Leonardo’s Flight

Otto Fischer

LEONARDO was getting twitchy.

Eternity was a long time, and one of the few mathematical problems he had not yet got his
head around. He’d only been here a mere 497 years and 17 days and he didn’t know if he
could last the distance.

It showed. His beard was getting exceedingly ragged and he could barely see through his
shamefully shaggy eyebrows. His mane of white hair was tied back in a ponytail – even
manna didn’t taste good with hair in it. Angels shook their heads discreetly as they passed.

He’d filled notebook after notebook with drawings, calculations and musings, but even he
was running out of ideas. His growing restlessness was causing the Higher Powers increasing
concern, particularly his recent coded message to The Other Place.

Leonardo sidled up to St Peter for the third time that week. (He’d refused to abandon Earth
Time, even though the Eternal Light made this difficult.) The Keeper of the Keys found
Leonardo’s grovelling manner distasteful, although he knew it stemmed from a long career of
currying favour from patrons. Princes of the Church could be difficult.

“For the life of me, don’t you ever give up?” St Peter exclaimed.

“But, but … just for a day! Just to see how folk are running with my ideas, given a few
centuries,” Leonardo pleaded, to which St Peter replied: “Look, you got here by the skin of
your teeth, let me remind you! They’ve run with your ideas all right – machine-guns, tanks,
submarines, weapons of death. Are you proud? And dissection of dead bodies ... that wasn’t
strictly kosher at the time, was it? You were lucky to get away with that!”

“Hey, I did some very nice religious paintings! Very time-consuming they were too!”

Leonardo sidled up to St Peter for the third time that week.

The saint sighed. This Italian certainly was persistent. (He couldn’t help an unsaintly
resentment about his final indignity in Rome: why upside down for goodness sake?) Peter
was capable of some very succinct language – he was a fisherman after all – but it was like
water off a duck’s back with this one!

“Leonardo, I can sympathise to some extent. Settling in can take some time. But I won’t be
badgered into giving in! I pride myself on my firmness. After all, I am The Rock!

“Heaven isn’t like The Other Place. They’re slack there. They allow visits all the time, and
look at the results: wars, pestilence and plagues, and weird American election results! Here
we allow only the odd judicious miracle and occasional apparition.
“But I’m not unreasonable. And I know, despite your impatience, that you haven’t done a
Faust on us. I’ll give in a little – only a little! I’ll let you go for a short time – only an hour,
mind you! And I’ll put you down at random – not a place of your own choosing.
Understand?”

Leonardo sulked. He gnawed at a wisp of unruly beard. Despite the hair, the after-taste of
ambrosia cheered him up: Greek habits were seductive even here.

“All right,” he conceded. “It’s a deal!”

Leonardo found himself sitting on a promontory overlooking an ocean. The grass was cool
and the darkening blue of the sky heralded approaching dusk. The ocean, ruffled blue and
vast, whispered below. Lines of surf foamed white along a curving yellow strand. A sea
breeze fanned his whiskers. He breathed in the air. He had been a sensuous man and now he
thrilled at foreign scents. He knew this was an eastern coast, for the sun was sinking through
gold-fringed clouds beyond low violet-blue hills. Yet this was not a Venetian sea.

He heard the plaintive call of gulls. They were different to the ones he knew. There was
activity out at sea. Birds were spearing into a patch of ocean darker than the rest. His
painter’s eye froze them in tableaus of flight – white black-fringed wings outstretched, tips
curved slightly upward, orange-red legs tucked in, head cocked, observing the surface below.
Wings folding in, elongated body gracefully tilting in a downward arc. The plunge, swift as
an arrow, the entry cleanly efficient. He could imagine the frenzied fish below, darting this
way and that. Scales shimmering loose in the water. Beauty in death.

Leonardo drank in the scene, the scent of the air, the balm of the breeze, the sound of the sea.
His fingers itched for pencil and paper. Did he only have an hour?

Suddenly an apparition swooped between him and the sun, outlined by the brilliance of the
background light. As he watched, spellbound, a running figure leapt and took to the air.
Leonardo was right there with him, arms outstretched, feeling the lift. For he knew what this
was. How often had he dreamed of it, longed for it! Pined for it!

The triangular wings were different, but unmistakably similar. It flew! He’d never doubted it
would! Always practical, he wondered how the wings were stiffened, how strong the silk
was.

He watched breathless as the man scythed soundlessly through the air, weightless as a bird,
freed from the bonds of the Earth and the constraints of evolution. Godlike, he guided his
craft in graceful flight, master of the air, joyous and free!

Leonardo smiled. He closed his eyes and a tear rolled down his cheek. In his mind he soared.
His dream was vindicated!

“Thank you Peter!” he sighed. “I can face Heaven again … for a while