The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (150 page)

—Why did you come here?

—Well of course, something . . . an experience of a spiritual nature . . . possibly. Stephen looked up at him blankly. —A need for spiritual . . . something more spiritual than typewriters, Ludy finished, and shifted his hams on his heels. He cleared his throat and lowered his eyes from the blank gaze. —And when he does get enthusiastic about something spiri . . . something about the place here, this Brother Elālio, it’s even worse, he went on petulantly. —You can’t explain to him that you don’t shout about beautiful things, you don’t try to . . . you know what I mean.

—You suffer them, Stephen said evenly, and the blade went right on, and the smoke rose against his face filling its hollows.

—Yes, why I was listening to the bells out there one morning, the campanilla, and he showed up and tried to raise his voice above them to tell me how beautiful they were. He’s up and about early, isn’t he. Why, he was showing me a chalice of some sort and he got so excited about it I thought he was going to jump on my shoulders. I couldn’t appreciate it properly after that, of course. I wonder if they know what a nuisance he makes of himself, just because he speaks English, if you can call it that, prying around everywhere. Smoking. I didn’t think that was right at all, a monk smoking cigarettes in my room. I almost reported him. Prying around . . . I suppose he’s been through all your belongings too? Waving them in the air and spitting on the floor . . .

—That’s how he found the pistol.

—The what? Found what, did you say?

—In the drawer. I had a pistol in the drawer, and he found it that way.

—A pistol? . . . Well, that . . . that must have put him off, a . . . a gun?

—He looked quite disappointed.

—Scared him, yes a . . . a gun like that . . . in a monastery.

—Oh no, no. He just looked shy, and then he looked at me and closed the drawer. He didn’t say anything. He just looked disappointed.

—Yes . . . yes, I . . . I see. Ludy cleared his throat, and looked up so sharply at the profile before him that the impact of his glance seemed to knock the long curve of ash from the cigarette, for nothing else moved there. Then he looked down at the painting, and asked who it was.

—Navarrete . . . Juan Fernández.

—Oh . . . yes.

Stephen had leaned back from it, to spit the cigarette on the floor and reach for the bread on the table. He sat there chewing the bread with no more apparent sense of what he was eating than showed in his eyes for what he was looking at, though the half-loaf was gone quickly, and he was back at the picture with the blade.

—Navaretty, he was a monk too, was he? Ludy showed his interest in this religious by bringing his weight from his hams forward on his toes.

—He studied with Titian, the man bent over the painting muttered, working the blade more busily now. —Titian’s paintings in the Escorial, he saw them when he went there to paint for the king, and his whole style changed. He learned from Titian. That’s the way we learn, you understand.

—And you, you’re . . . restoring this work? Ludy bent closer, got no answer, and went back on his heels against the stone wall. —You ought to have better light for such delicate artistic work, he said. —Especially if you can’t see very well.

—Yes, ver-ry careful, it’s very delicate . . . Stephen hunched more closely over the picture with his blade. —But that’s all right. That’s what they say about Leonardo now. Doctors say it, eye doctors. You’d be surprised. That’s the secret of her enigmatic smile.

—What? Whose?

—The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa . . . whose! he muttered impatiently, without looking up. —Science explains it to us now. The man who painted her picture couldn’t see what he was doing. She didn’t really have an enigmatic smile, that woman. But he couldn’t see what he was doing. Leonardo had eye trouble.

Ludy watched the blade approach a bare sandaled foot.

—Art couldn’t explain it, the voice went on clearly, but low as though he were talking to himself, as he worked the blade. —But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote
Paradise Lost
because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf. He didn’t even know they were clapping for him at the first performance. They didn’t have an applause-meter, you understand. Somebody had to turn him around to the audience so he could see them clapping for him. Then Stephen turned his face up abruptly. —I have passed all the scientific tests, you understand, he said earnestly, his voice taking tone for the first time. But when he repeated, —You understand . . . stopping his work to reach down another of the small loaves of bread, he spoke with the same dull voice. Though the loaf was hard-crusted, it broke easily between his fingers. The bread crumbled because of its fine gray texture. He crammed half of it into his mouth, offered the other half to Ludy, who shook his head quickly,
and then threw it back up on the table. As he chewed, a thoughtful expression came to his face for the first time. Though he may only have appeared thoughtful because his eyes, directed at the painting, were focused far beyond it. He chewed on.

—There was a Beethoven Street in my home town, said Ludy. —We pronounce it just like it’s spelled. Beeth-oven.

—If you’re going to make loaded dice, you have to make them perfect first. You can’t just load ordinary dice, they have to be perfectly true, to start with.

—Ahm . . . yes, what I meant to ask you . . .

—I’ve passed all the scientific tests, Stephen murmured, picking up the blade again and bending over the picture. —With science you take things apart and then we all understand them, then we can all do them. Get things nice and separated. Then you can be reasonable. Leonardo just needed glasses. That’s the enigma. He got busy with the scraping again.

—I meant to ask, who’s this a picture of?

—This is Saint Dominic. He thrashed himself three times a day.

—What?

—He invented Rosaries. Our Lady revealed the Rosary to him.

—You’re Catholic, then?

—Once a possessed person confessed that anyone who’s constant to the Devotion of the Rosary will surely be rewarded with life eternal. But you’ve probably read Ganssenio’s
Vita Dominici Ordinis Praedicatorum Fundatoris
.

—Why no, I . . . I’m afraid I haven’t . . . run across it.

—You may have forgotten it, Stephen reassured him, going on busily. —It’s all in chapter five, De auctore Sanctissimi Rosarii, ejusque efficacia. Now do you remember?

—Ahm . . . vaguely, but . . .

—He enclosed nuns too, he went on without looking up. —Strictly cloistered. Most of the Inquisitors were Dominicans.

—Ahm . . . this, Ludy commenced, bringing his weight forward again to inspect the picture, —this little figure of . . . the figure on the cross here is interesting, isn’t it.

—That’s Jesus Christ.

—Why . . . yes, yes of course. What I meant was . . . Ludy cleared his throat. Stephen straightened up, and held the blade before him as though it were a brush, and he was sighting some line along its tip before adding another touch to the canvas. Ludy sniffed helpfully. —This crucifix, what I meant was, the figure isn’t . . . it looks alive . . . He sounded embarrassed, at having got into this, but he went on, —A little . . . almost a live little mannequin . . . ahm, responding to . . . ahm . . . you see a great variety
of ahm in paintings of the Crucifixion, the expressions on the face, don’t you, some of them show an agony that is downright ahm . . . you can hardly say human, but . . . and then some of them . . . I mean to say, others . . .

The man sitting on the floor brought out another yellow paper cigarette and lit it. —In some of the cheap prints He just looks bored, Stephen said, and got back to work with the blade. —Have you seen El Greco’s?

—I . . . I don’t think I’ve come across it. Ahm. There’s an El Greco painting here, isn’t there. Here in the monastery, up in the. . . . one of those rooms, a picture of ahm . . . there’s a white bird coming down . . .

The blade stopped. Stephen darted a look at him, an instant in which the same leer Ludy thought he had seen on his face reappeared, but he got immediately back to work, even more busily, the cigarette smoke clinging to his face. —The
Descent of the Holy Spirit
, he said, a suddenly hungry tone in his voice. —He studied with Titian too. We all study with Titian.

For almost a minute, there was nothing but the rapid scraping of the blade, and Ludy came forward further and further until he almost went off balance. —But . . . he finally brought out, —the foot here, it’s almost gone. You . . . why are you taking it away, it . . . this whole part of the picture here, it’s not damaged.

—Yes . . . Stephen whispered, —it’s very delicate work. Why you can change a line without touching it. Yes . . . “all art requires a closed space,” ha! remember Homunculus?

—But wait, stop! What are you doing? Ludy brought a hand up as though he were going to interpose. —You can’t . . .

Stephen turned to him sharply. —Be careful now, he said, as Ludy dropped his hand and sank back against the stone wall. —I’ve passed all the scientific tests, you understand. And I have a lot of work here, very delicate, strength and delicacy . . .

—But you can’t . . . Ludy protested weakly.

—That El Greco up in the Capilla de los Tres . . .

—Yes . . . ?

—I’m going to restore it next.

—But you . . . there’s nothing wrong with it at all, it’s . . . it’s in fine condition, that painting.

—Yes, he studied with Titian. That’s where El Greco learned, that’s where he learned to simplify, Stephen went on, speaking more rapidly, —that’s where he learned not to be afraid of spaces, not to get lost in details and clutter, and separate everything . . .

—But you can’t, they won’t let you just . . . take that painting and . . . and do what you’re doing . . . Ludy was rising slowly,
the Irish thorn-proof back against the stones, sliding upward with his weight as he drew away from the figure on the floor, still busily working the blade. But his stare was transfixed by the squared hands, one of them gripping the picture with the long thumb along the top, the other blinking the two diamonds from the middle finger as the sound of the blade went on. Ludy closed his eyes, and opened them again, as he neared his height, and sniffed. —You . . . He was looking at the face, where nothing moved but the curls of thick smoke against its hollow surfaces. And then he cracked his head against the stone wall behind, so startled that he threw both hands up before him.

Stephen had jumped to his feet. —Do you want to see . . . see one I’ve already restored?

—But you . . . you . . . The Irish thorn-proof, the back of his head and his hands drawn back, Ludy stood flattened against the stone wall. He stayed so as though pinioned there, staring at the moving figure before him in the dim light, as the table was dragged away from the opposite wall, all the while Stephen was talking in a voice which was strangely breathless and at the same time unexcited,

—A painting . . . a . . . a Valdés Leal, I worked a long time on it, it . . . yes there’s warmth in it, I worked a long time on it, you’ll see that. Venice, Venice . . . we all studied . . . yes Titian, you’ll understand, we all studied . . . with Titian, working out this . . . harmony, yes, it . . . you’ll understand when you see it, this . . . this picture.

Holding to the end of the table with both hands, he stopped and stared at Ludy, who had begun to wilt against the gray wall. And when he repeated, —Yes, in a hoarse whisper, the same shock of a burning showed in his eyes, but he turned back to the table quickly, looked there uncertainly and mumbled something, grabbed up the half-loaf of bread he’d tossed there a few minutes before, and went on, looking behind the table and talking and chewing at the same time, so that his words were at once muffled and disconnected.

Possibly if he’d been still and talked evenly, Ludy would have turned and got out the door; but now he stood against the wall, moving his lips slightly as though trying to finish the sentence which would dismiss him, bringing his hands out loose and empty to press them back against the stones immediately, then bringing them out again if only the distance of their own warmth from the wall, to complete the gesture which would allow him to escape.

Meanwhile Stephen was muttering and he kept looking up as though he were talking to people in all parts of the small room, at one moment looking over Ludy’s shoulder and hemming him
in that way, then addressing an empty corner, or the table itself, with things like, —Separateness, that’s what went wrong, you’ll understand . . . or, —Everything withholding itself from everything else . . . and the moment Ludy started to turn away the eyes caught him again and he sank his weight in Irish thorn-proof back against the gray stone wall, as the voice broke out,

—You’ll say I should have microscopes for this . . . delicate work. Yes, egg white, egg yolk, gums, resins, oils, glue, mordants, varnish, you’ll be surprised how they’re put together just to bind the pigments. We could take X-ray pictures, infra-red, ultra-violet . . . Layers and layers of colors and oils and varnish, and the dirt! The dirt! Look at that, that picture there, look at the crackle on the surface, that’s from the wood panel expanding and contracting and the paint crackles when it gets dry. If we had a microscope with a Leitz mirror-condenser, we could turn it up to five hundred diameters, put on a counting disc and make a particle count of the pigment. Then we measure its thickness with a micrometer, put the Micro-Ibso attachment on the camera and you . . . If we had a micro-extraction apparatus we could bore holes in it too and get some nice cross sections out, put them in wax and then you slice them in half just like that with a microtome knife. And when you get that under a microscope with polarized incident light then you can really see what’s going on with a carbon arc lamp, you’ll see when we get into the high oil immersion series of lenses. You’ll see, if we can fix a microscope up with polarized light and put a particle of the pigment under it, we can see whether it’s isotropic or anisotropic, for that we use nicol prisms. Then we determine the refraction index of the particles of pigment and then, well then of course, then we know exactly . . . the dirt that collects, and one layer of varnish after another, and the dirt that collects in every little ridge and crack century after century, then we’ll know. Here’s the secret, laying transparent oils on heavy thick ones. Bosch . . . not Bosch. The transitions . . . Leonardo put on wet paint with the palm of his hand . . . dark brown underpainting all the way, and . . . that plasticity, that plasticity. And . . . and . . . if we can get a good reliable particle count, the refraction index on each particle and whether it’s isotropic or . . . when you get down to the gesso, you . . . what was it? What was it? . . . You . . . yes, the El Greco, I . . .