He broke it first. 'You haven't told me your name.'
She told him.
'Victoria,' he said. She felt a kind of triumph. It was the way he'd said it.
He patted her hand. 'Come,' he said feeling protective, almost fatherly. 'I am to meet him, at Scheissvogel's.'
'Of course,' she said. They turned left, away from the Arno, toward Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele.
The Figli di Machiavelli had taken over for their garrison an abandoned tobacco warehouse off Via Cavour. It was deserted at the moment, except for an aristocratic-looking man named Borracho, who was performing his nightly duty of checking the rifles. There was a sudden pounding at the door. 'Digame,' yelled Borracho.
'The lion and the fox,' came the answer. Borracho unlatched the door and was nearly bowled over by a thick- set mestizo called Tito, who earned his living selling obscene photographs to the Fourth Army Corps. He appeared highly excited.
'They're marching,' he began to babble, 'tonight, half a battalion, they have rifles, and fixed bayonets -'
'What in God's name is this,' Borracho growled, 'has Italy declared war? Que pasa?'
'The Consulate. The Consulate of Venezuela. They are to guard it. They expect us. Someone has betrayed the Figli di Machiavelli.'
'Calm down,' Borracho said. 'Perhaps the moment which the Gaucho promised us has arrived at last. We must expect him, then. Quickly. Alert the others. Put them on standby. Send a messenger into town to find Cuernacabron. He will likely be at the beer garden.'
Tito saluted, wheeled, ran to the door on the double, unlocked it. A thought occurred to him. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'perhaps the Gaucho himself is the traitor.' He opened the door. The Gaucho stood there, glowering. Tito gaped. Without a word the Gaucho brought his closed fist down on the mestizo's head. Tito toppled and crashed to the floor.
'Idiot,' the Gaucho said. 'What's happened? Is everyone insane?'
Borracho told him about the army.
The Gaucho rubbed his hands. 'Bravissimo. A major action. And yet we've not heard from Caracas. No matter. We move tonight. Alert the troops. We must be there at midnight.'
'Not much time, commendatore.'
'We will be there at midnight. Vada.'
'Si, commendatore.' Borracho saluted and left, stepping carefully over Tito on his way out.
The Gaucho took a deep breath, crossed his arms, flung them wide, crossed them again. 'So,' he cried to the empty warehouse. 'The night of the lion has come again to Florence!'
X
Scheissvogel's Biergarten and Rathskeller was a nighttime favorite not only with the German travelers in Florence, but also, it seemed, with those of the other touring nations. An Italian caffe (it was conceded) being fine for the afternoon, when the city lazed in contemplation of its art treasures. But the hours after sundown demanded a conviviality, a boisterousness which the easygoing - perhaps even a bit cliquish - caffes did not supply. English, American, Dutch, Spanish, they seemed to seek some Hofbrauhaus of the spirit like a grail, hold a krug of Munich beer like a chalice. Here at Scheissvogel's were all the desired elements: blond barmaids, with thick braids wound round the back of the head, who could carry eight foaming kruger at a time, a pavilion with a small brass band out in the garden, an accordionist inside, confidences roared across a table, much smoke, group singing.
Old Godolphin and Rafael Mantissa sat out in back in the garden, at a small table, while the wind from the river played chilly about their mouths and the wheeze of the band frolicked about their ears, more absolutely alone, it seemed to them, than anyone else in the city.
'Am I not your friend?' Signor Mantissa pleaded. 'You must tell me. Perhaps, as you say, you have wandered outside the world's communion. But haven't I as well? Have I not been ripped up by the roots, screaming like the mandrake, transplanted from country to country only to find the soil arid, or the sun unfriendly, the air tainted? Whom should you tell this terrible secret to if not to your brother?'
'Perhaps to my son,' said Godolphin.
'I never had a son. But isn't it true that we spend our lives seeking for something valuable, some truth to tell to a son, to give to him with love? Most of us aren't as lucky as you, perhaps we have to be torn away from the rest of men before we can have such words to give to a son. But it has been all these years. You can wait a few minutes more. He will take your gift and use it for himself, for his own life. I do not malign him. It is the way a younger generation acts: that, simply. You, as a boy, probably bore away some such gift from your own father, not realizing that it was still as valuable to him as it would be to you. But when the English speak of 'passing down' something from one generation to another, it is only that. A son passes nothing back up. Perhaps this is a sad thing, and not Christian, but it has been that way since time out of mind, and will never change. Giving, and giving back, can be only between you and one of your own generation. Between you and Mantissa, your dear friend.'
The old man shook his head, half-smiling; 'It isn't so much, Raf, I've grown used to it. Perhaps you will find it not so much.'
'Perhaps. It is difficult to understand how an English explorer thinks. Was it the Antarctic? What sends the English into these terrible places?'
Godolphin stared at nothing. 'I think it is the opposite of what sends English reeling all over the globe in the mad dances called Cook's tours. They want only the skin of a place, the explorer wants its heart. It is perhaps a little like being in love. I had never penetrated to the heart of any of those wild places, Raf. Until Vheissu. It was not till the Southern Expedition last year that I saw what was beneath her skin.'
'What did you see?' asked Signor Mantissa, leaning forward.
'Nothing,' Godolphin whispered. 'It was Nothing I saw.' Signor Mantissa reached out a hand to the old man's
