Darkness all about him. An occasional whisper of moon. His boots were waterlogged, heavy as stone, legs fighting against the current, water waist height now. He lifted the globe higher still, grateful for the halt in rain which would have destroyed it. Out onto Via Maggio and the water pulled like mud.
Flash!
He turned. （Click.） Caught forever.
The photographer raised his hand and waded off towards the Palazzo Pitti.
Ulysses turned right. The street drew colour from the lightening hour and the undulation of the ground made the water shallower and his footing felt firmer. He was in the square, he was almost there, and his arms burned from the carry but home was up ahead. The globe achingly beautiful in the violet light of morning. Michele shouting to him from the top window. Ulysses looked up and nodded. Suddenly, a fierce brown surge rose behind him and threw him into the deluge. He felt the moment the globe was ripped from his hands, the impact as he was slammed into the fountain, the roaring in his ears. He gripped the ledge with the last of his strength as the water rushed past him into Via San’Agostino. But it was too much, and eventually he had to let go. Carried across the square to the statue where he came to rest. When the water settled and shallowed out, he stood up. He looked about but the globe was gone. He just about had time to get into his building and close the door before another frothing surge rolled across the square. He sat on the stairs, dazed, breathless, shaking. The contessa above, calling out to him. The slow climb up.
By noon, Mayor Bargellini had got to a radio mic and announced to the city that the water had arrived in Piazza del Duomo. And in some neighbourhoods, it had reached the second floor of buildings. He told everyone to remain calm and told those with boats and canoes to bring them to the Palazzo Vecchio.
Shortly after Ulysses had changed clothes, there was a knock at the door. The elderly contessa must have listened to the radio announcement too because she stood in the doorway and said, Signor Temper, I have no electricity. No lights. I have no gas. I am cold and I have no water, and now the idiota talks of floods. Why didn’t he stop it?
Ulysses invited her inside and sat her beside the coal stove.
I had coal once, she said, but they made me have gas and now I have nothing.
It was a simple lunch of spaghetti and passata and she followed his every move about the kitchen. He threw in a couple of left-over sausages and a handful of black olives, a pinch of chilli. He opened one of the good bottles of wine and she said, Very nice indeed. From the transistor radio a broadcast warned that the city water was polluted. For how long now? said the contessa. He drained the pasta but kept the salted water for the toilet.
Why the toilet? said the contessa.
Because you can’t flush them, he said.
O mio Dio. Just like the war.
They ate and said little after that. When she’d finished, the contessa complimented him on his cooking. A little more salt maybe, she said.
Maybe, he said.
He put the coffee pot on the stove. The contessa said, That’s the best type of coffee pot. It never lets you down. Not like the mayor, she said.
Ulysses took his coffee onto the terrace with Claude. The fountain had become its own island and you’d need a boat to get to church now. Before light faded, the water ran putrid with a shimmering yellow scum and there was a high stench of oil. Red gasoline cans bobbed on the surface, such an incongruous trespass of colour. A car swept into the square and clattered against the metal shutters of the tabacchi.
All about, the narrow streets were awash, the cortile below immersed. All those workshops, all those livelihoods, all those ground-floor magicians who made shoes wearable and mended chairs and carved wonder and made frames of gold. Paintings began to float in on the tide, an antique shop or gallery broken into by the onslaught. A quick glimpse of cherubim before the canvas sank.
By 5 p.m. the city was in blackout. Ulysses and the contessa sat by the stove and listened to the Italian news broadcast by candlelight. All Tuscany had suffered flooding. Florence was cut off by road, rail and telephone from Rome in the south to Bologna in the north.
Someone needs to go down and check on the place, said the contessa. But I have the wrong shoes.
Ulysses switched on the torch and went down through the stairwell. He entered the pensione and opened the dresser where Cress kept boxes of candles. He didn’t go back up straight away, kept going down the stairs till he hit the waterline. Three, four feet maybe; far below the contessa’s landing, he could at least give her that reassurance. He sat on the stone. The heady smell of petroleum and sewage, the sound of debris battering against the front doors like the heaving clang of a ship slowly sinking. He thought about Massimo but knew Massimo lived up high. Wondered when Cress and Alys would get back home. He needed to know everyone was safe because without them he was nothing. The torch flickered. He banged it against his hand and a faint beam skimmed the surface. A carp darted away from the intrusion. And the water rose.