A Year in Italy
I had spent long hours, long months, nearly a year, in the libraries of Italy studying the life of one of the most pernicious despots of the Renaissance, Giangaleazzo Maria Giovanetti, a man whose love of power was intense and whose exercise of it was extreme, and so frightening that it was seductive. At least, to me it was seductive, and I cannot think myself, in that regard, peculiar, considering the success Giangaleazzo enjoyed in his quest for power and his lust for making everyone in Florence subordinate to him.
He was, by all accounts, divinely handsome and enjoyed posing – clothed or not, as the occasion demanded -- for monumental statues that graced some of the most prominent religious and civic edifices in Florence. He commandeered a monastery and evicted its monks – turning them into a divided and wandering sect – when he suspected a conspiracy by them against him, justified in the name of religion. That monastery he then filled with fifty of his finest slaves and turned it into what might be called a harem or his own brothel – to which particular friends or men whose loyalty he wished to secure were sometimes invited – but which he called with knowing irony, the Sanctuary. It became, in addition, a center for painting, sculpting, and music– usually of an erotic, sinuous, and undulating kind that is not usually associated with the art of Florence, -- an alternative to the Church. For this it was condemned by the Church, but without effect. So powerful was Giangaleazzo that he withstood anathema and was never excommunicated despite his provocations and despite the Pope's longing to punish him for his imperious disregard for Papal Authority.
He enjoyed having his most beautiful male slaves dressed richly as women and taught to compose, bear and conduct themselves in such ways that they could become in nearly every aspect of their being, female. It is reported that when one exquisite youth from northern Africa refused the command, he was castrated, chained by his nipples to a dungeon wall, and left to perish. Nor was this a solitary punishment. Everyday, as the youth deteriorated, Giangaleazzo is reported to have visited the dungeon -- illuminated by a dozen fine wax candles -- and installed upon a silver throne, sit gazing at the young man. Musicians were present with woodwinds and string instruments. Incense was burned. Sometimes six or seven of his courtiers joined him to speak of the Platonic dialogues and Ficino's commentaries. Sometimes Giangaleazzo struck the dying man with the short, gold-handled whip he habitually carried and never restrained himself from using wherever he was, if he judged its use efficacious. Sometimes he caressed the body. The body, when it became a corpse, was burned , rather than buried.
While Giangaleazzo did not hesitate to employ torture, terror, and murder, not just for pleasure, but to further his political ends, they were only last resorts. So much he accomplished with an elegance of person and a disposition that could not fail to charm and attract even as it threatened, so accomplished a horseman, poet, lute player, dancer, and gymnast was he, that his gross brutalities were optional and even whimsical. After visiting him, Castiglione wrote that he embodied the essential Courtier.
Such was Giangaleazzo's power over me that, in Italy, where the sun shines with a light that has inspired centuries of painters, and the air is so clear that you can see it, I chose rather the catacombs of libraries where the air was fetid from the decay of ancient books. What light there was came from incandescent electric bulbs and the hungry imagination that impelled me to pursue the career of a madman.
I left the Vatican library and met Eloise at the train station. We had earlier arranged to meet there when we spoke long distance. She was returning from a visit to her parents in the States. She wanted to stop in Rome, and we had agreed to travel to Florence together. She had a house there and I had a room on a small and ancient street. She spent much of her time in Florence, with the woman who had become her companion, the woman for whom she had left me ten years earlier. Now, that no longer mattered to me.
"You look pale," she said as we sat in a place near the Duomo and touched wine glasses. "Has any good come of it? Have you got a book?"
"I just might," I said, always speaking in the provisional rather than risking any certitude. In fact, I was pretty sure I did have a book.
"Well, good," she said. "All this sequestration may add up to something."
"Sequestration," I said, echoing her. "My god! I've roamed freely and openly through places I never would have been admitted to had I lived at the time I've been reading about. I've read letters and reports of conversations that were intended for a privileged few. The rooms, the furnishings, the costumes...the grand scenes that were played out before my eyes! The mix of eroticism and cruelty would shame Cecil B. DeMille."
"If I remember, you..."
"I was never cruel to you," I said, heading her off before she could finish with an indictment I did not want to hear, no matter how coyly framed.
"You weren't very erotic, either."
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"It was a long time ago. What does it matter? What do you want from me?"
"Now? Nothing."
"So why do you bring up the past?"
"Because it is not the past for me."
"And it certainly is not the present."
"It does not look like you have very much of a present," she said.
Her lips were shiny with colorless gloss. They had color enough already. She came on tough and sly. It was her way. She could get away with it because most everyone, men and women -- like me -- could not keep their eyes off the fresh fleshliness. As she spoke, I wanted to bring my own lips to hers and taste them and hold her soft, strong, voluptuous body in my arms. I remembered her with my body even though I had forgotten her in my longing.
She knew what I wanted and smiled.
"It doesn't change," she said, even though it really had.
With her index finger she touched my lips, then brought hers near, barring our kiss with that finger until she slid it away and brought our lips together.
I knew she was not yielding. She was triumphing. She was setting me up for a fall even as she seemed to be acquiescing to my desire. I went home with her but did not stay late.
I left and crossed the Ponte Vecchio into the old city itself, caught in a reverie by the amber streetlights. I stopped for coffee in a café located in an old stone cellar. I was not worried that I would not sleep. I did not want to sleep. I intended to stay up and work. Long passages had become chapters. The book was there. It had an strong narrative arc, intellectual clarity, an engrossing re-capitulation of its world, an easy engagement with its subject, an overall esthetic texture that excited me.
My window from the sixth storey of a seventeenth-century stone building looked out onto a crescent moon in a clear sky, and the crowns of budding trees in the distance.
I saw the sky get light. I was too excited to go to bed. I pulled on a pair of jeans, a pair of red canvas shoes, a red cashmere turtleneck sweater, and I lunged downstairs into the dawning street, intoxicated, and headed towards the Arno. I ought to have been hungry, but I wasn't. I had become empty and felt receptive. Everything bordered on me. I touched the architecture with my eyes; the air, with my skin.
The sun rose warm in the morning; I stood on the old bridge studying a man, hardly thirty, around my age. I took him to be a vendor. He was removing the panels of a stall and putting out leather handbags.
"You up early, or you did not get to bed yet?" he said, smiling at me when he noticed me watching him,
"I was up all night," I said, returning his smile. "You?" I asked.
He'd gone to bed early and was up at four. He'd walked down into the city from the surrounding hillsides. This was not his stall. He was helping a friend whose wife was in labor. We liked each other immediately. His physical beauty did not hide his modest loveliness; the impression of gentleness in his bearing predominated, despite the strength of his features, and it was real.
We met two nights later for dinner.
I was moody and upset with myself for being out of sorts. I was afraid to like him and I wanted him to like me. I was, despite myself, doing everything I could to insure he would not. Or perhaps I was challenging him, to see how far I could go with him. I felt an ache of desire.
"What's wrong"" he said. "Is it something thoughtless I have done?"
"No," I said, disarmed by his sweetness. "Sometimes I become gloomy, and I can't get myself out of it. But it is only one part of me." I touched his arm, tentatively, as I spoke. He took my hand and held it as I was drawing away. I stopped in the middle of the gesture and looked at him.
"Don't be afraid," he said.
We crossed the Ponte Vecchio and walked into the hills above the city. He put his arm around my shoulders as if to guide me along unfamiliar paths in the darkness. I wanted him to kiss me. I held myself back and became dispirited. I was absent, a body drained of energy.
The moon was a thin waxing crescent in a sky glittering with whitewash. He pulled me near to him.
"Why are you shivering? The night is warm."
I looked at him but said nothing. He held me tighter and kissed me. I yielded to him. I melted into him. I began to cry. He looked at me. With the tips of his fingers, he wiped my eyes.
"You have the body of a boy, a beautiful boy, but you are as soft as a girl."
I dropped my head in shame.
"No, it is nothing to be ashamed of," he said, carefully lifting my chin and gently kissing my eyes. "You will be my girl, my sweet girl. I will guard you. I will complete you."
I leaned into him. I ached for him to caress me. He put his palms on my chest, softly, and caressed me as if I had breasts. Everything he did was softly. I swooned under him and raised my head and looked at him. He brushed his fingers across my lips and kissed me.
"You're my beautiful girl," he said.
And I was. At least that night I was. And it went deep enough for me to know that that night could be forever. But the desire to work -- research and write and give the past its life once more -- was also forever.
When I went into seclusion for a month so I could finish the book, he let me do it. It was hard to take myself away from him. It meant iron discipline. The greater the effort it took me to stay away from him and to concentrate on writing, the greater, I could feel, was my desire for him. The strength of a force is measured by the strength of the force needed to resist it.