34 ...

Degas turned over the paper to reveal a drawing of a man reclining on some kind of bench, one arm draped over his eyes to protect them from bright sunlight, feet crossed, quiet repose. Beside him on the ground lay the small, rumpled heap of a nondescript jacket of some sort, and a well-worn pair of leather shoes. The drawing looked effortless, timeless, beautiful. It reminded me of Degas' many drawings of his friend, Edouard Manet. I heard an astonished gasp and immediately realized that it had come from me – confused, surprised, speechless. In another breath I managed to stammer, "What ... what?"

Edgar Degas, Study for a portrait of Edouard Manet, 1864-5

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edgar_Degas_-_Study_for_a_portrait_of_Edouard_Manet.jpg

"Mais oui, mon ami." By now both Frenchmen were laughing aloud at me, and with me. Degas clapped a reassuring hand over my shoulder. " It seems that when my sketchbook and I arrived in Venice for your event a few years ago, I had with me several pieces of my drawing paper from home. This little sketch is my way of saying merci, David. Although I have been miserable here in Firenze, I am often a miserable man; and I cannot say that my stay here has been entirely without pleasure, and enlightenment. But more than that, I never had the chance to tell you how much I enjoyed Venice. To sit in a café beside a Venetian canal and share conversation over coffee with Ingres and Della Francesca at the same table ... such a great honour ... among many such encounters during that week. It was such a delightful experience.

"But, I am becoming maudlin. Much more comfortable to be gruff. Now ... in both Venice and Florence I have noticed here and there some reproductions of my paintings and drawings, so perhaps people still enjoy my work. Who knows? Maybe this sketch is worth a little something. So, keep it or sell it, as you wish. I made this in the Boboli Gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti. Do you know the small stone amphitheatre there? It's often littered with young people resting and sunning themselves on the ranks of bench seating ... like this fellow." He waved the back of his hand over the the drawing.

http://www.reidsitaly.com/destinations/tuscany/florence/sights/pitti-palace-boboli.html

"But, Edgar, you have no idea ... this is priceless. What I, uh ... I mean to say that ... No! This is too much. How can I accept this?"

"You do not like the drawing?" asked Degas, a twinkle in his eye.

"Oh! Of course I like the drawing," I managed. "It's wonderful, thank you Edgar. I'll always cherish it. My god, how awful that no one will ever believe how it came to be in my possession. Whew. Thank you."

"You are most welcome, my friend. As I said, it is a small gift of my thanks to you. I had only a few pieces of this 'old' paper, so now you own a Degas, on original paper. There are only a handful of others like it."

"Wait", I said. I felt as though I'd been hit with a brick. "Others? There are other drawings on this paper circulating in Florence?"

"Well, some here and one or two in Venice, I believe."

33 ...

Degas had been carrying his box of sketching materials since Donatello and I first met the two earlier in the day at the Santa Maria Novella train station. Measuring roughly 18 x 14 inches and 4 inches deep, its wooden surfaces were randomly stained and polished smooth through years of use. Now he rested the box on the flat concrete railing that overlooked the Arno, unsnapped its two latches and raised the lid. Inside were a variety of drawing materials: sticks of pastel, charcoal and conté crayons, all of which looked to be of a much older vintage than my own.

"I've seen conté listed as a drawing material for work of the Impressionist period; but I suppose I've never really thought about when it came into common use," I said.

"Pah!" spat Degas, "that label – impressionism. I don't like it at all. Idiot art critics. As if all of us who worked in Paris between such and such dates were either too drunk or too drugged to record anything more than hazy impressions of what we saw. It's ridiculous." He wasn't finished."And lumping us all together under one name," he continued angrily, "they do it for themselves, you know. They want to fit us into neat categories, so that they can explain their vaunted insights to the rest of the world, whom they must consider to be morons."  He took a breath and calmed himself. "Sorry David, I know that you have been delivered this label as a fait accompli." He shook his head, and paused. "Instead, let me answer your question.

"Conté came out of the Napoleonic era. The British fleet had blockaded France, and one result was a shortage of graphite. So, a smart fellow named Nicholas-Jacques Conté devised a method for combining charcoal or graphite with clay, et voila, this wonderful drawing material was born and has been in use now for more than two hundred years. Marvellous stuff, non? But I have something here ... something for you."

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 

3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

With that, he reached into the slot inside the box's top and withdrew a single piece of paper.

32 ...
"Well," said Gauguin, "if you can figure a way to send us home, Degas and I will buy you dinner. Agreed, Edgar?"

"A small price to pay for one's sanity. Of course we'll pay."

After a pleasant meal, the three of us crossed the Piazza Della Signoria, paused outside the Uffizzi to listen for a moment to a classical guitarist who was entertaining the evening crowd of tourists,

D. Newkirk and V. Holland © 2013

and then watched the few rowers on the river Arno as we enjoyed the approach of sunset. Below us on a small patch of grass a pickup soccer game was under way.

D. Newkirk and V. Holland © 2013

D. Newkirk and V. Holland © 2013

D. Newkirk and V. Holland © 2013

D. Newkirk and V. Holland © 2013

It had been a very pleasant evening; however, there was no getting around the undercurrent of frustration that consumed both men. "You must be anxious to get back to your studios," I said.

31 ...

https://www.raileurope.com/popular-routes/rome-to-florence.html

This is terrible; something I did not foresee happening when we were in Venice, of course," I offered.

"No, no of course not, David," Gaugin insisted. We've done this to ourselves, but we would like to conclude the experiment now."

"I certainly understand that," I said; after all, you've been stuck here for nearly three years! How on earth did you survive?"

Degas slumped and sat heavily on the steps. "Three years? Three years? But how can that be? It seems that any logical sense of the passage of time has abandoned us. I suppose this is fortunate," he sighed. "But, three years. Had we been aware how long it's been, we'd have gone mad long ago."

Placing a sympathetic hand on Degas' shoulder, Gaugin explained. "Well, as you know David, I trained as an accountant and a stockbroker, and one can always find people who need help untangling their personal finances for a reasonable fee. And Edgar has been busy on most sunny days setting up on different street corners and in piazze around town drawing portraits for a modest price. The tourists seem to find it amusing that this fellow who looks and dresses like the famous Edgar Degas will also sign his drawings with that name – drawings I need not add, that look remarkably as though created by the hand of the real Degas. We have managed to stay housed and fed all this time in a small hotel near the Duomo. But my god, lousy father that I might be, I do hope to see my children again soon."

Gaugin's description of the new drawings his friend had been making stirred the memory of my recent encounter with the Guardia di Finanza, in Rome. No doubt more than one naive and greedy tourist will claim to have discovered unknown Degas drawings. The paper, however, will be impossible to pass off as old, and these people will be scoffed at and disappointed. If the art dealers they approached only knew the facts of the situation, they would be salivating at the thought of getting their hand on Degas, but that can not happen. Still, I wondered if the Guardia officers I'd met would hear about the new Degas drawings.

Alert now, I offered the only comfort I could. "I can only assume that my being here in Firenze is the solution you have been waiting for. I don't mean this in any egotistical way, but it seems to me that all of the variations of this collision of time periods originate in the event I created in Venice, and that they can only be resolved if I am present. Oh ... that is so confusing, isn't it? This is my fiction, my fantasy, I guess, and I'll have to see that you two get home. This is how it was in Venice, and again more recently in Rome. Look, it's getting late and I for one am starving. Could we go somewhere for something to eat?"

30 ...
The train pulled in to the Stazione Santa Maria Novella, and we made our way through the crowds to the main exit. As we descended the steps in front of the station, I caught a glimpse of two familiar-looking men in rather unusual clothes. One of them waved frantically and they began to make their way toward us. Dumfounded, I realized that these were Paul Gaugin and Edgar Degas. Both men looked weary and distraught. Shaking hands, they greeted us warmly and desperately. I introduced them to Donatello.

"Yes, of course," said Gaugin. "We saw you from a distance in Venice during David's event there, but never had the opportunity to speak. It's a great honour."

"The honour is mine, I assure you," replied Donatello, gracious as always. " I do hope that we'll have that chance soon, however I must rush off I'm afraid. I do apologize. I've been away from the studio too long, and I must see to several projects that are urgently ongoing. Please make arrangements with David to get together soon." And with that, he bowed and was gone.

I turned to Gaugin and Degas. "You two look awful. What's happened? What are you doing in Firenze?"

"Comment dit-on?" Degas looked sheepish. "We screwed up."

"Mais oui. We definitely screwed up," agreed Gaugin. "Let me try to explain, David. We are here at the train station trying to get out; but so far it has been impossible. It's like we are prisoners here. You see, when we met you and all the others at Venice a couple of years ago, Edgar and I were so enthusiastic about the idea that we thought: if he can do it, so can we! And then we went to the cinema to see that Woody Allen film called Midnight in Paris. We saw ourselves – well, actors playing our characters – saying that we thought that the golden age of art was the Renaissance, rather than our own time in the second half of the 19th century. Kaboom! That's when we had this bright idea."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin

"Yes, yes," Degas continued. "If David can bring us all to life in Venice in 2013, we thought, why should we not be able to try out life in the Renaissance if we wish? And where should we live during that period? Why Florence, Firenze of course, the cradle of the Italian Renaissance.

http://www.edgar-degas.net/biography.jsp

"And so we converted the few francs we had left into Euros and went to the train station and directly from Venice to Florence, naively imagining that we would then be able to "will" ourselves back in time to the quattrocento. After what we had seen in Venice, it all seemed like such a simple idea."

Gaugin picked up the narrative: "And we've been here ever since, stuck in this city in your present, and unable either to find a way to the Renaissance, or to leave here and just go home to Paris in our own time. Each day we come here to the station to buy tickets to Paris, and each day when we pass through the doors, we find ourselves standing stupidly among the throng of tourists in line outside the Uffizzi. It's enough to make one crazy. it's exactly like another film we watched one evening at our hotel: Groundhog Day. This is no longer amusing. You must help us, David. You must help us."

"Now we just want to go home!" said Degas. "I never want to see this city again. I feel as if I've been trapped inside a bell jar, hermetically sealed in a single time period. Firenze is Renaissance; Renaissance is Firenze. Do you have any idea how many times now I have seen Michelangelo's David? It is enough! Get me out of here! Please!"