FROM THE COLOUR STORM, PROLOGUE

 

"...I was your age, as young as you, when I met Zorzo. Your age when I realized what it is we’re all in search of, in one way or another, the subject of every artist’s sigh, the reason we wake up in the morning and escape into dreams at night.”    

  “Love?”    

  "Color.”      

Hearing this, Domenikos’s mouth slowly turns up in a smile.    

  “Stepping into his workroom for the first time,” she goes on, “was like finding myself in another country. I knew nothing of how paintings were made—or how colors were conjured: azurite, crimson lake, pink chalcedony, vermilion, realgar, lead yellow, bone black.”    

  "Yes, yes.” Domenikos nods, his enthusiasm growing. “I was the same.”    

  “I knew little of the world either, of the shocks that were about to tear through it at the start of this century, when ideas would light up the continent like fires everywhere. When no one knew if those fires would bring light—or burn us all. When painters were so charged with purpose, so voracious, so rebellious against everything that had gone before, that they described the age as a color storm. And I knew nothing of the new color, the great secret, the color that would change my life.”

 “Which color is that?”    

 “One that had never been seen before. Never imagined either. One that men would die for. He was prepared to die. My love. My other soul.”

Domenikos wonders if he heard right. “He was prepared to—?”    

  A cry goes up from outside, drums start to beat in time and what sounds like a hundred men—the civil guard from the barracks, presumably—begin a march down the hill. As they scour past the palazzo, feet pounding the frozen ground, the floor shakes and dust falls from the ceiling. In the chimneypiece, a log tumbles and flips open the hearth door. A shaft of light is thrown across the room, illuminating the signora at her table. 

   Now he sees her face. Skin like pale parchment, veined and watermarked, stretched over a tiny skull. She keeps her back straight and neck long, though her body, under layers of black tulle, is as thin as twigs. It is like looking at time itself. 

   “Prepared to die, yes,” she says. “Some people are. They’re ready to walk into fire, into battle, knowing they’ll not return. They’re willing to do it—so the rest of us can be safe.” 

   In front of her, the decanter and glass rattle on the tray, the surface of the brandy shivers as the pounding of soldiers’ boots reaches its apogee, before beginning to diminish. Down into the valley they go, in their nightly maneuver to guard their city. Domenikos’s heart quickens. He feels suddenly grateful he came to Rome, beyond doubt that the journey was worthwhile, sure he’s found a kindred spirit. He’s desperate to know more of Giorgione now, of what he made, what he painted, what he risked, that six decades later this woman in front of him is still in awe of it. Domenikos feels a light creaking open inside of him, a shiver of excitement—a sensation he hasn’t had in months. In years, perhaps. 

   The signora gives a nod and with her knuckle pushes the decanter toward him, and then the spare glass.

  “Drink.” 

Domenikos fills the glass, throws back its contents in one, inhales against the reassuring shock of alcohol and says, “I’m listening. Tell me all about him—all about this color storm.”