It’s that building over there, said Massimo, pointing to the cream and brown building that dominated the south side of the square.
All set, boy? said Cressy.
All set.
Then what are we waiting for? said kid, putting on her sunglasses. Come on! she said and lifted out the globe and her suitcase.
They managed as much luggage as they could between them and crossed the square, unwittingly, in ascending order of height. The old women on the stone benches looked up from their knitting and watched them pass. Boys by the fountain laughed and pointed to the parrot and said pappagallo. A group of men came out of the café and Ulysses heard the words soldato and arrivato.
Through here, said Massimo, holding open the large wooden door with his foot. The vestibule was cool and carried the lingering smell of stone and sewage, which Massimo said were the two patron saints of Florentine stench. Behind them, an elegant glass door led out to a cortile criss-crossed with lines of drying washing. And this is your post-box, Signor Temper, and he indicated the one awaiting a name. And now we climb, he said.
He led them up to a bright landing of black and white tiles and a comatose pot plant. He waited for them to gather before he placed his hand against the door and said, So this is it. Your new home.
The start of our new life, said Cress.
There was a brief moment of acknowledgement – raised eyebrows, mostly – before Massimo inserted the key and disappeared into the dark and airless hallway.
They followed him like the blind of the Great War. And as their eyes began to adjust, they could make out the scattering of white sheets that covered the furniture. The faint slither of daylight creeping through an occasional broken slat. Signor Massimo clapped his hands and flicked the switches and the hallway and living room flooded with light. Cress dropped his luggage.
Bloody hell, Temps! It’s huge.
Windows were opened, shutters thrown back and sounds from the square rushed in. Ulysses looked about. So little had changed and the sequence of time reversed and there he was, young and invincible again, in front of a typewriter that had offered up his name.
Kid screamed and ran around with Claude, looking for her bedroom and Cress still commentating on the size and elegance of the place. Look at all them books and paintings, Temps! Massimo smiling at their delight. Massimo, one of life’s givers, soon to become a friend. An upright piano, too, used as a side table judging by the ornaments and candelabra strewn across its top. Signor Temper? said Massimo, nudging Ulysses out of his stupor. Shall we? and together they lifted dust sheets off two velvet sofas, the faded orange replaced since wartime by a taut vivid blue.
Terracotta tiles ran beneath their feet and above them frescoes, pale pinks and blues and acanthus leaves and birds in flight and a starlit sky with constellations that really would look like night at the right hour, in the right light. Four bedrooms and not three as Ulysses had remembered, two overlooking the square at the front, two the cortile behind. A bathroom, which again defied Ulysses’ memory by being much larger, or maybe had become much larger in the years since he’d been there.
And the kitchen.
A refrigerator! shouted Cress. Who has a refrigerator? We do! said kid, still on her run about. Two ovens, one gas and an old unused coal one and Cressy’s mind trying to take in the workings of a new system. Fuse box here, said Signor Massimo. The boiler is in the cellar. All straightforward really. Massimo turned the stopcock and the pipes and toilet cistern began to rumble. He left the room and kid ran in and said she’d found a telescope. Come see, Cressy. And Cressy went see.
And then silence.
Ulysses alone. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen and remembered holding open a book of paintings and delivering a faltering explanation about grief and a dance, things Evelyn and Darnley had so eloquently – so effortlessly – explained. If you’d asked him then if they’d all come through unscathed, he’d have bet his life on it. Would’ve pushed his body and soul across the green baize as the wheel spun.
He crouched under the table and felt for the raised edge of a tile. Gritty deposits caught under his nails and he tugged at the edge till it gave way. He reached into the gape of the cubbyhole, and wondered if, over time, it had become a home to mice or rats. Those thoughts fell away though as his hand landed on the smooth cold edge of a wine bottle. He lifted it into the light. Adhered to its side was the image of Pontormo’s Deposition from the Cross, ripped from its book. You knew I’d come, he thought.
He went out to the terrace. Him and a wilting orange tree, awaiting an old man’s care. Swifts squealing overhead as cypress hills became misty and grew dark. The smells of cooking rising from the kitchens below. Violet light falling onto the city, casting it into eternity. He climbed over the railing and walked down the roof. Down below, outside the café, a large man in an apron was watching him.