IV
The evening before Leonardo's departure from Florence to mend a dam which had burst on the river Arno, he was returning from a visit to Machiavelli, who had alarmed him by his admissions with regard to Soderini.
He was crossing the bridge of the Santa Trinità, towards the Via Tornabuoni. The hour was late, and few people were about; after a hot day a shower had freshened the air. From the river came the sharp perfume which water acquires in the warmth of summer; the moon was rising behind the dark hill of San Miniato. On the bank near the Ponte Vecchio a cluster of very ancient houses, with uneven balconies and wooden supports, were reflected in the dull green water. Behind Monte Albano glittered a single star. The outline of Florence was cut against the clear sky like a golden capital letter in some ancient manuscript; an outline unique in the world, familiar to Leonardo as the outline of a human face. To the north rose the ancient belfry of Santa Croce, near it the straight slender stem of the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio; then Giotto's marble campanile, and the red cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, like the gigantic expanding blossom of the purple lily, the flower of Florence on her standards and escutcheons. All Florence, bathed in moonlight seemed a huge silver flower.
Leonardo noted that every city has its own especial perfume; that of Florence was a mingling of the scent of iris flowers, and the faint odour of dust and damp and old varnish which belongs to ancient pictures.
His thoughts veered to her who was becoming their constant preoccupation—Monna Lisa Gioconda. He knew scarce more of her life than did Giovanni his pupil; it was less an annoyance than a perpetual astonishment to him to reflect that she had a husband—Messer Francesco, so tall and lean, with a wart on his cheek, thick eyebrows; a positive soul; whose talk was of Sicilian cattle and the tax upon sheepskins. There were moments in which Leonardo rejoiced in her ethereal charm, which seemed above common humanity, yet was more real to him than aught belonging to everyday life. There were other moments in which he acutely felt the beauty of the living woman.
Lisa was not one of those celebrated by the poetasters as dotte eroine (learned heroines). She never displayed her knowledge of books; only by chance he found out that she read both Latin and Greek. She spoke so simply that many imagined her stupid. But Leonardo found in her what is most rare, especially among women, instinctive wisdom. Sometimes by a chance sentence she would reveal herself so near, so akin to him in spirit, that he felt her his one and eternal friend, the sister of his soul. At these moments he would fain have overpassed the magic circle which divides contemplation from life; but such desires he quenched at once. Was this love which united them? Platonic ravings, languid sighs of ideal lovers, syrupy sonnets in the Petrarchan style, had never excited in him anything but amusement or boredom. Equally alien to his nature was the passion which most men call love. Just as he ate no meat, because it seemed to him repulsive, so he refrained from women, because all material possession—in marriage or outside it—seemed to him coarse. He avoided it as he avoided the shambles, neither blaming nor approving, acknowledging the law of natural struggle for hunger or for love, but refusing to take any part in it himself, and obeying a purer law of chastity and love.
Yet even if he had loved her, what more perfect union with the beloved could he have wished than in this secret and mystic intercourse, in the creation of this immortal image, this new being, born of them both, as a child of its parents, in which he and she were one? Nevertheless he felt that even in this mystic union, stainless as it was, there was danger—it might be greater danger than in the bond of ordinary fleshly love. They walked on the verge of a precipice where none had walked before, resisting the vertigo and the fatal attraction of the abyss. Between them were simple words, vague and uncompleted phrases, through which their secret showed as the sun shines through the morning mist. At times he thought, What if the mist should scatter, and the blinding sun shine out which kills mystery, dissolves all phantoms? What if he or she should prove unequal to the strain, should overstep the magic circle, materialise imagination into fact, contemplation into life? Had he the right to test a human soul, the soul of his life-long friend, his spiritual sister, as he tested the laws of mechanics, the structure of plants, the action of poisons? Would she not revolt, cast him from her with contempt and hatred?
Again at times he fancied he was subjecting her to a slow and a terrible death. Her submissiveness alarmed him; it seemed limitless, like his own eternal search for knowledge, the delicate yet penetrating scrutiny to which he subjected her. Sooner or later he would have to decide what she was to him, a woman or a spirit. He had been hoping that temporary absence would postpone this inevitable decision, and for this reason was glad to be leaving Florence.
But now that the moment had come, that separation was imminent, he realised that he had been mistaken, and that instead of deferring, his departure must hasten the decision.
Absorbed in these thoughts, he did not notice that he had wandered into a lonely blind alley, and on looking about him did not at once recognise where he was. Giotto's campanile appearing above the houses showed he was in the vicinity of the cathedral. One side of the narrow street was lost in blackest shadow, the other was white under the rays of the moon. A distant light glowed red. It came from one of the loggie characteristic of Florence, with a balcony and semi-circular arches on slender pillars; a company in masks and cloaks were singing a serenade, to the gentle tinkling of a lute.
It was the old love-song, composed by Lorenzo Il Magnifico, which had once sounded in the carnival procession; a melancholy yet joyous melody, pleasant to Leonardo's ears because he had know it in his youth.
Quanto è bella giovinezza!
Ma sen fugge tuttavia
Chi vuol esser lieto sia
Di doman non v'è certezza.
(Fair-fleeting Youth must snatch at happiness:
He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.)
The last line lingered sadly in his ears with mournful foreboding.
Already on the threshold of old age, and approaching darkness and solitude, had not Fate sent him at last a living soul, a kindred soul? Must he repulse it? must he deny it? sacrifice life for contemplation, as he had so often done before? renounce the near for the faraway, the real for the ideal? Which was he to choose, the true and living and mortal Gioconda or the immortal, which had no material existence? They were equally dear to him, yet he must choose between them; choose at once, for her sake. But his will was weak. He could arrive at no decision, and wandered on aimlessly through the streets, debating, debating with himself.
Presently he reached the house of Piero Martelli, where he lodged. The doors were shut, the lights extinguished. He raised the hammer hung on a chain, and knocked. The porter did not come. Repeated blows were only answered by echoes from the sounding arches of the stone staircase. Echoes died away and silence succeeded, seeming the more profound for the brightness of the moonlight.
A clock boomed from a neighbouring tower. The heavy measured clanging told of the silent and dreadful flight of time, of the darkness and loneliness of age, of the past which could never return. And long did the last clang vibrate in the moonlit stillness, quivering on the air, now weakening, now strengthening again in ever widening waves of sound, as if repeating—
Di doman non v'è certezza.