed after the death of his great mentor by Vittore di Matteo, called Belliniano in his honor, according to his own talent, which was not exactly scandalous but just in no way comparable to the genius of the creator of the head; there stood the envoy of San Rocco and she did not know what to do; should she try to talk with this dreadful Mr. Arlango and ask his opinion — what for? — she cast aside the idea, it would be enough to persuade the council of the Confraternita of San Rocco to swallow this surprising result, and accept that life is surely a little more complicated than those present here, the current generation, would like to admit; that is to say the picture is completely immaculate, Agnese Chiari explained to the council, enthusiastically raising again and again the enlargement taken from the X-ray image, it is immaculate in every possible meaning of the word, she said, in once sense because master Arlango, after necessary chemical testing, mixed a certain solvent with which the “protective lacquer” originating from the unknown yet dilettantish hand was removed, and now it shines forth in its own immaculate, its own original character; but it is immaculate in the sense too that we now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who painted it, at which point the members of the council exchanged significant glances and looked at the art historian with great expectation, and if they were not made unequivocally happy by what they heard, it was because, now was it Bellini — or not Bellini? — they asked each other; do you understand? the question went back and forth, I for one don’t, came the answer from here and there, and as Dr. Chiari could see just how difficult it was for the council members to take in the truth, she repeated again and again that the head, and her voice resounded triumphantly in the room — was Bellini’s; the picture, however, she continued, originates from various hands; it can be hypothesized that this certain Belliniano found this marvelous head among the canvases that had been begun by his master in the workshop bequeathed to him, and cleverly, so that he could be there and yet not be there — he could hardly bear to write the name of his own person, having finally emerged from his master’s shadow, and yet he could not bear not to write it — he accordingly wrote his own name, dividing it between the left and the right sides of the head, and then painted over it, in other words concealing the entire thing; for surely he knew well that he could sell it as a Bellini painting for a huge sum anywhere and anytime, whereas an unfinished Bellini, actually a hardly started Bellini — not to mention, if he were to betray that apart from the head he had painted the entire picture — wouldn’t get him anything, only a few coins, so he painted what was missing as best he could; the three Greek letters on either side of the head, the naked torso, the shoulder, the two hands as they intertwine in the front of the picture, and he created for all of this a dark background, so that the face, whose enthralling power he would never have been able to conjure up himself, would burst forth as it were from the darkness, with its boundless docility, something like that occurred, it is certain — Dr. Chiari reported to the members of the council — and so the endless dilly-dallying could finally come to an end, at which the council members, slightly confused, began to nod their heads, and consented to everything that the art historian recommended, namely that the painting should not be put back into its old corner in the Albergo, but that it should be put on a stand in a prominent spot in the great hall, and an article should be written about it, because they could be completely certain — Agnese Chiari reassured her colleagues — that the art historians, if they had not done so before, would now take notice of this picture, so let it be displayed with all the respect due to a great creator, it should be lit with a spotlight and then they would see that the name of S. Rocco would become even more illustrious, for it was not any old finding that they had been able to discover with this Vittore, mark my words, repeated Dr. Chiari, everyone will be talking about this; in which, however, the scholar was greatly mistaken, because in total a notice of a few lines was published in a professional journal for restorers, penned by an unknown art historian, Giovanna Nepi Sciré, and the whole thing remained confined to the pages of Restituzioni 2000, which, because of the far too specialized nature of the journal’s orientation, could not reach the personages most affected, so that they knew nothing of this discovery, not Tempestini, not Goffer, not Belting; and the wider public, finally, knew nothing at all, so that now, standing in the square before the San Rocco in the sunlight that filtered through the iron gate, as he made ready to enter the building at last and seek out the work for the second time in its usual spot; inside, on the ground floor, the vendor behind the ticket desk awaited the tourists, continually arranging the exact same postcard with the exact same signature taken from the famous painting, exactly as eleven years ago, when he had come here for the first time, had entered and come into sudden contact with the Dead Christ, up there on the second floor, the little room opening up on the left from the wide landing, in the corner of the Albergo, not even lit by a single light.

The group with which he had arrived did not, as a matter of fact, wish to return to the heart of the city; due to the general fatigue, the direction proposed seemed like the journey back, but nobody wanted to turn back, no one was thinking that this Venetian excursion had to come to an end, and they would return to the station; they wanted to rest, that was the truth, but not to have it come to an end, to relax, and eat and drink, because they were truly exhausted from having walked all day; when he proposed that, before sitting down in a restaurant somewhere, they should absolutely, at the very least, see the San Rocco while it was still open, at first a uniform and drawn-out “no” was the response, the children in particular began to whimper and then to scream at full volume at even the mere mention of a museum visit, but then he said that it was possible to sit down in the San Rocco, and that according to the guidebook there was, on the Campo San Rocco, or nearby, a fountain, moreover on the way, there was also a very special ice-cream parlor, well with this he was victorious, the company began to incline toward the idea, good, they said, San Rocco, fine, but this is the last stop before the restaurant and if there was neither a fountain nor ice-cream parlor, they would wring his neck, mark their words — they were merry and intoxicated with what is termed the dazzling beauty of Venice, and there was an ice-cream vendor on the Campo S. Margarita, where they suddenly emerged, slightly diverging from the direct route, but then, finding a shadowy spot, when they withdrew toward the wall of one building to lick their ice cream, they noticed that there were at least two attractive-seeming restaurants open for business on the square; first they tried to talk him out of the whole idea of San Rocco, saying that Tintoretto — it was because of him that they had come — was just an overweening “something,” as one lady of the group put it, so they should just drop the whole thing; then, however, when they saw that he really was dead set on it, and wanted to go there no matter what, they advised him that this Campo S. Margarita was alluring enough for everyone to sit down in one of the two restaurants, and if he was so set upon it, well he could go, on the map San Rocco wasn’t so far from here, and really it wasn’t, although once again he got lost at the Rio Foscari, but then someone helped him, pointing him in the right direction, so that barely ten minutes later he was already standing in front of San Rocco; as it was too hot on the square he went straight into the building, thinking he would have a quick look, that he wouldn’t miss Tintoretto after all, then hurry back, for his feet were really burning by now, and he too was certainly quite hungry and thirsty, so just Tintoretto, he decided, he would regret it later on if, citing his fatigue, he had to admit having seen nothing of it, so he went inside, buying an entrance ticket that was more expensive than usual but forgetting to take the museum’s guide along with the ticket, so that at first he thought this is the whole thing, the ground floor, that it was the entire Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and he began to look for the Tintorettos and even found eight of them, but not a single one had any effect on him at all, that is to say that these Tintorettos were not the real thing, here in this one large room, that was cold, not very beautiful, and a little forbidding, with a grumbling ticket-puncher at the entrance and behind her, on a few tables, the offerings of cheap reproductions by the illustrious names of the place, and an equally grumpy employee, so can this really be right, he reflected, it’s inconceivable that there are no real Tintorettos here, and he was about to start back to the ticket desk to inquire where the real Tintorettos were, when to his left he spied a broad staircase, and as there was no sign on it stating that tourists were not allowed, he began to walk up it, a little timorously; his first steps were hesitant, but then, when no one called after him, he grew ever more decisive, and so wound his way up to the landing, like someone who knew from the start exactly where he was going, and there at the landing he realized he was a fool, a yokel from eastern Europe, an irredeemably insensate figure, for at the landing the two fresco panels by Pietro Negri and Antonio Zanchi revealed that he was in the right place now, that this was where he should have come right away, and then, on this upper floor — of course it was the same with everyone who comes here for the first time, it was also his first time up here — it then occurred to him that he had forgotten to catch his breath, because it was so unexpected, and for him this heavy magnificence awaiting the visitor fell so unexpectedly upon him: the ceiling painted in gold, the richly molded stucco, and in the midst of all this the real Tintoretto, his overpowering paintings striking him with such force, and the geometrical patterns in the marble floor beneath his feet left him so taken aback by their physical beauty that he didn’t know how not to step on them; so that his movements were only directed by that, and there remained still a kind of uncertainty as if he were continually dizzy, and he was dizzy, at first he stepped onto the marble floor with a bad feeling, as if he were not worthy to take these steps, and at first he didn’t even dare to look at the ceiling for a long time, for he felt he was really losing his balance, good lord, he sighed, as he slowly began to slide here and there, he had no idea where to begin or with what, because what should he do with these real but gigantic Tintorettos, what should he do with this blinding light affixed to the windows, for in this light, things were being laid open to him that he simply did not deserve, he thought, troubled, then he started off again, went over to the facing wall, and quickly sat down upon a chair, an uncomfortable modern one that could be folded shut and re-opened, an entire row of which was assembled all along both of the lengthwise walls, and just then he could have collected himself a bit, when from the back of the hall the guard headed very decisively toward him, and pointed at something behind the chairs: where underneath the windows, every meter or so, there was some kind of paper on the wall, stuck onto the marvelous carved decorations, the guard pointed at these and muttered something in Italian, of which he understood not one word, until finally one of the papers was pressed into his hand, where it was also written in English, DO NOT SIT DOWN!; nodding, he sprang up and not asking where else, or why the chairs had even been put there in the first place, he slowly began to walk by the windows, but the sunlight kept blinding him, so that he could hardly even see the huge Tintorettos; finally he made his way around and once again began the slow sliding, here gaping at the ceiling, here at the Tintorettos, and so it went, and he could not even conceive that, in this palatial hall, such bounty as had been created, marvelous but still too weighty for him, could even be possible, because it was too much, he was too weighted down by this rich beauty and excess, so that it was with relief that he discovered an open door at the end of the hall, which opened onto a little side-room; he quickly scurried in, for he believed that there would be less splendor here, and chiefly that he wouldn’t be so much under the gaze of the guard, who — as he was the only visitor capable of trying something, as he had dared to sit down — perpetually attempted to stand in his path, practically chasing him, not leaving him in peace for a moment; of course the guard acted as if he weren’t watching him, but he kept returning to the door of the little side-room to see what he was up to, but what could he have done, he asked himself, but slowly inch along the walls before the colossal paintings, and just as he was about to leave the room, with the intention of quitting the museum as soon as possible — as the museum-guard was too much for him, as was indeed the entire palace — and he now really did need to rest, he needed a rest from all this unparalleled yet complex pomp and monumentality and he was about to go back into the large hall from the smaller side-room, when he noticed that there stood a picture-stand in the corner — buried away as if it weren’t any object of great consideration — and the picture-stand held a little painting; his gaze happened upon it and he stepped back with a serious demeanor, to reassure the guard who was staring at him again, he stood in front of it like a proper museum-goer, or at least how he imagined a proper museum-goer should stand, he stood in front of the little painting, which depicted a half-naked Christ, whose head was so gently inclined to one side, and on his face was such an endless and otherworldly peace, he could not determine whether the figure was lying or standing, in any event, somewhere in front of the stomach the two hands intertwined, and the slightly awkwardly-painted blood could be clearly seen as it dripped from the wounded hands, but on the face there was not the slightest trace of suffering, it was a very unusual likeness; Christ’s hair, shining gold, fell in curling locks onto his slender shoulders, and again and again that terrible docility and resignation because — and he had discovered this first — in contrast to all the tranquility and peace, a profound desolation inexpressible in words was upon that face, and the whole image shone forth from a darkness, like gold against the deepest night, he looked, he looked at this strange Christ, and he could not bear to look away, he was no longer bothered by the guard, who just now was not only looking in but actually standing in the doorway with the most obvious expression of suspicion, to watch him to see if he was about to attempt another scandalous move as he had just done in the other room with the chairs, but although this happened, he didn’t see him anymore, he didn’t even realize that the guard was watching him, just then he saw nothing, for he was looking at Christ’s eyes, to figure out just what made this Christ so distinctive and demanded his full attention, he looked into those eyes which were so mesmerizing, because that is what happened: the picture, this imago pietatis-like figure of Christ had mesmerized him, he searched for some point of support but there was no helpful explanation, not under the picture nor on the stand which had been set up, nor on the wall before which he stood, nothing regarding the painter or the subject, they had simply put up this Christ-torso by the wall in the corner, as if the exhibition planners of San Rocco wanted to say — well, we have this picture as well, it’s not too interesting but as long as it’s around we’ll just put it over here, so have a look at it if you’re interested, and he was interested, he really couldn’t look away from it, and then he suddenly realized why: both of Christ’s eyes were shut, ah yes, he sighed, like someone who had found the clue, but he had not found it at all, and that was even more unsettling, because he had to look some more, now however he looked at just the two closed eyelids, and he had to endure the knowledge that he wasn’t finding out the clue to the strangeness, he looked again at the whole — the fragile shoulders, the head inclined to one side, the mouth, the fine wisps of beard, the scrawny arms, and the two hands placed so oddly together — when suddenly he became aware that the eyelid of Christ seemed, as it were, to have moved a bit, as if these two eyelids had fluttered; he had not lost his sanity, so he said to himself no that’s impossible, he looked away then looked again, and the two eyes flickered yet again, this is sheer impossibility, he thought, frightened, and he was on the point of abruptly leaving the room, for it was clear that his fatigue was playing games with him, or that he had simply stared at the picture for too long and was hallucinating, so he went out of the little room and passing the guard, set off decisively for the staircase, but there, before he actually placed his foot onto the stairs, he thought again and turned, just as decisively as he had gone out, he came back in, even looking at the guard, and this helped him too, for the expression on the guard’s face was easy to judge as he turned abruptly back, and who was looking at him even more suspiciously than before, if that was possible; it was clear that as far as the guard was concerned he was an insolent nutcase, whose every move had to be watched carefully; and actually there was something to that, he was not entirely certain that he hadn’t gone mad, because what was up with this whole Christ in there, he asked himself, he did not go into the little room but, defying the guard, plunked himself down in the chair nearest to the little room; the guard, however, did not wish, or rather did not see the point in making him get up; here, however, he did perceive from the corner of his eye the notice printed on the pieces of paper telling people not to sit down; let’s consider this one more time, he thought with a quaking stomach, is this possible? — it is not possible, inside there is a picture, a body of Christ, with the head bent to one side, a gentle abandoned Christ; someone painted him, someone turned him into an ideal, and someone is looking at him, in this case myself, he said, and he wasn’t quite sure if he were speaking aloud or not, in any event the guard was coming quite close to him, so that when he decided that he would go in to confirm everything, he practically brushed up against his clothes, the two of them didn’t fit into the doorway, and he stood again before the torso of Christ, he constrained himself not to look at it for a bit, but then of course he looked at it, because this is why he had come in, and the two eyelids of Christ flickered again, but now he could not look away at all, but rather his gaze was fixed, and he looked gaping at these closed eyes, he knew without a doubt that the eyes of this Christ were trembling, and that they would tremble again, because this Christ WANTED TO OPEN HIS EYES. . but then, as he realized this, he was already in the great hall on his way toward the staircase, already running down the stairs, turning onto the landing and he was already on the lower floor, out from beside the postcard vendor and the ticket-seller, out into the open air, into the throngs of people who, suspecting nothing, were undulating here and there in the friendly sunshine of the Campo San Rocco.

He had been here for the last time eleven years ago, but apart from his hair having turned completely gray, it was as if nothing at all had changed, and this was shocking to him, because normally at the very least a cobblestone is overturned, a gutter-spout breaks off, or where there was a pizzeria there is now a café, or there is a new fountain, or something like that; here, however — he looked again all around the square — there was not, in the entire God-given world, one single difference; yes, it was true that the Scuola Grande had been restored, but it had only become a little cleaner, a little more uniform; it had not changed, it was neither fresher nor livelier nor brighter, and not even, as in “modern times,” as so often happens in other cities, when a building is restored, because in that case it really is restored and an effort is made to return it to an image of its original state, which is a complete impossibility; for every material is different, the air is different, the humidity is different, the pollution is different, and those who endure all of this, who look at it, who walk around it are all different as well; here, however, no such error had been committed; everything in a word had remained as it was, he determined, drawing closer to the sunlit part of the square, he now faced the magnificent windows of the main façade; he sat down by the iron gate, the sun warming his limbs pleasantly, and nothing remained from his being chased around by the pink shirt than a failed mistaken story, which perhaps had never even happened, although once again the article on the front page of the Corriere della Sera came into his mind and with that — completely irrelevantly and senselessly — his memory somehow cast up the word Gehenna, translated as the word of Jesus in the Hungarian Bible as signifying Hell, yet in actuality signifying Ge-Hinnom, near Jerusalem, where waste was burnt, so that as he observed the integrated beauty of the building, and as he allowed the sun to warm his aged body, all of this became so utterly inappropriate to where he actually was — a thought-fragment without meaning, zigzagging and fleeting, brought about by mere coincidence, just like Pink-Shirt himself, as well as his pursuit and this whole trip here — and all of this had so little, so little to do with the scene of normality proffered by the crowds walking around on the square, it had so little, so little to do with him, or why he was in Venice now, or with what finally awaited him there inside the building, so that consciously and finally he wiped it all out from his brain, if he could still not yet summon up the courage to head inside immediately, for there inside, on the second floor, was the one significant thing in his entire meaningless existence: and his entire meaningless existence, as it were, bore down upon that painting of small scale; he had thought of it so often in the past eleven years, had so often conjured it up, so often taking into his hands that little frame containing the reproduction sold in the form of a postcard and allowing him to preserve a likeness of the painting even if of horrendous quality, and so often had he tried to discover how what had happened could have happened up there in the corner of the Albergo — so now, as he stood twenty or twenty-five steps from the entrance, he could resolve to go in only with difficulty; the sun, however, was beginning to set, the shadows grew ever longer on the square, the strip of sunlight was narrowing more and more, so that he had to consider that the museum had opening hours as well, of which the last two were necessary to him, for this was his plan: to come in fact, just before closing time, when there would perhaps be the fewest people inside, there would be two hours, then back to S. Polo 2366, a dinner with the friendly owner of the pension, then the next morning away from Venice, back to the Aeroporto S. Marco for the plane, for this was the question: what had happened then, and how it could have happened, and does that kind of thing happen generally, as well as the larger question of what if it happens again, if there will be a repetition of this. . something, since he could not pronounce the word miracle, even to himself, or perhaps he didn’t feel like pronouncing it; he cleared his throat for a while as if anyone in the crowd could have heard his thoughts, but well no, so he left off clearing his throat, he got up, went into the entrance, bought a ticket — seven euros? he asked in surprise, remembering the entrance fee differently — and like a blind man who knows the way with dead certainty — he was already hurrying forward in his black oxfords, which clattered on the marble floors, ringing out so clearly that the postcard seller and the woman at the ticket desk, who had already seen all kinds here, gazed after him with ever-rising indignation — in vain, the gray head commanding respect — until he reached the other side of the room, the entrance to the staircase in the middle, and then up the stairs to the right — onto the landing, and he was already standing in the upper hall of the Scalone, with its breathtaking magnificence, but he didn’t even look up at the ceiling or at the walls, or down at the marble floor, he just immediately turned to the left and went into the Albergo, he instantly turned left and was standing there in the corner, where the picture-stand should have been, but nothing stood in this corner, the Albergo had been completely rearranged, there were some sort of Renaissance chairs in it, and this room, which had originally served as the working area of the person who managed the daily affairs of the Scuola, was filled with them, only the ceilings were left untouched, only the walls were left untouched, everywhere the same pictures were hanging, of course again Tintoretto, once a member of the order; but the special painting-stands from the Albergo, upon which two works had been displayed, one of them the work he now sought, were nowhere to be seen; but there’s nothing now, all’s been swept clean, what has happened here, he looked around uncomprehendingly, what have they done here, he began to pace nervously from one side of the Albergo to the other, but the picture wasn’t anywhere, and then suddenly the same convulsion was squeezing his stomach together and he was struck by the same cold draft as when he was being chased near the Frari, the same convulsion and the same chill, he straggled here and there, I have to find someone whom I can get to understand what I want, he thought, and began to head toward someone who looked like a guard, who sat in one of the chairs in the back row of the great hall, visibly deeply immersed in whatever he was reading, of course all the while taking in everything that was going on in the great hall, this cannot be imitated, it is not possible to guess how they do it, impossible to figure out; he could feel, however, that the attendant noticed him immediately as he reeled from the thought that the picture was no longer here, as he appeared at the door of the Albergo in the oxfords that banged and clanged strangely against the marble floor, and headed toward him, the guard saw the figure with the snow-white hair clearly but he did not move, he didn’t even look up from the book, on the contrary before he even got there he turned over the leaf and ruffled the pages a little, slightly raising his head like someone who has reached the beginning of a new page, so when he heard the question, in a makeshift patchwork of Italian-Spanish-French-English, asking where the little picture was, and was shown its approximate size and where it had been, inside in the left-hand corner of the Albergo on an easel-stand, in other words he was shown rather than spoken to, the guard spread open his hands, and shook his head, indicating unequivocally that he did not understand what the visitor wanted, and he was already lowering himself to sit down and read again, but at this the visitor was visibly in despair, and began to explain even more vehemently, now mixing his own language in with Italian, and he just pointed and gesticulated, at which point the guard once again and for the last time shook his head and signaled with his hands that he didn’t understand, the visitor should realize that he didn’t understand — and with that he finally sat down in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, he clearly hated tourists and especially their questions; he opened his book, then, with an irritated expression, began to try to find where he had left off before he was interrupted, and the visitor, in his helplessness, left him there and set off, forward, blindly, the Tintorettos on the colossal walls just hanging, hanging next to him, when suddenly, like someone whose foot has grown a root into the ground, he stopped short, pressed his head forward, and straining his eyes in the front part of the room, bathed in a rather dim light, he gaped in the direction of the gigantic scene of San Rocco placed in exactly the center of the wall, more precisely he gaped straight ahead, to the left of the Altarpiece, because that is where it was, that is where they had put it, from there it gazed at him, from a distance — the great hall had been rearranged, so that the scene of San Rocco was separated from the rest of the hall by a somewhat bulky knee-high marble balustrade, and the picture-stand — as if it were an ordinary easel — had been placed within this area, just enough toward the back so that no visitor would be able to touch it physically, and thus no harm could come to it, yet close enough, and brilliantly lit in the dimness, so that whoever wished could feel himself directly in its presence; and this is what he wished; he left definitively behind him the museum guard leafing through his book and slowly, ever more slowly, sliding his feet forward ever so cautiously, so that the nerve-wracking heel guards would barely brush against the floor, he went forward, he went until the black oxford with the reinforced soles came up against the three broad steps leading directly upward to the marble balustrade, so that one could, if one chose to do so, get as close as possible to the picture; he still wanted to get as close as possible to the picture, but as he stood there, it disturbed him so much to see Christ once again shining from the darkness, so much did it affect him that he couldn’t even bear to look properly, so that he didn’t even see anything properly, and in particular not the picture as a whole, for he saw only details, his gaze jumped from one detail to another, as if his intention to take in the entire picture with his troubled gaze was deliberately made impossible by his very own self, with this jumping around from detail to detail; suddenly, then, he looked around, and felt himself to be ridiculous, like a hysteric, he thought, and stepped back onto the floor, obliged as he did so to look ahead toward the steps, so that he could bear to descend them, so when he faced it again, he had to look upward again, and by that point he had calmed down somewhat, there were hardly any people around, just the museum guard, sitting in the back with his book, the conditions were very nearly ideal, he could have said, all was silent, for now the Tintorettos and the opulent woodcarvings on the wall had swallowed up even the last echo from his shoes, there was silence and complete peacefulness, just an elderly couple with cameras dangling from their necks, but they were far away, near the entrance of the Albergo; he looked at the picture, he looked at Christ, and that which so laughably had not succeeded at first was now self-evident, that is he looked Christ in the face, finally he looked at the two closed eyes, and suddenly he felt very warm, with not even one knot in his stomach or chill in his body, nothing but this warmth that inundated him; he took one step back and then he felt he was tired: he had to sit down, he mumbled perhaps in an undertone, and he looked back at the guard, but he did not look like someone who was about to leap up and come running over here if he took a seat, so not even bothering with the strips of paper placed behind the chairs just as they had been eleven years ago, he lowered himself into the seat closest to the picture of Christ, to look at it from there; he waited for perhaps a minute and then realized with relief that the guard had not even pricked up his ears, he just kept on reading, and so he seated himself more comfortably and began to look with all of his strength to see what remained of the Christ of eleven years ago, he looked with all of his strength and he now dared to risk resting his gaze solely onto Christ’s eyes, he sat motionless, turned a little to the left so as to take in the canvas, and his gaze sunk deeper into the eyes of Christ and he waited, he waited to see if the eyelashes would quiver, and if what had happened once in this building would happen yet again, he looked at the painting, sitting rigidly; a light had been set up and the entire thing was perhaps overly illuminated; this light, however, made every detail perfectly visible, even from here, from the chair: the endless solitude of the naked torso, the shoulders and arms painted rather awkwardly — an awkwardness that showed only more plainly their fragility; and he saw perfectly that the two eyes were not flickering, but slowly opening — he was so frightened that he quickly looked at the right eye as well to see if what had occurred with the left eye was true, but then he lost his clarity of vision, the two eyes once again returned to a state of being closed, what is going on here, am I hallucinating or is this some optical illusion, what is this, he bent forward and lowered his elbows to his knees, and buried his face in his hands, then he looked around again to see if anyone was watching him, but nothing, the elderly couple was still here, how much time had passed anyway? — then others came in as well, a middle-aged man, alone, then two young girls who immediately began to play with one of the mirrors placed by the table for the museum visitors, allowing them, if they held it the right way, to take a closer look at any part of the ceiling ornamentation that might interest them; altogether that was who was there and no one bothered with him, with the figure hunched forward, just looking at the image of Christ, just looking and not even moving, BUT HE IS OPENING HIS EYES, he registered within himself; then again he tried to muster the courage to fix his gaze onto the two eyes of Christ, BUT HOW DARK are these eyes, it was spine-chilling as although NOW THEY REALLY WERE ALMOST COMPLETELY OPEN, you could hardly see the pupils, and nothing of the white of the eyes, it was completely clouded, a dark obscurity lay in these eyes, and it seemed unbearable that this dark obscurity was emanating such an endless sadness, and not the sadness of one who suffers but of one who has suffered — but not even that; he got up, and then leaned back in the chair, it is not a question here of suffering but only of sorrow, a sorrow impossible to grasp in its entirety, and entirely incomprehensible to him, an immeasurable sorrow, he looked into Christ’s eyes and he saw nothing else there, just this pure sorrow, as if it were a sorrow without cause, he froze at the thought of it, SORROW, JUST LIKE THAT, FOR EVERYTHING, for creation, for existence, for beings, for time, for suffering and for passion, for birth and destruction — and suddenly a noise of some kind struck his ears, his head cleared for an instant, and after a while he realized that it was sifting in from outside to here, oh, these strollers on the square, it’s coming from there, he thought, then he was struck with terror at the thought of Christ and his sorrow, and outside, the crowds, mostly young boys and girls teeming merrily, he recalled the people he had seen outside; this incomprehensible sorrow, it burst into him, was somehow lost in the corso of young boys and girls outside; everything, however, is still there and everything now is like that, and everything now is still there, and everything is like that — BUT FOR WHAT, something within him asked, and he felt this question as if he had been struck by lightning, not the flash of the lightning of recognition, however, but a flash of the lightning of shame — for he was ashamed that it had occurred like this, that here was Christ in the fullest and most horrible sense of the word — an orphan — and here is Christ REALLY AND TRULY, but no one needed him — time had passed him by, passed him by, and now He was saying farewell, for He was leaving this earth, he shuddered as he heard these sentences in his head, and oh my God what now, what horrible thoughts — I must get up, he decided, I’ve finally seen what I came here to see, now I can go, so that he saw himself as he got up, and went down the steps, stepping out among the youths of the Campo San Rocco, and he mixed into the eddy of early evening; he didn’t move, he just sat there in the chair and saw himself heading down the stairs, he saw himself leaving the building and boarding a vaporetto, forfeiting his dinner and leaving his bags at S. Polo 2366, having himself taken from San Tomà directly to the Stazione, and from there to the Aeroporto San Marco, to escape from Venice, back to where he came from, yes, he saw how he really set off down the famous steps — only he didn’t know that for him there would never be any exit from this building, not ever.