The Dante Game

by Jane Langton

  “Duomo,” corrected Zee politely, and he pointed to the dome of the cathedral rising conspicuously above the housetops on the southwest side of the square.

  “Oh, is that it? Oh, hell, I already been there. Jesus, look at the rain. I thought this place was supposed to be so, you know, beautiful.” The tourist waved a cold blue hand at the rain-soaked facade of the foundling hospital, where the nine arches of Brunelleschi’s arcade rested serenely upon their ten perfect columns. “Back in Milwaukee this would be a park, with, you know, trees. What’s so great about this?” Turning his back on the sporting sea creatures in the fountains, he stared at the melancholy carriages waiting for passengers, the sodden horses drooping their heads. “It don’t look beautiful to me.”

  Zee listened to the whining voice and wondered why the man had ever left home. Taking pity on him, he explained how to get to the Palazzo Davanzati, where surely the poor fool would enjoy the display of fourteenth-century domestic life. Then, with a nod, Zee mopped at his streaming hair and hurried away to catch a bus to the place where he had parked his car.

  He didn’t look back to see the man from Milwaukee turn away from the great tourist spectacles of the city of Florence and enter the Banca degli Innocenti for a chat with the manager, Leonardo Bindo, that fascinating geometrical study in circles inscribed upon circles.

  Signor Bindo was not happy to see the man from Milwaukee, whose name—Earl—he could not pronounce. He spoke to him angrily in English. “I’ve told you never to come here.”

  “Oh, Jesus, the phone. I can’t work the goddamned phone. Those goddamned tokens, Jesus.”

  Bindo listened to Earl’s peevish complaints, feeling for him nothing but contempt. When the product in which he was dealing worked its way to the bottom, all the way down into the hands of this piece of filth, he lost interest in it altogether. He felt more respect for the men who handled it on its long journey from the high mountains of the Hindu Kush. Sometimes Bindo compared himself with his colleagues in Milan and Naples and Turin, busy professional men who had no interest in the substance except as a profitable commodity like pharmaceuticals or cement. To his own wide-ranging imagination there was something romantic about its travels along the dangerous road to eventual consumption on the street—the long passage that carried it from some poppy field on a mountain hillside in Pakistan to a set of rusty oil drums on the Northwest Frontier, then through the Khyber Pass on donkeys, and at last, by a fantastic series of further adventures, to a conversion laboratory in Milan to become heroin by a hideously corrosive chemical process.

  That was excitement, that was daring. Bindo envisioned the cleverness of the turbaned tribesmen, the resourcefulness of the brave couriers, the exhilaration of living precariously every day on the verge of discovery and death. But as for the pushers on the street, beh, who gave a damn about them? They were dirt under Bindo’s feet. More contemptible still were the ultimate consumers, the sick offal of the city squares and back alleys, the dregs of the human race. If they perished from their obsession with the substance he bought and sold, it was no concern of his. Another crop of customers would rise up at once to take their place.

  Or rather, they would have risen up, if His Holiness had not announced his new crusade, his Anno Sacro Anti-droga.

  CHAPTER 4

  Say I submit and go—suppose I fall

  Into some folly?…

  Inferno II, 34, 35.

  “My umbrella,” said the Archbishop of Florence, getting down on his knees to look behind the heap of rubbers in the bottom of his wardrobe. “I seem to have mislaid it.”

  “Excellency, I have it right here.” The priest who was the archbishop’s secretary helped him to his feet, accompanied him to the door of the archiepiscopal palace, popped open the umbrella and put it in his hand. Then he reached forward and buttoned the archbishop’s coat. “It’s very wet, Excellency.”

  The palace of the archbishop was near the cathedral. Holding his umbrella slanted against the rain, he hurried across the square, past the Baptistery and along the great cliff of the north side of the church, to enter the vast space of Santa Maria del Fiore through the door called the Porta della Mandorla. In the sacristy he permitted another assisting priest to robe him, although he would much rather have done it himself. Being waited on was a continual penance, but he accepted these services humbly and tried to be thankful.

  The daily morning ritual of ten o’clock mass was not strictly required of the archbishop, but he was a man of great simplicity and strong faith, and he felt it his duty to celebrate the Eucharist every day with the common folk of his famous parish. This sort of devotion had won him a reputation for saintliness, a regard that pained him, since he felt himself unworthy.

  Worshippers were few this morning because of the rain. In the enormous hollow spaces under the dome the archbishop’s voice was almost lost, but to those receiving the body and precious blood at the entrance to the sanctuary his words seemed, as always, meant for their ears alone. Today it was mostly elderly women lifting their faces to the cup, except for the young officer of the police who often appeared at ten o’clock.

  After the service the archbishop pulled off chasuble, stole and alb with his own hands and hurried back through the rain, trying to work up the courage to make a long-distance phone call to a certain cardinal in the Vatican.

  When he burst into his study, his secretary was already putting the call through. The archbishop barely had time to catch his breath before the phone was put into his hand. “He’s on the line, Excellency.”

  Pulling himself together, the archbishop spoke up heartily, “Your Eminence? Good morning! I hope I’m not calling at an inconvenient time?”

  “Of course not,” said the Prefect for the Pontifical Household. “When I’m told to expect a call from Your Excellency, I’m eager to receive it any moment of the day.”

  “Well, then, I’ll get down to business right away. Were you aware, Your Eminence, that the city of Florence will celebrate next year the seven-hundredth anniversary of the consecration of our cathedral?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. Congratulations! But I suppose it means a lot of fuss on your part, all sorts of celebrations and special services?”

  “Well, of course, Your Eminence. We’ve already set up a committee. Actually, we’ve set up a number of committees. But the most important task has been assigned to me.” The archbishop cleared his throat. “Your Eminence, I have been delegated to ask if His Holiness would honor the occasion with his presence. You can imagine how much it would mean to us all.”

  “Ah, I see!” The cardinal prefect laughed. “Of course you would think of the Holy Father at such a time. And I feel sure he will be delighted to attend, if it can be fitted into his calendar. It’s a good thing you called today. We’re just making up a broad outline of his schedule for next year. What day were you thinking of?”

  “Ah, there now, that’s the difficulty. It’s Easter Sunday morning. Of course I understand how busy—”

  “Easter Sunday! But that’s impossible. You must know that.”

  “Your Eminence, it would be only for an hour. He could simply pop in and pop out. We’ve made all sorts of—”

  “Pop in and pop out! His Holiness? What are you thinking of? On Easter Sunday? You know perfectly well what his schedule is like. One enormous event follows another—on Holy Thursday the washing of feet in the basilica, on Good Friday the celebration of the Passion, followed by the torchlight procession and the Via Crucis in the Colosseum, on Holy Saturday a ceremonial conclusion to the Holy Year Against Drugs, on Easter Sunday—”

  “But, Your Eminence, if he flew up by helicopter! We will cordon off a landing place beside the cathedral. He would merely mount a platform on the cathedral steps, give his blessing, send into flight the little mechanical dove to set off the fireworks—the old ceremony of the Explosion of the Cart, Your Eminence—and then get back in his helicopter and return to Rome in plenty of time for his appearance at noon on w
orldwide television.”

  “I assure you, it is utterly impossible. Now, my friend, do you have other business? I’m afraid I have a busy morning.”

  “But, please, Your Eminence, let me describe our project in detail.”

  “Forgive me, Your Excellency, I must go.”

  “I will call again another time.”

  The archbishop leaned back and shut his eyes with fatigue. He had failed. It was too bad—Signor Bindo would be disappointed. It had been Bindo’s idea in the first place to invite the Holy Father. He must be informed at once.

  But to the archbishop’s surprise Leonardo Bindo merely laughed. “He said no? That means nothing. You mustn’t give up, Your Excellency. You must try again.”

  “But you don’t know how difficult it is to change anyone’s mind at the Vatican. You must remember, my dear Signor Bindo, Roma locuta est, causa finita est. When Rome speaks, the matter is finished.”

  “Your Excellency, I assure you, the cardinal only needs time to get used to the idea. You must call him again in a day or two.”

  Reluctantly the archbishop agreed, although his heart wasn’t in it.

  It was time for lunch. The Archbishop of Florence was ascetic by long habit, and his secretary had to wheedle him into eating a bowl of soup at his desk. For Leonardo Bindo it was a different matter. Lunch was the central ornament of the day. Bindo always dined properly at a restaurant around the corner on Via de’ Servi.

  But first he would stop in at Santissima Annunziata. The church was a famous shrine, frequented by the rich wives of several of the bank’s major depositors, and it did no harm to display his piety.

  The clouds were parting as Bindo walked out into the square. Sunshine sparkled on the wet ribs of the cathedral dome and glittered in the splashes thrown up by the whining wheels of motorbikes as they tore through the puddles on the pavement.

  To his mild disappointment he was alone in the church except for one ragged old woman kneeling before the famous old painting of the Annunciation, which had been finished by an angel, according to legend.

  As he finished his perfunctory prayers and got to his feet, the old woman got up too, and touched his arm. “I’ll tell you a secret, Signore. That is the real one.”

  “The real one, Signora?”

  “The real mother of God. The others, they are not real. Only this one.”

  “Ah, I see.” Bindo smiled at the old woman. “Grazie tante, Signora. I did not know it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Florence, rejoice, because thy soaring fame

  Beats its broad wings across both land and sea,

  And all the deep of Hell rings with thy name!

  Inferno XXVI, 1–3.

  They stood together on the north side of the Villa L’Ombrellino, Giovanni Zibo and Lucretia Van Ott, the two founding professors of the American School of Florentine Studies, looking down across the river at the city of Florence.

  There it lay with its fabled domes and towers, filmed over with a pearly haze as the rain withdrew over Monte Morello. They could not see the life on the streets—the stream of motorbikes flying along Via Cavour, the coffee drinkers in the corner bars, the old man riding a bicycle along Via Ghibellina with a ladder on his shoulder, the American pusher in a Milwaukee Brewers cap shambling into Piazza Santo Spirito to peddle his wares. Nor could they hear the roar of the traffic, the lumbering wheeze of city buses, the whistles of policemen in white helmets, the murmurs of lovers embracing on street corners, the clatter of metal shutters rolling down over shop windows, the hoarse cheerful greetings of shopkeepers entering restaurants and cafes. Here there was only a sprinkling of church bells from across the river, the distant horns of cars far below at Porta Romana, and the spatter and plop of raindrops falling from the olive trees below the parapet.

  “Well,” said Lucretia grudgingly, “the view is certainly very fine.”

  Zee glanced at her anxiously. Now that he had signed the lease, it was important that she be satisfied. Lucretia was to be his colleague in the new school, just as she had been for the last five years at the University of Florence, and her contribution would be crucial. Lucretia was Dutch. She spoke five languages. She was an authority on the art of the Italian Renaissance. Taller than Zee, she was a handsome woman with light hair cut short like Hans Brinker’s. She was always in a hurry, her long skirt whipping in the breeze of her forward stride. Beneath her jaw a little curve of skin betrayed the fact that she was no longer altogether young.

  Now they turned their backs on the view and looked at the villa.

  “But it’s falling down,” exclaimed Lucretia in dismay.

  Zee’s heart sank. It was true. The place was even more dilapidated than he remembered. Had the stucco on the loggia been crumbling like that last week?

  Signor Bindo had given him a key. Entering on the north side between a pair of busts wrapped in plastic, they toured the villa slowly, examining it inside and out, choosing places for classrooms, a library, a dormitory, private spaces for the staff.

  The Florentine comune had achieved a number of necessary repairs before running out of money for the renovation of its new trade center, but much remained to be done. In the dormitory wing the plumbing was new, but everywhere else it was practically prehistoric. The plaster on the walls was cracked, and grey mildew crept over the faded frescoes lining the central hall. In the garden the playful bronze umbrella that had given L’Ombrellino its name had been reconstructed, but all the stairways needed repair, and some of the tiles on the three great terraces were missing. The tower was shabby. Wisps of grass grew between the toes of the stone maidens adorning the parapet overlooking the city.

  But the maidens were goddesses, after all, and the villa itself was of a grand design. Once it had belonged to the mistress of Edward VII, Mrs. Keppel. Under her dominion it had been gussied up with crystal chandeliers and vases of tuberoses and porcelain pagodas from the Brighton Pavilion. Now the place seemed an empty shell.

  Nothing, however, could be more distinguished than its seventeenth-century history. For fourteen years the villa had been the home of Galileo. It was here that he had written the work for which he was condemned by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. You, Galileo, have made yourself vehemently suspect of heresy—the awful condemnation conferred luster on the villa, in spite of the bushy tangles sprawling where there had once been orderly gardens, in spite of the shattered greenhouses, in spite of the uninhabitable tower and the antiquated kitchen.

  Now, examining the kitchen, Lucretia stopped frowning and began to laugh. Zee’s spirits rose. Once again they wandered through the spacious rooms, and this time Zee invented comic names for them, marble-cold though they were—the Drawing Room of the Queen Mother, the Rumpus Room of the Crown Prince, the Pavilion of the Concubines, the Antechamber of the Grand Vizier, the Dining Salon of the Grand Duke, the Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan.

  Leaving the house, they explored the grounds. Pulling out his sketchbook, Zee scribbled swift portraits of the goddesses on the parapet. Most of them were tugging ineffectively at cascading draperies that failed to conceal their youthful breasts and long magnificent thighs.

  “Look, there’s another one,” said Lucretia, forcing a path through a jungle of overgrown hedges to the last of the marble women. Like the others it was no particular goddess, only a miscellaneous nymph, a potluck dryad. Lucretia grinned at Zee. “It’s really very grand, the whole thing. But, good God, there’s so much to do.”

  “Books,” said Zee. “Books first.”

  “Furniture,” said Lucretia. “Beds, chairs. No, first we’ve got to line up the staff. A cook! How do we find a cook?”

  Anxiously they thrashed their way out of the hedges. The trustees of the new school were far away across the Atlantic in Massachusetts, but Zee could feel their eyes on his back as his little Saab plunged down the steep declivity of Via di Bellosguardo.

  “September,” the president of the trustees had said. “We’ll provide the students and the
rest of the faculty if you people will prepare the physical plant and be ready to begin in September.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Those men do violence to God…

  Inferno XI, 46.

  The day that had begun with rain was now bright and hot. Reluctantly Matteo Luzzi pulled a dark wool suit out of the back of his closet. As he tucked in the black dickey and fastened the Roman collar, he was already sweltering.

  When he emerged on the street he at once became Father Matteo. Old women murmured, “God bless you, Father,” young girls smiled at the cherubic curly-headed priest. In spite of himself Matteo felt noble and holy. Benignly he smiled back as if he would be glad to stop for a chat, but, alas, he was on an errand of mercy.

  From infancy Matteo had been destined for the priesthood. His mother’s girlfriends, in spite of their calling, had clasped their hands at the angelic child and gushed, “The boy will be a priest.” It had been the dearest wish of his mother, as she carted him here and there in the company of one wealthy patron after another. Somehow she failed to see little Matteo scissoring off the wings of butterflies to watch the frantic zigzag crawling of the mutilated insect bodies. From butterflies he went on to cats, and at the seminary there had been an unfortunate episode involving the death by gunshot of another student.

  It was an accident, everyone agreed, and no charges were brought against Matteo, but he was quietly expelled just the same.

  “Guns and cars,” complained the rector to Matteo’s mother. “The boy thinks of nothing else, when his head should be filled with visions of Christ on the cross.”

  Leaving the school was no loss to Matteo. He had been a feeble student anyway, dreaming during class, drawing sports cars in his notebook, with long streaks of speed streaming from Jaguars and Alfa Romeos. Often in the morning he played hookey, going after birds with a shotgun he kept in an abandoned garage behind the cafeteria.