Infrared (7 page)

‘Right,’ Rena nods. ‘The Indians didn’t do bonfires of the vanities, they just did campfires.’

‘And they couldn’t burn books,’ Ingrid puts in, ‘because they were illiterate. Hitler burned books, though…’

Rena hastens to change the subject. She has nothing against Hitler, so to speak, but feels he shouldn’t be allowed to invade the whole world.

It’s for Simon’s sake, of course, that they’ve chosen to visit the History of Science Museum.

Once they’ve whisked through the first room, however (wonders of ancient clockwork, tiny crenellated cogs from the workshops of Florence, Geneva and Vienna), Simon decides to peruse the museum pamphlet for a while. No benches—so, oblivious to stares, he sits down on the floor like a tramp, baseball cap on lap, wispy grey hair standing on end.

Ingrid and Rena move on alone—too scared of him to urge him off the floor, too scared of the museum guards to join him there. Astronomy, meteorology, mathematics…but how to discuss these things without Simon? Where to go? What to do? Everything they visit now without him will need to be revisited later with him; the present moment thus becomes absurd.

After a good half hour, they go back to the first room and timorously ask (last thing they’d want to do is offend him, harass him, give him the impression they’re bossing him around), ‘Don’t you want to come and see?’

Rising at last to join them, he strides through one room after another—prisms, magnetism, optical machinery, transmission of energy…

Hey, what’s the hurry, Dad?

You the precocious child, forever top of the class, admitted to university at age sixteen…You the brilliant, curious, gifted young thinker, light of foot and heart. You the insomniac, mad with joy, utterly possessed by your vocation: to fathom and describe the origins of consciousness, the fabulous machinery of the human brain. You who, later on, would initiate
me
into these rites—thrilled to see my eyes widening in amazement, the light getting passed on. And it
did
get passed on. Look, Daddy—I inherited all these discoveries! To measure the temperature of the invisible in 1800, Herschel needed both Galileo’s thermometer and Newton’s prism; these allowed him to demonstrate the prodigious fact that the sun emitted infrared rays. I’ve been working on that side of the spectrum for twenty years—the spectral side, yes—the ghostlike, dreamlike universe wherein light waves, so short as to be invisible to the naked eye, start turning into heat. I use my camera to slip beneath people’s skin and show their veins, the warmth of their blood, the life that pulses within them. I reveal their invisible auras, the traces left by the past on their faces, hands and bodies. In rural and urban landscapes, I explore the ethereal detail of shadows, turning foreground into background and the other way around. I set the motionless into motion as no film could ever do, and show how the different periods of our lives echo one another. Connecting past to present, here to there, young to old, dead to living, I capture the fundamental instability of our lives. I try, in every reportage, to make the acquaintance of
one
person and to do all I can to understand what has shaped them. Leading them away from their official identities, I accompany them home, question them and listen to their answers, play with them and their convictions, watch them change masks, study them in the flow of their existence, love them as they love themselves, leave them freer than I found them…I use infrared to disturb the
hic et nunc
that is the very essence of photography.

Oh, Dad, why are you walking so fast?

‘I’m mainly interested in Rooms Six and Seven,’ says Simon. ‘The ones devoted to Galileo.’

To get to Rooms Six and Seven, though, they must first pass through Room Five—the History of Obstetrics.

Plaster moulds hanging on walls: dozens of life-sized uteruses painted in realistic colours. Nestled amidst the viscera, against the backbones or beneath the ileums: babies babies babies, single or twins, on the verge or in the process of being born, head first, rump first, foot first, arm first, sometimes with the help of forceps.

As they pass through this room, visitors tend to hasten their step.

These gaping wounds are a shock to them. A far cry indeed from the immaculate blue-and-white Virgins of the
Nativities.
Here, bodies teem, glisten and ooze. Flesh is garish, slippery, awful. Piles of intestines. The parturients’ legs are chopped off at the thighs, bloody steaks.

Simon, too, hastens his step.

Obscene obstetrical obstacles…It was all those
naissances,
wasn’t it, that prevented your own Renaissance? A giant lets out a roar. A jet of sperm shoots from his stiff cock. Year after year, each jet an embryo-clot—cells which, dividing, multiply. The babies grow, come into the world, grow, drink, grow, eat, grow. Horrified, the giant takes to his heels, pursued by his offspring. He trips and falls headlong. His children devour him.

Galileo had only three children, all with the same non-wife, Marina Gamba. The girls were placed in convents; the boy lived with his mother in Padova. No family life of any sort. It was the tradition for erudites to remain unmarried.

Right, Subra nods. Two wives, six kids—far too many, for a man who hopes to think.

Room Six proudly exhibits a framed copy, in both Latin and Italian, of the great scientist’s
retractatio.

At Ingrid’s request, Rena translates: ‘I have been judged and vehemently suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the centre of the universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not the centre of the same…I hereby abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith. I curse and detest the said errors and heresies.’

As she reads, Simon moves on a bit. Suddenly he comes to a halt in front of a glass display case and shouts with laughter, causing dozens of touristic heads to turn.

‘What is it?’ asks Ingrid in a worried voice.

‘Look—oh, no, just look at this!’

Obedient as usual, the two women approach the display case. Ingrid gets there first, and Rena sees her features contract in disgust.

‘A finger?’ she says.

‘And not just any finger,’ Simon chuckles.

He goes on chuckling until they get the joke. There, decked out in a lace ribbon and preserved these four centuries under a bell jar, stand the remains of the great man’s middle finger. The nail has blackened and the bones are starting to crumble, but the relic proudly declares to the Catholic powers-that-be:
Eppur si muove!

Oh, Galileo Galilei! If only you and my father could have met, you would have become the best of pals! You’d have spent long hours together, discussing the law of floating bodies. ‘Ice: lighter or heavier than water?’ ‘Heavier,’ said scientists of old. ‘Why does it float, then?’ ‘Because of its shape. Large pieces of ice with flat bottoms float, just like boats. Read Aristotle.’ ‘You’re wrong,’ said brave Galileo. ‘Even if you shove a piece of ice to the bottom and hold it there, it will rise
to the surface the minute you let go of it. Lighter than water, then, appearances notwithstanding.’

Yes, Galileo and Greenblatt—thick as thieves, for sure! Alike, as well, in their scorn for all those who prize jaspers and diamonds over fruit and flowers. ‘Some men really deserve,’ said Galileo, ‘to encounter a Medusa’s head which would transmute them into statues of jasper or of diamond, and thus make them more perfect than they are.’

Dreadful obstacles were placed in the Italian astronomer’s path. Real persecution, real impediments. Harassment, condemnation, destruction of career. At seventy-five—five years
older
than you are now—he was placed under house arrest, and would remain a prisoner of the Inquisition until his death. All this afflicted him at first, yet he recovered and went back to work. Kept at it. So they wouldn’t let him speculate about the cosmos anymore? All right, then he’d cast a bell for Siena’s cathedral…take up his old treatise on movement… write a few more
Mathematical Demonstrations and Discourses…
In other words, despite all the obstacles, he went on discovering things all his life…because he
wanted
to. Because he could, and would, and had to. Because it gave him joy.

Oh! Had my father only met him! But no…So he spent long years bravely struggling with his colleagues’ pragmatism and his employers’ indifference, to say nothing of his own doubts. In Montreal circa 1965, where were the Galileos who could have joined him in exploring the farthest reaches of sky and soul?

No one persecuted him. But he used up his time, squandered his energy, and watched his dreams go floating off into the distance. Boats of ice…

Why did Simon Greenblatt never deserve any joy? Why did he let his vocation get bogged down in absurd marital quarrels?

You, of course, Subra teases, would never dream of quarrelling with
your
husbands.

Two subjects and only two spark quarrels between Aziz and me: mothers and God.

Aren’t you ashamed of squabbling over such trifles? smiles her Friend.

I am, but there’s nothing for it. On the subject of mothers—when I dare tell him I feel asphyxiated by Aicha’s hospitality, her endless meals of couscous and sweet pastries, her pathological demand for gratitude, he gets all worked up and yells, ‘Basically you think mothers should be unavailable, don’t you? The way your mother was with you? Or the way you are with your own kids? Come right down to it, you have no idea what motherhood is all about!’ At that point I start beating him up. I enjoy a good tussle now and then—it reminds me of wrestling-matches with Rowan when we were kids, or football games with his friends in Westmount. I adored pile-ups—a dozen male bodies thudding on top of mine as I clutched the precious ball to my stomach—sure, I got hurt, even badly sometimes, but I never cried. Aziz is stronger than I am, and when he gets tired of fending off my punches he grabs me by the wrists and starts twisting my arms; almost invariably we wind up making peace in bed…

On the subject of God, Aziz simply refuses to believe I don’t believe in him, though I’ve explained countless times that in my father’s brain there was a place for God but it was empty, whereas in my own brain the place doesn’t exist so neither does the emptiness. Those quarrels don’t lead to punching or shouting; the air between us simply roils with silence, suspicion and dark misery. Here again, though, the bad feeling usually dissipates when we start tearing off our clothes, panting, soldering our bodies together in the kitchen doorway, in the shower, on the living-room rug, on or under the dining-room table…

Our worst quarrels occur when the two themes converge, for instance when Aziz comes home from a visit to his mother in the projects and I can tell Aicha has been getting on his case again about his girlfriend’s age and atheism: ‘So you’ll never give me a grandson? You’ll never have a Muslim son, Aziz? You’ll never be a real man?’ Those nights, as during the first weeks of our love, my sweetheart’s cock stays soft and small…

Still standing next to Simon, Rena stares at Galileo’s middle finger.

‘Did the Catholic Church ever apologise for its error?’ she asks. ‘Once they were forced to acknowledge that the Earth revolved around the Sun, I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Simon replies. ‘John Paul II finally admitted Galileo was right, three and a half centuries after the great scientist’s death.’

‘Did he add that, by the same token, Urban VIII was wrong?’

‘Oh, I doubt he went that far. Don’t forget, the pope’s infallibility didn’t become dogma until the nineteenth century.’

‘I see. And it’s not retroactive?’

‘No. So Urban VIII had the right to make a mistake.’

‘Well, the museum could at least
mention
the fact that Galileo’s story didn’t end with his retraction.’

Simon checks to make sure Ingrid is out of earshot. ‘Yeah, you see?’ he says. ‘Only his finger protests.’

And Rena laughs. Even if he’s belabouring the point a bit, she laughs. Even if she suspects that, deep down, he’s comparing Galileo’s persecution to Timothy Leary’s, she laughs.

As they sit waiting for lunch in a nearby pizzeria, Rena leafs through the book Simon purchased at the museum gift shop.

Galileo’s Daughter.
Well, well.

It would seem Virginia and her father shared a deep spiritual
communion…just like you and me, hey, Dad? Except that I betrayed you. Virginia entered the convent at age fourteen and took her vows two years later under the name of Suor Maria Celeste; she fervently loved her daddy all her life long—supporting him, doing all she could to protect him from the Inquisition, writing him hundreds of letters, sewing clothes for him, turning his fruit into jams and jellies, running the convent apothecary, concocting remedies, and…dying at age thirty-four, long before he did. Sorry about that, Dad.

Their next destination is the siesta—but naturally it would be unthinkable for them to head straight for the Hotel Guelfa and make it there without detours, hesitations, twists, turns or distractions. As they pass a hat stall in the marketplace near San Lorenzo, Simon (who needs to protect his vulnerable pate) decides this is as good a time as any to replace the absurd blue baseball cap he’s been wearing since they left Montreal.

He comes to a halt. Rena sighs inwardly.

It’s just the opposite of love, she realises in amazement. When you’re in love, time expands and boredom is unthinkable; every second is as round, full and juicy as a ripe grape. Your lover needs a pack of Pall Malls? Ah! A thrilling adventure, to spend twenty minutes waiting in line with him in a stinking tobacco shop while fifteen depressing individuals in slow succession scratch their heads over which Lotto ticket to buy. Everything is exciting, simply because the two of you are sharing it. Your love infuses every particle of the universe, even the most trivial and unsightly, with meaning—no, with music…

Simon removes his cap and tries on several hats in front of a cheap hand mirror dangling from a nail. Meanwhile, Ingrid strikes
up a conversation with the stallholder. Three minutes later, he opens his wallet to show her a snapshot of his daughter in Sri Lanka.