Immortal

by Traci L. Slatton

  “Not cold,” she whispered. “I don’t like the sight of an army marching into a city.”

  “Maddalena, it’s not like Volterra,” I said, pulling her close to my chest.

  “You must think me silly to be afraid.” She laughed, but her voice trembled.

  “Never,” I said, kissing the top of her head. Her vulnerability made me love her more. Maddalena turned in my embrace and looked into my eyes with candor, letting me see directly into the heart of the scared little girl who still lived inside her. That little girl was so achingly real and vibrant that it brought my youthful self to the fore, also. Luca as an abandoned, betrayed, brutalized child was present with her young, hurt, terrified Maddalena. My pain and her pain, and my joy and her joy, my love and her love, my fear and her fear, all existed together like wave peaks on the same bittersweet river, and there were no barriers between us. We didn’t speak for a long time. An army tramped into the city and shouts rang out everywhere, but we were streaming into a deep communion of selves. Then Simonetta ran out with her reddish-blond plaits flying around her head. She wriggled herself in between us until Maddalena and I laughed and linked arms around her.

  “What pretty costumes they wear, Papa,” Simonetta observed. She was seven and had an endless supply of questions, and now she scrunched her nose and tilted her head. “Do soldiers stay so pretty when they fight?”

  “No, darling, in a real fight, their costumes won’t stay fancy,” I answered.

  Maddalena winced. She whispered over our daughter’s head, “I know what soldiers do to children!”

  “I would fight an army for you two,” I responded with vigor.

  “You would win!” Simonetta said. She gave me an adoring look that made me melt all over again. Something about the way a daughter loves her father made me determined to protect my wife and child at whatever cost to myself. My life meant nothing except as it served their lives.

  Simonetta asked, “Will you have to fight, Papa?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, tugging her braid. “The army won’t stay long. Florence let in the Frankish army, but Florentines won’t consent to be treated like a captured city. Charles will threaten and the Florentine delegates will call his bluff; Charles won’t want to fight in this city. The streets are so narrow that his army can’t get a purchase to unfold itself in strength. Florentines who know the city have the advantage. Charles risks having his army stopped on the banks of the Arno. He won’t let that happen. He’ll take money and be on his way.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Maddalena said in an anxious tone. It was an uneasy time for all of Florence, with Savonarola assuming power and then the Frankish army occupying the city. Even after the Frankish marched back out ten days later, Florence was unsettled. Her taverns and brothels were closed, her young men sang hymns instead of ribald ditties, and unruly gangs of children who called themselves “Weepers” roamed the city, enforcing Savonarola’s harsh laws. Trade suffered, crops failed—and Florence, the city of bankers and merchants, went broke.

  Somehow the tensions of those days did not affect Maddalena and me. We lived simply and quietly to avoid attracting attention. We were encapsulated in our love for each other and in our pride in our beloved daughter, which shielded us. Maddalena submitted easily to Savonarola’s strict dress codes though she did not attend his sermons. Privately we both thought his severity was unbalanced, and we stayed away from him and his entourage. Then, one day in February 1497, Maddalena came home and asked Simonetta and me to attend one of Savonarola’s carnevales of sobriety and abnegation.

  When she arrived, Simonetta and I were engaged in the study of Latin. I declined to hire a tutor, preferring to spend the time myself with my daughter. I was a worthy teacher. I had taught this intelligent child’s mother. I had been professore to no less a personage than Leonardo, about whose work in Milano we heard great things. He’d sent me a letter and a sketch describing a fresco, the Last Supper, on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. I planned to go to Milano to see it. Sandro Botticelli had seen it, and he’d wept as he described it, an overwhelming and masterful expression of a single dramatic moment, the moment after Christ has said “One of you shall betray me.” Each of the different disciples was completely revealed in his expression, from Andrew’s astonishment in his open mouth, to Peter’s pugnacious, knife-gripping eagerness to declare his innocence, to the swarthy, staring Judas leaning away from Christ in guilt and isolation. Leonardo himself had written me, “The painter has two objectives, man and the intention of his soul. The first is easy, the latter hard, because he has to represent it by the movement of the limbs.”

  But Leonardo had depicted every soul perfectly in his fresco, including a Christ whose serenity and beauty were deeply moving. Leonardo had added to his virtuoso portrayals a sublime composition of hidden triangles and a ravishing tension among the ordinary, yet transfigured, items of this last meal and first Holy Communion: the wineglasses, forks, bread loaves, and pewter dishes. The bread of life foreshadowed death. But immanent in the Last Supper was the sanctity of Communion, an ongoing blessing for believers. And thus is death implicit in life, and the most common moment holds both redemption and tragedy.

  One of those common moments found Simonetta and me upstairs, in the workshop that had been converted to a playroom for Simonetta’s use. We were working on a translation of Cicero. It was heavy going for a ten-year-old girl, but bright Simonetta was managing. There was a bustle at the door and we ran downstairs to see who it was.

  “Mama! I’m so happy to see you!” Simonetta laughed, leaping to embrace her mother.

  “Simonetta mia.” Maddalena hugged the little girl. “How are your lessons?”

  “The hour we spent over Latin was torturous for the ragazza,” I said. I leaned over the young blond head to kiss Maddalena, to inhale her lilac and lemon scent and run my hand over her soft cheek. I never missed an opportunity to touch my wife, which comforted me later.

  She said gaily, “Luca, Fra Savonarola is holding another carnevale.”

  “Carnevale, is that what he’s calling these dreary events? Carnevale is when a beautiful woman in a costume kisses a man on a bridge and makes him feel like the only man alive!”

  Maddalena laughed. “This one is worth seeing; the whole city is outside today, listening to his sermon and taking part in the procession. Why don’t we all go?”

  I had avoided the monk ever since shrewd Lorenzo had warned me about him, but I had long ago promised myself to say yes to Maddalena. So I agreed, put on my dullest, soberest lucco and mantello, and the three of us went out.

  Fury scorched the streets of Florence, the fury of purity, of perfection, of unthinking obedience to a madman, the self-appointed voice of God. I should have known that this kind of insistence on purity must inevitably lead to tragedy, death, and grief. Masses of people dressed in drab clothing surged toward the Piazza della Signoria. A gang of the young thugs who were Savonarola’s enforcers ran up to us just as we turned onto the Via Larga.

  “Give us a vanity!” a black-haired boy of about twelve demanded. “Some material possession which keeps your heart from righteousness!” A dozen children, all dressed in white, clamored and pressed in on us, causing Simonetta, who was ten, to eye them with curiosity. The boy threatened, “We won’t leave until you surrender a vanity, we are collecting them for holy Savonarola himself!”

  “Here.” Maddalena laughed. She shrugged off her mantello and detached and then pulled off her sleeves, which were emerald green and made of the finest silk. She had put them on thinking her mantello would hide them. The children cheered and grabbed at the sleeves. I smiled at Maddalena’s fine slim white arms, which elicited within me warm licentious thoughts of which the pious Savonarola would never approve.

  “You’ll have your reward in heaven!” the boy cried, and the children ran off.

  “You are too generous, Maddalena,” I said dryly, helping her put back on her gray mantello.

/>   “Mama is always wonderful, but I don’t think she had a choice just now,” Simonetta said in her piquant way. “Those children were very determined! Do you think if they were reading Cicero they would have better manners?” Of course her words made us laugh and hug her, and the three of us clung together as we moved on toward the piazza.

  Even the outskirts of the piazza were tightly packed with people. The murmuring throngs had a sinister air of purpose which made my chest tighten with anxiety. I knew from experience that large groups of people too easily whiplash into cruelty. I remembered the crowds who would have burned me for being a sorcerer and the mob that stoned Moshe Sforno and little Rebecca during the first outbreak of the plague. I thought of the army that plundered Volterra. Something in man’s nature allowed wanton destruction to flourish unchecked when enough people were present. I thought of turning around to go home, but the swarm of people was too thick and importunate. Maddalena, Simonetta, and I were pressed forward by crowds behind us. I held Simonetta’s hand tightly on one side, and Maddalena clung to her other hand.

  In the center of the piazza, we beheld a horrifying sight: a vast pyramid of jumbled objects reaching ten stories into the sky. As we were slowly pushed forward to the edge of the pyramid, the objects resolved into their specific forms as the beautiful products which made Florence so rich and full and hungry: books, wigs, paintings, carnevale masks from Lorenzo’s time, mirrors, powder puffs, cards and dice, pots of rouge, vials of perfume, velvet caps, chessboards, lyres, and countless other items. Some were silly trinkets, others were precious. In the heap I saw paintings by Botticelli, some by Filippino Lippi, another by Ghirlandaio, and one that was definitely an early work of Leonardo’s, which made my heart clutch inward in my chest. I saw rich cottardite and fur-lined mantelli, painted chests, gold bracelets, silver chalices, and even jeweled crucifixes. The masses were throwing more items into the pile, dispensing with the precious, artful vanities the desire for which had made Florence the shining queen of the cities on the Italian peninsula. If Lorenzo de’ Medici had lived, he would have rallied the Florentine army against Savonarola and this mob to prevent such a desecration of Florence and all things Florentine. I wondered to what extent I had a hand in this obscenity because I hadn’t given Lorenzo the consolamentum, which might have extended his life.

  “Down, down with all gold and decorations, down where the body is food for the worms!” cried a voice, and I realized it was Savonarola himself. I had never seen him, had never been interested in attending his sermons, had wanted nothing to do with him, and neither had Maddalena, but now I angled myself to get a view of his face. After all, this friar was turning Florence inside out. His speech created an uproar that almost drowned out his next words: “Repent, O Florence! Clothe thyself in the white garments of purification! Wait no longer, for there may be no further time for repentance! The Lord drives me forward to tell you, Repent!”

  I finally caught a glimpse of his face. Instantly I recognized him. He was the thin, fiery-eyed monk who had watched Maddalena and me make love on the Ponte alle Grazie years ago, who had torn her dress and denounced us. All of my old instincts for danger screamed: I still remembered the way that he’d looked at her. I remembered his threats to us. I should have killed him when I could. The flesh on the backs of my arms and neck prickled and my stomach roiled. “Maddalena, we have to leave!” I said urgently. “Right now!”

  She couldn’t hear me. A ruckus was erupting to our left, as someone with a Venetian accent screamed out offers of twenty thousand scudi for all the artwork in the pile. An intelligent man among beasts, I thought, but an ugly roar of disapproval spewed forth from the crazed crowd. The Venetian’s voice was abruptly silenced. I hollered again for Maddalena, to no avail. Trumpets blew, bells rang, and drowned out my words. I leaned over, but Simonetta dropped my hand. She pointed at something and ran, pulling Maddalena along behind her. I tried to follow but got caught behind a raging group of people who had laid hands on the Venetian, stolen his coat, and were mocking up a broomstick and straw effigy of him. I kicked and punched, but I couldn’t get clear of the group for several minutes, until the effigy of the Venetian had been thrown onto the pile. By that time, there was no sign of Simonetta and Maddalena.

  I looked around in a panic and shouted their names, but guards were pouring into the piazza to surround the bonfire, and I couldn’t even hear myself over the din of the crowd and the ringing of all the bells in the city. All one hundred thousand people living in Florence at the time seemed to be in the piazza and the streets surrounding it. I kept pushing through people, frantically searching faces. I called out for my wife and daughter until my throat was hoarse. The guards set fire to the pyramid of vanities with the hapless Signoria watching from their balcony. I climbed walls and gates and peered into the crowd from above, to no avail. After a few hours I headed home, knowing that Maddalena and Simonetta would return there, if they hadn’t already.

  I wended my way against the flood tide of people heading toward Savonarola’s bonfire, which blazed orange and red, a funeral pyre for Florence, illuminating the heavens. When I finally reached my palazzo, Sandro Filipepi waited in front of my door. I knew something was wrong the moment I laid eyes on him. Sandro, that good-humored man, was weeping.

  “Don’t go in,” Sandro said brokenly, embracing me. His face was wet against my cheek.

  “What happened?” I cried. “Where are Maddalena and Simonetta?”

  “Prepare yourself, Luca,” Sandro sobbed, gripping me by both arms. “I thought Savonarola would cure the Church of her excesses, that he offered some kind of resolution for us, but now this!”

  I ran in through my open door into my foyer, where there stood a small circle of silent people, my servants, Maddalena’s fat maid, two of Maddalena’s friends, and a few strangers. They were all weeping. I wailed with dread and knowing. They cleared a path for me. Spread out on the floor lay Maddalena and Simonetta. They were waterlogged, their dark dresses fanning out around their pale incandescent bodies like inky spills from a black river. A glance told me they were dead, but still I checked them for a pulse. I knelt first beside Simonetta, because Maddalena would have wanted that. Our daughter’s blondish-orange hair, the same color as mine, was soaked, as was the plain brown cottardita mandated by Savonarola. Her mantello was missing and I moved a thick lock of hair from her face before my trembling fingers could alight on her neck. Nothing. Nothing at her wrist, either. The same for Maddalena. I went back to Simonetta, picked up her small, sweet head and tilted it back and blew air into her. I don’t know how many times I breathed into her, willing her to wake up, before Sandro pulled me off her.

  “Basta, enough! They’re gone, Luca,” he cried, his face wet with tears. “But I will paint your daughter’s pretty hair and your wife’s sweet face until the Lord calls me to Him, so they will live forever that way!”

  “How did this happen?” I asked numbly. There were torches blazing in the sconces, but it was hard to see. Everything was melting in front of me, the people and the walls bleeding into each other, a heavy kaleidoscope of color collapsing down like a stone wall to press on top of me. I could barely focus. My body was airless, breathless, locked in.

  “I saw it, by chance,” whispered Maddalena’s maid tearfully. “Savonarola himself pointed at her through the crowd. Some men lifted her up on their shoulders so the monk could see her, and he denounced the book that she was holding, a book she had tried to save from the bonfire. It must have been a book about astrology, because he was screaming ‘Whore! Astrologer! Heretic’s wife!’ She fell off the men’s shoulders and a crazed mob chased Maddalena into the Arno. They were screaming at her about being a whore and about the blasphemy of astrology and how she had to be cleansed. Simonetta was chasing them and she ran into the water to help her mother, and a giant swell came over the surface of the water and they both went down! A little while later, they washed up.”

  “The little girl kept up, even though Maddalena kept t
rying to get her to fall away and save herself,” Sandro added sadly. “Simonetta was determined and wouldn’t listen.”

  “She would be determined,” I said hoarsely. “She was devoted to her mother and me.” Stricken faces ringed me, and I waved for them to leave. I sent them out, even Maddalena’s maid, who howled with pain and had to be led away by the other servants.

  When I was alone, I lay down on the floor between Simonetta and Maddalena. The heavy, wet fabric of their clothes made squishy sounds around me as I scooted in. I took each of them by the hand. The river water had made a puddle on the floor that seeped into my clothes, into my skin and bones, as if to dissolve what was left of me after my love had been taken away: my empty, useless physical body. I lay in silence, waiting for death, praying for it. I prayed as I had done only two other times: standing in front of Giotto’s frescoes of St. John the Evangelist in Santa Croce, and after burying the burly, red-haired Ginori in the hills of Fiesole. I envied Ginori for dying soon after his family had died, and that’s what I prayed for. I prayed to die. I prayed to join my wife and daughter, wherever they were. I begged God, pleaded, promised Him anything, if only He would bring the joke to its end.

  My prayers weren’t answered. It became clear that I wouldn’t die that night, so I talked to Maddalena and Simonetta. I told them how much I loved them. I told them how much they meant to me, how important they were, how I was infinitely grateful for the chance to love them. I had told them those things many times before, there was some comfort in that. And then I told them my secrets. The secrets that I should have told my beloved Maddalena when I had the chance, but had failed to, because of the fear within me.

  “My name is Luca, and I am something like immortal,” I said to them. “I am over one hundred seventy-five years old. I do not age as other men do. I knew Giotto, and I was sold into a brothel by my best friend, Massimo. I have killed many people.” As my voice spun shadows on the torchlight-stained walls, they seemed to sit up beside me, and to listen.