Seiobo There Below (21 page)

He went to get the linden himself, and as a matter of fact, he really would have liked to complete the entire commission on his own, but the others in the artel — among them his son Feodosiy — were convinced that the master did not wish to work alone, for surely they could, just as they had been doing for years, help him out with this or that, finally — already this was somewhat typical of the era as a whole, and many such matters were similarly concluded out of a love of comfort — it was permitted, and so they allowed him to select for himself the linden wood best suited to the original Rublev; but already they did not allow him to squander his sacred gift on completing the planing, the joining, and the gluing of the icon board, or the formation of the two sponki, that is the two crossbars crafted from beech wood, whose function it was to hold the board together, as well as the hollowing out of the space for the two sponki, the so-called “sponki vrezniye vstrechniye,” they did not allow him to complete this work alone; there first came, accordingly, someone who sawed and planed and hollowed and fitted and glued and assembled the icon board and tautened the tightening bars, then someone came who completed the work pertaining to the sponki, then the polye was created to demarcate the border formed by the luzga — that is the border-area beveled inward — and the kovcheg — done by the one who was best at this — followed the direction of the luzga, already drawn; deepening the paintable surface, as it were framing it; because just as in the case of all other icons, the very first order of business was to ensure that the polye, the luzga, and the kovcheg were in good order, moreover in this particular case it was also mandatory for all three parts to correspond to a hair’s breadth to the original, that is to say the polye had to be in the same place and of the same extent, the luzga had to be beveled in the same way and at the same angle, and at last the kovcheg had to be as deep and as straight as related by the descriptions of the original in Radonezh, so that after this the priming-master of the artel could take up his work and with his assistants prepare for the canvas that would be glued onto the surface to be painted; the levkas — that is the diluted glutinous liquid — mixed with chalk dust, was applied, in this case, in exactly eight layers, to the icon board, and when finally the last layer of levkas had dried, and it had become as smooth and clean as it possibly could, then there came the znamenshchik, the composition master, who was one of the most important personages in the artel, and especially here in the artel of such a famous painter, for he was the one who, for instance, could now, upon the surface of the completely dried levkas, sketch in, following the outlines of the Radonezh drawing originating from the Master’s hand, with unerring assurance and fidelity, the three angels, infinitely gentle, with their enormous wings, gathered around the table; and behind them the outlines of the church, the tree, and the cliff, the table with the chalice and the platter filled up with veal; the entire artel stood behind his back with bated breath, as his instrument, the grafia, did not quiver even once in his hand; all of this, of course, from the assembly of the icon boards to the work of the znamenshchik proceeded self-evidently in such a way that it was not just the assistants and master of the artel who observed each other, but at each individual phase of the work the Master himself stood behind the backs of those who were working, and it remained so in the following phases up to the end, for this was not just any old work; the Master observed from behind to see if the paints, that is the lapis lazuli, the vermilion, and the rust and the malachite and the white, indeed, even the beaten egg-yolks corresponded exactly to that which had been chiseled into his memory as he stood immersed before the Radonezh original for all time; he stood there at the back, and he prayed, while first the lichnik and the dolichnik set to work, painting what was entrusted to them; the lichnik, in this case, exceptionally, just the arms and the legs instead of the face, the dolichnik, however the khitons and garments — and no matter, the Master governed every movement, practically guiding the hand of the lichnik and the dolichnik, so that it could be asserted with confidence that the Master himself had done everything from first to last, for it was evident that his assistants in the artel were obedient to his volition — namely, through the Master’s prayers, the volition of the Highest — until the famous copy reached the phase where there was no longer any intermediary assistance, where the Master could not entrust the task to another, where he himself had to take the brush, dip it into the paint-stained dish, and paint the faces, the mouths, the noses, and the eyes and, although according to the accustomed order of things as the last great phase of the painting, at this point, the appropriate master would have followed next in painting the outlines, he did not, as the Master insisted that he himself would lay down the outlines of the asisti and the dvizhki, but at that point he prayed much more intensely, he recited the Jesus prayer, for perhaps he was thinking that in this too he should trust in tradition, and one must believe that Andrej, at all times, but especially while working, had recited this Jesus prayer to himself, he could hardly do otherwise as he worked, not only that, he didn’t even stop praying, not taking his eyes off the icon for a second when he stepped aside for the assistants to put on the olifa, the transparent protective layer which, from this point on, had to protect all that had come into being so far, for it had come into being, said the people in the Master’s artel happily, their eyes sparkling, the copy of the Rublev icon is completed, here before us again is the Holy Trinity, and whoever was able to come from the neighboring monastery, they looked at the icon, and they couldn’t believe their eyes, because they were seeing the exact same thing, not a copy, and not an icon but the Holy Trinity in its own radiant beauty — the Master only stepped back from the workshop of the artel when the last layer of the olifa was being applied, and he stood before the completed icon, looking at it for a long time, then suddenly turned on his heel, and no one even saw him, in the time to follow, even cast the slightest of glances at the icon ever again; however, he had to have been there when the patron placed it in his own church, had to be there when the bishops consecrated it, had to stand there and listen as the bishops, after the opening prayer of the sanctification of the icon and the Sixty-Sixth Psalm, sang Our Lord, Our God, Who art praised and exalted in Thy Holy Trinity, hear our prayer, and send Thy blessing upon us, and may the icon be blessed and sanctified through the holy water, to venerate Thee, and bring salvation to Thy poor people — he heard this, he watched as the bishops consecrated the icon, he listened and he watched all of this, and he crossed himself and he said Amin, then immediately after that, Gospodiy pomiluy, and Gospodiy pomiluy, and Gospodiy, Gospodiy, Gospodiy pomiluy, but he was troubled, and he did not reply when later people went to him to express their recognition and wonderment, he was silent that day and he was silent for weeks on end, and every day he went to confession, finally completely withdrawing from life, and from that point on whoever, whether from curiosity or ignorance, dared to speak in his presence of how splendidly he had painted Rublev’s Holy Trinity either risked having Dionisy gape at him in incomprehension, questioningly like someone who does not understand what is being talked about, or — and this was principally before his death, at the time when he painted the Blagoveshchenskaya in Moscow — the celebrated icon-painter of his age would suddenly turn pale, his face distorted, and with enraged eyes would scream inchoately at the top of his lungs at his understandably terror-stricken interlocutor — except if it was his son who was asking, for until the very last moment he always forgave him for everything.

Sundays were like a monster that settled upon a person and wouldn’t let go, just chewing and digesting, biting, tearing, because Sunday did not want either to begin, nor to go on, nor to come to an end, it was always like that with him, he detested Sundays, much, but so much more than any other day of the week; all of the other days of the week contained something that slightly allayed the pressure, if only for a few minutes, of how intolerable it all was, but Sunday had never allowed this pressure to relent, that is how it was here, too; in vain had he come here to this country of Spain, in vain was this Barcelona different from that Budapest, in vain was everything here different, because in reality nothing was different, Sunday here settled upon his soul with exactly the same horrible force; it just didn’t want to start, it didn’t want to continue, it didn’t want to end; he sat in the Centro de Atención Integral, in the homeless shelter of the city’s social facility at Avenida Meridiana no. 197, which he had happened upon once by accident still at the very beginning when having temporarily despaired of finding any work here, he had set off on the so-called Diagonal and just kept on going and kept on going, he had no idea for how long, but at least for one hour, because he wanted to walk this temporary despair out of himself, and at one point he was just there in front of a building on the Avenida Meridiana, he saw that figures similar to himself were going inside, so, well, he went inside too; no one asked him any questions, he didn’t even say anything, they pointed at a bed among many other beds, and since then he had spent the nights here, and now here he sat, on the edge of the bed, and it being Sunday, he had to spend the entire day here, because where could he go on a Sunday, especially after everything that had happened to him yesterday between the Passeig de Gràcia and the Carrer Provença; he could remain alone, remain on the bed, take the plate of food dished out at noontime, and be happy that it was already noon, only that he couldn’t even bear to be happy about that, he was so nervous and chiefly not knowing why he was so nervous made him even more nervous, his legs kept moving; he jumped up, he could not bear to be still, he wasn’t interested in the others, everyone was preoccupied with themselves, generally they were lying on their beds and asleep, or they made it look like they were sleeping, and he tried to think about the infernal stench that hung in the air so that he wouldn’t have to think about how time was not passing; quite high up, on the wall facing him, a large clock had been affixed, and he would have been very happy to beat it down with something and stomp it apart into tiny pieces, down to the tiniest screw, but it was placed very high and he didn’t want any commotion; but he could not bear it anymore, so, well, he tried to concentrate on the stink, and not pay attention to the time which he suddenly realized was not passing — his legs, however, unfortunately kept moving back and forth like a reel — it was still twenty minutes after twelve, my god, what was he going to do here, he could not go outside into the immediate neighborhood, someone had explained this to him at the beginning, gesticulating that if he went outside, all around there was La Mina, some kind of living hell where they would murder him, so don’t go out there, La Mina, they repeated it several times over, si, he said in reply to this and did not go out into the immediate neighborhood, he solely used the dreadfully long street called Diagonal and that alone, this always took him into the city center, but he was too tired now, so tired that he couldn’t even think that if he could head in there again, the day would pass more quickly, just the mere thought of the Diagonal made him feel ill, he had gone up and down the length of it so many times, it was so, so long that he too, like the others, remained on his bed; there was a TV, again stuck up somewhere high on the wall, but it didn’t work, there was nothing else to do but to wait for time to pass on the clock-face, for a while he watched the hands of the clock, then he turned over on his left side and closed his eyes, and tried to sleep a little, but he couldn’t, because when he closed his eyes the three enormous angels appeared, he did not want to see them, never again, although to his misfortune they kept coming back, either because — as just a moment ago — he’d closed his eyes, or because — as now — he opened them; so he got up from the bed, which was itself a particularly awful bed, sinking down in the middle, with some kind of hard wire mesh, or whatever it was below, pressing into his back or his side so that even at night he had to keep getting up again and again to try to do something about it, but in vain, because when he beat at the mattress it only relieved the situation momentarily, the whole thing immediately caved in again under the weight of his body, and there was that hard iron grating, or whatever it was; now, too, that he had gotten up and looked back at it, the whole thing had sunk in again in the middle; he looked back, and he went out to where you could smoke a cigarette, because it was forbidden inside, although he himself did not smoke but, he thought, at least there it’s somewhere else than where he was before, only that even this didn’t solve anything, because from here he saw the clock inside, in a strange way this clock could be seen from anywhere, there was no escape, it had to be seen, to be seen at all times and by everyone for whom this place was a temporary shelter, to see that time was passing, that it was truly passing, it was passing very slowly; one thing was sure, whoever turned up here was obligated to have be continually preoccupied with time, and especially right now, on Sunday, he thought bitterly, and he went back to his bed, and lay down again on the caved-in mattress and watched the old man lying next to him who was pulling something from underneath the mattress, he pulled out something from there wrapped in newspapers and he slowly unwrapped it, and when he took a long-bladed knife out of the wrapping, he looked up and noticed that someone was watching him, namely that he was being watched from the neighboring bed; then he held it up, and there was a kind of pride in him as he showed it to him, in any case he said cuchillo, and motioned with his hand that by this he meant the knife, then when he saw that the other one didn’t even blink an eye, he showed it to him again, and he said by way of explanation, cuchillo jamonero, but nothing; he didn’t understand, he let the old man pack the whole thing with an offended expression, but then suddenly he sat up on the bed, turned to the old man, and signaled with his head and hands to repeat the word, please, those two words, cuchillo, cuchillo jamonero — he had the old man repeat it again and again until he had it down, then he signaled to him that he would like it if the old man showed him the knife once again; the old man cheered up, took the package out again, and unwrapped it, and clearly kept saying it’s beautiful, because somehow he had an expression like that on his face; he in the meantime took it into his hands, turned it over, and then gave it back, and tried to make the old man understand that he would now like to know where he had bought it, but the old man misunderstood the question and protested vehemently, quickly wrapped it up and shoved it under the mattress, signaling that no, it was not for sale, at which point he could do little else but try to say without words that he only wanted to know where he had got it from, the old man looked at him, trying to figure out what the hell this one wanted, for he didn’t even know how to talk, when suddenly his face lit up and he asked ferreteria? of course he had no idea what this ferreteria was, but he replied si, at which point the old man dug out a scrap of paper and wrote something on it with pencil, and this is what was on the paper: