The Dante Game

by Jane Langton

  Signor Roberto was gone much of the time. On the rare occasions when he spent the day at the farm, Julia kept her distance. But one day he spoke to her politely, with an old-fashioned formal bow. “Good morning, Signorina. I hope you are feeling well.”

  Julia looked at him in surprise, grateful to hear her own language. “Oh, please,” she said eagerly, “tell me why I’m being kept here. Why can’t you let me go?”

  He shook his head. “I’m very sorry that I cannot tell you. One day I will explain.”

  “It’s narcotics, isn’t it?” said Julia angrily. “And Ned, why did you have to kill poor Ned?” She could feel her eyes filling with tears.

  Signor Roberto’s face lost color. “Believe me, Signorina, there is a good reason why we keep you here. What is the word? Una ragione ideale, a noble reason. Some day you’ll understand.”

  But what noble reason could there be for killing Franco and Isabella and Ned, for setting up a heroin laboratory at the school, for stealing precious objects from the museums of Florence? It was drug-trafficking—it had to be. Perhaps at Easter there would be an enormous delivery of heroin or cocaine. Perhaps millions of dollars worth of illegal narcotics were hidden right here at the farm. Vast amounts of money were stashed away in bulging suitcases, the wine tank was choked with lire, the oil jars were full of coins, a huge pot of gold was buried under the kitchen garden.

  One afternoon she made a break for it.

  The day was balmy, with a hazy sun halfway up the sky. Pancrazio and Carlo played a ragged kind of two-man soccer in the driveway. They kicked and shouldered the ball, bouncing it off the roof of Matteo’s little Honda, chasing it into the shrubbery. They played with an awkward boyish grace. Julia sat watching them on the front step of the house. The ball ricocheted off Pancrazio’s head over the wall into the farmyard, and the chickens squawked.

  “Where is Raffaello?” said Julia, as they paused for a smoke.

  “Raffaello?” said Pancrazio. “Raffaello é un’ elettricista.. Lui, sta lavorando oggi.”

  Oh, yes, thought Julia. The little three-wheeled vehicle was an electrician’s truck. Raffaello was working today. She should have figured it out for herself. He was an itinerant electrician, a big cheerful slob who left behind him a trail of tossed cigarettes and junk-food wrappers, dropped shirts and shoes discarded in the middle of the floor. Julia smiled at Pancrazio and shrugged slightly, as if she hadn’t understood what he said, but never mind.

  “Ah, ecco Raffaello.” Pancrazio and Carlo called out in greeting as the little truck came bucking up the steep road, turned into the driveway and lurched to a stop.

  Raffaello did not return the greeting. Instead he leaped out and began yelling angrily. He stalked up to Carlo, and at once there was a violent argument. Julia couldn’t make head or tail of it. She guessed that Carlo had borrowed Raffaello’s truck and stolen something.

  Now Pancrazio joined in. He and Carlo stood in front of Raffaello, chins thrust out, heads thrown back, forefingers jabbing at his chest. The three of them were all shouting at once.

  The little truck stood in the driveway, throbbing slightly. Its motor was running, the door on the driver’s side had been left open. Julia looked at it, and stood up slowly.

  Someone threw a punch. There was a cry of pain, and then a free-for-all. Silently Julia walked to the truck and slipped into the single seat of the little cab.

  No one was looking. Quickly she studied the controls, then shifted into reverse. Taking a firm hold on the wheel, she looked over her shoulder and began backing up. Watch out, don’t jerk it like that. Smoothly, smoothly. If only she could make it to the steep slope of the stony road, she could be off and away. She could race down to the highway, then jump out and stop a car, or find a house and call the police. In the little truck she couldn’t hope to outdistance the Honda on the highway. Julia had seen the swashbuckling Matteo take off in it and tear down the hill, whizzing insanely around the sharp turns.

  Softly she backed up to the road. The three men were still furiously rolling over one another in the driveway. Cautiously Julia began the backward turn, but as she twisted the wheel her arm nudged the horn, and there was a loud toot.

  Dismayed, she looked out to see three faces staring at her. Frantically she shoved the car into forward gear and began plunging down the hill. In the rearview mirror she could see two of them catapulting after her. Violently she raced the little truck straight down, and then began swerving around the switchbacks, fearful of going off the road. The truck had not been meant for speed on a steep grade. It was tippy on its tiny wheels. Behind her she could hear the loud honking of the Honda. Before she had gone halfway down the hill, Matteo’s car caught up with her, forcing her to one side of the road. She had to bump wildly to a stop.

  Raffaello was driving. Furiously he dragged her out of the driver’s seat, threw her to the ground and fell on her, tearing at her clothes.

  Julia fought back, but he was far stronger than she was, and wildly aroused.

  Neither of them heard another car grinding to a stop. But in an instant someone was there, jerking Raffaello to his feet, smashing his face with a heavy blow that knocked him flat on his back.

  Julia sat up, weeping angry tears, trying to cover herself. Gently Signor Roberto lifted her and helped her into his car. At the house she was handed over to Tina, who grimly shut her in her room.

  She had come so close! In feverish disappointment Julia threw herself down on the chair beside the window and listened to the men next door. Carlo and Pancrazio were loud. Raffaello whined. Roberto’s voice was threatening.

  Soon the younger men fell silent. Julia listened to the deep voice. It was like Zee reading the Inferno in Italian. There was the same clear articulation of syllables, the same dire solemnity and awful conviction.

  She was worn out. There was nothing to do but sleep. Dragging her bed across the room, she heaved it toward the door,

  She was protecting herself from Raffaello, but not only from Raffaello. In spite of his old-fashioned civility, Signor Roberto frightened her even more.

  The bed would be a blockade. Its metal legs screaked across the floor. The headboard hit the door with a crash.

  CHAPTER 43

  Lo, the sweet siren!…

  Purgatory XIX, 19.

  The rains of early spring fell on the hill of Bellosguardo, pattering on the tile rooftops of the villas overlooking the city, keeping everyone indoors, isolating households from one another, preventing the good sisters of the convent of La Colombaia from sowing their cabbages and lettuces. Only Signor Paschelli’s white ducks paid no attention to the downpour, waddling around their little yard at the neighboring villa just as usual, paddling in the puddles.

  In the Villa L’Ombrellino the roof leaked on the south side of the central wing. Lucretia and Tom O’Toole put buckets under the dripping ceiling of the Antechamber of the Grand Vizier. Every now and then they had to run upstairs to empty them out the window. Once they forgot, and the buckets overflowed and water poured through the floor into the Pavilion of the Concubines, gurgling down the walls below the barrel vault, making reflecting pools over the huge word SALVE on the mosaic floor.

  The last quarter of the school year was underway. In June, by the solemn decree of the trustees, the doors would dose forever.

  Zee felt partly responsible for the failure of the school, and his guilt added to his anxiety.

  Homer Kelly too was depressed, his natural cheerfulness at low ebb. Walking his motorbike up the muddy driveway, his shoes caked with yellow day, he reflected that life was continually in psychic motion, perpetually sagging back toward sadness. One’s despondency might be succeeded by a period of liveliness and action, a time that might be called happy—and then melancholy slipped under the door again and climbed the stairs.

  His exploratory journeys with Zee were a relief. Together, working their way northward in the Saab, they pooled their anxieties, looking at them from different angles. To Homer, Zee�
��s view of the world was European—subtle and complex—while to Zee, Homer had an American rawness, a fresh vision of reality that was hairy and rough and charged with blood.

  For the last two weeks they had been puttering along Via Faentina, talking to the carabinieri in the little towns strung out along the Torrente Mugnone, one of the little streams rushing down to the Arno from the slopes of the Appenines.

  The carabinieri were a military police force, often working in tandem with the polizia. Together Zee and Homer visited the Comando Gruppo Firenze on Via Ognissanti, hoping to learn which little towns were served by this branch of the Italian security forces.

  “Have you seen this woman?” said Zee, showing his photograph of Julia to the brigadier in San Domenico. The picture showed Julia Smith and Ned Saltmarsh standing in front of the entrance to the Bargello, grinning at the camera. The snapshot was worn at the edges, as though it had been handled many times.

  “Questa?” said the brigadier, putting his finger on Julia. He showed it to his fellow officer. “Isn’t that Giorgio’s girlfriend?”

  The other officer looked at the picture, then glanced up at Zee. “Is she pregnant? Giorgio’s girlfriend is—” he made a huge shape in the air in front of his uniform.

  Zee laughed, disappointed, and shook his head.

  But in Fiesole they seemed to have hit pay dirt. Yes, yes, the captain had seen the woman. “She is very pretty, vero?”

  “Si, si,” gulped Zee, his heart beginning to beat.

  The captain made an imperious gesture. “Venite!” he said, and at once they were herded out-of-doors into the rain. “Avanti!”

  Down the street they went in a platoon behind the striding figure of the captain. Homer galloped along in the rear, trying to hold his pop-open umbrella over Zee, who kept rushing forward into the downpour. There was a flash of lightning and a sound of thunder like potatoes falling out of a sack.

  At the corner the captain made a left-face and threw open the door of a shop. It was a beauty parlor, an Istituto di Bellezza. Two young matrons were having their hair clipped and flounced. The two estetiste looked up in surprise, and then one of them began chattering at the captain, her red lips smiling, her eyes heavily made up with mascara.

  “Speak in English to my friends,” urged the captain, grinning at her.

  “Hi!” she responded obediently. “You Americani? Ah, I love Americani!” She rolled her eyes romantically. “Roberto Redford!”

  Zee was crestfallen. Homer shook his head mournfully at the captain, who shrugged, raised his eyebrows, kissed the hand of the pretty hairdresser, gazed at himself in the mirror, smoothed his hair, adjusted his captain’s hat, and promised to come back for a manicure.

  In the car Homer stared gloomily at the drenched houses looming up beside the road, the soggy women and children waiting for Bus 12, the girl in a fur coat whizzing by on a Vespa, and then he explained the incident theoretically to Zee. “The captain is just like Dante, you see, Zee. He looks at the entire universe in the person of the girl he loves.”

  CHAPTER 44

  …thou hast thy back turned to the thing.

  Paradiso VIII, 96.

  Inspector Rossi had assembled the entire master plan for the security of His Holiness. The thing was finished. Perhaps now he could get back to work in earnest on the pursuit of murderers in the city of Florence—the baby-strangler, the homicidal rapist, the Dante-quoting killer at the American school, and the woman who had finished off her husband with homemade sausage—sanguinaccio packed with bread crumbs, blood, candied fruit and strychnine.

  The master plan was bound into a folder and sent by messenger to the Banca degli Innocenti. Rossi felt the task of preparation slipping from his shoulders. Now there would be no further duties until the Easter celebration was actually at hand.

  But next day he received a note from Signor Bindo, written by the bank manager himself in his small round hand—

  Spettabile Ispettore,

  Your plan is magnificent. There is another urgent matter I wish to discuss with you. Please come to see me at the bank.

  Distinti saluti,

  Leonardo Bindo

  And that afternoon in the bank manager’s office, another burden descended on Rossi’s shoulders.

  “I appeal to you, Inspector,” said Signor Bindo. “You must come to the aid of our saintly archbishop. He’s deeply troubled by some of the requirements for the Easter celebration.”

  “Troubled?” faltered Rossi, filled with awe. “The archbishop? You’ve been talking with His Excellency, the archbishop?”

  “Oh, yes. The archbishop and I are jointly in charge of the festivities.”

  The inspector goggled at Bindo, his Adam’s apple working up and down. It was true that he often felt dose to the Archbishop of Florence, whenever he accepted the body of Christ from the old man’s own hands in the cathedral. At the same time there was a great distance between them, as though the archbishop floated high above him in the celestial spaces of the great dark dome, while he, Marco Rossi, knelt on the floor, earthbound.

  Bindo looked at him shrewdly. “You see, Inspector, the blessed man has been given the task of finding sleeping quarters for the visiting security forces from the Vatican for the night of Holy Saturday. My suggestion to him has been that the Questura should simply commandeer enough spaces in the city—in office buildings near the Duomo, in private houses. It would be like billeting soldiers during wartime. I will give you an official order from the comune. So far we have room for only thirty in the palace of the archbishop. Now there are to be fifty more. Not to mention the Roman schoolchildren. Sixty young people and their choirmistress will need safe and comfortable places to sleep on the night of Holy Saturday. The archbishop has asked particularly that the most talented young officer at the Questura should be given this assignment.”

  “Do you mean,” said Rossi innocently, “that His Excellency asked for me?”

  “His Excellency himself.” Leonardo Bindo was quick to agree with this misunderstanding. All things could be made to serve. At once he readjusted his line of command. “You will report directly to the archbishop. Shall I arrange a meeting for tomorrow morning?”

  “Oh, yes,” said the inspector. He went home in a state of excitement and told his wife and children of the great honor that had come to him. Next day he entered the study of the archbishop in a mood of prayerful devotion, and knelt to kiss the old man’s ring.

  The archbishop was touched by this young man so old-fashioned that he didn’t know the baciamano was rather out of date. He urged Rossi to sit down, and together they discussed the sleeping arrangements for the security forces from the Vatican and the schoolchildren from Rome.

  Inspector Rossi had given the matter a good deal of thought during the night, and he had a number of suggestions—the classrooms of the university, the refectories and sacristies of the nearby churches, the public rooms in the Palazzo Vecchio. And perhaps the children could be put up in local convents where the nuns would look after them.

  The archbishop’s anguished expression cleared, and he held out his hands to Rossi, a smile illuminating his wasted face. “Then you will take care of the matter?”

  “Certainly, Your Excellency. I will find places for them all.”

  “You will come back and report to me from time to time?”

  “Oh, yes, Your Excellency.” The inspector knelt again, and the archbishop dismissed him with his blessing.

  CHAPTER 45

  Feed thy faint heart with hope, and calm thy breast.…

  Inferno VIII, 107.

  After two weeks of downpour the sun came out at last. The grass shot up in the L’Ombrellino garden. There were new green leaves on the vine-covered wall and sudden growth on the hedges, blurring the sharp outlines Franco had cut last fall. Along the parapet the naked goddesses were virginal and fresh. Even the planets arching high overhead were moist and swollen in their brightness.

  The Dante class was exploring the same pla
nets, floating upward through them one at a time, experiencing Paradise. At the moment they were poised in the Heaven of Mars with warrior saints and images of fortitude.

  Zee spent most of the hours outside class in the company of Homer Kelly, visiting all the logical establishments along Via Faentina—the industrial electricians, the electrico-mechanical electricians, the household electricians, the automobile electricians, the suppliers of electrical equipment. All of them had permanent addresses, tiny shop fronts or greasy garages where they leaned over the hoods of cars installing fuse boxes or tracing broken wires. Their vehicles were vans or ordinary automobiles, not little three-wheeled trucks.

  Homer Kelly went along on these expeditions partly from his customary sense of adventurous curiosity, but mostly out of a sportsmanlike sympathy for his crazed friend Zee. But one day Joan Jakes took a phone call that shook things up.

  “Hello?” said the voice on the phone. “Hey, who’s this? Joan Jakes? Oh, hi, how are ya? Hey, listen, this is Kevin.”

  “Kevin? Kevin Banks?”

  “Right, it’s me. You know, like I left last month.”

  “Yes, we noticed that,” said Joan caustically. “Are you coming back?”

  “Oh, hell, no. Hey, listen, here’s what I’m calling about, like I left my camera behind. Did you find it? I mean did somebody see it on top of the wardrobe?”

  “You left a good many things in your room,” said Joan acidly. “Are you coming back for them, is that it?”

  “Oh, God, no. But my camera, you know, like it cost plenty. I mean it was a high school graduation present. My dad’ll be really pissed off if I lose it. So could you mail it to me? I’m in Mykonos, you know, in Greece? Listen, you got a pencil?”

  “Kevin, wait, listen. Is Julia there? Would you put her on the phone?”

  “Julia?” There was a puzzled silence. “You mean Julia Smith?”