IT WAS ANTONELLA'S IDEA THAT ADAM KICK HIS HEELS for a couple of hours after their lunch. What with it being a Friday, she could break early from work and run him back to San Casciano. Piazzale Michelangelo was the designated pick-up point because it lay on her route out of town. The large, sweeping terrace sat on the hillside south of the river, offering a panoramic view over Florence, the terra-cotta roofscape breaking like a muddy sea around the towers, domes and spires.
He headed straight there, the prospect of trudging the streets of the city center on a bellyful of raw meat and red wine not a particularly appealing one. Better to flee the heat and make for the higher ground, the tree-clad slopes. Besides, the Romanesque church of San Miniato al Monte was perched just above the piazzale, and it was one of the few places Professor Leonard had insisted he visit.
It didn't disappoint. It was a small building, beautifully proportioned and elaborately decorated, with an unusual elevated choir.
The interior was gloomy and pleasantly cool. He hovered close to a tour group of Americans, hitching a free ride. At a certain point, he allowed them to wander ahead. Something had caught his eye: a large zodiac set in the stone floor, like a giant clock face, the astrological signs of the twelve constellations made of inlaid white- marble.
He patrolled the circumference, wondering just what on earth it was doing here, this pagan symbolism in a Christian church. Did anyone know the answer? Had the guide passed over it because there was no explanation? The guide did mention the zodiac before leading her party from the church but offered no real illumination. Its presence there was open to speculation, she said. Adam found this strangely comforting. If its exact significance had gone missing over the centuries, then why shouldn't the same hold true for the memorial garden? Maybe he really was on to something. Maybe the book in his hand really did hold the key to some lost interpretation.
He had found nothing new in Dante's words to suggest this was the case by the time Antonella showed up at the wheel of an extremely small car. She called it her "blue frog" and she said she loved it. This didn't square with the way she treated the little Fiat 600, hurling it around the corners, wrenching it up through the gears until it was screaming in protest.
Crammed into the passenger seat, hurtling down a precipitous cobbled street, Adam found himself wishing he had opted to thumb a lift back to San Casciano. The city ceased abruptly, cobbles giving way to dirt and dust, stone walls to high, banked hedgerows. It was a narrow country lane. Very narrow. Must be one way. Had to be, given the speed they were traveling at.
It wasn't. But it was nice to know the brakes worked.
He asked Antonella to drop him off on the outskirts of San Casciano. It wasn't that he feared for the lives of the residents— although the thought had crossed his mind—he was more concerned that Antonella might sense something of what had gone on the night before if allowed to come face to face with Signora Fanelli. He was only delaying the inevitable. When Antonella suggested coming by the pensione in the morning and transporting his bags to Villa Docci, he could hardly refuse the offer.
He found Signora Fanelli on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor of the trattoria. It was a position he recognized. She got to her feet, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, which didn't help.
It was lust, he realized, pure and simple, unassailable. He was no different from Paolo and Francesca in the second circle of Dante's Hell, blown about for all of time by fierce winds, doomed by their— how had Dante put it?—dubbiosi disiri. Their dubious desires.
"Is everything okay?"
"Yes," he replied absently, thinking that he'd already reached the fifth circle of Hell in Dorothy L. Sayers' translation and he'd yet to come across a sin he hadn't been guilty of at one time or another.
"The money for Harry?"
"Yes. No problem."
How much further would he have to descend into Dante's ordered underworld before he could finally declare himself innocent of the transgression on show?
"How did you get back?"
He told her.
"She's a beautiful girl, isn't she?"
"Is she?"
"You don't think so?"
"No. Yes. I suppose."
"She's wild, that one. Well, not anymore. But she used to be."
"Wild?"
"Like her mother. But it's different now. They say she's changed."
"Changed?"
"That's what they say."
He headed for the bar in Piazza Cavour before dinner, as he did every evening, aware that this was the last time he would watch the ragged boys playing football, scampering to and fro between the goalposts chalked onto the walls, stopping to splash their faces with water from the old stone trough whenever one of them scored. The piazza started to fill—slow but steady trickles of humanity from the side streets—and the young footballers grudgingly relinquished their pitch to their elders.
You could go a whole day in San Casciano barely seeing a soul, but come early evening, the entire town (or so it seemed) took to the streets, making for Piazza Cavour. Couples, families, black- shawled widows bent with the weight of years: They all gathered, sauntering around.
Signora Fanelli had painted a picture of a fractured community, yet here they all were, congregating, carrying on as normal. He wondered what their stories were, and whether thirteen years was really time enough to forgive and forget.
He worked during dinner, although at a certain point it ceased to be work, Dante's wild imagination and spectacular imagery carrying him effortlessly along. On reaching the seventh circle of Hell, he was pleased to finally encounter a sin he hadn't committed: murder. Strangely, Dante rated this as a less grievous offense than both hypocrisy and flattery, which he had placed in the eighth circle. Here, a group of souls was walking endlessly around in a circle, a devil slicing them open from top to toe each time they passed him, only for the wounds to reheal. These were the Sowers of Discord and Schism, the prophet Muhammad chief among them. True to form, Dante had devised a punishment appropriate to the sin, splitting each of them apart for all eternity, as they had sought to divide others during their lifetimes.
But amongst all the unfortunates being eviscerated by devils, boiling in rivers of blood and choking on human excrement, there was still no sign of any of the characters from the garden. Frustrated, he started to skip ahead, skimming the pages for their names: Flora, Zephyr, Daphne, Apollo, Hyacinth, Echo, Narcissus. This is what he was doing when a figure appeared at his shoulder. "Hi."
Adam turned and looked up at Fausto. He appeared more presentable than before. His chin was still blackened with stubble but he'd run a comb through his long lank hair, and he was wearing a clean shirt, buttoned up to the neck—small concessions to smartness that didn't quite mask a congenital disregard for externals.
"Can I?" he asked, dropping into the chair opposite.
Adam pointedly checked the number of cigarettes in his packet. "Sure."
Fausto smiled. "Don't worry, I brought my own this time."
"How are you?"
"Good. Tired. Working too hard."
"I don't even know what you do."
"The minimum," grinned Fausto. "I have a small place on the hillside there. There's always something to do. Right now I'm building a shed for a pig."
"You have a pig?"
"Not yet. But it'll be the happiest pig alive when I do." He glanced at Adam's book. "Dante, eh? Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.,,,