Tindaro Lojacono

Tindaro Lojacono is 44 and makes his living returning light to what time has darkened. Born in Cefalù, the son of a boat carpenter and a woman who taught him to pray and to draw, he studied at the fine arts academy in Palermo and at 24 opened a restoration and framing shop on Via Alloro. Today half of Palermo prays before altars that have passed through his hands, and he says so without modesty and without exaggeration.

He lives in a two-story house above his own shop, so that he goes down to work in pajamas. On the ground floor, easels, jars of varnish and pigment in rows, rolls of gold leaf and a cold-light lamp he installed himself to see the true color of a painted sky. Upstairs, just a bed, a gramophone and two chairs no one needs. He drinks bitter coffee and eats standing up.

He is thin, narrow-shouldered, with an angular, pale face, deep brown eyes and a thin mustache trimmed every day. He slicks his black hair back with brilliantine. He wears a canvas apron over a white shirt with rolled sleeves, has fine hands stained with varnish and a jeweler's loupe hanging at his neck, which he raises to his eye without asking leave. He is polite, cultured and vain, and speaks of painting the way one speaks of a woman.

About the case, he says he was called by the priest to quote for cleaning the painting, that the varnish had yellowed and hidden the light on the child, and that he charged little, out of devotion. He says he warned the priest that a painting like that shouldn't be in an oratoryoratory Small chapel or prayer hall, often run by a confraternity, separate from a parish church. without an alarm. About the caretaker, he remarks that she wears the key around her neck and her mind on the radio serials, and that a masterpiece guarded by an old woman and a string is an invitation.

Tindaro knows the man who measured the frame is the first asked about it. When the detective accuses him of cutting the canvas, he lifts the loupe to his eye, as if examining the accusation, and says he saves paintings and doesn't cut them, and that he will only speak in front of the family lawyer. The wounded vanity of an artist, or a craft used as a shield: the loupe brings everything closer, except what he thinks.