Mattilda and I had known each other for fifteen years, at least. Playground friends. Then in high school we discovered sex, without much understanding what was going on between our two bodies, liquid surprises, erratic breathing, but bound together even more by these first awkward moments. And I’d been fascinated ever since by her attention to the details of love—the art of carrying involvement to extremes. You could see that this was a priority. As for her, she would have far preferred to see me consumed by pleasure rather than erudition. So, obviously, with notions like that about life and the world, and despite the gratification she got from hearing me speak, for once, become animated, yes, by his ideas, Mattilda couldn’t go along with my admiration for Robert. The expression on her face was one of wariness. As if she smelled danger. As if she had a premonition of what was going to happen.
She did, however, want to go to the old man’s place with me to take a look at this fellow whom she found intriguing because of my excitement in describing him. Seeing that I felt put on the spot, she insisted. But I refused. She was the one who never wanted to go out or meet anybody! Besides, I felt it would be better for me to go alone. Just out of politeness. Robert wouldn’t necessarily enjoy an invasion, especially if he had some proposition to make to me, one that just the two of us should discuss. Anyhow, I knew Mattilda, she’d have changed her mind at the last minute. Nonetheless, my refusal made her mad. I saw it in the way her eyes glazed over.
Chapter III
When we’d parted, Robert had explained to me how to get to his house. It was near the city, but looked like the country. To get there from the riverbanks you had to head into a real labyrinth of twisting alleys, so you had to do it right, but at the end of it all you’d come out onto half-cultivated fields. After that it was very simple, I couldn’t miss it. He’d even called that same morning, very early, to be sure I’d be coming and be on time, exactly five P.M. he said; he couldn’t stand people being late, because the way he organized his time meant there wasn’t a single minute left for improvisation. When he’d called, Mattilda was still asleep, and, as for myself, I didn’t know what to do with myself in those blue-green minutes of dawn. I’d never gotten up so early. Hardly a morning person, that’s the least you can say. But on this occasion I felt impelled by a new energy. I’d watched Mattilda, the way she had of being all wrapped up in sleep, taking great pleasure in it, yes, precisely, enjoying it, you could see on her face that she liked sleeping.
The neighborhood the old man lived in was amazing, a kind of enclave of greenery in the city, vast, with a public park down below, which was empty except for a couple of stray adolescents in love who were out in the cold; there were linden trees there too, and a cedar. Steps went up from there to the observatory and ran alongside Robert’s house, a third of the way up.
I hardly recognized him in his loose blue jacket and eyeglasses, which he hadn’t been wearing when we first met, probably he’d caught sight of me and wanted to meet me on the steps, so, right away, having only just arrived, I told him how enthusiastic I was about where he lived before we were even inside. All the advantages of the city plus peace and quiet; and what I could imagine of the yard surrounding his house was a pleasant, relaxed breathing space with a vegetable garden and fruit trees—how beautiful they must be in the fall, and especially in the spring, with the flowers . . . “Yes, you’re right, it’s magnificent. And I’ve really gotten used to it, just think, it’s been twenty years! At my age what makes it invaluable is how close it is to the city center. But don’t be fooled, things are changing, have changed, even here. Summer has become absolute hell.” The little park had turned into a veritable sluiceway into which the city vomited its excess of visitors. And by no means the cream of the crop! Drifting beer-soused youth. The nauseating foam of a horde of tourists, ever more cacophonous and invasive. And other parts of the city were no better off, especially the historical district with its gray-haired tourists and their sunburned faces. “Maybe the solution to this modern scourge is for you to hold it back, you with your data processing . . . Instead of entering literature and paintings into computers, why not put cities, with tourist routes described from every angle, into them? Images galore! Everybody could have the whole world via fiber optic, everybody comfortably settled in front of his little screen . . . Finally, a benefit of technology! Cities could be returned to their inhabitants, their workers, and that way they might recover their particular charm.” Like how it had been when he first traveled, but things were very different then. You could land anywhere at all that wasn’t your own region, somewhere that wasn’t necessarily very distant or exotic, no, simply elsewhere, and the contrast would jump out at you; you had the impression that you were discovering a new world. Today, all countries are just the same; international travel provides a uniform scenery: with identical products, identical cuisine, identical polite smiles. Only jet lag still managed to provide the thrill of being somewhere else, the notion of foreignness. Under such conditions, he was happily satisfied with his corner of this territory, a little island preserved in the urban tide. It was true that it was a good life, except sometimes for the isolation—in winter because of ice or snow, and in summer the dreadful way it became deserted in August. “But come in! You must be frozen just standing there listening to me. Once I get started . . . I all but forgot you were there!”
What had struck me right from the outset, enough almost to make me feel sick, was a terrible smell of mustiness, greasy cooking, and, on top of that, stifling smoke all over everything—furniture, knickknacks, people—which had to come from a chimney that wasn’t drawing well. From the outside, the house had seemed enormous to me—a first impression confirmed by the huge living room where, in the part of it softly lit by two squat lamps, Robert had asked me to settle in. A space far too vast for him, which could explain the smelly, filthy neglect in the place. My sense of smell has always been very sensitive. Really, just my luck. Later, thinking of the old man and myself, I often wondered if olfactory powers were not inversely proportional to those of memory.
He was already in a low, apricot-colored armchair that stood in piles of books lying every which way. That was his armchair, and it was no longer possible to tell if the springs had broken as a result of his weight, or if, on the contrary, they had gradually deformed the vulnerable, malleable body of the old man. In any event, the result was a perfect symbiosis. Robert stuffed himself into it, head slightly bent forward, with an expression on his face that invited me to sit down as well. Then, without a word, he’d looked me up and down at length, methodically, his piercing eyes sparing not one detail, not one morsel. Silence in someone’s presence very quickly makes me anxious. I lowered my eyes, fixing them on a pile of fat, oblong folders that lay on a low table, right next to the armchair, ones he’d probably been consulting before, pleased with my being on time, he’d interrupted his reading to come welcome me, and after a few minutes, he simply said, in his strong, steady voice: “Jacopo Pontormo,” before returning to his watchful silence. But it didn’t take long for him to get started, slowly, dreamily. Still on the subject of the vanished series, the last frescoes at San Lorenzo: “Vertiginous painting, and his crazed obsession with the body at the end, death in action, and the artist becoming lost, buried in a mass grave of colors. There’s no reference point anymore; the flood, the resurrection, the ascension, a few other scenes, they all seem to have been swept away in one lavish convulsion. What sense does it all make? Poor historians, poor interpreters, something to rack their brains over for centuries! Even today, there’s plenty of work there for those who never tire of digging up sources . . . But the sole source, the only one that’s really real, is the pit where Jacopo piled his corpses, plus the eyes to examine them, fiddle with them! That one source alone! Even Vasari is speechless as a result, claiming to understand nothing about a composition like this.” Then, with no warning, cool as could be, the old man started quoting what the famous biographer said, entire pages, in their original language. Then he sarcastically compared the troubled, perplexed remarks about Pontormo with other passages in The Lives, which were merciless. “What a joke! Vasari, who spent his time judging others, now suddenly abstaining humbly and simply expressing