“Grazie, signore, Lei è molto gentile. Se Lei ha bisogno di qualsiasi cosa, mi dica.” And the valet left.
D’Agosta hadn’t understood a word the man had said after “Grazie, signore.” It didn’t sound at all like the language his grandmother spoke. He shook his head. It must be the Florentine accent throwing him off: he knew he hadn’t forgotten that much. Italian was his first language, after all.
He looked around. This was like no hotel room he had ever stayed in before, the height of clean, understated taste and elegance. It was also huge: almost an apartment, really, with a bedroom, sitting room, marble bath, kitchen, and well-stocked bar, along with a wall of windows looking out over the Arno, the Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi Gallery, the great cupola of the Duomo. The room must’ve cost a fortune, but D’Agosta had long ago given up worrying about how Pendergast spent his money, if indeed it was his money. The guy remained as mysterious as ever.
There came another soft knock on the door, and D’Agosta opened it. It was Pendergast. The detective, still dressed in his usual black—which somehow looked less out of place in Florence than it did in New York—glided in. He carried a sheaf of papers in one hand.
“Accommodations to your satisfaction, Vincent?”
“A bit cramped, lousy view of some old bridge, but I’ll get used to it.”
Pendergast settled on the sofa and handed D’Agosta the sheaf of papers. “You will find here a permesso di soggiorno, a firearm permit, an investigative authorization from the Questura, your codice fiscale, and a few other odds and ends to be signed—all through the count’s good offices.”
D’Agosta took the papers. “Fosco?”
Pendergast nodded. “Italian bureaucracy moves slowly, and the good count gave it a swift kick forward on our behalf.”
“Is he here?” D’Agosta asked with little enthusiasm.
“No. He may come later.” Pendergast rose and strolled to the window. “There is his family’s palazzo, across the river, next to the Corsini Palace.”
D’Agosta glanced out at a medieval building with a crenellated parapet. “Nice pile.”
“Indeed. It’s been in the family since the late thirteenth century.”
Another knock came at the door.
“Trasite’,” D’Agosta called, proud to be able to use his Italian in front of Pendergast.
The valet came in again, carrying a basket of fruit. “Signori?”
“Faciteme stù piacère’ lassatele ‘ngoppa’ o’ tavule.”
The valet made no move toward the table, saying instead, “Where shall I put it?” in English. D’Agosta glanced at Pendergast and saw a twinkle of amusement in his eye.
“O’ tavule,” he answered more brusquely.
The man stood there with the fruit in his hand, looking from the table to the desk, finally placing it on the desk. D’Agosta felt a surge of irritation at his willful incomprehension—hadn’t he given the man a big enough tip? Words he had so often heard from his father flowed unbidden off his lips. “Allòra qual’è ò problema’, sì surdo? Nun mi capisc’i? Ma che è parl’ ò francèse’? Mannaggi’ ‘a miseria’.”
The man backed out of the room in confusion. D’Agosta turned to Pendergast, to find the agent making a rare and unsuccessful attempt to suppress an effervescence of mirth.
“What’s so funny?” D’Agosta said.
Pendergast managed to compose his features. “Vincent, I didn’t know you had such a flair for languages.”
“Italian was my first language.”
“Italian? Do you speak Italian, too?”
“What do you mean, too? What the hell do you think I was speaking?”
“It sounded remarkably to me like Neapolitan, which is often called a dialect of Italian but is actually a separate language. A fascinating language, too, but, of course, incomprehensible to a Florentine.”
D’Agosta froze. Neapolitan dialect? The thought had never occurred to him. Sure, there were families that spoke the Sicilian dialect where he grew up in New York, but he’d just assumed his own language was real Italian. Neapolitan? No way. He spoke Italian.
Pendergast, noticing the look on D’Agosta’s face, continued. “When Italy was united in 1871, there were six hundred dialects. A debate began to rage as to what language the new country should speak. The Romans thought their dialect was the best, because, after all, they were Rome. The Perugians thought theirs was the purest, because that’s where the oldest university in Europe was. The Florentines felt theirs was correct, because theirs was the language of Dante.” He smiled again. “Dante won.”
“I never knew that.”
“But people continued to speak their dialects. Even when your parents emigrated, only a small portion of the citizenry spoke official Italian. It wasn’t until the arrival of television that Italians began abandoning their dialects and speaking the same language. What you consider ‘Italian’ is actually the dialect of Naples, a rich but sadly dying language, with hints of Spanish and French.”