He watched an insect crawl across his arm and thought that was as good an answer as he was likely to get, and he began to swing his leg and the guttering shook. Backwards and forwards until the impetus of motion had generated enough energy for him to push off – suspended momentarily between roof and sky – and when he landed, there was just a slight wobble backwards that evoked a scream from the priest below. But it was mainly traction that he felt beneath his boot: beautiful resistance. He brushed himself down, readjusted his balls, and a crescendo of applause rose from below.
At this point, three buildings along, the Mimmis looked out of the window, completely unaware of the drama that had played out above them, as they’d gone at it on the sofa like teenagers.
Come on, Arturo, said Ulysses. It’s over, and he offered his arm, and Arturo took it, and they walked back up the roof together, to the hat, to the small terrace, to the quiet home below.
The euphoria of cheating death gave way to a weary calm and Ulysses left Arturo at the kitchen table and went to find a bathroom. The toilet gave off a strong smell of ammonia which he regretted adding to.
Out in the hallway, the first room on the left was a bedroom. Ulysses lay down on the bed, and the heavily embroidered eiderdown was cool and enticing. Above him was a fresco. Something classical, not religious, and he recognised the acanthus leaves that Darnley had pointed out to him over the months. The trompe l’oeil effect of cornices, an open sky and birds in flight. A breeze blew and the shutters creaked. He heard the man in the kitchen, and it was a sad, lonely sound.
Three more bedrooms led off from the hallway, two overlooking the church and square, the other a cortile in the back. They shared the same simplicity of décor, a luxurious ease of taste and style, frescoes on the ceilings, but only curved lines and clusters of leaves, blue and white, or white and pink, washed out by age or a skilful brush.
In the living room, two walls of books insulated the room and rugs were cast across the terracotta floor. An air of conviviality was enhanced by a couple of large sofas, orange in the fading light; no antimacassars, no heavy wooden chairs that were all too familiar in Florentine homes. Paintings cluttered the walls, images of fruit and working kitchen tables, scattered ingredients in various states of decomposition, domestic ordinary scenes he could have placed his mother in.
He sat at the desk behind a typewriter and typed his name over and over and the keys made a heavy percussive sound in the quiet. He picked up the book next to the typewriter, looked at the dense text and old photographs of paintings. Il Restauro dei Dipinti large on the cover. He flicked through the pages and stopped at one of the images.
In the doorway to the kitchen, he held the pages of the book open and said, I saw it.
Arturo turned. La Deposizione del Pontormo?
Yep, said Ulysses. Saw it – and his finger moving from eye to picture to window.
Dove l’ha visto? said Arturo.
South of here, said Ulysses, and he pulled up a chair and dropped his pack on the floor. He placed the book between them and said, It’s about grief. Oldest story in the world. And he placed his hand on Arturo’s arm.
He said, They’re trying to make sense of something they can’t make sense of. People captured in the exact moment Jesus comes off the cross. And in that moment is energy and emotion. It’s a bit like stopping a dance. And all you’re left with is the silence. And the sorrow. And your pulse races.
Arturo stared at him. Eventually, he stood up, pushed aside his chair and crouched under the table. He removed a couple of floor tiles to reveal the dark maw of a cubbyhole, a hidden pantry that, for a year, had sustained life. He pulled out a bottle of wine, a candle and a nub of cheese.
What a feast, said Ulysses, and he reached around and retrieved a tin of ham from his pack and placed it on the table.
That’s when Arturo began to cry.
It’s only ham, said Ulysses.
And for two hours the wine was poured, the cheese cut, and the two men talked. Of what? Who knows? Of love, of war, of the past. And they listened with hearts instead of ears, and in the candlelit kitchen three floors up in an old palazzo, death was put on hold. For another night or day or week or year.
Ulysses left as dusk was beginning to settle across the square. The heavy thump of the door behind him set a dog howling. The striking fa?ade of the church glowed and the last of the swifts made a desperate lunge at play. There were a few stragglers aimlessly wandering, but mostly the square was emptying before dark. He’d need to be sharpish to get back to camp before curfew and he ran across the square instead of turning left and found himself down by the river. The water was low, and a squadron of mosquitoes hovered above it, cruising for blood. The old buildings that had once overhung the river had all gone. The balconies, arches, towers were now a giant pile of shattered masonry that littered the embankment or had found settlement on the riverbed. A Bailey bridge, under construction, crossed the stricken stumps of the Ponte Santa Trìnita and the occasional pop of sniper fire north of the city kept him close to the wall in the darkest shadows. On the opposite shore, German tanks drove down onto the lungarno. Their bulk, in the twilight, like elephants at a water-hole. And the flare of German cigarettes in German mouths; it shouldn’t have been beautiful, but it was, daringly so. He stepped back into the dark streets and headed west until he came to the vast space of Piazza del Carmine again, then continued west until the Boboli Gardens were back on his left. If they stayed on his left, he knew he would eventually arrive at the Porta Romana and an Allied unit, and the slow road home.