Page 12 - The Grotesque Children's Book

“Leda’s the girl. And that makes the swan --?” Jupiter knit up his face, looking oh-so-
imperious, all eyebrow and furrowing.

“That makes the swan...that makes the swan --” Aurelio felt he was so close to the truth.
“-- dinner?”

“Oh, you stupid, stupid -- man! Leda is the girl on the shore. The swan is me, by
Jupiter!” shouted Jupiter, losing his patience, pulling his right arm back and hurling the lightning
bold directly into the left eye of Alessandro Aurelio, killing him instantly.

Almost.
Because, of course, Jupiter was only a painting, and the silly conversation about Leda
was mere fabrication. He did not really believe that Jupiter himself was speaking to him (or
Bacchus last week, or Daedalus the week before that); he wasn’t insane; no, he knew these
conversations were all in his head, and he could stop them at any time he wished. Aurelio
DeSolo often spoke with the characters he painted. It helped him feel a little less alone in the
universe, which, as a deaf man, was silent to him and he to it. Jupiter was hovering an arm’s
length away from Aurelio, that much was true. Aurelio, yes, was lying on his back looking
directly into the eyes of Jupiter, also, yes, but only for the purposes of painting them. In
actuality, Aurelio was on a scaffold which lofted him within an arm’s length of the ceiling in the
east wing of I Magistrati, soon to be renamed the Uffizi, the “Offices.”
Aurelio knew that Leda was the girl and Jupiter himself was the swan. But it amused him
as he lay there on his back, day after day after now year after year, painting, painting, painting,
painting...it wouldn’t surprise him if one day he did go mad and think his frescoes were actually
speaking with him, glaring at him, wishing him harm. Death by thunderbolt. Worse ways to go.

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