conversation came back to me like roosting kites. Suddenly I knew where to go. God’s house was always open.
I turned the points of my ruined shoes toward the monastery of Santa Croce, to enlist the help of the only man I had ever met who had not risen under my touch.
6
There were three things I knew about the monastery of Santa Croce.
Fatto Uno: Dante wasn’t buried there. He died in Ravenna, where his body rots, but they show his tomb in the monastery church of Santa Croce, since it has lately become the mausoleum for Florence’s most famous sons. But that most revered of all Florentines is revered in . . . Ravenna. Just one more piece of evidence that the church is one huge con, if you ask me.
Fatto Due: The place was chock-full of well-meaning Franciscans, such as the brother I had come to seek. Franciscans, it seemed to me, did much pastoral work out in the world, for the poor and leprous and other unfortunates. Unlike their chillier brethren, the austere Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella way across town. I’ll tell you how I knew that they were more approachable, and that is, though I had never set foot inside the hallowed cloisters of Santa Maria Novella, I had, in fact, been here before. Many times. And that brings me to:
Fatto Tre: the postern brother of Santa Croce was called Brother Malachi, and would occasionally pimp me for the brethren within. Shocking, I know, but the flesh is weak when the willy is spirited, and even those with a calling could forget the Lord for quarter of an hour of prick-play. So I knew Malachi well, and hoped that this pious pander would be at the gate tonight.
The great piazza of Santa Croce was bare and dark, empty even of the pigeons that peck and scratch in the daylight hours. The rough façade of the church loomed out of the dark, giant and forbidding; its door was a dark mouth, its single round window a cyclops’s eye. I dropped my eyes from its gaze, for I was badly frightened, and sought the little gate to the cloister, which sat low in the long high wall. Malachi was there, dozing, but waked as I reached through the gate to lift his cowl and crushed my breasts against the wrought-iron curlicues. Straightaway he leered at me, as if he had been dreaming of my face and greeted the reality seamlessly. His leer reminded me of what a dirty bastard he really was, and I called to mind one of the three Latin tags I know: “cucullus non facit monachum,” the cowl does not make the monk. (I will tell you the other two in good time—right now I am too concerned with saving my miserable skin.)
“Greetings, Brother Malachi. Is Brother Guido within?” The odious monk stretched, farted, and leaned against the gate. “We have several of that name in Santa Croce, Chi-chi. Will you take them all at once or in succession?”
I tired of his wit at once. I had walked a dozen miles that night, up the hill to San Miniato, down again to Santa Croce, and had seen two dead souls, one I liked and one I didn’t. I needed sanctuary, not sex, and I searched my tired brain for the monk’s last name. Something about a tower. “della Torre.” That was it.
Malachi’s brows almost shot into his cowl. “In truth? The Pisano? I thought him somewhat devout for . . . never mind.” He shook his head. “Well, at least he has the money to pay you, and then some, or at least his family does.” He turned the key in the gate and I stepped back as it opened toward me. I pushed quickly past the odious brother, but not before he grabbed my tits on the way past.
“The brothers are at prayer,” he grunted, trapping me with his bulk. “Don’t forget my tithe on the way out. Ten percent, as always.”
Madonna. His breath was foul—Christ knew what they fed on here—but I smiled into his drooling face and shot past into the courtyard.
Now I have no time for God, as you know, but I did feel safer at once. The place was peaceful—a cool rectangle of emerald grass like a still lake squared around by perfect loggias of numberless arches. A chapel with a round tower and a quartet of white columns sat at one end like a temple—oddly pagan in this setting. (Mind