Ulysses felt dizzy. The place stank. The woman’s voice rising with panic.
Ulisse? said Massimo.
Ulysses felt Massimo’s hand on his back. He reached into his jacket for cigarettes.
Not here, said Massimo gently. It’s all oil, Ulisse.
Ulysses staggered out and threw up.
Down by the river, they walked with silent groups of Florentines. The water had dropped fifteen feet but still raced towards the sea. On the Ponte Vecchio, tree trunks stuck out in all directions, great swathes of leaves and branches clung like giant nests. The goldsmith and jewellery shops had been ransacked, and the owners left scavenging in the mud for a glint of anything worthwhile. The waterfront outside the library had been torn away and vast banks of mud blocked the entrance.
On the north side came the first sighting of boats and canoes being poled along, buckets lowered from upper windows to collect food, water, anything to make the hours ahead bearable. The two men were forced to backtrack. Another street revealed blackened mattresses and clothing drying and hardening in the sun and wind. A pet shop full of caged, drowned songbirds. La fine del mondo, said a man. The end of the world.
In Santa Croce square, they stood where they’d been only two nights before. Cars were stacked on top of one another, half in water, half in mud, and the tidemark clear on Dante’s statue. Twenty feet, was it? Unthinkable. Here mostly the poor and elderly were housed, in basements or ground floors. Come on, said Massimo and they slipped and clambered across the stinking wasteland, holding on to each other for balance, but every attempt to get close to Zia Chiara’s restaurant failed. Street after street underwater and the carabinieri forced them back, saying foundations were unsafe and walls were about to come down. Massimo shouted to a man if he knew where Zia Chiara and her brothers had gone, but the man shrugged. No one knew anything, it seemed. No one knew even how they would eat that day.
Light faded by four and the clean-up stopped. Ulysses and Massimo dumped boots and muddied clothing on the upper-floor landing. They washed on the terrace with a bowl of rainwater and left the dregs by the toilet cistern. A little after six, a knock at the door. Not too early, am I? said the elderly contessa.
They ate the last of the cold meats and spaghetti with oil and garlic and chilli. The contessa complimented Massimo on the balance of flavour he’d achieved. A little more pepperoncino, perhaps?
Perhaps, he said.
Ulysses got up and put the coffee pot on the stove.
The night air was frosty and carried the wail of fire crews and the ambulances of the Misericordia. The contessa said that Rome had washed its hands of the city and in a remarkable volte-face said that Mayor Bargellini was the only one who cared.
And the Casa del Popolo, said Ulysses.
What do you know about those Communists? she said.
I know they’re giving out food and medicine.
And don’t forget the bakers in Fiesole, said Massimo. They’ve been getting bread to the poor.
Yes, well, bakers are good people, she said. A baker I’d trust with my kidneys. But where are the bulldozers? Where’s the army? Rome thinks we can clear a landslide with a spoon.
The contessa finished her coffee and declared she was tired. She took Ulysses’ arm and he led her down to her apartment. In the short time it took for Ulysses to return, Massimo had fallen asleep on the sofa. A dogged exhaustion clung to everything. He covered Massimo with blankets and closed the shutters.
Ulysses lay in bed. His tiredness had now passed. Slow hours ahead listening to the despair of a city, cold and forsaken and entombed in mud. Maybe people don’t know, he thought. Maybe no one really knows how much help we need.
But they did. The world was listening and long before his thoughts had settled, volunteers from around the world were mobilising. Experts in art restoration, and hundreds of students with the intrinsic belief they could change the world. Even a man from Manchester whose memories of lovemaking in a Renaissance palazzo made him tingle.
Des leant across the table and turned off the radio. I need to do something, Poppy.
I know you do, Des. You’re that kind of man.
I’m going to drive down to Tuscany in a Land Rover. Take a few essentials, show I care. You coming?
Not this time, Des. （They were awaiting their first grandchild.） But why not go to London and take Piano Pete? You’ve been longing to meet him.
Great idea, said Des. I reckon I could start out in a couple of days.
You need a Land Rover, Des.
I’ll buy one.
And in Bristol, Jem Gunnerslake, now thirty and studying medicine as Evelyn Skinner had once predicted, put down his copy of the Observer and phoned his university to say he needed ten days off to deal with a family crisis. He jumped on the train with galoshes, a K-Way rain jacket and one change of clothing. He looked out from the ferry as England pulled away. He was going to Florence to save art. He was a Sixties man through and through, and peace and love pulsed through his pulmonic and aortic valves. And he smiled wide now that his teeth were fixed.