Caravaggio's mistake

                                 

Caravaggio's mistake 

The hot, sultry southern summer, which seemed will be no the end, suddenly finished. And also, unexpectedly, autumn began. But September continued to delight us with warm sunny days, as is often the case in Odessa. On Deribasovskay street young lindens stood along the sidewalks like high school students, shyly bashfully covering their legs with light dresses, sewn from mother-of-pearl wings river dragonflies. This autumn day was calm and this mood was transmitted to my companion. My girl was at that age when it had not yet lost the ability to be surprised and two surprises. What I liked most of all in her…

We met by chance, having encountered in the corridor of the editorial office of one of the local newspapers. "Excuse me," I said, having a silly habit every time by using a few learned English phrases. The girl astonishingly threw up brown eyebrows, raised on me blue with a touch of gray eyes, they say, where you came from.

Trying to turn everything into a joke, I blurted out: "Very nice, my name is Sasha..."

"Alexandra," the girl automatically replied. And we laughed, surprised by the unexpected coincidence of our names. As it turned out, my new friend works in the newspaper as a proofreader, but marks in life for more, studying in the absentee department of the Kiyv Institute of Arts.

We with Alexandra go in the long Deribasovskay street, it is a happening beautiful autumn day. And she periodically looks at her reflection in the display cases, as most women do, to once again see how beautiful she is. As we passed the jewelry store, I also looked at the window. Among the jewelry, I saw the disembodied somnambulist figure of Sasha. But my reflection was not there. Window glass ignored me.

Having near passed the once fashionable cafe "Scarlet Sails" with a sidewall of transparent glass, behind which the interior and visitors could be seen in the interior, we crossed the street of Catherinensrsya and approached the "house of whalers" with a grainy plaster is of marsh color. On the opposite side of the street stood, gleaming with large windows, the four-story building of the restaurant "Bratislava" with cooking and cafes on the first floor. Its construction was timed to the anniversary date - to 50-year’s October coup of 1917 in St. Petersburg. And for a while, the restaurant so was called "Anniversary". But after the occupation by Soviet troops of Czechoslovakia, probably on for political reasons, the restaurant was renamed "Bratislava".

"Are you know, on this the place was an old, almost toy house of stone and there was the famous to dumpling cooking," I said.

"Famous because you ate dumplings there?" Sasha asked ironically.

"Yes, in my youth, I am and my friends often went to this dumpling-room to snack. And in winter, when was on a cold, blowing from the sea wind, and warm-up. Because there was always warm and humid from the fumes coming from the kitchen, smelled of vinegar and red ground pepper," I said.

"Or do you feel it?" Asked of Alexandra, caught off familiar smell.

"What is this?" She asked, surprised.

"The smell, the smell of toasted Arabica coffee!" said I.

And a minute or two later, we were already being in at the "Malayatko"

Cafe, which was a little three tables all.

"To you as always?" asked Anna, a barmaid, who knew me well, and greeted us with a smile.

More than once I went to this cafe with friends. We often went here to drink not only for a cup of coffee, but also brandy, and after brandy eat a small slice lemon. Cognac Anna poured, like the conspirator in small porcelain cups with blue trim on the upper edge. And every time looked at the closed-door...

But this time I was with the girl and, smiling at Anna in the response, said: "Please give us four ham and cheese sandwiches and two big cups of coffee.

"And I didn't know that there was a cafe in Odessa with such a nice name "Malyatko", Alexandra said.

So she liked it, I thought.

After finishing with sandwiches and coffee, we left the cafe passed fifty meters and stopped at the corner of Deribasovskay and Richelieu streets.

With this place, the sea could not be seen and audible, but its proximity was guessed by at the whiff of a light breeze, which noises levels of lindens and caressing our faces. From the nearby confectionery smells of almonds, marzipan, and coffee, causing adequate associations. Therefore, I was not surprised when Sasha, looking intently at the air outlines of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre, said: "And, you know, he looks like from afar a big chocolate cake."

"Yes, and made by cooks in the style of Viennese Baroque, which going over in rococo, and with musical stuffing inside," I said, to support her improvisation.

"Are you sure?"

"In what?"

"What this is the Viennese Baroque, which going over in rococo?" She asked, putting me at a standstill.

"Not really, but I know for sure that we will go to the sea now," I said, dreaming stay off finally with her one-to-one.

Going down Deribasovskay, we went out to Pushkinskay street. When we passed is the Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Sasha offered to come inside. She very wants to look at one interesting picture. We go up with the steps of the marble staircase, and we found ourselves on the second floor, where the main exposition was located. The spacious halls with high ceilings were empty at that hour. Going from one to the other, we involuntarily frightened the older-ladies-watchers, which dozing in the corners on the Viennese chairs. Hearing as the creaking parquet under our feet, theу shuddered, turned their heads on their own wrinkled of necks, and, blinking like owls, looked at our direction, not seeing us.

"Here she is!" Said Alexandra, when we walked to approached picture Michelangelo da Caravaggio's "The Kiss of Judas." The canvas was depicted in the final episode of the tragedy that occurred on the Mount of Olives two thousand years ago after Jesus made the prayer "for the cup."

The oscillating fire, flame of torches snatched from the gloom of the Jerusalem night several key figures and details of that scene, leaving everything secondary in the shadows. They all froze forever under the artist's brush: in the foreground, the Master, his disciple Judas, guards in metal armor and helmets. From the expression of Jesus' face, one could guess that He humbly accepts what is happening and is ready for what is meant for Him from above.

"Please note how the artist expressively depicted the twelfth apostle," Sasha said. "He's all in motion, he's all in hot, he's in a hurry to do more than kiss Jesus Christ.

"What are you talking about, Sasha?" asked, think that she was overheating in the sun.

"Judas Iscariot performs a divine mission, he contributes to death, and through the death of the Resurrection of the Son of God and the salvation of all mankind. He hardly knew the ultimate goal. But his role as a mediator, assigned to him by the Master, he performs with all the responsibility he was capable of.

"But have you Imagine if it wasn't for this kiss, The Jewish-Christian world could have gone the other way," I said, playing along with Sasha.

"Don't blaspheme. It just went the way it should. And nothing could have been otherwise!" She said.

I went up to her, conciliatory put my hands on her shoulders, and pressed her against me. We did not say any word, we looked at Christ, at so, at the guards, at the rest of the apostles, frozen in confusion and panic. But unlike them, we knew how and how this New Testament story would end.

Enriched with new sensations, we went outside. The sunbeam makes lite-on Alexandra's freckled face. A lone leaf fell off the top branch of the sycamore. It falls like a downed front-line bomber, slowly rotating around the vertical axis, shifting to my right. I stopped, seeing him off with my eyes until he fell flat on the pavement. And when I looked back, Sasha already was not near me.

For twenty minutes I stood at the entrance to the museum, confused, stunned and puzzled: was everything all that happened to me today to be really, or this was my dreams warmed me?

Annoyed, I was about to leave when the heavy sash of the museum door succumbed to whose effort, swung open and let out a smiling Alexandra.

"Did you think about something, and I did wasn't lazy and I ran to look at the picture again," she said embarrassed.

"Did you forget something or remember something?" I asked, not knowing what else I would expect from a girl with chameleon eyes.

"I decided to check if I was wrong in my assumptions. You see, Caravaggio in this painting depicted the guards who captured Christ in metal armor and helmets, which in the Roman Empire of that era was not. Clothes of this configuration appeared much later, maybe, in the Middle Ages", Sasha said.

"Oh! Artists always lied a little, but you've deducing them out on clean water. Really?" Said I.

Sasha looked at me, checking if I was not lying. Then she took me by the arm. We are turning the corner, went out to the Greek street, and come to the Greek bridge. And from there already was close to coastal slopes...

 Picture of Nikolay Prokopenko