Dan Brown Parody, Part 5

The Fawlty Code

Chapter Five

 

The heat of the city, after the cold of Boston and the damp of England, caught him off guard.  And like all great Indirectionists, he then thought immediately of warmth’s opposite.  He thought of snow.  And then he thought of Piero Di Medici, least of all the Medici, forcing Michaelangelo to build snowmen.  That prig Vasari was very snooty on that score, Roger felt.  Seemed to regard it as an insult to a so-called “true artist”.  Good.  Good to see these so-called geniuses properly insulted once on a historical blue moon.  The plastic arts are the collectiveenemy of Indirection, because they make so widely available to so many different forms of interpretation and appreciation.  The true purpose of any so called “work of art” is not to liberate feeling or inspire debate but to produce one very specific and very difficult  meaning that only a very small number of clever and important people can grasp and enjoy.  Roger had always hated vulgar Michaelangelo.  Putting up statues in public piazza for any dumb yokel to pass by and “enjoy”.  And when Roger reimagined (so closely as to almost call it a memory), the sniggering Piero watching the “genius” roll up balls of snow, he actually laughed out loud, provoking some surprise from his fellow arrivees in line for taxis.  He imagined Michaelangelo’s previous fingers, blue and numb with cold.  He imagined the gritted teeth, the smothered rage and then the calm, pristine, aristocratic happiness of insulting someone lower born than oneself.  The whole scene had a kind of timeless beauty to it.

 

Roger sometimes wished he’d been born Italian.  The stereotypically delicious food, the landscape, the climate, the persistent reputation for artistic genius and sexual charisma – yes – the Italianate had its superficial attractions.  But then he recalled the essential and inescapable degeneracy of Europe, its utter inability to interpret itself, or make sense of itself to itself.  No, to understand Europe one needs difference.  An ocean of difference no less.  There is ultimately no such thing as a European intellectual, and more that one could imagine any such thing as an Egyptian Egyptologist.

 

And of course the rather lovely thing about snowmen is their ephemeral stupidity.  You are plotting their sure destruction at the moment that you start building them.  Roger liked ice sculptures for the same reasons.  You are commissioning the destruction of a so-called “work of art”, not just its creation.  An ice sculpture is the perfect expression of the contempt that money and power should and does have for the artistic imagination. 

 

Florence is a city where Roger never felt wholly comfortable.  There were too many centuries of civic pride on display – too much grandeur and elegance that was offensively available to all Florentines.  Florence offered a legacy of the very worst kind of open-access “republicanism”.  Yet, amid all the grandeur, there remained secrets, conspiracies, “huddles” – if you knew where to look.  And Roger of course knew perfectly well to look for that special “something” he was after.

 

This precious cryptic “something”  was not to be found in the Duomo or the Baptistry or the Uffizi or the Pitti Palace or the Acadamia.  Such tedious tourist traps he avoided like the plague in any case – they had been emptied of Indirection long ago and were by now  over-interpreted and redundant.  Evacuated like a tired colon.  Looking at the long long lines of people sweating and smiling outside the Uffizi did his heart good.  Tired and hot they were still excited, still in happy awe of the renaissance masterpieces they were about to experience.  Just knowing how much better and cleverer than they, put an extra spring in Roger’s already springy step.

 

He passed instead over the cramped bazaar of the Ponte Vecchio and trotted securely and familiarly to the Brancacci Chapel, purchased his ticket, and waited patiently to become of the small party allowed in at any given time.  Fortunately he’d barely been waiting ten seconds before one of the senior attendants recognised him, tore up the ticket, refunded the money and discreetly and deferentially escorted him ahead of the sweating multitudes, past the filigree of red rope, to receive a well deserved private viewing.  And then there he was again, staring at Massaccio’s masterpiece, of which he never tired.  The Garden of Eden.  Adam’s face in his hands, obscured.  Eve head lolling back, eyes clogged and squinting, her mouth a great triangle of pain.  Here, if no where else in Florence, there remained indirect meanings to be brought back to life.

 

He was suddenly prodded from behind.

 

“Ah Monsieur Mysterium, I ’ave been expecting you.”

 

Roger bristled, lamenting the inconveniences of academic celebrity.  A fan.  Here of all places.  A very French fan no less.

 

“That’s Monsieur le Docteur to you.   And please speak French.  Or Italian.  I speak both fluently.  As you well know.”

 

“But of course… but ah prefer to practice mah English, also it, owyusay, slows me down to speak in English… ’elps me tink..”

 

Roger smiled.  The Frenchman had a point.  Talking in a foreign language was good practice for any Indirectionist.  Anything that slows down expression and makes it more self-conscious and careful.

 

“Ah bliv, we arr lookin for ze same ting ere. What iz she called?  Indi?  Duenna?  Suggestyah?  She seems not to laak ’er naams zo she kip changin’ em.”

 

Surprising even himself with energy of his perplexed state of frenzy, the professor grabbed the little man by the lapels, lifted him clean off the ground, turned him around and slammed him against the opposite wall, causing tiny fragments of fourteenth century fresco to quiver and fall from nearby.  A looming and oddly muscular clerical tour guide, cassocked and clipboarded,  started to chastise Roger but was silenced with a look.  Again, Professor Mysterium was recognised and given due allowance.  Roger meanwhile addressed the Gallic heap on the floor. 

 

“What do you know about Indy?  Don’t make me beat it out of you?”

 

“Heeting me…will not faand ’er?  You waant to faand ’er, n’est pas?”

 

He had a point.  Physical violence should rarely be the first recourse of a serious scholar.  “Subjugate with Scholarship” – like it says on my coffee mug.  So instead of a kicking the heap, he wagged an admonitory finger at it instead.

 

“Get up.  Get yourself in order.  We should go and have an expresso somewhere and discuss things properly.”

 

The heap nodded its assent and a few minutes later they were eyeball to eyeball, separated by a rickety circular table and some steaming tiny coffees.

 

Tuscan daylight can be cruel.  Under its uncompromising glare, the heap looked a lot like Serge Gainsbourg, only rather more dishevelled and disreputable looking.  As though Serge Gainsbourg, had a twin brother whose outrageous and self-destructive practices were a source of constant anxiety for the (relatively) sober and disciplined Serge Gainsbourg.  As though this evil twin Gainsbourg had to be locked away from sight, lest his shambolic and degenerate appearance bring shame upon the whole Gainsbourg name.  And of course, he chain-smoked horrible and foul smelling cigarettes that polluted half the piazza.  The heap grinned, and offered one to Roger.  Roger was in no mood for self pollution, or indeed small-talk.

 

“So.  What do you know about Indi Strangelore?”

 

The heap shrugged.

 

“Aah must be ’onest.  Eeet’s not really Indi aahm intererrrested in.  It’s ’er mother.”

 

“Her mother?”

 

“Ah oui… aah would travel anywhere, aah mean anywhere… to faand ’er dear maman.”

 

 

 

The Fawlty Code Part 1

https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/dan-brown-parody-part-one/

 

The Fawlty Code Part 2

https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/dan-brown-parody-part-2/

 

The Fawlty Code Part 3

https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/dan-brown-parody-part-3/

 

The Fawlty Code Part 4

https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/dan-brown-parody-part-4/