Immortal

by Traci L. Slatton

  “Do they so move you, boy?” asked a kindly voice.

  “Oh!” I was startled out of the rapture and sat backward, foolishly. I twisted around. A few paces back stood a stout and homely old man. He regarded me as curiously as I did him. Then I yelped with recognition. “That day at Santa Maria Novella—you’re the ingegno man!”

  “An honorific I hope to be worthy of,” he answered dryly. “And I recognize you. You’re the boy with the broken stick and the bastard dagger….”

  “The boy God laughs at.” I nodded, scrambling to my feet.

  “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “God laughs at all of us. Life is a divine comedy, and this is how we show our reverence for it.” He indicated the paintings.

  I nodded again. “They’re holy, because they come from the beautiful place.”

  One of his graying brows lifted. “The beautiful place, eh? What is that?”

  “You told me that Florentines had great souls, that there were qualities inside us that made us who we are,” I said. “The beautiful place is where whatever is beautiful comes from; it isn’t inside us, but we can get to it from the inside. It’s not from this earth at all.”

  “If the beautiful place isn’t within us, how do we express it like this?” The older man waved at the frescoes as he trudged up to stand beside me. “Don’t you think it must be within?”

  “No,” I said, but softly, so as not to offend him. “It’s separate from us. The earth is full of ugliness. Like God’s laughter is. But beyond that, there’s beauty.”

  “What does a young hound like you know of ugliness?”

  I thought of the patrons who opened the door to my room. I remembered the blank faces of people who’d walked past me when I was starving and begging for a penny, a scrap of food, anything. I recalled how I myself had silently willed Marco not to reveal my part in his escape attempt. Experience had shown me that there was more ugliness in most men than beauty. I wasn’t going to say that to this man who crackled with quick intelligence, though I thought he would understand. “Ugliness is what we get for being human. It’s the sin that stains us since the Garden of Eden. The beautiful place is God being kind to us.”

  He stroked his chin and stared at me. “I had a friend who would have agreed with you. He would have said that beauty expresses the grace of God, and that we see beauty when we are purified enough to see all of God’s creation as one seamless unity.”

  “I’m not purified. I see a lot of evil.”

  “I daresay my friend Dante is spending a bit of time in purgatory himself these days.” The man smiled and it was a soft illumination from his heart, a smile of love and loss that encompassed everything and rejected nothing. I marked it well, resolving immediately that I would one day smile like that.

  “So he’s dead. Was he a good friend?” I asked, turning to look at St. John ascending.

  “Oh yes, a dear friend. A remarkable man and a poet like none other. I miss him still.” He sighed. “More than I would miss my family, I think. They’re a noisy and expensive lot.”

  “These are my family and friends.” I stretched out my arms as if I could embrace the frescoes. “These will stick with me.”

  For a time we contemplated the frescoes in silence. Finally he turned to me. “I have an appointment to buy some pigments, boy. Then I must return to work in another city.”

  “I have work, too,” I said, and the words were like ashes on my tongue.

  He nodded. “I will return to Florence in a few months. I would like to bring you something. You remind me of one of my children, with these ideas that are bigger than you are, and far too old for your age…. If my paintings are going to be your family—”

  I gasped. “You’re him? You’re the artist who painted these holy frescoes?”

  “Giotto di Bondone, at your service, and almost worthy of this much adulation,” he said dryly, shaking his grizzled head.

  I fell to my knees. “Master, I didn’t know, I would have been more respectful!”

  “Nonsense, you silly pup,” Giotto said gruffly. He pulled me to my feet with surprising strength in his liver-spotted hands. “Where do I find you, when I return?”

  Not at the brothel, no, that would be unbearable. More than anything, I did not want this man whose smile bore a hint of the Lord’s grace, this artist of miracle paintings, to know what I was. He would loathe me. I shook my head. “I’ll find you, Master.”

  “See that you do, pup,” he said. He cuffed my head playfully and took his leave.

  A while later I stumbled out of the chapel, transported with joy at having been spoken to by Giotto himself, master of the frescoes that gave me solace while I was working. He had treated me with kindness and even interest! My feet skipped down to the shining river, under a bridge where I had often slept. I was standing close to the water, which was suddenly dappled and blue, full of mischievous currents and surprising peaks of winter light. Sometimes the Arno rose and washed away the bridges and carried away screaming people, but today it was peaceful in its playfulness, and laughter floated down from the bridge above.

  After a while, I came to myself. I was being hailed. “Bastardo,” a weak voice was calling. Propped against one of the bridge struts, his useless legs stretched out before him, was Marco.

  “Marco!” I ran to him and hugged him tightly. He was pale and dirty, the scrapes on his face were full of pus, and he was much thinner. But he was alive. I asked urgently, “Are you hungry? I’ll get food!”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. I was the first few days.”

  “I’ll get you bread and meat!” I scrambled up, prepared to run off and get him something.

  “Stay and talk with me, Luca. I always liked to talk to you.” Marco made a weak gesture with his muddy hand. I sat down beside him. “He let you go outside. Our plan worked. For you.”

  My throat constricted, but I forced out the words. “Marco, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know this would happen to you!”

  “At least I’m not working anymore! That’s something. You may be able to walk, but you still have to work.” He laughed bitterly.

  “Are you surviving out here? How is it?”

  His long lashes fluttered down. “The streets of Florence are not kind to cripples.”

  “I know. But I’ll bring you food every time he lets me out,” I promised.

  Marco opened his sunken eyes and smiled. “You would do that, I know. Bring me food and talk to me as if I mattered, as if I was still special.”

  “Of course you’re still special! You matter a lot!” I said hotly. “Just because you live on the street doesn’t mean you don’t matter!”

  “You’re the special one now. You learned from me. You’re keeping that thing alive inside you that would have you be kind.”

  “You were the kind one,” I said. “You gave me candies and teased me so I’d laugh and told me how to take a beating so it wasn’t as bad as it could be!”

  “I did little things for you and the other children because it kept me alive in there. You have to do those things now. Help the other children. Give what you can. Don’t hold back, give everything, anything! That’s how you save yourself!”

  “I want to save you now!” I cried.

  “You can save me, but not with food.” Marco’s black eyes were like spears into me.

  “Water? Wine?” I asked. “Tell me!”

  “Freedom.” He smiled as he said the word, then pushed himself upright with his bony arms. “Help me into the river.”

  “No!” I rocked back on my heels, shocked and understanding. “Don’t ask that of me!”

  “You owe me, Luca Bastardo,” he said, with finality. “I didn’t tell Silvano about you.”

  “This is no escape, Marco! You’re alive! You said yourself, at least you’re not working!” I grabbed his shoulders. “Marco, you have to try!” The words poured from my mouth in ragged pleas, but despair filled my gut. Marco’s eyes were set and void. I didn’t know why I hadn�
�t noticed that before; Marco, who had found a way to survive the brothel, had now yielded to his mutilation. In some way, he’d already left himself, already died.

  “I’m not alive,” he said, his face distorted with savage anger, his voice like the weighted silk bag swinging at me. “This is a worse prison than Silvano’s. The other beggars spit on me, because they know what I used to be. At least the patrons wanted me, even if it was disgusting!”

  “You get used to the street. It’s better than Silvano’s, you’re free out here!”

  “I was freer at Silvano’s! At least there I could command my own body, sometimes, when the patrons weren’t using me.”

  “You can still command your thoughts!” I cried. “Like you told me, think about things that make you feel better! You can travel to wondrous places—”

  “I’m a cripple on the streets with no way to get food for myself and no friends out here. I will die, slowly and suffering. You will do this mercy for me,” he said coldly. “It’s what I need. I would do it myself, but my strength has been gone for two days; in the cold, it won’t return. Pull me to the edge and slide me into the river. If I bob up, hold me under.”

  “It’s too terrible!” I cried. “I can’t do it!”

  Marco glared, holding my eyes with his empty, inscrutable ones. “Yes, you can. I know you, Luca Bastardo. You’re the kind who can do whatever he has to. You won’t pull back from the edge. That’s how you survived out here for so long. That’s why you didn’t die the first week at Silvano’s. Plenty do, you know. Not you. I have a feeling you’ll be the only one of us to make it out of Silvano’s alive! And not crippled. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve got something inside you, some quality that makes you endure!”

  “You’re asking me to kill you,” I whispered. And would it matter if I did? No one but me in this world cared about Marco. In the next world, God was snickering; if I fulfilled Marco’s request, it would only enhance His joke. There was a hard knot in my chest as we argued, but now it collapsed into waves of sadness.

  “I’m asking you to save me! It’s what you have to do to save yourself,” he returned, in a tone both triumphant and bitter.

  I’m not proud of it, but I did it. It was easy, in fact. Marco had only a sparrow’s weight and it was nothing for me, strong and well fed as I was, to drag him to the water’s edge. It was but a few minutes’ labor.

  “Go with freedom,” I said to him, which was a kind of prayer for forgiveness.

  So I rolled him over into the sun-stippled water. Life has a will of its own and wouldn’t be denied so easily. Marco’s arms splashed and propelled him to the surface gasping and sucking in air. I pushed down firmly on his black-haired head. I held him down until his thrashing stopped and his arms eased out. Marco was right: I was capable of doing whatever needed to be done, no matter how appalling. I had picked pockets and stolen fruit and extorted money for fake injuries on the streets, and I had submitted to degradation by patrons at the brothel, but this was different, in magnitude and in kind. I willingly became a killer. I could steel myself to anything. To this day it is a characteristic of mine, whether for good or bad or both, and I’ve lived long enough to understand that a man has to reconcile all sides of his nature. It’s not that I don’t weep later, just that I will pay the toll that the moment demands. Marco taught me this about myself, and I’ve never forgotten it or his kindness.

  I let go of his head and sat watching the Arno carry his body away. I wondered if I would end similarly, a husk lapped by the river as it floated off. It might be soon; there was no predicting Silvano’s whims. I wished with all my heart that someone who meant me well would be nearby, so that I did not die scorned and alone, as I had lived. Perhaps some friend would return the service I had just performed for Marco and yield me to the river. I did not know then that life had other plans for me, and that my end would come not through water, but through flame.

  Chapter 3

  AFTER MARCO’S DEATH, I took on more of the liberties that had been accorded him. I also took on his pastimes, stealing into other children’s rooms to befriend them. Perhaps it was my way of keeping him alive, because I missed him; perhaps it was about assuaging my guilt and sorrow over his death; perhaps it was just that the longer I resided at Silvano’s, the more I hated being trapped, and I was determined to wrest as much freedom from my situation as possible. I called on my old skills from the street, my quickness of foot and my ability to fade into the background as I snuck around the palazzo. I was largely undetected, except for once when Silvano caught me inside the room where he kept track of his business accounts. A large wooden desk sat atop a Saracen carpet along with a chest with painted doors that locked.

  “Bastardo, you clever boy! You’ve found your way to the money place!” Silvano’s gleeful voice rang out. “In all the years I’ve run my beautiful establishment, I’ve never once found a worker here. You’re the first. You are like me, smarter than most! Hungry for wealth.”

  “I’m not like you, sir,” I whispered.

  “I think you are. Otherwise, why are you here in the abbaco room, my accounting room?” Silvano came up and caressed my neck. The room wavered in front of me like the air above a scorching hot flagstone on a summer day.

  “Why is this room so important?” I asked.

  “This is where I keep my abbaco book that records payments and expenses, of course.” He smiled. “And my important documents. I even have one that concerns you!” He reached around me to pull out a large book. He opened it and withdrew a sheet of vellum paper. “If you can read it, since you’re so clever, I’ll let you run away to your room without feeling the kiss of my florins.” He thrust the paper into my hands. “Go on, read it!”

  I had never before held a sheet of paper, which was far too precious for a street urchin. It was soft and white and covered with strange markings. “What is this?”

  “This is a letter that came to me when my condottieri robbed a messenger. Silly messenger was bearing far too much gold. It slowed his horse. My men relieved him of that little problem. And they took this. They couldn’t read it, of course, but I could and I was delighted to have it in my possession. Can’t you see how important it is? Why, the Pope himself would want to read it! Then hide it where it wouldn’t be found for a thousand years! Someday I’ll sell it to him. Not just for money, since I have that, but also for a full pardon, for a title, for influence! The Pope will want you enough to pay whatever I ask! I’ll let him have you, for a fortune. But not until you grow to manhood. They can’t use you before you’re grown.”

  “Why would the Pope want me?” I whispered.

  “You can’t read it?” he asked, in fake dismay. “When you’re so clever as to make your way to my abbaco room? Sneaking around like your old friend Marco? Well, don’t worry, a whore like you is valuable for other reasons.” He reached out to ruffle my hair. “You are a beautiful commodity, this orange-blond hair and those big dark eyes that are lush and almost purple, like plums, yes? Thank God for other men’s lusts, for they make my business thrive.” He released me abruptly. I went limp against the desk.

  “I’ve heard other Florentine businessmen, noblemen of wealth and status, say that by exercising caution and vigilance over our affairs, by caring for even the slightest detail, we can avert disaster.” Silvano walked around the room to the chest, withdrew a key from his lucco, and opened the lock. “I agree with them.” He pulled out a lumpy silken bag, and I quailed. His narrow face twisted into a sneer. Then he swung his bag of florins with such force that it made the first beating he’d given me seem tame.

  “Don’t let me catch you in here again!” he said when he was done. I lay on the floor in a pool of urine, vomit, and tears. I felt pain and shame, but also vast rage. I knew Silvano cared less about my explorations in the palazzo than about the opportunity to beat me, so after a week of recuperating in my room with the walls closing in on me, I was at it again. Silvano’s beating only strengthened my resolve to take what li
berties I could.

  The beating also sharpened my senses, or it taught me to pay exquisite attention to them, because I grew supernaturally alert to Silvano’s approach. The lift of a few hairs on the back of my neck told me he was moving toward me. I learned to fold myself into a dark alcove or to twine myself behind the heavy drapery that shrouded all the windows. There were times when I could have sworn he was thinking about me, because my stomach would tighten and feel light all at once, as if his very intent was a clawed thing reaching for me through the silent, dark palazzo.

  As I explored, I looked for the little blond girl who had clung to my hand in the cellar, seeking comfort. I spied her one day when a door in the long hall opened and a big-bellied man, richly dressed, came out. I remembered seeing him at the market with his wife and children and servants. Behind him on the bed sat the little girl. She wore a torn white dress, her little face sagging into numb creases that a thirty-year-old would have worn better. I began to buy her sweets at the market when I went out. I would listen to make sure she was alone, and then I would crack open her door and toss in my offering. Her blue eyes would light up as her fingers closed around the sugared date or the pastry filled with frutta di bosco. Patrons often brought sweets to us children—something about a child licking sugar made them wild with lust—but I knew the little girl prized what I brought because I didn’t want to do anything to her.

  In the meantime, when I went out into Florence, I sought information about Master Giotto. He had said he would return and wanted to see me, and I believed him. He had an honor about him that was obvious even to a mongrel like me. When he came back I wanted to impress him with my knowledge of his incomparable work. On a cold day after Christmas, I went to the monk Friar Pietro, who had once taken me into the Church of Ognissanti to show me the glorious Madonna panel that Giotto had painted there.

  “Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. Misere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam,” I called brightly, when I spied him sweeping the path outside the austere stone facade of the old church of Santa Maria Maggiore. I had no idea what the words meant, but I remembered hearing them at a Mass, and it amused him when I recited the liturgy back to him.