by Colin Campbell

We are all given stories to tell. Some are allowed to tell many stories.
I believe that others, like myself, have been allotted but one.
It becomes a question of timing.
Fingernails impaled in palms, tongue clenched by teeth, I bided my time.
If I told my one story, would another take its place?
I had no way of knowing.
But I’ve gathered myself for the moment, that moment being now.
This is a true story.
It’s a story that was lost, only to be found again.
So, in fact, it may not be my story after all.
But, as I said, we are given stories to tell, and are compelled to tell the story before it’s lost to our final breath. Some stories will themselves through time, breathing inside us, through us, in spite of us, while authors’ names fade, until forgotten, like most peoples’ lives.

I am no different. I am not an author. At most, I’m a medium.
I was given this story. It arrived in the mail.
I’m a scholar, an academic, my life-long subject being another’s life.
That of Caravaggio.
There is a paucity of material available on Caravaggio. A scant forty paintings, no drawings, no sketches, no diaries. It seems little enough to build one’s entire life upon, but I’m well into my second half century, and still, Caravaggio mesmorizes.
The paintings remain. So do the court records.
They say Caravaggio was a criminal. A murderer. Brutish. Jealous. Loutish.
Caravaggio’s language , if ever recorded, has been lost.
His paintings speak in silence.
Justice has ears.
And Justice is blind.


A King’s Zuppa.
‘I’ve just moved into Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte’s commodious palace. The Palazzo Madama. It overlooks Piazza Navona. My contract with Del Monte states I will be provided with living quarters, wine and bread.
When I throw open my shutters the studio is flooded with a pure morning light, spurring my painterly Muse into awesome agitation. The quarters provided me are deliciously inspiring, but my mind’s not on setting paint to canvas this morning. It’s on food.
To express my gratitude for Cardinal Del Monte’s patronage, I, Michelangelo Merisi (Carravaggio to you!) have invited Del Monte to my quarters for dinner.
Frankly, it’s a risk.
The Cardinal is a diplomat. A lover of music and art. A man of delightful bearing and sparkling conversation, renowned for his culinary expertise. He’s handsome… well how else could I have been charmed into signing a contract that provides me with mere bread and wine?
I intend to blatantly instruct the Venetian Del Monte on my palate with a menu where each dish will be a carnal canal of untold pleasure. I must avoid Roman cuisine, for Del Monte spent decades refining his tastes in that splendid city’s palazzos. Nor do I dare chance a Venetian concoction, for food fortifies the memory of youth as well as the stomach. The unfamiliar makes the strongest impression. The choice is simple. Lombardy. My gastronomical home base.
It will be an all-out assault.
My sybaritic Cardinal boasts of singing ‘ alla s pagnuola’ and playing a bit of guitar, so I’ve engaged three handsome youths to provide a concert of song and music during the repast, garbed in white tunics of the finest silk that will fall away to reveal plenty of thigh. Three instrumental appetizers for Del Monte, well known to stray from the pleasures of women of ill repute into the arms of young men of no repute.
My opening salvo shall be Lombardy’s Zuppa Alla Pavese.
Back in February, 1525, Francis 1, King of France, demanded food at a cottage near Milan while in retreat from the Spanish army, the growls in his stomach being greater than the groans of his wounded soldiers.
The cook dithered. She couldn’t serve the King of France mere minestrone. She wracked her brains as she searched her larder. Inspiration, the smelly brine of desperation, found her buttering then toasting stale bread. Breaking two eggs over it, she tossed in a few handfuls of Parmesan cheese, then drenched it in a hot vegetable broth. Trembling, she presented it to the hungry king.
He stared at the bowl.
He sniffed.
The cook felt faint as he tasted the steaming concoction.
A beatific expression flooded his face.
“A King’s zuppa!’ he exclaimed.
The cook wept in relief.
Del Monte’s tears shall be tears of boundless gratitude.
Most of the ingredients have been easy to procure-except for the butter, for Romans, as you are well aware, use oil, not butter. Butter comes from Lodi in my native Lombardy. Lore has it that Caesar’s troops used butter to grease their bodies in preparation for battle. Accidentally, some butter found its way into Caesar’s mouth, I don’t know how, but one can imagine. In any case, Caesar declared butter to be a culinary breakthrough, a portal to pleasure, as it were.
I can use no substitute.
Del Monte is also a practitioner of Alchemy, and like most Alchemists, claims that gold cures all of man’s ills, hence the practice of gilding food in ages past. But these are poorer times. Saffron has become the substitute. I have a handy supply, for saffron strengthens the yellow in my paint. My golden Risotto Alla Pilota will be worth a painting in itself!
To finish, the finest cheese in the world, my native Gorgonzola...but hurry, let us light the tapers, for he will soon arrive.....’

 

So This Is Love.
‘Rome. April, 1596.
Ah Minnitti.
So this is love.
I’m interested in your virtues only if I may help squander there meritoriuos baubles with which you so angelically adorn yourself. We both know the guile behind your disguise.
I shall transform you into my personal Bacchus, dirty fingernails and all. I’ll make you wallow in a slippery bed of grapes, your body glistening, crushing, grinding, spurting their heady juices into my insatiable mouth. You’ll send me sprawling with a foot to my face before I can nibble your toes, You ending up in a shameless position that feeds us lascivious thoughts for sordid nights. My palms bruise that precious peach of your face while my tongue rasps your tears from your cheeks and i warn you that i love you. Brutally.
I’ll make you the Bacchus of the Ancients where your virility, your inglorious maleness violates me and drives me to transform you into my sullied She-Goddess, panting low to the ground as I bite into your neck, maybe to break it.
My pretty little murderer who ends others lives so casually. I sleep with you and my dagger. They are one and the same, I impale myself on you.’



A Death In Rome.
‘Rome. Tuesday, May 30, 1606.
Cocksucking liars! Bloodless eunichs. You think I’d kill a scum like Tomassino for a lousy 10 scudi? Then you have even less imagination than the pope. I killed him and good riddance to the biggest whore in Roma. i can’t abide the tawdry rumors.
Am i not Caravaggio, the greatest painter in Roma? Don’t bother to answer.
Yes!’
‘Caravaggio was jealous of d’Arpino’s frescos and caused a big fight to avenge his honor.’
That’s the other taradiddle. That pig’s asshole! Swine sucker! Jealous of d’Arpino? Can a man be jealous of a maggot? Only if you’re a low-life like d’Arpino feeding off rat carrion.
I’m leaving Roma tomorrow and i’ll never come back.
I didn’t actually mean to kill Tomassino, he just got in front of my blade. His brother nearly polished me off.
Besides.
He gave me the clap, that little pretty boy who wouldn’t say cock if his mouth was full of it. He wanted me dead alright, but the 10 scudi wasn’t owed for a tennis match. Think I’d pay 10 scudi for a dose? I owed it for the use of his butt!’



There Is Nothing...
Messina. 1610.
‘There is nothing venial about me. All my sins are mortal.’


In Hot Pursuit.
Malta. 1608
I was made an Honorary Knight (a long lusted for title), by Alof de Wignacourt, the Grand Master of the knights of St. John, a reward for painting his portrait.
I was also presented with two slaves whose virile charms I ravished before selling. My temper will not be tempered. I was tossed into prison for quarrelling with another knight (more honorable than I, it would seem). I escaped to Sicily by bribing the gatekeeper with my collar of gold, a bauble bestowed upon me by Wignacourt. Famous and infamous, I am now hotly pursued for very disparate desires.’


Saint of Darkness
1609. Syracuse.
After all these years, a reunion with Minnitti! The curve of his thigh as enticing as ever, dark eyes of an enchantress, he embraces me as a brother, yet I feel the heat of Hades. Unlike my long lost father, who forever abandoned me, Minnitti is back, a soldier for my cause, a patron of my irretrievable soul, gaining commissions for me, his Saint of Darkness. My Goliath becomes a self portrait, and I yearned to become the Head of St. John on Salome’s plate, yet i restrained myself for St John was a martyred beauty. I draw more comfort playing the beast. I shall never forgive Minnitti his marriage, for it is truly against his nature, Its duration is his punishment. I, a lewd ghost from his past sling looks, hot arrows of lust that puncture his recent respectability as I ponder taking (again!) his new Virginity.’



Breath of the Devil
July. 1610
I am constantly on the run. My enemies, my demons spare me no rest. There’s word from Rome that Pope Paul V is about to pardon me. I shall set sail from Naples soon. The hot breath of the Devil himself scorches the back of my neck.’


Night’s Return


‘Port Ercole. July, 1610
I’ve been arrested. It’s not Caravaggio they want. It’s mistaken identity! They think I’m someone else. My squalid prison is strewn with scantily clad men of all ages, wiping sweat from their bodies, some pacing, some lying languidly on mats of straw, the barred window high above their heads revealing a sky ablaze with heat.
I could very well rot here.
I fear for my boat, my possessions abandoned on the beach. I must reach Rome and my pardon. Last night carnal abandon embraced and discarded me with faceless vengeance. This morning we mill about, shameless, unsatiated, hopeless. Desiring and fearing Night’s return, her breath like ice, her flesh burning.’


On The Beach
‘Released at last.
On the beach......
Unhinged by the heat, every orifice spews blood. I am free. What irony. My most wanton desire fulfilled, I wander vomiting upon this seared cinder, searching for my boat.
It’s gone.
I pray I’m mistaken.
No, it has vanished. The horizon wavers, a Tuscan mirage that recedes as my despair mounts. Burning sand scorches by feverish brow. I’ve fallen. I will rest.
I will get up. I will.
I will not die here.
I will...’

Lazarus

‘Messina. 1609
“Ready”
Carravaggio stands at the head of a long polished slab of marble, his hair wrapped in a long white scarf, wearing a white smock. On the table lies a sturdily built young man, his body a lifeless pale white-green. Caravaggio picks up an arm stiff with rigor mortis. He lets it drop.
A middle-aged woman covered in white drapery head to foot enters the room accompanied by two rough looking men wearing tunics caught loosely at the shoulder. They stop at the sight of the corpse, then raise questioning gazes to Caravaggio, who draws a dagger that glints dangerously in the dim light.
‘Now’.
They grapple the corpse off the table until the two men prop the lower part of the body aloft, while the woman cradles the torso and head, her lips grazing the dead youth’s right cheek. The shifted corpse burps a hideous odor. The woman moans and moves her head away in disgust.
“I must paint from life. My Lazarus must be truly dead. There can be no compromise. Back into position or else you’ll taste this blade.’
Later, I write in my diary.
‘I’d requested a hospital room as my studio for my stay in Messina. It suits my frame of mind. I demanded a corpse be dug up for my commission of ‘The Ressurection of Lazarus’. Not freshly buried, mind you, but one about to squirm its way into the soil. Those faint hearted wretches this morning care nothing for art but their fees are another matter. Greedy cowards. I had to terrorize them throughout the execution of the painting. Lucky for them I wasn’t Maxentius, who tied the condemned face to face with cadavers that they may have company as they starved.
The models holding the corpse pleaded for a break. I finally gave in.
They disgust me.’