by Alex Preston
‘Was it––? Did you––?’ He looks at her and is silent.
‘After they got rid of the baby, they had to clear other stuff out of me, a hurried operation before they got me out of the hospital. I remember Morandi saying, This is going to hurt. But it didn’t, not at all, and I’d be surprised if anything does again.’
‘Because of what Carità had done to you.’
‘That? Nothing. Do you understand nothing?’ She burrows beneath the covers again and he resumes his helpless bedside vigil.
The days pass and the bruises lose their brilliance. The blood which had flowed so thick and red between her legs that he’d quickly used up the bandages and had resorted to tearing up George Keppel’s Turnbull & Asser shirts for dressings, slowly abates. He brings the gramophone up to the room and they sit in darkness, her head in his lap, listening to Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, the Goldberg Variations, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. Still, she doesn’t cry. After dinner, which he carries up from the kitchen, his powers of culinary invention increasingly tested as the garden turns in on itself for winter, they sit on the bed and stare at the triptych.
With a choir singing Rachmaninoff’s Alleluias in the background, he tells her the story of the triptych, of Filippino Lippi’s life, of the painter’s dissipated father. With the covers pulled up, her head in his lap, he speaks for hours, thinking back to his father’s gallery in the chapel at Aston and the stories Sir Lionel had told him about Filippino. He calls to mind lines from Browning’s ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’, from Vasari and Cellini. That which he cannot remember, he invents, hoping that a story, even one as melancholy as this, might reach her in a way he cannot.
*
He tells her of the vagabond priest, Fra Lippo, the greatest painter of his day, a rogue, a libertine. He’d made a teenaged nun pose as the Madonna, had locked the doors of the cathedral. Nine months later our hero, Filippino, was born.
The atmosphere of his youth was rich with the scent of gesso and tempera, with the sound of apprentices grinding pigments, stretching cartone, hammering gold leaf. Sandro Botticelli, Lippo’s most gifted pupil, was often there, helping the older Lippi, schooling the younger. When Fra Lippo was poisoned by his brother-in-law, dying on the floor of Spoleto cathedral, Filippino went to live with Botticelli in Florence.
Botticelli introduced Filippino to Lorenzo de Medici and very soon the young man with the famous name was commissioned by Florentine bankers to decorate family chapels, wedding chests, tondo portraits of wives and mistresses. As he turned eighteen, he was able to call upon the city’s greatest artists, Verrocchio, Perugino, Ghirlandaio.
Filippino was certain he’d eclipse even his father, whose name trailed like a ghost behind him. He was, after all, Filippino – Little Filippo. In 1483 he completed the frescoing of the Brancacci Chapel that had been halted sixty years earlier, when his father’s master, Masaccio, was struck down by the plague. At twenty-five he was painting himself into history, onto the walls of all of the city’s most magnificent churches.
But life was chaotic. He’d inherited his father’s love of wine and women. The days began to darken. Botticelli’s great love, Simonetta Vespucci, died of tuberculosis and he fled to Rome. Filippino was passed over for a number of major commissions, left others unfinished, drowning himself in the city’s fleshpits. There were love affairs that ended in rows. His closest friend, Betto Pialla, was arrested for sodomy and hung on the strappado at the Murate prison. Filippino spent a night in debtor’s gaol before Verrocchio bailed him out. His work became obvious, slapdash, cynical. There were new painters appearing whose work made Filippino’s seem stale and outmoded – Michelangelo and Leonardo in Florence, Bosch and Dürer abroad.
Botticelli returned to Florence, Esmond continues, and painted three masterpieces: Primavera, The Birth of Venus and Diana and Actaeon. Each of them used as the principal character the face and body of Simonetta, whom Botticelli said he saw in his mind clearer than any living person. Filippino’s old master was a mournful, bitter figure now, caught up in his memories of his dead lover, his increasing religiosity, his professional rivalries.
He reaches out for Ada and takes her hand. The world grew darker still, he says. The priest Savonarola came to the city, preaching from the Book of Revelation about the horrors to come. He was followed by keening, dead-eyed acolytes, the Weepers. Black-coated Officials of the Night rounded up prostitutes, cutting their noses off to mark them; homosexuals were beaten and dragged through the streets. Women were no longer encouraged out; when they did leave their homes, the new city frowned upon colour, decoration. The world of twill and lawn and damask and brocade became dull overnight, all prompted by this flat-faced monk in his Fra Angelico-frescoed cell in San Marco. I’m not an artist, just a humble craftsman, Filippino would say when people asked him what he did.
Then King Charles VIII of France crossed the Alps and, picking up Swiss mercenaries along the way, pitched siege outside the walls of Florence. There was an outbreak of the plague, some of the city’s walls were burning. Penitents whipped themselves on the steps of the Duomo. Food ran out and people starved. The flames of hell seemed close to them then. A pyre was built in the centre of the Piazza della Signoria. The city brought its armfuls of pagan texts, graven images which formerly, encouraged by Poliziano, by Pico della Mirandola, they’d hoped to smuggle into their Christian faith. The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Picture, Esmond says, Filippino arguing with Botticelli, desperate to stop him carrying out all three of his Simonetta-inspired masterpieces. Finally his old master leaves with Diana and Actaeon, sobbing, saying that he must make his peace with God. That only in the kind cruelty of Savonarola’s words can he escape from the despair that has hunkered over him since Simonetta, coughing blood, left the world. Filippino watches from the window as the painting burns. That evening, he begins the triptych. He doesn’t sleep until the three paintings are finished.
Now we see him, ten years later, dying in the airy bedroom of a house overlooking the Piazza della Signoria. Only forty-eight. The triptych is at the end of the bed – Esmond points towards it – hanging there, watching over him just as it watches over us. Out of his window he can see the massive form of David moving by. One of the last things he did was to vote on where Florence should house its new masterpiece, sculpted by the man who would go on to be the true inheritor of Lippo’s title, the greatest painter in Florence – Michelangelo. The triptych is his own monument, a relic of those sinister days when it seemed as though Florence would fall.
As he dies, he feels himself being soaked into the triptych. These paintings, he realises, are enough. They may not have the surface beauty of Primavera or the grace of his father’s work, but they tell the truth, and that is what matters. To an echo of applause as David is set down outside the Palazzo Vecchio, Filippino drifts deeper into the paintings, feeling the tendons and sinews of his own body coil around those of St John. He begins to disappear. Now his wife is here, mopping his brow with a damp cloth, his son, another Filippo, mouthing words he cannot hear, grasping his hand. As if lifted on a cloud he looks down on himself, on his family. He dies with the triptych before him and tendrils of love pouring out from his beatless heart into the still, soft world.
*
He tells the story of Filippino over and over, becoming more inventive with each iteration, knowing that the brighter the images he offers Ada, the more she is able to leave her own suffering. It’s not a happy story, but it begins to gather a life, and helps to heal her mind, just as his careful ministrations heal her body. After a fortnight, she rises from the bed. The scar on her ear has become infected, an indignant red; her wrist remains in its cast, the nails do not grow back; otherwise she is as recovered as she’ll ever be. In silence, Esmond helps her to dress, pulling the old tunic with its scent of lavender over her head, lacing her shoes. When they are finished, they stand facing each other, and she takes his hands and leans forward to kiss him.
*
Esmond put
s in a call to Pretini on the W/T that afternoon. It is the twenty-third of November. ‘Ada is up and about,’ he says. ‘We’re ready to help again. To do whatever we can.’
A little after nine that evening, there is a ring at the front door. Pretini is with them, and the Professor and Elio, his arm in a sling. As Esmond and Ada are greeting their guests, a motorbike pulls into the driveway with its front light off. Bruno and Alessandro skip up the steps to the door and soon they are all in the drawing room, a fire roaring in the grate. The Professor has brought brandy and a lasagne made by his wife, which they heat in the kitchen. Ada is distant but composed. The men are careful with her, take care to let her know that she is included in their plans but not unthinkingly. After they have eaten, Bruno passes around a box of Toscanos. Pretini looks first at Esmond, then at Ada.
‘A second wave of round-ups this weekend. They’re trying to grab every Jew in the city, this Judenfrei dream of Mangianello’s. We’ve been attempting to get as many as possible out, but the Germans are breathing down our necks. The convent at Prato was raided last night. Six nuns arrested for harbouring Jews, although Cardinal della Costa marched down to the Stadtskom-mandatur immediately in full sacerdotal dress and had them released. We’re going to send two families from the Oltrarno up to you tomorrow. They’re holed up at the back of the salon at the moment, but there simply isn’t room for them.’
‘There are too many who need our help, too few of us to give it,’ the Professor says. ‘The best we can do is warn them and hope they get away. I have spoken to Rabbi Cassuto. He’s aware of the dangers. He’s tough, for such a young man.’
Esmond nods. The fire has died down and he adds another vine branch to it.
‘We need to take the fight to the enemy,’ Bruno says, slapping his hand on his thigh and making Ada start. ‘It’s not enough to simply react. As the Allies approach – and they will, soon, Monte Cassino is only a temporary hold-up – we need to make the Fascists feel like they’re under attack from within and without.’ He throws his cigarillo into the fire and puts a matchstick in his mouth, which he moves from side to side as he thinks.
‘So what do we do?’ Esmond asks.
‘We attack. Our first target is Gino Gobbi. A Colonel in the MVSN. He’s in charge of the Blackshirt squads rounding up conscription shirkers in the hills. We have information that he’s planning to lead a more serious attempt on Monte Morello just before Christmas.’ He knocks back his glass of brandy. ‘We’re going to get him before he does.’
‘Why not go for Carità?’ Esmond says. ‘Or Alberti? Why go for this Gobbi? I’ve never even heard of him.’
‘Because he’s easy and he’s official,’ Bruno says. ‘He lives on his own in an apartment on the Lungarno Soderini, just upriver from Antonio’s. He’s regular, leaves his place on the dot of seven-thirty every night and strolls up to a restaurant near the Ponte alla Carraia. We’ll hit him on the evening of the first of December.’
‘We want to get Carità as much as you do,’ Alessandro says. ‘But he’s heavily guarded. He’s a paranoid fucker and we’ll need to plan carefully. But we’ll get him, never fear.’
‘Fine,’ Esmond says, looking across at Ada, who is sitting still, listening. ‘At least we’re doing something.’
21
The next day, they hear nothing from Pretini. They had been expecting the Jewish families to arrive, but when evening comes and there is still no news, Esmond calls down to the salon. There is no response, just the dull buzz of static. It is dark outside. They have not yet had dinner. He radios through to the partisans at Monte Morello and Maria Luigia answers.
‘They’re all down in the city,’ she says. ‘Carità has Penna. We shouldn’t speak any more. The Germans will be listening in. Goodbye.’
A little after midnight, the doorbell rings. Esmond and Ada are both in bed, neither asleep. They go downstairs together, Esmond looking through the shuttered window beside the door before opening it. Antonio and Tosca are standing on the doorstep. He is shaggy-headed, exhausted-looking; she is as neat as usual, but agitated.
‘Carità raided the salon this morning. Pretini had no chance,’ she says as they follow Esmond into the kitchen. ‘They found the two families in the rooms at the back, handed them over to the Gestapo, hauled Pretini and his assistant, Giacomo, off to the Villa Triste. At least we found out where the leaks have been coming from. There was a priest with Carità, a Father Idelfonso. He’s been hanging around the monasteries and convents, picking up news from the monks. Unworldly bastards don’t know any better and reveal everything. One of them must have told him about Pretini. Now we just have to hope that Pretini’s able to keep his mouth shut about the location of the camp.’
Esmond places a bottle of grappa on the table and Tosca pours herself a drink. ‘He’s tough. There’s nothing to worry about there. And we’re still going to take Gobbi down,’ she says, gulping and pouring another. ‘We need to prove they can’t scare us.’
On Saturday morning, the twenty-seventh, Ada and Esmond stand in the garden with their binoculars trained down on the streets around the synagogue. They see nothing, they hear nothing, and they feel useless and cut off now that Pretini is no longer on hand to keep them up to date with news from the streets. It is only on the Sunday evening, when Gino Bartali pulls up on his bicycle, his peaked cap and racing colours bright even in winter, that they learn.
Bartali tells them that SS Captain Alberti brought specially trained commandos over from Trieste to manage the round-up. Jews were hunted down in all corners of the city: in the convents, in the hospitals, in the empty galleries of the Bargello where several had been hidden by Professor Rossi. Eight Jews in their seventies were taken from a care home in Novoli and rolled in their wheelchairs to the slatted train at Santa Maria Novella station.
Carità had led gangs through the streets of the Jewish quarter breaking windows, entering houses and looting. What they didn’t steal, they destroyed. They found six grubby-faced children hiding in a cellar and Carità led them up to the station himself, waving the train off as it chugged slowly out of Santa Maria Novella station. That train would eventually, after agonising stops on windswept mountain passes, long waits at empty platforms whose lamps swung yellow light into blackness – all of this seen through slats no wider than a finger – end up at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The last man who stepped onto the train at Santa Maria Novella that Sunday morning, holding himself very tall despite the weight he must have felt, was Nathan Cassuto, the city’s youthful Chief Rabbi.
Bartali also gives them a message from Bruno. They are to meet at the side of Santo Spirito at six-thirty the next evening. Esmond should bring his revolver.
22
It is cold as they make their way down into the city. The trees have dropped their leaves on the lanes and there is damp squelching beneath their feet. It had rained earlier in the day and now there is a fine mist. The lights of the town look smudged. Esmond is wearing George Keppel’s ulster, the revolver snug in one pocket.
As they reach the first houses, he hears the drone of aeroplanes overhead. They look up as searchlights slash across the sky. The anti-aircraft guns crackle over Fiesole but the planes surge on, through the air and mist.
The red coal of a solitary Toscano burns in the shadows behind the facade of Santo Spirito. Esmond and Ada walk along to the right of the church where they find Bruno attached to the glowing cigarillo, Elio and Alessandro beside him. ‘We’re waiting for Antonio and Tosca,’ Bruno says. Esmond stands back and looks up at the darkened windows of St Mark’s. He picks out the French windows of his old studio, the rooftop terrace where he’d spent his sweltering days three summers ago. This is his seventh December in Florence, he realises. He asks Bruno for a smoke and lights it, brightening them all for a moment with the flare of his match. Five earnest, eager faces. A few minutes later, Antonio and Tosca arrive. They gather around Bruno.
‘Elio’s going to make the hit,’ Bruno says. Esmond has noticed before th
at, when they discuss death, they speak like characters in a trashy American novel. He gives a little smile in the darkness. ‘We’ll get him in front of San Frediano, at the Piazza di Castello. I’ll be waiting around the corner. If Elio misses, I’ll go after Gobbi.’
‘I won’t miss,’ Elio says. He looks very young in the dim light, Esmond thinks. His round glasses reflect the Toscano.
‘There are guards on both bridges – the Vittoria and the Carraia. We need to have them covered. Make sure that Elio can escape. If they come near, we shoot them, is that understood? Antonio and Tosca, you take the guards on the Ponte della Vittoria; Esmond and Ada, you’ll be on the Ponte alla Carraia. Alessandro will have the Moto Guzzi to get Elio away afterwards. Listen, Ada, here’s a gun for you.’ He hands her a small Beretta that she places quickly in the pocket of her jacket.
The seven friends look at each other for a moment and then, without speaking, make their way in separate groups up towards the river. Esmond hears the engine of the motorbike start and then fade into the distance. He and Ada wend their way through the streets directly behind the Lungarno until they come to a small passageway leading to the riverfront. They lose themselves in shadows and look over towards the bridge. The two German soldiers are smoking in the mist, waterproof jackets over their uniforms. There is no traffic on the Lungarno. They can hear the river slapping against its banks every now and again, the sound of the Germans talking. Esmond looks at his watch. It is twenty past seven. The revolver is heavy in his pocket.
They hear the bells of Santo Spirito chime seven-thirty, those of San Frediano answering a few moments later. Ada places a swift kiss on his cheek. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she says. They wait. The breeze over the river swirls the mist like a brush through grey paint. They wait for the sound of Elio’s gun. Five minutes pass, now ten. When the bells toll quarter to eight, first Santo Spirito, then San Frediano, Esmond gives Ada’s hand a squeeze.