by Giulio Leoni
He was distracted from his thoughts by the sight of a massive silhouette that had emerged from a side-street to pass along the curve of the ancient amphitheatre. ‘Greetings, Messer Monerre!’ Dante called to him from behind.
The other man jerked round, looking around to see who in the crowd had called his name. He looked worried, but his circumspection dissolved as soon as he recognised the poet.
‘You won’t mind exchanging a few words along the way, I hope,’ said Dante, catching up with him.
‘Messer Durante, it’s an honour for me to make your acquaintance. Even if I can imagine the origin of your interest in my humble person. Perhaps in other circumstances learned matters would have been our subject, rather than violence and death.’ The man had pronounced those words in correct Tuscan, rendered slightly harsh by his French accent.
‘I hear that you speak my language well. But to which learned matters do you refer?’ the poet replied.
Monerre raised his finger towards the sky. ‘The science of Urania, to which I have dedicated my whole life. In Toulouse, where I was born, then in the Languedoc and finally in Venice. There I studied the chart of the skies on the maps of the ancients, particularly Ptolemy. Sometimes amending imperfections which those great men had disregarded. And I tried to spread that knowledge from my university chair, but without success. And the proof of this is that my name is unknown!’
The man had closed his speech with a bitter smile. As he grimaced, his scar appeared more marked.
An astronomer, thought Dante, surprised by the coincidence.
He must have looked puzzled, because the man smiled. ‘If you ask what I am doing in your city, it is only a stage along my final journey.’
‘Where are you headed?’ asked Dante, increasingly curious. ‘And why is this journey your last?’
The word resounded in his ears with a macabre echo. Did this man, like Bernardo, feel that he was close to the end?
Monerre had stopped by the remains of the Roman gate. In the distance one could glimpse the corner of the Stinche prison, with its grim, blind walls. He ran a hand over his forehead, as though to banish a sudden pain. ‘My destination lies in Africa, in the hostile lands of the Moors. And then further south, in the realm of the Manticore, beyond the distant equator, beneath the new southern sky, never beheld by Christian eye. There they speak of the splendour of unknown stars and new constellations imprinting on the heavenly vault the marks of unbelievable destinies. This is the great gap in the catalogue of Hipparchus, which I hope to remedy, at least in part.’
While he spoke, the astronomer’s face had brightened, as if his mind’s eyes had really flashed with those new lights. Dante heard him absently murmur something in French, before returning to Tuscan. ‘And they speak of a divine sign, four stars arranged in a perfect cross. Almost as though to signify the origin of the true faith, or to point to its destiny. But I imagine there is something else that you wish to know.’ The emotion had faded from his face. He uttered the last words coldly.
‘You spoke of a final journey,’ said Dante, engrossed. Florence was becoming an obligatory passage on the way to the end, he thought bitterly.
‘I have already travelled in the lands of the infidels. But the injury inflicted on me most recently has damaged the visual ability of my right eye. And through that mysterious sympathy that connects the twin organs, the infection of the one is slowly spreading to the other. Soon I will be in darkness, and the only starlight visible to me will be the one in my memory. That is why I must hurry.’
They went on walking in silence for a long time. The poet tried to keep up with his companion, who walked quickly and vigorously in spite of the infernal heat. ‘You’re marching like a Berber horse, Messere. Was it on your travels that you developed such a gait?’ Dante exploded, after being forced several times to run in order to keep up with the Frenchman.
The other man stopped with a smile. ‘Indeed, Prior. There are lands that I have visited in which even an hour’s delay can make all the difference between life and death. In the desert, between one oasis and the other, and in the regions infested by pagans, where our bases are precisely a day’s journey apart, and any deviation from that means being surprised in the open at night, far from all safety. In those places it is customary for two people to mount a single horse, so that the second may rest and be ready for the remaining part of the march.’
‘All lands are hostile in their own way,’ Dante murmured. ‘You will be aware of what happened in your inn, the murder of your companion.’
Monerre nodded. ‘Brunetto. A painter, wasn’t he? I often saw him busy at his drawings, in the brief time we shared our lodging.’
‘He wasn’t a painter. And that wasn’t his name. The victim is Guido Bigarelli, the greatest sculptor of our time.’
The Frenchman received the revelation impassively.
‘Hadn’t you ever suspected anything?’ the poet pressed him.
‘No. But it isn’t unusual for travellers to conceal their identity. For the most various motives.’
‘What might those be?’
‘To escape the local authorities, if they are in opposition to the governing party. Or the keen eyes of criminals, if they are carrying something precious with them.’
Dante thoughtfully pursed his lips. Bigarelli was an inveterate Ghibelline, passing through a Guelph city. That might well have explained it.
‘And perhaps … perhaps that was true in his case,’ the other man went on.
Dante gave a start. ‘What was?’
‘The evening before his death, as I went upstairs to my room, I bumped into him. He was standing on the stairs with the fat wool merchant, Rigo di Cola. They were engaged in an animated conversation. When they saw me they stopped suddenly, but not before I was able hear their last words.’
Dante moved closer to him. ‘What were they talking about?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Gold, Messer Alighieri. A mountain of gold. And that in order to have it, they needed to close the light in the circle.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked the poet, perplexed.
Monerre shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But that’s what I heard. I’m an astronomer, you’re the intellectual,’ he concluded, with a hint of irony in his voice.
Afternoon and evening
DANTE TOOK his leave of the Frenchman with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. The idea that the crime might have close connections with the men who, apparently for different reasons, had stayed at the Angel Inn was growing ever stronger.
This idea arose from the sense that in some way, which he could not yet explain, there was something that bound them all together. And yet their characters, their clothes, even their physical appearance were as different as it was possible to imagine. Apart from the fact that they were all foreigners, merely passing through Florence.
He was sure that the form of the crime reflected the mind of the perpetrator. The victim always seems to summon his own executioner, selecting him from those most like himself. The violent man finds death in the brutality of a deliberate act, the amorous spirit ebbs away in lasciviousness and incontinence. So who had the sculptor sought to put an end to his days?
Guido Bigarelli, the master of the figures of the dead, had returned after a long absence, under a false name, as if to meet death itself. He had courted death throughout his life, in his works. He had made a pact with death, he had silently summoned it to dwell in his bronzes, he had stroked its bones beneath the hot flesh of his lovers. And then death had come, demanding its payment. He remembered the crude hypothesis of the Bargello, which he had at first irritably rejected. But now that possibility was making its presence felt in his mind. Was he the fourth man from the galley? Was he the one who had committed the slaughter, to descend to Avernus in the company of a legion of men?
Dante’s mind ran to the miracle of the Virgin. Could the appearance of this old work of Bigarelli’s be a mere coincidence, as extraordinary as the human-looking thing that i
t contained? And do coincidences really exist?
THE ROAD narrowed at a spot where carpenters’ poles had been set up and a building was under construction. Another manifestation of the arrogance of the newly wealthy classes, Dante thought. He leaned back against the scaffolding to let a cart pass. Someone ran past him, striking him hard in the face with his elbow. The pain of the blow stunned him for a moment.
As he tried to recover, looking around in an attempt to work out what was happening, a large stone fell with a crash on to the plank wall behind him, followed by another, which grazed his shoulder. He instinctively leaped away from the scaffolding, imagining an imminent collapse.
The square in front of him was the stage for a great tumult: benches overturned, baskets of herbs scattered on the ground amidst fragments of earthenware, and streams of oil and wine trampled by a mass of people engaged in fierce combat, in a whirl of wrestling bodies. All around him, a general stampede of men and women trying to escape.
Another stone, thrown by someone in the middle of the throng, skimmed past him, followed by a large number of other projectiles. From the opposite sides of the square some combatants had begun throwing stones at each other, swinging above their heads slingshots improvised from strips of sheet picked up from the ground among the overturned benches. Making levers out of boards and poles found lying around the place, they had first tried to dig up the cobblestones: then, when the ancient Roman paving stones resisted their efforts, they had fallen upon the remnants of the ancient walls of the Campidoglio, pulling out bricks with their fingers amidst yells and insults.
‘What’s happening?’ shouted Dante, who had taken refuge behind a cart, to an old man who sat hunched up, clutching his head in his hands.
The old man looked up at him, encouraged by the sight of his clothes. ‘The Cerchi and the Donati. They met at the market, and the insults immediately went flying. A fist-fight couldn’t be far away.’
‘Damned brawlers,’ the poet muttered between his teeth. He waited for another volley to land all around them, then resolutely rose to his feet and walked towards the middle of the piazza, hoping that his prior’s insignia were very visible. ‘Stop, in the name of the law of the Commune!’ he shouted in a stentorian voice, gripping the shoulders of one of the fighters who had gone crashing into him, and dispatching him with a kick to the backside.
He felt a hand holding him back by the elbow. With a jerk he pulled away, turning round in fury.
The man behind him raised his hands in a gesture of peace, smiling faintly. ‘Excuse me, Durante. I was only trying to help you,’ he exclaimed, leaning down to pick up the poet’s biretta, which had rolled a short distance away.
The poet recognised the smiling face of the philosopher Arrigo da Jesi. He smiled in turn, trying to brush away from his clothes the dust and filth with which they were covered. ‘Forgive me my gesture. But in this insane chaos it isn’t easy to discern the just man’s hand.’
‘Perhaps there aren’t so many just men in this city,’ Arrigo murmured, looking round at the gangs who had assembled on opposite sides of the square, now giving each other surly glances and shouting threats at one another. ‘It looks as if everything’s falling apart, as if the plan of the city’s founding fathers is collapsing in internecine strife.’
‘That plan, if there ever was such a thing, was written on leaves, like the answers of the Sybil, which a gust of wind was enough to throw into confusion,’ Dante replied with a shake of his head.
The philosopher also looked round sadly. ‘So what has reduced your city to this sorry state?’
Dante pointed angrily at the group of ruffians still wrestling with one another. ‘This shameful rabble was unleashed like an irresistible flood within our walls. It came from the four corners of Tuscany, drawn by the ease of profit promised by the decadence of our customs, the idleness of our city governors, the simony of our priests, the corruption of our magistrates and the triumphant ignorance of the learned. It spilled into our streets after overflowing from the sewers in which it first sheltered, taking over the land that our fathers spilled their blood to redeem from barbarism. Florence now looks like a maddened horse.’
The prior broke off, still staring grimly at the young thugs. Meanwhile he rubbed his jaw, wiping away with the back of his hand a little stream of blood that flowed from his cut lip.
Arrigo seemed to have followed his words with great attention. ‘Other cities in Italy enjoy no better conditions. But a good ruler could return everyone to reason, if only he had the help of all the men of goodwill. People like you, Messer Alighieri.’
‘If people like me, whom you are kind enough to praise, were capable of making themselves heard. If you, rather than these ruffians, had the means and the strength presently conferred by ill-gotten gains.’
‘Perhaps the time is near when the eagle will return to rule the skies of Italy, and its claws will blind for ever the dogs of night that have invaded our land.’
Dante smiled weakly, still drying his lip with the tip of his tongue. As he spoke, he continued to follow the movements of the battling parties, which had now moved towards the other end of the square, where they swarmed into the side-alleys. ‘Cities are big animals, similar in every respect to the smaller animals that inhabit them,’ he said bitterly.
‘And they fall victim to the same crimes. You can punch a city, just as you would punch a man,’ the philosopher insisted.
Dante stared at him. ‘That’s true. And by the will of fate, that is a crime that I am currently investigating. Death has passed through the Angel Inn.’
‘I know. That poor man Brunetto.’
‘That wasn’t his real name,’ Dante replied indifferently, still brushing the hem of his garment with the palm of his hand.
Arrigo had not reacted to his words. He looked calm, waiting for Dante to go on.
‘His name was Guido. Guido Bigarelli.’
‘Really?’ The philosopher had maintained his placid attitude, as if the name were completely unknown to him. ‘And are you on the way to finding the guilty man?’ he asked, sitting down in the lee of a low wall.
Dante shrugged and did likewise. ‘Fragments of a plot, signifying nothing. No precise motive, neither a how nor a why. Just a sense that the crime had been planned not far from the victim, perhaps by someone known to him, certainly by someone close to him. The dead man’s travelling companions: that is where I am being taken by my instinct, and by the reason that lies beneath it.’
‘Interrogate them, then, with all the power of your perspicacity.’
‘What would be the point? I’d end up with a sticky mixture of truth and lies, in which the light of the just would be corrupted by the artifice of the guilty. I don’t have the gift of entering their minds.’
‘You seem to have lost all hope.’
‘No,’ replied the poet. ‘I don’t need their words. There’s a logic that governs things, and that logic is supported by necessity. I must discover the necessity that produced the crimes. Then I will have the logic behind them, finally I will have the words I need.’
‘So what’s stopping you?’
‘Something that is making me lose my bearings. The crimes were committed for a motive both contingent and immediate. And yet the reason behind them lies in something remote. That’s what disconcerts me: that a single effect should derive from two causes. Aristotle seems to deny this.’
Arrigo shook his head with a smile. ‘I admire your trust in the philosopher. But what do you think of the most modern masters from Paris? Bacon, for example. Does he not teach us that it is the order of nature that gives us the norms for our reasoning? And is Nature not the realm of transformation, and becoming, and contradiction? You have spoken to me of “crimes”: is it not, then, only Guido Bigarelli who has crossed Hades’ threshold before his time?’
‘Not he alone. There was a murder some leagues to the west of the city, perhaps to cover up a single crime. The murderer filled an entire ship with corpses.’
Arrigo opened his mouth to ask a new question, but then clamped his lips shut as if he had changed his mind.
‘What is the “Kingdom of Light”?’ the poet asked him all of a sudden.
Arrigo turned towards him with a stunned expression. ‘A place of the triumph of the spirit, I should imagine. Or, metaphorically, what you call Paradise.’
‘We?’
‘I mean you theologians, who design its appearance, essence and boundaries. Or even you poets, who attempt to clothe them with words. Why do you ask me?’
‘It appears that many people are in search of that place. And what if it were in fact a physical location? Or an object with extraordinary properties? The bastards!’
The philosopher gave a start at this unexpected imprecation, as surprised as the other man by a luke-warm flood of golden droplets raining from the sky, along with the tuneless melody of a popular song. Above them, standing on the remains of the crossbeam of the ancient Roman portico, a member of the Donati family had undone his breeches and was urinating down upon his adversaries, making a magnificent triumphal arch with the jet.
Dante jumped away cursing, careless of the stones still falling around him. He threw himself on all fours, frantically searching for something on the ground, then rose to his feet clutching a fragment of brick in his fist. He froze for an instant, making a quick calculation, then hurled the stone at the man who was still singing as he urinated.
Arrigo saw him taking aim at his target, eyes fixed on the projectile as if guiding its trajectory with the force of his thought. He too lowered his head to follow the object, all the way to the crisp smack and the man’s yell as it struck him on the forehead. ‘Heavens above, Prior!’ he yelled in astonishment. ‘A throw of biblical dimensions! You Florentines should have David on your coins, rather than the lily. Or at least erect a statue of him to guard your gates!’