Gioconda's voice

“Smile, Lisa… smile, my fragile creation”, Leonardo softly whispered to the painting, but Lisa doesn’t answer.

Its eighteen years that Leonardo Da Vinci is trying to solve his enigma of which himself gave birth. Nobody doubts Leonardo’s genius, and yet nobody knows where he is, dead or gone. Some think that he is gone mad, some think that he fell in obsession with this last commission. Indeed, Leonardo is not only obsessed with this last paint, but absorbed like water in a sponge. He can hide from people around, he could escape in order to obtain peace of soul, and yet, he cannot escape from his mind, our prison. There is no night without the ancestral, obscure and darkness of his nightmares. Every nightmare is the same; he dreams the painting, his artwork, his Lisa, whispering to him its terrific poem:

Kiss me, Leonardo, seal your love on my lips,

Don’t resist to my beauty,

Men fight for my hand, they still persist.

Don’t trust God, He lies over and over,

Kiss me with your blood, Leonardo,

My soul…you, only you are the owner.

Just one kiss and we will sing together,

Time has come for us to live,

This is our heaven, the place where we can sing forever.

Kiss me, Leonardo, sculpt your sentence on my lips,

Burn me or set me free.

Leonardo runs, but the painting always appears in front of his eyes in the penumbrae yelling “kill me, burn me” dressed in a voice that not even God himself would dare to listen. All his nightmare are all the same. Afterword, when he wakes up, he stays in silence, in front of his masterpiece whispering to the canvas “smile Lisa, smile my fragile creation”, and yet Lisa doesn’t answer, thing belong to eternal stillness. Leonardo cannot escape this obsession which like a parasite devours his intellect, his genius. “why does not even look human, this woman” Leonardo yells in prey of his disperation, “her eyes are not Lisa’s eyes and its mouth is a reckless fool, sailor of someone else’s ship!” Leonardo talks to himself holding his eyes on the canvas.” “I cannot watch you in your eyes, I don’t understand them, my Lisa, you shake my hart and all my libs, your sight petrifies me, Lisa.” He is tormented like only a bunch of man on the world, agonized by his thoughts, devoured by the awareness of the terror and anguish the night holds.

“Maybe is time to end this commission”, Leonardo asks to himself trying to solve an enigma that doesn’t even exist. He knows that, in reality, he cannot end this commission, he had been paid years ago; the biggest commission ever brought to life, the most expensive in all Florence. He remembered the strange words of the end of the poem from his canvas in his nightmares. “maybe I am mad already, or maybe I will be these years! No, no, please stop it Leonardo, you are not mad, you are a rational man, I believe in science and in rationality.” Leonardo tried to calm down his mind. Its been two nights without a nightmare, only restored rests; the third day come, Leonardo lies on his chair in front of his masterwork with a chalice of red wine in the hand. Glass after glass, he became drunk; rapidly falling aspleep. Few minutes after and his mind would manufactures the darkest landscape, the worst nightmare he ever dreamt of.

Sulphur smell, burning reddish soil, harrowing scream of pain and terror, people devoured by flames, and a taste of fresh human blood into his mouth. “where am I?” Leonardo could barely pronounce this sentence, almost unconscious; as if he woke up from a dream. An archaic anguish finally finds him, frightens him, tortures him. “Where am I?!” Leonardo screamed now, in prey of terror; a human eye couldn’t see a more terrific and crude landscape. He blinks and suddenly the landscape changes, again. His eyes are simply frozen at the millions of mutilated damned under fire, in an eternal hellfire. Terror, tears, and gnashing of teeth; a never-ending pain. God, save me, they scream with their inebriated harts full of terror, but…there is no God for them. Leonardo cannot hold his tears, his threatens, covering his mouth; an horrifying landscape runs his senses. But then, there where light is even more weak, slave of the darkness, there where only corrupted people lay, there where flames and sulphur devour them, there. There, The Beast lies in in the shadow of its own corrupted soul. Leonardo sees it and screams with all his voice petrified; a kind of terror that you would dare to face God’s rage in order to not see again those crude features. Leonardo deeply desires to move but his is just petrified; a crying living statue fixed to the reddish soil of the inferno. He closes his eyes, he couldn’t do otherwise. The evil is approaching, he feels it, he feels it in front of his closed eyes.

“I know you, my eyes are day and night over you… I know all my creatures, Leonardo da Vinci”, the Beast whispered to him. Leonardo is frozen, but his blood runs like hell. Leonardo is barely capable of pronouncing few words under his shaking teeth: “why are all these people here…I know almost all of them.” “their God has forgotten them, they just wanted a happy and fulfilled life, God doesn’t love them, God is empty of compassion, son. But, I have compassion, they searched me, they invoked my compassion; I am their lord.” Then suddenly devil’s voice muted into something gruesome, a voice of the sound of fire: “do you fear death?!” the Beast yelled like a schizophrenic lion, ready to devour its prey. Then his voice turn down again like a voice of an angel: “what do you want from me, son?” Leonardo cries like a child, “I want epace” he replied. “oh, I can give you peace for long years, son, but the price is high”. “why am I living all this” Leonardo yelled to his tempter.

“Because the woman you are portraying, the women you secretly love, is damned from birth, she belongs to me already. She is beautiful because her mother needed money at the time; she was barely surviving when she invoked me in her darkest nights. She prayed me to make her future daughter a beautiful woman, the richest woman in Florence; I helped her, I’m not like God, I accept them, son. She is marked by me and all men that fall in love with her are cursed too, so you are, Leonardo.” Leonardo couldn’t believe to those words; his breath is heavy, his hart beat is quick and loud and his tears fell like waterfall down to the soil; he is bounded to eternal terror. “I am their lord… I am your hope of long peace, dear son. You kissed her and how wouldn’t you?! She is beautiful indeed, she is my creation, son, I’m proud of her and soon we’ll meet again to seal my love forever”.

Leonardo is pale, he wouldn’t dare to open his eyes, he would stay still and blind while the beast was in front of him. You could see the damned mutilated in suffering, you hear them, but you would never ever dare to see the hell’s most infamous and cruel creature, not the damned could, not even good would dare to watch in the eyes His most terrifying creation. “Because you kissed her, because you love her, you are damned by the god you all fools pray, son. But I can still save you, I can destroy the curse that ties you to that prostitute, to that love, to your sentence. Only I can untie this rope on your neck, son”. Leonardo’s body shakes with more intensity at the voice of Lisa.

Kiss me, Leonardo, seal your love on my lips,

Don’t resist to my beauty,

Men fight for my hand, they still persist.

Don’t trust God, He lies over and over,

Kiss me with your blood, Leonardo,

My soul…you, only you are the owner.

Just one kiss and we will sing together,

Time has come for us to live,

This is our heaven, the place where we can sing forever.

Kiss me, Leonardo, sculpt your sentence on my lips,

Burn me or set me free

“Open your eyes Leonardo, please open your eyes. I’m here, my lover, right in front of you Leonardo. Listen to my voice, my love: we can be together”, Leonardo is frightened, but he also need a voice that of which he feels home when listening; he slightly dare to open his eyes. Lisa is in front of him: “there you are my dear, kiss me, Leonardo, let’s seal our love in a passionate kiss, embrace me.” Leonardo couldn’t held his sick-burning despair, he couldn’t resist and kissed her like never before. Suddenly, the landscape changed again: the darkest darkness in the middle of no-where; Leonardo and his painting already kissed, already sealed. A tiny drop of blood on the lips of Lisa’s portrait, his masterwork. Leonardo looks at the canvas he already kissed, full of sadness, resigned to his destiny. In a fraction of a second and Leonardo is again in front of the Beast. “You fooled me, Satan. I’ve never know about my emotionality since I’m bounded to science and rationality. I never seen my emotions and feelings; the pleasure of discovery is my curse”, Leonardo yells and crying trying to alleviate his terror that cannot be poisoned. The evil lies into the penumbra laughing like a maniacal flame in all its scorching fury: “Time has come for us to live together, This is our heaven, Leonardo, the place where we can sing forever”. Leonardo wakes-up. He is wet by sweat -as if immerged in a pool-. Its midday, Leonardo is still on his bed for 20 minutes now in complete confusion and a light sense of anguish. He stands up willing to go to his studio, to see his master-work, maybe willing to even burn it. Finally he is in his studio, pale like a cadaver. No words, he cannot speak as if his mouth is sealed wit iron all around; fear, panic and terror broke him like a dam he is collapsing under these forces. He is speechless in front of his canvas like a dead with opened eyes; a statue of flesh and blood. He approaches the canvas, kissed with blood, his blood: “smile Lisa, please smile, my fragile creation” Leonardo says crying loudly meanwhile, like a damned too lately aware of his fatal trade.