Page 93

He couldn't know what I meant by such words. I couldn't tell him. I stared at him, and for the first time I saw a little apprehension in him. He had begun to notice my skin, and perhaps my hands.

It was time to leave him before he became even more suspicious, and I wanted him to remember me kindly and not with fear.

I took out another purse which I had brought with me. It was full of gold florins.

He gestured to refuse it. In fact, he gave me a very stubborn refusal. I placed it on the table.

For a moment we merely looked at each other.

"Good-bye, Sandro," I said.

"Marius, was it? I'll remember you. "

I made my way out the front door and into the street. I hurried for the space of two blocks and then I stopped, breathing too hurriedly, and it seemed a dream that I had been with him, that I had seen such paintings, that such paintings had been created by man.

I didn't go back to my rooms in the palazzo.

When I reached the vault of Those Who Must Be Kept, I fell down in a new kind of exhaustion, crazed by what; I had beheld. I couldn't get the impression of the man out of my mind. I couldn't stop seeing him with his soft dull hair and sincere eyes.

As for the paintings, they haunted me, and I knew that my torment, my obsession, my complete abandonment to the love of Botticelli had only just begun.

Chapter 16

16

IN THE MONTHS that followed I became a busy visitor of Florence, slipping into various palaces and churches to see the work that Botticelli had done.

Those who praised him had not lied. He was the most revered painter in Florence, and those who complained of him were those for whom he had no time, for he was only a mortal man.

In the Church of San Paolino, I found an altarpiece which was to drive me mad. The subject of the painting was a common one, I had discovered, usually called The Lamentation, being the scene of those weeping over the body of the dead Christ only just taken down from the Cross.

It was a miracle of Botticelli's sensuality, most specifically in the tender representation of Christ himself who had the gorgeous body of a Greek god, and in the utter abandon of the woman who had pressed her face against that of his, for though Christ lay with his head hanging downward, she knelt upright and her eyes were therefore very near to Christ's mouth.

Ah, to see these two faces seamlessly pressed to each other, and to see the delicacy of every face and form surrounding them, it was more than I could endure.

How long would I let this torture me? How long must I go through this wanton enthusiasm, this mad celebration before I retreated to my loneliness and coldness in the vault? I knew how to punish myself, didn't I? Did I have to go out of my way to the city of Florence for this?

There were reasons to be gone.

Two other blood drinkers haunted this city who might want me out of it, but so far they had left me alone. They were very young and hardly very clever, nevertheless I did not want them to come upon me, and spread "the legend of Marius" any further than it had already gone.

And then there was that monster I had encountered in Rome¡ªthat evil Santino who might come this far to harry me with his little Satan worshipers whom I so desperately deplored.

But these things didn't really matter.

I had time in Florence and I knew it. There were no Satan worshipers here and that was a good thing. I had time to suffer as much as I chose.

And I was mad for this mortal, Botticelli, this painter, this genius, and I could scarce think of anything else.

Meantime, there came from Botticelli's brilliance yet another immense pagan masterpiece which I beheld in the palazzo to which it was sent upon being finished¡ªa place into which I crept in the early hours of the morning to see the painting while the owners of the building slept.

Once again, Botticelli had used Roman mythology, or perhaps the Greek mythology that lay behind it to create a garden¡ªyes, of all things, a garden¡ªa garden of eternal springtime in which mythical figures made their sublime progress with harmonious gestures and dreamy expressions, their attitudes exquisitely gentle in the extreme.

On one side of the verdant garden danced the youthful and inevitably beautiful Three Graces in transparent and billowing garments while on the other side came the goddess Flora, magnificently clothed and strewing flowers from her dress. The goddess Venus once more appeared in the center, dressed as a rich Florentine woman, her hand up in a gesture of welcome, her head tilted slightly to one side.

The figure of Mercury in the far left corner, and several other mythic beings completed the gathering which entranced me so that I stood before the masterpiece for hours, perusing all the details, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, wiping at my face, and eyen now and then covering my eyes and then uncovering them again to see the vivid colors and the delicate gestures and attitudes of these creatures¡ª the whole so reminiscent of the lost glory of Rome, and yet so utterly new and different from it that I thought, for loving all this, I will lose my mind.

Any and all gardens which I had ever painted or imagined were obliterated by this painting. HOW would I ever rival, even in my dreams, such a work as this?