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“Yes, it was to this ave the library I had accumulated, a study in which to work, luxuries which I hoped would comfort him, and the promise of students ould come to him to seek his wisdom as soon as his spirit could be healed Elders froue on the top floor of this house, and to gather in prayer there with Giovanni as too crushed in spirit to go out the front door into the streets

“But how, I ask you, can a father who has seen such barbarity done to his son ever be healed?”

Signore Antonio looked at the priests He looked at Vitale, and at me He looked at his son, Niccolò

“And re Lionello myself very much He was the companion of my heart, Niccolò, as Vitale has always been to you He had been my tutor when my teacher didn’t have patience for me He had been the one to write verses with me back and forth across the tavern table He had been the one to play the lute as you do, Toby, and I had seen his hands chopped off, thrown to dogs as if they were garbage, and his body torn all but to pieces before his eyes were finally put out”

“Better that he died, the poor soul,” said Fr Piero “May God forgive those who did these things to him”

“Yes, ive theive them

“But Giovanni lived in this house like a ghost And not a ghost who hurls bottles against walls or rattles doors, or heaves ink pots into the air or throws things against a cellar floor He lived as if he had no heart left As if he had nothing in hiht, talked of better tiain, as he had lost his wife soanother son”

He stopped and shook his head “Perhaps this was the wrong thing to suggest to him Perhaps it wounded him more deeply than I supposed All I know is that he kept his few precious articles to himself, his books to himself, and would never settle into the library or ave up the idea ofhim live in and enjoy this house as its proper occupant, and I went on back to my own, and came to see him as often as I could only to find him, often as not, in the cellar of all places, and reluctant to come up to me unless he was certain I was alone The servants told me he had hidden his treasure in the cellar, and some of his most precious books

“He was in essence a destroyed er existed in him Memory was too painful for him The present didn’t exist

“Then came Holy Week as it does each year and those ere Jews in these streets shut up their doors as always and stayed within as the law requires And the roughs of the neighborhood, the lowborn, the foolish, went about as always after the heated Lenten ser the of Our Lord Jesus Christ

“I thought nothing of it as regards Giovanni because he was in one of htest harht, I was called by o at once The one out to face the rocks at them as they hurled rocks at him

“My guards struggled to put an end to the ed Giovanni back inside

“But Giovanni’s desperate actions had touched off a riot Hundreds were pounding on the doors and the walls, threatening to tear the place apart

“Now there areplaces in this house, behind paneled walls, off staircases which one ht not discover for years But the most secure place is in the cellar, beneath the stones in the middle of the floor

“With all ed Giovanni down there ‘You o away’