Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante #2)(26)

“He died recently.”

We both nodded.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He was young. He was so young.” And then she pulled back, as if she was willing away the sadness. She smiled at Dante. “I’m glad you like the painting.”

“What does the writing say?” I asked.

“It’s a poem he wrote. It’s taped to the back of the painting in an envelope.”

“May we read it?”

“Yes, of course.”

She walked up to where we were standing—then took the painting off the wall. “Take the envelope,” she said.

Dante carefully untaped the envelope from the back of the painting. The woman placed the painting back on the wall.

Dante held the envelope as if it were something very fragile. He stared at it. I could see it said, What is it that makes things matter? He took out a sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it. He stared at the handwriting. He looked up at the woman, who had returned to her seat behind the antique desk where she had been sitting when we’d walked in. She seemed perfect and broken all the same time.

“My name’s Dante.”

“What a lovely name. I’m Emma.”

I thought she looked like an Emma. I’m not sure why I thought that. “I’m Ari,” I said.

“Ari?”

“It’s short for Aristotle.”

She had a super-beautiful smile. “Aristotle and Dante,” she said. “How lovely. The names suit you. Dante the poet, and Aristotle the philosopher.”

“Dante’s a poet, that’s for sure. But I don’t think I qualify as a philosopher. Now or ever.”

“Hmm,” she said. “You don’t strike me as being a shallow young man. Do you do a lot of thinking?”

“He’s always thinking.” I’d been wondering when Dante was going to dive in and give his opinion. “He thinks about everything all the time. And I mean everything.”

“I think too much,” I said.

“There’s no such thing as thinking too much. The world would be a better place if everyone did more thinking and less talking. There might be a lot less hatred.” She looked at both of us as if she was trying to see who we really were. “So, Ari, you just might be the philosopher you think you aren’t. Humility is a fine quality. Hang on to it.”

Dante pointed at the poem he was holding in his hand and then toward her. “Will you read it to us?”

“No, I don’t think I can.” Her refusal wasn’t all harsh—it was soft, and I thought that I could hear a brokenness in her voice and I knew that she lived with a hurt inside her. “Why don’t you read it to us, Dante?”

He stared at the poem. “I’m not sure I can do it justice.”

“A poet knows how to read a poem.”

“What if I ruin it?”

“I’m sure you won’t,” she said. “Just read it as if you wrote it. That’s the trick.”

Dante nodded. He stared at the writing—and began to read, his soft and sure voice filling the empty gallery:

“?‘This is not a painting. And this is not a poem. This is not the ocean. And this is not a sky. Words do not belong in a painting. Words of an art teacher who told me I would never be an artist. Poems do not belong on a painting. And I do not belong in this world. This is not a painting. And that is not my eye that cries in the night for a lover I never knew. This is not about my pain, nor about the loneliness of nights I endured in the solitude of my own prison.

“?‘I am going blind and soon I will no longer be able to see. But what I saw and what I felt never mattered and the eye that looks out at you will be gone. My eyes and my poems and my art do not matter—not in a world where nothing can matter.

“?‘My mother taught me that love was the only thing that mattered—and her love lives in my heart and it is not something that can be bought or sold and it is here in this painting and in this poem and that is why this thing we call art matters.

“?‘A man who loves another man does not matter because he is not a man—and his paintings and his poems and whatever he thinks or says or feels do not matter. That is what people believe. But those are lies, and I do not believe any of those lies. So I became an artist and a poet so I could paint and write the things that mattered—even if they only mattered to me. And that is the only thing that matters.’?”



I saw the quiet tears running down Emma’s face, and I thought of the word “dignified,” which was the only word I could reach for to describe her. My mother had worn that same look at my aunt Ophelia’s funeral. Emma looked at Dante and said quietly, “You read like a poet. That was lovely.”

Dante smiled. “Well, perhaps not as lovely as your son.”

Dante—he always knew what to say.

And she sat there, just sat, because she had nothing else to say. And Dante and I stood there, just stood, because we had nothing else to say. And there seemed to be a kind of peace in that small gallery surrounded by the work of man who was dead and whom we did not know and surrounded too by a mother’s love, and I had never thought about those things before, and now that I was thinking them, I didn’t know if I liked thinking about how much mothers loved, because it hurt to know that. And I didn’t want to live in hurt. But it was much better than self-hatred, which was just a stupid way to live.