It was nearing Easter. Father and son were experiencing the simple joy that springtime offers when one leaves early in the morning. The earth rang brightly beneath their steps; this emptiness that the sky conceals, there are faces there, perhaps your mother’s of long ago, or what remains of your youth, and what remains of it is vast. Beneath trees that are yet leafless but full of song, Saint Francis preaches to the birds, and the Revelation redoubles their song. The father and son move from shadow to light, then back into shadow; for a moment, everything is bright: they pass amongst these early blooming trees, perhaps almonds, which are as light as air upon air and beneath which shadows dare not stray. Little Piero’s face was filled with these things and too was unshadowed, was only more pink. He walked with great seriousness; it was as if he were pondering a great project that made his features seem resolute; he took pride in this grown-up trip from which he expected some sort of great advent, so much had his father spoken to him of it: he was hoping for a reality more real than this one, whose portent he felt all around him amongst the almond trees. Little Piero was strongly drawn to this stronger reality. When they saw Borgo, white trees in great numbers made an airy crown around it. “Piero” the child repeated to himself without moving his lips, and this name already within him was also rising from the immense place where our eyes meet the sky, was singing there like fifty monks together in a church, but all in bright frocks, like plumage. These flowers and these voices came from this name in Borgo, they shuddered around it, weightless and strong like flowers. And he, Piero di Lorentino, had the same name. The father watched him out the corner of an eye, knowing what the child was thinking, and he knew that any moment, before his child’s eyes, he would be speaking to the legend, he would embrace that name. His cheeks too were rosy and shadowless; he too heard the singing of these blue-frocked monks. They entered the town toward noon.
The master wasn’t at home, they were told that they would find him in a piazzetta up above. They made their way.
The piazza sloped downward, was deserted; from far off Lorentino saw him at the other end, sitting against a little wall on a projection of stone in front of a sort of market in the shadows, but he, Piero, was in the sun. His shirt was blue. Lorentino, who was walking at his customary pace, had the impression he was moving very slowly. The piazza was treeless, but many pigeons were walking around it, you could hear that silky noise they make when their fat bodies rise into the air. It was only then that the disciple really thought about the master’s blindness: Piero couldn’t see him coming, and that’s what made it seem as though he were moving so slowly. Piero was visible and expressionless like a thing or a painting. Nonetheless, someone did watch them approach: sitting on the ground against the legs of the blind man, little Marco di Longaro, the valet whom the magistrates paid to guide their genial relic through the streets, observed the arrival. Piero was sitting rigidly upright, his head cocked to one side, warming himself on the stones as old people do. They now were before him, the sun beating against Piero’s white, wide-open eyes; his head was still but his hands were moving, one searching for Marco’s shoulder, questioning or nervous, the other rubbing the stone seat with its fingertips. Lorentino noticed immediately how much he had aged; the skin on his neck was withered, his veins were protruding from his hands; but it was still he, the square head and the great jaw, sullen, but no more so than before, perhaps less so, and the strong frame that nothing had stooped; all of this was just beyond those plaster eyes against which space inarguably collided. Lorentino thought that Montefeltro, Malatesta, the great captains, had been afraid of those eyes, in a sense, when those eyes had watched them pass into posterity. Sigismondo Pandolfo in his war harness had been afraid of this old man. Lorentino felt a very sweet urge to cry. He announced himself. Piero seemed not to comprehend right away; the tips of his fingers came and went across the grain of the stone: “Ah, Lorentino,” he said at last. “Little Diosa.” His voice was far away, tranquil, the same as it had been in Arezzo when he hadn’t been angry. He leaned forward a little and Lorentino, who was very moved, did as well, embracing him clumsily, since he hadn’t dared or thought to take him by the shoulder to direct this kiss. Piero’s skin was cold. “Is that Diosa with you?” he said. Lorentino responded — he stammered a little — that it was his oldest son, whom he had named Piero and who would be a painter; and having said this he pushed him a little toward the blind man. The child didn’t move, he resisted, serious and sullen, as if insulted: he looked at the dead eyes, and even more closely at the sleeves of the handsome Spanish shirt that bore long scratches and streaks from the plaster, from filth, since the master, not seeing the walls, had to rub everywhere along them. The child didn’t want to get anywhere near him. The hand of the blind man lifted, remained extended briefly in waiting, and since nothing came, fell back down. He smiled, he said that it was a good first name, Piero, that he himself had born it without displeasure, and that painting was a fine profession, but fatiguing. He asked the child how old he was, and the child responded angrily. The old man fell quiet. For a long moment there was only the sound of the pigeons; Lorentino didn’t know what to say; he had a strong desire to cry. He knew perfectly well that the master couldn’t see him, but he didn’t dare look at him; he was looking off into the somber little market behind them, this wall with a view of nothing. He thought about the high walls of San Francesco. He asked himself if in all the black beneath the plaster spots on Piero’s eyes there might be enormous figures on those walls, great maidens, God the Father, or perhaps only wind; doubtless a little bit of everything. Once again he looked at the master, but below his face, at his shirt. He told him that he hadn’t changed at all.
And so they spoke a little about what they had in common, the profession of painting, faces of yesteryear; those of Arezzo from the time of the frescoes, of Melozzo and Luca who had both done well, who worked for Pope Sixtus, of Perugino who had done even better, and of him, Lorentino, who after all had nothing to complain about, it wasn’t going so badly, he was painting; not for Sixtus, of course, but you can’t have everything. He laughed, and the master laughed too. Marco and little Piero were making faces at each other, the bigger of the two had taken out a game of knucklebones. Preoccupied, the child didn’t look at them again; Lorentino once again saw the rosy face in the almonds where Piero’s great name was blooming, along with all those blue voices, singing. Something like remorse squeezed at his throat. At last he said that a bit of business had brought him to Borgo, a matter of an inheritance, that he shouldn’t linger; that he was happy that luck had allowed him to see his old master. The master seemed moved but said nothing. Lorentino embraced him less clumsily this time, he got a good handful of the ample shirt at the shoulder, of the rich stained silk over old flesh. When they were at the bottom of the piazza Lorentino turned around; draped in the empty space, the old man sat impassively beneath the pomp of midday, blue shirt shimmering; a girl passed slowly through the market: disturbed by the dozen, pigeons took wing, rising from beneath the awning above Piero like one great mauve body rising, climbing, dispersing. Once again, Lorentino felt as he had upon arriving, before seeing a blind man and not knowing what to say to him, triumphantly hearing the great name of Piero calmly spread through the applause of so many wings. On the way back, the child ran in front of him and didn’t look back once, and Lorentino, short of breath, looked at the ground. He hadn’t returned to Borgo since. He didn’t know if the master were dead.