This interview was conducted during a phone call to my father’s house, where the puzzle remains on display.
Michelle Orange: Hi, Dad. Have you heard from the Spaniards yet?
John Orange: No.
Nothing?
Nada.
I jumped ahead a bit there. Now, it took Michelangelo three years to complete the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. How long did it take you to finish the jigsaw-puzzle version?
Two and a half years.
What are its dimensions, now that it’s done?
The dimensions are 272 centimeters by 96 centimeters.
And what’s that in Yankee?
About three feet by ten feet.
How did you come into possession of such a thing?
[Laughs.] I was given the puzzle by my precious daughter, who was trying to drive me insane.
Right. Why did you decide to take it on?
Well, because we’d done a puzzle every Christmas for the last five or six Christmases, and we were all going to do it.
I know, but how come you kept working on it after we left?
Well, because it was a challenge. A nine-thousand-piece puzzle? I wanted to see if it could be done.
What was your first line of attack?
I decided I would work from right to left, because the right-hand side of the puzzle had brighter colors than the left-hand side.
That was a slightly controversial move, if I may say so, because Michelangelo actually worked from the other end and moved toward the altar.
Really? I thought they maybe took the picture for the puzzle before they were done restoring the ceiling, because the right half definitely has brighter colors.
No, because when I saw it in person this year, it looked the same. You can see that his style evolved and became much more intricate and brighter as he moved across the ceiling over time.
Oh. Well, suffice it to say that it’s easier to sort the puzzle pieces when you have bright colors for one end and duller colors for the other. After I sorted the colors, it became clear that it would be easier to do the brighter side first, the side that was in the den.
When did you realize that the puzzle wouldn’t fit on the family-room floor?
After about a month, I realized that you couldn’t look at the whole thing at once.
And when did you put the cardboard under it, from our refrigerator box?
At the very beginning.
Did any of your strategies evolve organically?
What do you mean by “organically”?
I don’t know.
Do you mean, did I change strategies as I went along?
I honestly don’t know.
What I realized was that the arches containing the sibyls could actually be put in more easily than I’d thought they could, because they’re each of a slightly different color and design, and the pieces of the arches would tell me what color I needed inside that lunette. They formed the most important part, the central frame. If I could get that in, then it would tell me exactly where things begin and end. So once I had the central frame, that established the overall design, and once you have that . . .
Were you on sabbatical the year I gave you the puzzle?
I was on sabbatical the following year.
And did the puzzle get extra attention during that year?
In a way, since I was at home and could work on it when I got tired of whatever else I was doing. It was a way of distracting myself without having to, you know, go out.
Did you ever ignore the phone or doorbell when you were working?
No, I wouldn’t say so. You’re the one who ignores the phone.
Oh-ho! If I ignore the phone, you positively snub it.
Hmm.
Tell me about the puzzle-reward system that developed when you were marking essays.
Well, that was the next year, when I was back at work again. I would say, “If I can get through these next two essays, I’ll give myself half an hour with the puzzle.”
I thought it was that you got to put one piece in, regardless of how long it took.
Well, sometimes I would say, “I’ll put in one or two pieces and then go back to work.”
Do you think any of your students benefited from your working on the puzzle — say, if you had a particularly satisfying go of it between essays, would the next student get the benefit of that?
Oh, I don’t think so.
I mean, if you were really on fire and found a piece that you’d been looking for for months, you don’t think that would bias you when you picked up the pencil again? Or maybe you’d whip through an essay so you could get back to the puzzle?
No. Well, it would affect my mood, but not my marking. But I must say, it does give one a sense of satisfaction to get a couple of pieces in over the course of the day.
More satisfaction than correcting “it’s/its” over and over again?
Surely. The interesting thing about that is, at night, I trained myself to remember the pieces I had put in that day, or sometimes they would just occur to me, and that would give me such a feeling of satisfaction that I could fall asleep with ease.
[Laughing.] Would you count puzzle pieces like sheep to get to sleep?
It depends how much I did that day. I rarely got in more than four or five. But I’d go over in my mind how I’d found each piece and realized where it went. The ones that I could remember best were the ones that I’d been looking for for months. They would give me a real satisfaction. In fact, there were two pieces I could not find for two years, and I found them only when I was almost finished with the puzzle.
Why couldn’t you find them?
They were just of a monochrome color, and I always assumed they went someplace I hadn’t done yet. It never occurred to me they’d go back where I was before. Then, when I found them, man, I jumped up and down and whooped and yelled and twirled —
You twirled?
Yes, I twirled.
How many zip-lock bags were enlisted for this project?
A whole package.
How many bags did you have going at the height of it?
Well, I didn’t count, but my guess would be probably thirty-five.
And what sort of system did you come up with?
It started out with one bag of body parts and one bag of each color: one bag of white pieces, one of browns, and so on. Then, gradually, the whites got divided into off-white, bright white, yellow-white, gray-white, blue-white . . .
Did you ever have a problem with Michelangelo’s handling of the female body? I mean, did it ever confuse you, since his women tend to be built like linebackers? Did you ever look at a piece and think that big biceps belonged in the “man” bag, but it ended up belonging to a woman?
The pieces were so small you could hardly tell that a body part was a body part. What struck me when I was going through it is that there are so few women in the painting.
And aren’t only the men nude?
Eve is about the only nude woman in it, which surprises me. I thought there were more than that, but it turns out, when you look closely, that those nude figures are not women; they’re just funny-shaped men.
Did you get the equivalent of a Christian-theology course from studying the scenes for so long?
I learned that I don’t know who these people are or what they’re doing. I know the women are sibyls, but I don’t know why he chose to put them in there. I don’t know why he put Judith where she is, and the one that says “Jonah” makes no sense to me. There’s a fish, but no whale, and Jonah’s not even an old man.
Were there any puzzle-hiatus periods?
I got very busy when I went back to work last year, so for about five months I didn’t work on it.
Tell me about the emotional setback you had.
That was when J.B. and Nadia were coming to live here in the summer of 2000, and I was going on vacation. The question was: Would the kids and the dog upset the puzzle? I tried to transfer the other half of the puzzle into the den, so we could close the door and they could still use the family room. But the puzzle is wider than the door, and I tipped the cardboard, and the puzzle slid and just folded into itself, and half of it came apart. It took three weeks to put the big sections back where they belonged and a good two months to put the 150 or so loose pieces back in.
Did you cry?
No. I cursed.
Did you twirl angrily?
No, I cursed, and I stamped, and I pounded my fists on the floor.
Did that help?
No. It dislodged two more pieces.
Was there a golden puzzle hour?
When I first started in the morning, all of a sudden pieces fell into place that I hadn’t been able to find for hours the day before. Anytime you come to it fresh, you see things that your tired eyes didn’t. There comes a point, I think, after about forty-five minutes, when you’re not working very productively anymore and you have to stop.
Was it a dramatic moment when you connected God’s finger with Adam’s?
The way the puzzle is made, that doesn’t happen.
Bastards! How could they deprive you of that?
It’s cut in such a way that it takes four or five pieces, and then you see, “Oh, that’s what that is.”
Do you now have a favorite scene from the chapel ceiling?
I guess the scene that I like best is the picking of the apple from the tree and the banishing of Adam and Eve from the garden.
Did you have any weird rituals or swear words to get you through the tough times?
I didn’t find the puzzle frustrating, because I didn’t care how long it took me to complete it. I was just doing it as a hobby, so if it took me ten years, that would be all right.
How many pieces did you fear would be missing when you finished it?
Oh, I thought as many as thirty pieces would be missing. I was very careful, but I figured with nine thousand pieces . . . Toward the end — say, the last four or five days — there seemed to be so few pieces left in the box, and so much puzzle left to do, that I thought there were going to be a whole bunch missing. But it turned out there were only two.
How did the two sections of the puzzle come together?
Beautifully.
I mean, how did you actually get them back together?
Your brother and I found a way of moving the section in the den into the family room without spilling it: we pressed something against it really tight. Once I got the two halves in the same room, it was no problem at all.
And how long after that did you put the final piece in?
Three weeks.
Were you alone when that happened?
Yes.
How did you celebrate?
I didn’t, because I’m still waiting for the two missing pieces to show up.
You didn’t get drunk?
[Scoffs.] I don’t get drunk!
Michelangelo probably got drunk.
Ah?
OK, I’d like to take this opportunity to have you say on record that you’ve been drunk only once in your life.
Maybe twice.
When was the other time?
When I was a teenager.
But the main time was at Uncle Carroll’s in 1971?
Yeah.
So you insist on this hoary legend: that you stood on the table and called Uncle Bob, whom some called Robin, a “robbin’ bastard”?
Yeah.
Bourbon?
Apparently.
Why do people call it “getting tight”? Is that an F. Scott Fitzgerald thing?
My dad used to say that too.
What gets tighter? Your pants?
No, I think it must come from getting tight with people, as in “Those two are really tight.” Drunks sort of get intimate with each other.
How are you going to get the two missing pieces?
There’s an order form in the puzzle box, and it tells you how to count the number of pieces up and across, and then you write down what pieces you need and send it off. Which I did.
To Spain.
Yeah. But that was more than six weeks ago.
Will you ever forgive me for giving you the puzzle?
No.
What are you going to do with it now?
That’s the big question. I don’t know what to do with it.
Are you going to give it to me?
I could . . . but there’s no way of transporting it. You want me to break it up and put it in the box and give it to you?
No, no! I just think it needs to go somewhere.
What would you do with it?
I’d shellac it and put it on the wall. Would you say you have a predilection for puzzles now?
No, I’ve done all the puzzles I want to do because I’ve done this one. The mother of all puzzles.
Have you ever felt the urge to lie down on the puzzle and roll around on it?
No. I wouldn’t want to wreck it. It’s too pretty.
Did you know that I rolled around on it?
[Laughs.]
It’s very smooth!
[Laughing.] Well, you dusted it anyway. That’s good.
You used to make me feel guilty for giving you the puzzle by saying it called out my name at night. Did it?
No, it kept calling my name. You had abandoned it, and it had mourned your loss and then moved on.
When I went to Rome this spring and visited the Sistine Chapel, I looked up and saw all those familiar toes and folds and faces, and I got a case of the giggles so bad that I almost got kicked out. You’re going next year. What do you think your reaction will be looking at the ceiling?
What interests me are how accurate these colors are. I want to see if they are as bright on the ceiling. The last time I saw it — the only time I ever saw it — it was so covered in soot that you couldn’t make out much of anything. It must be spectacular if it looks like the puzzle.
It is. I think you’ll have an unexpected reaction when you see it. You might giggle.
Yeah, I imagine.
You may even twirl. Just watch out for those guards.
Two days after this interview was conducted, the missing puzzle pieces arrived from Spain. The fit was a little tight.
This interview previously appeared in Brick.
