Salai
A Short Story of Leonardo da Vinci
By Anne Hendricks
Dedication:
For Caterina: a mother often thought of as opportunistic or absent, but perhaps, indeed, a woman that carved her own destiny – and gave us greatness through her son.
“I cannot get him to confess although I am certain he is guilty,” the old man read in his notebooks from years before. It was now 1518 and the years had passed quickly. He sat back, baffled and amused. Had the lad been as bad as he had written? Was he the overindulgent foster father to a peasant lad that needed a home and opportunity? Continuously, repeatedly, the boy he had taken into his home had stolen – or lied – or cheated. He also was very stubborn, often refusing to cooperate on what he could learn from his foster father.
The old man chuckled, remembering all he had done; he remembered well the kindness shown to him, as a bastard son, so long ago. The conviction he felt for the lad, with the masses of blond curls, blue eyes, and the clear complexion had inspired him to bring him home to be a subject to paint - and he had found himself a foster father. The lad had grown into a good man: it had taken patience. For twenty-six years, his patience tried, the lad once named Giacomo Caprotti became a new name: “Devil,” or, in their native Italian: “Salai.”
Salai was his shadow – and one of his most trusted assistants.
“Shadow!” he called, closing his notebook, “Salai?”
“I am here,” the quiet voice returned. The man entered to see his foster father get up and lay aside his notebook, “My belongings are packed, and I am ready to depart. It is time.”
The foster father turned and put his hands on Salai’s shoulders, “Thank you, and “he smiled, “For all you do.”
Salai nodded, a strange feeling going through his body. He was leaving his foster father to return home to return to Milan, to work on his foster father’s vineyards. They had been in France to visit the court of Francis I, to do commissioned work, but Salai longed to return home. “I will miss you,” he told his foster father.
“And I you, Salai. I will look for your return. Keep working on your art - for you improve daily.” Even as he spoke, the foster father had a brief stab of pain. His child was leaving, for only a visit to his home, but it felt – final.
I am imagining things, he thought. However, his hand touched his autobiographical notebook with the thought of possible finality. He made his decision.
Salai smiled, “You’ve tried,” he commented. He knew well he had been a horrid boy and young man. No, he had been, indeed, the “devil” his nickname had become. For he had run up bills for fancy clothing, eaten meals like a gluten, pick-pocked purses, lying, and not deserving the trust and love of this great man. Somehow, for whatever reason, his foster father had never thrown him on the wayside, but kept him close. Close, he thought bemused; to make sure he would not steal. Later, as time passed and Salai had realized his fostering was a gift and not a privilege, he had changed his ways, respected, and honored his foster father. Nay, he loved the man, the genius.
His art would never be great, but he felt competent as an artist, but he often felt drawn to the vineyards his birth father, the real peasant heritage he possessed and longed for: sunshine and rain, thunder and grass: he longed for nature. He was returning home. His goal of a re-creation of his foster father’s greatest work was a goal; but he felt it would be a pale and unimportant part. Few could rival a master such as his foster father’s genius!
His foster father held up his finger for Salai to wait, turned, and retrieved a packet for his foster son and placed his notebook inside, “This – is for you, Giacomo,” he used his foster son’s real name. “It is…some things you do not know about me – maybe, it is time for you to read.”
The foster son looked at his foster father, worried that, perhaps, he too, felt the odd feeling of goodbye, “What is it?”
“It is part of my notebooks – of my childhood. I trust this to you and your convictions as to how it is to be used when I pass from this life,” he pressed the packet to his foster son. “There are some things people know about me, or think they know; but my early years were quite hard. I think you will understand why I trust it to you, my son. Read it under my special tree, for there, is where I first saw you, making a charcoal drawing of your sheep on a stone.”
His foster father patted his shoulder again and Giacomo Caprotti nodded, taking the packet to exit for his long journey home to Milan and hailed a servant to add it to his belongings for safekeeping. As the carriage rocked to the jolt of the horses, he murmured, “He believed in me – and why? Old man, how I owe you! But how foolish you were – but thank you!”
The journey took weeks and upon his arrival, as instructed, Giacomo walked the very vineyards where his birth father had toiled and he had been discovered, drawing, and his life had changed. Giacomo, or “Salai,” sat under his foster father’s favorite tree and opened the packet.
Moreover, learned of his foster father’s childhood…
1457 -The child was a bastard – conceived from a dalliance of Ser Piero and a peasant girl. Ser Piero barely remembered her name, but her lush breasts beckoned to him as she worked in the fields near her village, bending over as she worked. He rode his horse near her and reigned in, smiling down at the beauty, as she shielded her eyes from the shining sun. Her bosom beckoned him, he would later say to his friends, as well as her backside.
Ser Piero smiled – which she returned. The girl was young, but she knew opportunity when he rode up to her. He gestured her to her with his hand and she mounted, riding pigeon in front of him. Together, they went to a quiet place, near a meandering brook, and he took her, quickly, and tossed her a coin. She re-dressed and put it coyly in her bosom.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asked, hoping to see him again. This would be her chance – her chance to get out of the fields. Life as a peasant was hard: she would age like her own mother – and her goal was to marry better – and the opportunity of a lover of a rich man, she may better herself and her future.
“Aye,” he smiled, adjusting his clothing.
Her maidenhood, sacrificed for opportunity, stained her thighs and she winced at the soreness. However, the jingle she felt in her bosom comforted her. As did the more jingles of coins as the weeks passed.
Months later, she birthed his son. Ser Piero, without any children, heartily acknowledged his bastard, even allowing his father to register the birth. The child, recognized as “Ser Piero’s get," soon found his mother married into her end goal a secure home, out of the fields. The child alternated between his uncle’s farm and his mother’s home, where Ser Piero continued to support his child as the years passed. At five, the peasant mother took her son quietly aside and told him, “Remember all your uncle and I have taught you?”
“Yes,” the child responded, “I do, Mother.”
“Be good. Be clean. Be respectful. Most of all learn courteous ways and please learn how to read and write. Your opportunities will come, my child,” she kissed his brow and held him close, knowing, like her, his opportunity would come, in this life, as a bastard to a rich man. Other children had been born to her, children of her husband, legitimate children. The child had been called for to live with his father, still the only child, bastard or legitimate. A marriage to a young heiress had proven infertile and he demanded the child be sent to him. The mother walked her son to his father’s home, with the command he be given over to the cook upon arrival.
“Remember what I said,” his mother brushed his cheek and turned, prepared to walk the long journey home. She did not look back, for she knew to do so, would bring the lad runn
ing to her. Even if he thought her harsh, or abandoning him – she knew it was his best opportunity in life.
The house was one of an important man, one of the growing upper middle class quattrocento. The boy had met his father rarely, for the relationship was uncomfortable and he felt unsure where and what he should say or do to his father. He often longed for his mother’s home, but his stepfather did not want “the bastard” around unless necessary. He adored the familiarity of his uncle’s home. His uncle farmed and allowed him to be outside and surrounded by nature. He enjoyed the outdoors and attempted to draw in dirt or on rocks about things he observed. His father, he had been told, was positioned strongly in the growing middle class, where he had access to clubs, guilds, and unions – where a legitimate heir would have opportunity. However, his only child was a bastard: but he was all his father had: he could inherit property, but never attend university or become a notary like his father. “Grab your chances,” his uncle had told him, “And your destiny will be your own.”
The cook looked over the child. Garbed in plain britches and a clean, but