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6.
A black suit with cream shirt stepped forward after the red curtains were drawn
aside from the hidden masterpiece. He loosened his border, barked clear his
throat, and then started speaking to the large crowd that had gathered around
him in a loud and well-practised voice.
"Sinners, my dear ladies and fine gentlemen. Sinners and saints. That's
what this work is all about."
A wrinkled apricot dress shifted between the others, moving herself to the
front of the crowd while uttering a string of Pardons and Escusez mois. When
she passed by, her nauseatingly strong perfume totally levelled my sense of
smell and stung in my bloody eyes.
"This exquisite painting by Domenico di Michelino, dated from the
fifteenth century, is unique, not because of the quality of the work or the
name of the artist, which are considered both to be relatively poor
academically. No, it's intriguing and stands out by it's own because of what it
actually depictures. It has an highly unusual theme for a work of medieval
art."
A purple suit came standing next to me, craning his neck to see the
masterpiece, but catching very little of it. While his attention was somewhere
else, I caught eye of his wallet, made of reptile skin if I was not mistaken,
possibly snake or gator, sticking half way out of his back pockets. I glanced
over my shoulder, and saw Pete standing no more but a couple of heads behind
me, looking severely bored.
"These men and women I see here, dear Lord, are they pictured naked?"
The apricot dress asked, lifting her thick glasses up to her nose while she
leaned forward to pierce at the left corner of the painting. "And oh my!
Are these nude children?"
The black suit shifted uncomfortably. Half of the crowd, about two third of
them bourgeois middle class and one third pompous upper class, uttered a gasp
of indignation and scuttled closer to get a better look at all this artistic
perversity. Purple suit moved along as eagerly as the rest and before I knew
it, his wallet was entirely out of reach.
"Oh Bollocks!" I whispered beneath my breath, and forcing my own way
through the crowd, went after it.
"Ladies! Gentlemen! Don't push each other! Stay behind the velvet cords,
please!" Uttered the black suit.
"I think I can see the little boys' willies." Muttered the apricot
dress. "It's painted quite clumsily though, they look more like plump
little sausages to me."
"It's pornography, that's what it is! How could the National Gallery even
consider purchasing such filth!" Shouted a wasp waist flower gown.
"Those bloody Italians! Totally obsessed they are with the sinful flesh!
Everything has to be stripped and painted nude!" Exclaimed a dark green
tweed jacket.
"How dare they call this rubbish "Dante's Divine Comedy",
connecting the work of our Lord to this iniquity! It's pure blasphemy, I
say!" Yelled yet another tweed jacket, grey this time.
"Well, I rather like it! There's a really nice use of colour, I
believe."
A good number of gowns and suits turned their heads and stared at the black
tailed-coat, observing him with some suspicion.
"What?" The tailed-coat uttered, glancing back at the others.
"Can't a man speak up his own mind? Even on the subject of art which is
more a matter of taste than anything else?"
A murmur rose up from the crowd, providing an opportunity to the black suit to
pick up his little speech. He was now sweating like a pig and had to wipe off
the perspiration from his brows using the loosened cuffs.
"Ladies! Gentlemen! Please! Don't come any further! If you all would calm
down and allow me to explain the painting!"
I finally caught up with the purple suit and his Pick-me! snake skin wallet. We
were standing two heads away from the painting and I could observe it somewhat
better now; there was a figure standing in the middle, dressed in a poofy pink
gown, wearing a wreath of bay leaves and holding up an opened book toward the
observer's eyes. He was in front of what looked like a seven stories high
wedding cake, with a pile of rocks at his right and a man-sized dollhouse at
his left. Above his head, there was a layered sky with a panel of colours varying
from depressing grey to a shade of foul black. I wandered where exactly the
nakedness was that wrinkled old apricot dress was getting all excited about,
and I wondered if that Italian bloke wasn't nipping from the good ol' absinth
when he was painting all this bollocks, even more than I questioned his sanity.
"The painting, ladies and gentlemen." Continued the black suit.
Although he wore black, stains, which were blacker still, were blooming
underneath his armpits. "It's a remarkable painting, really." He
smiled, sheepishly.
"Are you going to explain to us why there are all these naughty naked
people in the painting?" The old apricot dress asked.
"Oh for crying out-loud! Could someone please make that obsessed old bat
shut up about it already!" Black suit yelled, red spots budding over his
neck.
My eyes were fixed. Carefully, I moved my tensed body so I was able to bend my
arm. Purple suit was standing right in front, and had both his hands in his
pockets as he was slightly hopping on his toes from time to time. I shot a
casual glance over my shoulder, acting like I was looking around accusingly for
who was poking in my back or stepping on my shoes, my brows fitted together
into a irritated frown. Meanwhile, my hand slipped through the narrow pockets
of space between the tightly packed bodies like a boa slivering forward through
a swamp. It snatched its prey, and then retreated immediately.
"This painting pictures scenes from Dante's masterpiece; "The Comedy
of Dante Alighieri from Florence", the first work of literature bearing
significance in western civilization after the Romans and the Greeks. It is a
poem, describing a journey of the writer himself into the other world, visiting
hell, purgatory and paradise. The man standing in the middle of the painting is
Dante, showing to us his poetic work of fiction, the "Divine Comedy"
opened on the first page."
I slipped the wallet into my own pocket, with the back of my hand and the
shadows shielding it from public's eyesight. I remained on my spot for a while,
trying my best to look as dull and bored as the rest of the group.
"He gestures to his right. At that side of the panel, we see the gates of
Hell, where the damned are led by a company of demons into the Inferno to
suffer and burn for their sins, never to be released again."
Encouraged by the wanker's enthusiastic ramblings, I blinked and narrowed my
eyes as I peered at the brown mass of paint that I had mistaken for a pile of
shapeless rocks. There were definitely tiny figures there, I could distinguish
them now. Men and women, all starkers, caught in utter desperation. Their hands
were raised, their mouths wailing regret and promises of penance, their overly
large googly eyes cast up to heaven. All around them, pot-bellied demons with
comically large animal heads were herding them toward a big fire-breathing
monster. They had a jolly-good time poking their long pitchforks into the
docile human life-stock, cheerfully adding something memorable to their misery.
"To his left is his beloved city of Florence, on which he would never set
foot again after his banishment. Behind the poet, we see Purgatory, which he
described as an immensely high mountain, rising up from the vast abyss that is
hell. On top of this mountain lies the Garden of Eden. In Dante's vision, the
lost garden is a place where we find the earth it self. It is the earthly
paradise from which the souls ascend into heaven proper."
The dark green tweed jacket scraped his throat thoroughly, intending to draw
enough attention before dropping the question.
"Excuse me, my dear fellow, but I don't see any scenes of paradise in this
picture. The only thing that seems remotely heavenly in this miserable painting
is on top of that mountain, but that's only the earthly paradise, you say? The
garden of Adam and Eve?"
"Yes, indeed good sir. There is no clear depicturing of heaven by the
artist. It's merely suggested to exist by the context from which it arises. You
see, the artist knows Dante's work, and there heaven is described to be located
beyond the outermost of the nine concentric spheres, the celestial layers, as
you may know, that carry the planets and the stars around the earth. That is
what Michelino painted, and nothing more. His own stern belief in its existence
and the unyielding faith of his fifteenth century public allowed him to do so.
In their opinion, although they were both not to be seen, it doesn't mean that
heaven and God doesn't exist inside the painting."
Slowly, I worked myself toward the border of the crowd where Pete was waiting.
The boy was tapping impatiently on the marble floor with a spit polished but
still shabby looking shoe.
"The sinners however, in both purgatory and those who are on their way to
hell, lack both virtue and knowledge, to carry such faith. They all are doomed,
even the ones spending fullness of time on the slopes of the mountain, exposed
to continues abuse and horrible hardship in order to cleanse their souls of
their sins. They are all unable to free themselves to find redemption. Dante
entered the gate and travelled deep into hell, where he found Ulysses' ghost,
no more but a shadow of the man he was before, and the hero told him the story
of his last voyage and death. This Ulysses had never returned to Ithaca. He set
sail to the west instead after his last adventure described by Homer, on a
quest to find a place where there was virtue and knowledge, disillusioned as he
was by the dishonesty of mankind. After a terrible voyage in which he lost all
of his remaining crew and his dearest of friends, his battered ship stranded at
the foot of a high mountain. He had found Purgatory, for that was indeed the
place where the condemned tried to gain both virtue and knowledge."
"What took you so bloody long?" Whispered Pete, as I shook his hand
like he was an old acquaintance who I had just spotted, slipping the purse over
to him as our hands met.
"Never mind that." I said on a faked friendly tone, pumping his hand
with an enthusiastic smile plastered over my face. "Go take care of
business as usual." I whispered.
"Right, it was nice talking to ya."
He slipped the lout into his pockets, and wandered off after giving me a slight
nod. He was going to empty mister purple suit's purse from anything valuable,
and dispose the rest of it behind a row of musty curtains or drop it into an
antique vase. Rule number two from the Pickpocket-handbook for dummies; never
allowed yourself to be caught with the red-hot evidence right in your hands.
This is however complete rubbish if you considered rule number one, which was to
never allow yourself to be caught at all.
The black tailed-coat, who had so boldly admitted his fondness of the ugly
painting in public, stared at me from a few feet away. When I glanced back at
him, he quickly took his gaze somewhere else. Call me paranoid if you fancy,
but that bloke definitely got my senses tingling. He folded his finger behind
his ear as pretending to be listening, or maybe he really was listening. It was
hard to tell, and I imagined he was some sort of a copper, watching me from the
corners of his eyes, and every tiny gesture of his fingers ought to be a secret
sign to his fellow colleagues that the subject under his surveillance was very
likely a criminal.
"Oh bugger this!" I muttered to myself. "It's just a crazy old
hag with a bollard-eye. Keep your bloody knickers straight, you big poof!"
Pete reappeared within sight, wearing a gigantic smile that ran from ear to
ear.
"I don't bloody believe this! There was almost two pounds in that purse!
These people are nuts to carry around so much money!" He said, hardly able
to restrain his voice.
"SSsssst!!" Panic spurred up my spine when tailed-coat cast a glance into our direction, and this time, when I gazed back at him with an apolitical grin, he didn't look the other way.
"Ops, sorry Will." Pete continued, hardly
adjusting his volume. " But bloody hell! Two pounds! That makes ten pounds
fifty in total! Bloody marvellous! I've never hold on to so much money in my
entire life!"
The black suit was done talking and was occupied with answering the very
peculiar, often moronic questions coming from the crowd.
"So the poor fellow never got home to his wife, then?" Asked the
green tweed jacket.
"Beg you pardon, sir, but I believe that although Dante might have been
fallen in love with Florence, he never was married to it."
"Not him, you ignorant green potato! I meant Ulysses!"
"You did? Oh, I'm awfully sorry! Ulysses of course, how silly of me! Nope,
No, Dante's Ulysses was sent to hell." The black suit replied firmly.
"I don't understand this." A pink dress with yellow ribbons opted.
"Why would God punish a hero like Ulysses by sending him into damnation?
The man knows no other crime but his desire to become righteous and to find
wisdom. How could this possibly be considered a sin by our Lord?"
The purple suit had placed a cigar in his mouth and was searching his pockets
for matches. For some unknown reason (I mean come on! No-one in his right mind
ever sticks a box full of matches in his back pockets, everybody knows it will
get squashed) his hands fluttered from his jacket to his trousers to his rear
end, and then, after he found out that there was actually something more
important missing, he dropped his jaw so wide that his soddin smoke fell out of
his mouth.
"My wallet! He yelled. "I've been robbed! My wallet is missing!"
Pete looked up at the purple suit, together with all the others in the crowd,
his eyes growing wide. From the other side of the hall, the black tailed-coat
stopped observing Pete and me like we were some endangered bird species in the
wild and came hurrying toward us, his brows knitted into one firm V.
"All right, lad." I said, grabbing the youngster by his arm and
pulling him to the fringe of the masses. "It's time to dash. This cultural
trip is over."
Purple suit's lament had caused a good deal of panic and people were shouting
their indignation and were generally moving about like tightly packed chickens
in a den, utterly chaotic and without any sense of direction or purpose.
"Please! Ladies and gentlemen! Figuratively speaking that is." The
black suit was finally getting tired of this group of annoying buggers.
"Please! People, calm down! Calm down! Oh calm down, you bunch of mindless
barbarians!"
"Those two!" and as Pete and I fought ourselves a way through the
stream of heavy cigars puffing, lavender scented, and fans waving flannel, lace
and silk suits and dresses, the tailed-coat ran after us as much as the limited
free space allowed him to while he pointed an angry finger at us. "That
one with the auburn tweed jacket and the patched elbows! And that scabby
looking young boy! Hold them! They're bloody pickpockets!"
His shouts were barely audible above the high pitched wail coming from the
black suit when one of the guests stepped on a lady's long petticoat and caused
her to stumble and knock an overly priced but bloody ugly charcoal drawing
right off the wall.
"NO!!! Not the da Vinci!" The black suit cried. He looked like one of
those sinners out of the painting with his desperate expression of horror and all
the plucks of hair that he was tearing right off his scalp.
"Not the bloody da Vinci!!"
Pete and I escaped out of the main exhibition hall, and kept running through
the corridors till we found ourselves safely back outside under the broad grey
sky of Trafalgar Square.
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