That clinches it for Ingrid; she gives in and their wobbly procession starts off again.
Rena goes on reading from the guide as they advance towards the Via C. Battisti. ‘Monks’ cells decorated with frescoes by Fra Angelico…a library built for Cosimo the Elder by Michelozzo… to say nothing of Fra Bartolomeo’s famous portrait of Savonarola!’
‘Who’s that?’ Ingrid asks.
‘You know,’ Simon says. ‘The fanatical prior we mentioned the other day. Railer and reviler, impassioned orator, demented igniter of bonfires of the vanities…’
‘Oh, yes,’ mutters Ingrid. ‘I remember now.’
‘When he arrived at the Duomo for his sermon,’ Simon goes on, ‘the crowds of the faithful would drop to their knees and chant, Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. A thousand foreheads would hit the floor at the same time. Imagine!’
‘Protestants don’t do that,’ Ingrid says.
‘See?’ says Rena, pointing. ‘It’s right over there. We just have to cross the square…’
But no. As they step up from street to kerb on the Piazza San Marco esplanade, Simon stumbles.
Not to worry, thinks Rena. He’ll catch his balance.
But no. Before her very eyes, he plummets earthward.
Not to worry, thinks Rena. He’ll use his arms to break his fall.
But no. His arms buckle uselessly beneath him.
Not to worry, thinks Rena. His fat tummy will absorb the shock.
But no. As she watches, aghast, Simon hits the ground with his forehead.
It’s not: his forehead hits the ground. No, it’s: he hits the ground with his forehead.
As if, on this very spot, straddling the centuries, Savonarola had forced him to confess his crime.
Grande problema
So much for San Marco.
Now what. Now what do we do? Rena asks her Special Friend, but Subra has no answer.
Simon is lying on the ground, his forehead spurting blood. At once, half a dozen passers-by rush over to help him to his feet. Luckily there’s a bench on the esplanade, just a few steps away. Ingrid sits down on it next to her husband, deeply shaken.
Maybe she’ll faint, too, Rena thinks — why not? Anything can happen. But I’ll be on that plane tomorrow morning, nothing in the world can prevent me, I’ll be on it. Drawing a tissue from her pocket, she starts dabbing at the blood on her father’s forehead.
‘Ghiacchio!’ a young man exclaims.
Yes, of course. That’s what we need. Ice. She crosses the avenue and walks into a fancy coffee shop — gleaming chrome, towering chocolate layer cakes, elegant customers milling about. ‘Ghiacchio?’ she says to a young waitress. Even as she performs a pantomime of her father’s accident, she registers every detail of the girl’s appearance: carefully made-up face, well-cut uniform, pink ruffles on her apron, mauve ribbons in her hair, purple polish on her fingernails… Ah, thinks Rena, what wouldn’t I give to have this girl as a model…a friend…a hostage…
Now the waitress is handing her a crackly cellophane bag chock-full of tiny white ice cubes. ‘Grazie, grazie!’ Rena feels like kissing her full on the lips.
She goes back outside and sizes up their new situation from afar: Tourists; spot of bother. An old man slumped on a bench, forehead bloodied; his wife muttering and fluttering around him. Called back to their respective pressing obligations, the helpful passers-by have vanished. Resolutely, Rena goes over to include herself in the tourists-spot-of-bother group. Yes, that is correct, I am the man’s daughter and this is what my life is about just at the moment — this, and nothing else. Not the riots in France, not the Dominican monks’ cells; this. Here’s the ice, Daddy. I love you…
Simon’s eyes are closed.
‘You okay?’
‘Sure, sure.’
‘Rena,’ Ingrid says feverishly, ‘several people told me we should find an ambulance and take him to the hospital.’
‘Did they say it in English?’
‘In English, in Italian, what does it matter? They made themselves clear. They said it several times. But your father doesn’t want to go.’
‘There’s no need,’ says Simon with a wave of hand. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Here,’ says Rena, handing Ingrid the ice cubes. ‘Can I take a look?’
Ingrid parts the tissue papers with which she’s been staunching the blood. Since Rena left, the bump has risen spectacularly and is now the size of a large egg. The sight of the raw flesh makes her shudder.
‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘I don’t know, maybe they’re right. Maybe we should go to a hospital and ask a doctor to check it, if only to set our minds at rest.’
‘What do you say, Dad?’
‘Not in an ambulance, anyhow,’ Simon says. ‘I wouldn’t want to take an ambulance away from someone who really needs it.’
‘Well, let’s take a taxi, then,’ Ingrid says. ‘I’m sure the taxi drivers know all the hospitals.’
‘Have you got enough cash?’ Rena looks at her.
‘Sure, I’ve got plenty of euros. Everyone has been so kind to us on this trip, I haven’t been able to spend anything.’
When they help Simon to his feet, he reels. It’s a dream. Rena hails a cab. It slows down as it approaches…but takes off again, tyres screeching, when the driver glimpses the blood on the tissue papers.
‘We’d better put his hat back on,’ Rena tells Ingrid, ‘or else no taxi will take us.’
‘Can we do that, Dad?’
‘Gently, gently…’
Eventually, another cab draws up. It takes them several minutes to settle into the back seat. The driver fidgets with impatience.
Just as you used to, says Subra.
No reason to fidget, sir. No reason at all. Your meter is ticking, believe me. You wouldn’t want it to tick any faster. Why hurry to reach the day when, like my father, you’ll fall and break your head open on the Piazza San Marco? That day will come soon enough. Believe me, sir, there’s no rush at all.
‘Ospedale,’ she says out loud, feeling an almost maternal benevolence for the impatient young idiot.
‘Spedale degli Innocenti?’ he asks, meeting her eyes in the rear-view mirror.
And though it would be perfectly plausible for a group of tourists to wish to be driven to that sumptuous art gallery, she bursts out laughing. No, no, I’m not innocent, no one is innocent, I mean everyone is innocent, I’m not Beatrice Cenci…
‘No,’ she says out loud, stifling her incongruous mirth as best she can. ‘Un ospedale vero.’
‘Il quale?’ the young man asks in exasperation.
‘Non lo so, non me ne importa un fico!’
‘Signora!’
‘Il più grande, il migliore, ma, per favore, subito presto!’
Arcispedale
It’s rush hour, and traffic is at a standstill in the Via Nazionale. Squashed into the back seat on either side of the wounded man, Ingrid and Rena each take one of his hands.
‘I’m fine, I’m just fine,’ Simon murmurs, eyes closed, gently tapping their hands with his.
Voices and music blare from the radio in a non-stop jingle. It’s impossible to tell advertisements from regular programmes; it all sounds equally imbecilic and hysterical. Other anguished car rides well up to the surface of Rena’s mind: her two deliveries (her waters broke in the taxi on the way to the hospital to give birth to Tous-saint, and the driver made her sign a paper promising to pay to have his upholstery cleaned)…various planes she all but missed, fearing for her life as taxi-drivers honk-honked their way through traffic in cities like Jaipur or Cairo, where the highway code is replaced by the notion of destiny…mad scrambles to get Alioune to Orly Airport on time when he had to take over for a colleague in Dakar at the drop of a hat…rushing to meet Thierno at the Montparnasse train station when he came back to Paris, depressed and angry, from school outings to ski resorts…It seems as if she has spent half her life stuck in traffic, glancing at her watch and swallowing exhaust fumes. All those marvellous inventions of the Renaissance — clockwork, machines, the harnessing of natural forces by man — have converged to produce this moment: a medical emergency at a standstill, amidst ten thousand aggressive vehicles that sit there revving their motors, spewing chemical poisons into the air, eating away at the ozone layer…