"I'm not sure, but I suspect that the first one is related to Dante's seven levels of Hell."
"What? Oh, from The Inferno. Yes, I see," she said, leaning forward for a closer look. "Yes, there are seven circles. Of course, that makes sense. Perhaps they are related to the long stanza. After all, it mentions seven pilgrimage destinations."
“Eight,” he corrected her. “So it may not be related to that at all.”
For lack of something more concrete, she observed, “Well, seven is still close to eight. Besides, weren’t there actually eight levels of Hell in The Inferno?”
"That may be, Antonietta. I’m really not sure,” he replied. “Anyway, we have some work to do to decipher them."
“Sure, but first, can you tell me what the second drawing is, Professore?”
“Of course. It’s the leaning tower, Contessa.”
“What? You mean THE Leaning Tower - The Leaning Tower of Pisa?”
“Absolutely!”
“What makes you think that?” she queried in apparent confusion.
“Read the sixth stanza of the poem.”
She gathered up the poem and carefully read the sixth stanza:
Thenceforth find Leonardo, count his way
Eighty paces toward the tilt
And left (from lantern) eighty more
The tilt shall be found in the way,
And falter on the selfsame day?
“Oh, my goodness. I never caught that before. ‘Leonardo’ doesn’t refer to Leonardo Da Vinci. Tis Leonardo do Pisa – Fibonacci! And the stanza refers to the Piazza dei Miracoli. Start from the statue of Fibonacci in the Camposanto, and, following the instructions, you end up at The Leaning Tower. Mio Dio!”
At this she glanced upward, exclaiming, “Oh, Paulo, this is fabulous! It’s finally beginning to come together. After all this confusion, it’s starting to make sense.”
Eyeing her victoriously, he posited, “Actually, I would say it has been more error than confusion. But therein lies the solution to the whole puzzle. I believe that we are closing in on some answers, Contessa.”
Chapter 3
Arcetri
The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.
-Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1294)
Arcetri - 1631
Galileo lounged on the veranda, gazing absentmindedly toward the garden below. As he took in the placid view he contemplated his next project. It was too bad that Kepler had died. He would have loved to have traded letters with him regarding his new book. Kepler’s had been the only intellect to match his own. Now he would have to move ahead entirely on his own.
Suddenly, a thought came to mind. Noticing a small remnant of wood extending laterally from the brick wall surrounding the garden, he said to himself, “Ah, here it is! Here is the introduction to my next challenge. I shall build a beam, cantilevered from that wall, and this will be my first experiment on the mechanics of the materials that make up our world.” The problem of the beam had perplexed him for half a lifetime. Although he was certain that the solution was related to Archimedes’ principle of the lever, up to now he had been unable to carry his theory further. Accordingly, he resolved that the logical step was to perform careful experiments, and these he would commence as soon as possible.
1997
Antonietta relaxed within the kitchen and, the morning sun pouring indiscriminately in through every window, she pressed her first cup of espresso gratefully to her lips. Her brain cells abruptly responding to the shot of caffeine, she suddenly asked, “Why are we back here in Arcetri, Professore?”
Contemplating momentarily, Paul responded nonchalantly, “No reason, other than the fact that the message says ‘Next back to whence footsteps commenced’.”
“Oh, right - I forgot about that,” she admitted, but then added inquisitively, “Isn’t there a line before that in the poem?
“Yes, there is…” he murmured absently.
“Well, what does it say?” she prodded impatiently.
Examining the poem, he read, “It says, ‘Thence on to hidden Abbey founder’.”
“Oh, right,” she said thoughtfully. “I forgot that, too. We have no idea where that one is, so we’re back here. What do you suggest?”
“I’m thinking that ‘whence footsteps commenced’ could mean something very specific. It could mean his footsteps, which would be where Galileo was born - in Pisa. But I doubt that it means that. If I am right, the entire stanza is meant to be viewed as events unfolding in chronological order. So I am guessing that it means where our footsteps commenced.”
“And where would that be?”
“Frankly, I’m not sure. I wasn’t actually here, Antonietta.”
She pondered for a moment and then volunteered, “Perhaps it means at Galileo’s house Il Gioiello. Perhaps there is a clue there.”
Frowning momentarily, he offered with poorly disguised condescension, “But that’s what I meant – that’s where his footsteps would have commenced, not ours.”
Ignoring his veiled insult, she responded, “But think of it this way, wouldn’t he also view that as the place where the discoverer’s footsteps commenced? After all, I did in fact purchase the credenza across the street from Il Gioiello.”
He stared out the window for a moment, but then he turned to her and spoke barely above a whisper, “Of course, Contessa, you are right. It makes perfect sense. It’s just a short walk from here. Why don’t we go have a look?”
Perplexed by his sudden change in demeanor, she nonetheless responded, “Sounds good to me.”
Suddenly, he caught her by the shoulders, and murmured contritely, “I’m sorry, Antonietta, I was rude. I assumed that I knew everything, and that you are the pupil. But of course, you are not. We are in fact in this together. I promise I will try to do better.”
Placing her hands on his outstretched arms, she smiled convivially and offered, “You needn’t apologize, Paulo. Hold on, you’re still jetlagged, aren’t you. I’ll bet you didn’t sleep at all last night. Am I right?”
And now it was his turn to smile, “Well, er, I suppose you are right,” and he grinned with relief at her proffered olive branch. “But that doesn’t excuse my acting like a stronzo.”
Now tugging him into a full-fledged hug, she giggled and responded, “Apology accepted. And my, such colorful language! I had no idea you spoke Italian, my erstwhile James Bond.”
He gently pulled back from her embrace and posited the single word, “Grazie.”. Now reassured in their mutual resolve, the pair gulped down their coffee and off they went in search of Galileo’s house.
It was a gorgeous morning, the Tuscan hills enhanced by a touch of morning fog that lent a halo to the distant skyline of Firenze. As the pair strolled silently along, Paul reached across himself with one arm and pinched himself with the other.
Frowning at this incongruous action, Antonietta queried, “What was that for? Stumped by the riddle, Professore?”
“What?” he responded absently, “Oh…no, actually I wasn’t even thinking about the poem. I was just pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. This view, this setting, it is all just beyond reality to me. You’d have to live in Cleveland in winter to understand how surreal it is. I’m sorry, I was distracted. I’ll try to focus on the business at hand,” and he said this last apologetically, as if he was embarrassed that his mind had wandered so far from their mutual challenge.
Glancing sidelong at him, she slipped her hand around his arm and posited, “There is no need to hurry. Professore, I can see that we are making progress. I shall make an Italian of you yet!”
Having been properly chastised, he strolled onward, she for her part keeping perfect pace. Still arm in arm, the pair arrived shortly at their intended destination. Of course, they could not enter, as the house is privately owned. But it was quite easy to discern the layout of the house, with the second floor balc
ony adjacent to the street.
“I would really like to see in his garden,” Paul hinted in anticipation.
Aware by now that he did not make such pointed comments out of hand, she inquired, “Why? What is there to see?”
“I doubt that you would be interested, Contessa. It has nothing to do with the riddle.”
Having induced exactly the opposite effect from his announced intention, she responded with visible interest, “Humor me.”
Returning her inquisitive glance, he responding pensively, “Okay, well, let me see…,” at which point he halted and, apparently deep in thought, he took up again with, “So Galileo wrote a book near the end of his life, right here in this villa, Il Gioiello. The book was entitled Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. This work, his last, was undoubtedly his greatest, and it was arguably the first truly scientific book written in modern times.”
“Why arguably?” Antonietta queried.
“Well, there were the books by Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, and Descartes. All of these were essential to the scientific revolution. Nonetheless, Two New Sciences was transformative far beyond these other works.”
“How so?” Antonietta asked quizzically.
“Well, the science of motion of bodies had been considered by others, but no one had ever studied the strength of materials in a scientific way before Two New Sciences. Thus, it could be argued that Galileo is the father of modern mechanics. And since mechanics is the underpinning basis of all science, it can be inferred that Galileo is the father of all modern science.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” Antonietta replied, “But I never knew why.”
“Well, there are other even better reasons perhaps, but that is certainly one of them,” he replied.
“So what does all of this have to do with getting into Galileo’s garden, Professore?”
“Ah, right, I almost forgot,” he replied with an impish grin, “Early on in Two New Sciences there is a sketch of a beam cantilevered from a brick wall. It just so happens that I have a copy of it here in my wallet.” He pulled out his wallet, searched within for a moment, and handed a small image to her.
Antonietta stared at it and, frowning apprehensively, she observed, “You are one strange person, Professore Paulo Woodbridge.” She paused momentarily and, tugging her hair back with one hand, she added, “I could see a picture of a loved one, a daughter or a son maybe, or a spouse…but this?”
“Here,” he replied laconically and, handing her further items from his wallet, he announced, “Here are pictures of my two daughters, both of whom I love dearly.”
At this she took the pictures and examined them intently, “Why, they are both lovely! You must be very proud, Paulo.”
Paul smiled at her, and, shrugging his concurrence, he mumbled, “You have no idea.”
“And a photo of your wife?”
“I don’t have a wife. I’ve been divorced for more than ten years. But you already know that, don’t you, Contessa,” and he said this last more as an accusation than a question.
“Yes. Yes, I know,” she replied sheepishly, “But I wasn’t checking up on you in that way. I just came across it when I was researching, looking for the right person to help me.”
Eyeing her noncommittally, he proceeded to provide his own sheepish explanation, “It’s okay. I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”
“So what happened?” she queried.
Having somehow lost his train of thought, he replied, “What, you mean the beam?”
Nudging him playfully, she contradicted, “No, your marriage, you idiot.”
At this he stumbled a bit but, recovering his balance, he chuckled and replied, “Oh, nothing. Oh, well, I suppose it wasn’t nothing,” and, apparently searching for something more forthcoming, he admitted, “I suppose it was my fault. Yeah, well, that’s life I guess.”
Shaking her head at such a muddled response, Antonietta probed, “Surely you can do better than that.”
Appearing totally off guard, he responded with, “Okay, I didn’t love her. Okay?” He halted for a moment as if he were admitting it for the first time, but abruptly added, “I hated myself. I tried to love her, but I just couldn’t do it. The harder I tried, the more I despised myself. Finally, I had to do something different, and that was when I realized that we do not get the luxury of choosing whom we love in life. Love is thrust upon us, and when it happens, it is unconditional. And without that, there is no hope for a romantic.”
Eyes glistening, Antonietta gazed at him and whispered softly, “My, my, our erudite Professore is a true romantic. Who would have thought…”
Paul glanced back at her, and then he looked away, attempting to hide his emotions. He then turned back towards her and responded defensively, “Guilty as charged, Contessa. But if you ever so much as whisper such an accusation publically, I will deny it vehemently!”
At this admission they both twittered, and she gave his left arm a brief hug. After a moment of embarrassing silence, Antonietta queried tangentially, “So what does all of this have to do with Galileo’s beam, Professore?”
At this the two broke into uncontrolled laughter, so much so that an apparently perturbed head appeared from the second floor window across the street. Spotting the offended inhabitant, Paul held his index finger to his mouth in an apparent attempt to elicit her silence, at which the pair broke into even more raucous laughter. The elderly man staring down at them now broke into a smile, and all three gave way to shared giggles.
Paul waved impulsively to the man in the window and, the man waving conspiratorially in return, he then disappeared within. At this the pair locked eyes and laughed yet again, but in shear exhilaration with the small wonders of life.
Finally regaining her solemnity, Antonietta prodded yet again, “The beam, Professore?”
Having finally regained his composure, Paul managed to respond solemnly, “Oh, right. Well, I had the picture in my wallet, not because I revered it as if it were a child of mine, but for the simple reason that I had hoped to get a look in that garden on this trip, and I wanted to see if the picture might have been an antiquated sketch drawn from an authentic experiment performed within Galileo’s garden.”
“Surely you’re not serious!” she exclaimed doubtfully.
“No, no, I don’t mean that the beam in the picture is in the garden behind the wall there. It’s just that it is a very famous picture. If there ever was a beam in that garden, I doubt that it is still there, but there might be some indication, such as a gap in the bricks, that it was once there.”
“Why is this so important, Professore?”
“Because, the problem that Galileo posed in Two New Sciences, the load carrying capability of a cantilever beam, turned out to be a very difficult one – one that stumped scientists for more than a century after Galileo’s death.”
“So he didn’t solve it?” she queried.
“No, he didn’t, although he, like his father before him had proven for musical instruments, discovered that the response was nonlinear in terms of the length.”
“So who did solve it?” she continued with her queries.
“Right,” he responded. “Robert Hooke couldn’t solve it, although he tried. Newton didn’t even attempt it so far as I can tell. It wasn’t solved until the middle of the eighteenth century, by Leonhard Euler, with help from Daniel Bernoulli. Their beam model laid the groundwork for all modern mechanics of deformable bodies. And it was in large measure due to the fact that Galileo described the problem in Two New Sciences.”
“Wow,” was all Antonietta could think of to say, the story seemingly at an end. “Well, we can’t get into that garden, so I suppose we shall never know the answer to your question, Professore.”
“That is an understatement,” Paul replied. “Anyway, it’s not important, because once again, we seem to be foiled. The stanza is clearly unclear. We are up to now going around in circles, my dear contessa.”
“But we cannot give up, Paulo!”
she responded, exclaiming it as if she was afraid of something.
“Who said anything about giving up?” he responded reassuringly. “What do you say we go to Ravenna tomorrow?"
"Ravenna! Why Ravenna?" Antonietta responded in bewilderment.
"Well, it seems to me to be the next line in the long stanza,” Paul responded. "Look here,” he said, pointing at the sixth line of the long stanza, “It says ‘And then sea she called back the pope'. The only place I can think of with sea that might refer to the pope is Ravenna."
“That sounds weak to me, Paulo," she responded.
"I know, but do you have a better idea?"
"I suppose not," she answered distraughtly. "The rest of that line is total gibberish to me.”
“Me, too.”
She thus inquired, “Anything else you want to see around here?”
“Well, we could go up the street and visit the Monastery of San Matteo where his two daughters were, but that seems like a waste of time to me.”
“Why?”
“Well, he was blind for the last four years of his life, so he couldn’t have gone there around the time that the poem was written. His older daughter Virginia, or Sister Maria Celeste, as she was called at the convent, died in 1634, only four months after he was imprisoned here. It was a great blow to him, as she was his favorite. His younger daughter Livia lived until 1659, but she was never close to him. No, the convent did not hold good memories for him, so that seems like a dead end to me. Besides, I have an idea. It’s been buzzing around in my head all day.”
Brightening at the prospect, she asked, “What’s that?”
“Well, we’ve been basically going around in circles ever since we got that fricking poem. That got me to thinking about the line in the third stanza, the one that goes -
Near circles crossing with the endings
Galileo's Lost Message Page 8
