Hannibal - Thomas Harris [44]
The two committees were a contentious and prickly assembly - for years they could not even agree on a venue, neither side willing to meet in the other's offices. They met instead in the magnificent Salon of Lilies in the Palazzo Vecchio, each member believing the beautiful room suitable to his own eminence and distinction. Once established there, they refused to meet anywhere else, even though the Palazzo Vecchio was undergoing one of its thousand restorations, with scaffolding and drop cloths and machinery underfoot.
Professor Ricci, an old schoolmate of Rinaldo Pazzi, was in the hall outside the salon with a sneezing fit from the plaster dust. When he had recovered sufficiently, he rolled his streaming eyes at Pazzi.
“La solita arringa,” Ricci said, “they are arguing as usual. You've come about the missing Capponi curator? They're fighting over his job right now. Sogliato wants the job for his nephew. The scholars are impressed with the temporary one they appointed months ago, Dr Fell. They want to keep him.”
Pazzi left his friend patting his pockets for tissues, and went into the historic chamber with its ceiling of gold lilies. Hanging drop cloths on two of the walls helped to soften the din.
The nepotist, Sogliato, had the floor, and was holding it by dint of volume: “The Capponi correspondence goes back to the thirteenth century. Dr Fell might hold in his hand, in his nonItalian hand, a note from Dante Alighieri himself. Would he recognize it? I think not. You have examined him in medieval Italian, and I will not deny his language is admirable. For a straniero. But is he familiar with the personalities of preRenaissance Florence? I think not. Whatif he came upon a note in the Capponi library fromfrom Guido de' Cavalcanti for instance? Would he recognize it? I think not. Would you care to address that, Dr Fell?”
Rinaldo Pazzi scanned the room and did not see anyone he recognized as Dr Fell, even though he had examined a photograph of the man not an hour before. He did not see Dr Fell because the doctor was not seated with the others. Pazzi heard his voice first, then located him.
Dr Fell stood very still beside the great bronze statue of Judith and Holofernes, giving his back to the speaker and the crowd. He spoke without turning around and it was hard to know which figure the voice came from - Judith, her sword forever raised to strike the drunken king, or Holofernes, gripped by the hair, or Dr Fell, slender and still beside Donatello's bronze figures. His voice cut through the din like a laser through smoke and the squabbling men fell silent.
“Cavalcanti replied publicly to Dante's first sonnet in La Vita Nuova, where Dante describes his strange dream of Beatrice Portinari,” Dr Fell said. “Perhaps Cavalcanti commented privately as well. If he wrote to a Capponi, it would be to Andrea, he was more literary than his brothers.”
Dr Fell turned to face the group in his own time, after an interval uncomfortable to everyone but him. “Do you know Dante's first sonnet, Professor Sogliato? Do you? It fascinated Cavalcanti and it's worth your time. In part it says: ” The first three hours of night were almost spent The time that every star shines down on us When Love appeared to me so suddenly That I still shudder at the memory..Joyous Love seemed to me, the while he held My heart within his hands, and in his arms My lady lay asleep wrapped in a veil. He woke her then and trembling and obedient She ate that burning heart out of his hand; Weeping I saw him then depart from me.
“Listen to the way he makes an instrument of the Italian vernacular, what he called the vulgari eloquentia of the people: ”Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo Meo core in mano, a ne le braccia avea Madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. Poi la svegliava, a d'esto core ardendo