Und so weiter. Every detail of the world, whether sensory or mental, would get blown up out of all proportion the minute we brought our attention to it, and we’d tumble into it head over heels, losing ourselves in its contemplation and exhausting ourselves in its commentary. When a silence came, each of us would wander through it separately, heading off on a solitary path through the forest of our own thoughts and memories, often winding up in dark thickets rife with danger. Sometimes my father would come upon me huddled in a corner of the room, convulsed with sobs and shaking in fear — in which case he’d take me by the hand, help me up, lead me over to some image, smell or sound into which I could plunge with delight. Other times, I’d come over and sit down next to him, lay his dark curly head gently on my thighs, dry his tears, stroke his forehead and sing him a lullaby to calm him down…
The bottle of Valpolicella is empty, and Ingrid has drunk only one glass.
Lurching over to the cash register to pay the bill, Rena realises her mind is a blur.
They emerge into the white floating ineffable beauty of the square by moonlight — ancient façades, Arnolfo Tower, giant statues of David, Perseus, Hercules. All is still. Perfection petrified as in a dream. They stand there staring at it in silence.
‘Takes your breath away,’ murmurs Simon.
Rena glances at him. Which of us is better able to receive this beauty, she wonders — Simon drugged, or me drunk? Which of us is happier, right now?
Davide
Ruthlessly, she whips out her Guide bleu. She can tell her stepmother resents it.
Why can’t Rena just experience the beauty? Subra says, mimicking Ingrid again. Why does she have to obfuscate it with facts and dates, darken it with ancient wars, smother it under dusty erudition?
But she does have to.
Come on, wake up, get a hold of yourself — do you realise we’re standing in front of Michelangelo’s David? Genius, great man, amazing feats of courage, are you listening? Remember David, thirty centuries ago — the little Jewboy who felled Goliath the giant with nothing but a slingshot? The young musician who appeased King Saul’s melancholy with nothing but a harp? The young warrior who defeated the Philistines and took over the city of Jerusalem with nothing but an army? O, intrepid hero! Artist and soldier, king and composer, peerless creator and destroyer! Admire him! And then… Buonarotti, at age thirty (he, too, a genius) received a block of marble another sculptor had damaged and turned it into a sheer masterpiece. The young, perfect, muscular naked body: symbol of the soul, in the loftiest neo-Platonic tradition. Stunned by the statue’s beauty, Florence’s greatest artists met to decide where it should be erected. It took four days, forty men and fourteen wooden cylinders to move the cage from the Duomo workshops to the Palazzo de la Signoria — and here it stands, before our very eyes, its perfection intact these four centuries! The acme, nay, the very epitome of the Renaissance! Twelve feet high, the kid with the slingshot! Admire him!
She doesn’t tell them this statue is in fact a copy. Who knows if they’ll have the time and energy to visit the original at the Accademia?
A young man goes by, selling postcards. One is a close-up of David’s genitals.
Ingrid giggles. ‘I promised to buy a postcard of this statue for our friend David in Montreal,’ she says. ‘But being a minister, he probably wouldn’t appreciate this one, tee, hee, hee! Right, Dad? Oh, no, I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t bring this card home to our David, aren’t you, Dad?’
Finding her own joke irresistible, she repeats it several times. Inwardly, Rena rolls her eyes heavenward.
Then she finds herself tormented by questions again. How do I know my approach to David is right and Ingrid’s wrong? Who has the ability to judge? Based on what criteria?
One thing’s for sure, Subra says. Ingrid’s having more fun in Florence than you are.
Il Duce
They drift back through the Centro Storico in silence. Approaching the Piazza della Repubblica, they hear festive noises — drum roll, circus music, salvos of laughter — what’s going on?
They decide to check it out.
It’s a clown. A clown who, though imitating Charlie Chaplin, is missing Chaplin’s humility, self-irony and truculence (missing Chaplin, in other words).
With imperious gestures—’You! Come here!’—the clown picks a young boy out of the crowd.
The boy shakes his head, trying to resist, but his mother gives him a little shove. ‘Go ahead, little one. Don’t be shy.’ Reluctantly, the child enters the arena.
The clown gives him orders, punctuated by deafening blows of his whistle. By obeying every time, the child makes a fool of himself.
‘Come here!’ the clown says, again and again, his tone of voice more furious by the minute. ‘Sit down! No, stand up! Turn around!’
The boy does his desperate best to comply.
‘Go away, I told you — are you deaf or what? Come back here!’
The child reels. ‘Fine, son,’ his mother beams. ‘You did just fine.’
The clown struts and swaggers. Ingrid joins the crowd in applauding him.
Rena is nauseous. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she says.
‘What’s wrong?’ asks Ingrid.
‘I never liked Mussolini.’
‘Come off it, Rena. This has nothing to do with fascism.’
‘It does so.’
‘It’s getting late, maybe we should be on our way?’ says Simon, who can’t bear any form of conflict between his daughter and his wife.
The true source of Rena’s nausea, though, is in her brain, her distant memories, much too close for comfort.
‘Do you remember Matthew Varick?’ she asks her father as they head for the Hotel Guelfa.
‘Sure,’ he replies. ‘What reminded you of him?’
‘No, nothing, he just flitted through my brain, I don’t know why.’
You do, though, Subra says. Tell me…
Dr Varick was a colleague of my father’s at the university. He had an autistic son named Matthew; the boy’s mother had either died or flown the coop, in any case she wasn’t in the picture. Dr Varick had been offered a sabbatical in Europe, and since hospitality was one of the values of Simon’s Jewish upbringing he cared about preserving, he suggested Matthew come and live with us for a few months, under his scientific observation and Lucille’s care.
How did the rest of the family feel about the idea? Well, Ms Lisa Heyward gave her consent, provided that it didn’t keep her from putting in her seventy-hour week at court; my brother was already off at boarding-school and didn’t care a whit; as for me…no one asked my opinion. And so it was that in September 1973, Matthew Varick moved in with us. I hated his guts from the minute I saw him. He was twelve, just a year younger than I was. He was a plump albino with ginger-coloured hair and eyelashes. Unnaturally pale beneath a thick sprinkle of freckles, his face and neck flamed crimson whenever he blushed, which was often. For no good reason I could see, he walked on tiptoe. Matthew was an unusually gifted autistic child, virtually an extraterrestrial — he had an IQ of 180, was obsessed with astronomy, and did mathematical calculations at lightning speed. He spoke incessantly in a high, thin voice, making the same exclamations over and over again, blinking his pale lashes, waving and flicking his fingers in the air — especially when he was scared, which was often. Over breakfast, the only meal the Greenblatt family took together, his excitement and volubility made conversation next to impossible, but Lisa’s mind was elsewhere and Simon found Matthew’s behaviour fascinating. I was the one who had to put up with him day after day, from after school till bedtime. Since his room was directly beneath mine, I’d hear him chattering to himself as I tried to concentrate on my homework and it would drive me up the wall.