Requiem: A Hallucination by Antonio Tabucchi

Author:Antonio Tabucchi [Tabucchi, Antonio]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780811222495
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1991-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When I got to the room, the guard gave me a nod of recognition, I thanked him and said I wouldn’t be more than an hour, he said not to worry and I went in. To my great disappointment I saw I wasn’t alone, for right in front of the painting stood a copyist, with easel and canvas. I don’t know why but it displeased me to have company, I would like to have seen the painting on my own without other eyes looking at it, without the slightly discomforting presence of a stranger. It was perhaps because of that feeling of unease that instead of standing in front of the painting, I went round to the other side to study the back of the left-hand panel, the scene that shows Christ being arrested in the Garden. I tried to concentrate on the scene, perhaps in the rather absurd hope that the man would fold up his easel and leave. If you want to see the painting, you’ll have to hurry up, said the man from the other side, the museum’s about to close. I peered round at him and gave a faint smile. The guard was kind enough to let me stay another hour, I said. The guards in this museum are all very kind, said the man, don’t you think? I came out from behind the painting and went over to him. Are you making a copy?, I asked stupidly. A copy of a detail, he replied, as you can see, that’s what I do mainly, details. I looked at the canvas he was working on and saw that he was reproducing a detail from the right-hand panel that depicts a fat man and an old woman travelling through the sky mounted on a fish. The canvas was over six feet across and three feet high, and the effect of blowing up the Bosch figures to that size was most odd: the monstrous size seemed to emphasise the monstrousness of the scene. But what are you doing?, I asked in a shocked voice, what are you doing? I’m copying a detail, he said, can’t you see?, I’m simply making a copy of a detail, I’m a copyist and I make copies of details. I’d never seen a detail from a Bosch painting reproduced in those dimensions, I explained, it’s monstrous. Perhaps, replied the Copyist, but some people like it. Look, I said, forgive me being nosy, but I don’t understand, why do something like that?, it doesn’t make sense. The Copyist put down his brush and cleaned his hands on a rag. My dear friend, he said, life is strange and strange things happen in life, besides the painting itself is strange and causes strange things to happen. He took a drink of water from the plastic bottle he’d placed at the foot of the easel and said: I’ve worked really hard today, I can afford to take a break and have a bit of a chat, you

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