The Disciple

Chapter I: Rogation Days-2

Just as they arrived at the confluence of the L-shaped hall – the front door of departure now staring him in the face – John turned round and, pointing in the other direction to a set of closed double doors, asked, in quiet desperation, ‘Is that your study?’

‘It is, but I’m afraid that it is hardly visitable, as it is in the most frightful muddle. And I imagine it will have to stay that way, now that summer is upon us, till one can find someone to arrange it in the autumn.’

‘I’d be happy to help you sort things out,’ John said unhesitatingly.

‘Oh, in that case!’ Sir Christopher said, striking another high note.

‘I would certainly do whatever I could, though I’m not, I mean, here much longer, as I already said.’ John had flown from New York to Milan at the beginning of June and come straight to Florence, having arranged, in advance, to sublet from a fellow graduate student a small, fetid flat in via Sant’Agostino through the end of August. He planned to use this apartment as a base, whilst travelling the length and breadth of Italy throughout the summer, to see in the original all those works of art that he had only ever known from books, photographs and slides.

‘You’d better come and have a look before you make any rash promises,’ Sir Christopher said as he pushed open the double doors to his study. ‘You see what one means.’

John did see. He stood in a long rectangular room with a French window at the north end, providing a broad view of the Arno, in front of which loomed a grand refectory table and an even grander chair – worthy of, at the very least, a cardinal – whilst a smaller window on the east wall provided a lyrical vision of San Miniato al Monte. Immediately to the right of the entry was a piano, upon which sat a large armillary sphere, reminding John of the one that Botticelli had depicted in the fresco of St Augustine in his study; above hung a picture of the Lamentation, which was, John thought, late fifteenth-century Lombard, though any precise attribution escaped him.

Otherwise, the walls were covered with bookcases, wrapping round the corners of the room, right up to the windows. Though the shelves were already full to the point of overflowing, box upon half-opened box of more books lay scattered about the room. Interspersed with them was an avalanche of photographs (of works of art, not of people), slides, periodicals, off-prints, a rolled carpet, a pair of chairs still covered in plastic packing, two good old trunks and several cheap modern suitcases that appeared to be bulging with papers. Towering over the scene, like a group of misplaced sentries, stood five metal filing cabinets, all of a slightly different, drab hue. Looking round, John thought of the bookless rooms of his childhood and exhaled, not discontentedly, but almost with an air of relieved satisfaction, as if to say that he had finally, after years of wandering, reached his true port of entry.

Unlike a bibliophile, who values each volume individually, he was aroused by the abundance of books. He felt that he learnt something, indeed became something, just from the very profusion; the sight of all these books, the smell of them, the touch of them excited him. And this was a sensation that no institutional library could inspirit, for he found that, just as pearls, even if they be carefully kept, will lose their lustre if they are not worn, so too is it necessary that books be owned and handled for their magic to be ignited. That so many of these volumes were battered or mis-shelved only added to his sense of awe, confirming his conviction that the books by which he was surrounded were not distraction for the rich but tools for the knowledgeable. He walked up to the altar of a writing-table and piously ran his fingers along its book-laden, paper-strewn surface.

‘I’m afraid that I wasn’t exaggerating,’ Sir Christopher broke in on John’s reverie.

‘No, you weren’t.’

‘A veritable Augean stable it is,’ Sir Christopher said. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘Peter did the best he could. He really worked wonders in the short time he was here. It was he who hung all the pictures and organised the plants. But now that he’s gone back to London – well, I don’t see how things will ever be put right.’

Peter? John thought but refrained from asking, for he imagined that it would be better for him, as is often the case when learning a new language, to try to piece things together from context, rather than to interrupt the flow of conversation in pursuit of precise definitions. Instead, he said, ‘If you think it would help, I could come back tomorrow afternoon and try to make a start at organising some of these books.’

‘But that would be too marvellous.’

‘I could call first, if you want – but, I’m sorry, you said in your note that your telephone is broken. I mean, uh, that’s why you told me just to turn up like this.’

‘It’s not broken, the telephone. The wretched thing has never been turned on, or whatever they’re meant to do to it. There’s a number, and there’s a telephone, but there’s no sound when one picks it up,’ Sir Christopher said with unconcealed exasperation.

‘I wonder what can be done?’ John said, thinking aloud.

‘If you could find out, I should be more than grateful.’

‘How long have you been living here?’ John asked.

‘Actually in this apartment, just over a fortnight. I stayed in an hôtel for the first month, whilst the worst of things was being straightened out. I must say that I never imagined that it would be quite so difficult to get settled. And this does so interrupt one’s work. Not,’ Sir Christopher stopped himself, ‘that one wasn’t perfectly right to move out here; it’s what one’s always dreamt of, so when Antonia Vespucci told me that this flat in their palace was available to let – well, I thought one really had to nab it at once. It’s just that, perhaps, one should have waited to move till the autumn, as many people suggested.’

‘I’ve been told that everything really closes up here in summer, particularly during the month of August.’

‘Does it not! Which means that one has only another few weeks to get this flat organised, before things come to a complete standstill. In the past, I admit, I’ve always rather liked the idea that Florence should be almost hermetically sealed during the month of August. Lord knows, I’ve spent every summer here for nearly the past fifty years – excepting the war, of course – and I always found it immensely conducive to work, what with all that intense heat and everything tight shut. But then, one had never before been responsible for organising a household. For the summer, one had always taken furnished flats, which came provided with servants, and where everything was done for one. Frightfully fussing, this is!’ Sir Christopher said, agitatedly twirling his hand in the air, whilst raising his voice an octave – maybe two.

John was as struck by Sir Christopher’s frequent reference to himself as ‘one’ as he was by his habit of stridulously contorting his voice, to the point of a near choking sound, over a selected word or two. To say, however, that he broke into a high-pitched tone would be misleading, in that the effect produced, at least on John, was one not of effeminacy but of unassailable authority. Grasping for a subject to dispel the discontent that Sir Christopher’s voice betokened, John said, as he clutched the edge of the refectory table and looked down at a small pink manual typewriter, out of which fluttered a crinkled sheet of paper, ‘Well, it looks as if your work has not been completely interrupted.’

‘Oh, yes, that’s a review I’m writing about several new monographs on early quattrocento painters, but even that has been going on for much longer than usual.’

‘I don’t think it will be all that difficult to get things settled. Should I come by a little earlier tomorrow, say round four? Though I don’t want to interrupt you at teatime,’ John said, not because he was so naïf as to imagine that all English people religiously took tea at four o’clock, but because he wanted to get as clear a picture as possible of Sir Christopher’s habits.

‘You don’t have to worry about interrupting tea, I can assure you, as there is no one to make it. The servants don’t live in, you see, which is probably why things seem so strange to one. Anyway, yes, why don’t you come at four tomorrow.’

Ú

John held his hand over the spout, trying to judge from the force of the steam if the water had boiled, for he didn’t think it likely that such a battered kettle would produce a whistle. And as he had taken such trouble in procuring the tea, he wanted that it be perfectly brewed. After having visited several shops this morning, he finally settled on a tin of Russian tea, made by an émigré firm in Paris, which he found in a dark, but welcoming, shop in via de’ Tornabuoni. At first, he wondered if he shouldn’t choose some obviously English brand of tea, but he preferred the canister of the Russian one and, as it was more expensive than any other, thought it would make the greater impression. Sir Christopher’s cry of delight with the offering, verging on euphoria when John explained that he could actually make the tea, had more than justified his choice.

‘Do you have everything you need?’ Sir Christopher asked, peering irresolutely into the kitchen.

‘I think so. I found this nice strainer,’ John said, holding up an elaborate piece of Victorian silver. ‘But I don’t know if that’s the teapot you use,’ he continued, pointing to a coarse earthenware vessel.

‘I suppose that it will do, though there is a proper Georgian one, but Lord only knows where that Indian has put it.’

‘Indian?’ John asked.

‘Rita, the maid. She insists she’s only half Indian; the other half is Neapolitan, if you please. What a combination!’

‘Has she been with you for a long time?’

‘No, it was Peter who found her, when I arrived here. She was very highly recommended, or so Peter says. But I don’t like the look of her. Very shifty. In London, I had a lovely Portuguese couple who lived in the basement of my house and looked after one beautifully, but I am told that it is quite impossible to find that sort of thing here.’

Peter – again, John said to himself as, aware that he was being observed, he manœuvred deftly round the kitchen, warming the pot, measuring the tea and slicing the lemon.

‘My, how capable you are,’ Sir Christopher said, being as proud of the humble tasks he himself had never performed (make tea or slice lemon) as he was of the impressive ones (write books or direct museums) that he had.

‘Hmm.’ John smiled, mistaking the remark for an unmitigated compliment. ‘Shall I bring the tea back to your study?’

‘I think we’ve done enough in there for today. Why don’t we go to the drawing room? Or, better yet, why don’t we go up to the loggia – if that tray isn’t too heavy for you?’

‘No, I’m sure that I can manage,’ John said obligingly, even though he would have preferred to remain inside, with the works of art, of which he had caught but a glimpse, rather than outside, with nature.

‘How nice,’ Sir Christopher said, leading the way.

‘Oh, I forgot.’ John stopped. ‘Do you take milk?’

‘I’m afraid I do, generally, but I doubt that the Indian has thought to lay any in.’

‘No, there is some,’ John said, putting down the tray. ‘I saw it in the refrigerator, only I couldn’t find a pitcher.’