Dark Water_ Flood And Redemption In The City Of Masterpieces Part 6

Nick had awoken not as from a dream or from a nightmare, but with the internal a.s.surance that today things would go back to being the way they had been. It was not that he did not understand the laws of the physical universe (at school he'd been nearly as talented in math and science as in art) but, intuitively, it seemed that when the water withdrew-like a cloth, like the tide-everything that had been there before ought to be there again. He had, after all, nearly been dead, and now he was back here, alive.

Yesterday, after losing everything on the Lungarno, he'd found something for all of them to eat. In the afternoon he and Antonio Raffo-today they'd have to see how his Fiat had fared on the Ponte Santa Trinita-had broken into their landlord's offices downstairs and hauled his account books and files upstairs. Later they were rewarded with a month's free rent. In the afternoon, they'd all looked out Antonio's window on the Via Santo Spirito and watched the flotsam sail by, not just junk and debris, but furniture and antiques, presumably valuable, from the shops up the street. There'd been a pair of sculpted wooden angels-nearly as big as Anatol-Amy had had her eye on in a dealer's window a few doors down. Now she imagined the angels might float by, and if they'd had a grappling hook, a rod and a line, they might have caught hold of them, those and all the lovely things Florence was full of.

Today the sun had come out for an hour or so, and where the water had withdrawn, there was an ochre sheen of mire that was the same color as the traditional stucco of the walls of Florence. It seemed to Amy that the whole city was lacquered in tints of warm earth and azzurro azzurro sky, so beautiful, like pigments just brushed on and still moist. Amy, Nick with his camera, and Anatol of course-how did this look to him; was it just one more stunning everyday thing?-wanted to go out and see how the morning after looked. sky, so beautiful, like pigments just brushed on and still moist. Amy, Nick with his camera, and Anatol of course-how did this look to him; was it just one more stunning everyday thing?-wanted to go out and see how the morning after looked.

Antonio's Fiat stood absurdly untouched on the Ponte Santa Trinita, the apparent sole survivor in a necropolis of battered, overturned, heaped, and swamped cars. But the three of them continued onward, as anyone would, like pins to a magnet, to the Ponte Vecchio, and Nick began to take pictures. Amy held Anatol. He looked at his hand, about to put the knuckle of his index finger into his mouth, to give it a nip, a suck. Amy gazed sidelong-she was still beautiful and young; she'd managed to brush her long hair-as if emptied out; a vessel drained, a scaldino scaldino without coals. Alongside the exhilaration they'd all shared, a sense of the devastation was rising in her. without coals. Alongside the exhilaration they'd all shared, a sense of the devastation was rising in her.

Behind them was the river and bridge, pinioned and shot through with tree trunks like Saint Sebastian, overhung with limbs, hanks of shredded furniture and lumber, the plaster, wood, and stone of its own flayed innards. The river didn't bear looking at: it was a mammoth roiling sewer, slithering away, shamefaced.

They threaded their way across the Ponte Vecchio through the thicket of debris. Nick stopped to make photographs: antique chests and chairs entwined in roots and branches; wall-less, windowless jewelry showrooms with their chandeliers still immaculately pendant. And on the other side, where the Via Ninna comes up behind the Uffizi, quiet; and then a ghostly bark floating toward them, full of silent souls, ferried toward them by boatmen with poles. They were crossing the river of forgetting, from the land of the dying to the land of the dead. Amy understood, at last, that something truly terrible had happened.

But then there was shouting and chattering: it was Firenze after all. The boat held a contingent of rescuers and rescued. The skiff was beating its way-upstream, so to speak-from the depths of the Via dei Neri and Santa Croce to the Palazzo Vecchio, where the water was now scarcely knee-deep. Nick, Amy, and Anatol worked their way north, across the mud flat of the Piazza della Signoria toward the Duomo. There was a crowd, Zeffirelli's film crew among them, and in the middle stood the mayor in his gum boots, gesturing emptily, as though water were pouring through his fingers, then kneeling in the mud.

Everyone was standing by the Baptistry, at the east doors, Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. Five of the ten gilded panels were missing: they used to tell the story-Adam and Eve, the expulsion from Eden, Cain killing Abel-of the things that led up to the flood, the Mosaic deluge, but now those images were buried somewhere in the mud. Monsignor Poli, the head priest of the Duomo, and some custodians were poking the mud with staves. So far, they'd found one panel.

Two more panels were missing from Pisano's south doors, which were hanging by a few tendons of bronze from their frame. Nick took a picture of one of the empty wells in the door where a panel had been sheared away. There was a crack from the upper left to the lower right clear through the metal; a fissure, a chasm, as though an earthquake had rolled right through the door.

Nick and everyone else, really, had thought that the flood was merely water, a liquid, not a solid; a substance that yielded, pa.s.sed around obstacles, sought the gentle, idle path of least resistance. They hadn't reckoned with its power, energy, or force: the weight of millions of gallons of water at sixty pounds to a mere cubic foot. Still less had they considered its residuum, its spent remains, the skin it sloughed off as it oozed away-muck, sewage, heating oil, and soil gathered from here to Falterona-which resembled nothing so much as merda merda, s.h.i.t. Inside the city walls there was now one ton of mud for every man, woman, and child in Florence.

Nick, Amy, and Anatol turned east. They had an expatriate friend, a sculptor, Art Koch, in Santa Croce. n.o.body had spoken of Santa Croce. They pa.s.sed along the south flank of the Duomo, right past Giotto's Campanile. People had said the foundations had been undermined; that the spindly, arrogant tower might fall. But Pisano's figure of Icarus, up there above the waves on the southeast corner, hadn't even gotten his feet wet.

On the bank of the Arno below the basilica, Emanuele Casama.s.sima finally got inside the Biblioteca that morning. He'd come by boat with his two a.s.sistants, Manetti and Baglioni. They'd worked their way inside with shovels. The water had retreated from the ground floor, but the card catalogs were buried in mud. Of the books for which every card stood as doppelganger, no one could yet say. But there were 62,000 miles of shelves in the library and perhaps half of them were on this floor or the floors below it. At a rough guess, that would make three thousand tons of books: sodden, as they a.s.suredly were, twice that.

The Basilica of Santa Croce was directly behind the Biblioteca; in fact, the library and the Franciscan convent overlapped, Santa Croce's original second, southern cloister being occupied by the Biblioteca. And as was true on the Lungarni in the Oltrarno, the riverbank was higher than the ground behind it: at the Biblioteca, the farther north-away from the Arno-you moved, the lower the ground. So as Casama.s.sima went farther back into the library-six million items const.i.tuting the nation's written patrimony, with which he had been entrusted-his horror and then despair deepened. At the cloister, water still covered the ground floor up to the top of the lower arcade, forming a pool a thousand feet square. Books were floating in it, surfacing like wreckage from the sunken stacks below.

Just on the other side of the common wall, in the primary northern cloister, the priests and brothers had finally been able to descend from their dormitory. Outside help had reached them from the higher ground of the basilica steps: a rubber dinghy had been found in a neighborhood sporting goods store (could bringing aid to a mendicant religious order be called "looting"?) and turned over to the brothers. Now Father Cocci was aboard it, navigating the flooded cloister to the refectory. The main church had already been checked: water had streamed around the high altar, spilled into the crypt and tombs of Michelangelo and the other great men of Florence, but had stopped just inches below the frescoes of the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels. The blessed luck of Giotto had held again: his fresco cycle of Francis was untouched.

But the interior of the refectory was a shallow lagoon: a foot of mud, four more of water, and along the surface, river carp flapping and gasping. The water was retreating very slowly, but what remained was too noxious to support life. Father Cocci may or may not have disembarked from the inflatable at this point, but he was joined in the refectory by Father Barsotti and Brothers Franchi, Collesi, and Renzi. Later, there were supposed to have been twelve brothers present, like the apostles. But disasters, like miracles, are amorphous and slippery; realities that are at once more persuasive than ordinary events, yet refractory. So no one can quite agree what happened next, and today all the witnesses are dead.

It's said that Father Cocci saw the floating paint and gesso flecks, some bright and gilded like tropical fish; that it was only then he looked up at the Cimabue Crucifix Crucifix, looming over the waters of the refectory like the creator spirit. Or rather like G.o.d reduced to shreds. It was un brandello, carni strappate fino al volto un brandello, carni strappate fino al volto, "in tatters, the flesh ripped off up to the face," Christ crucified and then drowned. Someone found a tea strainer or a pasta collander and began to scoop the scabs of paint off the surface of the water. Another version has it that Father Cocci was still in the inflatable and that the inflatable was equipped for fishing, so the priest angled for bits of gesso and pigment, leaning over the gunwale with a net on a pole. And a persistent story, one that would not go away even after forty years, had it that the Crucifix Crucifix wasn't attached to the refectory wall at all; that it was found floating facedown in the lagoon, drifting. wasn't attached to the refectory wall at all; that it was found floating facedown in the lagoon, drifting.

How else, a.n.a.lytic minds contended, could all that paint have come off? Who knew what had gone on? Con men and looters were supposed to have been roaming around the church; and, in Firenze, how could it be otherwise-someone looking for an angle, grating a little profit from the wedge, or just helping lost things stay lost? But no one could even agree on when the Crucifix Crucifix had been discovered. Most of the brothers thought it was in the morning, but the first layman to enter the refectory, Salvatore Franchino, said it was in the afternoon and that the only way in was through a window. had been discovered. Most of the brothers thought it was in the morning, but the first layman to enter the refectory, Salvatore Franchino, said it was in the afternoon and that the only way in was through a window.

Regardless of what time it was, all the priests and brothers could do was continue to pan and skim with their various devices, and when that was done-when no more bright specks of paint were left-retreat back to the cloister and save the rest of the basilica, their home.

Word of conditions inside the refectory wouldn't reach the world outside the basilica until later. Meanwhile, around the corner from the Crucifix Crucifix, there was Vasari's Last Supper Last Supper, unseen. The flood had immersed the painting, and even now water slapped against the bottom-perhaps Father Cocci's bark had left a wake that beat in wavelets down the corridor-lapping on Judas Iscariot's sandals.

By noon Nick, Amy, and Anatol had reached Santa Croce, the most deeply flooded place in Florence. The epicenter was a point approximately equidistant from the market at Piazza dei Ciompi, the Borgo Allegri, and Dante's statue in the piazza, which was now half mud, half water, surmounted by haystacks of cars. They found Art Koch's Volkswagen, almost vertical, suspended on a rail outside his apartment. Art's apartment was uninhabitable-on November 4 he'd been driven from the first floor to the second and finally to the third floor of his building-and Amy and Nick invited him to come live with them. They slogged down the boot-sucking trail back to the Piazza Santa Croce, where an army truck that had just arrived was distributing bread.

The bread was gone in a few minutes, but a crowd remained thick around the truck. There was no more bread for them, and there'd never been any water. Just then, at noon, the sun broke through, clear and strong, and perhaps that was why there was no shouting, no raised fists, no effort to stop the truck rolling off back to that drier, better-provisioned place whence it had come. After all, this was Santa Croce, Saint Francis's country, where you had to beg. The Communists at the Casa del Popolo by the Piazza dei Ciompi would have put it differently, would have said that Bargellini and the Palazzo Vecchio would just as soon let people here starve, a.s.suming they couldn't exploit them. That Bargellini lived in the neighborhood and yet did nothing simply proved the point. Largely surrounded by water, Santa Croce was now an island-under the protection of St. Francis, Karl Marx, or both-and would have to become the steward as well as the handmaiden of its own suffering. No one else was going to bother.

In fact, relief was being organized, even if no one could say precisely by whom. There was the mayor and Palazzo Vecchio; there was the army; there was the fire department and the various branches of the police; there were priests, nuns, and monks; there was the single panificio panificio in the hill village of Meoste (with its own well and an overstock of flour) that had dedicated itself to baking for the most devastated parts of the city; and there was the Casa del Popolo in Piazza dei Ciompi, which had decided to found its own Paris Commune to save Santa Croce. From Rome there was silence. in the hill village of Meoste (with its own well and an overstock of flour) that had dedicated itself to baking for the most devastated parts of the city; and there was the Casa del Popolo in Piazza dei Ciompi, which had decided to found its own Paris Commune to save Santa Croce. From Rome there was silence.

It was almost as if the farther away you were the easier it was to hear and to act: the BBC had sent a film crew headed by the young art critic Robert Hughes almost as quickly as Zeffirelli had dispatched his. Of course it was less the cry of Santa Croce than of the Uffizi, the Baptistry doors, the David in the Accademia, and whatever other art might be under threat-Florence rather than Firenze-that was being heeded.

You could hear it in America, in Philadelphia. Professor Frederick Hartt had heard it, and in his morning art history cla.s.s at the University of Pennsylvania-it was late afternoon in Florence; the sky was clouding again; Art Koch was getting settled at Nick and Amy's; he and Nick were hauling drinking water up the 103 steps to the apartment-Hartt told his students what had happened. Then he explained, in tears as often as not, what else would happen if some things weren't done, if certain measures weren't taken immediately; which was why he was leaving them to go to Florence tomorrow.

In the Palazzo Vecchio Mayor Bargellini was trying to conjure up loaves and fishes for the hungry mult.i.tude of his city. A central distribution center for food, medicine, and clothing was being established near Campo di Marte, at the city soccer stadium, through which supplies could be efficiently channeled, inventoried, and secured. In addition to being able to handle trucks and heavy equipment, it was big enough for helicopters to land in. They were already coming: at midday one arrived from Pisa, carrying a Life Life magazine photographer from Rome. He'd had to drive himself up the coast to Pisa, camp for the night, and cajole his way onboard. magazine photographer from Rome. He'd had to drive himself up the coast to Pisa, camp for the night, and cajole his way onboard.

David Lees would spend the rest of the day getting his bearings and planning how to cover and photograph the city under what seemed to be near-battlefield conditions. For starters, he had to find a pair of rubber boots, without which nothing was possible. Then he would plunge in and start taking pictures. There was no way to a.s.sess the damage or even to discern exactly what kinds of damage-inundation, drowning, burying, soaking, rotting, moldering; all of Leonardo's hydrological lexicon-had taken place or might still be happening. Of all people, his wife, the mother of his children, had been in Florence yesterday. They'd talked for a moment. She'd escaped without harm and now she would be going back to Rome, their paths crossing in pa.s.sing, moving in opposite directions, as was their wont.

David found his boots, set off through the streets of the city of his birth, and learned what he could. By the end of the day of November 5, the following things were true, if not yet tallied up: most of the city's museums and churches were either still inaccessible or uninspected, but some 14,000 movable artworks would prove to be damaged or destroyed; sixteen miles of shelved doc.u.ments and records in the State Archives had gone underwater; three to four million books and ma.n.u.scripts had been flooded, including 1.3 million volumes at the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale and its catalog of eight million cards; the rare book and literary collections of the Vieusseux Library in the Palazzo Strozzi had been completely inundated, with book covers and pages stuck to the ceiling; and unknown millions of dollars' worth of antiques and objets from Florence's antiquarian shops were destroyed, swept away, looted, or otherwise missing.

That is one kind of knowledge, but for the moment what most people knew was amorphous and fragmentary, evanescent, frayed, and fractured. Everyone seemed to be saying, for example, that it was just like August 1944; or worse than August 1944; or that, when the sun went down, that it was dark in exactly the same way it had been dark in the war. Or people saw things: someone carrying off the Ghiberti panel of Joseph and his brothers from the Baptistry in a wheelbarrow; through the gap in the doors themselves, Donatello's Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene stained by heating oil up to mid-thigh, besmirched beyond any penance she might make; a Dominican in Santa Maria Novella seated at a table, its legs and the monk's feet immersed in water, selling votive candles for one hundred lire apiece; in the window of a pet shop, a cage of drowned songbirds. stained by heating oil up to mid-thigh, besmirched beyond any penance she might make; a Dominican in Santa Maria Novella seated at a table, its legs and the monk's feet immersed in water, selling votive candles for one hundred lire apiece; in the window of a pet shop, a cage of drowned songbirds.

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The intervention should happen!

-UMBERTO BALDINI, TEORIA DEL RESTAURO E.

UNITa DI METODOLOGIA.

Moving paintings in the Piazza Signoria, November 6, 1966 (Photograph by David Lees) (Photograph by David Lees)

1.

As of nightfall on November 5, Ugo Procacci had slept perhaps three hours in the last thirty-six. On the fourth he'd been up at dawn and had worked at the Uffizi until dawn the following day. That evening he'd gone back to his apartment in the Palazzo Pitti, where the telephone lines still worked, long enough to make some calls, and then washed and retired to bed, but one of Baldini's students, a twenty-year-old named Alessandro Conti, arrived breathlessly, saying Procacci was again urgently needed: there'd been a report from Santa Croce that the Crocifisso Crocifisso of Cimabue had been severely damaged, soaked from top to bottom, and was still shedding paint. of Cimabue had been severely damaged, soaked from top to bottom, and was still shedding paint.

Now, at nearly midnight, there was no way to get to Santa Croce, and no light to work by, anyway. He gave Conti a note to take to Umberto Baldini in the morning:

Dear Baldini-They tell me we're in danger of losing the Crucifix of Cimabue; it seems that the head and body have already been badly damaged. Suspend any other work and get to Santa Croce immediately.Yours,Procacci

Unable to sleep, Procacci got to the refectory at six the next morning. By then the water inside had receded to ankle depth over the mud. Only a little light reflected off the water, casting waves and glints onto the walls and, as Procacci began to make out, onto the Crucifix. Crucifix. It was a shadowy, immense gangling form among still more shadows, but as the dawn light slowly unveiled it, he could begin to make out its details, or rather, all that was gone: half the face, much of the right side of the body and legs plus the chest and the abdomen. Perhaps three-quarters of the image was gone, stripped down to the gesso or to the canvas beneath it. Procacci could not be sure-hearing the drip and slop of water everywhere, of things being sloughed off-that it wasn't continuing, in the dim light, to disintegrate before his eyes. It was a shadowy, immense gangling form among still more shadows, but as the dawn light slowly unveiled it, he could begin to make out its details, or rather, all that was gone: half the face, much of the right side of the body and legs plus the chest and the abdomen. Perhaps three-quarters of the image was gone, stripped down to the gesso or to the canvas beneath it. Procacci could not be sure-hearing the drip and slop of water everywhere, of things being sloughed off-that it wasn't continuing, in the dim light, to disintegrate before his eyes.

Procacci was not given to despair. But here there seemed to be nothing to save, regardless of what efforts he or an entire army or Cimabue's G.o.d might make. It was, at dawn, two days after the flood had coursed into Santa Croce, far too late.

By now-it was almost seven o'clock-some of the crew Procacci had sent for were turning up. They stood around uselessly, shuffling in the cold and the damp, watching Procacci standing before the cross in his mud-spattered raincoat, his face angular and weeping. Then, out of terrible audacity or raw frustration, someone said, "If you're crying, what are we we supposed to do?" supposed to do?"

When Baldini arrived a few minutes later-he'd dispensed with his customary suit and thrown on a blue pullover when Conti had turned up with the note-the light was stronger, strong enough for Baldini to see in seconds what Procacci had only made out over many minutes. He, too, wept, but Procacci was looking at him. And then, because no one else was saying anything, Baldini said, "We need to lay it down."

But how? The Crucifix Crucifix was fastened to an iron support that was fixed to the wall, the entire a.s.sembly corroded. There were no tools. One of the workers found some scaffolding in an adjacent room that, once erected, allowed them to see what they were up against. The cross would have to be cut down like a tree. Someone went off to look for a hacksaw. He would be a long time: hacksaws were just then in great demand in Florence, along with buckets, pumps, winches, sponges, mops, and, most of all, shovels. was fastened to an iron support that was fixed to the wall, the entire a.s.sembly corroded. There were no tools. One of the workers found some scaffolding in an adjacent room that, once erected, allowed them to see what they were up against. The cross would have to be cut down like a tree. Someone went off to look for a hacksaw. He would be a long time: hacksaws were just then in great demand in Florence, along with buckets, pumps, winches, sponges, mops, and, most of all, shovels.

As they waited, Procacci and Baldini saw that the Crucifix Crucifix was still shedding paint. Baldini's chief restorer, Edo Masini, began to fish through the water with a tea strainer and recovered about one hundred flecks of color, the largest perhaps a sixteenth of an inch in size. As Masini bent down, peering into the mire, tourist brochures and Giotto postcards from the gift shop floated by. was still shedding paint. Baldini's chief restorer, Edo Masini, began to fish through the water with a tea strainer and recovered about one hundred flecks of color, the largest perhaps a sixteenth of an inch in size. As Masini bent down, peering into the mire, tourist brochures and Giotto postcards from the gift shop floated by.

By late morning, a hacksaw and some other tools had been found and what Baldini would call the "deposition" began. Just then, David Lees arrived in the refectory. He was traveling light, shooting with his Nikon F and high-speed Ektachrome. As the workers sawed, he photographed the activity at the foot of the cross: Procacci stock still; Baldini gesticulating, a blur on the film; the others, waiting. The reflection off the muddy water overlaid by a sheen of oil threw up highlights here and there, the colors as lucid and deep as Cimabue's.

It took fifteen men and yards of rope to bring the Crocifisso Crocifisso down. Sodden, it weighed well over a thousand pounds (450 of that was the iron frame on which it was mounted). Cimabue had milled and joined the four-inch-thick planks of poplar to be strong, but no one knew how strong: struggling to maintain their footing in the slime or balanced precariously on the scaffolding, the rescuers feared the crucifix would come apart, fall, or collapse of its own weight, crushing them. Lees photographed the straining, grimacing men bearing the weight of the cross-itself bearing the weight of the world, Francis would have said-as a fury of labor, of suffering posed against suffering. down. Sodden, it weighed well over a thousand pounds (450 of that was the iron frame on which it was mounted). Cimabue had milled and joined the four-inch-thick planks of poplar to be strong, but no one knew how strong: struggling to maintain their footing in the slime or balanced precariously on the scaffolding, the rescuers feared the crucifix would come apart, fall, or collapse of its own weight, crushing them. Lees photographed the straining, grimacing men bearing the weight of the cross-itself bearing the weight of the world, Francis would have said-as a fury of labor, of suffering posed against suffering.

Afterward, David went into the basilica itself, the one-time home of the Crucifix Crucifix (had it remained there it would have been safe), which was now a delta of mud. The mud was smooth in most places while in others it was banked and shoaled, rippled like sand after the tide's retreat. In the middle of it stood a wooden (had it remained there it would have been safe), which was now a delta of mud. The mud was smooth in most places while in others it was banked and shoaled, rippled like sand after the tide's retreat. In the middle of it stood a wooden Madonna. Madonna. To one side of her was a candlestick, lodged as though intended to be a votive offering; a little farther away lay the roof of a confessional and a tangle of pews and kneelers. She held her arms in the customary pose of Madonnas, her arms lowered but outstretched, the palms opened upward, as if to say, on the one hand, "Come-you're safe with me," or, on the other, "Behold, look," indicating her child in the manger or his body after his deposition. Now, with Mary shipwrecked, marooned here, both those possibilities were absent in the picture David took. Perhaps now she'd become the patron of mariners and sailors, To one side of her was a candlestick, lodged as though intended to be a votive offering; a little farther away lay the roof of a confessional and a tangle of pews and kneelers. She held her arms in the customary pose of Madonnas, her arms lowered but outstretched, the palms opened upward, as if to say, on the one hand, "Come-you're safe with me," or, on the other, "Behold, look," indicating her child in the manger or his body after his deposition. Now, with Mary shipwrecked, marooned here, both those possibilities were absent in the picture David took. Perhaps now she'd become the patron of mariners and sailors, Stella Maris Stella Maris, Mary, the Star of the Sea. She's gesturing outward, bidding David and us to look; blessing-it seems-the mud and the great tide that's just withdrawn from it.

As the workers struggled under the cross inside, outside in the Piazza Santa Croce there was an even larger surge of activity. The president of the Republic, Giuseppe Saragat, was making a tour of Florence in an army truck, trying to demonstrate that Rome had reacted and did, in fact, care. He'd just announced that the government was releasing one billion lire-one million dollars-in unrestricted funds to the local authorities. This perhaps mollified some quarters of the city, but in Santa Croce it did not make much of an impression. People here did not believe in "unrestricted funds": they believed in bread, as they said at the Casa del Popolo.

Now Saragat was being chauffeured through the piazza, and perhaps contrary to his deepest wishes, it was here that the truck bogged down in the mud. There had already been a crowd, grumbling and launching jeers and epithets at the head of state, things you might hear anywhere but some uniquely Tuscan, involving pigs, swamp-dwellers, the Madonna, bottles, and a.n.u.ses. Mostly, they simply shouted, "Bread."

When the truck stopped, immobilized and spinning its wheels, the crowd closed in. The truck began to rock and the president sat, smiling tightly, the color ebbing from his face as the interminable pitching and yawing continued. Then the truck was moving, waddling toward the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale, and the laughter-it was mostly laughter now, plus a few imprecations so local as to be incomprehensible to people three neighborhoods away-fell away behind the greasy spoor of its tracks.

At the Biblioteca, one of the nation's preeminent cultural inst.i.tutions, they'd cleared a path through the mud-where it wasn't an impasto of sewage it was a sort of dense black antimatter, snow heavy as lead, dark as bile-up the steps for the president's arrival. Or so he thought. Entering the front vestibule where the circulation desks stood piled with ten-foot-high stacks of sodden books, he was led to the library's chief, Emanuele Casama.s.sima. Mud-spattered and bedraggled in a suit shapeless with damp and sweat, Casama.s.sima seemed not to know who Saragat was. But then he said, Presidente, ci lasci lavorare Presidente, ci lasci lavorare, "Mr. President, leave us to our work."

It's said that Casama.s.sima then handed him a bucket, but it's also said that Saragat managed to maintain his dignity and, despite everything, to meet these trials with a shy but palpable compa.s.sion. He was in the same mold as Bargellini, a good man inundated by the deluge of misery, anger, and despair that the flood left behind. People were prepared to believe the worst about everybody and everything. Earlier in the morning a rumor began going around that the Levane and La Penna dams, supposedly drained ninety-six hours before but now br.i.m.m.i.n.g again with water, were on the verge of collapse: another flood, equal to the first, was on its way. That story produced panic while others in circulation fostered bitterness or cynicism: for example, that on November 4, the dams were opened-or not opened, depending on the version-to save somebody's job or their money or to cover up a mistake or a bribe; another said that the jewelers and goldsmiths on the Ponte Vecchio had been warned hours and hours before the flood while everyone else was left to drown.

The atmosphere was rife with backbiting, suspicion, and calumny, and the air itself increasingly stank: as the water withdrew it left a mixture of mud, sewage, and heating oil to cure over a succession of warmer and sunnier days, an aroma at once fetid and acrid, a hybrid of tide flat, refinery, and cesspool. Now, forty-eight hours after the ebb, the things that had been submerged or drowned were surfacing: dead domestic and farm animals, foodstuffs (thousands of gallons of souring milk, wheel upon wheel of cheese, tons of fish, and hundreds of sides of butchered meat in the central market), and the effluents produced, hour after hour, by Florentines living on the street and in their now unplumbed homes. Among the resources that accompanied President Saragat north from Rome were army flamethrowers to incinerate the carrion in the streets, the horses in the Cascine, and, later, the monkeys, deer, goats, and a lone camel at the city petting zoo.

The Casa del Popolo had managed to find three hundred pounds of bread and four hundred candles that day. Sandra, Macconi, Federico, Carlo, Daniela, and the rest-their last names were irrelevant; they were young, they were politically committed, they were the vanguard-distributed half a loaf and a candle to whoever got to the Piazza dei Ciompi before they ran out. They were still waiting for water, and from farther afield, salvage equipment: the Casa had contacted its counterparts in the Communist Party in Perugia and bulldozers and backhoes were being sent. Based on friendship, commitment, and ideology, a network was forming and spreading in Santa Croce with no ties to the government or the authorities: people knew people and people worked together and shared what they had-a load of underwear and socks, cages of drowned chickens from the country-motivated by solidarity rather than profit.

While they waited for more supplies and equipment, all of them-Menzella, Luca, Beppe, Luisa, and more-shoveled or, because it continued to rain sporadically, bailed. The sewers were still full or blocked with mud and debris: with the smallest increment of additional water, they overflowed. Cellars all over the neighborhood remained full of rank standing water. Along with buckets and shovels, the emblematic tool-the hammer and sickle of the Santa Croce Casa del Popolo-was the rastrello rastrello, a wooden rake whose crossbar, with the teeth removed, could be used to push and plow through mud, water, or melma melma, mire and slime. Much more than with machinery-when and if it arrived-Florence was sc.r.a.ped and squeegeed clean with rastrelli. rastrelli.

Down the Borgo Allegri and across the Piazza Santa Croce at the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale and its caverns of book stacks, only shovels and buckets would do, but even more they needed hands: there were almost one and a half million items to be moved-not just books, but newspapers, periodicals, ma.n.u.scripts, pamphlets, and the written and printed ephemera that const.i.tuted the historical records of Italy. Conditions were appalling: wet, cold, and dark, everything stuck to everything, slime to sopping paper, boots to mud, books to one another or to their shelves. The bound volumes hadn't sat inert in the cases, but swelled: sometimes their sodden weight simply overwhelmed the shelves that held them, but they also expanded laterally, pressing against the sides of their bookcases until these gave way and the entire case collapsed. Where the verticals of the shelving were stronger, the books themselves distorted: with no s.p.a.ce in which to expand, they pressed upward and downward to accordion into undulating curves like wave oscillations.

But that afternoon of November 6, books were nonetheless coming out of the stacks, emerging into the light of the circulation hall, hundreds per hour. It must have occurred to Emanuele Casama.s.sima that he should be facing a labor shortage; that in a city without food, power, or transport, people should be too busy fending for themselves to be mucking about in his library. Yet they were, dozens of them, and he hadn't even asked them to come. Nor, it seemed, had they asked for instructions or equipment: the books just kept surfacing, bubbling up as from an inexhaustible spring. These workers weren't organized; they didn't have a party or a manifesto like the Casa del Popolo; it wasn't clear what they were against or what they were for, except perhaps books. You could call them volunteers, except they hadn't volunteered or been recruited: they'd simply appeared as though from thin air and set to work. Maybe they'd been sent by Francis or the Madonna; maybe they'd been thrown up by inevitable historical forces, by the dialectic operating at light speed. But they were some sort of miracle. Florentines came to call them angeli del fango angeli del fango, "mud angels."

In fact they'd been turning up since the day before, the day the water receded. At first they were Florentines, almost universally young, at loose ends with no families to feed or cla.s.ses to attend. When Bruno Santi, for example, finished helping his father, he waded across the Ponte alle Grazie and rescued a Giotto with a group of soldiers; later he found himself working among the treasures and artworks in the church of Santi Apostoli, then in the Museo Horne, and finally, for many weeks, at the Limonaia of the Palazzo Pitti, which was being set up as a kind of refugee camp and hospital for flooded artworks. A near contemporary of Giovanni Menduni with perhaps less anxious parents, Cristina Acidini, turned up at the Biblioteca and was put to work and later moved on to the Museum of the History of Science. A pretty and energetic twenty-three-year-old art history student, Ornella Casazza, pitched in and finished up studying under Edo Masini.

Some became angels by coming home: Marco Gra.s.si was the son of five generations of Florentine art dealers and restorers. Having studied with the magisterial Cesare Brandi in Rome, he now worked in the Swiss art collections of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen, the aristocrat industrialist and connoisseur. But on the morning of November 4, he'd jumped in his car and was in Florence by eleven that night. Joined by another young restorer, Thomas Schneider, he spent the next three weeks circulating among the Uffizi, Santa Maria Novella, and Santa Croce.

It was understandable that Florentines should be in the forefront of rescuing their own city, but over the coming days more and more angeli angeli arrived from much farther away. A group of American college students saw the Franciscan brothers working outside Santa Croce and took up shovels and arrived from much farther away. A group of American college students saw the Franciscan brothers working outside Santa Croce and took up shovels and rastrelli rastrelli on the spot. From as far away as Scandinavia, young Europeans simply dropped what they were doing and boarded trains or drove south. An extraordinary number came from England: a student from London's Courtauld Inst.i.tute-perhaps the world's preeminent graduate school of art history-left the night of the flood, but not before going to his family's farm to round up all the pumps and hoses he could lay his hands on. Driving day and night across the continent in a Land Rover, he was at the doors of the Uffizi twenty-four hours later. on the spot. From as far away as Scandinavia, young Europeans simply dropped what they were doing and boarded trains or drove south. An extraordinary number came from England: a student from London's Courtauld Inst.i.tute-perhaps the world's preeminent graduate school of art history-left the night of the flood, but not before going to his family's farm to round up all the pumps and hoses he could lay his hands on. Driving day and night across the continent in a Land Rover, he was at the doors of the Uffizi twenty-four hours later.

Luciano Camerino undertook a briefer but in some ways longer journey. Twenty-three years earlier, in his native Rome, he'd been seized by the Gestapo along with his entire family and deported to Auschwitz. Only he had returned alive. After the war he'd run a restaurant and started up a business that dealt in liturgical goods. He was good at all the things he did. Perhaps he was also lucky. But on November 6 he'd dropped everything and gone north to Florence. He'd heard there was a synagogue in Via Farina that held some 120 priceless scrolls of the Law plus fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century commentaries-fifteen thousand volumes-of inestimable scholarly and antiquarian value.

Camerino arrived late that day and worked largely alone and almost continuously for the next seventy-two hours. The only way to save the 120 scrolls of the Law was to unroll each one-all 130 to 165 feet of it-and drape it over chairs, up and down the aisles, like drying pasta. He labored without food or rest or joy, as they'd labored in the camps. But he was saving the Word, the Law, and the Prophets. After the third day, he raised his palm to his forehead, staggered, and fell dead, of cardiac arrest it was said afterward. The flaw in the heart-his or the world's-that had been tracking him since 1943 had found him.

2.

The next morning, November 7, three days after the flood, a headline in La n.a.z.ione La n.a.z.ione spoke of a "A Prayer Rising Up from the City," but at the Casa del Popolo in Santa Croce they entrusted themselves to scavenging and scrounging, stoked by need, solidarity, and anger. There had been talk of illness and even epidemic all day yesterday, a rumor abetted by the growing reek of sewage. Piero from the Casa tracked down fifty doses of teta.n.u.s vaccine. Graziella went to the barracks to ask if army doctors might come and treat sick people in the neighborhood but was told there was no process for allowing this; that the military, for apparently good const.i.tutional reasons, mustn't encroach on the sphere of local government. spoke of a "A Prayer Rising Up from the City," but at the Casa del Popolo in Santa Croce they entrusted themselves to scavenging and scrounging, stoked by need, solidarity, and anger. There had been talk of illness and even epidemic all day yesterday, a rumor abetted by the growing reek of sewage. Piero from the Casa tracked down fifty doses of teta.n.u.s vaccine. Graziella went to the barracks to ask if army doctors might come and treat sick people in the neighborhood but was told there was no process for allowing this; that the military, for apparently good const.i.tutional reasons, mustn't encroach on the sphere of local government.

Nearby a group of neighbors from the Borgo Allegri had gone to the prefecture and refused to move until the city sent a truck and a crew to begin clearing their street of mud and filth. In their case the tactic worked, even as a block away on Via Pinzochere-where Mayor Bargellini's palazzo stood-residents went unaided: Bargellini had wanted to show that his home would be treated no differently than anyone else's in Florence, but the example served as another instance of civic neglect and incompetence. As with President Saragat-another well-meaning figure who had the misfortune to be a good rather than a great man-the flood had the capacity to warp every intention, to muddy the most transparent virtue.

Saragat's tour of the city had occupied most of page one of La n.a.z.ione La n.a.z.ione, but two other stories were given equal prominence: Colpa alla Diga del Valdarno? Colpa alla Diga del Valdarno?, "The Dams of the Arno Valley at Fault?," and Semidistrutto in Santa Croce il Prezioso Cristo di Cimabue Semidistrutto in Santa Croce il Prezioso Cristo di Cimabue, "The Precious Christ of Cimabue Nearly Destroyed in Santa Croce," with the subsidiary heading "Masterpieces of Art Lost or in Danger." Until now the press, like the public, had focused on the human and economic costs of the flood: even by very rough estimates, there were at least twenty people dead in the city, six thousand businesses wiped out, and 80 percent of Florence's restaurants and hotels-crucial to the city's tourist economy-out of commission. Arguably, the scale of misery had not decreased at all, or only by the smallest of increments, but art was pressing its way into the public consciousness. Regarding the Uffizi, La n.a.z.ione La n.a.z.ione had a.s.sured its readers yesterday that "Dr. Baldini and the personnel of his laboratory are doing their utmost beyond the limits of human possibility," but now there was a sense that, as with other efforts to address the disaster, incompetence and a dearth of concern or will were threatening Florence's patrimony. had a.s.sured its readers yesterday that "Dr. Baldini and the personnel of his laboratory are doing their utmost beyond the limits of human possibility," but now there was a sense that, as with other efforts to address the disaster, incompetence and a dearth of concern or will were threatening Florence's patrimony.

Florentines still had their dead to bury-there would be thirty-three, mostly drowned or suffocated by mud, but others killed by cold and lack of medicine-and their city to dig out, but its art was the larger world's preoccupation. Edward Kennedy flew in from a conference he was attending in Geneva and visited the Uffizi and the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale. David Lees photographed him talking to the mud angels in a spattered trench coat. Lees had already decided to stay an extra day, rather than ship off his film and return to Rome. "This is history, not just news," he'd told one of the brothers at Santa Croce.

Frederick Hartt arrived from America that same day. Within hours he was standing before Franco Zeffirelli's camera in his own mire-flecked trench coat, explaining why the flood was not simply a catastrophe for Italy but for all of Western civilization. What was at stake here was, in some sense, our humanity, the traditions and artifacts that embodied our best aspirations, the things that gave us meaning.

In the s.p.a.ce of the next ten days Zeffirelli's film, David Lees's photographs, and the example of the angeli del fango angeli del fango (now consecrated in their youthful and selfless idealism by one of the surviving Kennedy brothers) transformed the flood from a local disaster into a global tragedy. It coincided, perhaps, with a moment when people were especially prepared to respond to it. Their innocent, naive, and perhaps-from a twenty-first-century vantage point-even ignorant belief in human goodness and its capacity to change the world had been attacked at its heart, in the embodied idealism of art. Kennedy's words about the mud angels at the Biblioteca felt entirely true: "It was as though they knew that the flooding of the library was putting their souls at risk." (now consecrated in their youthful and selfless idealism by one of the surviving Kennedy brothers) transformed the flood from a local disaster into a global tragedy. It coincided, perhaps, with a moment when people were especially prepared to respond to it. Their innocent, naive, and perhaps-from a twenty-first-century vantage point-even ignorant belief in human goodness and its capacity to change the world had been attacked at its heart, in the embodied idealism of art. Kennedy's words about the mud angels at the Biblioteca felt entirely true: "It was as though they knew that the flooding of the library was putting their souls at risk."

The angeli del fango angeli del fango phenomenon-a proto-Woodstock of high visual culture-gave the appearance of being a miraculous and spontaneous expression of youthful benevolence, epitomized that same night in Botticelli's phenomenon-a proto-Woodstock of high visual culture-gave the appearance of being a miraculous and spontaneous expression of youthful benevolence, epitomized that same night in Botticelli's Magdalene Magdalene being transported from the Baptistry in a red Volkswagen Beetle (the archetypal student vehicle of the time), its harrowed face emerging from the sunroof. But for all the impromptu charm of the image-Procacci and Baldini would have been apoplectic (with good reason) had they known-the being transported from the Baptistry in a red Volkswagen Beetle (the archetypal student vehicle of the time), its harrowed face emerging from the sunroof. But for all the impromptu charm of the image-Procacci and Baldini would have been apoplectic (with good reason) had they known-the Magdalene Magdalene arrived safely at the Palazzo Davanzati, where expert restorers of wood sculpture from Norway would join it in a few days. arrived safely at the Palazzo Davanzati, where expert restorers of wood sculpture from Norway would join it in a few days.

In fact, coordinated decision making and planning was slowly taking shape: by the end of November 7, Procacci and Baldini had met with their counterparts at other museums, inst.i.tutions, and monuments. A central office was established at the Uffizi to dispatch angeli del fango angeli del fango to the places and tasks for which they were most urgently needed. While the mud angels were amateurs in the best sense-lovers of art for art's sake-there was a surprising amount of expertise among them. Some like Marco Gra.s.si and his friend Thomas Schneider were already professional restorers; others like Bruno Santi and the British volunteers from the Courtald Inst.i.tute were graduate students in art history; and still others were working artists like Nick Kraczyna, people who knew something about the techniques and craft of painting and sculpture. Susan Gla.s.spool had just graduated from the Slade in London and arrived in Florence on a graduate painting scholarship. Working among the mud-encrusted books of the Biblioteca dell'Accademia, she met another painting student, a Florentine named Giuseppe Bottaro, whom she married a year and a half later. to the places and tasks for which they were most urgently needed. While the mud angels were amateurs in the best sense-lovers of art for art's sake-there was a surprising amount of expertise among them. Some like Marco Gra.s.si and his friend Thomas Schneider were already professional restorers; others like Bruno Santi and the British volunteers from the Courtald Inst.i.tute were graduate students in art history; and still others were working artists like Nick Kraczyna, people who knew something about the techniques and craft of painting and sculpture. Susan Gla.s.spool had just graduated from the Slade in London and arrived in Florence on a graduate painting scholarship. Working among the mud-encrusted books of the Biblioteca dell'Accademia, she met another painting student, a Florentine named Giuseppe Bottaro, whom she married a year and a half later.

But if there was amateurism at the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale and the other flooded libraries, it was entirely understandable: no one in the history of book conservation had ever dealt with materials damaged in this way and on this scale. In the course of recovering the contents of Florence's libraries, many volumes were further damaged by their rescuers' good intentions. As was also true with some paintings and sculptures, there was an urgent sense that things should be made dry as soon as possible with a concomitant failure to consider the damage that might result-cracking, splitting, and distortion-along with the overarching and pervasive problem of mold. No one knew whether books should be taken apart-disa.s.sembled from their bindings and sewn sections-or should simply be washed and dried, never mind whether this drying should be gradual or accelerated. For the latter purpose, by November 7, Emanuele Casama.s.sima had secured not only the use of tobacco kilns in the Tuscan countryside but the powerhouse and heating plant of the Santa Maria Novella railroad station. The main thing was to keep pulling books from the mud, rinsing them off, and hanging them to dry. The rest would be figured out later.

Simultaneously Procacci, Casama.s.sima, and their colleagues were meeting and calculating the extent of the damage to date: 321 panel paintings; 413 on canvas; 11 fresco cycles; 39 single frescoes; 31 other frescoes-32,000 square feet's worth-detached from their original locations; 158 sculptures; 37 miles of shelved materials at the Archives of State; and 6,000 illuminated ma.n.u.scripts, psalters, and musical texts in the Duomo. In all, there were fifteen museums and eighteen churches described as "devastated." And at the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale, despite the labors of the angeli del fango- angeli del fango-whose numbers were increasing by a dozen per hour-in some places the mud was still twenty-two feet deep.

The ability of Procacci's staff and their counterparts throughout the city to make such tallies and summaries suggested that, if the worst was not over, the disaster was becoming comprehensible. But the mind numbs before the abstractions of figures, however impressive in magnitude: a body count, however ma.s.sive, pales in impact beside the visible, terrible fact of a single corpse. It is from such discrete and tiny realities that meaning arises and can be grasped, from which the awful whole could begin to be sensed.

That was what began to happen to Cimabue's Crocifisso Crocifisso on November 7. Baldini had described it to the press in Vasari's terms, "the first page of Italian art," which was to say it was valuable and important. It was worth saying because, contrary to later impressions, the on November 7. Baldini had described it to the press in Vasari's terms, "the first page of Italian art," which was to say it was valuable and important. It was worth saying because, contrary to later impressions, the Crucifix Crucifix was neither famous nor beloved: it hadn't been high on the list of must-sees in Florence; it wasn't, in fact, on the list to begin with. It was known, of course, to art historians, but less as a work of art in its own right than as a precursor of truly important work, the obscure Cimabue's half step toward what his pupil Giotto achieved. was neither famous nor beloved: it hadn't been high on the list of must-sees in Florence; it wasn't, in fact, on the list to begin with. It was known, of course, to art historians, but less as a work of art in its own right than as a precursor of truly important work, the obscure Cimabue's half step toward what his pupil Giotto achieved.

Despite that, almost immediately the Cimabue became the preeminent symbol of the flood. But symbol symbol wasn't quite the right word; it implied yet another abstraction rather than a particular but transcendent fact-which is, after all, what (in fact) art may be-a body that had suffered, a body that embodied much more than itself precisely in itself; a particular being that was also an essence. Here, it was wood and paint and brushstrokes that came to mean-that came to become-all of Florence: its beauty, its suffering, and its redemption. wasn't quite the right word; it implied yet another abstraction rather than a particular but transcendent fact-which is, after all, what (in fact) art may be-a body that had suffered, a body that embodied much more than itself precisely in itself; a particular being that was also an essence. Here, it was wood and paint and brushstrokes that came to mean-that came to become-all of Florence: its beauty, its suffering, and its redemption.

And maybe there was one more thing that made the Crocifisso Crocifisso such a profound vehicle for meaning: it occupied a boundary between human suffering and the damage to artworks where the two seemed to blur or overlap. On the seventh and the following days, everyone in the media was listening to Frederick Hartt: he was an expert of global standing, he was perfectly bilingual, and he had, in a sense, been through all this before in 1944. And his love for the city and its art was tangible: he teared and choked up at the slightest provocation. such a profound vehicle for meaning: it occupied a boundary between human suffering and the damage to artworks where the two seemed to blur or overlap. On the seventh and the following days, everyone in the media was listening to Frederick Hartt: he was an expert of global standing, he was perfectly bilingual, and he had, in a sense, been through all this before in 1944. And his love for the city and its art was tangible: he teared and choked up at the slightest provocation.

Talking of his first sight of Ugo Procacci that day, he said that Procacci "looked like a man ruined, used-up, destroyed by fatigue and covered with mud." And then Hartt was talking about the Cimabue Crocifisso Crocifisso: "It's a corpse, the paint is gone and it can only be displayed as a relic." Where did Procacci end and the painting begin? Where did a person-any person in all of suffering Florence-shade into Cimabue's image, now both luminous and besmirched, shading into the ruined Christ?

You might say all this, but the people at the Casa del Popolo in Santa Croce would only grow more impatient and angry. They had their own art. There was a large graffito outside in the Piazza dei Ciompi depicting male and female characters, "Mama Flood" and "Papa Deluge," standing in a puddle next to a building whose toppling wall is sh.o.r.ed up by props. The text says they've "run off leaving sorrows, ruins, and tears behind them." Next to these are smaller figures of "the sons and daughters left behind": "Hope," "Streets," "Neighborhood," "The Arno Restrained," "Bracing for Houses," "The Help Twins," and, last, "The Promise Twins." Beneath them is the legend "And we hope that someone wakes up in order to aid these orphans." It's an allegory of the Santa Croce quartiere quartiere, wry, facetious, and bitter, a black-and-white panel painting that found its way up the Borgo Allegri to this piazza.

No one in Florence thought that art was a luxury, a diversion from truly important things. But among all the troubles-shortages of food, water, and medicine, streets wedged with cars, trees, carrion, and yards of mud, and a mere 150 pumps in the entire city to drain thousands of rooms, courtyards, and cellars-these pleas on its behalf were a little troubling. An artist who lived down the street from Nick and Amy found himself writing, "Am I supposed to care about the Christ of Cimabue or the doors of Ghiberti before the reality of five people who could be my own family faced with darkness because they can't even sc.r.a.pe together three hundred lire to buy candles-a.s.suming there were any candles?"

Don Luigi Stefani had other misgivings. Writing in his room above the Piazza del Duomo, looking onto the Baptistry and its shattered doors, he wondered if "perhaps it isn't true that the Christ of Cimabue has really been lost because of our indifference to every aspect of its religious and moral significance, retaining only the aesthetic? And when a 'Christ' ceases to speak to the soul, what are we to do?"

Both writers voiced their concerns as questions rather than statements. There was nothing to do but go on thinking, feeling, and expressing; nothing to do except to make more words and images. David Lees had taken another photograph inside the basilica. There was a brother working in the Chapel of Madonna delle Grazie with no more than a small broom. The Madonna Madonna that the chapel belonged to had herself washed up outside in the nave, where David had photographed her the previous day next to the candlestick. Inside the chapel mud inclined up the front of the altar like a snowdrift, the retreat of the water marked by undulating sidewinder ripples. And here, in the photograph, taking it all on-the ton of mud that buried the room-was this slight Franciscan with his little stick and its hank of straw. that the chapel belonged to had herself washed up outside in the nave, where David had photographed her the previous day next to the candlestick. Inside the chapel mud inclined up the front of the altar like a snowdrift, the retreat of the water marked by undulating sidewinder ripples. And here, in the photograph, taking it all on-the ton of mud that buried the room-was this slight Franciscan with his little stick and its hank of straw.