The Savage Garden

    'The money for Harry?'

    'Yes. No problem.'

    How much further would he have to descend into Dante's ordered underworld before he could finally declare himself innocent of the transgression on show?

    'How did you get back?'

    He told her.

    'She's a beautiful girl, isn't she?'

    'Is she?'

    'You don't think so?'

    'No. Yes. I suppose.'

    'She's wild, that one. Well, not anymore. But she used to be.'

    'Wild?'

    'Like her mother. But it's different now. They say she's changed.'

    'Changed?'

    'That's what they say.'

    He headed for the bar in Piazza Cavour before dinner, as he did every evening, aware that this was the last time he would watch the ragged boys playing football, scampering to and fro between the goalposts chalked onto the walls, stopping to splash their faces with water from the old stone trough whenever one of them scored. The piazza started to fill—slow but steady trickles of humanity from the side streets—and the young footballers grudgingly relinquished their pitch to their elders.

    You could go a whole day in San Casciano barely seeing a soul, but come early evening, the entire town (or so it seemed) took to the streets, making for Piazza Cavour. Couples, families, black- shawled widows bent with the weight of years: They all gathered, sauntering around.

    Signora Fanelli had painted a picture of a fractured community, yet here they all were, congregating, carrying on as normal. He wondered what their stories were, and whether thirteen years was really time enough to forgive and forget.

    He worked during dinner, although at a certain point it ceased to be work, Dante's wild imagination and spectacular imagery carrying him effortlessly along. On reaching the seventh circle of Hell, he was pleased to finally encounter a sin he hadn't committed: murder. Strangely, Dante rated this as a less grievous offense than both hypocrisy and flattery, which he had placed in the eighth circle. Here, a group of souls was walking endlessly around in a circle, a devil slicing them open from top to toe each time they passed him, only for the wounds to reheal. These were the Sowers of Discord and Schism, the prophet Muhammad chief among them. True to form, Dante had devised a punishment appropriate to the sin, splitting each of them apart for all eternity, as they had sought to divide others during their lifetimes.

    But amongst all the unfortunates being eviscerated by devils, boiling in rivers of blood and choking on human excrement, there was still no sign of any of the characters from the garden. Frustrated, he started to skip ahead, skimming the pages for their names: Flora, Zephyr, Daphne, Apollo, Hyacinth, Echo, Narcissus. This is what he was doing when a figure appeared at his shoulder. 'Hi.'

    Adam turned and looked up at Fausto. He appeared more presentable than before. His chin was still blackened with stubble but he'd run a comb through his long lank hair, and he was wearing a clean shirt, buttoned up to the neck—small concessions to smartness that didn't quite mask a congenital disregard for externals.

    'Can I?' he asked, dropping into the chair opposite.

    Adam pointedly checked the number of cigarettes in his packet. 'Sure.'

    Fausto smiled. 'Don't worry, I brought my own this time.'

    'How are you?'

    'Good. Tired. Working too hard.'

    'I don't even know what you do.'

    'The minimum,' grinned Fausto. 'I have a small place on the hillside there. There's always something to do. Right now I'm building a shed for a pig.'

    'You have a pig?'

    'Not yet. But it'll be the happiest pig alive when I do.' He glanced at Adam's book. 'Dante, eh? Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.^,,,

    It was a well-known line from the poem, the inscription on the Gates of Hell: Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

    'You know it?'

    'Do I know it? Do you know Shakespeare? Do you know Milton? Dante is a son of Tuscany.' Fausto laid his hand on the book. 'This is the reason the Tuscan language is the language of Italy, did you know that?'

    'Yes.'

    When writing The Divine Comedy, Dante had shunned Latin in favor of his Tuscan vernacular, a clear break from tradition, and one that had enshrined the dialect as the national language.

    'A great man—like Machiavelli, another Tuscan.'