The Dante Game

by Jane Langton

  They were looking for the reliquary stolen from the Museo del Duomo. Zee stood by politely while they ransacked the villa once again. It was absurd to think they would find anything. He remembered the reliquary. It was at least a meter tall, not something you could hide in a crack in the wall. After a while they gave up with good grace and went away.

  The bread, therefore, was all gone at the supermarket. Zee pushed the little cart up and down the aisles, looking for the other things on Lucretia’s list. At the checkout counter he had to wait his turn in line. Three women ahead of him were gossiping among themselves.

  Zee listened idly as one of them talked about an accident suffered by a friend of hers in a collision between a truck and a bicycle. “Poor Signor Paschelli!”

  “Signor Paschelli?” said Zee, breaking in. “Signor Paschelli of Bellosguardo? The caretaker at Villa Mercedes?”

  “Si, si,” said the woman, turning to him excitedly. And then she explained that Signor Paschelli had been walking his bicycle up the steep slope of the Via di Bellosguardo when a little Ape, one of those tiny three-wheeled trucks, had come barrelling around a sharp turn and knocked him down.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Zee, and begged to know if the old man was all right.

  The woman rolled her eyes upward and explained that he was in the orthopedic hospital on Viale Michelangelo, and another woman reported indignantly that the driver of the little truck had driven off at full speed, leaving him crumpled on the road.

  “When?” said Zee, feeling a stirring of interest.

  “Last Friday, a week ago, at noon.”

  Zee was stunned. Friday was the day Julia had disappeared. At noon the rest of them had all been away from the villa, and they had come home to find her gone.

  “Thank you, Signora,” he said, picking up his packages and hurrying away. Speeding home in the Saab, he thought about Signor Paschelli.

  The old man had been the caretaker at Villa Mercedes for a very long time. The villa was one of the great houses neighboring L’Ombrellino. From the day they had moved in, he had offered Zee and Lucretia good advice. He had instructed young Franco in the pruning of hedges. He had regaled them with tales about the grand old days. He was a mine of information about the international set and the cream of Florentine society.

  At the villa Zee dumped the groceries on the kitchen counter, then went looking for Homer Kelly. He found him sprawled on a lawn chair in his winter overcoat on the north loggia, tipped back against the bust of Galileo, reading a novel. Homer was still trying to keep one jump ahead of his class.

  He was not impressed by the news from the supermarket on Via Senese. “Listen, my friend, it could have been anybody. There must be five or six hundred cars going up and down Via di Bellosguardo every day.”

  “Come with me to the hospital,” pleaded Zee. “At least we can talk to Signor Paschelli.”

  The Viale Michelangelo was a broad tree-lined avenue curving high above the river. As they swept along in a sea of traffic the city kept opening out below them, closer at hand than it appeared from Bellosguardo. Rounding a hill they saw the great ribbed shape of the dome of the cathedral rising slowly like a hot-air balloon in majestic ascent.

  In the hospital they found Signor Paschelli in the old men’s ward. He was sitting up in bed, surrounded by visitors. His daughter stood at one side, tenderly feeding him spoonfuls of a delicacy brought from home. His son-in-law bowed over him solicitously on the other side. The parish priest stood at the foot of the bed holding a rosary.

  Graciously they made room for Homer and Zee. The old man was delighted to see them. He beamed. There were introductions, handshakes, nods and smiles. Signor Paschelli was eager to describe the incident in which he had been hurt. He had obviously told the story many times already, and had formed and shaped it into a work of art, a saga with a tumultuous climax and an exciting conclusion in which the hand of God had played a vital part.

  For Homer the old man’s Italian was too fast, but he had no difficulty in interpreting the whizzing motion of his good arm, the tossing up of his hand to indicate the collision, the collapse back on the pillow to show the way he had been thrown aside.

  Zee shook his head in sympathy and asked if Signor Paschelli had seen the driver.

  “Non so.” Signor Paschelli shrugged his good shoulder. “Ma penso sia stato un uomo giovane.”

  “A young man,” translated Zee.

  Signor Paschelli was not finished. “Un elettricista!” he cried, rearing up in bed.

  “An electrician? Why? Perché un elettricista?”

  Signor Paschelli smiled in triumph. He explained that while he was lying in agony on the side of the road, he had watched the little three-wheeled truck plunge away down the hill.

  His daughter raised her hands in horror to think that the wicked driver had so cruelly left his victim to die on the highway.

  “Abominevole!” agreed her husband.

  “Assassino!” protested the priest.

  But Signor Paschelli’s story was still in midflight. Gazing into space as if beholding a holy vision, he read aloud the miraculous words hanging before him in the air. “Elettricista Mobile!” These two words, he told Zee, had been written on the back of the truck in large red letters. He had caught a glimpse of them just before toppling backwards in a dead faint.

  “Meraviglioso!” gasped his daughter, astounded by this example of her father’s amazing powers of observation and recollection.

  “Magnifico!” said the son-in-law.

  “Splendehte!” murmured the parish priest.

  On the way out of the hospital, Zee pummelled Homer’s arm. “An electrician, of course. That little electrician’s clamp I found in the driveway, remember? It fits.”

  “You mean Julia Smith was kidnapped by a criminal electrician?” Homer was sarcastic, but Zee was too excited to notice. He rushed to the Saab and tried to wrench open the locked door.

  “Look, old pal,” said Homer, “before you start investigating all the electricians in the city of Florence, there’s something you should do first. You should call some of the other people who live at Bellosguardo. The truck probably belonged to some legitimate craftsman making a house call in the neighborhood, replacing old wiring or installing a new outlet.”

  “Innocent! A hit-and-run driver? Why was he in such a hurry in the first place?” Zee unlocked the car and groaned, “Oh, God, Homer, of course you’re right.”

  Back at home Zee consulted Lucretia and Tom O’Toole, who were better acquainted with the neighbors. Then with Tom’s list in hand, he called the Villa Brichieri, the Villa Bellosguardo and the Villa Mercedes. But no one had used the services of an electrician that particular Friday.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a plumber?” asked the British housekeeper in the Villa Brichieri. “We’ve been having the most god-awful trouble with the drains.”

  Zee was exultant. “You see?” he said to Homer. “That little truck had no legitimate business in this neighborhood at all. Now all I have to do is find an electrician working along Via Faentina.”

  Homer laughed. “You mean you’re connecting the electrician with that bus schedule you found the other day? Well, my friend, I suppose everything in the world is connected, in a way. I mean, in the cosmic order of things there must be some grand unity—electric guitars and birds in the trees, hard-boiled eggs and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, bus schedules and electricians. So why not? Carry on.”

  And then Homer went off to teach his class, and Zee settled down in the Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan to consult the Pagine Gialle of the phone book. With his breath steaming in the frosty air he ran his cold finger down the page of Elettricisti.

  What he wanted was a mobile electrician who worked out of his truck, someone whose home base was one of the little towns along Via Faentina—Badia Fiesolana, perhaps, or Fonte Lucente, or Pian del Mugnone, perhaps even Fiesole.

  A mobile electrician? Nobody in the phone book described himself as mobile. But ther
e were several establishments with addresses in the towns he was interested in. He marked them heavily with a pencil, then hurried into the warm dining room to listen impatiently while Homer lectured about Alberto Moravia, and Joan Jakes interrupted with fascinating fragments of fact. At last class was over. Zee hurried forward, pounced on Homer, and showed him the list. “Look here, an outfit called La Casa on Via Faentina, and there are five electricians in Fiesole.”

  “Well, good,” said Homer. “That’s just fine. Why don’t you show them to Rossi and let him take care of it?”

  “Because he doesn’t really believe she was captured,” insisted Zee. “He thinks she just went away like the rest.”

  Tom O’Toole wanted to ask Homer about Moravia, Dorothy Orme needed to know when the next paper was due, Joan Jakes was eager to show off. Humbly Zee stood aside and waited while Homer listened, shuffling papers into his briefcase, wondering what to do with his insane friend Zee, who was allowing himself to go so far off the deep end.

  The girl had left the school of her own free will, goddammit. At this moment she was probably drifting down Lake Como in a pleasure steamer, or shacked up with Kevin Banks in a hotel on the Riviera, or drinking champagne On the Via Veneto in the city of Rome.

  CHAPTER 41

  I held my tongue; but my desire showed through …

  Paradiso IV, 10.

  In the other part of the house Julia heard the faint ring of the phone. She knew where it was sequestered, behind a locked door in the other wing of the farmhouse. If only she could get at it, if only she could have two minutes alone with it, she could call the school and tell Zee where she was.

  But only Matteo and Signor Roberto had keys to the telephone room.

  Today the call was for Roberto.

  Carefully he shut the door before lifting the receiver. “Pronto?”

  “Listen, they’re looking in the right direction. One of your men lost a bus schedule in the driveway when they took her. It’s the schedule for Bus 12, naturally, and now they’re going to look along Via Faentina.”

  “Don’t concern yourself. Via Faentina is a long road.”

  “But it’s worse than that. Your driver had an accident on the way. He ran into an old man with a bicycle, and the old man remembers that it was an electrician’s truck. Zee has talked to him, and now he’s looking for an electrician on Via Faentina.”

  “Madre di Dio!”

  There was a pause, then the voice on the line said, “What do you think of the girl?”

  “The girl? Oh, the girl Julia. Fortunately she’s become docile.”

  “But beautiful? You think she’s beautiful?”

  This time it was Roberto who paused before speaking. “Beautiful? What difference does that make? She’ll be useful.”

  In Florence in the Palace of the Archbishop, His Excellency too was picking up the phone. The Vatican Prefect for the Pontifical Household was on the line. “Buona sera, Your Excellency. Can you hear me? What’s all that racket?”

  Rattled, the archbishop cupped both hands around the phone to block out the chanting of the women in the square. They were louder than ever, all shouting in unison. “Nothing, Your Eminence. Only some women. There is some sort of—ah—celebration in the street.”

  “I see. I only called to inquire how your preparations for the Easter festivities are coming along, and to say that we will be sending our security forces up by train on Holy Saturday, forty officers of the Vatican Vigilanza and forty halberdiers of the Swiss Guard.”

  The archbishop was stupefied. “But, Your Eminence, you told me thirty. Do you really mean to send fifty more? Is it really necessary? Our people are making their own superb arrangements. There is really no need—”

  “I’m sorry, but it is an absolute requirement.”

  “Do you mean, Your Eminence,” faltered the archbishop, “that we must find accommodation for fifty more people for the night of Holy Saturday?”

  Out-of-doors the women had started another chant. They were Americans, but they were calling in badly accented Italian for the ordination of women—“Ordinazione delle donne! Ordinazione delle donne!”

  Hugging the phone closer to his lips, the archbishop raised his voice and pleaded, “Surely, Your Eminence, they are unnecessary, beyond a few ceremonial members of the Swiss Guard?”

  “My dear archbishop, I have been leaning over backward to make it possible for the holy father to be present at your Easter morning ceremony honoring the founding of the cathedral. It is entirely contrary to custom. In my personal opinion he should not be making such a journey at such a time. Therefore, unless we can be utterly certain that he will be surrounded by his usual security forces, we cannot and will not permit him to attend.”

  “Allora,” sighed the archbishop. “In that case we will find room for them all.”

  “And the choir, you must find places for the sixty children in the choir.”

  “The choir? What choir?”

  “The young people who are to sing on the steps of the cathedral. They will be taking the pledge of purity, il voto di purità, the promise to abstain from narcotic addiction. A song has been composed for the occasion.”

  The women under the windows of the palace were screaming another slogan over and over again, Matrimonio per preti! Matrimonio per preti! The archbishop wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Marriage for priests, how scandalous. “You mean sixty young children will be standing on the steps of the cathedral with His Holiness? But, Your Eminence, all the places of honor have been assigned. I would have to dislodge people of prominence, officers of the comune, distinguished citizens.”

  “Then please do so. After all, you must see that the holy father’s anti-drug crusade is of paramount importance?”

  The archbishop was now completely cowed. “And housing, Your Eminence? All these young people, they too must be housed?”

  “Naturally.”

  The archbishop hung up in a panic, and put his head in his hands. Under his window there were terrible percussive noises. What were those women doing now?

  Later on he understood, when the priest who was his secretary brought him a long sheet of paper. Like that quarrelsome person Martin Luther, the noisy women had hammered a list of their pugnadbus demands to the door of the palace with carpet tacks.

  Demand number one was ordination for women; number two, marriage for priests; number three, birth control for wedded couples; number four—

  The hammering had been terrible, as though the tacks were being driven right into his skull. The archbishop had a splitting headache.

  CHAPTER 42

  … I—I alone—

  Must gird me to the wars—rough travelling …

  Inferno II, 3–4.

  Julia was fascinated by the pig Graziella. She liked her animal innocence and helplessness better than the swaggering machismo of Raffaello, Pancrazio and Carlo. And they were alike in being prisoners, Julia and the pig.

  She had been a captive for a week. It felt like a month, two months, a year. Julia leaned against the wooden bars of the pigpen door, murmuring nonsense to Graziella and scratching her back with a twig. Grunting with satisfaction, Graziella moved closer so that Julia could reach the remoter parts of her anatomy.

  “Porcellino, eh?” said Pancrazio, and Carlo made a snuffling noise, the Italian equivalent of oink-oink. Idly the two of them crouched in the sunshine against the wall of the brick barn, smoking, watching their prisoner.

  Julia could feel their eyes on her back. She was aware that her disfiguring pigtails had not discouraged their lively prurient interest. Raffaello was always finding excuses to touch her, to thrust his body against hers, to sit too close to her on the swaybacked sofa.

  In the big ground-floor common room of the farmhouse the men played cards. It was a large dark room with ugly furniture and small windows, hazy with cigarette smoke and soot from the charcoal in the iron stove, clamorous with the din of Carlo’s radio and the nearly defunct television set. The next roo
m was the kitchen, where Tina prepared the meals, keeping up a rapid fire of talk with her husband Egidio.

  On rainy days they stayed indoors. Julia sat on one of the folding chairs, flipping through magazines belonging to Raffaello and Pancrazio. With gestures she asked for needle and thread, and mended a sofa cushion. She repaired a loose leg of the card table, after making a twisting motion with her hand to show that the job required a screwdriver—a simple domestic feat that aroused great amusement. Sometimes she leaned back sleepily on the sofa and watched as the men dealt the cards and fanned them out and cursed and laughed like cardplayers the world over.

  Occasionally she joined them at poker. No speech was needed. She held up her fingers to say how many cards she wanted, and pushed into the center the pebbles that were poker chips.

  But she listened carefully, straining her ears to separate the careless stream of talk into words she could understand. Sometimes she knew they were talking about her. Their eyebrows shot up, they snickered and cast sidelong glances in her direction. Blandly she paid no attention. But when the word Pasqua was repeated, she stared at her cards and listened. Pasqua was Easter. The word kept coming up. Why were they talking about Easter?

  Slowly, very slowly, February became March. The weather turned springlike and mild. Wildflowers sprang up in the olive groves, and the green shoots of iris pallida. Tiny pink leaves opened on the grape vines like babies’ hands.

  Tina and Egidio were busier than ever. With a rotating blade pulled by his tractor Egidio dug up the kitchen garden. Tina planted it. The fertilizing of the vineyards and olive groves went on and on.

  Julia envied them their work in the open air. One day she made a dumb show of feeding the chickens, and Tina silently handed her the bucket. Once when Tina came storming into the house complaining about her macchina da cucire, her sewing machine, it was Julia who fixed it.