For quite a while, I managed to keep up with the perspiring mass of the catchpoll who, despite the fact that he was giving his all, was losing ground.
"To the left, he's gone to the left!" yelled Sfasciamonti, his voice broken by his efforts.
Hardly had I turned to the left than, to my great surprise, I saw that the pursuit was about to come to an end. The fugitive, who had hitherto kept up and even increased his lead, had fallen.
Sfasciamonti was almost on top of his prey when the man recovered his senses: skilfully dodging, he rolled to one side so that Sfasciamonti went flying into the void and fell in his turn. Although exhausted, the fugitive ran once more in the direction of the Theatre of Pompey; at that moment, I too had almost reached him. I was, however, distracted by an unexpected event: our man had left a parcel on the ground, so that when I arrived, I found myself at an equal distance between the object and the man who had got rid of it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that only then was Sfasciamonti rising to his feet with something of a limp.
"You, go ahead!" he exhorted me, breaking once more into a run.
It was pure folly on my part unhesitatingly to follow that order in circumstances in which, given the extreme excitement that reigned, no one could possibly discern the consequences of his acts. So I did not leave off from running even when I saw the individual hesitate between right and left, then, quite unexpectedly, rush into a doorway which he perhaps already knew to be open. I crossed myself mentally and, hastening through the door in my turn, heard his footsteps on the stairs and rushed headlong after him.
The mad upward pursuit, amongst the inky shadows of the stairway, as I tripped clumsily on the steps in an effort to keep my balance, running with hands outstretched before me into clammy landing walls, all seems to me today the height of idiocy which could have resulted in something far worse than what in fact happened. It was scant consolation to hear Sfasciamonti's approaching footsteps, still far below.
I do not know, and perhaps I never shall, whether the man we were following already knew where the steps of that building led. Nevertheless, it came as no small surprise to me to see, in the last stretch of the staircase, the steps becoming, first bluish, then grey, and in the end whitish. Thus it was that, suddenly, almost forgetting what 1 was doing there and what awaited me, Dawn's rosy fingers gently parted my eyes and showed me, free at last of dependence on candles and torches, the precious spectacle of a new day being born.
I had opened a door at the top of the stairs. At first, it was only half open, then I was on a terrace. Above and all around I was engulfed by the harsh clarity of morn: first light had already appeared when I caught up with Sfasciamonti at Campo de Fiore but, so immersed was I in action that I was almost unaware of it.
What happened next took place in a flash. I was completely out of breath. Rather than fall to the ground, I bent over, with my hands on my knees. Then I heard Sfasciamonti's voice, which seemed to come from the floor below.
"Forget it boy, 'tis no spyglass…"
I turned around and saw him. He had hidden behind me; now he faced me. He collared me and thrust me against the penthouse wall, gripping me tightly. His knife was pointed at my belly. It was pointless to move; if I struggled he would stab me.
He was ill-dressed and he stank. He had pitch black eyes and a pockmarked skin. He might have been thirty years old — thirty badly lived years; thirty years of prison, hunger and nights spent sleeping in the open. He looked at me through one eye only. The other squinted like that of a stray cat.
Thanks, perhaps, to faculties unnaturally intensified by closeness to death, I read in his expression… indecision: should he kill at once and face the other, or run yet again? But if so, where? The terrace was in fact a mere corridor running around the penthouse at the top of the staircase. In a lightning flash of intuition, I understood how stupid I had been: I had followed him until he felt forced to kill me.
"'Tis an accursed, what do you call the things?…" Sfasciamonti's voice thundered, still coming from the stairs, but now very near us.
The corner of the eye that stared at me had sought an escape route. I could see that it had found none.
Two, perhaps three seconds, and I would know the feeling of a cold blade in my liver. I had an idea.
"The German will kill you," I managed to say, despite having my neck half crushed in his grip.
He hesitated. I felt his hand tremble.
Then it happened. Under Sfasciamonti's elephantine weight the door swung open with unbelievable violence, like armour- plated lighthouse doors smashed by the force of the raging sea. It struck my assailant's shoulder, and he tottered from the blow. Turning over and over in the air, the knife shot up between our two faces and fell to the ground with a clatter.
"A mackeroscopp!" exclaimed Sfasciamonti triumphantly, bursting onto the terrace and shaking at arm's length a half- broken metal device, while my adversary, shocked by the blow he'd received, prepared to make a break towards the left.
Sfasciamonti saw his face and yelled, with an undertone of indignation: "But you're not Chiavarino!"
We threw ourselves onto the stranger, but it was precisely in so doing that I tripped over a large brick. I rolled over on the ground and all my strength was not enough to stop my body's slide to the edge of the terrace. I fell into the abyss of the courtyard, thus suffering just punishment for all that night's demented conduct.
I fell backwards. Before being hurled to my death thirty or forty feet below, I had time to behold the dumb stupor stamped on Sfasciamonti's face: in a timeless moment, I thought absurdly that such was perhaps the sentiment (and not pain or desperation) that seizes us at the instant when we witness the imminent death of another man. Poor Sfasciamonti, I thought, just after saving me from being stabbed he again lost me.
Despite the singularity of that instant, my memory retained a detail which the catchpoll failed to notice. While I was falling to my death, just before disappearing into the abyss, the fugitive replied to the threat I had uttered moments before.
"Teeyooteelie."
Then with the sky, framed by the four walls of the courtyard, swallowing me up ever faster, faster, I offered a heartfelt prayer to the Almighty for the forgiveness of my sins, and, with heart and spirit turning to my Cloridia, I awaited the end.
Day the Third
9th J ULY, 1700
It was the purest and lightest of chants, nor could I have said whence it came; it was, if anything, nowhere and yet all around me.
It had an air of innocence about it, of timid red-cheeked novices, of remote and solitary hermits. It was a tender psalmody and it delighted my ears as I became aware of my new condition.
At last, I realised: it was the chant of a confraternity of pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee. It was men and women who made up the sublime blend of voices, sweet and robust, silvery and stentorian, manly and womanly; they had risen with the sun, and now they raised a song of thanksgiving to the Lord as they set out on the visit to the four basilicas to seek the remission of their sins.
The rectangle of now azure sky from which I had fallen was still there above, crystalline and immobile.
I was dead and, at the same time, alive. My eyes were full of that rectangle's blue, but I could no longer see. The sky flowed from my eyes like angels' tears. Only the music, only that pilgrims' choir drew me to itself, almost as though it alone could keep me alive.
The last sensory impressions (the precipitous fall, the walls of the courtyard swallowing me up, the air pressing against my back) had been swept away by that holy melody.