The Ponte Vecchio was saved by a sentimental Führer, who’d visited the city in ’38, and formed an attachment to the famous landmark. Darnley said it proved the man had fucking awful taste. So had invading Poland, added Ulysses.
Let’s go, sir! shouted Ulysses. Darnley got in the jeep and they drove into the heat, leaving behind the grand fa?ade of the former ducal seat. At the bottom of the slope, along the Via Guicciardini, rubble 30 feet high blocked access to the Ponte Vecchio. Ulysses turned the jeep around and headed west. The stink of broken sewers and seeping gas pipes broiled under an August sun. The air shimmered like liquid.
They only got as far as Piazza del Carmine when Darnley suddenly shouted, Stop the car!
Sir?
Stop the car, repeated Darnley.
Crowds of returning Florentines passed by, dragging handcarts.
What is it, sir?
You need to spend time in this city, Temps. I promised Miss Skinner, didn’t I? Go on, out you get. But back before nightfall.
There was no negotiation. Ulysses grabbed his rifle and got out the jeep and Darnley shifted behind the wheel.
Ulysses watched him drive away, unsure what had just taken place. He unscrewed his canteen and drank. The sun was fierce overhead. The wide expanse of the piazza offered no shade and the stones were baked white. Ulysses backed away from the church and followed a cyclist making slow progress towards a street entirely in shadow.
He felt invigorated by the cool and by the hours of freedom ahead. Men continued to shake his hand as if he were the sole liberator of their city and women kissed him, left marks of bright lips across his cheeks but he didn’t mind. No one back home could understand what occupation did to a people. The deprivation of body and soul. The daily choice to survive but at what cost and sometimes at what cost to others. He stood back and saluted as Allied tanks passed. A soldier gestured that he was a wanker. He laughed. That was the least of his problems.
The street brought him to the corner of a tree-lined square dominated at the far end by a church. He moved through a crowd that had gathered outside a café and the bells rang out. He settled on a bench in the shade near a fountain, half expecting to hear a familiar gurgle, but the city’s water supply had long been cut. He lit a cigarette and watched the path of swifts through the campanile, across the terracotta dome, that perfect complement to the azure sky. A dog howled. A cyclist passed by. An overwhelming feeling that something bad had happened there, and it was that something other that ratcheted up the tension.
He noticed a group of people gesturing wildly. He stood up and joined them, followed the path of their gaze to a shutter swinging above. Beyond the shutter, a lone dark figure. It could have been a statue except for the slight swing of the man’s arm to steady his balance. He was inching himself down the roof until the drop came into sight, at which point he froze. The man’s hat took off on the breeze and made a spiralling descent. It took no effort at all for Ulysses to stretch out his hand and catch the dark grey Borsalino pinch-front fedora.
He rushed forwards, surprised to find the door to the building locked. He tried each of the neighbouring buildings in turn, until a door gave way and led him into an ancient stone vestibule. He ran up the stairs two at a time and set in motion a sequence of events that the locals would gladly recapitulate in the coming days.
There would be many versions of the stairwell dash that would be told later in the café, but it was Signor and Signora Mimmi, an amorous couple in their early sixties, only recently returned to their top-floor apartment, who actually opened the door to the soldato and were thus granted special dispensation to tell the story as it was, without interruption or embellishment by the many unreliable narrators who frequented the square.
He was banging on our door, they said in unison. But not like when the Germans arrived, added the signora. Could you demonstrate? suggested the priest, and she made a fist and began banging on the counter. Everybody agreed that the tone was not angry but had a certain consideration to it. Oh yes, said Signora Mimmi, he was very polite. He wiped his boots on our mat. He said Buongiorno, but that was the extent of his Italian. He was a kind-looking soldier with lovely eyebrows, and dimples. He kept pointing his finger upwards, trying to get us to understand. He was sweating. We had no water, so we offered him a large glass of wine which he drank straight down. We led him into the kitchen and when he saw the ladder he began to climb up to the terrace, where my husband grows two fig trees and collects rainwater. But there has been no rain for weeks and the fig trees are dead.
Mine too, said the butcher.