“We don’t have time. We have to go.” As Salaì came forward, he left a trail of water on the floor behind him. “It’s a flood.”
“Where? The square?” Rain often collected in deep puddles in the piazza.
“The Arno.” Salaì stood in front of Leonardo and looked up at him. The assistant seemed shorter than usual. Leonardo looked down and realized the young man was not wearing any shoes. “The levees have broken.”
Leonardo examined the young man’s appearance. He seemed to have thrown on mismatched clothes, without enough time to button his shirt properly. His hair was dripping wet; his chest was heaving; his nose, ears and eyes were bright red. “That can’t be true.” Leonardo turned back to the wall. Should he add another horse to the background to amplify the mayhem?
“Master. Men are dying!”
Leonardo shook his head. Every few years, the Arno flooded. The river swelled and crested over its banks. It rose a few feet, sloshed up against windows, and ruined a few rugs. But no one ever died. “I don’t have time for lizards in the bed today, Salaì.”
“This is no joke. Your designs have failed. The construction site is destroyed. The workers … men are dead.”
Leonardo heard the words, but they did not make sense. “Why would you say such things, Giacomo? Are you angry with me?”
“When the people see this carnage,” Salaì said, picking up Leonardo’s chalk and sketch paper scattered across the floor, “they’ll come after you. We must go.” His hands shook as he shoved Leonardo’s things into his leather satchel.
His concern touched Leonardo, but there was no reason for it. Even so, just in case a bit of water did wash in from the piazza, Leonardo removed his sketchbook from his belt and took the leather satchel and stashed them into a wall niche high above the floor.
“Come, Salaì,” he said calmly. “Let’s go down to the Arno, so I can prove that you’re wrong.”
Outside, the rain came down in silver sheets. The downpour sounded like a mountain of collapsing gravel. Thunder crashed in the sky. Within seconds, Leonardo was drenched. His foot dropped into a deep, cold puddle, and as he walked in the direction of the river, the piazza became a lake. Water swirled around his shins.
The air smelled of silt and mossy sludge. But he knew that once he reached the river, he would see the levees were holding strong. He had checked on progress at the construction site two days ago, just before the storm rolled in. The men had finished building the dam. The Arno had been flowing gently into its new canal. The old riverbed was down to a trickle. His plan had successfully closed off the route to Pisa. The workers were still reinforcing a few leaking levees and building a viewing platform for interested tourists, but the city was on the verge of planning a celebration. Everything had been fine.
The storm. It had been raining for two solid days.
Leonardo’s eye twitched, and he walked faster, to the west, in the direction of the dam. “Hurry up, Salaì,” he called. In the distance, over the din of rainfall, he heard a cacophony of screams. What was going on? Was Cesare Borgia attacking? Was a fire rampaging the city?
“Master, please.” Salaì ran up from behind and grabbed Leonardo’s elbow. “Don’t go down there. You don’t want to see it.”
Leonardo yanked his arm away and splashed through the rising water, now up around his knees. With every step it became harder to move against the tide. Salaì fell behind. “Master. Stop!” he shouted, but Leonardo kept going.
Up ahead, a shadow fumbled toward him. As it got closer, Leonardo saw that it was a woman clutching a child. Her skirts billowed in the water around her. She stumbled and fell. The child screamed. Leonardo sloshed toward her, picking up his knees as high as he could. He grabbed her flailing arm and helped her to her feet. “Did someone attack you?” he asked.
“Dio mi aiuti,” the lady cried to the heavens and then pushed Leonardo away. Clasping her baby, she continued down the watery street.
What kind of evil had invaded the city?
“You’re going the wrong way,” a man shouted, but Leonardo kept pushing toward the river. Other people passed, wading in the opposite direction. Some of their eyes shone with terror, others fumbled away in a daze, a few wailed uncontrollably. Leonardo wished he had brought his sketchbook so he could draw their fearful faces, but if he had, the notebook would already be ruined.
A large piece of wood bobbed toward him. As the black mass got closer, Leonardo realized it wasn’t an inanimate object, but a man cradling a dead girl. The stranger had a large gash in his head. Blood trickled down his face. As the man floated by, Leonardo tried to make eye contact, but the man’s gaze was blank and distant.
A wave washed Leonardo off his feet and pushed him backward. He found his footing, but another wave knocked over him again, so he put his head down and swam. At the end of the street, the water was so high, rushing so hard, that he had to grab onto the metal railing of a balcony to pull himself forward. He kicked around a corner and looked up the street toward the construction site.
The rain was falling hard, the sky was dark, and the water was so high and so black that he was disoriented for a moment. He couldn’t see anything. But then a bolt of lightning illuminated the sky, and in that flash, Leonardo saw the horrible truth.
The construction site was gone. Boards from the building platforms cracked and tumbled down rapids, along with churning boulders and whipping ropes. Workers, down at the river to help reinforce the dam, had been caught up in the raging tides. Men grasped at the riverbanks and the remaining levees, trying to keep their heads above water. As Leonardo watched, one man, struggling to swim, was hit in the head by a splintered plank. His eyes closed. He sank.
Half of the dam had collapsed, and the mighty Arno River was snaking across the city, desperately trying to find its way back into its original riverbed. Part of the levees stood strong, but he didn’t know if the obstruction was making the flood better or worse. If the whole thing failed, the river could find its way home.
There was no outsider terrorizing Florence. There was no fire or invading warlord. It was Leonardo’s own designs that had caused this devastation.
Salaì was right. The levees had broken. The city was flooding.
Leonardo opened his mouth to scream, but a wave crashed down, filling his mouth, nose, and lungs with water. He let go of his grip and allowed the raging monster to carry him away.
Michelangelo
“The levees have collapsed,” a man shouted.
Panicked chatter swept through those eating breakfast at Santa Croce basilica. Michelangelo and his family had been sleeping there since the storm began; the new roof on their new house was already leaking. But at least Santa Croce was a dry, quiet place where he could scribble down ideas for a safer transport for David. And his father wouldn’t curse at him as long as they were living inside a church.
“The levees?” Lodovico repeated, a bit of curd dribbling from his mouth. The last few months had aged his father so that he was now slow to comprehend anything.
But Michelangelo understood the implications immediately. “Buonarroto.” He knocked over his chair as he bolted toward the door. His brother was working on those levees. If they had broken, he might be in danger.
Outside it was raining hard and the puddles were deep, but there was no sign of a catastrophic flood. Of course, he was a long way from the construction site. He took off at a sprint.
He reached the Arno far upstream of the levees, but already the river had swelled over the banks and was sloshing into the streets. Ignoring the cries of men telling him to turn back, he continued to push downstream. As he worked his way to the west, the water rose and swirled around his legs and hips. He was relieved he hadn’t moved David yet. The cathedral was further inland than city hall. His statue was safer under the shadow of Il Duomo.
Past the Ponte Vecchio, he rounded a bend and, in the distance, finally saw the chaos: a mass of churning, whirling water and rocks and wood and injured men. Th
e Arno was a barbaric beast, rising and falling in merciless waves, drowning men like a broken barrel of wine would drown an ant.
How would he find his brother in that mess?
“Do you see him?” Lodovico rushed up behind him.
“Stay here. You’ll hurt yourself.” Michelangelo kissed his father’s cheek, and then, half-swimming, half-marching, headed toward the ruptured levees. He hoped both he and his brother would be back by his father’s side soon. “Buonarroto,” he yelled. “Buonarroto!” Not his brother, please God, anyone but his baby brother. He paused to check the face of a dead man bobbing in the water. It was not Buonarroto.
Thank you, God.
Michelangelo kept going.
“Grab the rope,” a man called down, flicking a line to him, but Michelangelo waved it off. He didn’t want to be saved.
“Buonarroto,” he called again. He stayed near the edge of the river so he wouldn’t be swept into the tide, too. Holding onto the sides of buildings, he guided himself closer to the former construction site. In front of him, the river was a snake, hissing and wriggling and whipping around the city. “Buonarroto!”
“Over there,” a man with a bloodied cheek yelled. He pointed to the north side of the river, where one section of the stone levees was still holding. There, standing on top of the half-collapsed dam, Buonarroto was helping to haul fellow workers to safety.
Michelangelo let out a laugh of breath. The river rushed against his back, but he didn’t care. His brother was safe. “Buonarroto,” Michelangelo called and waved.
But Buonarroto never saw him. One of the large rocks under his feet twitched. Michelangelo saw it move, but none of the other men did. They were too focused on pulling their coworkers to shore. “Buonarroto,” Michelangelo shouted with more urgency, but his voice was lost in the din. “Move! You must move.”
The boulder creaked, then settled.
Relief unclenched the vise around his heart.
Then, in one blast, the dam of boulders collapsed. Buonarroto and the other men dropped into the river.
“No!” Michelangelo screamed.
Water and stone ground downstream like the jaws of a beast eating everything in its path. The teeth closed in around Buonarroto and dragged him into its belly.
Michelangelo dove into the roiling river and swam toward the collapsed dam, finally spotting Buonarroto’s tuft of brown hair, surrounded by a cloud of red blood. He kicked forward and reached out, but Buonarroto spun away from him. Swimming deeper, his lungs tightened from holding his breath. A splintered plank struck his temple. It stung. Another red cloud. Now he too was bleeding.
Buonarroto sank fast. His eyes were closed. His body was limp. His orange tunic billowed around him like a sail catching the wind.
Michelangelo would not let his brother go so easily.
Lungs burning, he kicked forward. His fingers grazed his brother’s arm. He stretched and strained until his fingers latched onto his brother’s collar. He pulled up, little by little, until he grasped Buonarroto’s arm.
Grazie, mio Dio.
Michelangelo strained upward, searching for the surface, but he suddenly realized he didn’t know which way was air and which way was drowning. The water was dark and murky, churning in every direction. He fought the urge to inhale, but he couldn’t stop from coughing out air. Large bubbles erupted from his nose and mouth.
Every single bubble rose in the same direction.
That was the way up.
Michelangelo pulled Buonarroto in the direction of the bubbles until his head broke the surface. He gasped in a breath of air and pulled Buonarroto’s head out of the water, too.
All around them was chaos. Rapids, rain, tumbling timber, screams of agony.
A wave pushed Michelangelo under again. He held tight to Buonarroto as they spun. He erupted out of the water again and caught his breath. “Buonarroto,” he cried, but his brother’s eyes remained closed. Michelangelo wrapped his arm around Buonarroto’s shoulders and, using every bit of strength developed over years of pounding into marble, dragged his baby brother to shore.
He laid Buonarroto on the dirt and knelt next to him. Buonarroto wasn’t breathing. His skin was pale. His lips were blue. “Buonarroto.” Michelangelo pounded on his brother’s chest. “No, please,” Michelangelo sobbed and, like the Virgin at the base of the cross, cradled Buonarroto across his lap.
Leonardo
The flood waters deposited Leonardo in the Piazza della Santa Maria Novella. He sat on the muddy ground, his beard dripping with river sludge, legs splayed in front of him, as a stream of injured workers stumbled away from the destruction. Salaì found him in the square. “Master …” was all he could whisper.
Floods and wars. Wars and floods. It was all the same. A jumble of death and pain and unnecessary chaos. “The first time I ever thought of changing the course of a river, I was fourteen years old,” Leonardo said. His voice sounded disconnected from his body, as though he were calling to himself from the back of a cave.
Salaì silently watched him.
“One day, my mother walked me to my father’s house on the Via della Stufa. She kissed me on both cheeks and reminded me to always wash. Knowing how I hated to bathe, she told me with a wink that swimming felt a lot like flying. Then she walked away. I still remember her black hair flowing in the breeze as she disappeared around the corner.
“That night,” he went on, “as I prepared to sit down for my first meal with my father and stepmother, my father instead took me by the hand and walked me out of that stylish house in that stylish neighborhood and down to another part of town where the artisans lived. Those streets were darker. The cobblestones of the city streets were gone; I was back on dirt.” He pressed his fingers into the mud. Salaì did the same.
“My father knocked on an orange door. A man answered. He had a pudgy face and a stern scowl and a small, pursed mouth. I watched my father exchange money and papers with him; then, without a word, my father left. The man identified himself as the goldsmith, Andrea del Verrocchio.” He could still smell the paints and chickens and smelted bronze and sweat of fellow studio apprentices. “My obsession with drawing had landed me my first job. That night, while the other assistants slept in piles on the floor, I crept out and ran to the Ponte Vecchio. Standing on the edge of the bridge, I stared into the moonlight reflecting off the rippling Arno. And then I jumped.”
Salaì placed his hand over his.
“I landed in the river with splash. The water was cold and teeming with mud and algae. I dove under, kicking to go deeper. As I swam, I tried to glide as though flying, my hair and tunic billowing. I wondered how long I could remain submerged before I needed to surface for air. I imagined staying in the river all the way to the Mediterranean. I could spend my life swimming from river to river, and never have to walk on land among men again.” He had never been content with following the paths set by others. Even Mother Nature. “That was the first time I ever thought of changing the course of a river.”
Leonardo was now a man sitting in the remains of that childhood fantasy. He searched his brain, trying to think of some ingenious plan that could repair everything and save everyone, but he could think of none. Nature was pouring the Arno back into its original riverbed, and it was impossible to stop.
Nothing was impossible, Leonardo reminded himself. He had diverted the river once. He could do it again. He stood and started back toward the river.
“Wait! Master, stop,” Salaì called.
He swam his way to the diversion site, near what used to be the edge of the river. He grabbed onto a balcony and pulled himself up. From there, he could get a better view. He needed time to study the situation and think. Splintered boards, sandbags, and boulders tossed along the rapids like pebbles. His mind slotted idea after idea into place, but no solution came out.
He climbed down from the balcony and worked all night. He saved many men. Saw many others die. One of the corpses Leonardo dragged to shore was the mustache
d Colombino, who had warned him about the dangers of pushing too far and too fast, who had a wife and five children waiting for him at home. He saw Michelangelo desperately pounding on the chest of his brother, that young man who had approached him at the river just a week before. “Buonarroto. Buonarroto!” Michelangelo pleaded with God as Leonardo had never heard someone plead with God before, so when Buonarroto finally spit up river water and spurted back to life, and brother embraced brother, and their hobbling old father found his two sons and sobbed, Leonardo allowed himself a moment of relief.
He also had a brief exchange with that old gray-eyed notary. As the old man fished yet another corpse out of the river, he whirled on Leonardo and screamed, “You and your damned visions of grandeur.”
That night was like watching a play. He did what he could to pull a few men to safety, but everything seemed to happen at a distance, as though it were being performed on a stage. He’d felt that way in war, too, watching men cart their dead brethren off the battlefield.
Finally, the rain slowed to a sprinkle, and the river found its way back into its bed. Leonardo had no idea how many men were dead, but the count was high. As the other men dragged themselves home to rest and recover, Leonardo sank into a pool of water and stared out over the scene.
He hadn’t meant for this to happen. He had only been trying to give the city an upper hand against Pisa. Protect Lisa and her family. But his arrogant attempts to change the course of a river had failed, and now, he would forever be known as the delusional man who had destroyed Florence with a dream of outthinking God.
Michelangelo
In a town of fifty thousand, the eighty fatalities from the flood touched everyone. People lost family, friends, and neighbors. Buonarroto lost coworkers, and four members of the family’s congregation at Santa Croce died, including one man who had slept on a pallet next to them when they were rebuilding their burned-out house.
Oil and Marble Page 24