The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [90]
“You want to be unregarded? Underfoot?”
“I think of it as supporting the passage of the living.”
“The living in their backward caps, not knowing what they’re walking on.”
Thursday, October 25
THE CHAPEL OF SAN CARLINO
“I Don’t Want a Face”
“I’m feeling a little guilty that I haven’t given Bernini’s archenemy a chance.”
“I didn’t know he had one.”
“Borromini,” he says. “He kept losing commissions to Bernini … Bernini was charismatic and he was dour, a Northerner, a Swiss, and his aesthetic was demanding and austere, I thought perhaps the plainness might appeal to you.”
“Yes, sometimes all the ornamentation is overwhelming.”
They walk up a steep hill to the Street of the Four Fountains. She’s worried that the steepness might be a strain on his heart. She thinks she’s walking slowly, at a pace that won’t cause him strain, but she keeps stealing glances to make sure his color is all right.
At the top of the hill, she’s surprised that there actually are four fountains, one on each corner, each representing a lounging neoclassical goddess, filthy, moss covered, good-naturedly presiding at the top of the frenetic traffic-clotted street.
The entrance to the church is unremarkable: she hardly takes it in. But once inside, she is flooded with whiteness. Above her head, a dome that is a honeycomb of pure white circles, interrupted by crosses, not a hint of ornament. The arches are like waves of snow: they alternate, concave, convex.
She closes her eyes, opens them, allows herself to be carried by the alternating waves.
“I thought you’d like this,” he said.
“I like it very much.”
They make their way to the cloister. She’s struck by its emptiness. Not a possibility here of bush or flower: white stone, gray paving, black plain ironwork providing a canopy for the well which one could only imagine had always been and would always be empty. Her heels strike sharp on the gray stone; the sound flies, unencumbered, through the deliberate, neutral air. Her eyes travel upward to the windows—perfect ovals: plain, transparent glass recessed into the wall whose whiteness seems, though she’s been told this is impossible, pure white, without a trace of color.
“I’d like to look at the dome again,” she says, “and the wavy arches.”
The chapel is entirely empty. Pleased at the emptiness they take a seat at what they have determined, without speaking, is the exact center.
She opens her eyes. Closes them. Opens them and looks at what he understands is nothing he can see.
“Do you pray?” he asks, embarrassed, as if he has asked her to confess indecency.
“I have,” she says, “converted to Judaism. Still, I can’t say I’ve become a Jew. Or I’m a Jew. Or I am Jewish. It’s a strange thing. I don’t quite believe you can claim to be a Jew if you weren’t born one.”
“Did you do it for your sons?”
“You know me well. Of course I couldn’t stand to be at the margin of one of their important moments. So before they were bar mitzvahed, I began to study. But it wasn’t just that. I wanted a larger life. I wanted to be saying words people had said for thousands of years. I chose Judaism, yes, because of my sons, but because a Jew doesn’t have to believe in anything particular. We just have to behave in a way that … oh, I don’t know … that does the world good. I guess I like the sense of endless responsibility without the promise of reward.”
“You haven’t answered me. Do you pray?”
“In a very special sense. I don’t pray to anyone. I don’t want a face. I like the Jewish interdiction against making an image for God. I want to be able to say certain words: words that conform to certain categories. ‘Praise.’ ‘Lament.’ And you, Adam? Does Rome make you feel more a Catholic?”
“No, less. I don’t have it, the ear for faith, the way some people have no ear for music. I feel it doesn’t fit me; I’ve seen people whom it does fit. My father, when he died I found he had a lot of books on mysticism, and in the end, when he retired, he went to Mass every day. You remember