“But these were mad times in Florence. Savonarola was gaining power. The Medici were losing their grip.
“And so this sentence was decreed on the luckless Lionello, whom I knew, you understand, knew and loved as I did Giovanni, my teacher, knew and loved as I do my son’s friend Vitale, who sits with us here.”
He paused as if he had no taste to go on. No one spoke. And only then did I realize that the ghost was quiet. The ghost was not making a sound.
I didn’t know whether anyone else realized it, because we were all looking at Signore Antonio.
“What was this sentence?” asked Fr. Piero.
The silence continued. Nowhere in the building did anything rattle or shatter, or break.
I wasn’t going to draw anyone’s attention to this. I listened instead.
“It was decreed,” said Signore Antonio, “that Lionello should be taken first to the corner of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, at San Nofri, to an image he had supposedly defaced, and there have his hand chopped off, which in fact took place.”
Vitale’s face was rigid but his lips were white. Niccolò was plainly horrified.
“From there,” said Signore Antonio, “the young man was dragged by the mob to a painted Pietà at Santa Maria in Campo, where his remaining hand was chopped off. And then it was the intention of the populace to drag him to the third scene of his supposed transgressions, the Madonna at Or San Michele, and there to have his eyes put out. But the mob, some two thousand strong by this time, did not wait for this last act of abomination to be committed on the hapless youth, but grabbed him from those accompanying him and mutilated him on the spot.”
The two priests were downcast. Fr. Piero shook his head. “May the Lord have mercy on his soul,” he said. “The mobs of Florence are altogether worse than the mobs of Rome.”
“Are they?” asked Signore Antonio. “The young man, with stumps for hands, his eyes torn out, his body mutilated, clung to life for a few days. And in my house!”
Niccolò lowered his eyes and shook his head.
“And I knelt beside him with his weeping father,” said Signore Antonio, “and it was after that, after the beautiful young man who had been Lionello was laid to rest, that I insisted Giovanni come to Rome with me.
“Savonarola appeared unstoppable. The Jews would soon be driven from Florence altogether. And I had my abundant property here, and my connections at the court of the Pope who would never stand for such barbarity in the Holy City, or so we hoped and prayed. So my Maestro Giovanni, shaken, shocked, barely able to speak or think or take a taste of water, came with me for safe refuge here.”
“And it was to this man,” asked Fr. Piero, “that you gave this house?”
“Yes, it was to this man that I gave the library I had accumulated, a study in which to work, luxuries which I hoped would comfort him, and the promise of students who would come to him to seek his wisdom as soon as his spirit could be healed. Elders from the Jewish community came to set up the synagogue on the top floor of this house, and to gather in prayer there with Giovanni who was too crushed in spirit to go out the front door into the streets.
“But how, I ask you, can a father who has seen such barbarity done to his son ever be healed?”
Signore Antonio looked at the priests. He looked at Vitale, and at me. He looked at his son, Niccolò.
“And remember my wounded soul,” he whispered. “For I had loved young Lionello myself very much. He was the companion of my heart, Niccolò, as Vitale has always been to you. He had been my tutor when my teacher didn’t have patience for me. He had been the one to write verses with me back and forth across the tavern table. He had been the one to play the lute as you do, Toby, and I had seen his hands chopped off, thrown to dogs as if they were garbage, and his body torn all but to pieces before his eyes were finally put out.”
“Better that he died, the poor soul,” said Fr. Piero. “May God forgive those who did these things to him.”
“Yes, may God forgive them. I do not know if Giovanni could forgive them, or whether I could forgive them.
“But Giovanni lived in this house like a ghost. And not a ghost who hurls bottles against walls or rattles doors, or heaves ink pots into the air or throws things against a cellar floor. He lived as if he had no heart left. As if he had nothing in him, while I, day and night, talked of better times, of better things, of his marrying again, as he had lost his wife so many years ago, of his perhaps having another son.”
He stopped and shook his head. “Perhaps this was the wrong thing to suggest to him. Perhaps it wounded him more deeply than I supposed. All I know is that he kept his few precious articles to himself, his books to himself, and would never settle into the library or make himself at home with me at any repast. At last I gave up the idea of making him live in and enjoy this house as its proper occupant, and I went on back to my own, and came to see him as often as I could only to find him, often as not, in the cellar of all places, and reluctant to come up to me unless he was certain I was alone. The servants told me he had hidden his treasure in the cellar, and some of his most precious books.
“He was in essence a destroyed man. The scholar no longer existed in him. Memory was too painful for him. The present didn’t exist.
“Then came Holy Week as it does each year and those who were Jews in these streets shut up their doors as always and stayed within as the law requires. And the roughs of the neighborhood, the lowborn, the foolish, went about as always after the heated Lenten sermons heaving rocks at the houses of the Jews and cursing them for the killing of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
“I thought nothing of it as regards Giovanni because he was in one of my houses and I never expected the slightest harm would come to him, but on Good Friday night, I was called by my servants to go at once. The mob had attacked the house, and Giovanni had gone out to face them, weeping, howling in rage, hurling rocks at them as they hurled rocks at him.
“My guards struggled to put an end to the melee. I dragged Giovanni back inside.
“But Giovanni’s desperate actions had touched off a riot. Hundreds were pounding on the doors and the walls, threatening to tear the place apart.
“Now there are many hiding places in this house, behind paneled walls, off staircases which one might not discover for years. But the most secure place is in the cellar, beneath the stones in the middle of the floor.
“With all my strength, I dragged Giovanni down there. ‘You must hide,’ I told him, ‘until I can make this mob go away.’