XIV
Giovanni had learned from Cesare that the master had all but finished the face of the Christ in the 'Last Supper'; he had asked several times to be allowed to see it, but Leonardo had always postponed the matter.
At last, one morning he took the lad to the Refectory, and there, in the place which had been vacant for sixteen years, between St. John and St. James, against the square of the open window, with the background of the quiet evening sky and the blue hills of Zion, Giovanni saw the Christ.
A few days later Leonardo sent him for a rare mathematical book to the house of the alchemist, Sacrobosco. He was returning late in the evening. The air was frosty and still, after a day of high wind and thaw; the pools and the ruts of the road were coated with ice; the low clouds seemed to cling motionless to the purple tops of the larches, in which were a few ruined and deserted nests. Darkness came on apace; on the dim verge of the horizon stretched the long copper and golden streak where the sun had gone down. The water in the Cantarana Canal, still unfrozen, seemed heavy, black as iron, and unfathomably deep.
Giovanni did not own it to himself, and indeed used every effort to suppress the thought, but he was comparing, not without dismay, Leonardo's two renderings of the Lord's face. If he shut his eyes, both rose before him like living things; the one face that of a brother, and full of human weakness, the face of Him who had agonised in bloody sweat, and prayed a childlike prayer for a miracle; the other, superhuman, calm, wise, alien, and terrible.
And Giovanni thought that, perhaps, notwithstanding their inexplicable contradiction, the one was a likeness no less true than the other.
He grew confused, as if delirium were returning, and sitting on a stone above the black canal waters, he bowed himself in exhaustion, and buried his head in his hands.
'What are you doing here, like a shade on the banks of Acheron?' cried a mocking voice; and he felt a hand on his shoulder, turned, and saw Cesare, like some ill-omened ghost, in the wintry twilight; a long, lean figure, with a long, lean, pale face, and muffled in a long grey cloak. Giovanni rose, and they moved on together, the dead leaves rustling under their feet.
'Does he know we ransacked his papers?' asked Cesare.
'Yes.'
'And is not angered. That I expected;' and Cesare laughed maliciously. 'Everlasting pardon, of course!'
There was a silence; a crow flew across the canal, cawing hoarsely.
'Cesare,' said Boltraffio in a loud voice, 'have you seen the face of the Christ in the Cenacolo?'
'I have,'
'And—what think you of it?'
'What think you?' said Cesare, turning abruptly to his companion.
'I can hardly say; but it seems to me——'
'Speak frankly. It does not satisfy you?'
'That is not what I mean. But it seems to me, perhaps, that it is not Christ.'
'Not Christ? Who then else?'
Giovanni did not reply; his eyes were on the ground, and without knowing it, his pace slackened. At last he said—
'That other sketch in coloured chalk, the young Christ—have you seen that?'
'Yes. A Jewish boy with chestnut curls, full lips and a low brow; the son of old Barucco. You like it better?'
'No. But I was thinking how little alike they are, those two pictures!'
'Little alike? But it is the same face—fifteen years older, that is all! However, it may be you are right. They may be two Christs, but as like each other as a man and his own phantom.'
'As a man and his own phantom!' echoed Giovanni, shuddering and stopping. 'What say you, Cesare? A man and his own phantom?'
'Well, what is so alarming in those words? Don't you agree with me?'
They walked on.
'Cesare!' cried Boltraffio suddenly and impulsively, 'do you not see what I mean? How could He, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient, whom Leonardo has painted in the Cenacolo, how could He have been tortured on the Mount of Olives, not a stone's throw away, till He sweated blood and prayed a human prayer for a miracle? "Let not that take place, to accomplish which I came into the world, that which I know cannot fail to be! Father, let this cup pass from me!" Cesare, everything is contained in that prayer! Without it there is no Christ, and I would not relinquish it for all the wisdom of Solomon! The Christ who prayed not that prayer was never a man; He did not suffer and die like us!'
'I see your meaning,' replied Cesare slowly; 'certainly the Christ of the Cenacolo never prayed that prayer.'
The darkness was falling around them, and Giovanni could not accurately see the face of his companion, which, however, seemed strangely illuminated. Suddenly Cesare stopped, raised his hand, and spoke in a low solemn voice.
'You wish to know whom he has painted, if 'tis not the weaker Christ who prayed for a hopeless miracle in the garden of Gethsemane? Well, I will tell you. Remember that beautiful invocation of Leonardo's when he spoke of the laws of the mechanical sciences, "O divine justice of Thee, Thou Prime Mover!" His Christ is the Prime Mover, who, principle and centre of every movement, is Himself moveless. His Christ is the eternal necessity, which is divine justice, which is the Father's will. "O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee and I have declared unto these Thy name, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them." Do you see? Love born of knowledge. 'Grande amore è figlio di grande sapienza.' Great love is the child of great knowledge. And Leonardo, who alone of men has understood this saying of the Lord's, has incarnated it in his Christ, who loves all because he knows all.'
Cesare ceased, and for long they walked silently in the profound calm of the winter twilight. At last Boltraffio said:—
'Do you remember, Cesare, how four years ago, you and I, walking along this path together, were discussing the Cenacolo? Then you mocked at the Master, and said he would never finish the face of the Christ, and I contradicted you. Now it is you who defend him against me. Of a surety I should never have believed that you—you! would one day speak of him as now you have spoken!'
And Giovanni tried to see his companion's face, but the other turned away.
'Now, I see with joy, Cesare, that you also love him! Yes, you love him, you who wish to hate him; you love him perhaps better than do I!'
'Did you imagine anything else?' replied Cesare, slowly turning to his companion a pale moved face; 'and yet I would indeed be glad to hate him, but instead I must love him, for he has done, in the 'Last Supper,' what no one has ever done, what perhaps he himself does not understand so well as I—I, his most mortal enemy.' And Cesare laughed a forced laugh. 'How odd is the human heart!' he went on. 'I will confess the truth, Giovanni; perhaps I love him less to-day than I did at the time you have alluded to.'
'Why so, Cesare?'
'Perchance because I value my own individuality. To be lowest among the lowest—yes, better that than to be but a member of his body, a toe of his foot! Let Marco find contentment in ladles for the measuring out of paint, and rules for the proportions of noses. I should like to ask with which of these Leonardo made that countenance of Christ! True, he does his best to teach us, poor chickens, to fly like eagles from the eagles' nest; for he is compassionate, and sorry for us, as he is sorry for the blind pups in the yard, or for a lame horse, or for the criminal whom he accompanies to execution that he may watch his dying convulsions. Like the sun, he shines upon everything. Only, see you, my friend, each man hath his own fancy; you may like to be the worm which, in St. Francis' fashion, Leonardo lifts from the highway and sets on a green twig; I'd sooner be crushed by him!'
'Then, Cesare, if you feel thus, why do you not leave him?'
'And you—why do you not leave him? You have burnt your wings like a moth in a candle, and still you flutter round the flame. Perchance I also am fain to burn myself in that flame. Yet, maybe, one hope remains to me!'
'A foolish hope. The dream of a madman! Yet I often dwell upon it. The hope that one day a man shall arise, unlike him, yet his equal; not Perugino, nor Borgognone, nor Botticelli, nor the great Mantegna—Leonardo surpasses all these; but another, one who is still unknown, reserved for a later day. I would fain see the glory of this new one immense! I would fain look in the face of Messer Leonardo and remind him that even a spared worm like me can prefer another to him, can be pleased in the humiliation of his pride; for, Giovanni, he is proud as Lucifer, in spite of his lamb-like meekness and his universal charity.'
He broke off abruptly, and Giovanni felt his hand tremble.
'Hark you, Giovanni,' he said in a changed voice, 'who told you I loved him? You never guessed it?'
'He told me himself.'
'He? Then he believes——'
His voice broke. Nothing remained to be said, and each was lost in his own thoughts, his own griefs. At the next cross-road they parted.
Giovanni, with eyes on the ground, walked mechanically along the narrow path skirting the canal in whose dark waters no star was reflected. He repeated to himself, scarce consciously, 'As like as a man and his own phantom! His own phantom!'