9
MAIA
A month or so after the art collections began, Ficino and Ikaros blandly presented to the Art Committee a lost bronze of Michaelangelo, a David, but very unlike his most famous David. They told us unblinkingly that it was Theseus with the head of Kerkyon. I nodded and made a note of it. “Excellent,” Atticus said. “One of the best artists of your time.”
“Of any time,” Ficino said, smiling.
I asked Ikaros if I could speak to him a little later. He agreed at once. After dinner, that day a kind of nut porridge, we went for a walk.
The island was beautiful, even then when the city was still a building site. We walked off to the west and sat under a pine tree overlooking the sea to watch the sunset. “You’re a monk,” I began. I was speaking in Latin as we usually did together.
Ikaros jumped. “I am not! I was just wearing the habit. I’ve taken no vows of celibacy, don’t worry.”
It was my turn to jump. “Did you think this was a sexual assignation?” I asked. I was simultaneously horrified and delighted. Ikaros was a handsome man, only about ten years older than me, and I had believed everyone who told me that nobody would ever want a bluestocking. Yet at the same time I felt diminished, as if it meant he wasn’t taking me seriously.
“Such things have happened,” he said, smiling. “Even here. Plato does not describe how the first generation of teachers are supposed to regulate their lives.”
“He does talk about how children are to be born,” I said, as sternly as I could. “And really, sneaking off to the woods is against everything he says.”
He took my hand and ran one finger around my palm, making my breath catch. “But if it were a proper festival of the Republic, and you and I had drawn each other by lot?”
“That would be entirely different,” I said, pulling my hand away in as dignified a way as I possibly could. Entirely different and far too exciting, I thought. “Come on Ikaros, we’re friends.”
“And what does Plato say about friendship?”
“He says not to get Eros mixed up with it,” I said crisply, though far from unmoved. I was very aware that the kiton left far more of me uncovered than the clothes of my own period. I had never really noticed that before, because nobody had been looking at me the way Ikaros was looking at me. I stared straight ahead. The sun was setting into the sea and turning both sea and sky as crimson as my cheeks felt.
“If you didn’t want that, then why did you want to drag me off alone?”
“I wanted to ask you about the David.”
“Theseus,” he corrected me at once.
“Exactly. That’s why I wanted to ask you alone.”
“Well, what? It’s a good Theseus, it meets the needs, it’s beautiful and we’ve rescued it. Atticus didn’t blink.”
“But why not say it’s David? Why do we have to keep Christ out? What’s the necessity? The reason I mentioned that I thought you were a monk was because I thought you were a Dominican, but still you prayed to Athene.”
“I was having a bad moment when I prayed to be here. The church refused to hear my arguments and then I was imprisoned in France.”
“You prayed to Athene when you were imprisoned by the Inquisition?”
“With very good results,” he said, smiling and spreading his hands.
“Yes, fine, but my point is that many people have reconciled Plato with Christ. Ficino did.” Only a sliver of the sun was left, but the sea and sky still blazed. Why would he have been wearing a monk’s habit if he were not a monk? Did they have fancy dress parties in the Renaissance? Could I possibly ask?
“I myself did,” he said, proudly. “I reconciled Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Platonism and Zoroastrianism. I learned Arabic and Hebrew. I was so proud of myself. But don’t you see, we were doing it starting from a belief that Christianity was true. If instead it’s the Greek Gods who are true, if we have immortal souls that go down into Hades and on to Lethe and new life, then what price salvation? They can mix from the other side, we could say that Plato was really talking about God. But from this side, well, we can’t say that when Jesus said he’d be in his father’s house that he was really talking about Zeus, now can we?”
“I do see that,” I said. “But it’s not as if it does any harm, even if it’s not true. It’s a lovely story, about good people. It’s not … contaminated. I don’t see why we have to exclude it so entirely that we have to say the David is Theseus.”
Ikaros lay back, propped on his elbow. “Christianity is harmful to the Republic because it offers a different and incorrect truth. We want them to discover the Truth, the real Truth that a philosopher can glimpse. That’s important. We don’t want to clutter it up with irrelevancies. Christianity would just get in their way. So no Madonnas and no crucifixions.”
“But David is all right as long as we say it’s Theseus?”
“Why not? What harm could that do? I’d bring a Madonna and say it’s Isis, but Ficino thinks that’s going too far.”
“I wish I could see the Madonnas again. Botticelli’s Madonnas, that is. I only saw them once. I was going to buy an engraving, but I spent all my money on books. Still, we have the new ones.”
“We do. Athene in the Judgement of Paris looks a little like you.” He moved closer and put his arm around me. “The real trouble with Christianity is that the morality can do so much harm.”
“I didn’t offer you Christian morality, but Plato on love,” I said, standing up. I wasn’t afraid that he would attack me, although I was aware that he was strong and could easily have overpowered me if he had wanted to. What frightened me was the thought that if he persisted, and especially if he persisted in touching me, I would give in to him. “Come on, let’s go back if you can’t exercise temperance.”
“But you are a poor little Christian virgin, not somebody holding out for agape,” he said, not moving.
I was furious. “How could you possibly know?” I asked.
He laughed, silhouetted against a sky of violet and rose. “Oh sit down. I can’t talk to you when you’re hovering over me like that. I’ll concede that I could be wrong. But I doubt it.”
“Nobody will ever say yes to you if you’re that smug,” I said, sitting down but out of arm’s length.
“Lots of people have said yes to me already,” he said.
“Here?” I was amazed, and a little jealous.
“Here, and in Italy before. I know my way around. I know what women like.”
I was completely cold now. “There’s nothing less exciting than being thought of as part of a class of beings that are all the same,” I said. “You’re treating me as a thing.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t see you as a person,” Ikaros said; “that I want to copulate with you. Latin is an impossible language for this, and you don’t know Italian. Let’s speak Greek.”
“I’d rather talk about why we have to exclude Christianity,” I said, but I did switch to Greek.
“I know, but you’re misjudging me.”
“You keep changing the subject,” I said.
“I see you, and I like you, and I find you attractive, and it would be a pleasant thing we could do together, like … sharing a meal. It doesn’t stop us having serious conversations that we have silly conversations with imaginary wine. It wouldn’t stop us having serious conversations if we indulged in eros. All I meant by the remark about knowing what women like is that I’m not a clumsy oaf who would hurt you, or who wouldn’t care about your pleasure.”