The Restoration Artist Read Free Page A

engine strained up the incline.
    Just as we reached the top of the ridge a herd of goats came scrambling over the crest, halting abruptly at the sight of the car. I braked quickly. The goats surveyed the car, waiting, then the front of the group parted to allow a large ram to come forward. As it approached, Piero rolled down his window, letting in the smell of dry dust and the clanking of the copper bell around the ram’s neck. No shepherd was in sight.
    The ram came closer and raised its head to the window, regarding us with yellow eyes under long lashes. Piero extended a hand and touched one of the curved horns. The animal twisted its head and licked his fingers with a long pink tongue. With a laugh Piero jerked his hand back. At the sound of his voice the rest of the herd sauntered forward, their thick barnyard odour filling the interior of the car.
    “Close your window, Piero,” Claudine said, wrinkling her nose.
    She took off her sunhat and fanned her face. Her hair, which she wore cut short these days, stuck up from her head, giving her a gamine look. Glancing at her in the rear-view mirror, I felt a surge of tenderness.
    I put the car in gear again, drove on to the crest of the ridgeand stopped. And there below us, in a hollow next to a grove of trees, stood Agios Lazaros. A thrill quivered through me. This was the place I had longed for.
    Piero jumped from the car and ran down the slope, Claudine close behind him. His blue and white striped T-shirt and her pink dress were splashes of colour against the landscape. I got out and breathed in the clean smell of grass and a faint pine scent. Below me, the chapel nestled between the rolling hills and the olive trees, their outlines like black flames, and the building white against ochre and sienna.
    I strolled down towards the church. The voices of Piero and Claudine drifted from the shade of the olive grove. The heavy wooden doors creaked and scraped across the stone floor as I entered. The dark interior had that particular cool mustiness of ancient stone, of time itself.
    As my eyes adjusted, the door opened wider behind me and the elongated shadow of Piero fell across the floor. In the sudden increase of light, I saw the fresco covering the entire side wall.
    I was unprepared for the splendour—the rich depths of the blues, the clarity of the whites, the intense reds, the lustre of the gold. But the theme I knew well.
    The whole painting measured about ten feet high by twenty feet long and seemed remarkably well preserved for something so old, with only one high patch where the colour had flaked off to reveal bare plaster beneath. A haloed figure, obviously Christ, stood just to the left of centre, one hand raised towards an open grave at the lower right corner. I walked closer, and because the scene had been painted to life size, it was as if I stepped right into the painting, coming to rest on the edge of the open grave in the foreground.
    “Who are those people, Papa?” Piero asked, tugging at my sleeve. “What are they doing?”
    “It’s called
The Raising of Lazarus
, from a story in the Bible.”
    “Why is that man covered in bandages?” Piero pointed to where two men were lifting the stone lid from the tomb, revealing a figure swathed in a burial cloth, an expression of profound astonishment on his features as daylight penetrated the shadows and fell upon his face.
    “That is Lazarus,” I explained. “Jesus came to visit him but when he arrived he found that Lazarus had died. Lazarus’s family begged Jesus to bring him back from death, so Jesus told the men to uncover the tomb, and then he called Lazarus’s name. When Lazarus heard his name he woke up and came out of his grave into the world again.”
    “And then what did he do?” Piero asked, his voice lowered to a whisper.
    I pondered the question. One I’d never asked myself. “I don’t know. Nobody knows.” Realizing I had whispered too, I said in a normal tone, “It’s just a