Da Vinci's Bicycle - Guy Davenport (e novels to read TXT) 📗

into battle on it, a phalanx of these due rote bearing lancers at full tilt. Avanti O Coraggiosi, O! the trumpet called, tambureggiandi le bacchette delli tamburi di battaglia.

The scamp Salai was up and about.

— Maestro! he piped. You’ve made it!

Leonardo picked up the brown boy Salai, shouldered him like a sack of flour, and danced the long gliding steps of a sarabande.

— Si, Cupidello mio, tutto senonchè manca la catena.

— And then I can make it go, ride it like a pony?

— Like the wind, like Ezekiel’s angel, like the horses of Ancona.

Salai squirmed free and knelt before the strange machine, touching the pedals, the wicker spokes, the saddle, the toothed wheels around which the chain would fit, i vinci.

— Como leone!

He turned to the basket of flowering grasses, reaching for his silver pencil. Bracts and umbrels fine as a spider’s legs! And in the thin green veins ran hairs of water, and down the hairs of water ran light, down into the dark, into the root. Light from the farthest stars flowed through these long leaves. He had seen the prints of leaves from the time of the flood in mountain rocks, and had seen there shells from the sea.

— Maestro, Salai said, when will the chain be ready?

— Chain? Leonardo asked. What chain?

He drew with his left hand a silver eddy of grass. It was grace that he drew, perfection, frail leaves through which moved the whole power of God, and when a May fly lights on a green arc of grass the splendor of that conjunction is no less than San Gabriele touching down upon the great Dome at Byzantium, closing the crushed silver and spun glass of his four wings around the golden shaft of his height.

— The chain, Salai said, the chain!

Did man know anything at all?

BEFORE FLYING to China Richard Nixon ordered a thousand targets in Laos and Cambodia bombed by squadrons of B-52s. He sent a hundred and twenty-five squadrons of bombers to silence the long-range field guns of North Viet Nam along the border of the DMZ. Richard Nixon was pleased with the bombing, knowing that Chairman Mao would be impressed by such power. Dr. Kissinger had recommended the one thousand, one hundred and twenty-five squadrons of bombers to Richard Nixon as something that would impress Chairman Mao. The bombs were falling thick as hail in a summer storm when Richard Nixon set foot on China, grinning. A band played The March of the Volunteers. Premier Chou En-lai did not walk forward. Richard Nixon had to walk to where Premier Chou stood grinning. They shook hands.

— We came by way of Guam, Richard Nixon said. It is better that way.

— You have good trip? Premier Chou asked.

— You should know, Richard Nixon said. You are such a traveler.

Richard Nixon rode in a limousine to Taio Yu Tai, outside The Forbidden City. As soon as he got to his room, the telephone rang.

— Who would be calling me in China? he asked.

Dr. Kissinger answered the telephone.

— Yes? he said.

— Excellency Kissinger? a voice asked. You are there?

— We are here, Dr. Kissinger said.

— His Excellency the President Nixon is there?

— Right here, said Dr. Kissinger, taking off his shoes.

— Would His Excellency Nixon come to telephone?

— Sure, said Dr. Kissinger. For you, Dick.

Richard Nixon took the telephone, put it to his ear, and looked at the ceiling, where scarlet dragons swam through clouds of pearl.

— Nixon here, he said.

— Excellency President Nixon there?

— Right here, Richard Nixon said. To who have I the honor of addressing?

— Now you speak with Comrade Secretary Wang.

A new voice came on the line. It said:

— Chairman Mao invite you, now, come to visit him.

— Right now? Richard Nixon asked. We’ve just got off the plane. We came by way of Guam.

— Now, said the telephone. You come visit. Yes?

— OK, Richard Nixon said. Will do. You coming to pick us up?

The line had gone dead.

— Son of a bitch, Richard Nixon said.

Dr. Kissinger rocked on his heels and grinned from ear to ear.

ROSES, BUTTONS, thimbles, lace. The grass grows up to the stones, the road. There are flowers in the grass and flowers on her dress. And buttons down her dress, and lace on the collar and cuffs and hem. And buttons on her shoes. In the Luxembourg she wears a shawl from Segovia and Pablo says she looks like a Spanish woman of the old school, when women were severe and well bred and kind, and I say that she looks like an officer in the Union Army. We sing The Trail of the Lonesome Pine which she plays on the piano, throwing in snatches of Marching through Georgia and Alexander’s Ragtime Band. She has Pumpelly’s nose, the hands of a Spanish saint.

In France she wears a yellow hat, in Italy a Panama. Alice, I say, Assisi, the grass of Assisi, and the leaves Sassetta. We walk comfortably over the stones, hearing the bells ring for the nuns and the girls in their school. It is so quiet, she says, being herself quiet to say that it is quiet. Spain is a still life, I say, only Italy is landscape. The birds there, she says. St. Francis, I say. The birds suffer their suffering each in a lifetime, forgetting it as they endure. We remember suffering from years and years ago. Do not talk of old things, she says. There is no time anymore, only now. Not, say I, if you can hear as I can the bugles and see the scarlet flags.

And I could, I can, I always can. The officers sit in their saddles and the guidons with their Victorian numbers and faded reds move to the head of the column. It is an old way with men, it happened at Austerlitz and Sevastopol. The generals are high on their horses, listening to the band, to the shouts of the sergeants. It is glory. When Leo moved out, we trotted around