“I didn’t know you had friends in Florence.”
“A woman…I went to school with.”
“Really? How nice. Wait. You haven’t told me if you’ve discovered anything.”
Alex moved from bed to chair, glanced out at the balcony of her sublet apartment, checked the time, almost two hours since she had left Luke. She wondered what he was doing, wondered what the hell she was doing.
“Are you there?”
“Yes,” she said, debating, delaying, knowing she would have to tell him—and then she did, describing the page she’d found in Luke’s backpack and what it had said.
“Good work!” he said. “You are really earning your money.”
Alex hung up without saying goodbye. She felt dirty despite the hotel shower, slipped out of her rumpled clothes and decided to take another. But no matter how long she stayed under the hot water, no matter how much soap she used, she still felt dirty, and it had nothing to do with having had sex with Luke. She pictured him asleep, his bare chest rising and falling, his handsome face, the tattoos.
Like a tattoo, he’d gotten under her skin, had touched something unexpected, things she did not want to feel, and it made everything worse, not better.
50
Nothing I had read added to the explanation or secret of the missing pages, other than the repeated fact that I would need a magnifying glass to find out. I made a note to buy one and headed to the library. I needed to go through the journal again.
One of the two scholars I saw almost every day, the one with the ponytail, was in the courtyard. I was about to head in when he stopped me. “You are an American artist and art historian, sì?”
I was not in the mood to strike up a conversation but was curious to find out how he knew.
“Chiara,” he said in response to my question. “She make it her business to know everything about anyone in the library.”
I hoped Chiara didn’t know everything about me.
“Marco Pisano,” he said, extending his hand. “I teach art history at Florence University of the Arts, contemporary Italian art, transavanguàrdia my specialty.”
“The three C’s—Cucci, Chia, and Clemente.”
“So you know their artwork.”
“Very well. I’ve taught the Italian trans-avant-garde, as we call it in America, in my art history class. I’m a big Francesco Clemente fan.”
“It is too bad you were not here last month to see his exhibition at Le Murate Progetti Arte Contemporanea.”
“Le Murate?” The name stopped me. “Isn’t that the name of an old prison?”
“It is the old prison,” he said, explaining that the lower part had been renovated by the arts organization but that much of the prison remained intact.
It had never dawned on me that the prison might still exist.
Less than an hour later, Marco and I were in an enclosed courtyard at a table of a hip restaurant, literally carved out of part of the prison, Caffè Letterario. When I’d told him that part of my research involved the prison, he’d called his friend, the director of the arts organization, and she’d invited me for a tour. Beside us, a table of young people eating pizza and drinking beer were talking and laughing loudly while I tried to imagine my great-grandfather imprisoned in these stone walls.
Valentina Gensini, the artistic director of Le Murate, dark-haired and olive-skinned, was as attractive as she was interesting. She asked about my project, and I told her half the truth: that my great-grandfather had been imprisoned in these walls and I was thinking of writing about his life. “A book, how wonderful! You must come back and read from it when you are finished,” she said, a surprising offer.
I took in the high stone walls of the courtyard, which looked clean and scrubbed, while Valentina described how the place had been built in 1424 to house Benedictine nuns, who had chosen a walled-in life, “so the name, Murate, which means ‘walled-in.’” It had not become a men’s prison until the mid-1800s and remained so until 1985, when it was “crumbling and overcrowded,” Valentina said, “and several prisoners drowned in the great Arno flood of sixty-six—and there were riots!” She was proud that the arts organization had fought to make the prison a landmark, “a testimony to inhumanity,” and she had organized exhibitions around its dark history. Then she turned us over to a young man for a tour.
Stefano brought me and Marco inside to show off the art space, but I could barely look at it, anxious to see the prison, and when I said so, he directed us into a hallway where he unlocked a heavy chain, then led the way up a narrow staircase.
I had read about my great-grandfather’s arrest and trial, his trip to the prison, stripped and searched, standing naked with other inmates under cold showers, shivering and humiliated, brought to his cell, door slammed shut, the sound of metal against metal as the locks were drawn, all of it written in excruciating detail. I could see it now as I took the steps slowly, the space tight and confining, already a prison, the only light from a window way above, casting everything else in darkness. Marco and Stefano were walking fast, disappearing ahead of me, and I could feel the years disappearing too.
The first-floor landing was a study in erosion: painted gray walls that had long ago started to peel revealed the stone below, fissured and water-stained, the floor a reddish-colored diagonal stone, scuffed and faded.
Stefano called out, and I was startled—I’d been lost in the past, picturing prisoners being led down this hall, my great-grandfather among them.
We headed up another flight of stairs.
Here, just off the landing, a round-ceilinged hallway maybe twenty feet long and eight feet wide and a series of heavy wooden doors. I stopped at one, stone molding with chunks of it missing, thick iron hinges top and bottom, a corroded iron bracket maybe ten by twelve inches with a bar that slid across and fit into another iron receptacle to lock it securely. In the center of the door, a small square window, hinged and locked. But at the next door, that same square window was open. I squinted, but it was too dark to see anything. Stefano signaled me down the hall to another cell, the door open.
But it was not a cell; it was a cage.
For a moment, I was unable to move, then I took a step in. Stood there. No toilet. No sink.
I recalled Vincent’s description of the weekly gang shower under frigid water and the “shit sloppers,” as they were called, the men tasked with the odious job of emptying the buckets.
The place was more a dungeon than prison, something out of The Count of Monte Cristo, so horribly real it seemed fictional, impossible.
I steadied myself, a hand to the wall. It was damp and cold. I shivered. Stefano pointed out that the prison had never been heated, though in fact it was warmer now due to the heat rising from the bottom-floor art space.
Stefano and Marco went into the hallway, but I stayed alone in the cell, Vincent’s words echoing in my head: I count my steps, one foot in front of the other, six steps one way, nine the other. I placed one foot in front of the other, toe to heel, and it was exactly as he had said, six feet wide, nine feet long. I felt as if I were walking in his shoes, back and forth, back and forth. I thought how he had kept sane by plotting revenge against Valfiero and Chaudron, my mind, his mind.
I sat on the stone floor. Closed my eyes. Thought of the weeks and months my great-grandfather had spent in a cell like this one, recording his life. Opened my eyes, took in the one barred window that looked into a corridor. I stood up as if propelled and grabbed hold of the bars. My hands, Vincent’s hands. How often had he gripped this same kind of bars?
Stefano offered to show me the corridor, a sort of tunnel, with corroded walls and floor. I remembered Vincent’s words again: There is one barred window—though not a window at all. It looks into a narrow corridor the guards use to spy on us.
I pictured guards patrolling, thought of the guard who had given him the journal
and pencils, one small kindness in this hellhole.
There was another open cell, identical to the others, only here there were drawings.
I dared to touch them, my fingers tingling.
One wall had a pencil drawing of a soldier in an old-time uniform, another a series of incised lines that took me a while to recognize as a crudely etched female figure. In the next cell, there were drawings too, the profile of a modern-looking woman just beside a small cropping of medieval-looking buildings, worn and faded, obviously very old but still legible, and I realized the graffiti had been created at different times, that it spanned decades, possibly centuries. It was next to impossible that any had been made by Vincent, but still I pictured him crouched by the wall, using the stick he had found and sharpened to carve the drawing as a way to stay connected to the real world, as a way to hold on.
I sat back and stared at the drawings, my hands on the cold stone floor, lost in thought about my great-grandfather, the months and months he’d spent in one of these cage-like cells, how he had managed to survive and to write his story. I not only needed to know what came next but wanted to know it all, everything about him, this man I had come to care about in ways I could never have imagined.
51
I met Alex for dinner, still a bit off-balance from my time at Le Murate, almost as if I had just served a prison sentence. The restaurant, Alex’s choice, was family run, not chic nor expensive, and she seemed in a good mood. She asked if I was still going to Paris, and I said yes, thinking about my appointment at the Louvre and the other, unsolicited visit I was planning.
She said “good,” though I wasn’t sure she was happy about it. I told her I’d be back soon, and she said “good” again, then asked about my friend in Paris, and I made one up.
We skipped dessert and coffee. I was anxious to get going but didn’t want to presume we would be leaving together, though I was relieved when she said, “My place or yours?”
“Yours,” I said. “Mine’s a dump.”
She said she didn’t mind. I said I did.
Alex’s apartment was a third-floor walk-up in an old building not far from San Lorenzo, nice but not too nice, and I was glad. She gave me a tour of the living room, pointing out beautiful blue floor tiles in the kitchen and the little balcony with its wrought-iron railing. We went out on it for a few minutes to take in the view, the Duomo lit up against the dark sky, and I pulled her close. She surprised me with a kiss that felt urgent, almost desperate, and we stayed like that, hardly separating, Alex leading me to her bedroom.
The lovemaking felt urgent too. I kept trying to slow it down but couldn’t, and it was over too soon. Afterward, we lay on her bed, not speaking. She got up to get a glass of wine, and I watched her walk away, afraid she might break into a run.
On the bedside table was a small framed photo of a young girl, obviously Alex, and her mother, whom I recognized from the locket.
“Nice picture of you and your mom,” I said when she came back.
She nodded, half smiled. I could see she was struggling with something and asked.
“My mother’s…not well. I’m mean, she’s okay but…” She broke off, shook her head. “It’s just… Never mind.”
I told her it was okay, that she didn’t have to talk about it.
After a while, she said, “I want to,” took a swallow of wine, the glass shivering in her hand, then spoke quickly as if she needed to say it fast or she never would.
“She was always fragile, but wonderful and kind. At first, the doctors didn’t know what was going on, depression or anxiety? Then they hit on a diagnosis—early onset dementia. The thing is she’s not going to get better, only worse.”
“I’m sorry. What about your father?”
“He’s…out of the picture, divorced. I thought I told you.” She expelled a short breath. “She’s in a good place now. It’s expensive, but there’s no choice. She’s only fifty-six—and it’s bad…always worse. For a while, I tried to take care of her myself, moved her into my apartment, but even with an aide, it was too much. She was up half the night crying or confused—and me up with her, trying to comfort her, then slogging through the next day on no sleep.” There were tears in her eyes.
I got my arm around her but didn’t say anything, let her keep talking.
“It was after the second suicide attempt—the first with pills, the second with a razor blade…” Alex took a sharp breath, practically a gasp. “The doctors suggested it would be better if she were someplace where she could be watched. It’s just…” Another deep breath. “I’m sorry…”
“There’s no reason to be.”
She swiped a tissue off the side table and dabbed at her eyes. “But I am. Why am I burdening you with this?”
I told her it was fine, that I wanted her to feel she could tell me anything.
“I’m not usually a crier,” she said, sniffing back tears. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Hey, show me three minutes of Bambi and I’m blubbering like a baby.”
“Oh sure,” she said but managed a smile, then ran a finger along my tattoo. “Tough Mister Kill Van Kull.”
“Not so tough,” I said and meant it, drawing her into my arms, wanting to take care of her, to protect her. I was sorry to hear all she’d been through, sorry for her mother too. But it felt good that she had confided in me. I didn’t know what love was supposed to feel like, but for the first time in my life, I thought I might be feeling it and did not want to lose the feeling, lose her. I wanted to say, I’ll help you with your mother when we get back to New York. I’ll help you with anything but I didn’t want to scare her, so all I said was “It’s okay.”
That night, Alex slept in my arms, several times waking me with her violent twitching and mumbling, obviously bad dreams. “Shh,” I’d say, stroking her forehead, and she’d settle back to sleep until the next bad dream.
In the morning, I slipped out of bed early, trying not to wake her, then stopped to kiss her when I was dressed and ready to go.
“Where are you going?” she asked, lifting her head from the pillow.
“Paris, remember? I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“Oh…right.” She tugged me back for another kiss, this one passionate but fraught, then pushed me away. “Go!” she said, pulling the blanket up to her neck and burying her face in the pillow.
52
Alex dressed quickly, started to make the bed, brought the pillowcase to her nose and inhaled Luke’s scent. She was glad he’d gone, couldn’t bear that he had. Jesus. She hadn’t signed up for this. She exchanged the pillow for the framed photo, the one she always carried with her, she and her mother, the mother she preferred to remember, the mother who remembered her.
Why had she talked so much last night? Was she looking for sympathy, excuses, hoping to be rescued? Luke Perrone the white knight, she the damsel in distress? If anyone was going to need rescuing, it would probably be him, not her.
She set the photo back on the bedside table, thinking sometimes you did things for the people you loved, no matter how hard, how wrong, because you had to, because you saw no other way.
53
The morning sky over Paris was slate gray, though the city was as beautiful as I had imagined. I’d taken a cab from the airport and, eager to see as much of the city as possible, had dumped my bag and was now strolling in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, an historic district of whitewashed buildings with wrought-iron balconies, fancy boutiques, and high-end art galleries.
I found a cool-looking restaurant where I sat at a redwood bar, had an omelet, fries, and much needed coffee. My night of watching Alex toss and turn had left me tired and troubled. Was it talking about her mother’s condition that had given her such bad dreams—or was there something deeper that had caused her such pain? I had to admit I liked the urgency of her goodbye kiss but not how she’d pushed me
away just after. Was she still playing advance and retreat? If so, she didn’t seem to be enjoying the game any more than I was.
My appointment at the Louvre was not for a couple of hours, so I took my time, soaking in the beauty of the city. Amped up on caffeine, I fast-walked around the grounds of Les Invalides, the complex of buildings dedicated to the French military, topped by a gold dome that managed to glitter despite the lack of sun. I strolled along tree-lined streets, stopped to admire a large tiered theater that turned out to be the famous Comédie-Française, and could have wandered along the streets of Paris all day if it were not getting close to the time of my appointment. I headed toward the Louvre with a mix of excitement and trepidation about finally seeing the Mona Lisa. Would I recognize what Chaudron had put into his forgeries, even if I saw it?
With his narrow face and angular features, dark hair and pointy goatee, the curator of Renaissance painting, Alain Gingembre, looked as he’d been painted by El Greco. He had bought my story: an art historian writing a paper on the work of Leonardo, though he seemed in a hurry, as if I were an annoyance taking him away from something more important. I followed him through the museum, his shoes echoing on the marble floors. The temperature-controlled air was cool and thin, a smell of something musty under lemony floor wax. I could see why Vincent had referred to the place as a graveyard.
We moved down one long hallway after another, ignoring works of art, and I couldn’t help but think of my great-grandfather heading down these same halls to commit his notorious crime.
Every few yards, the curator looked over his shoulder and said “Come,” as if to a dog. I was tempted to bark.
We finally reached the Salle des Ètats gallery, and there she was, Leonardo’s lady, as Vincent had so often called her.
My first thought was She’s so small. A moment later, her quiet intensity drew me in. Was it simply because the image was so famous or that I had been obsessed with the painting for so many years?
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