Immortal (23 page)

Night fell with its sticky plum shadows arching out of alcoves. A cold wind wheezed at the windows. I went through the palazzo, lighting lamps and candles. In almost every room a child lay dead, either on the floor or on the bed. The throats of most had been slit, though some were stabbed. None had resisted; I knew from bitter experience that they had been taught not to, and even years of liberation were not enough to remove the fences in their minds. I saved my own room for last. There was a shape in my bed. It was a small reddish-brown dog, a mutt of the kind often seen scampering about the city, begging for food. The muzzle of its severed head hung open, its long pink tongue lolling out, and the head lay next to its torso, which had been stabbed through several times. Its legs and genitals were missing. It was a clear warning to me. Instead of frightening me, it angered me. I should have killed Nicolo when I had the chance. If I had been the sorcerer he said I was, I would have killed him with my thoughts in that moment.

There were almost fifty bodies here to bury, a few days’ work were I to do it alone. But I was done burying the dead; my time as a becchino was over. The Laughing God, seeking a new joke, had batted me as a cat does a mouse into another place in life. It was a while of sitting in contemplation on the bed next to the mutilated dog before I knew what to do. Then the answer came to me in all its crimson simplicity. It would require a huge sacrifice from me—exile—but it was the only fitting response to this moment. I took a torch out of a wall sconce and held it to the heavy drapes that had blocked the light from this little room, my prison of so many years. They lit quickly and orange flames raced up them to lick at the ceiling. I held the torch to the bed with its horsehair mattress and the linens whistled as they caught fire. A small trickle of flame ran along the dog’s muzzle, and I ran upstairs and set Simonetta’s bed on fire. I watched for a while as the flames wrapped tenderly around her body like a blanket for sleeping. I left before the smell of roasted flesh could nauseate me.

I entered into room after room, setting fire to the linens and drapery. I didn’t pray because I was angry at God again for allowing Nicolo to commit so many murders. I simply trusted the fire to guide the children into a better afterlife, whatever that afterlife might be. I doubted it was the boring heaven vaunted by priests. But there was probably something. Better men than me, baptized men, had been certain in their faith of a heaven.

Soon the palazzo crackled, groaned, and shrilled with fire. Black smoke poured in flumes along the ceiling and fierce hot blasts of air struck my face. A golden glow suffused walls and ceiling and it reminded me of the radiant, expressive halos in the work of Giotto’s master Cimabue. Cimabue had painted the exquisite altarpiece of the Madonna at Santa Trinita. The Madonna was shown as a queen upon a rich and monumental throne, with eight adoring angels attending her and four stern prophets below her. She existed in the gold that was the ground of her divinely maternal being, holding on her knee the Christ child with his hand upraised in blessing.

Perhaps it was the smell of smoke and burning meat that confused my senses, or perhaps it was Cimabue’s powerful Madonna that exalted them, but I was thrown back, for a moment, into the unbounded state of the philosopher’s stone. Time spun loose like a wheel rattling off the axle of a cart, and scenes from the past sprang to life before my eyes. The flames vanished like clouds scattering from the surface of a river and I saw myself, a scrawny, dirty boy, being led through the door by a sneering Bernardo Silvano. I saw the first patron walk into my room, and the countless other patrons who had followed him—I saw each and every one of their richly hated faces. I still hated them. I still felt the fire of anger scorching through me at what they had done to me. It tormented me and I felt violated all over again.

Suddenly time stopped gyrating and the forty-eight children whose bodies I had consigned to the fire stood around me in a semicircle. They were quiet, solemn, reverent. They wore plain blue silken camicie and golden halos, like Cimabue’s angels. The little girl from Cathay stood nearest me; when I met her eyes, she nodded. Ingrid, to whom I had fed poisoned candy to save her from the ministrations of a cardinal, joined the children. Blue-eyed Bella appeared, with her hands mercifully whole, and then Marco stepped into the semicircle. He was as he had been before Silvano had brutalized him: handsome, elegant, radiating kindness. I was so happy to see him looking well and luminous that I called his name. He winked at me with his old esprit. A sound like a song went up from the children’s throats, exalting me, and Simonetta stood among them. She was young again, but without the stripes from Silvano’s whip that she had often worn. She smiled at me and pointed—

Crack! A falling beam landed close enough behind me to throw blue sparks at my face, startling me out of my reverie. I laid the torch on the carpet and turned and strolled out the door. I walked some distance, making sure I could still see the palazzo’s scarlet umbra reflected in the night. I scaled the wall of an abandoned palazzo near the Porta Santa Croce, which, like all of Florence, was closed for the night. Heedless of the curfew and any passing ufficiale, I shimmied up onto the roof to watch the spectacle of Bernardo Silvano’s brothel burning to the ground. It was, after all, my life that was also burning. I wasn’t sorry to see it go. A better life, a better Luca, would emerge from the ashes. Perhaps for the fence to finally leave the mind of a beaten dog, the fence had to go up in flames.

It was worth it, though I now had to leave Florence. The city fathers would disregard Nicolo’s slaughter of innocents, but they would never forgive my act of arson. Arson was a hanging offense. Florence’s buildings were precious, far more valuable than fifty familyless children and an old woman who took care of them. In fact, the Signoria would probably be grateful to Nicolo that he’d rid the city of pestiferous outcasts, embarrassing reminders of a vice in which too many city fathers had participated. But burning a building which could have been reclaimed for civic purposes: that was an unpardonable outrage. Knowing this to be so, that neither God nor men would avenge the children whose funeral pyre I had set, I could no longer believe in any God at all. Even a cruel God must harbor tenderness for enslaved children and for a sweet soul like Simonetta. Clearly there was no God apart from the evil in men.

Dawn broke cold and damp. The first tentative rays of sun shattered the indigo horizon, and the city gates opened. In came peasants from the contado with their carts laden with produce for the markets. Mingling in the streets with the carts and pack animals were devout folk hurrying to early Mass. I had to return to the Sfornos’ home to pack my things, and by the time I arrived, a light rain was falling. I went quietly through their house and out to the barn to wash myself. Rachel was waiting. She sat on the hay where I had slept for so many years, but would never again. Her knees were curled up against her chest and wrapped in my woolen blanket.

“I’ve been worried about you, Luca, I didn’t see you come home last night,” she said. Her full pink lips were drawn in concern, and her long auburn hair spilled around her shoulders in a glossy sheet, wisps of it curling around her face. Her large eyes were smudged under with purple crescents. Strong-minded Rachel seemed oddly vulnerable, even to my exhausted eyes. She had grown very beautiful over the last four years, with her high cheekbones and fair skin and eyes that shone with intelligence and spirit.

“Rachel, your mother doesn’t want you alone with me,” I said softly. I stopped in the doorway and pulled over the little tripod stool to sit on, to wait for her to leave.

She asked, “Where were you?”

“Out. I think you should go, so your mother doesn’t get angry with me.”

“You disappear sometimes,” she murmured, hugging her knees closer to her chest. “Where do you go, Luca Bastardo? Do you go to the market, to visit friends from your past, to look for the parents you’ve never known? Mama says we’re not to ask you questions about your life, that someone who’s done what you’ve done has secrets that the rest of us must never learn.”

“I’m leaving,” I said, looking away. “Something has happened. I can’t stay in Florence. It isn’t safe for me. Or for your family; ufficiali will come here looking for me.”

“No! Luca, why?” She jumped to her feet, dropping the blanket, standing in front of me in her plain peach-colored gonna, the sheer undergarment women wore. I wanted to look away because it wasn’t at all appropriate for me to see her thus. A woman wore her gonna only in the most domestic settings, with the most intimate family members. But the dawn threw a soft luminescence that made Rachel’s gonna diaphanous, revealing the lift of her full breasts and the indent of her small waist underneath the sheer silk. I was aroused, and stunned and shocked to find myself so. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

“Luca, what’s wrong? What’s happened? You must tell me! We can help you, I can help you!” Rachel cried. She ran over and pulled me up off the stool. I was breathing heavily, almost shaking. “You’re not alone anymore, you have us!” She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me, and as she did, the silk of her gonna was sucked inward to outline the curving shape of her body. A strange lassitude coursed through my being. I went slack though my blood was boiling. I knew all about desire, of course, having had it wielded against me during those years at Silvano’s. But I had never before experienced it in myself. I had not expected it to feel this way, insistent and luscious and warm. My cheeks burned. I felt ashamed. Desire was cozening my brain, as I had seen it fool men with wives and children of their own into despicable acts of rape and abuse. So what difference was there between them and me? It was a galling question. I did not want to hurt Rachel as I had been hurt, especially not this day of new self-possession. I hung my head.

“Luca?” Rachel asked. Softly she placed her hand under my chin and tilted up my face. She searched my eyes with her own.

“You have to get out of here,” I said hoarsely. “Now!”

I stood to the side to let her pass. Instead, before I could react, she clasped my face in her hands and kissed me. I noted that she was as tall as me and didn’t have to stretch up on her toes, and that her lips tasted sweetly of butter. Then she parted her lips to let me feel her soft, lush tongue, and all thought left my head. After a few moments, Rachel pulled her head away from me.

“You’re so beautiful, Luca,” she murmured. “I’ve wanted you for so long!”

“Really?” I asked hoarsely, surprised and grateful. “You wanted me?”

“But only if you want me, too,” she whispered, and right then, I knew the difference between me and the patrons: Rachel wanted me as much as I wanted her. I had never invited patrons into my room, I had submitted to them with anger, despair, and contempt. There was no submission in Rachel, just reciprocal tenderness. I couldn’t speak, so I kissed her some more.

Somehow she was soon lifting off her gonna, and I was scrambling out of my camicia. All those years at Silvano’s, I had never imagined that I would be in a hurry to remove my undershirt! I fumbled and Rachel giggled, and then she stroked me and I could only groan. Over the next hour, she took pleasure in my body, as so many had before, but she also unstintingly gave pleasure to me, with her hands, and her mouth, and all of herself. Something was healed that had been damaged by my prior work. I would never be unscathed by what I had done, but I could let myself be a man now, with all that implied. It was a great gift that Rachel gave me.

“You’re not going to leave now, are you, Luca?” Rachel asked, after a while. We were lying in each other’s arms in the hay. I was nuzzling her, marveling at her beauty and sweetness and strength. Somehow I knew she wasn’t the woman promised to me during the night of the philosopher’s stone, but I still felt grateful and tender toward Rachel.

“If I don’t leave, I put you in danger,” I said, and guilt assailed me as I took in the full import of my words. Now more than ever, having loved Rachel, I couldn’t bring harm to the Sfornos. Jews were only grudgingly tolerated in Florence. My heart sank as a second recognition seized me: what Rachel and I had done would not be condoned, not by Jews, not by Gentiles, and most of all, not by her parents. “Not just because of what I did last night, but because of this.” I stroked her breast softly. “Your parents will kill me when they find out. And you!”

“They won’t find out, we won’t tell them,” Rachel said, her tone pleading.

“Your parents aren’t stupid, they’ll know at a glance what we did,” I said. I rolled away from Rachel and gazed up into the rafters. My heart ached. I had discovered this wondrous thing with Rachel, and it was already lost. We’d betrayed her parents’ trust and broken a great taboo. This on the heels of my setting fire to a building, which would bring the city’s wrath upon me. I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry about our lovemaking, because it felt whole and right, but others would judge and condemn us, her more than me. She could even be killed. I took a deep breath. “Moshe and Leah will be shamed. They’ll feel that you’ve brought dishonor to them, to your family, and to your community. Your family could be ostracized.”

“No one will ever know,” Rachel repeated, stubbornly. I kissed her forehead.

“People always find out,” I said. It hurt me, but I had to leave her, for her own sake. I scrambled up and searched for my camicia. “And men will come here looking for me, and I don’t want your family to get in trouble. I did something last night—the ufficiali will hang me! They won’t wait for a trial. They already don’t like me because of Nicolo Silvano and his new Confraternity of the Red Feather.”

“Did you kill Nicolo Silvano?” Rachel stared at me with round eyes.

“I wish I had!” I said. “I wish it was that simple.” I was finished dressing and I stood on the stool to retrieve my Giotto panel from its hiding place. Rachel watched me with curiosity in her intelligent eyes. I packed the panel with Petrarca’s notebook and Geber’s eyeglasses in a portmanteau I’d bought recently at the market, and then shrugged into my mantello.