I must have walked out of the Museo, because I was standing in front of the Duomo, surrounded by tourists. I ducked through the huge bronze doors into the cool of the cathedral, where the striped columns rose spectacularly to the high arches of the vault. The dome soared above me, decorated with golden stars gleaming against a dark blue background, and sunlight poured through the glass-paned oculus at the top, blindingly bright.Crossing myself reflexively, I counted the busts of popes along the cornice at the top of the nave, trying to calm down. It’s just a coincidence. I have a common Italian face: it just happens to have been shared by someone in fourteenth-century Siena.
In the transept a circle of marble lions held up the columns of the octagonal pulpit. When I reached out to touch one, the marble of the lion’s back was cool and worn smooth by many hands before mine. I took out Gabriele’s journal, opened it at random, and bent my head to read the words of this artist whose writing had started to encroach on my modern existence, and whose art, for some inexplicable reason, depicted me.
July 1347
I find my paintings haunted by a persistent image that I cannot dispel, and whose origin I cannot fathom. One day as I knelt in the Duomo, my senses were overtaken by a strange quiet, and my surroundings—the Te Deum ringing around me, the church bells calling our citizens to prayer and chasing the night’s demons away, the creaking of benches on which my neighbors knelt and shifted—went silent. At that moment I saw a figure of a woman, dark hair loose over her simple white shift. She appeared beside the lions of Pisano’s pulpit, but when I leapt up to see the apparition it had vanished. I find the mysterious figure hovering at the edge of my paintings, watching the events unfold in the scenes I depict. It is as if she were seeking a path through my paintings and into this world.
This time as I read, my vision went abruptly dark, and I heard the last words I’d read reverberating in my head, as if someone had said them aloud.
. . . a path through my paintings and into this world.
And then I stopped hearing at all.
PART II
WIDER THAN THIS GATE
This episode did not fade like the others—I couldn’t see or hear. Seconds passed, and I started to panic. What if I stayed like this forever? Finally sounds started to filter back, and I began to see shapes again, then details. My fear receded. It’s just nighttime and the lights are off, I told myself. But the comfort of that explanation faded fast. It wasn’t nighttime a minute ago.
Faint moonlight came through the cathedral windows. I’d been reading in the bright light of the afternoon. How had I lost hours without realizing it? I ran through possible diagnoses. Complex partial seizure? Bad. Transient global amnesia? Not as bad, since that was, by definition, transient.
I was still standing next to the marble lion and I put my hand out to touch its back, steadying myself. It felt different now, rougher under my fingers. Other than the lion, my hands were empty—Gabriele’s journal was gone. I was still wearing Ben’s backpack though, the straps cutting into my shoulders. I bent my arms and legs, making sure I still could. Now I had a strange headache at both temples. Could it all be a complicated migraine? I’d never had a migraine before. Occipital aneurysm? God, I hope not. I staggered over to a wooden choir stall and sat. From somewhere in the dark, a single disembodied voice began to chant the night office in Latin.
Then I noticed something very odd. Along the high cornice that ran the length of the nave, the busts of the popes I had just counted were missing; the space below the clerestory was empty. My heart pounding, I made my way to the great front doors of the cathedral, my footsteps echoing in the empty nave. The rose window in the facade had disappeared, leaving a gaping hole in its place, with the night sky beyond.
I stumbled out through the doors of the Duomo, which had inexplicably changed from bronze to wood. There were no lights anywhere. No lampposts, no warm yellow café windows beckoning travelers. And there was no one on the street. I had never seen a city, any city, so eerily empty. I made my way across the Campo, the slanting lines mysterious in the silvery light from above. A dream? It seemed too realistic to be a dream. Fugue state? Psychotic break? I was running out of diagnoses.
The streets had no signs but I managed to find Ben’s street from memory. Once I turned the corner it was so dark I could hardly see at all. The buildings leaned in toward one another, blocking out the moon, and awnings further darkened the narrow alleyways. Was it a blackout? I touched the walls for guidance as I walked.
A votive candle in a niche that housed an image of the Virgin Mary faintly lit my street. When I found the doorway of Ben’s house—my house—relief washed over me. Now I could climb the stairs to my bedroom, slide between the linen sheets, and fall asleep. Everything would be fine again.
But it wasn’t. The lock looked strange, and my key didn’t fit. I tried it upside down, then right-side up again, but it was clearly the wrong kind of key. How could it be the wrong kind of key? I felt along the plaster wall in the direction of Ilario and Donata’s bell. But there was no bell. Instead of the flat front of the building, the wall extended into a shuttered storefront that I didn’t remember seeing before. Shivering, I wrapped myself in the shawl I’d packed in my bag that morning, curled up on the doorstep of the house that I couldn’t go home to, and waited for sunrise.
The clamor of bells woke me from a cramped sleep before dawn. Out of Donata’s doorway came a mother and daughter arm in arm, both dressed for a Palio parade, in ankle-length gowns with long, tight sleeves. The younger woman stared at me while Mom clucked disapprovingly, and hastened down the street, pulling her daughter away. More doors opened and people poured out, heading toward the Piazza del Duomo. I joined the group and followed the pealing bells to morning Mass at the striped cathedral.
I sat in the far back, surrounded by strangers who should have been my neighbors but looked like actors in a historical reenactment. Were they celebrating some big feast day, maybe the favorite local saint? The priest’s face emerged, lit by candles and serious under a miter. It must be a special holiday for the bishop to be giving Mass. But once the bishop started speaking, his Latin ringing through the nave, my last stubborn attempts to rationalize failed.
Feria Sexta Iulii Anno domini mille tres centum quadraginta et septem . . .
The rest of the service was wasted on me as my rusty high school Latin kicked in and I realized that the date was July 6, 1347. My head spun with the impossibility of the dislocation. I had often imagined that at some point in my life I would lose someone I loved, and I had. But I had never considered the possibility that I would lose my place in time.
* * *