Entering Piazza Santo Spirito, all was calm. The shutters on the buildings were closed, as you’d expect; the odd light or two, but he knew who the insomniacs were. Water was coming up from the gutters here too. He entered his building but didn’t go up straight away. It was that niggle in his guts that made him head for the cellar.
He stepped down the stone stairs into ankle-deep water, and a strong stink of drains was no surprise. The overhead light flickered but didn’t go out.
The topmost bags of coal were still dry, and they were the first to come up. And the boxes the elderly contessa had asked him to store. Crates of cheese and wine for the pensione came next, jars of homemade passata, bottles of oil, bottles of San Pellegrino mineral water, anything unadulterated, anything he could wipe free of water, all brought up to the ground floor. And every time he went back down, he had a sense the water was rising. The bike came up last, wheels dripping. He was wired and exhausted and his best suit was drenched. And at 2 a.m. he went over to Michele’s.
Michele out of the top-floor window: Hey, soldato! What time you call this?
It’s the cellars, Michele.
It’s always the fucking cellars! But Michele came down. His night would be long.
Ulysses put on a pot of coffee and changed his clothes. He moved about with a sense of dread and thought, at first, that it was about Alys and Cressy. He went out onto the terrace for air. The rain had softened to a drizzle and the city was trapped under a haze, both torpid and eerie. Dawn was still five hours away. What is it? he wondered. The restlessness felt like wartime, the unseen enemy in wait. He wouldn’t sleep, he knew that. He finished the last of the coffee and decided to set about the task of bringing up the coal and the crates and sacks; it seemed the most sensible thing to do. He grabbed a torch and went out into the stairwell.
At 4.30 a.m. the elderly contessa opened her door. You stealing my things now, Signor Temper?
The cellar’s flooded, contessa, and he placed the last of the boxes at her feet. Take them or leave them, he said. （He was in no mood for her rancour.） Grazie, graz— but he was gone.
He closed the wooden door quietly behind him and stepped out into the night. Lights were on in Michele’s and he could see the big man at the counter having an espresso. He turned left into Via Maggio, torchlight leading him down to the river.
He heard it before he’d even got close: the sound was deafening. A terrifying black torrent, almost level with the top of the parapets, was frothing and howling and pitching foam into the wind. Suddenly, a mighty oak dragged down from the Casentino slammed against the wall in front of him, sending up clouds of spindrift. He stumbled to the ground, heart pounding at this mad confrontation with nature. The torch went out.
He stood up. The river was now cascading over the top of the embankment wall and black waves were eddying and turning back on themselves. He hit the torch against his leg and a beam of light shot out against the bricks. Small cracks had begun to appear, spurting water.
He turned and ran, Borgo San Jacopo already inundated as he passed. The wail of a siren ominous in the distance.
Michele was in the bar, talking to a group of men, and before Ulysses could tell them what he’d seen, Michele called out to him. Everything’s going down, Soldato! Electricity, phones – you need to collect as much water as possible before the pressure gives out.
Ulysses entered the hallway and ran the stairs two at a time.
He knocked on the contessa’s door.
You again, she said.
Contessa. Fill every container you have with water. The bath. Bowls. Anything.
You frighten me, Signor Temper.
Don’t be frightened. Just do it, contessa.
What’s happening?
I don’t know.
Back inside, he lifted the phone to warn Massimo, but the line was dead. Bath, pots, saucepans, anything capable of containing water was filled and he went down and did the same in the pensione.
Back down the stairs once more, but this time, out of the front door. A helicopter swooped overhead. His torchlight cutting a path through the inundated streets. By the time he got to Piazza dei Sapiti it was already 2 feet under water. A beam of light through the window showed sheets of paper and plastic moulds shimmering on the undulating black surface. The wooden door had swollen, and it took his shoulder to get it open. Inside, the smell of paint and sewers and water rising by the minute. The rain had stalled, and he needed to take the globe now. He stuck the torch in his pocket, lifted the giant sphere and began to back out of the doorway. Only then did he notice the three bundles of his father’s copperplates on an upper shelf. Fuck. It was simply too late.