A child and Zurbaran (from "The children of yesterday", By A.Magri)

 

A child and Zurbaran

 

 

 

One morning, in a break while studying some documents, John began to rummage through his letters. In his cell he had not a lot of place at disposal: only two lockers, one necessary for legal papers and the other one used for the custody of his personal items. If the first was full of documents (and it did not even contain all of his folders), the second overflowed above all with Ada's letters.

Over the years, his wife had tried to let him taste a little of about everything fine she experienced in life out there. Not infrequently she had sent him copies of portions of books, or postcards with beautiful landscapes; she had often also resorted to her camera, to send him memories of places she had visited (always with the unspeakable dream of bringing him there too). On other occasions, after visiting an exhibition, she had even sent him some postcards featuring works of art on display in Europe. The latter kind of gifts was however rarefied since she permanently lived in the States.

But now John, worried about little Sol, was rummaging through his letters to find something else. He regretted not keeping them in strict chronological order (and he also wondered he had not: he was usually so meticulous - if not picky, as claimed by his wife); then, he struggled a lot. After a good two hours he heard rummaging (amazing how things could vanish like that in a cell less than 3 meters by 1.80!), the neighbor of Marshall, Ronald Scott, who was lazily watching TV, heard a loud "At last!", but he paid little attention. The following steps in the adjacent cell, far and wide, told him that Double-u was able to start what he had planned to do that morning; but he did not care that much.

John had found, pressed into a larger envelope, ten sumptuous postcards sent to him by Ada years earlier (in 2001 or 2002: they were not yet married and she lived in Europe) from Spain, where she had gone for a Law internship some months long. She had visited an exhibition on a seventeenth-century Spanish master painter, Francisco de Zurbarán, one of her favorites, and had accumulated some postcards in separate envelopes: the Regulation prohibited to put more than five pictures into a single letter, therefore she had resorted to two or three different mailings to share with him her favorite paintings. About Zurbarán the fourth centenary of his birth had been recently celebrated, therefore Spain was full of celebratory occasions in memory of an artist, however, quite forgotten for decades. Ada had fallen in love with the intimate, almost domestic atmosphere of his paintings, where the dark background was crossed by slashes of light and, however, it betrayed a strong desire to protect family intimacy, an intimacy where there realistic figures strikingly stood out; she had imagined, as she wrote in her letters, to touch with her fingers the drapery of shiny silk or rigid satin, or even of rigid, rough cloth worn by various characters of the pictures, fabrics painted with such perfection as to seem real, piled up there, on the table and ready so that the viewer could touch them. And, finally, she had sunk in contemplation before the silent atmosphere of those images, where everything seemed leading to a more genuine meditation.

John began to leaf again through those postcards, plunging in contemplation in turn. He loved painting a lot, although, unlike other fellow prisoners, he not often resorted to drawing (some of them performed works worthy of true artists): he was particularly attracted by the Impressionist period, bathed in the light and colors en plein air, but he was also fascinated by the one preferred by his Ada, the Mannerist-Baroque one, so in line with the opulence she, as a healthy Bolognese, was used to.

The first figure he found was the Blessed Serapion, a very intense, yet remarkably peaceful image of a young father mercedario, tortured and martyred. The young man was hung by his wrists to ropes and his cassock shone of a variety of white tones. John turned the postcard and read the caption written behind by his wife:

St.Serapion, at first knight during the Second Crusade with Richard the Lionheart, later belonged to the order of Mercedari who, in Spain occupied by the Moors, took care to redeem Christians enslaved by the Arabs. He died a horrific death after being captured by arabic pirates. Look how virtuosic the folds of his dress are and the infinite variety of white shades used by the painter to represent the robe of his order. And then, from this picture such a peace exudes...

It was true. Even John had been tremendously impressed by all that light in the darkness and the peace shining on the martyr's face, who seemed peacefully asleep. Even when he had received that postcard, he had been contemplating it long. He did not know whether Ada had noticed, but it did not escape him: the young monk looked like crucified. He thought back of the "painful death" alluded to by Ada and he reconnected it to what he had recently seen in the film The Four Feathers: even there, the area of Saharan and South Mediterranean Africa was presented as the scene of brutal imprisonments and inhumane deaths. But he was attracted by the calm, the serenity of that face. Was it possible to die a "painful death" like that? The painter had undoubtedly concealed the most horrid details of what had happened afterwards, but John felt the real possibility that this young man, celebrated for his heroism centuries before, had actually been immersed in a superhuman peace beyond the agony he had suffered from. Would he, John Marshall, keep the same peace just before, say ... getting on an electric chair?

John preferred to leave open the question, began to leaf through his postcards and found in his hands another image of mercedario dressed in white, with many folds and light colors, then an extraordinary St. Francis, who meditated in the shade with a skull in his hand; a magnificent St. Gregory the Great, completely red dressed and whose papal robe showed an almost palpable refinement; a graceful Immaculate Conception that, indeed, seemed more a child than a girl; a lovely still life consisting of cups and silverware, where light reflections flickered; a beautiful basket of red and yellow apples (but Ada had noted behind that the painting belonged to Zurbarán's son, Juan, specialized in still lives); finally, a painting depicting the house of Nazareth and two others featuring a lamb and a little Mary asleep. John was looking precisely for these paintings.

Although he was reserved, the young man often fed the need to discuss his ideas with someone else; therefore, he called his neighbor.

- Ronnie! Could I show you something?

But a groan, from the other side of the wall, made him realize that the other was in no mood to answer. John sighed disappointedly. The wing was always like that: there was no way to have an interesting conversation or to communicate authentically with anyone. Even if the young man, during his teens, often feeling misunderstood, had been recalcitrant before communication, he felt sharply and repeatedly its deprivation. Here everyone was so indifferent and locked up in his own problems that finding an interlocutor was almost impossible. Moreover, several ones did not care about anyone and Ronnie was no exception. He had got in the wing five or six years before, because, as it happened to many others, while under the effect of a plethora of drugs (alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and the unavoidable LSD, which causes hallucinations), a deadly cocktail one wondered he had survived, he had slaughtered an elderly neighbor by a knife (several dozen stabs). He had plunged into a sort of apathy after confessing, he had become definitely inert after landing in the death-row and spent his day watching TV or sleeping. Many, in the grayness of the prison, turned into amoebas. If one added to this the lunatic behavior of various prisoners, who either showed an enthusiastic opening, either a disorderly susceptibility, and bitterly quarreled with those whom, until a few minutes before, they almost considered as "friends", the death row did not really look the ideal place to build human relationships.

However, John did not give up and called the other neighboor.

- Danny?

- Eh?

- Come, I want to show you something.

The other got out of his bed and walked over to the bars: on his right, John glimpsed his graceful profile and a tuft of dark blond hair. Danny was much younger than John: he was not yet 25 years old and was in the row since recently, two or three. John himself, then thirty-six, had to learn to guard against him: if they played cards, Danny cheated shamelessly; he was a liar, arrogant and loved to pick a fight. He had not yet understood that, in prison, there are barriers not to be overcome and he seemed still in the phase of those looking for trouble all the time, until they find someone who puts them in place permanently. He was in for robbery, kidnapping and murder, and he was probably guilty: outside he had got up to all sorts of mischieves. However, John, wisely, had become accustomed to living with him too. It didn't escape him that he had a sharp intelligence and that, in other situations, one might have got something good from him. He handed him the three postcards out of his bars and murmured:

- Look here a moment, my wife sent them to me a few years ago. What do you think about?

Danny began to observe them carefully.

- Look, look at this! He looks like me - and he pointed to the House of Nazareth. In the image, a young Jesus in his teens, whose face was fine and concentrated, framed by long, wavy, blond hair, was weaving a crown of thorns and had just pricked his finger: on the right, the Virgin, who was sewing a green cloth and some white canvas, contemplated him with melancholy. She forebode what would happen to her Son.

- According to me, you exaggerate. Christ has long hair - John objected, with a touch of traditionalism.

- He's a boy like me. And then, He's destinated to the death row like me - Danny concluded unceremoniously. Not surprisingly, he was called Speedy (but hearing it, he got angry, because that nickname reminded him of Speedy Gonzales and he could not stand it; he could, rather, come to blows for that matter). - Right?

John nodded, thoughtful. After all, it was true. The fate of the Boy in the picture had not ended so very differently from Danny's, even though the latter was still alive.

- And that, what is it? - the guy started again, taking an interest in the lamb. A peaceful and white lamb, absolutely harmless, was tied by its paws and visibly prepared for slaughter. One did not ever happen to admire paintings like this and such a point of view on the Christ was absolutely unusual.

- It's the Lamb of God, Jesus, don't you see? - John rebuked him, knowing more the subject.
- Ah. He thought a lot of death, this painter. Where was he from?

- Spain, 1600. Yes, he thought a lot of death. Look at this - and he handed him the St. Francis.
- Hell! - Danny exclaimed in amazement - this here seems in a cell like ours! Look here! and he pointed to the dark background, where a sculptural St. Francis, coated in a brown cassock, stood out. - Forcibly he meditates with the skull. He hasn't much else to do - Danny continued undauntedly in his unorthodox comments. Then he resumed, with a more meditative attitude:

- Tell me, Marshall, why were the ancient used to think so much of death? I try to not think about it.

- And do you manage? - John retorted doubtfully.

- I try. I don't always succeed, indeed. In here, it's death that comes after you from every corner.

- Exactly. If it chases you, it's useless to flee. Sooner or later you have to deal with it. Now, out there, they're used to think very little of death, except those spectacular ones on TV, which are useless, and the result's they send us in here. If you're a man, you've to face it.

Danny nodded and went back to look at the postcards. Finally he lingered on the beautiful Mary Child, sitting and sleeping, with her elbow resting on another chair. He considered it in silence for a while, then he murmured:

- This painter, what's his name... Zurbarán? He was very interested in children, right?
- Yes, he had several children. He portrayed many children.

Danny was still thoughtful and John waited. Then, the boy slowly returned the images.

- What's on your mind? - John could not help but ask the young man. He knew the other would hardly answer clearly or answer at all: intimate questions are not very popular in the death-row. But Danny, unexpectedly, and maybe even a little naively, replied:

- I think that if someone had made me a portrait like this, now I'd not be in here.

- Why?

- Because you see .... it's done with tenderness - and, all of a sudden, rude as usual, he left behind John to lay down in his bed. John heard him fumbling with his headphones which he attached to his TV. Evidently, he wanted to be estranged.

Instead, John focused more on Mary Child. She really aroused tenderness: she seemed so little, helpless, abandoned as she was to her sleep. She emerged from the dark background surrounded by a slight brightness and it seemed that, even in her sleep, her image emanated not only the fragility of a child, but also the love surrounding her in the rest of the day. Her sleep was confident and serene, because someone loved and protected her. Danny was right. Even the flowers on the table behind her, spoke of a daily tenderness, interwoven with little things. He felt the need to take her in his arms, gently, so as to not wake her, and carry her to sleep between warm blankets.

 

- Do you remember the postcards with Zurbarán's paintings you sent me from Spain a few years ago? - John suddenly began during the next visit, with Ada. The girl was looking at him gently, her face resting on her right palm.

- Yes. Why? - she asked simply.

- Do you remember the picture of the Child Madonna? The one asleep?

- Yes. And it's one of my favorites.

- You know what I think? You need to look for a little girl like this, to find Sol. I've a vague memory of her photographs - I followed the news on TV years ago - and I find she looked very like the little Girl of the painting. Moreover, even Zurbarán was inspired by a little Hispanic girl.

- What do you mean? - Ada caught, in the words of her husband, a much richer and more complex message than the obvious, physical resemblance.

- We never think about it, but, if she's alive, she's grown up, and now she might look like this child. And she may need someone covering her sweetly while she's sleeping, so that she doesn't get cold.

Ada was silent, absorbed, trying to remember the exact portrait of the child in the painting. John insisted, murmuring softly:

- My mother always told it: children get cold if they sleep uncovered.

Ada could not help it: in a flash, she was visited by the image of John who, tall as he was, bowed down on the little girl, collected her with extreme delicacy among his arms and minding she did not wake up, carried her in a little, near bed. She stared at him and, once again, she seemed to read in his heart. After all, it was already as if he did it: he worked to find Sol too. And she knew he prayed for this purpose, every night. If one day they were to find her, he would be numbered among those who had bent on her, tenderly.

Th