I smiled as timidly as I could. “I’m afraid we did.”
The Maestro frowned. “Did you find her grave? Did you steal her eyes? Did I not tell you to leave them where they are?”
“We didn’t do anything!” I glanced at Janice to make sure she, too, looked sufficiently innocent. “We got trapped, that’s all. Do you think we can somehow”—once again, I knocked on the sewer cover, and once again, it felt pretty rigid—“unscrew this thing?”
“Of course!” he said, without hesitation. “It is very easy.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” He got back on his feet. “I made it!”
DINNER THAT NIGHT was pasta primavera from a can, spruced up with a twig of rosemary from Maestro Lippi’s windowsill and accompanied by a box of Band-Aids for our bruises. There was barely room for the three of us at the table in his workshop, seeing that we were sharing the space with artwork and potted plants in different stages of demise, but even so, he and Janice were having a grand old time.
“You are very quiet,” observed the artist at one point, recovering from laughter and pouring more wine.
“Juliet had a little run-in with Romeo,” explained Janice, on my behalf. “He swore by the moon. Big mistake.”
“Ah!” said Maestro Lippi. “He came here last night. He was not happy. Now I understand why.”
“He came here last night?” I echoed.
“Yes,” nodded the Maestro. “He said you don’t look like the painting. You are much more beautiful. And much more—what was it he said?—oh, yes … lethal.” The Maestro grinned and raised his glass to me in playful communion.
“Did he happen to mention,” I said, failing to take the edge off my voice, “why he has been playing schizo games with me instead of telling me that he was Romeo all along? I thought he was someone else.”
Maestro Lippi looked surprised. “But didn’t you recognize him?”
“No!” I clutched my head in frustration. “I didn’t recognize him. And he sure as hell didn’t recognize me either!”
“What exactly can you tell us about this guy?” Janice asked the Maestro. “How many people are aware he is Romeo?”
“All I know,” said Maestro Lippi, shrugging, “is that he does not want to be called Romeo. Only his family calls him that. It is a big secret. I don’t know why. He wants to be called Alessandro Santini—”
I gasped. “You knew his name all along! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew!” the Maestro shot back. “You are Juliet! Maybe you need glasses!”
“Excuse me,” said Janice, rubbing a scratch on her arm, “but how did you know he was Romeo?”
Maestro Lippi looked stunned. “I … I—”
She reached out to help herself to another Band-Aid. “Please don’t say you recognized him from a previous life.”
“No,” said the Maestro, frowning, “I recognized him from the fresco. In Palazzo Pubblico. And then I saw the Marescotti eagle on his arm”—he took me by the wrist and pointed at the underside of my forearm—“right here. Did you never notice that?”
For a few seconds I was back in the basement of Palazzo Salimbeni, trying to ignore Alessandro’s tattoos while we discussed the fact that I was being followed. Even then I had been aware that his were not—unlike Janice’s muffin-top tramp stamps—mere souvenirs from boozy spring breaks in Amsterdam, but it had not occurred to me that they held important clues to his identity. In fact, I had been too busy looking for diplomas and ancestors on his office wall to realize that here was a man who did not display his virtues in a silver frame, but carried them around on his body in whatever form they took.
“It’s not glasses she needs,” observed Janice, enjoying my cross-eyed introspection, “it’s a new brain.”
“Not to change the subject,” I said, picking up my handbag, “but would you mind translating something for us?” I handed Maestro Lippi the Italian text from our mother’s box, which I had been carrying around for days, hoping to stumble upon a willing translator. I had originally toyed with the idea of asking Alessandro, but something had held me back. “We think it might be important.”
The Maestro took the text and perused the headline and first few paragraphs. “This,” he said, a little surprised, “is a story. It is called La Maledizione sul Muro … The Curse on the Wall. It is quite long. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
[ VI.II ]
A plague o’ both your houses,
They have made worms’ meat of me
…
THE CURSE ON THE WALL
Siena, A.D. 1370
THERE IS A STORY THAT NOT MANY people have heard, because it was hushed up by the famous families involved. It starts with Santa Caterina, who had been known for her special powers since she was a little girl. People would come to her from all over Siena with their pains and aches, and would be healed by her touch. Now, as a grown woman, she spent most of her time taking care of the sick at the hospital by the Siena Cathedral, the Santa Maria della Scala, where she had her own room with a bed.
One day Santa Caterina was called to Palazzo Salimbeni, and when she arrived, she saw that everyone in the house was sick with worry. Four nights ago, they told her, there was a great wedding held here, and the bride was a woman of the Tolomeis, the lovely Mina. It had been a magnificent feast, for the groom was a son of Salimbeni, and the two families were there together, eating and singing, celebrating a long peace.
But when the groom went to his wedding chamber in the midnight hour, his bride was not there. He asked the servants, but no one had seen her, and he was filled with fear. What had happened to his Mina? Did she run away? Or was she abducted by enemies? But who would dare do such a thing to the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis? It was impossible. So, the groom ran everywhere, looking for his bride, upstairs, downstairs, asking the servants, asking the guards, but everyone told him that Mina could not have left the house unseen. And his heart as well said no! He was a kind young man, a handsome man. She would never run away from him. But now, this young Salimbeni must tell his father, and her father, and when they heard what was wrong, the whole house began searching for Mina.
For hours they searched—in the bedrooms, the kitchen, even in the servants’ quarters—until the lark started singing, and they finally gave up. But now that a new day had begun, the oldest grandmother of the wedding party, Monna Cecilia, came downstairs to find them sitting there, all in tears and talking of war against these, war against those. And old Monna Cecilia listened to them, and then she said to them, “Sad gentlemen, come with me, and I will find your Mina. For there is one place in the house you have not looked, and I feel in my heart that she is there.”
Monna Cecilia took them down, down, deep underneath the earth and into the ancient dungeons of Palazzo Salimbeni. And she showed them that the doors had been opened with the household keys that were given to the bride in the wedding ceremony, and she told them what they already knew: that these were caverns where no one had come for many years, for fear of the darkness. The old men in the wedding party were terrified, for they could not believe that the new bride had been given keys to all these secret doors, and they got more and more angry as they went, and more and more afraid. For they knew that there was much darkness down there, and that many things had happened in the past, before the Plague, that were best forgotten. So there they were, all the great men, walking after old Monna Cecilia with their torches, not believing their eyes.
At last they came to a room that was used in the old days for punishment, and now Monna Cecilia stopped, and all the men stopped too, and they heard the sound of someone crying. Without hesitation, the young groom rushed forward with his torch, and when the light reached the far corner of the cell, he saw his bride there, sitting on the floor in her fine blue nightgown. She was shivering with cold, and so afraid that she screamed when she saw the men, for she did not recognize anyone, even her own father.
Of course, they pick
ed her up and brought her upstairs into the light, and they wrapped her in wool and gave her water to drink and nice things to eat, but Mina kept shaking and pushed them all away. Her father tried to talk to her, but she turned her head away and would not look at him. At last the poor man took her by the shoulders and asked his daughter, “Do you not remember that you are my little Mina?” But Mina pushed him away with a sneer and said, in a voice that was not hers, a voice as dark as death, “No,” she said, “I am not your Mina. My name is Lorenzo.”
You can imagine the horror of both families when they realized that Mina had lost her mind. The women started praying to the Virgin Mary, and the men started accusing each other of being bad fathers, and brothers, and of finding poor Mina so late. The only one who was calm was old Monna Cecilia, who sat down with Mina and stroked her hair and tried to make her speak again.
But Mina rocked back and forth and would not look at anyone until Monna Cecilia finally said, “Lorenzo, Lorenzo, my dear, I am Monna Cecilia. I know what they did to you!”
Now at last, Monna Mina looked at the old woman and started crying again. And Monna Cecilia embraced her and let her cry, for hours, until they fell asleep together on the wedding bed. For three days Monna Mina slept, and she had dreams, terrible dreams, and she woke up the whole house with her screams, until at last the families decided to call for Santa Caterina.
After she had heard the whole story, Santa Caterina understood that Monna Mina had become possessed by a spirit. But she was not afraid. She sat by the young woman’s bed all night and prayed without a pause, and by morning, Monna Mina woke up and remembered who she was.
There was much joy in the house, and everybody praised Santa Caterina, even though she scolded them and said that the praise was due only to Christ. But even in this hour of great joy, Monna Mina was still troubled, and when they asked her what was troubling her, she told them that she had a message for them, from Lorenzo. And that she could not rest until she had delivered it. You can imagine how everyone must have been terrified to hear her speak of this Lorenzo again, this spirit who had possessed her, but they said to her, “Very well, we are ready to hear the message.” But Monna Mina could not remember the message, and she started crying again, and everyone was horrified. Maybe, they worried to each other in hushed voices, she would lose her mind once more.
But now, the wise Santa Caterina handed Monna Mina a feather dipped in ink and said, “My dear, let Lorenzo write his message with your hand.”
“But I cannot write!” said Mina.
“No,” said Santa Caterina, “but if Lorenzo has the skill, his hand will move yours.”
So, Monna Mina took the feather and sat for a while, waiting for her hand to move, and Santa Caterina prayed for her. At last, Monna Mina got up without a word and went out onto the stairs like a sleepwalker and down, down, deep into the basement, with everyone following her. And when she came into the room where they found her, she went to the wall and started running her finger over it, as if she was writing, and the men came forward with torches to watch what she was doing. They asked her what she was writing, but Monna Mina said, “Just read!” And when they told her that her writing was invisible, she said, “No, it is right there, do you not see?”
Now Santa Caterina had the good idea to send a boy to fetch clothes dye from her father’s workshop, and she made Monna Mina dip her finger in the dye and write once again what she had already written before. And Monna Mina filled the whole wall, this woman who had never learned to read or write, and what she wrote made all the great men cold with fear. This was the message that the spirit Lorenzo made Monna Mina write:
A plague on both your houses
You shall all perish in fire and gore
Your children forever wail under a mad moon
Till you undo your sins and kneel before the Virgin
And Giulietta wakes to behold her Romeo
When Monna Mina had finished writing, she fell into the arms of her groom, calling him by his name, and asked him to take her away from the room, as her task was over. So he did, crying with relief, and brought her upstairs, into the light, and Monna Mina never spoke with the voice of Lorenzo again. But she never forgot what had happened to her, and decided that she wanted to understand who this Lorenzo had been, and why he had spoken through her, even though her father and father-in-law did everything in their power to keep the truth from her.
Monna Mina was a stubborn woman, a true Tolomei. She spent many hours with old Monna Cecilia when her husband was away on business, listening to stories of the past, and asking many questions. And although the old woman was afraid at first, she also knew that it would give her peace to pass on this heavy burden to someone else, so that the truth would not die with her.
Monna Cecilia told Monna Mina that just where she had written that terrible curse on the wall, was where a young monk named Friar Lorenzo had written the same words many, many years earlier, in his own blood. It was the room where they had kept and tortured him until he died.
“But who?” Monna Mina asked, leaning over the table to clasp Monna Cecilia’s gnarled hands in her own. “Who did this to him, and why?”
“A man,” Monna Cecilia said, her head drooping with sorrow, “whom I have long since stopped thinking of as my father.”
THIS MAN, MONNA CECILIA explained, had ruled the Salimbeni household in the era of the great Plague, and he had ruled it like a tyrant. Some people tried to pardon him by saying that, when he was a little boy, Tolomei bandits had killed his mother before his very eyes, but that does not excuse a man for doing the same to others. And that was what Salimbeni did. He was cruel to his enemies, and severe on his family; whenever he was tired of his wives, he locked them away in the countryside and instructed the servants to never feed them quite enough. And as soon as they were dead, he married anew. As he grew older, his wives grew younger, but in the end not even youth could please him anymore, and in his desperation he developed an unnatural desire for a young woman whose parents he himself had ordered killed. Her name was Giulietta.
Despite the fact that Giulietta was already secretly betrothed to another, and that the Virgin Mary was believed to have blessed the young couple, Salimbeni forced his own marriage with the girl, and by doing so provoked the most formidable enemy a man could have. For everyone knew that the Virgin Mary did not like human interference in her plans, and, indeed, the whole thing ended in death and misery. Not only did the young lovers kill themselves, but Salimbeni’s oldest son perished, too, in a desperate struggle to defend his father’s honor.
For all these insults and griefs, Salimbeni arrested and tortured Friar Lorenzo, holding him responsible for secretly helping the young lovers in their disastrous affair. And he invited Giulietta’s uncle, Messer Tolomei, to witness the punishment of the insolent monk who had destroyed their plans of uniting the two feuding families through marriage. These were the men Friar Lorenzo cursed with his writing on the wall: Messer Salimbeni and Messer Tolomei.
After the monk had died, Salimbeni buried the body under the floor of the torture chamber as was his custom. And he had his servants wash off the curse and put new chalk on the wall. But he soon discovered that these measures were not sufficient to undo what had happened.
When Friar Lorenzo appeared to him in a dream a few nights later, warning him that no soap and no chalk could ever erase the curse, Salimbeni became filled with fear and closed off the old torture chamber to contain the evil powers of the wall. And now, suddenly, he began to listen to the voices of people saying he was cursed, and that the Virgin Mary was looking for a way to punish him. The voices were everywhere; in the street, in the market, in church—even when he was all alone he heard them. And when, one night, a great fire broke out in Palazzo Salimbeni, he was sure it was all part of Friar Lorenzo’s curse, which called for his family to “perish in fire and gore.”
It was about this time that the first rumors of the Black Death came to Siena. Pilgrims came back from the Orie
nt with stories of a terrible plague that had destroyed more villages and towns than a mighty army, but most people thought it was only something that would strike the heathens. They were sure that the Virgin Mary would—as she had done many times before—spread her protective cape over Siena, and that prayers and candles could keep the evil at bay, should it ever cross the ocean.
But Salimbeni had long lived with the illusion that everything good that happened around him was an effect of his brilliance. Now that something bad was coming, it was only natural for him to think that this, too, was his doing. And so he became obsessed with the idea that he and he alone was the cause of every disaster that happened around him, and that it was his fault the Plague was threatening to come to Siena. In his madness he dug up the bodies of Giulietta and Romeo from their unholy ground, and made for them a most holy grave in order to silence the voices of the people or, maybe more accurately, the voices in his own head blaming him for the deaths of a young couple whose love had been blessed by Heaven.
He was so eager to make peace with the ghost of Friar Lorenzo that he spent many nights looking at the curse written out on a piece of parchment, trying to find a way of meeting the demand to “undo your sins and kneel before the Virgin.” He even had clever professors from the university come to his house and speculate on how to make Giulietta “wake to behold her Romeo,” and they were the ones who finally came up with a plan.
In order to do away with the curse, they said, Salimbeni must begin by understanding that riches are evil, and that a man who possesses gold is no happy man. Once he has admitted that much, he will not be sorry to pay large sums of his fortune to people devoted to ridding him of his guilt, such as clever professors from the university. Also, such a man will be happy to commission an expensive sculpture that will, most certainly, do away with the curse and help its owner at last sleep soundly at night, knowing that he alone, by sacrificing his wicked money, has bought forgiveness for his entire city, and credits against the rumored plague.