Petrus, feeling a strong bond with him.
“Farewell,” he said, “friendship survives falls.”
The dolphins performed a deep arpeggio before diving and disappearing for good. The members of the last alliance looked at the channel and, above it, the city where the ashen flakes were drifting. The decline of the mists was continuing, and from the channels came the sound of a wrenching dirge.
The vision changed, yet again.
“For the last time, before the final painting,” said Tagore.
On a patio of roses, Gustavo Acciavatti was holding a woman in his arms and saying I love you. Next to him, wrapped in paper and placed against a wall, a rectangular shape was waiting. Farther away, a tall, bent man, of a respectable age, but vigorous appearance, was also waiting. Gustavo embraced him in turn—embraced Pietro Volpe, Leonora’s brother, the son of Roberto and heir to the painting that will open the gates to the future.
After looking one last time at Leonora, the former Head of the Council, now direttore in the land of the humans, set off for Nanzen.
It is snowing on the plain of Ireland
And the flames are of clay
Book of Battles
TEARS
There were so many tears in the painting of destiny.
Landscape paintings show the soul of the world in the shimmering that the painter’s genius extracts from our ordinary perception, but the tears of a pietà show humans in their invisible nudity.
The soul now liquid, the beauty of fervor visible at last—we must dream of the landscape that contains all landscapes, the tear that encloses all tears, and, finally, the fiction that encompasses all others.
THE FOUR BOOKS
The life of humans can be portrayed through prayers, battles, paintings, and legacies.
Through prayers, so that the world will have meaning.
Through others’ wars, where the battle with oneself is fought.
Through paintings—be they gardens or canvases—which, in causing our vision to hesitate, reveal the essence hidden behind what is visible.
And through invisible legacies, which are the only ones that allow us to attain love.
IN THE FINAL HOUR OF LOVING
The former Head of the Council appeared on the bridge of mists, the painting of destiny under his arm. When he left the arch of the bridge, he was transformed into a white horse, then into a hare with immaculate fur. When he stepped into the pavilion and became a man once again, he looked at Clara and seemed unsettled.
“I am smiling because I no longer have to play for you,” she said mischievously, and the Maestro seemed even more stunned.
When he stood before Maria and handed her the painting, the little veins on the young woman’s face darkened.
She gently freed the canvas from its tissue paper.
In the morning light, the painting acquired all its texture. Its splendor was intact, but the Nanzen dawn gave new meaning to the fresh tints and material. It was no longer a scene of lamentation and fervor, but a story, drifting as it waited for its words. And yet it was the same scene reproduced over and over in human art: Mary and Christ’s followers, weeping over the body taken down from the Cross; tears like dewdrops, the beauty of the Flemish style, so sharp, crystalline; in spite of this, beyond the story of the image, the members of the last alliance felt something vibrate, something that responded to the wood of the pavilion, the trees in the valley, the stones on the tea path, something beneath the surface of the painting that was struggling to get free. The mist idled in the forest, intact and light. Beyond the last treetops, a stormy sky still threatened. A bird sang. Something in the order of reality shifted and the dawn light took on a clarity which reminded Sandro of the landscapes in Flemish painting that he’d once loved. The transparencies of the path flickered and, in the space between two breaths, the trees appeared in sunlight. All along the black stones were hundreds of maple, pine, and plum trees, interwoven above the passage, whose vanished form received the power to transform itself into a vision with an intensity of presence that no living tree could ever attain. The transparencies of the path were turning opaque again and this rebirth from beyond death was the sign that the elves were waiting for. Tearing themselves away from the contemplation of the resurrected trees, they looked again at the canvas.
A transparent wave passed over its surface, altering the scene before them, and mingled with the tears of the faithful. Maria held her hand out to