Michael Dibdin - A Rich Full Death

Legions had stood where I was standing, gazing like Keats’s stout Cortez. What their wild surmises may have been I do not know, but I am sure I was the first to look out there and feel that the Florentines had done right to exile Dante!

To be sure, this nightmare inferno whose geography Browning was exploring with such excitement was but a parody of the poet’s vision. Nevertheless, a man who occupied his life with the creation of an all-embracing minutely-organised vicarious universe in which he was exalted and his enemies made to suffer atrocious and degrading torments-what had he to do with the genius of this place whose finest monument was just this scene before my eyes: not the obsessively organised masterpiece of some lonely exile, but the splendid product of evolution, chance, history, and a dozen different hands?

Browning had also been actively contemplating the scene.

‘How often I have stood up here,’ he pronounced, ‘or on the brow of Bellosguardo, or at Fiesole, looking down on Florence! There it stands, like a theatre after everyone has gone home. How noble the verses must have been! And how the actors must have moved like kings, and spoken like gods. What we but dream of and play at, they performed . But where are they now? Vanished without trace!’

A desire to shine was almost embarrassingly evident in my companion’s words and manner. The thought which flashed into my mind, rightly or wrongly, was that he had sensed that I had withdrawn my admiration, and was waxing brilliant in order to try and win me back. If so, his efforts were wasted.

‘Until now!’ he added, giving me a significant look. ‘Now that power and scope of conception and execution have surfaced once again, albeit in an evil guise. But let us admit it-there is grandeur, there is genius, in the thing! No petty crime this! No nasty tale of a lover’s spite, as at first I thought. No-nothing less than to re-create Dante Aligheri’s Inferno here on earth, bang in the middle of the nineteenth century, punishing the heirs of the poet’s sinners in ways which parallel those which he described. This is evil on a scale worthy of this setting! Tell me honestly, Booth, do you not feel some slight admiration for the man?’

‘Not the slightest,’ I replied coldly. ‘Indeed, I am afraid I must say that I most strongly deprecate the views you have just expressed. Unlike you, I do not find evil and crime amusing or inspiring, but dreary, dark and desolate. You ask me to be honest: let me therefore tell you that if I agreed to our meeting today, it was solely for the purpose of announcing my fixed intention of withdrawing from any further involvement in this affair.

‘As you must remember, I have on several occasions urged you to place such information as you possess in the hands of the authorities. You have until now succeeded in convincing me that this would be a mistake. In the wake of recent events I am no longer convinced. You, of course, must do as your conscience directs. But please be clear that I shall henceforth disassociate myself entirely from any further private investigations into these crimes.’

Browning stood staring, his bottom lip hanging down, for all the world like a little boy trying not to cry. I almost felt sorry for him-until I recalled how he had treated me that day at the English Cemetery.

‘But why?’ he wailed. ‘You used to be so eager to help me! What has happened to change you? What are these “recent events” you speak of?’

This was too bad. I had thought he would be angry and stalk off, but by showing his hurt so plainly, Browning was managing to make me feel at fault. Was I never to be in the right with the man? There was, however, no turning back now.

Yes, I have changed,’ I told him. ‘We have been speaking of Dante. He said that his life began again the day he met the woman you have described as a vulgar merchant’s daughter. Well, I too have met Beatrice.’

Our looks met with an almost audible chink.

‘Very well, Mr Booth,’ Browning said-and his voice was hard and full of menace. ‘In that case I need detain you no longer.’

And now, at last, he turned on his heel and strode off-too late! My victory rang hollow, and I felt I had blundered badly, perhaps fatally.

I set off for home, only to get lost in a maze of alleys and paths of that over-elaborately calculated landscape. One spot in particular returned continually to haunt me: the path curved invitingly away downhill in what seemed the right direction, only to come to an abrupt end against a high stone wall in a close airless dead-end where I could hardly breathe.

As I found myself back there for the third or fourth time, and stopped to try and get my bearings, I heard laughter close behind me. I whirled round, but there was no one there. The air suddenly felt chilly, and I shivered as though someone had walked across my grave.

Then there was a rustle in the bushes, and I took to my heels! Had Browning been right, then? Was this garden hell itself, from which there was no escape? Would I always find myself back at that same spot where the path went wrong, listening to that mocking laughter, for all eternity?

Strangely, however, in my blind and stupid panic-for the gardens were now rapidly filling with people, and it had been some innocent laugh I must have heard, from another alley beyond the hedge-I somehow managed to find the exit which had eluded me before, and in a few minutes was out of the gardens of the Pitti Palace and back in the noise and turmoil of the streets.

When I had met Charles Nicholas Grant at Miss Chauncey’s ill-fated ‘seance’, he had told me that he was staying with the Ricasoli family, and urged me to call on him, and as my way home took me directly past the Ricasoli palace I took this opportunity of doing so. Mr Grant received me kindly, and sent the footman for a bottle of wine-which his firm imports, he informed me with a smile and a wink, to add substance to their claret in poor years.

Mr Grant proved to be a rather different quantity tete-a-tete than he had been in company. The urbanity and the polished charm were rather less in evidence, and a bluff boisterous high spirits considerably more. In particular I found him as thrilled as a schoolboy at the prospect of the poor old Florentine Carnival, which he evidently envisaged as a spanking new edition of the Roman Saturnalia, with all its original excesses intact and a variety of modern ones superadded. His manner became frankly conspiratorial as he intimated that one as long resident in the city as myself must surely know all those special places and times when the flame of Carnival burned most intensely, and a good time was to be had by all.

I agreed that I might possibly be able to furnish him with certain indications, and even offered to accompany him if he so desired. He said he could wish for nothing better. I then described some of the traditions of the Carnival, including the opportunity it presented to indulge in masquerade.

At this the staid merchant’s eyes lit up. Nothing would do but we must immediately repair to an outfitter who specialised in this kind of apparel, and look out something suitable-or rather unsuitable . After much reflection, Grant settled for a suit of jester’s motley, complete with cap and bells-and of course a mask to conceal his identity, lest his respectable acquaintances here catch him thus playing the fool. This costume was duly ordered to be made up in time for the Saturday, when the festivities commence in earnest, continuing without respite until the climax of the grand procession on Shrove Tuesday-on which day Grant and I made our arrangements to meet and sally forth together in quest of adventure.

Meanwhile I at last heard from Beatrice’s lips the news I had longed for-that Browning had been to visit her, and she had severed her relations with him.