by Joanne Lewis
Dolce looked at Po, who nodded, then back at Pippo. “Your apology is accepted,” she said.
“Molto bene. I will tell the Opera to reconsider the entries to include your design.”
“No, per favore. I have had enough attention.”
“Then I will modify the design of the lantern to incorporate some of your ideas.”
“Grazie. Now, tell me about Andrea.”
Pippo’s expression turned grave.
“That is the other reason we are here,” Po said. “The podesta issued a ruling.” He held up the scroll.
“And?”
“They do not believe you lost the child.”
“Why not?”
“The remains were examined and they found hide and fur like from an animal. They asked if any animals have been pregnant on the farm recently. I assured them that was not the case since no pregnant animal would have survived this past winter’s chill. But they did not believe me. They want to question Bartolommeo, father and Nic. And if they have enough evidence to prove you are lying, you and Andrea will be hung together.”
Pippo knelt on the floor, beside the bed. “I beseeched the podesta to think of another way that would satisfy him that Andrea was no sodomite. At first, he said there were none. I had never seen a man filled with so much fury, except myself of course. And I have never felt at the mercy of another. It is a horrible feeling. But Andrea is my son and it is a parent’s duty to do everything possible to protect his child.”
Dolce nodded, said nothing.
“You still have the power to save Andrea,” Po said.
Pippo shifted in his seat. “Everyone knows if a Jew is found guilty of consummating with a Christian, the Jew will be punished. Just recently, a Jew from Siena was exiled for having relations with a Christian. But first, he was tied to the back of an ass and paraded through town where he was whipped, his ears were cut off and he was branded.”
Dolce wrung her hands. “I didn’t realize …”
Po took her hands in his. “You can save Samuele and your child.”
“And you can also save Andrea,” Pippo added.
“How do I do that?”
Pippo took the scroll from Po and let it unravel to the floor. “Marry Andrea.”
PART FOUR
Chapter Sixty-four
Journal of Il Buggiano
All who read this (and who will read this I wonder?) will claim my scribbles are self-serving and who am I to disagree? I sit in Giotto’s bell tower day after day (if I stand my head hits the ceiling) and wait for the sun to plunge behind the cupola. Brunelleschi’s dome sits directly outside my windows. When the sun sets and the moon rises over the Apennini, I spend hour upon hour staring into the darkness until my eyes set upon glowing timber flickering in the distance. I know this fire is set each evening by Dolce Gaddi since my prison guard told me right before he gave me a bowl of the most delicious pigeon stew I’ve ever had. He proffered that the stew was made by Dolce so I chewed slowly, seeking the girl in the flavors of the bird and the vegetables and the spices. That same guard gave me a stylus and paper, something to do, he said, while I waited. I thanked him. He said he was a humanist but he also needed a job to support his wife, six sons who need educations, and three daughters who need dowries. I did not judge him. It is not up to me to judge. I am only to be judged.
I feel judged daily by the bell that chimes in this tower six times each day. One hour before sunrise, at sunrise, one hour after sunrise; and then the same is repeated without mercy at sunset. The bell is only one but it sounds like many, five or six, choralling with vehemence. Some days I no longer hear the sound of the bell even though it is but a few feet above my cell.
From atop the bell tower, I see the unfinished Church of Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, the San Marco monastery, the Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio; and into the northern distance on the other side of the city wall, Il Poderino; Dolce’s home.
It was this same prison guard who calls himself a humanist who let il professore come see me one day and it is of this learned man I inscribe. To write about myself is tedious as I already know about me and can see no reason why you would care to read my tale. But to write about him, yes, that is of interest for only the ignorant of mind or stubborn of thought would not find him intriguing.
Aside from Pippo who visits one time each month per decree of the Pope—and the prison guard whose name I do not know—this teacher is the only human I have spoken with since my imprisonment in the tower five months ago. I say human since I have been visited by many spirits. Some I see, some I hear, some embody Minuscolo—my deceased pet horse—some Dolce, some I do not recognize. I know they are not real but I welcome them nonetheless.
All the time, tears fill my eyes and drip down my face but when the tears are especially cruel they clog my throat and each breath feels as if it will not be followed by another. I am sad for Firenze, the most beautiful city filled with the most ugly people and laws; and this place is very foul, I mean, it smells bad.
I do not remember much of where I was born—Il Buggiano, which is what they call me—except for the aroma of books. Stretched and beaten hide, parchment and vellum. Ink of various colors, each with a different smell. Red ink sweet like berries, black bitter like fennel, sepia strong like garlic. It is the memory of smells that carried me through my days in the bell tower. That is, until I met him.
Carrying a wooden stool, he entered my cell and placed the seat across from mine. We sat knees to knees because that is all the width allows. I wondered if I was looking in a mirror, although he looks nothing like me of that I am sure. It had just been so long since I had seen my own reflection that I became confused. And then I thought he was an apparition, one of Dante’s characters from Commedia. I reached out and touched his face. His skin was warm with just a slight raise of stubble. He was real.
“Are you here to give my last rites?” I asked.
I hadn’t seen the flames from Il Poderino in several weeks, which I had figured was due to the harsh weather. But maybe Dolce had stopped lighting the fire since she had made her decision. I would not blame her for keeping her baby. In fact, it is what I desire.
“No,” he said.
This response left me with no emotion.
“I am Iacopo Gaddi. My friends call me Po.”
“I have heard of you. You are the humanist teacher and Dolce’s half-brother. She told me of you many months ago while we hid in a gypsy woman’s home. Did Dolce send you?”
“No.”
“Pippo?”
He shook his head.
“Donatello?”
“You will not guess.”
So I stopped trying. I wasn’t enjoying the game anyway. It didn’t matter who sent him or why. I was glad to have interaction with another. I said nothing else, turned my head, looked out the windows and watched the snow fall sideways, heard the wind howl. The tower shook slightly but I was not afraid. I know she can withstand the strongest earthquakes. How I know this I do not know. Instinct? Trust in Giotto’s design? Foolhardiness? No matter. I might be sad but I am not afraid.
I felt a chill and wrapped my arms around my shoulders. He took off his cloak and put it around me.
“We are close in age?” I asked.
“You are twenty-two?”
“Yes.”
“I am one harvest younger than you,” Po said.
“You stand more than three braccia like me?”
“Yes.”
“And like me, you were raised by your father who is an artist. He is also a farmer.”
Po laughed. “He deserves none of those titles since he is not very good at either.”
“You and I, we are not that different.”
“I know.”
“Choices separate us,” I said.
“And talent. I have seen your sculptures. They are magnificent.”
“Grazie. But I could never be an orator like you. You have touched many.”
“Thank y
ou. The Florentines must pave the way for a new world. The individual is at the center of that world through government and politics, art and literature, family and friendship. And it begins here.”
“Yes, it begins in Firenze.”
“No,” he slapped my knee. “It begins here. In this cell.”
“How …?”
“I need your help.”
“How can I help you?”
“You can teach me.”
“There is nothing I can teach you.”
“I am out there every day preaching about humanism and the need to place the individual before all else. God is within all of us and by our individual actions we are Him. We do not live at God’s whim, waiting for storms or pestilence or some other form of his fury. We do not achieve because He wants us to, we do not fail because He has chosen for us to fail. We achieve because we work hard. We fail because we are lazy. It isn’t God who created the cupola, it is Pippo.”
“Didn’t God give him the talent?”
“Yes, of course. But it is Pippo who used it.”
“I still don’t understand what I can teach you.”
“When I am on the streets meeting people and talking with them, I see pain in their eyes, their expressions, their postures. They have lost children and siblings and parents. They are hungry and thirsty. They are dirty. Some, are homeless. Some, are … discriminated against.”
“And some are wealthy and fat.”
“Yes, I know. But they are not the ones I am trying to touch. The ones I speak of view you as a hero because of all the injustice you have endured.”
Outside, the sun was sinking into the horizon. I pulled the cloak tighter around my shoulders.
He looked down, then back at me. “I am supposed to be a teacher but when I teach, they stare at me, their expressions blank. It took me a long time to realize why I could not identify with them and why they could not accept me.”
“And?”
“I know about their struggles up here,” he tapped his head, “but not here.” He placed his hands over his heart.
He looked around the cell as if he wanted to stand, pace, maybe leave. Then he settled, put his hands on his knees and leaned in toward me.
“Teach me about real pain, Andrea.”
Chapter Sixty-five
“Don’t you know pain?” Andrea asked. “You lost your mother at a young age and your twin brother, Piero, too.”
“Yes,” Po said. “But I have never been hungry, physically and morally attacked, exposed for all of Firenze to judge, tortured …”
Andrea looked away, although there were very few places to look.
“You’ve missed curfew,” Andrea said.
“I have written permission from Cosimo to be out after curfew. Where do you sleep?”
“Sometimes on this stool. Sometimes on the floor.”
“And how do you move your blood?”
“I walk in place for hours.”
“Human contact?”
“The guard brings my meals twice a day and usually stays to speak with me for a short time. Pippo visits once a month. And now … you.”
“What of your intellect?”
“I have not read a book since my imprisonment. I have not touched marble or wood. I have not seen a painting nor a sculpture.”
“How do you not go mad?”
“I don’t live in this tower,” Andrea said. “This is my body, which is present. But my mind is elsewhere.”
“Where is it?”
“Everywhere I’ve been. From Buggiano to Firenze. I see the boys at the orphanage, the nuns and monks, Pippo, the building of the dome, Dolce. I hear Minuscolo whinny, the sound of turning pages of a book, the clank of hammers and the laughter of carpenters. I smell everything, more vividly than when I had actually lived it. I taste the most precious fruits and vegetables, even the flurry of marble flakes on my tongue as I carve. And I feel things.” He ran his thumbs over the tips of his fingers. “Minuscolo’s hide, a silk scarf, a soft mattress.”
“And that’s how you survive?”
“Yes.”
Po looked out the windows. “That must be how they do it.” He swung his arm as if to encompass all of Firenze. “That’s how they get through the pain.”
“Dreams are very powerful.”
“And that is why,” Po looked back at Andrea, “they do not talk to me, or even look me in the eyes. Rulers have always governed through violence and patronage but I do not wish a following based on fear. I have a message of kindness and good will to share. How can I reach the masses?”
“There is nothing you can do unless they think you are one of them.”
“Then that is what I will attempt to do. Andrea,” Po dropped to one knee, “I would like to make a formal proffer of friendship.”
“You want me for a friend even though I bring you no profit?”
“There are other benivolenza to friendship such as letter writing, visiting and gift giving.”
“I would be honored to have your personal patronage,” Andrea said. “Although I fear our friendship will be one-sided as I have nothing to offer.”
“We shall see. By the trust that you demonstrate, which appears to me as a ray of love, I will strive and exert myself to make you happy. You may trust me as the brother you never had. And I will trust you as the twin brother I have lost.”
Chapter Sixty-six
Journal of Il Buggiano
The air is filled with snow flurries that sprinkle across the horizon like volcano ash. The sky is grey from short winter days. It has been hard to decipher one day from the next. Only the peal of the church bells announcing the opening or closing of the gates offers definitive evidence of the passing of time, even if I am not always sure if the chimes are real or imagined. When I think it is night, I gaze out the window for Dolce’s fire, but it does not come. I blame the weather.
Right now, I believe it is morning.
I haven’t seen nor heard from Po since his visit and proffer of friendship. I do not know whom to blame for Po not returning. Had I offended him? Did he get the information he wanted and therefore have no further need to see me? Had his vow of friendship been a hoax?
There is very little I can control in this tower. Twice a day, the guard brings food, which I must eat as he watches and a bucket over which I must squat while he waits. Dolce holds the key to my freedom. And you have to believe me when I write the following—whatever happens to me upon the birth of her child, it will be better than the life I have been living.
So here is what I can control. When I sit. When I stand. Which window I look out. What I think about. Whether or not I feel emotions.
I choose not to feel anything. Po had asked how I do not go mad. I did not tell him the real answer. I do not go mad because I do not feel.
So, it does not trouble me that Po has failed to return to see me.
But what is that I hear? Footsteps. My stomach is not grumbling from hunger and my bladder is not full as happens minutes before the guard begins his climb up the 414 steps to the top of the bell tower. It is not the guard since his left foot strikes the marble stairs heavier than his right and that is not the sound I hear.
It is not Pippo, who I saw a few days ago, since the person coming up the steps is moving more quickly than my aging father.
If it’s not the guard or Pippo, who could it be?
My heart is beating very quickly. I am at once excited and hopeful it is Po and troubled that it might be the executioner. Had Dolce delivered her baby and made her choice? I have calculated that she still has a couple of weeks before the baby is due. Did the child come early?
As the footsteps grow nearer, my feelings are rampant between good and bad, hopeful and hopeless. With each strike of a foot on a step, my worry deepens. I curse myself for allowing emotions to control me. A key jiggles in the lock. The door opens.
It is Po. He holds a scroll in one hand, a satchel in the other.
“Here,” Po thrust a scro
ll toward Andrea.
Andrea dropped his paper and pen, took the scroll and let it unravel. He read, so hungry for words he didn’t gather their meanings at first. Soon, the letters and their arrangement into words and the words that flowed into sentences filled him like sweetmeats and wine. He sat on a stool, started back at the top, attempted to read not for the love of the language but for comprehension. Partially absorbed, enough to gather the significance, he dropped the scroll to the floor.
“You mean …?” Tears filled his eyes.
“Yes,” Po handed him the satchel. “Put these clothes on. It’s very cold. It’s only for the day. I must have you returned by curfew.”
“Why is this happening?”
“Cosimo has requested your presence. The people are uprising. They are demanding their leader.”
“Am I to be a witness?”
“No, you are to be their savior.”
Po pushed open the thick wooden door and they ran out of the cell, into the cavernous dark, down stone stairs that sharply wound as they descended. Small rectangular windows occasionally beamed rays of light and marked the bottom of grey steps before the slabs wrapped into nearly ninety degree angles then down again. Andrea pushed off against walls and steered himself around corners, feeling the cold stone on the palms of his hands and pads of his fingertips. Po was only a few steps in front of him.