The Kingdom of Light

by Giulio Leoni

  He plunged into the labyrinth of alleyways behind the remains of the ancient amphitheatre, skirted by a wasp’s nest of humble stone houses and wooden shacks where many of the craftsmen of Florence lived and had their workshops. Further south, towards the Arno, the road was blocked by the row of weavers and dyers and by the carders’ big water-mills anchored to the river bank. For the last stretch he wandered around the open-air benches of the silk-steamers until he reached a point where the narrow street widened slightly, avoiding the remains of a Roman arch. Immediately after it the way was blocked by a big wall built with the remnants of the old building, where a gate led into a little courtyard. Alberto the Lombard’s house opened up on to it.

  People were gathered in the little square in front of his workshop. Amidst shouts and laughter, men and women were excitedly watching something in front of them. Thinking that an acrobat was performing and making silly jokes, the prior pushed his way through the people, preparing to order him to move on.

  But it wasn’t what he had expected. A pillory had been erected on the corner of the street, its wooden pincer constricting the hands and neck of a man in peasant garb, who was lamenting in a loud voice. All around, the laughter of the onlookers rose along with his mounting wails, while stones and dung picked up from the ground were hurled at him.

  Dante walked over, resolving to pass by. But someone must have recognised him, because an anxious murmur ran through the crowd, followed by a sudden silence. In that void the voice of the convict suddenly rang out, a confused babble stuffed with Latin terms.

  Filled with curiosity, Dante stopped near the pillory. ‘What are you complaining about, you rogue? What were you convicted of?’ he asked, leaning forward to meet the unfortunate man’s eye. When the other man went on staring at the ground, the poet gripped him by the few hairs he still had left, forcing him to lift his head.

  Screaming with pain, the man turned his neck as far as he could to return Dante’s gaze. On his swollen face one livid eye had been closed by a blow, but the other glittered with malice. ‘Oh, Messer, by my faith I am exposed to this derision only because of a quaestio irresoluta, a difference of interpretation,’ he announced quietly.

  ‘It is over a philosophical disputation that the Bargello has bound you to this cross?’ the poet replied in astonishment, relaxing his grip.

  ‘Precisely, Messer. I see from your clothing that you must be a man of culture and learning,’ said the convict who, defeated by the uncomfortable position in which he found himself, had turned his face towards the ground once more. ‘So you will understand my innocence.’

  ‘Both prisons and hell are full of innocent men, it’s well known,’ Dante said ironically.

  ‘And yet you will agree with me when you know the history of my disgrace. It all originates in my desire to increase my ancestors’ little vine by acquiring a farm on its boundary. My neighbour and I agreed to move the boundary by thirty paces, which I asked to measure personally, with my feet.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I counted out precisely thirty paces, but he declared me a cheat – and here I am.’

  ‘Why? It seems to me that you respected the agreement.’

  The other man unexpectedly exploded into mocking laughter, as if all his sufferings had disappeared as he remembered what had happened. ‘I ran the thirty paces, Messere. But rather than appreciating the joke, that false neighbour of mine immediately reported me.’

  Dante had involuntarily joined in with his laughter. ‘It’s really a matter of mutual understanding, my friend. Certainly, the measurement increases if the measurer is quick,’ he agreed.

  The other man seemed content with his judgement. ‘Will you intercede on my behalf?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘No. But since you’re a philosopher, accept your punishment philosophically and wait for vespers. A few strokes of the whip and you’ll be free.’

  THE MECHANICUS was busy fixing pulleys to a support, for one of the cranes working at the building site of the new Duomo. As the poet walked in, he interrupted his work.

  ‘That consignment I sent you … where is it?’ Dante broke in.

  The other man pointed to a corner of the workshop, between a shelf and a little door. The bag lay there, still tied. ‘I haven’t touched anything, in accordance with the orders of the bargellini,’ replied Maestro Alberto. ‘But whatever’s in there, it would be a good idea to take it out as soon as possible. The cloth is drenched with water.’

  The poet quickly untied the laces and began to remove the fragments of the device, passing them to the man who arranged them on the workbench.

  As part of the machine passed between his fingers, a grimace of surprise grew on the face of the mechanicus. Dante carefully studied his reactions. ‘So, what do you think it is?’ he asked when the bag was empty.

  Without replying, Alberto took from a shelf a lamp with a brass disc behind its wick to concentrate the light. He lit it, even though the workshop was still illuminated by the sun, and concentrated his myopic eyes on the bits of machinery lined up in front of him. ‘They look like elements of a tower clock – but different from the ones I know. Apart from …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘These carvings, on one of the wheels.’

  Dante brought his head close to the point that the other man indicated to him. ‘Moorish characters,’ he said after a brief examination.

  The other man nodded. ‘This machine was built by the infidel. Where did you find it?’

  The prior didn’t reply. The image of the galley had floated into his mind for a moment, with its cargo of death. He gestured vaguely, muttering a few words about confidential commercial matters.

  But the mechanicus seemed to pay him no heed, gripped as he was by what he had in front of him. ‘Besides, they have always excelled at this particular art. Even Frederick the Great had to use Arabs for the clock in Palermo,’ he remarked.

  ‘Can you understand what they mean?’ asked the poet, touching the incisions with his finger.

  ‘I can’t, but my servant can. He can read the writing of his ancestors.’

  The mechanicus left the room for a moment, before returning in the company of a boy of medium height, with olive skin and the sharp features of someone prey to hunger and rancour. ‘This is Hamid, captured off the coast of Egypt. I saved him from the oars when I discovered his skill at working metals. But I don’t know if he’s grateful to me.’

  The old man held the gear-wheel out to the slave, showing him the writing. For a moment the boy stared at the spot he was pointing to, then suddenly looked away. His expression, at first impassive, now seemed perturbed.

  ‘So?’ Dante asked him, irritated by his hesitation.

  The boy still didn’t reply, his frown deepening. ‘It’s blasphemy. It’s an insult to Allah, the powerful, the merciful,’ he finally murmured. ‘Why do you want to repeat this offence by translating it into the language of the infidel?’

  Dante gave a start at the pagan’s phrase. But he restrained himself: the boy’s face showed signs of sincere discomfort. And perhaps an offence against God really was one in any language.

  ‘The insult against your god will be lessened in my tongue. Out with it!’

  ‘Allah is great,’ the Saracen finally decided to say, ‘but al-Jazari … is greater.’ He had drawn his head between his shoulders, as though fearing that Allah might be listening.

  ‘Al-Jazari. Who’s that?’ Dante asked him.

  ‘I know,’ the craftsman exclaimed. ‘Al-Jazari, of the great Persian family that made automata. The very greatest of them.’

  ‘Automata?’

  ‘Machines for imitating life. Golden peacocks capable of spreading their lapis-lazuli tails. Bronze lions able to roar on the gates of the thrones of the East, and other diabolic things of that nature. It would appear that the Emperor commissioned something from them to increase the value of his court still further,’ Alberto went on. ‘He had seen some works by this infidel in Jerusalem, wh
en he went there as a crusader. An extraordinary mind.’

  Dante had averted his gaze, staring into the void. He was thinking about the relic in the church, with its simulacrum of life. The idea that it might have been nothing but a statue animated by a hidden mechanism had never left him.

  ‘But also a … a perverse one,’ Alberto was saying.

  ‘Perverse. Why?’ asked Dante, struck by these words.

  ‘There’s something indecent about wanting to simulate life, to invert the order of creation and elevate things of wood and metal to the level of live creatures, even threatening the place of the living.’

  ‘Inverting logic and nature?’ the prior asked. Those words had suggested an idea to him. The galley that he had explored also seemed like an incredible inversion of the meaning of things. An object born to protect life on the hostile seas, transformed into an infernal ferry-boat. ‘But God instructed us to possess the earth, to name its riches, to regulate its mutability. Even your clocks, Maestro Alberto, are regulators. Is your art not blasphemous, too? Shouldn’t you be writing something similar on your toothed wheels?’

  Alberto shook his head and was about to reply, but Dante interrupted him. ‘Meanwhile tell me if you can grasp the purpose of the machine by studying its remains.’

  The other man shrugged, with a dubious expression. He went back to staring at the fragments, rearranging their order a number of times and attempting to link them in different ways. His clenched lips and beetled brow revealed his growing dissatisfaction. At last he stopped, after one final attempt. ‘Perhaps. But not entirely. Some essential parts are missing. Certainly, it’s like a big clock in some respects. You see this toothed pivot and this fragment of chain? It’s the heart of the mechanism, I’m sure of it. Fixed around its axis, this strip of steel activates the first wheel, which transmits the movement to the other, smaller wheels, by means of a sequential application of rotational speed at a calculable rate; if I had all the parts …’

  ‘And you say it was built by this al-Jazari,’ Dante went on after a brief pause in which he had tried to weigh up the other man’s explanations.

  ‘Al-Jazari was the greatest machine-maker in the whole of the known world, the very glory of our trade. If only we had access to his constructions …’ Alberto resumed staring at the metal fragments, his expression full of religious respect. ‘If only he hadn’t been killed,’ he went on.

  ‘Al-Jazari was killed? Why?’

  ‘He was executed by his co-religionists. Apparently he’d gone mad. Or at least that’s what was said years later, in Christian lands.’

  The prior stroked his chin reflectively. He pulled so hard on it that he seemed to be trying to stretch his lower jaw. Lost in reflection, he brushed a finger along the incised characters, going over their spirals once more. ‘Allah is great, but al-Jazari is greater.’ Blasphemy. Blind pride. Even the best were his victims this time.

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘Around the middle of the century. Just before Emperor Frederick.’

  Dante went back to observing the mechanism. So, if it really was al-Jazari’s work, as everything suggested, this most complex object must have been constructed at least fifty years before. Where had it been kept for so long? And why had it now come in the company of death, in lands so far from its origins? Above all, what was its purpose?

  ‘There was another thing that was said about him.’ The mechanicus had spoken in a low voice, but it had been enough to interrupt the thread of the poet’s thoughts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he was driven mad by one of his discoveries.’

  ‘A machine?’

  The other man shook his head. ‘No, his machines were his pride, his joy. Al-Jazari went mad because he had discovered the limits of God.’

  ‘The limits of God?’

  ‘That’s what they say.’

  Dante fell silent for a few moments. The faces of the dead were dancing before him. Then he remembered the astrolabe that the Bargello’s men had found on the ship. He looked for it in the bag. Now, in the bright light, he noticed that the tiny marks were not a decoration, but regular carvings of degrees and orbits. Along the rim, once again, Arabic characters. An object of extraordinarily refined manufacture.

  He turned round, seeking the young Saracen. Hamid had knelt down on a little rug and was praying with his head turned towards the wall.

  Dante walked over to him, holding out the instrument. ‘And what’s written here?’

  The slave hesitated, as if he feared being exposed to another blasphemy. Then, after a rapid glance, he seemed to take heart. ‘It’s a dedication. “To him who measures the stars.” A gift from the Sultan to the head of the astrologers of Damascus.’

  The poet and the mechanicus stared at one another, waiting for the young man to continue. But there was nothing more to say. Thinking about what he had just heard, Dante looked away, his attention drawn by the room around him. As well as the big workbench, some of the shelves were covered with tools and mechanical parts. In one corner of the room he saw a little niche holding a mat and a rolled-up bed-roll. It must have been the place where the slave-boy slept, he thought, spotting the edge of a manuscript peeping out from beneath the cloth.

  Curious, he bent over the mat and lifted it up. It was a decorated manuscript in which the arabesques of the characters merged harmoniously with the ornaments in the margins. The boy had followed his movements apprehensively. Dante caught his eye when he looked up to question him.

  ‘It’s a precious, pagan book. What is its title?’

  ‘The story of a dream. It’s the Kitab al-Mi’raj.’

  Without being aware of it, the prior had placed his hands on the text, as if he wished to keep it. Years before, his teacher Brunetto had spoken to him of this rare volume, known in Latin as the Liber scalae Machometi. Mohammed’s journey into the realm of shadows, to the throne of God. He would have liked to know its contents. And now it was in his hands, but written in a language that he was unable to decipher. He held out the manuscript to the Saracen, but still clutched it tightly. ‘You will tell me what is written. If you don’t want the Commune to drag you out and burn you, for an act of heresy.’ The boy lowered his head. ‘But not now. I will come back, to learn what I wish to know.’

  Near the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova

  ‘OH, DANTE! Always running, as if the Furies were after you!’

  The poet froze, recognising the clumsy voice yelling abuse at him. The newcomer stood, legs spread, on the other side of the street, winking at him with a vulpine expression in his keen eyes. Then he raised his hand, gracefully moving his fingers like a flirtatious girl. His broad face was stamped with an ironic little smile.

  ‘Can I greet you, too? Or are only the Beatrices and your other girlfriends allowed to flash their eyes at you? And yet I too could make the air tremble as they do … with my farts, perhaps!’

  The poet turned towards him, his fists clenched and his face bright red.

  The other man shielded himself, with a comical expression of terror. ‘For the love of God, Prior, what a terrible face! The same one that I saw on the plain of Campaldino. That’s why we won: the Aretines had no one as terrible as you.’

  Meanwhile Dante had reached him. He looked the man up and down, taking in his showy outfit. ‘Cecco, are you still here?’ he hissed. ‘You know there’s no place in Florence for debauchees and ne’er-do-wells. I thought you were already on your way to Rome: in the Eternal City there will certainly be more room for you and your enterprises, and the air there is more favourable to corruption.’

  Cecco Angiolieri sat down on a stone at the corner of the crossroads, after carefully arranging his stockings and lifting his jerkin, the better to display his breeches.

  ‘And you should know that the laws of Florence forbid indecent and lubricious clothing. What in the devil’s name are you dressed like?’ the poet pressed him.

  But the other man didn’t seem at all concerned. He gesture
d with his hands, indicating the people around him. ‘My friend, it is true that in the city of Boniface there are more taverns than stoups and more brothels than confessionals. And in fact it is there that my star revolves, regretting what I have done and gaining the indulgence of the Centesimus. But a stay in your virtuous city is obligatory for anyone setting off on the path of goodness and contrition. And as for my breeches,’ he went on, stretching out his squat legs and darting Dante a smug glance, ‘I must say that no one in Florence has complained, if the truth be known.’

  Dante burst out laughing. ‘If you frequented our temples and lecture halls rather than our taverns, you would be less full of yourself.’

  ‘Ah, Dante, it’s the weight of terrible melancholy that is crushing me and dragging me from the good life. And, above all, an irritating lack of money. If my old man doesn’t decide to kick the bucket soon, and leave me the little he has left, I will be forced to beg. Unless you know of a decent opening somewhere. It looks as if things are going really well for you accursed Florentines. It could be that there’s a scrap of bread for me, too. I’m here to offer my services.’

  ‘To whom, might one know?’

  ‘Oh, there’s always someone who needs a sharp tongue or a ready hand. But you, on the other hand …’ Cecco winked at Dante, nudging him in the ribs. ‘Tell me about your work. What is the prince of Tuscan poets about to offer the world? I heard a rumour, among the Fedeli. A journey into the kingdom of the dead.’

  ‘Of the dead and those who will not die.’

  ‘Nothing less …’ Cecco murmured in an ironic voice. But Dante had plunged back into his reflections. ‘Apparently you want to match the French for arrogance,’ said the Sienese, pointing to the walls of the new Duomo, which were rising up behind Santa Reparata. ‘Vast cathedrals are being erected, with tall pinnacles and huge pointed vaults. It’s as if you want to build a stairway to God, rather than calling to him humbly here below, as we do in our churches.’