by Joanne Lewis
“What is so funny?”
Andrea pointed.
“What? On my face? There is no mirror and I have no time for vanity. Here,” he tossed a cloth, which Andrea caught. “Wipe whatever you find so amusing from my face so I may return to work.”
Andrea held the cloth. His body shook.
Zac’s voice softened. “I have seen the scar on your face. Everyone has. Why are you ashamed? You are stunning, even with the sfregio.”
“Grazie but it is not what is on the surface that makes the man,” Andrea said. “It is what is inside.”
“And what might be inside you?”
“A sinner.”
Zac laughed. “We are all sinners. Il Buggiano, what is your sin?” He stepped toward him. Andrea stepped back. “Is it limbo? Are you not baptized?”
“No, I am baptized.”
Zac moved closer. “Are you a heretic or have a violent nature?”
“No, no. Never.”
Zac took another step. Andrea felt the heat of his body.
“Have you committed conscious fraud or treachery?”
“I have never cheated anyone.”
Zac was inches from him. He smelled lovely, of dust and oils.
“Then what haunts you inside?”
Andrea looked down. “Lust.”
Zac took his hand. “The second circle of hell. Dante got it wrong. It is not lust that is a sin. It is not being true to yourself that is the wrongdoing.”
Zac’s mouth covered Andrea’s. Andrea hesitated then let fly his uncertainties, his fears, and his hands. He touched Zac everywhere. On his face, feeling his wide nose, soft cheeks and sharp whiskers. On his broad shoulders and over his well defined chest. Down his stomach, following a path of the softest hair he had every felt until an inferno erupted inside him. And for the first time, he knew paradiso.
Chapter Seventeen
Rain continued to fall. The Arno splashed over the sides of the banks. From under the Ponte Vecchio, Dolce watched a tall, balding clerk through a storefront window. Abramo Da San Miniato, Moneylender was etched on the glass in gold. She recognized him from the brothel. He had run out the door, his head hung, as she had stepped in.
Abramo sat behind a desk, handling paper money and gold coins, collecting and paying out cash, signing documents, making double entries in an account book. A boy, about ten years old, the same age as Dolce, was seated on the floor with bound parchment on his lap. Dolce felt jealous until she realized he wasn’t reading the handwritten book but was flipping the pages, forward and back, his eyes vapid. The boy couldn’t read.
She watched Abramo and the boy for several days, learning their patterns of activity. When the shop opened and closed, when they rested, when they ate. She saw how Abramo cradled the money like he was rocking a newborn. He seemed richer than the Pope, wealthier than the Medici. She was sure Abramo wouldn’t miss a few florins.
Abramo kept the money in a wooden box carved with symbols she didn’t recognize. They weren’t Latin. They weren’t her native Tuscan. They weren’t even Greek letters. Egyptian, she thought, like hieroglyphics. Abramo kept the box with him, all day, every day, while the boy stared at the book. His large eyes blank and sad.
Dolce had learned many things about survival while living on Il Poderino, and much more since her escape. Patience, was one. So she waited, and watched. Days passed, maybe an entire week. At night she crawled back under the dome then climbed down each morning before the workers returned. She waited until her opportunity arose.
It arrived one morning when two shabbily dressed men surveyed the shop before entering it. She recognized the men from the brothel. One was small and toothless and the other was bearded and tall. Next door, were the parchment sellers who had wanted to kill her, and next to them worked a blacksmith who banged incessantly on iron. The smell of smoke and fire mixed with sweat, animal blood and decay and filled the morning air. Water, tinted red, soaked the streets. The two men entered the money shop and with expressive, angry hands made demands of the clerk. Dolce scampered closer and listened through the open door and window. They wanted a loan.
“And what collateral will you give me?” Abramo asked.
“Our word is our collateral,” the tall, bearded one said.
“That is not enough. Do you have property?”
The small, thick necked man stepped forward and growled. “Are you—a Jew—telling us our word is not good enough?”
Abramo shied away, pulled the box into his chest. “No, sir. It is my policy like every banker along the Arno. I must have collateral.”
The little boy stood next to the clerk. His father, Dolce presumed.
Abramo put his arm around the boy, held the box in his other hand. “Please leave.”
“Not without our money,” said the tall one.
“It is my money,” Abramo said.
“We saw you last night at the gypsy woman’s house collecting money. Our money.”
“That is my job. I am her banker.”
The small man leaped behind the desk. The box flew into the air. Money scattered. Dolce saw a polizia walking up the street. She hesitated, but this was her moment. She charged in, grabbed a fistful of paper and a handful of coins. As she ran out, heading for her hiding place under the Ponte Vecchio, the polizia grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back into the store. The men were gone. The clerk and the boy were on their knees, gathering the fallen currency.
The policeman grabbed the money from Dolce. “Is this yours?” he asked Abramo.
“Yes.”
He dragged Dolce out the door. “She is going to jail.”
Dolce struggled and grunted in protest. La polizia threw her to the ground, raised his fist over his head.
“No.” Abramo ran toward her.
The officer smacked her in the face. Dolce fell, curled into a ball. He stood over her. “She is a thief.” The polizia grabbed her hair and pulled her to her feet. “She will be whipped in the piazza.”
Blood dripped from Dolce’s nose. She wiped it, smeared blood across her face. “He gave me the money.” She pointed at the boy, surprised at the lies of her own voice.
“P-P-Papa, no, I never …”
Abramo silenced his son with a finger to his lips, addressed the officer. “She is correct. My son gave her the money. You can let her go.”
“You lie to protect the girl.”
“No, sir.”
The officer pushed Dolce to the dirt and pointed at the clerk. “If she steals again, you also will be whipped in the piazza. Capite?”
“Yes, sir.”
Abramo helped Dolce to her feet, lead her into the store and closed the door and window. “Why did you take my money?”
Dolce shook her head, vehemently.
“Speak, child, or else I will give you to the polizia and your beating will entertain the Florentine citizens forthwith.”
She cleared her throat and parted her lips. A weak voice emerged. “I am sorry. I am not a thief. Normally.”
“What is your family name?”
“Gaddi.”
The clerk’s eyes grew wide. “Are you an ancestor of Agnolo and Taddeo, the great artists?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bandino is your father?”
She didn’t respond.
“He is a client of mine. He owes me money. How come you have never accompanied him into the city? I have met your brother, Niccolo. He is a rough one. Why are you not with your family?”
She said nothing.
“What does your family call you?”
“Dolce,” she spoke softly.
“I must tell your father you are here. I will send Samuele …”
“No.” She ran to the door, pulled on it. It was locked. She went to the window, searched for a way to open it. No escape. She rested her head against the pane, blood from her nose painting the glass. Trapped, she sank to her knees, shook violently.
“Get up, girl. I will not tell. For now. You are a ver
y unusual child.” He picked up the box from the floor. “Do you steal because you are hungry?”
She shook her head, no.
“Then why take from a hardworking man? Speak your words.”
“I desire pen and ink.”
“Are you an artist?” he asked.
“An architect,” she said.
Abramo’s eyes danced with amusement. “You look young to be an architect.”
“I am ten years old,” she said with pride.
“Like my son, Samuele.” The clerk circled Dolce. “You can keep the money you have stolen but you must work it off. What do you know? What can you do?”
“I can draw.”
“What good is that? Commerce does not depend on the artisan but on the moneylender. There must be something else you can do.”
She looked down.
“Then I must call the police back.” He unlocked the door.
She pulled on his belt. “I can teach Samuele how to read. And geometry. Latin. Ethics. Any subject my brothers have learned.”
Abramo cupped his hand under her chin. “You start tomorrow, and every day until I have decided you have repaid your debt. And if you do not show up, I will find you. And if you do not teach Samuele well, I will call the police. And if you steal again, I will return you to your father.”
Samuele was slight of build and smaller than Dolce. His skin was pale. His hair dark and cut short to his ears. His nose was larger and straighter than the typical Italian’s nose. And even though Dolce was homeless and away from her family, even though she had become a thief and a beggar and a whore, even though she knew what it was like to freeze until she felt her fingers and toes would snap off, even though she had experienced starvation until she foraged for food like a rat, and even though she knew the agony of the struggle to escape a dirt crypt, she was better off than Samuele. Samuele was a Jew.
To be allowed to lend money, Abramo had signed a condotta with the signoria, the rulers of Firenze, setting the exact terms as to what he could accept as collateral and how much interest he could charge. True contracts, called capotoli, were executed by a notary and ratified by the city council. The agreement for Abramo to lend money was to last ten years. In exchange, Abramo asked for one condition that was reluctantly granted after much debate. Even though he and Samuele were Jewish, they were exempted from wearing the Jew’s badge—a roll of yellow material ten centimeters in diameter that is worn across the shoulder or chest—as long as the contract was in effect.
Each morning, Dolce tutored Samuele. When he was working on his assignments, she would learn on her own from manuscripts and scrolls on architecture and construction. Sometimes, she filled pages of notebooks with sketches, designs and ideas. The afternoons were spent running through the streets, playing and laughing. Dolce excitedly grabbing Samuele’s arm and pointing, explaining how a bridge was constructed or how a tilted home could be righted. Then pulling Samuele into the shadows when she would spot her father or brothers, hiding from Bandino and Nic, yearning to touch Po and Piero but resisting when she remembered the dirt tomb collapsing around her.
One afternoon, Dolce and Samuele sat on the floor of Abramo’s store as the rain splattered outside and the Arno surged. She held up a necklace.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Una collana,” Samuele said.
“Write it.” She pushed a quill and paper in front of him.
“I-I-I can’t.”
She took the paper and dipped the feather in the ink. Then she wrote the letters, big and bold.
“Copia,” she ordered.
As men, weak and strong, filled burlap with sand and lined the banks of the Arno to fight the rising water, Dolce taught Samuele how to write. And for every piece of paper he wrote on, for every bottle of ink he used, for every feather pen he made dull, she hoarded one away. At night, she would take the bounty and climb to the top of the cathedral. The rats no longer ran when they saw her. The bats no longer mussed her hair.
As she climbed, Dolce would note the progress on the dome for the day, realizing with the war against Lucca ending, more work was getting done. Sometimes, she would have to hide in the shadows as workers lingered longer than usual. She noticed one man in particular. He was tall, muscular and handsome with dark hair that curled to his shoulders. He seemed to be a supervisor and close with Pippo who often patted the man on the back or gave him an affectionate squeeze. The man seemed familiar to her.
Could he be, she wondered, the boy Andrea who had saved her from the parchment makers all those years ago?
On this star filled night, atop the cathedral and under the dome, Dolce pulled out a board and balanced it on two stones. She sat on a rock and laid out the parchment on her desk. She dipped the feather and inhaled deeply, the ink rising like perfume and as tantalizing as a field carpeted with flowers.
Feather pen poised over parchment, the blank paper frightened her. She placed the pen point down, drew a wobbly line, picked up the pen, took a deep breath and put the point down again. This time, the line was straight, as if sketched along an edge. She closed her eyes and let her dreams guide her hand. When she opened them, the building on the parchment was so grand and full of grace it grew into the clouds—exactly as she had imagined, exactly as she knew it would be one day.
People would be miles and miles away and see the structure as it scraped the sky. They would point and smile and say, “There is La Citta di Dolce. A magical place.”
The highest building ever created in the whole world would quarter the masses. No one would be homeless again. No family superior to another. Cosimo de’ Medici would sit next to the gypsy woman. The Pope next to the pauper.
Dolce drew large windows. And doors that slid open onto balconies so people could step outside and breathe fresh air, even hundreds of feet above the earth. She had been studying the progress of the dome for years and knew it was possible. But how to create these balconies? How to make them jut out without falling? She looked around Pippo’s incredible creation that required no buttressing. Yes, she could do the same thing. She could design a beam without external bracing. It was possible. It really was.
She stood, gloriously stretched her arms over her head, saw her name carved in the wall, Dolce Gaddi, Architetta, then looked into the night. In the distance, Firenze and the world rolled out like a plush rug lit by a full moon and an orchestra of fireflies. She looked up inside the dome and noticed a short tunnel, an entrance of some kind, leading up, plugged with wood inserted from below. Why hadn’t she noticed this before? She circled underneath, her neck craned. It was rudimentary, like an afterthought. Not the work of a fastidious architect. What was Pippo up to?
Chapter Eighteen
Fifteen-year-old Filippa and Grandpa Raj sat in the dining room.
“Dammit,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Is it the electric bill again?”
“It’s not your fault. Just my crazy friends come here all the time and the lights burn all night long.”
“I can get a job and help out.”
“Definitely not. We’ve talked about this. Your job is your studies, and that’s it.”
“What about your investment in windmills and natural energy? We’ll be fine after that comes through.”
“Yeah.” He put the bills down and opened a newspaper.
“What’s that?”
“An Italian periodical on architectural history.”
“I didn’t know you read Italian.”
“I don’t. This is the translated version. I’m teaching a course next semester on Italian Renaissance architecture.”
“That’ll be fun. It’s about time Flamingo College offered that course. You’ve wanted to teach it for years.”
“I’m not teaching it at Flamingo. I’m teaching it at the community college.”
“Why?”
“To make extra money, that’s all.”
“I can babysit weekends. T
hat won’t interfere with my schoolwork.”
“No.” He put the paper down. “And that’s final. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grandpa Raj picked up the newspaper again. Filippa looked at her homework.
Write the slope-intercept form of the equation of the line perpendicular to the graph of that passes through the point (3, -2).
She put her homework down. “What are you reading about?”
“You sure are nosy.” He smiled.
“Isn’t that a good quality for an architectural historian? I’m going to be like you. If I can pass math, that is. So, what is it?” She nodded at the newspaper.
“A competition.”
“For what?”
He read, “The Italian Architectural Historian Society has announced a competition to find proof of the design of the first skyscraper, believed to have been created by an Italian Renaissance artist in the fifteenth century. The winner receives one million American dollars.”
“Wow. That’s a ton of money. You could work things out with the bank. When is the deadline?”
“There is no deadline. Just the first person to provide a sketch or blueprint or something that can be authenticated wins.”
“You’ve been researching that for years. You have to enter, Grandpa.” Filippa looked at her watch and closed her book.
“Time for art class?” he asked.
She kissed him, ran out and hopped on her bike. If he knew she was going to meet Julio, he would have forbidden her from going.
Chapter Nineteen
“W-W-Where do you go each night?” Samuele asked Dolce each time she packed her books and papers to leave Abramo’s store.
“Into the night,” was all she would say.
As they grew, so did their affection. One peaceful night when they were seventeen years old and the sun was starting to fall, Dolce was gathering her belongings. Samuele took her hand and brushed his lips on hers. “You can stay with us. We have a soft bed for you.”
Dolce lost her voice, shook her head no, no, no.
“Then we will marry. You must live with your husband.”
