The Master of the Day of Judgment (17 page)

This Giovansimone Chigi was a small and surly man. He wore a blue cloth cap with ear flaps in summer and winter alike, and anyone seeing him for the first time might well have taken him for a Barbary pirate rather than a Christian and a citizen of Florence. He was so mean that he gave me less than half a loaf a week. Before I had been with him for seven weeks I had already spent five gold florins of my own.

One evening when I came home from mathematics school my master was in the workshop deep in conversation with Messer Donato Salimbeni of Siena, a physician who was in the service of the Cardinal Legate Pandolfo de' Nerli. Messer Salimbeni was a man of fine intelligence and venerable appearance, widely travelled and highly experienced in the art of preparing medicines and potions. I knew him from my time with my previous master, when his excellent remedies had given me great relief after I caught a fever from the damp air on a ride to Pisa.

When I entered Messer Salimbeni was looking at a picture of the Madonna surrounded by angels while my master was pacing up and down in front of the fire, for it was cold. When Messer Salimbeni saw me he beckoned to me to approach.

"And this one?" he asked.

"I have only him," my master replied, with a grimace. "He paints flowers and small animals in praiseworthy fashion, and that is what he is best at and, if I needed to put owls, cats, song-birds or scorpions into my pictures, he could be really helpful to me."

He sighed, and bent down to throw two oak logs on the fire. Then he went on:

"When I was young I did much fine work and enhanced the fame of this city with my art. It was I who made the bronze St Peter which you still see in front of the altar in the church of Santa Maria del Fiore. At that time more than twenty sonnets were pinned to my door, all of them praising my work and me, and I was also showered with other and greater honours. But now I am an old man, and I can no longer do good work."

And he pointed to a Christ teaching in the temple and to a Mary Magdalene being borne up to heaven by angels, and said:

"What you see there is nothing. I am well aware of it, and you have no need to say so, for nothing is more oppressive than adverse criticism. In my youth I saw visions, and I saw God the Father and the patriarchs, I saw the Saviour, the saints, the Virgin Mary and the angels. I saw them in marvellous fashion wherever I looked, up in the clouds and here below in my workshop, I saw them with a clarity and vividness that the intellect alone could never achieve; and as I saw them so did I paint them, and there were not many artists who were my equals. But now my eyes are dim and the visionary fire has gone out."

Messer Salimbeni was leaning against the wall. I could not see him in the darkness and only heard his voice.

"Giovansimone," he said, "all human wisdom and knowledge is patchwork and less than patchwork, is smoke and shadow in the face of the Lord. Nevertheless it has been granted me when raising my thoughts to God to solve some of the mysteries with which this transient world is filled, and I can give you back what you call your power to see visions, and I can even awaken it in those who have never before possessed it, and I can do so with ease."

My master listened attentively to this, and for a short while stood deep in thought. Then he shook his head and burst out laughing.

"Messer Salimbeni," he said, "the whole town knows that you boast of many secret arts and skills, but that when it comes to putting them into practice you always have excuses ready. What you have just been telling me was certainly no more than another of your boasts. Or did you learn the art of which you spoke at the court of the Mogul or the Grand Turk?"

"The art of which I spoke," said the learned physician, "is not one of those heathenish arts, for I owe it to the goodness of God alone. It was He who showed me the way to knowledge. "

"In that case," my master replied, "all I desire is to see something of that art. But let me tell you one thing, and that is, if you make a fool of me, it will be so much the worse for you."

"Today there is not much more we can do than to agree on a day when we can do the thing," Messer Salimbeni said. "But first I advise you to consider very carefully, Giovansimone, for it is a stormy sea on which you are about to launch yourself, and perhaps it would be better for you to stay in harbour."

"You are right, Messer Salimbeni," my master replied. "This is a case for caution, for everyone knows you are my enemy, though you speak to me with the respect to which I am entitled. I cannot trust you."

"It is true, Giovansimone, and there is no point in passing over in silence the fact that there is something between us," said the Cardinal Legate's physician. "You had a quarrel with Dino Salimbeni, my brother's son, and he spoke hard words to you, and you said aloud so that all those present could hear you: 'Just be patient, the day will come when this matter will be settled,' and a few days later he was found dead on the path through the fields leading to the monastery of the Servi friars, he lay there with a dagger stuck in his neck."

"He had many enemies, and I foresaw his misfortune," my master muttered.

"It was a Spanish misericordia dagger, and the smith's name was engraved on the blade," Messer Salimbeni went on. "It belonged to a man who had fled here from Toledo, and they seized him and took him before the Eight. He denied his guilt and insisted that he had lost the weapon the night before among the traders' booths in the Old Market, but they didn't believe him and he mounted the cart."

"All honour to the verdict of the Eight," said my master, "and things that have happened are over and done with."

"Things that have happened are never over and done with," said Messer Salimbeni. "And those responsible for them have to face divine justice."

"Let me just tell you this," my master replied. "I had a commission to paint St Agnes with the book and the lamb, and I was at home working on it when Messer Cino came seeking to make his peace with me, and we drank together and parted as friends. And next day when the crime was committed I lay ill in my bed, as I have witnesses to prove. And, as truly as God is in His heaven and I pray that He will be merciful to me on the Day of Judgment, so it was and not otherwise."

"Giovansimone," the physician explained, "it is not without good reason that they call you
cattivanza
, wickedness."

When my master heard himself referred to by that name by which he was known his fury knew no bounds, for that was something he could never tolerate, and his fury deprived him of reason and he took the wheel-lock musket he kept loaded in his workshop and brandished it like a maniac and yelled:

"Get out of here, you rogue, you priest's bastard, get out of here and never let me set eyes on you again."

Messer Salimbeni turned and went down the steps, but my master ran after him with the musket in his hands, and I heard him raging and cursing outside the house for a long time.

Some while later, it was on the eve of the feast of Simon and Jude, Messer Salimbeni turned up again, and he spoke and acted as if there were nothing between him and the Master.

"The day you were waiting for has come, Giovansimone," he said.

The Master looked up from his work, and when he recognised Messer Salimbeni he grew angry again.

"What are you doing here again? Didn't I throw you out?" he said.

"This time you will welcome me," the physician replied. "I am here so that we may do what we discussed, because the time has come."

"Just go away," the Master said irritably. "You said dreadful things about me, and you shall pay for them."

"To those who have done no wrong my words did not apply," Messer Salimbeni replied, and then he turned to me and said:

"Come, Pompeo, this is no time to sit idly playing the flute. Go and get me this and this."

And he gave me the names of the herbs and substances he needed for his fumigations and the quantities he needed of each. Among the herbs there were several I knew nothing about, and there were others that grow on every hedgerow. He also wanted two pints of brandy.

When I returned from the apothecary's the two were in agreement in every particular. Messer Salimbeni took the herbs and the substances from my hands and explained to the Master that this was this and that was that, and then he made everything ready for his exhalations.

When he had finished we left the workshop, and on the way down the steps the Master showed Messer Salimbeni that he had a sword and a dagger under his coat.

"Messer Salimbeni," he said, "don't think I should be afraid of you if you were the devil himself."

We went down the Via Chiara, crossed the Rifredi bridge, and passed the fulling mill on the other side of the river and the little chapel where the marble sarcophaguses are. It was a bright night and the moon was in the sky, and at last, after we had been on the way for an hour, we came to a hill on one side of which the ground fell steeply to a quarry. Nowadays there is a house there called the Villa all'Olivo, but then goats browsed there in the daytime.

Here Messer Salimbeni stopped and told me to gather brushwood and thistles and make a fire, and he turned to my master and said:

"Giovansimone, this is the place and the time has come. Once more I say unto you: Take counsel with yourself, for he who submits to such an ordeal must be of strong and confident temperament."

"All right, all right," the Master replied. "Stop beating about the bush and begin at last."

Messer Salimbeni then very ceremoniously described a circle round the fire and led the Master into the circle, and then he threw a little of his fumigatory material into the flames, and as soon as he had done that he left the circle.

A thick cloud of smoke rose out of the fire and surrounded the Master, and for a while concealed him from my sight, and when it thinned Messer Salimbeni threw more material into the flames. Then he said:

"What do you see now, Giovansimone?"

"I see the fields and the river and the towers of the city and the night sky, and nothing else," the Master replied. "Now I see a hare running across the fields and, oh, wonder of wonders, it has been tamed and saddled."

"That is indeed a remarkable sight," said Messer Salimbeni, "but I think you will see many more such tonight."

"It's not a hare but a goat," the Master exclaimed. "It's not a goat but an oriental creature the name of which I do not know, and it makes the most extraordinary jumps and leaps. Now it has vanished."

The Master began bowing as if greeting someone.

"Look!" he exclaimed. "My neighbour the goldsmith who died last year. He doesn't see me. Poor Master Castoldo, his face is covered with sores and boils."

"Giovansimone, what do you see now?" the physician asked.

"I see jagged rocks and ravines and gorges and caves, and I see a rock, coloured black and hovering in the air, which is a great and hardly credible miracle."

"That is the Valley of Jehoshaphat, " Messer Salimbeni declared, "and the rock hovering in the air is God's eternal throne and, Giovansimone, know that to me that is a sign that you are destined tonight to see things so tremendous that no human being has seen them before."

"We are not alone," the Master said, and his voice dropped to a fearful whisper. "I see people singing and rejoicing, and there are many of them."

"There are not many but only a few to whom it is granted to join God's angels in singing the glory of the Day of Judgment," Messer Salimbeni said quietly.

"And now I see thousands upon thousands, an endless host, knights and councillors and richly adorned ladies, raising their arms to heaven and weeping, and there is great lamentation among them."

"They lament what has been and cannot be again," said Messer Salimbeni. "They weep because they are condemned to darkness and are deprived to all eternity of the sight of the Lord."

"There is a terrible fiery sign in the sky that glows in a colour I have never seen before," the Master cried. "Woe is me. It is no earthly colour, and my eyes cannot stand it."

"That colour is trumpet red," Messer Salimbeni called out in a voice of thunder. "That colour is trumpet red, the colour of the sunshine on the Day of Judgment."

"Whose is the voice that calls my name out of the storm wind?" the Master cried, his whole body beginning to tremble, and suddenly he began howling, howling like an animal, and the howling shattered the silence of the night and seemed as if it would never end.

"The demons of hell are coming for me, coming for me from everywhere and the air is full of them," he yelled. In his terror he tried to flee, but the invisible host caught him and he fell to the ground and struck out at the void all round him. He rose shrieking and with terribly distorted features, he started running but collapsed again, and it was such a pitiful sight that I thought I was going to die with fear.

"Help him, Messer Salimbeni," I cried in desperation, but the Cardinal Legate's physician shook his head.

"Too late," he said. "He is lost, for the visions of the night have taken possession of him."

"Have mercy on him, Messer Salimbeni, have mercy," I yelled.

The demons of hell had seized him and were dragging him away, and he fought them, screaming, and Messer Salimbeni went towards him and stood in the way at the cliff edge just above the quarry.

"Murderer without fear of Almighty God," he cried. "Stop and confess your crime."

"Mercy," the Master cried, and fell on his knees.

At that Messer Salimbeni raised his fist and struck him in the middle of his brow so that he fell to the ground as if dead.

I now know that this was an act, not of cruelty, but of mercy, and that by that blow Messer Salimbeni freed the Master from the power of his visions.

We took him back to his workshop, still unconscious, and he lay there without a sign of life until the Angelus. When he awoke he did not know whether it was night or day. He was confused, and kept talking about the demons of hell and the terrible colour of trumpet red.

Later, when the frenzy began to abate, he became completely absorbed in himself. He just sat in a corner of his workshop staring into the void, and he would talk to no-one. But at night he could be heard lamenting and singing prayers in his room, and on St Stephen's day he disappeared from the city and no-one knew where he had gone.