chapter 26

Standing just inside the door of the church, Matt felt the deep stillness gather and settle into him, the sense of quiet, of timelessness, as familiar as if he had only just been there. But something was different, something essential had changed. The feel of the place was the same, the sense of space and the paving stones underfoot, but the scent was different. The sweet blend of incense and flowers and candle wax was gone, replaced by the sharper smell of smoke and freshly cut stone and raw wood. It was the fire, he remembered, reminding himself of when, not just where, he was. The church had burned only sixteen years ago, in 1771, a conflagration that had almost completely destroyed it. Only the Brancacci chapel had survived, although the paint had been irretrievably altered by the heat. But had it survived?

Matt made his way in the almost complete darkness to the right aisle and up the long nave, relieved to see that they, at least, were as he remembered them. He stopped at a side altar and took a taper, lighting it from the single tiny flame that glowed before a sorrowing Madonna, and then continued on toward the chapel, hoping against all hope that it was still there. As he approached, the walls of the chapel gradually took form in the wavering light, one of them partly obscured by a rough scaffold.

Figures appeared, Adam and Eve standing in the Garden. On the wall opposite, they were being driven from it, naked and sobbing, by an angel with a sword. Matt entered the chapel and turned, looking at all the panels one by one, his relief at finding the chapel intact overcome by the warmth of seeing old friends once again. Grouped in two tiers of panels, men were talking, listening, sleeping. He thought of the countless hours he had spent there sketching, studying, sometimes just letting go of all conscious thoughts as the forms and colors and people on the walls had come alive, suffusing him with their warmth. There was Masaccio himself, in the corner, reaching to touch the enthroned Saint Peter. And there, nearby, Alberti and Brunelleschi, architects of the age. Brunelleschi, Matt thought, who on hearing of Masaccio’s untimely death at only twenty-eight had repeated over and over, We have suffered a great loss, we have suffered a great loss. We …

Matt turned to the wall opposite. There was Botticelli, looking out from the crowd of onlookers at Saint Peter’s crucifixion. And there, at the very edge of the last panel, was Filippino Lippi, a questioning look on his face as though he were asking, Do you like it? Matt held the candle aloft. At the very moment that these figures had come to life, color flowing from Filippino’s brush into the wet plaster of the new chapel, Matt had been with Anna. And there was the neophyte she had drawn, standing with the others on the shore of the river, uncertain and awkward, each waiting for Saint Peter to sprinkle water on his head. He was next in line, arms crossed, shivering, naked but for the smallest loincloth. Matt held the candle up, captivated by the man’s expression. Why did I never notice him before? He has surrendered everything, placed himself at the mercy of an unknown future, but look at him: his face is alive with the radiant wonder of a man who has traveled to the ends of the earth and at last caught sight of the home he had thought he would never find.

The candle guttered out, the figures on the wall fading as the light died. Matt, exhausted from all he had been through in the past few days, thought of a chapel across the nave. Secluded, it had a broad stone bench along the wall where, unseen, he had often fallen asleep in the long afternoons. It might still be there. He crossed the nave in the dark, seeing it in his mind, finding the single step to the chapel. With a cry of pain he stopped, barking his shin on an unexpected edge of stone.

Matt limped back to the altar to get a fresh taper so that he could see what he had bumped into. It must be material for the reconstruction of the church, he thought, because the chapel had been empty when he had known it. Returning with a candle he found a family crypt, with a della Robbia glazed Madonna on the end wall and, in front of it, two sarcophagi carved of alabaster. An original della Robbia, he noted, not one of the garish confections churned out later by the workshop. The large caskets had no family name incised, but the one on the left had the head of a lion carved in the stone, watching the church with sightless eyes. The lid on the right was inlaid with an intricate porphyry pattern of sticks and swirls, and above it—

Matt felt his heart grow still. Sculpted from the white stone were three irises, tied by a ribbon, the petals so thin and delicate that the light shone through them. He had found Anna at last.

How can this be? Matt thought. It was only a few weeks ago that I held her hand. She launched a tiny paper airplane. I folded it while I was talking to her—about what? What was it she had been saying? He remembered the paper, could feel how thick and stiff it was, how it felt to fold and crease it. He could see her next to him, feel her hand in his, even hear her laugh. But he couldn’t remember what she had said.

This was Anna, Matt thought. This is all that is left. Dust and air. From a wave of possibility to a memory, and then to nothing at all. Everything fades and disappears, stolen by time. Time, not love, conquers all.

Matt touched the irises, as soft as the silk of the dresses that she wore. Eternally fresh and never to wilt, they might almost have been laid on the top last week. Faith. What good is faith now? The chord was eternal, but the music was not. It had a beginning and an ending, and he knew that here, under his hand, was the ending.

But something in him refused to accept the cold evidence before him, tangible and real as it was. He knew this was the ending, but what did that mean? Knowing was what lost me Anna and the world I found, he thought. As he looked at the smooth white marble, the image of a drawing came to mind. He could see himself, lifting it out of the drawer. A drawing of a man. The penitent, waiting to be baptized. “That’s mine,” Anna had answered him, when he had said how good it was. But he had already known it was hers. Just as the same man, naked and cold, knew without knowing what he would find. A different kind of knowing.

“A man walks along a street on a sunny day. He glances at a shop window …” Kalil’s words came back to him. This is the window, Matt thought. Not the marble top, or the casket, but the church, the world around him. As real as it seems, what I see is no more than a reflection of what I know. Empty your mind of what you know, he told himself, and find the world that lies beyond.

Matt set the candle down on the marble lid. Going back to the altar he gathered up all the candles he could find and then carried them back, cradled in his arms, and piled them on the floor next to the sarcophagus. He took one and held it, the wick inches away from the steadily burning flame of the candle on the casket, and thought back to the day he had arrived at the villa. He could see it with perfect clarity—the large kitchen, the full table, Rodrigo bantering with Lisl. He felt the heat of the open hearth and smelled the pig turning on the spit and the herbs hanging from the ceiling and heard the crackling of the fire and then laughter, coming in the door, and there she was. And seeing Anna as he had that very first time, her gaze barely even touching him, he lit the candle and set it on the lid.

One by one, moment by moment and day by day, all the different ways he had come to know her, he lit the candles until he had lit them all, standing them next to each other until there was a row and then another and another, a glowing sea of Anna as he knew her.

When he was done, Matt stood at the foot of the casket, hands on the lid. “I am a mountain lion,” he said. “And I beg for mercy.”

He climbed up on the other casket and sat, cross-legged, his coat draped around his shoulders. Beyond memory or thought, in a world even beyond faith, his being was filled with the presence of Anna, the woman he loved, in the constellation of flames dancing next to him, silent in the night.

His cheek pillowed on linen, Matt woke slowly. Eyes closed, he luxuriated in the feel of the coarsely woven fabric, soft compared to the hard stone he lay on. Hard stone. He opened his eyes and raised himself on his hands. Aching and stiff, his body protesting, he looked down at his pillow, a folded blue coat. Next to it lay a long sword, the tooled scabbard attached to a woven leather belt, and a pair of leather boots, the soft uppers drooping to the side. His white linen shirt was secured by a braided silver belt, and on his legs were hose.

Matt swung his legs over and jumped down from the casket, hanging on to the marble until he could gain his balance. He stretched, willing his body awake. Candles gone, the bare marble of the casket next to him shone in the light from the stained glass window high up on the chapel wall. Swaths of red and pale yellow, green and purple, colored the marble, surrounding a patch that was still white. Long and wide, the whiteness was shaped like a sun with rays curved like fire.

Matt looked up at the window. He reached inside the folded doublet. The prism was there. The sunlight danced and shone inside the beveled glass as he laid it on the marble, a small sun inside the larger white one cast through the window by the strong light of the morning sun. With a heave and a grunt he dragged the heavy oak prie-dieu from its place in front of the della Robbia Madonna over to the tall window. Prism in hand, he climbed up and, balancing in front of the metal frame, rotated the glass sun until it slipped into place, clicking home into the surrounding frame of lead.

Matt jumped down and stood at the head of the casket, feeling the sun on his back, suffusing him with its warmth even through the stained glass. He watched the miniature sun, a glowing ultramarine blue surrounded by rainbows of fire, creep across the lid as outside the real sun climbed in the sky. The stillness of the church deepened, dust dancing in the motionless light, as the image of the sun slipped from the carved irises down across the inlaid porphyry, the random pattern of sticks and circles he remembered from the studiolo. As it reached the exact center the vibration that he had felt rising within him from the flagstones beneath his feet and the air around him inside him coalesced into a sound he felt rather than heard, a resonance beyond music, an infinite world of overtones and harmonics within the beauty of its one magnificent tone.

In the center of the glowing sun a line sprang to life, bright white, the blue of the sun canceling the blue of the inlay. The line was blurred, as though deep under water. The vanishing point, Matt thought, and he shifted to the side, his eyes on the line. Feeling something under the soft sole of his boot, he looked down. Scuffing with his toe, a gold sun came to light against the paving stones. Standing on it, the white line came into brilliant focus, connecting a chapel at one end to a villa at the other. Matt reached in, his hand passing through the chapel, the white line tracing its way across the back of his hand as he followed it to the villa. He tried to close his fingers around the tiny emerald irises glowing like a constellation inside, but they vanished when he touched them, leaving his fingertips stinging as though he had brushed the invisible tendrils of a jellyfish.

Just as abruptly as it had appeared, the scene vanished, the star moving closer to the irises carved in the lid. Leaning his weight on his hands on the marble, warm with the sun, Matt closed his eyes. It was there, burned on his memory, the path from the chapel to the villa. How long it would take he had no idea, but the way was clear. He stood up and stepped back out of the light, feeling the cool air of the church wash over him.

The nave, as he walked through it, was decorated with the rich trappings of the Carmines. Passing the Brancacci chapel he saw that the fresco of the crucifixion of Saint Peter was only half finished, the unplastered part of the wall stenciled with the red drawing of the sinopia. A table laden with colors and tools stood in the center of the chapel, the floor by the wall protected by a rough drop cloth, splattered with paint and plaster.

Emerging from the dusk of the church, Matt was again dazzled by the brilliance of the morning sun. White on white, shadows slowly resolved, taking on substance, the vague form in front of him becoming an old woman, bent, sweeping the steps of the church. Without a cloud in the sky, it would be a hot day.

A young man walked up the steps. Long nose, narrow eyes under arched eyebrows, a lower lip slightly protruding with a strong chin to balance it and a sharp jaw, a red doublet and a shirt with a white collar, he passed Matt with barely a glance.

“Buon giorno, Madre Lisabetta,” the man greeted the old woman.

“Giorno, Filippino,” she replied without looking up, as she kept on sweeping.