Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

In Which I Meet Da Vinci Et Al.

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist”

-       A conformist (but still a man)

We arrived in the courtyard to find Botticelli and Da Vinci in heated conversation. I thought they might be speaking of light or anatomy (or any of those highly pretentious subjects levied against you by an art student high off his gourd in the corner of a friend’s kitchen). Not so.

“They keep saying I’m in love with a dead woman!” Botticelli exclaimed.

“Christ, a dead woman? How would you manage that?” Da Vinci responded with a smirk.

“No, no, no! What I mean to say is that I loved her when she was alive, but now she’s dead.”

“Is that what you mean?”

“No! I mean… that’s what they mean! Don’t twist my words. I’m not in love with her, dead or alive. It’s nonsense!”

“Yes, yes. Nonsense. At least you haven’t yet been accused of sodomy.”

There was a brief pause in which Botticelli coughed a few times. Lorenzo, the lumbering David, and I meandered over to the fountain in the center of the courtyard, close enough to hear their dialogue without intruding. I inspected the fountain’s base. I recognized Neptune, but was unable to name any of the other figures that circumscribed the fountain. Botticelli broke the silence as I began to count the number of dolphins serving as Neptune’s escort.

“Come on, Leonardo. Let’s not play that game,” he said with an apologetic smile.

“What game? What are you talking about?”

“There’s no need to keep up appearances, Leonardo. Even Socrates had—"

“I don’t give a damn about Socrates! I’m telling you that I did not have sex with that man!”

~~

The truth of the matter was that he probably did have sex with that man. Botticelli knew it as well as anyone.

Botticelli was lying too, of course. The dead woman he claimed not to love was the inspiration for his famous Birth of Venus. You know the one; she stands atop a scallop shell and tastefully covers two of the three forbidden places that adorn her frontal female frame. He would not admit his love now because the shame of loving a married woman was more powerful than his love for her.

(Oh, right. I neglected to tell you that she was married to another man. Before she died, of course.)

Later, however, he would request to be buried at her feet and—more surprisingly—this request would be granted. He managed to pull of what most necromancers never master: cuckolding from the grave.

~~

I hoped that these two men could make my trip worthwhile. Even with the novelty of continental and temporal travel fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help but feel that I was waiting too long for… something. I stepped toward them with the newfound knowledge of the exact number of dolphins that escort Neptune: twenty.

“Good afternoon,” I began, “May I interrupt?”

Da Vinci, who apparently hadn’t seen the three of us enter the courtyard, only showed a brief glimmer of shock in his eyes. Only the most perceptive would have noticed it.

~~

(Which means I shouldn't have noticed it, considering I am one of the least observant people alive. "But wait," you say, eminently quick to criticize, "if you aren't observant, why in the world do you want to be a writer?” That's a great question, dear reader. I think it's because I'm working backward; I hope that if by writing, I will have to force myself to pay attention. This method has, so far, proven unsuccessful.

I understand that this confession probably doesn't inspire very much confidence, dear reader. It's as if your cab driver hinted that he may have lost his glasses earlier... But you're on the highway now and—like it or not—you have to live with his bad decisions...)

~~

For those paying less attention, he seemed to glide into conversation effortlessly.

“Of course, of course. And who might you be?”

“I’m nobody of any importance. Not yet, at least. You, however,” I gestured to both of them, “are men of great importance. I take it on good authority that you are intelligent, talented men, and I wish to be imparted with some of your wisdom.” (God, would you listen to me talk? "Wish to be imparted." Who the fuck says that?)

“Wisdom? That’s a heavy task to spring on a man. Have you any wisdom for this nobody, Sandro?”

“Don’t get married,” he said, unsmiling. I laughed and said I’d keep it in mind.

“I’m serious,” he continued, “Don’t get married. It’s an antiquated system that condones owning women. It’s barbaric and inhumane.”

“Come on, Sandro,” Da Vinci jabbed, “Let’s not play that game.”

Botticelli’s face grew instantly flushed. I could tell he wanted to verbally (or physically) assault Da Vinci, but chose instead to leave in silent indignation.

“He must really love that dead woman,” I offered.

“Somehow even more than the live ones,” Da Vinci replied.

~~

Botticelli gave a curt nod to Lorenzo and the lumbering servant as he vanished from the courtyard. Lorenzo seemed only mildly worried. He had on that face which we all use to indicate frequent dramatics: a mute raising of the eyebrows and eye contact with the nearest person. Because the lumbering servant was eying a few birds in a nearby tree, Lorenzo instead turned to me for commiseration. I attempted to reciprocate his look but my eyepatch held my right brow in place. The result was that I ended up looking more snobbish than surprised. The lumbering David kept his eyes trained on the birds as I turned back to Leonardo.

“Anything to add? More marital advice, perhaps? Gardening tips might not be so bad, all considered.”

“If you must have it in short terms, you won’t have it much at all,” he said, ignoring me. “But placing such constraints upon me makes me wish to try all the more.” He took a breath as he scanned his surroundings. Only a moment passed before he began.

(Here is an unrelated secret: if you'd like good advice, don't ask for it.)

~~

“Appearances. If I had to distill my wisdom into one word, it would be appearances. Consider how one must observe something in order to predict or understand it, and how without careful observation, no knowledge can be gained. It is important that we endlessly refine our observations, our understanding of appearances, before we begin the task of understanding ideas. Appearances are the closest thing we have to reality.

“Think of Plato’s cave for a moment and understand the moral. There are those trapped in the cave, who only witness the shadows of reality, and those who have exited the cave, who have discovered the true nature of things. The difference between the two does not lie in their ideas, for the men who see only shadows may conjecture endlessly. They may come to any number of conclusions about what is real and what isn’t. They may even guess correctly! And yet, they still base these conjectures on shadows. It is the same with any philosopher or man of endless fantasies. They observe something in passing and spend the majority of their time theorizing around it, instead of the opposite. How else could smart men suppose the Earth to be flat? Those men might be able to argue circles around you and I, and yet it matters very little in the end. Their arguments stand upon shadows.

“Not many men actually spend time observing the world to glean its secrets. This is why I note and diagram. When all appearances become plain, the ideas become much easier to see. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that observation is much less entertaining than conjecture. If you need proof, try this: bring a book of numbers into any room of any people. Show them all the things you’ve noted, the diagrams you’ve drawn. You’ll find some, no doubt, who will take on genuine interest, but most will only vacantly nod, if they look at all. Now go into those same rooms with one short paragraph of your finest nonsense. Declare gold to be silver, blood to be water. Find some bit of specious logic to validate your claim. You will find that many more will be interested in your work.

“Perhaps more interestingly, you will find that there exists a certain type of people for whom observation and conjecture are both equally disdained. They are content to live without wondering, without curiosity. They give no thought to anything other than their immediate surroundings and the ideas they were taught as a child. They cringe when paradigms are changed or destroyed. These men are not fit to be called men, for they abandon reason entirely and cling to themselves in reaction to change, just as a normally docile animal will attack when backed into a corner. This is what man becomes when he abandons reason: an animal.”

At that exact moment, the lumbering David took an errant step backward in order to get a better view of the birds in the nearby tree. His foot caught a raised stone, sending him backward, toppling his gargantuan frame into the fountain. In my mind: echoes of Firdos Square, the immensity of Saddam Hussein succumbing to gravity. What a joy and horror to watch statues fall.

~~

Leonardo, Lorenzo, and I helped the servant out of the Neptunian puddle. He was grumbling under his breath, not because he had tripped and soaked himself, but because the commotion he caused had frightened the birds into taking flight. Lorenzo instructed the man to go and change into dry clothes. Thus, the lumbering David sulked away, dripping wet and mumbling about birds. How much more interesting a subject than the real David! What I would give to see a statue of this man, normally magnificent, soaking wet and exiting ashamed!

Da Vinci laughed and asked Lorenzo when he planned to build a fence around the fountain. This was apparently not the first time someone had fallen into the courtyard’s centerpiece. Lorenzo returned his laugh and said he preferred it how it was, so that it might be a constant reminder of the inferiority of certain men.

(Lorenzo would stub his toe and plunge into that same fountain in less than a week, during a drunken walk on a moonless night.)

~~

Before I could thank the two and announce my intention of leaving, Leonardo clasped my shoulder and delivered one final monologue.

“One last thing about appearances, my good nobody: there are only two things which are both invisible and unobservable, and those are God and the Soul." (This was before physics got really crazy, remember.) "While it is true that we can deduce the certainty of both, we cannot truly observe either. With this in mind, remember to conduct yourself in a good manner, regardless of the inclinations of your Soul. Others are only able to observe your actions, not your thoughts.  Even if you wish to do evil in this world, contradict yourself and do good instead. By doing this, you will appear to be a good man, even though your Soul is rotten. You will never know how many evil souls do good, or good do evil. To you, it will only seem as though there are good and evil men. Keep this in mind, that you may contradict your thoughts, and that a lie applied religiously enough to yourself will eventually become truth through appearance. This is how we exercise free-will, through dissonance of the invisible Soul and the visible body. If you lie energetically and often enough, perhaps you will even fool God! Who knows?”

“I certainly don’t,” I replied.

“And neither do I. See to it that you become an observer on your travels, my curious nobody, and in the meantime, choose to appear as a good and perfect man.”

~~

And with that advice, I took my leave of Lorenzo and Leonardo. Although his advice seemed good enough, on the face of it, there were some obvious shortcomings. For one, I was not religious and generally disinclined to believe in anything as useful as the Soul. When it comes to cosmology, I like to make things difficult for myself, situating my body as a vector smashed between other forces, a paper boat bullied about by the wind and waves. Another problem: Da Vinci’s philosophy is pretty much the de facto philosophy of European civilization, eminently binary, nominally objective, and focused squarely on reason. But I decided it wasn’t worth trying to be poststructural in the 15th century, so I said nothing.

I stridently exited the Palazzo and drew a deep breath through my nostrils. If I wasn’t totally contented with what I had heard, I was at least content with what I was hearing, which was the incessant twittering of David’s birds overhead. Men and women, merchants and beggars, priests and courtesans swarmed throughout the square, some carrying boxes, or pamphlets, or fans, or babies, or hopes in their arms.

I stood on the steps of the Palazzo for quite some time, observing the thousands of good and evil appearances, imagining the thousands of good and evil souls hovering just above their heads. (That’s where I imagine the soul would be, anyway.) I wished that I could keep the moment intact forever, that I could shrink it down, put it in a snow-globe (sans snow, of course) or a mechanical diorama, but I was not so insistent upon this impossibility that I felt any sadness. Instead, I felt a sort of nostalgia grow at the base of my throat and spread into my upper chest.

But it couldn’t be nostalgia, could it? After all, I was there. I was present. And yet, what else could I call that bittersweet rejection of time?

I closed my eyes, heaved a sigh, and switched my eyepatch from my right eye to the left.