So I cracked the tube open, saving it for after the regular mail, the credit card offers and sweepstakes notifications and nothing that resembled a letter from Katie. In the glow of the television, the barrel seemed hollow, no poster from Charlie, no message. Only when I stuck my finger inside did I feel something thin curled around the circumference. One side of it felt glossy, the other side ragged. I pulled it out less gently than I should have, considering what it was.
Bottled inside the little package was an oil painting. I rolled it open, wondering for a second if Charlie had outdone himself and bought me an original. But when I saw the image on the canvas, I knew better. The style was much older than nineteenth-century American, much older than any century American. The subject was religious. It was European, from the first true age of painting.
It is difficult to explain the feeling of holding the past in your hands. The smell of that canvas was stronger and more complex than anything in Texas, where even wine and money are young. There was a trace of the same smell at Princeton, possibly at Ivy, certainly in the oldest rooms of Nassau Hall. But the odor was much more concentrated here, in this tiny cylinder, the smell of age, hardy and thick.
The canvas was dark with grime, but slowly I made out the subject. In the background stood the statuary of ancient Egypt, obelisks and hieroglyphs and unfamiliar monuments. In the foreground was a single man, to whom others had come in submission. Seeing a hint of pigment, I looked more closely. The man's robe was painted with a brighter palette than the rest of the scene. In the dusty desert, it was radiant. This man before me, I hadn't thought of in years. It was Joseph, now a great official in Egypt, rewarded by the pharaoh for interpreting dreams. Joseph, revealing himself to his brothers who came to buy grain, the very brothers who left him for dead so many years before. Joseph, restored to his coat of many colors.
On the bases of the statuary had been painted three inscriptions. The first read: CRESCEBAT AUTEM COTIDIE FAMES IN OMNI TERRA APERUITIQUE IOSEPH UNIVERSA HORREA. There was famine all over the world. Then Joseph opened the granaries. Then: FESTINAVITQUE QUIA COMMOTA FUERANT VISCERA EIUS SUPER FRATRE SUO ET ERUMPEBANT LACRIMAE ET INTROIENS CUBICULUM FLEVIT. Joseph hurried out; so strong was the affection he felt for his brother that he wanted to cry. On the base of the third statue was simply a printed signature. SANDRO DI MARIANO-better known by the nickname his older brother gave him: little barrel, or Botticelli. By the date below his name, the canvas was over five hundred years old.
I stared at it, this relic that only one other pair of hands had touched since the day it was sealed below ground. Beautiful in a way that no humanist could resist, with its pagan statuary that Savonarola could never abide. Here it was, nearly destroyed by age, but somehow still intact, still vibrant beneath the soot. Alive, after all this time.
I laid it on the table when my hands became too unsteady to hold it, and I reached into the tube again, looking for something I'd missed. A letter, a note, even just a symbol. But it was empty. The handwriting on the outside, spelling out my address with such care. But nothing else. Only postmarks and a routing code in the corner.
Then that routing code caught my eye: 39-055-210185-GEN4519. There was a pattern to it, like the logic of a riddle. It formed an exchange, a phone number overseas.
At the dark end of a bookshelf I found a volume someone had given me for Christmas years ago, an almanac, with its catalogs of temperatures and dates and zip codes, suddenly useful. Toward the back was a list of foreign
prefixes.
39, the country code for Italy.
055, the area code for Florence.
I stared at the rest of the numbers, beginning to feel the return of my pulse, the old drumming in my ears. 21 01 85, a local phone number. GEN4519, possibly a room number, an extension. He was at a hotel, in an
apartment.
There was famine all over the world. Then Joseph opened the granaries. I looked back at the painting, then over at the mailing tube.
GEN4519.
Joseph hurried out; so strong was the affection he felt for his brother that he wanted to cry.
GEN4519. GEN45:19.
In the home I'd made, it was easier to find an almanac than a Bible. I had to rummage through old boxes in my attic before coming across the Bible that Charlie claimed to have left behind accidentally after his last visit. He thought he might be able to share his faith with me, the certainties that came with it. Indefatigable Charlie, hopeful to the end.
I have it now, in front of me. Genesis 45:19 comes at the conclusion of the story Botticelli painted. After revealing himself to his brothers, Joseph becomes a gift-giver, just like his father before him. After all he has suffered, he says he will take his brothers back, they who now starve in Canaan, and let them share in the bounty of his Egypt. And I, who have made the mistake most of my life of trying to leave my father behind me, of thinking I could move forward by keeping him in the past, I understand perfectly.
Get your father and come, the verse says. Never mind about your property, for the best of all Egypt will be yours.
I pick up the phone.
Get your father and come, I think, wondering how he understood, even when I didn't.
I put the phone back down and reach for my daybook, to copy the number before anything can happen to it. In those lonely pages, the new H of Paul Harris and the old M of Katie Marchand are the only two entries on the spread. It feels unnatural to add a name now, but I am fighting the sensation that all I have is this set of digits on the mailing tube, a single chance that could be erased by the simplest mistake, an opportunity that could bleed into nothing beneath a single drop of water.
There is sweat on my hands as I lift the receiver again, hardly aware of the time that has passed as I sat here, trying to think of the words to put to this. Out the bay window of my bedroom, in the glittering Texas night, I can see nothing but the sky.
Never mind about your property, for the best of all Egypt will be yours.
I refresh the dial tone and start pushing the buttons on the keypad. A number I never thought my fingers would form, a voice I never thought I'd hear again. There is a distant buzz, the ringing of a telephone in another time zone. Then, after the fourth ring, a voice.
You've reached Katie Marchand at Hudson Gallery, Manhattan, Please leave a message.
Then a beep.
Katie, I say, into the hum of silence, this is Tom. It's almost midnight here. Texas time.
The hush of the other end is haunting. It might have overwhelmed me,
if I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say.
I'm leaving Austin tomorrow morning. I'll be gone for a while; I'm not sure how long.
There is a photo of the two of us in a small frame on my desk. We're slightly off-center, both holding one side of the camera and pointing it toward ourselves. The campus chapel is behind us, stony and still, Princeton whispering in the background even now.
When I get back from Florence, I tell her, the sophomore in my picture, my accidental gift, just before the machine in New York cuts off, I want to see you.
Then I place the receiver back in its cradle and stare out the window again. There will be bags to pack, travel agents to call, new pictures to take. Even as I begin to realize the magnitude of what I'm doing, a thought occurs to me. Somewhere in the city of rebirth, Paul is lifting himself out of bed, staring out his window, and waiting. There are pigeons cooing on rooftops, cathedral bells tolling from towers in the distance. We are sitting here, continents apart, the same way we always did: at the edges of our mattresses, together. On the ceilings where I am going there will be saints and gods and flights of angels. Everywhere I walk there will be reminders of all that time can't touch. My heart is a bird in a cage, ruffling its wings with the ache of expectation. In Italy, the sun is rising.