Seiobo There Below (13 page)

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