The Medici Boy Read online

  Praise for …

  THE MEDICI BOY

  “On the basis of Donatello’s great statue of David, and against the background of the witchhunt against gay men in 15th-century Florence, John L’Heureux has built a gripping story of love, genius, and betrayal.”

  JM Coetzee, Booker Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature, Elizabeth Costello, Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace.

  A novel bursting with love—collegial, artistic and erotic. John L’Heureux brings to life the bliss and treachery of the Italian Renaissance through prose as passionate as his characters. Deeply enjoyable, THE MEDICI BOY soars like an operatic aria, before breaking our hearts.

  David Henry Hwang, playwright, M. Butterfly, Chinglish.

  “Intensely appealing, viscerally gripping, and unfailingly human in its characters, L’Heureux’s most recent novel beckons with the undeniable promise of great writing to all lovers of historical literary fiction that easily manages to transcend its time parameters.”

  Booklist, Starred Review

  TIGHT WHITE COLLAR

  “Close to the bone . . . a moving vision of the torments of spiritual solitude.”

  The New Republic

  THE CLANG BIRDS

  “A delicious, rollicking novel.”

  San Francisco Chronicle

  “John L’Heureux has written an exceedingly funny and intelligent novel that is certain to scrape like heavy sandpaper against a good many thin skins.”

  New York Times Book Review

  FAMILY AFFAIRS

  “Witty, vital, and perspicacious.”

  New York Times Book Review

  “L’Heureux sits, stodgy as old Chekhov, observing real human beings and putting them on paper, pore by pore. He’s a wise writer, with a wisdom as old as the hills.”

  John Gardner

  JESSICA FAYER

  “Chilling, cutting alarming offbeat, haunting, strangely touching . . . one of John L’Heureux’s finest novels.”

  The Boston Globe

  “A beautifully crafted and deeply moving work.”

  Joyce Carol Oates

  DESIRES

  “John L’Heureux’s vision is eerie and unmistakably his own. These are oblique, ironic moral fables and they are written in a spare, elegant and witty prose.”

  The New York Times Book Review

  A WOMAN RUN MAD

  “L’Heureux is elegant, cunning, and wickedly funny. The reader will feel played with, but it’s that kind of novel, a psycho-philosophic thriller—and more.”

  Washington Post Book World

  “One of the most intense reading experiences I’ve had in recent memory. A WOMAN RUN MAD was impossible to put down.”

  New York Times Book Review

  AN HONORABLE PROFESSION

  “Brilliant and complex. Mr. L’Heureux is a deeply ambitious novelist, one who isn’t afraid of dealing with dark themes and what it means to be fully human, especially in the frightening and ecstatic world we create behind the darkened bedroom walls.”

  New York Times Book Review

  COMEDIANS

  “Mr. L’Heureux’s stories work on several levels at once: the serious and comic, the realistic and fantastic, the personal and allegorical. They are not stories you have read before, you will want to read a number of them more than once.”

  Washington Times

  “COMEDIANS is a treasure . . . L’Heureux’s prose is fascinating and elegantly powerful. It’s a strange, witty, sexy book that’s both wonderful and impossible . . . impossible to put down.”

  Cleveland Plain Dealer

  THE SHRINE AT ALTAMIRA

  “John L’Heureux’s fine new novel may not just disturb you but haunt you. Prepare yourself for an ending that’s the obverse of catharsis and that also leaves the reader with no hiding place. In plain, unornamented language L’Heureux is writing about sin and redemption.”

  San Francisco Examiner

  “L’Heureux’s most ambitious novel . . . Readers will marvel that he has somehow conspired to redeem the unforgivable.”

  Los Angeles Times Book Review

  THE HANDMAID OF DESIRE

  “Wickedly entertaining”

  New York Times Book Review

  “A subtle literary joke that reflects the unique intelligence of a deeply thoughtful, intensely serious man.”

  Washington Post

  HAVING EVERYTHING

  “A master of understated, ominous moments in a marriage in which not asking the question can be more disastrous than asking. Sharp, moving, poignant.”

  Washington Post Book World

  “HAVING EVERYTHING is an unforgettable exploration of what it means to become fully human.”

  Seattle Times

  THE MIRACLE

  “L’Heureux seems to be standing on the shoulders of giants.”

  San Francisco Chronicle

  “Admirable . . . delicately nuanced . . . L’Heureux has created in THE MIRACLE a set of characters who feel fiercely authentic, not least in their contradictions.”

  New York Times Book Review

  Winner of the gold medal in the Commonwealth Club of California’s book awards, 2002.

  PRAISE FOR JOHN L’HEUREUX

  “A writer who picks up his readers by the scruff of the neck and won’t let go.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “A deeply ambitious novelist, one who isn’t afraid of dealing with dark themes and what it means to be fully human, especially in the frightening and ecstatic world we create behind the darkened bedroom walls.”

  New York Times Book Review

  “L’Heureux’s efforts to weave myth, extremity, and a religious note into modern urban and suburban settings are high risk. The result is powerful and original.”

  The Los Angeles Times

  The Medici Boy

  by

  John L’Heureux

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  THE MEDICI BOY

  Astor + Blue Editions

  Copyright © 2013 by John L’Heureux

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by:

  Astor + Blue Editions,

  New York, NY 10003

  www.astorandblue.com

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  L’Huereux, John. THE MEDICI BOY—1st ed.

  ISBN: 978-1-938231-50-6 (hard cover)

  ISBN: 978-1-938231-49-0 (epdf)

  ISBN: 978-1-938231-48-3 (epub)

  1. Historical Literary Novel—Fiction 2. Fiction 3. Inspired by the creation of the David by Donatello—Fiction 4. Love Story The illicit love affair between the genius Donatello and his model—Fiction 5. Homo-erotic Love—Fiction 6. 15th century, Italy 7. Florence (Italy) Title

  Includes an Afterword by the Author © 2013, bibliography

  Book Design: Bookmasters

  Jacket Cover Design: Danielle Fiorella

  Other Books by John L’Heureux

  Quick as Dandelions

  Rubrics for a Revolution

  Picnic in Babylon

  One Eye and a Measuring Rod

  No Place for Hiding

  Tight White Collar

  Family Affairs

  The Clang Birds

  Jessica Fayer

  Desires

  A Woman Run Mad

  Comedians

  An Honorable Profession

  The Shrine at Altamira

  The Handmaid of Desire

  Having Everything

  The Miracle

  Conversations with John L’Heureux
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  The author wishes to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial foundation for the generous grant that allowed him to spend a year in Florence researching background for THE MEDICI BOY . . . and he particularly thanks André Bernard for his moral support during the writing of this book.

  For Joan

  only and always

  Table of Contents

  1400–1420

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  1420–1423

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  1427

  Chapter 13

  1429

  Chapter 14

  1430

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  1431 – 1432

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Time Lost

  Chapter 26

  1433–1434

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  1435

  Chapter 29

  1437–1443

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  1443–1453

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  1467

  Chapter 41

  Author’s Note

  A Brief Bibliography

  About the Author

  An Afterword

  THE MEDICI BOY

  1400–1420

  CHAPTER 1

  IT IS RIGHT and just to confess at the very start that it was fornication that took me out of the Order of Friars Minor and set me on the path of sin. I am an old man—perhaps sixty-seven—and make this confession at leisure and in detail since, imprisoned in this monastery, I have nothing left but time. And, to speak truly, I write this for pleasure as well. Having long left behind me the possibilities of lusting and loving, I find satisfaction in watching my quill move across the page. There is no waste; I use the reverse side of paper that has already been ruined by false starts, ink stains, the wanton mistakes of inattentive copyists. On the finer side of this confession, blotted, you will find Holy Scripture, a nice irony. I have myself served as copyist—and do yet—and I know it is easy to err, even in the service of God.

  The unwanted son of a rich merchant and his Dalmatian slave girl, I was taken in by a dyer of wool and consigned as a boy to the Fratelli of Saint Francis where I proved a failure as a monk. Later I failed as a painter and still later as a sculptor. From birth I have been a creature of lust and misadventure and I have continued on in the usual way of men who have come to nothing. Thus I have no claim to your attention. I can make none. I presume to write this only because of my long association with two men: the cattivo Agnolo Mattei who is burning now in hell, God have mercy, and Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, my master, whom the whole world reveres today as Donatello, the greatest sculptor of our time.

  I was born—perhaps—in the year 1400, a time of great portents that the world was ending. It rained blood in Orvieto, there was a plague of frogs in Pisa, in Florence fire was seen in the sky for three nights sequent. It is said that in Paris a two-headed baby was born speaking Latin and Greek, but that of course was harmless folly, and in any case the world continued on as wise and foolish as it had always been. No worker in dyes knows the date of his birth, though everyone remembers the turn of one hundred years, and it is certain many unwanted sons were born in 1400 and so perhaps was I.

  My mother, Miryam, was a Dalmatian slave in the house of a rich merchant of Prato, and when it was clear that he had made her pregnant, he married her off—with a persuasive dowry of forty florins and a chest of bed linen—to a wool dyer in the Via dei Tintori. Thus was I born, officially legitimate, to Matteo Franchi and his new wife, Miryam, who two days after my birth died of the Black Pest.

  The pestis atra, the Black Pest, has marked the most important moments of my life. It was the Black Pest that carried off my mother two days after my birth and it was the Black Pest that released me for a time from the Rule of Father Saint Francis and I used to think—but no longer—that in the end the Black Pest would see me off, swollen and foul smelling, to the silence that never ends. But I cannot repent its ill favors since it was the Black Pest that brought me, hastened on by my sins, to the bottega of my lord Donatello.

  * * *

  IN TRUTH, I was lucky from the start. Begotten on a slave girl by a rich merchant of Prato, I was—for a goodly fee—born in the house of Matteo Franchi and was greedily sucking at my mother’s breast when, with no warning, she came all red with fever. Black buboes appeared beneath her arm and in her groin—they took me from her nipple then—and before the third day of my birthing, she lay dead. I should have died with her but I did not. It was the will of God. I was put to nurse—for a small fee—until Matteo, the dyer of wool, was assured he could keep my mother’s dowry. After that, in secret, he placed me on the steps of the foundling hospital with a note and a basket of swaddling cloths and left me there until a year later when the merchant inquired about my well-being. By this time Matteo had found a mistress with a liking for children, and since this Spinetta could not bear children of her own, they took me back. Soon after my return she became pregnant—who knows the mysterious workings of God?—and within ten years she had popped out four babies, all of them sons. Matteo married her after the second.

  I grew up playing in the colored muck of the Tintori where the dyers boiled their wool in huge round vats, turning the cloth with long paddles, until the indigo and woad made the raw wool blue, and the dyers’ hands burned and their arms took on the colors of the dye: indigo here, and in other vats the red of tomatoes and the deeper red of blood, violet and purple, green and onyx.

  At seven, I was of an age to help with the dyeing but I was not tall enough or strong enough to control the long heavy paddle used to stir the vats. It was for this reason that the accident occurred. It was a midsummer day and the sun had long been hot on my back and the weight of the paddle moving among the woolen cloths became too much for me. I lost the paddle in the boiling vat. It was the second time this had happened and the dyer, a little drunk and in much anger, cried out upon me and struck me smartly on the head with his closed fist. I fell from the stirring platform and for a time lost sense of who and where I was, and when I returned to myself I had a great ache in my head. My leg was tingling strangely and I flailed about with my arms and for a while I could not speak. It seemed no great matter, but it was the start of the spells that would return now and again through all my life. These spells were from the devil, the dyer said, and he spoke more truly than he knew.

  I was the oldest of the dyer’s boys when, two years later, the merchant who begat me on my mother took notice of me. It was again a summer day, I remember, heavy with the hot stink of the dyes and the dead stink of the privies, the sun glinting on the river in the distance, and the hammering of the carpenter who was repairing a breached vat. I knew by then that the merchant was my natural father.

  “Who is that one?” he asked.

  I was standing on the platform at the boiling vat, pushing the heavy load of wool with my long stick as the madder turned the gray cloth red and the boiling water sloshed at my hands and arms.

  “Luca,” the dyer said. “He is the oldest. And he’s strong and fair.” He seemed to forget he beat me soundly whenever he was drunk.

  “Is he mine?”

  “Sir,” he said. “He is like a son to us.”

  “Can he read? Does he know his numbers?
”

  I looked up from the vat of boiling wool and said loudly, “I would like to read. I would like to know my numbers.”

  The merchant laughed at my impudence and said, “Send him to the Friars,” and almost as an afterthought, he said, “I’ll pay.” He looked around, as if this were his family and he was pleased with it.

  “How many do you have?” he asked.

  “Three,” Spinetta said. She was heavy with child. “And now a fourth.”

  “And Luca,” the dyer said. He did not mention that I sometimes had spells. “He is our favorite.”

  But the merchant wasn’t interested or deceived. “The Friars,” he said again.

  * * *

  SO IT WAS that I became a student in the Order of Friars Minor. The merchant, I discovered later, would have taken me into his own house, but his wife would not tolerate the idea that the son of a slave girl should be brought up as one of her own. But I was well-favored because of my mother, and my rich father looked kindly on me and did for me what he thought best. To atone for his sin he gave over my life to God.

  I was sent to the Brothers of Saint Francis where I could learn to read and write and do numbers and where, in time, I could embrace a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Thus freed from all worldly desires, I would atone for his sins and, as it might happen, a great many of my own.

  CHAPTER 2

  MY WORLDLY DESIRES were simple at the start since there is nothing more simple than reading and numbers. I loved reading the sweet, unbelievable stories of Saint Francis’s Fioretti and later, with my plodding Latin, I struggled through the Confessiones of Saint Augustine and the Cur Deus Homo? of Saint Anselm of Canterbury and I developed a certain facility with the abacus. The merchant, who was himself a student of painting, paid for me to be instructed in that art, or rather in the art of drawing with a stylus. Study was great joy to me and work in the fields was a necessary evil since it took me from my books. I learned silence and I learned to love it. But it was drawing that I enjoyed most, especially when it was found I had some skill at it. I was praised, reluctantly, by Father Gerardo, our superior. And then at age twelve I discovered purity of mind and body just in time to lose them.