One day a lady walked passed the poor man and, as naturally as could be, gave him alms of two hundred lire. That was a fabulous amount of money at the time, and the shopkeepers in the small shops by the bridge decided only an American woman could afford to give away such an astonishing sum. Consequently, the poor man had a piece of card made to hang from his neck, where the scene of the elegant lady giving him the notes was painted. The drawing had been childishly colored and was very similar to scenes beggars draw on the pavement to please their customers in the more pleasant parts of London. There was an inscription under the scene that ran: “On December 10 1921, an American lady gave this poor little fellow — a questo poverello — alms of 200 lire. Tourists, ladies, gentlemen! Imitate that American lady’s gesture! Imitate her and you will be deemed worthy of being in the city of the great men of the Renaissance!”
If Ràfols the architect had been with us, he’d have been quick to give him alms. He’d gone to live in Fiesole to add a rustic, Franciscan touch to his general compassion, but occasionally came down to Florence and met up with us. It was amazing to see him acting charitably. He went to it with admirable conviction and energy. In this particular case, I don’t think he did so because he wanted to be deemed worthy of the city of the great men of the Renaissance. Not at all. The architect found satisfaction of a higher, ethereal, rarified order, in worldly detachment. If it had been in his power, he’d have given alms to everyone, including the rich and powerful.
On the corner of the Ponte Vecchio, we’d debate which café to head for. Llimona and I argued for a café that wasn’t noisy or particularly pretentious, that allowed you to talk in peace. At that time you could say coffee was higher quality in the whole of Italy, a wondrous miracle of mechanical distillation. The espresso-raccomandato coffee-making machines had triumphed, and the peninsula offered the best coffee on the continent. When I think back, I become gloomily nostalgic. However, the Mexican didn’t agree. His passage through central Europe had accustomed him to cafés with music, to establishments that had at least a quartet, if not a quintet. The beverage on offer was what least interested him — what he really wanted was culture, to grasp every opportunity to deepen his knowledge of culture; as a result, when it was time to drink coffee, he needed to be surrounded by what Latin Americans call Arte. Not a single moment could be allowed to pass when he wasn’t surrounded by Arte. It was his obsession, his angst. When we pointed out that the café ensembles playing in Florence were nothing out of the ordinary, he’d look at us with the woeful, imploring eyes of a beaten dog. He disarmed us. And the day he disarmed us most quickly was the day when he told us about an especially fraught quintet, an ensemble that included a harpist whose divine touch was so velvety she alone redeemed the fearful stutters and ignorance of her fellow players.
It would have been pleasant and easy from where we were to walk to the Palazzo Pitti and spend a couple of hours among the wonderful cypresses in the gardens of the Boboli palace. We only had to cross the Arno. The royal house of Italy had just given the gardens and palace to the city of Florence, and people were flocking there. On the other hand, it was hot. Il caldo di Firenze is humid and sticky and famed throughout Italy for being oppressive. If one place promised a degree of relief it was that concentration of plants and ample grassy slopes. Nevertheless the Mexican’s devilish passion for art, that we didn’t dare oppose, kept us far from such elegant nighttime delights.
So we turned up the Via di Porta Santa Maria, with its intense medieval resonances, walked past the Baptisteri, Campanile, and Santa Maria dei Fiori, namely the city cathedral, crowned by Brunelleschi’s dome, and headed towards the Palazzo Ricardo, where we spent many an hour gazing at the cavalcade of Lorenzo the Magnificent painted by Benozzo Gozzoli. Then we entered the Via Cavour, where there was the large café enhanced by the quintet that so fascinated the Mexican. It was a roomy establishment, dominated by an extensive terrace and a stage where four pale young men and a slightly hunch-backed young harpist trotted out their music. We could hear the distant scraping of strings in the oppressive heat on the street at that time of night when it was deserted.
The streets in the center of Florence are quite narrow — the widest are the size of Barcelona’s Carrer de Ferran. The general tone of the city is very severe unlike other Italian cities that seem easier going and more affable. There are few arches, porticoes, or columns. The dark, blackened walls of the huge old palaces look like the walls of a fortress. The stone is dense, of an astonishing volume and quality. Possibly no other city in Europe has monuments with such dramatic lines or explicit and dynamic presence as Florence. The city center is severe yet passionate, and enjoys a tension the centuries haven’t been able to tame. It is the place in Italy where longings still reach the highest temperatures.
“¡Vaya trozo de Mendelssohn!” exclaimed the Mexican, stirring his spoon in the coffee Ferruccio had just brought us, smirking gleefully under his nose. Ràfols looked at Llimona, Llimona looked at me, and I looked at Ràfols. It was a piece by Liszt that was one of the best known and hackneyed in his repertoire. Our friend never moved beyond the vaguest approximations in music, and always got it wrong. When they played Schubert, he thought he was listening to Schumann.
“¡Qué adorable y tierno es Schumann!” he’d remark softly, no doubt wanting to ensure we knew that a soldier who’d fought with wild Pancho Villa could be really sensitive once enlightened and nurtured by culture and art. But his errors eventually irritated, because they were so systematic. His mind was full of nonsense, musically speaking.
The café had an international clientele: a tourism that was sensitive rather than moneyed, with easy-going, liberal habits — the usual clientele one finds in literary cafés on the continent, people who tend to look like slightly odd fish. There were stiff, starchy, hard-faced English ladies in mauve dresses who looked like swordfish and Germans who were like scorpion fish. There was the occasional greasy hirsute fellow, who was short-sighted, apparently learned, and urbane. The great man in the café was Giovanni Papini, the most influential mind in Italy at the time. He always came with a retinue of other great young men — fatally destined, that is, to human greatness as soon as they were taller and less callow. Papini greeted everybody, shook hands, accompanied by a series of absolutely welcoming smiles. As he’d been anti-Austrian and anti-German during the war, the Germans adored him and the Walkyries’ eyes swallowed him whole. He seemed delighted by the feelings he aroused. In such a milieu, his extraordinary features seemed quite normaclass="underline" extremely short-sighted, with lenses as thick as bottle bottoms, a prominent, protruding syphilis-inherited forehead, frizzy, wispy hair, a mouth that was both cynical and childish, an unbuttoned shirt, creased jacket, tight-lipped and edgy, he had all that was required to be à la page in that world of shipwrecked souls. He was coming to the end of his long poverty-stricken period and was really beginning to make his mark. He preened most when people told him he was the St George who had killed the dragon. The dragon was Benedetto Croce, the philosopher (a Hegelian), senator, and historian who had remained neutral in the war. I suspect, however, the dragon was too tough-skinned for that goldfish bowl, for St George to have speared him.
The music was still scraping away.
“¡Qué delicado minueto de Mozart!” the Mexican suddenly proclaimed. Ràfols looked at Llimona, Llimona looked at me, and I looked at Ràfols. It was a piece by Vivaldi that was extremely popular in Italy. The architect managed a sadly pleasant smile. The milieu wasn’t right for him. He finished his dish of pink ice cream and bid farewell, on the excuse that the last train to Fiesole was about to depart.