Lost Paradise Read Free Page A

I didn’t exist any more, while all along it was you who didn’t.’
    I tuned her out. The first sight of a painting that you know only from reproductions is a kind of hallucination. You can’t believe you are actually looking at the real thing, that hundreds of years ago Botticelli stood before this very picture – staring at it with eyes long since turned to dust – and applied the finishing touches. I can feel his presence, hovering in the vicinity of the painting, but he is unable to get close to it. So much time has gone by that the painting has become something completely different, and yet it is the same physical object, and that is what makes it so scary. The original painting has a magical effect on me, producing an indescribable dizziness. If I also had to listen to the people going past the painting, giving it a quick glance and walking on, I would faint. I went to a candomblé session in Bahia once. The woman who was dancing was in a world of her own. If someone had shocked her out of her trance right then, she would have fallen in a heap. That is more or less how I feel.
    Quiet hysteria. Another one of Almut’s observations. Said with a smile, but still . . .
    Meanwhile, I have become wholly absorbed by the painting. Red rectangular floor tiles, a regular pattern whose straight lines contrast with the swirling motion and the pleats and folds in the clothing of the two figures for whom the rest of the world does not exist either. All is calm: the angel has just arrived. He kneels on one knee, his right hand reaching up towards the woman standing over him, who bends towards him. Their hands are almost touching, a gesture of electrifying intimacy. Both figures have their fingers spread wide, as if this is the language in which they wish to express themselves, since no words have yet been uttered. The woman looks away, otherwise she would see the fear in the angel’s deference. Few people, I believe, ever think about the inherent absurdity. A winged man flies into the room – his wings are still slightly outspread – and while that one tall spindly tree rises from the serene landscape in the Mediterranean light beyond the window, he bears a message from a world millions of miles away and yet so near, a world that knows neither time nor distance, a world that is now nestled inside the woman. I don’t know what divinity is. Or rather, I don’t know how to describe it. How do people bear the touch of the divine? I don’t think such a thing is possible. But if it is, it must look very much as it does in this painting.
    ‘You don’t believe in all that rigmarole, do you?’ Almut was bound to ask me that.
    ‘No, except that in the painting every bit of it is true.
    That’s what it’s all about.’
    Just then the angelus rang, which was of course also what it was all about. Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae . Some stories are powerful enough, even after two thousand years, even in the age of computers, to make a bell ring. And Botticelli knew that.
    An hour later, as we were standing on the Ponte Vecchio, looking down at the swiftly flowing waters of the Arno, Almut said, ‘Try to imagine it.’
    ‘Imagine what?’
    ‘Making love to an angel. The wings must be a bonus – all that rustling and flapping when he comes. Or when he spreads his wings and flies off with you. The closest I ever got to it was with an airline pilot, and that was a total flop.’
    ‘The only angel you’d ever fall for is the one in the El Greco painting in Toledo, the guy with the scraggly wings who looks as if he’s being dragged into heaven.’
    ‘The one with the turned-up nose? Oh, thanks. Though he does radiate a lot of power.’
    I can count on Almut to bring me back down to earth.

3
    I COUNTED ON HER THEN TOO. ALMUT DEALT WITH everything, coming down to the police station and taking me to a gynaecologist. I don’t know which was more humil-iating: the uniformed policemen who kept asking me what I was doing in the favela