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10______________His mother stood at the oven and pulled out home-make cakes. She was silent and Luca sensed a threatening thundercloud over his head. "Have you been out with the Prince?" she snapped out of the blue.
Luca laughed a bit too shrill. "Well, Mamma, I'm still alive. They did nothing to me." Except kicking me in the ribs with their boots and almost strangling me, he thought. Clarissa flashed at him with her blue eyes. "The newspaper doesn't say what it was about. Were you robbed?"
The door flung open and his brothers entered the kitchen, coming in from work. "Ah, there's our little prince consort", Dante sneered. "Or the prince's flunkey, I should say." Giano pushed him hard. "Stop that foolish babbling", he hissed. Dante looked at him completely astonished. He was bigger than Giano and bigger than Luca. Bigger and bulkier and stronger. Marcello took Dante's arm as if he knew what would follow.
Giano and Luca looked at each other, then at their mother.
The brothers looked dumbfound, then all four of them burst into a peals of laughter. It didn't take long until Clarissa joined them, but her eyes were still furious. "Beware, ragazzi! I meant every single word of it."
Dante's disgusted look touched Luca. Despite his grinning face Luca knew
that Dante had also meant every single word as he had said it. Luca shuddered
when a sense of fear rose within him.
Luca turned to him. "Well, just a bruise. Sandro got it all."
Giano shook his head. "You don't have to shout. Mother might innocently defend the diversity and freedom of mankind, but you don't have to lie to me, piccolino. How is he? Who's caring for him right now?"
Giano looked attentively into his face. "You've got it bad, haven't you." A small smile appeared around his mouth. "Alright, go when it's getting dark, I don't think anybody will notice." Luca hesitated. Should he tell him everything? About Dante and his threats? About the drawing he had found? Giano saw the emotions in his brother's face. He could understand what was going on in his head. The confusing muddle. And he worried as he thought about the time when he and the Gondi-lad would start their studying at Pisa. Would he be able to avoid him?
Alessandro's eyes glistened. "And what does he think?"
He rose to a sitting position, grimacing with the pain and lifted Luca's shirt. The bruises were blue-brown and covered the left side of Luca's chest. "Gosh, you should do something about that. There's an ointment laying on the nightstand that the doc left." Luca fished for it, but Alessandro took it from his hand. "Lay back." Luca hesitated, then he pulled off his shoes and crawled onto the bed, beside Alessandro who removed his shirt and started to apply the cool ointment. Luca moaned a bit. "It helps, believe me. What have you told the police?"
"Not really. I can feel them again." Alessandro grinned. He came closer and started to kiss Luca, though the movements caused both pain and his plastered hand was always in the way. Unsatisfied Alessandro groaned with frustration. "When do you think this will be over? I mean, I was really looking forward to a hot night." Luca sounded his pearly laugh again. "You can cuddle with me, isn't that enough?"
Luca stroked his pale cheek and examined Alessandro's black eye. Despite
all his injuries Sandro kept his good looks, at least for him. Sighing
he finally carefully opened the book and turned the brittle pages.
Despite that pope Martin had ordered the enlarging of the gate through the Leonid wall
we struggled, were pushed and hit, before we were carried to in
front of the basilica, a plain, irregular place on whose farthest end the
church stood, a facade with mosaics on golden ground. A nasty wind blew rain
drops upon our heated faces, but Tommaso was laughing. He made the sign of
the cross and I prayed silently that we would gain release and blessing in
front of the eyes of the Lord. Was he not praying the love on earth? The
love between humans?
Cries echoed up to the cloudy sky, vanishing in the mists of drizzle that
came down on the pilgrims. Many of them fell onto their knees and covered
the way to the entrance of the church, crawling on the dirty sand and mud
covered earth. Tommaso, strong as he was, made room for me and himself until
we saw the tomb of San Pietro with high gates and twisted marble pillars.
One altar had been built above the other so that nobody had access to the
grave below.
A multi voiced singing started. A chant wafting through the cold room,
breaking itself at the apses with Constantine's mosaics. I fixed my eyes on
the lamb holding the cross. Fixing my eyes on the four rivers streaming to
its hoofs. Saw the phoenix and the eagle, the bull and the angel.
People sobbed, their heads laying down in the dust, muttering words; others
had thrown away their crutches and walking sticks, I saw missing limbs,
wrapped in dirty, suppurating bandages, pockmarked faces, empty eye sockets,
scabby noses and mouths. Figures carried on stretchers, moaning, not able to
find peace. They all gathered in a long row, ready to give confession and
receive revelation, health and the prospect of a new and better life.
Well-dressed ones stood aside, waiting for the air, pregnant with illness,
to been blown away, holding perfumed clothes in soft hands and I wondered
from what heart complaint they had been plagued to come here to this heinous
and blessed town of the representative of God.
Tommaso had bent his head too and I heard him silently mumbling, his strong
hands folded and I did so as well. I prayed for absolution for this
unholy alliance that connected myself with him. But was I ready to give it
up? I glanced at Tommaso's red-brown shock of hair that hung over his ears,
his dirty face and the moving, soft, enticing lips. I could not. Christ
would understand and forgive.
We had gone as friends and became a couple by night. Everything was possible
with him. He had shown me heaven. I craved for more and awaited each night
with a feverish head that he knew to cool with a stroke of his hand. I could
not give it up. I needed him like I needed air to live. If God was the
omnipotent love then he had to understand. Was our love not worth living? Was it
minor? Love is good. To love was everything we ought to do. And I loved.
We dismissed the pilgrimage hospices and went to stay instead of at a hay
barn in the hills behind San Pietro. Tommaso could not bear to be
parted on a stinky, shabby wooden bed in a room we had to share with dozens
of stinky, shabby men.
Several times we were on the brink of discovery when the farmer came to
look for his hay and even the Romans, depraved from their carnival, would
have lashed us openly - or worse. But we both had been in a state of fever
where the single thought did not count. Just the two of us.
We spent the days walking alternating from San Pietro to San Paolo that
meant a path across the town from west to east, behind the town walls,
following the way all popes had to go from the grave of Pietro the fisherman
to the Pope's own church, the Lateran, crossing Via Merulana and the ancient
church of San Clemente.
We wandered through streets, corners, alleys, staircases. Backyards with
urns, ivy and altars for the Lari, the good Gods of the houses. We were
driven away by a procession of pushing, rubbing, screaming and laughing,
row of beggars in rags, rising their weak hands, a bowl with
coins beside them until everything started anew.
I made sketches for my tempera painting of San Giovanni and San Martin and
Tommaso knew how to improve them. San Giovanni now looked like his Apostle
Paolo he was about to finish for the Pisan church. My depicting of figures
remained the same though, but Tommaso found a way to teach me how my objects
could gain volume and a sense of perspective to the spectators, but what did
I know about perspective? Now he was my model and I saw the heaviness of a
well built young man and transferred it into my painting.
He snuggled closer to the sleeping body and ignored the pain in his ribs. When Alessandro's sharp tongue was slumbering, Luca felt protected, while by daylight he didn't know exactly what to think about him. On one side he was glad to have him at his side, while at other times Luca thought that he just used him for a private revenge against his family. He was like his name: Lizard. A lizard will lose its tail to be free as soon someone grabs it. |