The elderly contessa was actually the first person the bleary-eyed English group met that morning. They were coming down the stairs as she was going up. Claude squawked and she stopped, mouth agape at the sight of her new neighbours.
Buongiorno, said Cress with a slight bow.
Is it? said the contessa, hurrying to get inside her first-floor apartment.
She seems nice, said Cress.
And as the nine o’clock bells chimed, they stepped out into the square and as far as entrances went, it was pretty theatrical. Sunlight dazzled, casting rays onto the pale cream stucco of the church. The sky was blue, the roofs were red, the trees green. For years they’d moved about in a palette of grey and deprivation. And now this …
The air was saturated with the sounds and smells of the market and the steamy waft from the tripe seller crept around the corner and punched them in the guts. Claude flew to the white marble statue of Cosimo Ridolfi and settled on his head. He would stay there and shit on him all morning.
Eyes followed them as they traversed the stones, and Ulysses heard that word soldato again. Kid ran off towards a donkey and Cress exclaimed at the abundance of produce – the ‘cornucopia of delight’ were his exact words, classic Cressy. Ulysses headed straight over to an outside table at Michele’s and sat down. He lit a cigarette and wondered how he could make another man’s life his own.
Over here! he shouted when coffee was on its way.
Coming! said Cress who had just acquired a watermelon as big as his head.
It was from that outside table at Michele’s that they eased into Italian life. Popular with locals and visitors alike, a jukebox played morning and night and photographs of cinema stars and Campari posters brought a touch of glamour to the nicotine-stained walls. Plates of food came and went under the scrutinising gaze of Giulia – a touch of glamour in her own right – and gradually names became recognisable; things like faraona – guinea fowl, said Cress. And fiori di zucca fritti – fried courgette flowers, said the kid.
They learnt that the ubiquitous back of a lorry appeared in the market after the carabinieri had left and shifted a whole lot of ecclesiastical reliquary and knocked-off radio sets. No different to home, then. And the basket lowered from an upstairs window was for shoes when the cobbler was shut. In the Uffizi they learnt to tell the difference between a Botticelli and a Leonardo. Which one? said Cress. Botticelli, said Ulysses. Wrong, said kid. And they learnt that the old women gathered on the stone benches every day to knit and broker gossip.
Kid soon clocked up 152 words of Italian and a smudge of slang and began to scowl like a native. She tried coccoli for the first time, balls of deep-fried bread dough, and declared it was her second-best day ever. The citrus aurantium – the ornamental orange tree wilting in the shade – was brought back to life by nothing more than a larger pot and a few kind words. On the night of the twenty-fourth, fireworks shot across the sky and no one knew why. Feast of San Giovanni, said the tree to Cress.
And one afternoon, Ulysses found a bike in the cellar and cycled from San Niccolò in the east to San Frediano in the west. He discovered workshops of every kind: antique furniture repairers, carvers, gilders, carpenters, but no one who made globes. He noticed Italian men wore shoes without socks and trousers that hung shy of an ankle. The women were beautiful but not more beautiful than Peg. And always he was followed by stares.
The stares are not malicious, explained Massimo, a month after Ulysses had acquired his Italian bank account.
They were walking down the Via dei Calzaiuoli together, and for Massimo to have the parrot again on his shoulder added an element of flair to his daily conformity. He turned heads wherever he went. In truth, he’d never felt more alive since Ulysses had entered his life.
He explained to Ulysses that he’d begun to spend time around Santo Spirito purely to eavesdrop and to assess the impact of Ulysses’ arrival on the neighbourhood. He said the public bathhouse on Via Sant’Agostino had become a good source of information, and he touched his hair when he said this.
They veered off the main thoroughfare and stopped at a small café with outside tables. The air was whiffy, and July’s heat was multiplying the spores. They collected their espressi from the counter and sat in a sovereign corner of shade. Massimo continued his explanation.
He said, They are the San Fredianini. They are clannish.
You’re not like that, said Ulysses.
No. But my family is from Emilia-Romagna. Every quartiere in Firenze is different, and every quartiere has its ways. Santa Croce is completely different to Santo Spirito and Santo Spirito is completely different to Santa Maria Novella and so on. And, he said – and stopped to drink his coffee – some resent your good fortune.