The Disciple

IN THE EARLY summer of 1983, John Forde, a twenty-four-year old American, arrives in Florence to begin work on a dissertation about a group of obscure followers of Botticelli. He at once seeks out an immensely distinguished art historian, Sir Christopher Noble-Nolan, nearly half a century older than himself, by whom he has long been obsessed. By the end of that summer, John finds himself working for, living with and passionately in love with Sir Christopher. Without qualm, John definitively severs all ties to his past-the parched landscape of his middle, middle-class childhood in Providence, Rhode Island and the oppressive pedantry of graduate school in New York-and allies himself to the empyrean realm of Sir Christopher's large, art-filled, book-laden apartment in a Renaissance palace. From his first sighting of Sir Christopher, imposingly perched on a dais whilst delivering a lecture on Botticelli's illustrations to the Divine Comedy, John is convinced that 'he finally beheld his master and author', and there is no length to which he will not go to, no lie he will not tell, no debasement to which he will not submit in order to realise his dream of becoming the disciple whom Sir Christopher loves.

Told with brutal honesty and constructed, with architectural precision, as a symmetrical triptych, each part consisting of five chapters, The Disciple unfolds over more than a decade, behind a veil of arch intellectual calm. It depicts a vanished world, yet menacingly lurking behind this civilised facade, seethes the underworld of John Forde's inchoate ambition, festering rancour and unvoiced longing.

In time, John Forde achieves his goal of rendering an increasingly frail Sir Christopher Noble-Nolan utterly dependent on him-he writes his footnotes, he signs his cheques, he prosecutes his research, he cooks his ever more elaborate meals, he even attends to his plants on the loggia-but, no matter the level of his devotion, he begins to fear that, 'follow his Master though he might, even until the ends of the earth, Sir Christopher would never confide unto him the keys to his kingdom.'

But even if all his dreams were to be realized, John Forde would 'remain forever unsatisfied, for he could not cease to yearn, to imagine, to regret, as there was within him a devouring impulse toward self-hatred, an impulse that he could neither appease nor exorcise.' Eventually (albeit reluctantly) he comes to accept that, in order to become the consummate disciple, a position to which he desperately aspires, he must-just as Christ had exhorted his disciples to do so-hate himself. The Disciple is a tale of the inextricably entwined emotions of loyalty and betrayal, pedagogy and lies, trust and suspicion, love and hatred.