National Gallery because it was the first
place I had visited in London and I was nostalgic for the past,
because I had taken the day off, because Gregory had made me angry,
because he had told me he was going to Nairobi, because the man who
had intended to go couldn't because his mother had been involved in
a car crash. You know that we could go further back, go deeper. I
know for example that the only reason you were there is because a
lecture that you were about to give had been cancelled due to
circumstances beyond your control. And so it goes on. But why then,
knowing the tenuous thread that led us both to peruse the old
Italian masters at eleven o'clock one wintry morning, did the whole
thing seem so preordained; why did I feel destined to meet you?
You know
Gregory that I am not superstitious, nor a lover of romance, nor do
I feel that I am in some way special, but why Freddie, why did the
whole thing just seem so meant to be?
I didn't
notice you at first. I was engrossed in all that medieval art, that
orgy of Italian religiosity, the beautiful Madonna's, the crucified
Christs, thinking how human they all looked, how beautiful, even
Jesus racked on the cross, looked like a man. And this seemed the
saving grace of Christianity and its greatest crime. It was
attractive because it was precisely human, with all its weaknesses,
its struggles and its sufferings, but overlaid on this touching
humanity, humanness, was the biggest foible of all, the deathly
creation of abstraction, the manipulating truths of assumed
certainty, this intellectual arrogance, this pitiless
superiority.
I didn't like
to think of this. I just liked to look at the faces, imagining the
life of some Mantuan model in a Mantegna painting, the beatific
sadness of her eyes, wondering what happened, what joy or pain she
lived through; or seeing all those Italian faced Jesus' with their
dark eyes, their tiny beards and tautened bodies. Maybe they really
were carpenters or fishermen. It was not what the pictures
represented that impressed me, but the actuality of the lives that
constructed him; or, what can I say, my imagination was again
working overtime.
That was when
I noticed you. You weren't looking at me at all. There you stood in
your jeans and leather jacket, peering into some portrait, looking
at it with such intense curiosity, as if you had never seen a
painting, any painting, in your life before.
I saw you all
in that first glance, the neat, slicked back hair, the
olive-skinned face, the magnetic dark brown eyes. I noticed your
broad shoulders, the thin waist, the height, the sheer presence of
you, the way you shuffled from one painting to the next, looking
both pensive and strangely purposeful.
Not love at
first sight, near as damn it, but not quite. I was a keen observer
of the opposite sex; I needed the physical detail for my fantasy
world, and the better I could recall, the more I could recall, then
the more pleasurable my fantasy. I had picked up this little habit,
this skill as a child. I would look at a person, then turn away
from them, recalling in my mind's eye everything that I had seen,
then I would turn my gaze back, modifying my memory of them so by
the end of the practice I had the most clear picture of them.
Freddie, what
I am saying is that you were fantasy material.
Nothing would
have happened if it hadn't been for Leonardo's cartoon. You know,
Freddie, that it was the clincher.
I turned away
from you, and then tested my memory, then turned back. I'd missed
out the longish nose, the chiselled angularity of the jaw and the
cheekbones, so amending the visual data in my mind, I turned away
and progressed through the rooms. I couldn't miss out the cartoon
though. I remembered how it had impressed me the first time that I
had seen it, that simple, beautiful line drawing, hidden away in a
corner of the gallery, the little bench where you could sit in the
darkness and stare at the artistry of that fabulous work. As I
stared, noting
place I had visited in London and I was nostalgic for the past,
because I had taken the day off, because Gregory had made me angry,
because he had told me he was going to Nairobi, because the man who
had intended to go couldn't because his mother had been involved in
a car crash. You know that we could go further back, go deeper. I
know for example that the only reason you were there is because a
lecture that you were about to give had been cancelled due to
circumstances beyond your control. And so it goes on. But why then,
knowing the tenuous thread that led us both to peruse the old
Italian masters at eleven o'clock one wintry morning, did the whole
thing seem so preordained; why did I feel destined to meet you?
You know
Gregory that I am not superstitious, nor a lover of romance, nor do
I feel that I am in some way special, but why Freddie, why did the
whole thing just seem so meant to be?
I didn't
notice you at first. I was engrossed in all that medieval art, that
orgy of Italian religiosity, the beautiful Madonna's, the crucified
Christs, thinking how human they all looked, how beautiful, even
Jesus racked on the cross, looked like a man. And this seemed the
saving grace of Christianity and its greatest crime. It was
attractive because it was precisely human, with all its weaknesses,
its struggles and its sufferings, but overlaid on this touching
humanity, humanness, was the biggest foible of all, the deathly
creation of abstraction, the manipulating truths of assumed
certainty, this intellectual arrogance, this pitiless
superiority.
I didn't like
to think of this. I just liked to look at the faces, imagining the
life of some Mantuan model in a Mantegna painting, the beatific
sadness of her eyes, wondering what happened, what joy or pain she
lived through; or seeing all those Italian faced Jesus' with their
dark eyes, their tiny beards and tautened bodies. Maybe they really
were carpenters or fishermen. It was not what the pictures
represented that impressed me, but the actuality of the lives that
constructed him; or, what can I say, my imagination was again
working overtime.
That was when
I noticed you. You weren't looking at me at all. There you stood in
your jeans and leather jacket, peering into some portrait, looking
at it with such intense curiosity, as if you had never seen a
painting, any painting, in your life before.
I saw you all
in that first glance, the neat, slicked back hair, the
olive-skinned face, the magnetic dark brown eyes. I noticed your
broad shoulders, the thin waist, the height, the sheer presence of
you, the way you shuffled from one painting to the next, looking
both pensive and strangely purposeful.
Not love at
first sight, near as damn it, but not quite. I was a keen observer
of the opposite sex; I needed the physical detail for my fantasy
world, and the better I could recall, the more I could recall, then
the more pleasurable my fantasy. I had picked up this little habit,
this skill as a child. I would look at a person, then turn away
from them, recalling in my mind's eye everything that I had seen,
then I would turn my gaze back, modifying my memory of them so by
the end of the practice I had the most clear picture of them.
Freddie, what
I am saying is that you were fantasy material.
Nothing would
have happened if it hadn't been for Leonardo's cartoon. You know,
Freddie, that it was the clincher.
I turned away
from you, and then tested my memory, then turned back. I'd missed
out the longish nose, the chiselled angularity of the jaw and the
cheekbones, so amending the visual data in my mind, I turned away
and progressed through the rooms. I couldn't miss out the cartoon
though. I remembered how it had impressed me the first time that I
had seen it, that simple, beautiful line drawing, hidden away in a
corner of the gallery, the little bench where you could sit in the
darkness and stare at the artistry of that fabulous work. As I
stared, noting
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