LITMIR.BIZ

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I could see—altering the essentials of the plot. But from then on the Italians were done with the story, and it travelled first to France, then England, to eventually end up on Shakespeare’s desk, ready for immortalization.

      The biggest difference, as far as I could see, between all these poetic versions and Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, was that in reality there had been three families involved, not just two. The Tolomeis and the Salimbenis had been the feuding households—the Capulets and the Montagues, so to speak—while Romeo, in fact, had been a Marescotti and thus an outsider. In that respect, Salernitano’s very early rendition of the story was the one that came closest to the truth; it was set in Siena, and there had been no mention of a family feud.

      Later, walking back from the Fortezza with Maestro Ambrogio’s journal clutched to my chest, I looked at all the happy people around me and once again felt the presence of an invisible wall between me and them. There they were, walking, jogging, and eating ice cream, not pausing to question the past, nor burdened, as I was, with a feeling that they did not fully belong in this world.

      That same morning, I had stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying on the necklace with the silver crucifix that had been in my mother’s box, and decided I would start wearing it. After all, it was something she had owned, and by leaving it in the box she had clearly intended it for me. Perhaps, I thought, it would somehow protect me against the curse that had marked her for an early death.

      Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there are many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, as it did now.

      When I returned to the hotel, Direttore Rossini came towards me like the messenger from Marathon, dying to tell me the news. ‘Miss Tolomei! Where have you been? You must go! Right away! Contessa Salimbeni is waiting for you in Palazzo Pubblico! Go, go’—he shooed me the way you would a dog hanging around for scraps—‘you must not leave her waiting!’

      ‘Wait!’ I pointed at two objects that sat conspicuously in the middle of the floor. ‘Those are my suitcases!’

      ‘Yes-yes-yes, they were delivered a moment ago.’

      ‘Well, I’d like to go to my room and—’

      ‘No!’ Direttore Rossini flung open the front door. ‘You must go right away!’

      ‘I don’t even know where I’m going!’

      ‘Santa Caterina!’ Though I knew he was secretly delighted with yet another opportunity to educate me about Siena, Direttore Rossini rolled his eyes and let go of the door. ‘Come, I will draw directions!’

      

      Entering the Campo was like stepping into a gigantic seashell. All around the edge were restaurants and cafés, and right where the pearl would have been, at the bottom of the sloping piazza, sat Palazzo Pubblico, the building that had served as Siena’s city hall since the Middle Ages.

      I paused for a moment, taking in the hum of many voices under the dome of a blue sky, the pigeons flapping around, and the white marble fountain with the turquoise water—until a wave of tourists came up behind me and swept me along with them, rushing forward in excited wonder at the magnificence of the giant square.

      While drawing his directions, Direttore Rossini had assured me that the Campo was considered the most beautiful piazza in all of Italy, and not only by the Sienese themselves. In fact, he could hardly recount the numerous occasions on which hotel guests from all corners of the world, even from Florence, had come to him and extolled its graces. He, of course, had protested and pointed out the many splendours of other places—surely, they were out there somewhere—but people had been unwilling to listen. They had stubbornly maintained that Siena was the loveliest, most unspoiled city on the globe, and in the face of such conviction, what could Direttore Rossini do but allow that, indeed, it might be so?

      I stuffed the directions into my handbag and began walking down towards Palazzo Pubblico. The building was hard to miss with the tall bell tower, Torre del Mangia, the construction of which Direttore Rossini had described in such detail that it had taken me several minutes to realize that it had not, in fact, been erected before his very eyes, but at some time in the late Middle Ages. A lily, he had called it, a proud monument to female purity with its white stone flower held aloft by a tall red stem. And curiously, it had been built with no foundation. The Mangia Tower, he claimed, had stood for over six centuries, held up by the grace of God and faith alone.

      I blocked the sun with my hand and looked at the tower as it stretched against the infinite blue. In no other place had I ever seen female purity celebrated by a 335-foot phallic object. But maybe that was me.

      There was a quite literal sense of gravity about Palazzo Pubblico and its tower, as if the Campo itself was caving in under its weight. Direttore Rossini had told me that if I was in doubt, I was to imagine that I had a ball and put it on the ground. No matter where I stood on the Campo, the ball would roll right down to Palazzo Pubblico. There was something about the image that appealed to me. Maybe it was the thought of a ball bouncing over the ancient brick pavement. Or maybe it was simply the way he had pronounced the words, with whispering drama, like a magician talking to four-year-olds.

      

      Palazzo Pubblico had, like all seats of government, grown with age. From its origins as little more than a meeting room for nine administrators, it was now a formidable structure, and I entered the inner courtyard with a feeling of being watched. Not so much by people, I suppose, as by the lingering shadows of generations past, generations devoted to the life of this city, this small plot of land as cities go, this universe unto itself.

      Eva Maria Salimbeni was waiting for me in the Hall of Peace. She sat on a bench in the middle of the room, looking up into the air, as if she was having a silent conversation with God. But as soon as I walked through the door, she came to, and a smile of delight spread over her face.

      ‘So, you came after all!’ she exclaimed, rising from the bench to kiss me on both cheeks. ‘I was beginning to worry.’

      ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. I didn’t even realize…’

      Her smile dismissed everything I could possibly say. ‘You are here now. That is all that matters. Look’—she made a sweeping gesture at the giant frescoes covering the walls of the room—‘have you ever seen anything so magnificent? Our great Maestro, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, made them in the late 1330s. He probably finished this one, over the doors, in 1340. It is called Good Government.’

      I turned to look at the fresco in question. It covered the entire length of the wall, and to make it would have required a complex machinery of ladders and scaffolding, perhaps even platforms suspended from the ceiling. The left half depicted a peaceful city scene with ordinary citizens going about their business; the right half was a wide view of the countryside beyond the city wall. Then something occurred to me, and I said, baffled, ‘You mean…Maestro Ambrogio?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Eva Maria, not the least bit surprised that I was familiar with the name. ‘One of the greatest masters. He painted these scenes to celebrate the end of a long feud between our two families, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis. Finally, in 1339, there was peace.’

      ‘Really?’ I thought of Giulietta and Friar Lorenzo escaping from the Salimbeni bandits on the high road outside Siena. ‘I get the impression that in 1340 our ancestors were still very much at war. Certainly out in the countryside.’

      Eva Maria smiled cryptically; either she was delighted that I had bothered to read up on family lore, or she was miffed that I dared to contradict her. If the latter, she was graceful enough to acknowledge my point, and said, ‘You are right. The peace had unintended consequences. It happens whenever the bureaucrats try to help us.’ She threw up her arms. ‘If people want to fight, you can’t stop them. If you prevent them inside the city, they will fight in the country, and out there, they will get away

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