Caravaggio's David

CARAVAGGIO’S DAVID

               The likes of Petey Simkins had never seen the inside (or the outside, for that matter) of the

Galleria Borghese in Rome. The closest Petey had ever been to Italy was the city’s Little Italy

neighborhood. Rome was not a place a man like Petey even dreamed, much less thought of

visiting. That was for the rich and the middle class wishing they were rich, relishing the moment

when the middle class would throw them up and launch them into the realm of the wealthy. The

trips to places like London and Paris and Rome and Venice fostered their illusions of affluence. 

Petey Simkins had no such illusions. It would have better if he did. Who can really say with any

certainty? Assuredly not Petey who never thought beyond the next house or small business he

would rob. 

               Two things and two things only, drove Michael Peter Simkins: stealing and painting. He was

a poor thief (meaning lousy) which might explain why he had spent twelve of his last twenty years in

prison. The latter was a very “deep” thought for Petey. He frowned as he sipped from the coffee

cup held in his paint-stained hands. He didn’t like such thoughts. They gave him a headache. 

               Stealing didn’t. After all, everyone steals something, don’t they?  Pencils, pens, paper,

time: their own and other peoples.

               And painting took away headaches and stress, leaving as much peace as he could feel.

               He was a thief because he was too lazy to earn an “honest” living. He smiled. He had often]

wondered if there really was such a thing. He painted because he liked it. He liked the smell of

paint on canvas; the touch of the canvas and the frame and the brushes. He loved how he felt as he

showered removing the paint from his hands and face and arms after a session. He had even

painted in prison. The wardens had allowed it since it kept him out of trouble. He wasn’t a great

painter but he was good. The other prisoners liked his work and liked to watch him work. There was

an eager intensity about him as he painted, usually from his imagination but often sketching and

painting prison scenes and prisoners themselves. He often traded his paintings for services and

goods and even protection. The warden from the last prison he had inhabited had two of his

paintings in his home. He wasn’t sure he liked them, but his wife did. And what Warden Jenks

wife, Betty, liked she got. 

               “Listen, Simkins,” Jenks said to Petey on his last day in the joint, “Betty likes your stuff.

Stay in touch. Send me anything you think she’ll like.” Petey smiled and nodded. “I’ll pay you,”

Jenks added. He grinned and said, “as long as you don’t try to rip me off.” Petey laughed and

shook hands with the warden. He hadn’t thought of Jenks or of his wife since leaving prison.

               Petey Simkins had been out of prison for three months. He sat in his two room apartment

sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette. A habit acquired in prison. He stared at the canvas

across the room. He frowned. Something wasn’t right with it. He didn’t like the feeling he got

from it. He couldn’t pinpoint why it wasn’t working for him. Sighing, he took a sip of coffee.

Suddenly his eyes lit up. He remembered the last place he had broken into. It had been in one

of the wealthier sections of the city. The house had been walled and barred, but he had some

skill. Obviously, it hadn’t been enough for him to get away, but it had gotten him in. He

remembered rushing through the house of the prominent businessman until he came to the

man’s study. He scoured the room then flashed his light onto the painting on the wall. He

knew the minute he laid eyes on it, that it was something special. It was a dark and brooding,

a melancholy painting of a young man holding the head of a man in one hand and a sword in the

other. The picture triggered distant memories of childhood and a different kind of life, but he

couldn’t pinpoint the memory. The painting seemed to draw him in; he felt as if he

materialized into, or from the essence of the work. He felt the darkness and the terror and the ego

triumph in the young man. He was lured by the haunted surprise on the face of the head. He

stared at the painting until he felt rough hands on his shoulders and cuffs clamped around his

wrists. Then and only then did he seem to come back from within the shadowy world of the artist

and his subjects.

               That was his first introduction to Caravaggio’s David.

               Now, a year and a half later, he felt almost obsessed by it.

               Maybe obsessed was wrong; as wrong as the painting felt wrong. Perhaps it the

painting was right, but he was wrong. It could be that he wasn’t so much obsessed as

possessed.

               That’s nonsense, he thought. A chill ran through him as the thought exited his mind.

               Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio weaved drunkenly through the tavern door into

 the murky, smelly streets of Milan’s seamier part of the city. His dark, curly hair was dirty

and tousled. His dark moustache was wet and smelled of liquor. Caravaggio’s bleary eyes

saw but did not see. He knew the city and knew it well. Had he not gotten drunk there? Had he

not wenched there? Had he not painted there? Had he not stolen there? An evil smile crossed his

anything but evil face. He stumbled on through the darkness. Suddenly his stomach heaved and

the liquor and food so studiously and devoutly consumed that evening surged upward and

and outward, a sour, smelly Vesuvius, on to the already grungy street. He heaved, his face and

 head bathed in sweat. His world swirled as though he were caught in a wind tunnel. He tried to

stand straight but wind and dust blew into his eyes and the wind seemed to bend him over as

though a huge boulder rested on his shoulders. Visions flitted from his mind to his eyes, to the

world he could no longer see around him. An easel and canvas leaped before him then blew away;

paints and brushes filled a table in a room inhabited by furniture and furnishings he did not

 recognize. He saw a tall, metal cabinet with a handle next to a shorter rectangular object bearing

metal grills as if waiting for a piece of meat to be thrust upon it. A rectangular white sink bore

metal objects, not a pump. From no where a hand turned one of the objects and water spilled out

into the sink. The hand disappeared. The wind howled and rain arrived, unexpected, and

 pummeled him. Still he tried to straighten but could not. Rain drenched and wind buffeted

him to and fro. As suddenly as it began it stopped.

           Caravaggio raised his right hand to wipe the water from his face but found himself dry.

Frowning, he looked around but there was no one else on the dry street. Looking down, he saw the

contents of his stomach. He did not understand. Suddenly darkness surrounded him, and he was

back in the strange room. A man stood before the easel, paint brush in hand and he was painting.

A fury seemed to possess the lean, almost frail man with lank black hair. He had not shaven for a

number of days. His clothes appeared as dirty as the room he inhabited, but this in no way altered

the fury of his brush strokes. Images began to appear on the canvas: a dark background; a pale

youth held a sword across his back in his right hand and the head of a huge, bearded, black haired

 man in his left. A pouch hung from a strap around his neck outside of a dingy tunic. The black

bearded man appeared shocked, bewildered in death as he perhaps had never been in life. The boy

bore a serene and confident composure, as if holding the head of a man were an everyday

experience. The painter continued his furious brush strokes until he stopped as suddenly as he

began. He stepped back, wiped the back of his right hand across his brow, then slowly turned and

stared directly into Caravaggio’s eyes.

           Michelangel Merisi da Caravaggion fell into a dead faint.

Petey Simkins was a thief. 

Michael Peter Simkins was a painter.

Until this moment in time the two inhabited the same space, the same place. The sour

smell of rancid food and old liquor filled his nostrils leaving him woozy and shaky. He stood as

if waking from a dream. The canvas before him was filled with paint revealing an image he had

seen but never duplicated. He recognized the no longer callow youth in the painting.

Recognition of the bodiless man in the boys hand was even more poignant. Some

how he knew he was both and neither just as he knew he had painted but had never painted

 this canvas. The painting was beyond him. Not only was it beyond his ability, it was from some

era he had never inhabited save perhaps in a dream, or visited in the study of a wealthy man

 whom he had once attempted to rob. The puzzled eyes of the bodiless man stared at him

and the lean, grungy man knew that somehow, he had stepped into a world to which he could

never return. He had been allowed to share the world with the artist of the painting before him,

but he knew it was not his. 

           Petey Simkins was a thief.

           Michael Peter Simkins was a painter. He was not the equal of the man whose work he

had somehow commandeered. He would not keep it. Something had changed.

           Petey Simkins was a thief. But he was no longer.

           Michael Peter Simkins was not. Now was not the time to begin.

THE END