Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

I crossed the small courtyard at the back of the House of Shells and climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. As usual, the last flight felt claustrophobic, and I was breathing hard by the time I arrived outside Cuif’s room. To my surprise, the door was open. I knocked anyway, then stepped inside. There was no sign of him in the first room, so I moved on through the archway. The second room was quite as monastic as the first, with a single round window and a straw pallet pushed against the wall. The cage holding the cricket hung from a hook above Cuif’s bed, but the mulberry leaf was gone, and had not been replaced. Though both rooms were unoccupied, I called his name. After all, this could be part of the act he had been working on: an open door, an empty room — a temporary invisibility … But no, he wasn’t there. I began to laugh. He wasn’t there! His moment had come at last, and he had gone out to take his rightful place in the world — and judging by his wash-bowl, which was overturned, and a dropped piece of clothing, he had left in a hurry, excited by the prospect of a new, untrammelled life.

Downstairs again, I found the signora sitting by an unlit fire, her back to me, a black shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Cuif wasn’t in his room, I said. Did she know where I could find him? She looked up. Her eyes were swollen.

‘He’s been arrested,’ she said.

I stared at her. ‘What for?’

‘Adultery.’

‘But that’s ridiculous —’

‘That’s what I said. They didn’t listen.’

If the Office of Public Decency was behind the arrest, as seemed likely, Bassetti would be involved. Stufa too. I hadn’t forgotten the box-like carriage with its barred windows and its soiled floor. Since I was employed by the Grand Duke, and had become part of his inner circle, they would find it difficult to target me directly, but they might have decided to make life uncomfortable for the people I knew and cared about, people who were far less well protected.

In ten minutes I was standing outside the Bargello, where the majority of civil offences were tried and sentenced, its high, blunt tower tilting against the sky, its walls dauntingly sheer and bristling with iron bolts. Two soldiers guarded the entrance. I asked if the Grand Duke’s secretary was inside. They didn’t answer, or even move, but merely regarded me with supercilious curiosity. When I repeated my question, the taller of the two men took a step towards me. ‘What’s it to you? Who are you, anyway?’

‘My name’s Zummo. I work for the Grand Duke.’

The tall soldier looked at his colleague. ‘Did you hear that? He works for the Grand Duke.’

‘Impressive,’ the second soldier said.

The tall soldier turned back to me. ‘You sound foreign.’

Cool air swirled out of the courtyard behind the two men, and I thought I smelled blood. I shivered at the implication.

The tall soldier addressed his colleague again. ‘Do you think he sounds foreign?’

‘He’s not from round here, that’s for sure,’ the second soldier said. ‘What did you say your name was? Zugo?’

The tall soldier guffawed. Zugo meant ‘simpleton’ — among other things.

‘Is the Grand Duke’s secretary here?’ I said patiently. ‘If he is, I need to see him. It’s urgent.’

‘We’re under strict instructions not to let anyone in,’ the tall soldier said.

‘I have to see Bassetti. Or Stufa. Whoever’s in charge.’

‘Didn’t you hear me, Zugo? No one’s allowed inside.’

‘Tell them I want to see them,’ I said in a loud, clear voice, ‘or I’ll go straight to the Grand Duke himself.’

Sighing, the tall soldier spoke to his colleague. ‘Tell them Zugo’s here.’

‘Zummo,’ I said. ‘The name’s Zummo.’

The second soldier set off across the wide, paved courtyard.

‘Satisfied?’ the tall one said.

I stood facing the street. The day brightened suddenly, the sky bleak and stringent, like the light on the blade of a knife.

Two more soldiers arrived. Scruffier and more thuggish than the pair on duty by the entrance, they marched me across the courtyard, through a door, and down a steep flight of stairs. The stone walls gleamed with damp, and greasy black fumes uncoiled from the tallow lamps. I began to cough. The deeper we went, the clammier it became. I had been in the Bargello for no more than a few minutes, but the idea that a sun might be shining outside already seemed fantastical.

At last, when we were far underground, in a labyrinth of galleries and recesses that resembled a catacomb, one of the soldiers opened a door that was reinforced with horizontal metal bands. In front of me, on the far side of a wide room, Cuif was suspended in mid-air, his arms forming a triangle above his head, and it seemed for a moment that I had walked in during the execution of a daring somersault, a somersault so new he hadn’t showed it to me yet, but then I saw a burly, bald man in a leather apron stationed nearby, holding the end of a rope, and my stomach lurched. Cuif’s hands had been tied behind his back. A rope had then been looped through his bound wrists, and he had been hoisted to a height of about ten feet. His head hung limply on his neck. He appeared to have fainted.

Stufa lifted his eyes from the ledger he was studying. ‘This particular technique is known as the garrucha . Are you familiar with the garrucha ?’

His abrasive whisper matched the surroundings perfectly. I didn’t answer.

‘It’s Spanish,’ he went on. ‘You make sure the rope is taut, then you jerk it suddenly, which causes instant and often severe dislocation of all the joints in the upper body.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like a demonstration?’

‘Not necessary,’ I said.

‘Is there anything you can tell us that might spare him further pain?’

‘About what?’

‘About his immoral behaviour. Why else would he be here?’ Stufa exchanged a look with the bald man in the apron. Their faces were smooth, comfortable, expressionless.

‘But that’s a fabrication,’ I said. ‘What’s the real charge?’

Stufa’s head came up sharply. ‘Are you saying he’s guilty of something else?’

‘I’m saying he’s not an adulterer.’

‘You think our intelligence is false?’

Once again, I didn’t answer. Probably I had already said too much.

‘You look a bit off colour.’ Stufa turned and signalled to his crony. ‘All right. That’s enough.’

Rather than lower Cuif to the ground, the bald man simply let go of the rope. Cuif dropped through the air and landed in a crumpled heap. The bald man bent down and freed Cuif’s wrists. Cuif cried out every time he was touched.

‘I don’t know what it is about the French,’ Stufa said. ‘They don’t seem to have any backbone.’ He closed his ledger. ‘You can take him away.’

I crossed the room. Cuif lay in a pool of blood and urine. It was obvious that he couldn’t stand, let alone walk. Bending over, I took hold of one of his arms and heaved him up on to my back. His shriek was so loud that it rebounded off the wall like something solid. Shocked at how little he weighed, scarcely more than a child, I had no choice but to ignore his groans and whimpers as I carried him up the stairs and out into the open air. The soldiers on duty at the entrance smirked as we passed. Ignoring them, I set off along the street. The sky had a strange, muted dazzle to it, the winter sun lighting the white cloud cover from behind; I felt as if hours had gone by. I talked to Cuif in a low voice, telling him that he was with me now, and that he was going to be all right, but he lost consciousness several times on the way to Santa Maria Nuova, even though it was close by.

When I laid him on the slab in Pampolini’s operating theatre, his face was paler than the marble, and I was afraid he might already be dead. Pampolini used a pair of scissors to cut off the jacket, shirt and breeches. Cuif’s shoulders had been wrenched out of their sockets, and his right kneecap was shapeless, a mass of congealing blood and shattered bone.