Chapter 4 - WIP2 - The Sculptor Of Frog Lane

Hello. I feel like The Sculptor of Frog Lane really begins to hit its stride in chapter four. We move the narrative back to Alice in 1840, during her first year of studies at the University of Bologna, and introduce her contemporaries - Endrizzi, Patricello, and Gallo - as well as the political landscape of the city.

Comments welcome. Who's your favourite character of the book so far? Are you enjoying John's narrative or Alice's more?

IV – March 1840
 
“Is every Godforsaken man, woman and child in this city a beggar?” the young Italian noble snapped as he slammed the door of the wood-panelled chamber behind him. The others were already gathered, though it was still early.

“Ciao, Endrizzi – tutto bene?” Alice asked.

“Tutto bene,” Endrizzi replied, mocking her question and her accent. He took a seat next to her in the second row. “I mean really. I was accosted a dozen times, and I live two streets away. The grasping, wretched poverty of this city disgusts me. I should bring guards with me. I shall bring guards.”

​It was an empty threat. Though Marco Endrizzi was of an old noble family with a brace of castles to their name, he was the fifth-born son of a woman who had produced a prodigious quantity of children. He stood to inherit nothing but trinkets and keepsakes from his father – not even a title. What money he received, he spent on clothes and wine. He could not afford guards, and his lodgings were actually half a mile away and worse than Alice’s. All of that was a familiar story.

There were fourteen of them gathered in the tight gallery whose seating was circular, steep, and arranged in four levels around a stone slab in the centre – covered, for modesty’s sake, with a white sheet. Alice was the only woman and the only non-Italian. Of the thirteen men, eight were in the same situation as Endrizzi. They were the sons or grandsons of powerful and wealthy men, but they happened to have the misfortune of being born far too late to be useful.

For first and second sons there were good marriages, lands, a practical education in finance or diplomacy, and enough money to indulge in art or mistresses or even the occasional small war. Third sons went to the church. That was understood. The noble houses of Europe paid their tithes, and the Holy Mother Church of Rome took their unwanted children and gave them something respectable to do. Endrizzi’s brother was already an archdeacon at twenty-five.

But for the fourth, fifth and – God be merciful in his blessings – sixth sons, there were no end of bad options. If an Italian boy had any kind of real military training, then he could become a mercenary and wander around killing people for money. If he killed the right people, he might even get a medal from the Pope. But syphilis ran rampant through the Italian Free Companies, a lot of people died trying to kill other people, and when considering those factors, the pay wasn’t great.

If a boy were especially interested in physical labour, then several countries in the new world were basically giving land away to anyone willing to farm it and shoot natives. But land which had never been farmed before was like a horse that had never been ridden. Natives sometimes shot back. And the return on investment wasn’t great. In twenty years, the problem of what to do with all the extra sons would come up again and things would be even worse. The church was not interested in the third sons of people who weren’t rich.

What was left were the professions. If a boy were clever – not a requirement for all the previous roles, and in some ways a hinderance – then he might do well as a lawyer or a doctor. It took years to be taught these professions and even longer to learn them. There was some money in it – enough that one might indulge in unfashionable art or rural mistresses. Some doctors got medals from the Pope, and though the lawyers deserved to be killed, they rarely were. But the most important benefit was the ability to build relationships – lawyers and doctors knew as many people and as many secrets as priests, and those connections created different kinds of opportunities. Perhaps there would be no land to pass on to the grandchildren, but there would be trust, a name, and a network.
“I know they’re starving, but can’t they just fuck off and die somewhere else?” Endrizzi said as he took off his hat with the dramatic plume of ostrich feathers.

Alice replied, provocatively rather than helpfully, “Perhaps if you dressed more modestly people wouldn’t bother you.”

Endrizzi narrowed his eyes at her. “If I dressed more modestly, what would be the point of anything?” He unfastened the clasp on his fur-lined green velvet winter cloak and dropped it into the empty seat beside him.

“You seem to be miserable regardless of what you wear,” said Gallo. He half-turned from his seat in the front row and looked at Endrizzi and Alice over the reading glasses which pinched the bridge of his nose. In his lap were two large books from which he had been studying anatomical drawings.

“I am miserable,” Endrizzi said. “You would also be miserable if you were me. Just yesterday I received a letter from my mother. She writes that my brother is to be made a bishop.”

“How awful,” said Gallo.

“If the smug bastard becomes Pope, I shall convert to another religion entirely. What’s the one with the hats?”

“Please,” said Patricello, who was sitting directly behind Alice. He was the only one of the group who was able to grow a full beard, and he stroked it for emphasis excessively. With a gesture to the centre of the room he added, “No blasphemy.”

“He doesn’t mean it,” Alice said and patted Endrizzi’s arm sympathetically. “His brother is the son of his mother and his father – who are married to each other – he can’t very well call him a bastard.”

Endrizzi ruffled. “I wasn’t there for any of it. Who can say?”

“Besides that,” Alice continued, “he’s a terrible catholic. His soul would be no loss to us and no gain to anyone else.”

“That is also blasphemous,” Patricello grumbled and stroked his beard.

“There will be some kind of celebration for your brother?” Alice asked Endrizzi. In response he dropped his head into his hands and groaned. She transferred her hand from his arm to the top of his head. “One day, my friend, you will be a famous doctor surgeon, and your patients shall include perhaps two or three – maybe even four Popes at a time.”

“Mademoiselle Black, I implore you.”

“Signor Patricello!” Alice snapped and turned in her seat. “You owe me near two scudi. Your morals are in debt to my purse and I will not hear them squeak until we are square.”

“The end of the week.” Patricello’s voice fell to a whisper. “I promise.”

Some of the other students smirked, and some pretended not to hear. After all, Patricello was not the only one who owed debts to the young woman. She had become a small-time banker, managing cash flow problems for her classmates who were forever vacillating between living lean and living fat. Hardly any could budget their expenditure, and none could keep to a budget they made. When money was sent from home, they all knew about it quickly and with great generosity they helped to spend it.

In the previous six months she had learned about the security of every man. How his future career was financed; whether they were like Endrizzi – a late son of a great house – or Gallo – who received a scholarship from the little town where he was born in the expectation that he would return to be their doctor.

Alice knew how risky each loan might be based on these relationships. She made notes. January was three weeks of hard frost for Gallo’s town – perhaps he would not be able to afford the tuition come autumn. Acardi’s uncle had died unexpectedly in February and he had not received word of the will. Uncertainty hung over him like a guillotine.

As their financial confessor, she had taken all the respect she needed. In the long run, she might lose money through unrecoverable debts, but the debts were trifling compared to the value of being one of the students. They argued with her as if she were a man. They fought her and cursed at her without any consideration of politeness. She was included.

Of course, they had all fallen in love with her at some point. She was, after all, the only woman they spoke to on most days, and she was the only person they knew socially who seemed to have any money. A fertile woman with even a small fortune would be an excellent match for any of them. She had expected it to happen. But the best of them she regarded with only a little fondness – as if they were an idiot cousin.

Professor Medici entered the room and studied the skylight high above them in the arched ceiling of the room, before adjusting the large, polished metal reflectors. Gallo quickly moved to assist the professor in redirecting light to the sheet covering the slab.

“Good morning,” said Medici, and with a flourish he pulled away the white sheet.

The body was male and around thirty to forty years old. He had been suffering from an infected cut on his leg at the time off death, evidenced by profound discolouration and visible discharge. He had sustained injuries to his hands, likely caused by the torture which extracted his confession. However, he had certainly died as a result of being hanged by the neck.

“This gentleman died yesterday. He was convicted of killing another man in a drunken brawl and fled, only to be captured at his home some hours later. What can we tell from a prima facia investigation of the body?”

“St Anthony’s fire,” said Gallo. “A cut on his leg has become poisonous and inflamed.”

“If he were alive, what symptoms might he present with?”

“Pain, itching, fever, and if progressed, nausea and fatigue.”

“Treatment?”

“Bloodletting to balance the humours and a poultice of herbs to pull out the infection.”

“Anything else?” Medici scanned the students.

Alice said, “Professor. With respect. We have no effective treatments for St Anthony’s fire.”

Medici nodded and replied, “Our future Doctor Gallo calls for leeches and a poultice. Our future Doctor Black recommends?”

“Wash the wound every day, keep it clean and dry. The patient should rest and would benefit from being fed little and often.”

“This is the challenge that you will face throughout your professional lives,” Medici said. “To treat, or not to treat. Gallo’s prescription is accepted in the literature as being correct and therefore many doctors would administer it. However, Black is also correct that this treatment does little to benefit a patient with this condition. You will find that even after administering the best medicine at your disposal that your patient will die, and you will find that even when you do nothing for a severe illness that your patient will live. How do we resolve this? If we can act without injury to the patient, we should act, even if the benefits are limited.”

“The patient is malnourished,” said Alice. “Pragmatically, I would rather he spent whatever money he had on a bath and bowl of soup than on my time.”

“Good point, well made,” said Medici. “This man was clearly wretchedly poor. He might come to a free hospital and then, with limited resources, and dealing with a condition which is not contagious, Black’s advice of food and rest is superior.”

Gallo said, “So we should leave the poor to die?”

Alice said, “If we had a miracle tonic in infinite supply, we should administer it to rich and poor equally. We don’t. Therefore, we should treat according to the patient’s circumstances. Leeches for the rich and food for the poor, with rest for everyone.”

“Different treatment means inferior treatment.”

“It might,” Alice said, “but what would you do about that?”

“We will not find an answer to this today,” said Medici, cutting off any reply from Gallo. “I am not sure how successful a doctor will be if all she prescribes is soup—” he spoke over a little laughter “—but Signor Gallo may need it if he spends all his time giving mercury pills to the indigent.”

Medici moved on to a surgical demonstration, opening the skin around the throat and the neck, describing the anatomy of each in detail and noting the trauma. He concluded, as he washed his hands in a basin, that their unfortunate patient had not died from a broken neck – which was the preferable outcome for someone who was hanged. The vertebrae were all intact. Instead, the throat had been crushed by the rope – he had been strangled, probably for a minute or two, before he finally died. He allowed each student to examine the body up close and gave Endrizzi and Acardi the job of sewing the cadaver’s skin back together. It would be preserved and used for many more lessons for months to come.

“Professor,” said Patricello, “the infection of St Anthony’s fire seemed advanced to me. Is that correct?”

“Quite advanced, I agree.” Medici dried his hands on a small towel.

“Likely he would have fever, fatigue? Perhaps some dizziness and exhaustion?”

“Perhaps.”

“It does not seem to me that a man with this condition would be able to kill another man, run half-way across the city without being seen, and make it back into his own bed. It seems to me that St Anthony’s fire this progressed would keep a man in bed for a week, or until he died.”

“You have been following the case?” Medici asked.

Patricello nodded.

Medici looked over at the body being worked on by his students and said, “I teach medicine, Signor Patricello. You must seek justice elsewhere.”
 
* * *
 
The murder of Giovanni Aiello by Paulo Abate had appeared to be quite ordinary. Two men had taken too much wine and fallen into a disagreement which became violent. Abate produced a knife and stabbed Aiello. The former fled the scene. The latter died. There were many such incidents in Bologna each year and most suspected murderers fled the city, travelled to some remote region under an assumed name, and were never heard from again. When murderers were caught, they were convicted and hanged.

“The Austrians have been here for ten years,” said Gallo. He leaned into the centre of their small table to do so. He, Endrizzi, Patricello and Alice were having lunch at an osteria near the location of their afternoon class. All had ordered cotechino con lenticchie – a dish of lentils and spiced sausage, which was especially good there – and were sharing a bottle of lambrusco.

“They are here to stop people from saying exactly what you are about to say,” Patricello muttered into his lentils.

“They did not come to create order, and that is not why they have stayed.”

“There was an uprising of some kind?” Alice asked.

“Many uprisings,” Gallo corrected. “Italy should be one nation. As powerful as France or Britain or Austria.” Patricello made several shushing noises, but Gallo continued, only becoming more animated. “Instead we are a few cities always under the heel of one country or another. The Holy Roman Empire, the French empire, the empire of Austria-Hungary. And you see what comes of this? Endrizzi? There are thousands of beggars in Bologna. People starve in the street. While this city is run by a military governor who answers to Vienna, on behalf of a Pope who cares only about the authority of the church, people in Bologna will starve and suffer.”

“You speak as if he had his hands around your throat,” said Patricello. “Gregory does not want to see Italy become like France, where everyone now is a fashionable atheist. Where everyone is a democrat, and the newspapers print a new constitution every day based on the whims of their publishers and not the will of God. It is a mad anarchy that governs France.” He turned in his seat towards Alice and said, “I mean no offence in saying any of this.”

“None taken,” Alice replied. “I am sure that I have told you several times that I am not French.”

Patricello scoffed through a mouthful of lentils. “Of course you are French. Your accent. Your ideas. Your dress. You are as French as Napoleon.”

“I was not aware that Napoleon wore a dress. Certainly he did not wear this one, which was made for me in this city.”

“For a woman with French tastes,” Patricello said dismissively. “A good Italian seamstress is not going to be so foolish as to make in the Italian style for a woman who so clearly loves France.”

“I don’t believe I shall win that one,” said Alice. “Go on, Gallo.”

“Please no,” said Patricello.

“Go on,” Alice insisted.

“The gendarmerie are all Austrian soldiers. They are here to continue Austria’s rule over northern Italy as it was before the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved. It serves the interests of the Pope that it continues, because while Milan and Genoa and Venice are Austrian, Bologna and Ravenna shall remain the property of the Papal States.”

“He is not wrong,” said Endrizzi to Patricello, who did not reply.

Gallo said, “What is strange about the murder of Aiello? The man who has been hanged for it – Patricello – you saw yourself – that man was not out carousing and fighting. He was – all night – in the bed where he was found by the gendarmerie.”

“We see his leg three days later,” Patricello demurred. “Prisons are full of ill humours. His condition could have worsened.”

“But he is still ill at the time of the murder, at least,” Alice said and Patricello shrugged acknowledgment.

“What do you know of Abate or of Aiello?” Gallo asked the others.

Endrizzi finished the bottle into his cup and said, “Both of them were nationalists, at least this is what I heard. Abate more so. Aiello spoke better.”

“He did,” said Gallo.

“And was better looking.”

“He was.”

“So was there political tension between them?” asked Patricello. “Or something romantic? Aiello sleeping with Abate’s wife?”

Gallo pulled his wooden stool closer, so that he was all but sitting in their food. He whispered, “Aiello was sleeping with someone. With Martha Bachleitner.”

“Stop,” said Patricello.

Gallo continued, “The wife of Oberst Bachleitner.”

“You will see us flogged through the streets!” Patricello hissed. For a moment the osteria fell silent and the group ate in strained silence.

“Oberst is a German military rank?” Alice whispered. “Like a French major?”

“Colonel,” said Gallo.

“Then Bachleitner would be the highest-ranking officer in the city.”

“He is.”

“The scandal,” said Endrizzi, who was suddenly interested in something other than his own foul mood.

“It might not be the end of his career,” Alice said, “but he would progress no further. Back in my homeland of France things are a little different, but in Austrian society he would be considered fatally compromised by his wife’s indiscretion. Austrian women of any social class do not discuss their lovers – which does not mean they do not take lovers, only that they are expected to be especially discrete.”

“And French women are not discrete?” Patricello asked.

“Only when it suits them. A lady at court is expected to have a lover and she is distinguished if her lover is powerful, or younger and more beautiful than she is. But she cannot enjoy the prestige if she doesn’t drop a few hints. Therefore, a woman who isn’t rumoured to be having an affair is considered the least desirable of all.”

“I could never live in France,” Patricello grumbled.

Gallo continued, with an ideal Austrian lady’s level of discretion, “It is said that the argument that took place was not between Aiello and Abate, but between Aiello and Bachleitner. An accident – or an overreaction – I am sure. But when what is done, is done, why not kill two birds with one stone? Bachleitner has his soldiers find the most convenient and most annoying nationalist they can and blame him for the murder.”

“Amazing,” said Endrizzi. “Is any of it true?”

“This is what I have heard,” said Gallo.

“Fanciful,” said Patricello.

“What if the noose was not an accident?” Alice said. “Imagine that you are a clever man, and that you want to conceal your crime. How might you do that? Well, you would put the murder weapon in his house, because you have the weapon, and you can enter any house in the city. Straightforward: you have a story, but there can be only one story. You must break a man’s fingers so that he cannot write and crush his larynx so that he cannot speak. Then you hang him badly to conceal the injury, and give the body to medical science where, rather than a crime being discovered, a hundred minor surgeries will obliterate all trace of it.”

“Why bother?” Endrizzi asked. “An Oberst can probably kill any Bolognese peasant.”

“He wouldn’t be concerned about hiding the crime from the Bolognese,” said Alice. “He has to hide it from the Austrians.”

“Medici has more experience than any of us,” Gallo said. “He would know.”

Patricello drank all that remained in his cup.

“Medici does know,” said Alice. “The gallows are not short of business and the executioner is familiar with his trade. There was no mistake. In fact, it seems to me all too practiced: I doubt it’s the first time that the body of an inconvenient nationalist has found its way to an anatomy class.”

They ate the rest of their meal together in silence.
 
* * *
 
The Reno River cut through the city walls and rolled into a network of canals, vanishing under the city’s streets and generally flowing beneath the city unnoticed by most of its residents. But the short walk from the walls, where the river was still visible, was pleasant. Wherever the river exited Bologna was likely a sewer, but its entry was refreshing, and it brought an earthen scent from the hills.

It did not remind Alice of London or of Paris, both of which had vast, rancid rivers that were poisonous to look upon, much less drink. But there was something of Scotland about it. The Water of Leith was potable before it got too far into Edinburgh, and she had been a child in a land of a hundred mountain burns that ran cold as ice even on summer days.

She sat by the river and practiced her will-as-muscle on the deep currents. Water was heavy and changing its flow over stones at the bottom was as tough as lifting those stones out of the grime by hand. There was little true magic involved in this. She did not command the spiora: it was her and the current matched against each other in something like an arm wrestle, something like a dance. Those walking by her saw nothing of interest and felt no disturbance in the air or the earth. For them, she was just a girl staring into a river.

After an hour or so, she would lose the contest. The current was endless. The point of the exercise was not to win, but to resist, and to understand how and when to fail. As a child she could halt the flow of a rivulet of snowmelt for as long as she could hold her breath, watching it pile up against and overtop an invisible dam a handspan high. She wondered what she could do now. She could cause the water to froth and foam anywhere she chose. Could she separate the fish into speciated groups by feel, and herd them like cattle? Perhaps she could stop the Reno altogether and walk along it like a road.

Alice took a handkerchief from her sleeve and patted away the sweat from her brow. Perhaps she could do these things – but not today.

The sun hovered above the western wall. It would soon by evening. She and three other students had been invited to a small dinner at the home of Professor Lombardi. Alice was, she suspected, supposed to make conversation with the professor’s wife, who had been born in Marseille half a century earlier and had not been back to France in thirty years.

She would ask for news and Alice would reply with – what? Disturbing stories of being abducted and almost burned as a witch? How she had spent two months in a cellar in an opium-induced stupor as they tried to pull from her the secret of turning lead into gold? How she had given it to them – knowing that it would turn their bones to liquid and fill their organs with tumours? None of that was dinner party conversation. It would be safer to stick to fashion and literature.

She had brought her copy of Gérard de Nerval’s French translation of Goethe’s Faust and intended to make a present of it. The other invited students – Rossi, Acceto and Endrizzi – would not think to bring a gift of any kind, except perhaps for cheap wine. It was an ideal opportunity to stand out even from the small crowd that Lombardi regarded pleasant enough to invite to his home.

There had been an awkward conversation with Professor Lombardi about a young lady wandering the city unaccompanied at night, and Endrizzi had volunteered as her escort. To Alice, that felt like the lamb defending the virtue of the lion, but there was nothing to be done about it. Endrizzi had agreed that she could meet him at his lodgings, as they were somewhat mid-way between Alice’s house and Lombardi’s. In truth, she had left several chemical experiments that would continue to process for several days, and she did not want Endrizzi to ask awkward questions about the source of the mysterious smell of sulphur. (It was caused by a large quantity of sulphur).

Endrizzi’s apartment was the top floor of a dilapidated four-storey building that was home to at least six families, Endrizzi, and the building’s landlord. A section of roof tiles was missing and had been substituted by a square of black tarpaulin. The front door often stuck, as she knew from experience, and the second step on the staircase was missing and had been replaced by piled-up dirt and rocks.

She slipped between two young children playing on the top landing and knocked on Endrizzi’s door. It opened to reveal half of the young man’s face.

“Give me a minute,” he said. “I’m not decent.”

Alice smirked and said, “I don’t know what difference a minute will make.”

Endrizzi stepped away from the door but left it ajar.

“There’s a seat outside,” he said. “I will meet you down there.”

“I’m not an old woman, and if I was you shouldn’t have had me climb up here in the first place. Professor Lombardi will expect us in fifteen minutes.”

“I know,” he called, his voice muffled by the sound of some item of clothing going over his head.

“This is a very gracious offer,” Alice said. She leaned her back against the wall and smiled at the children sitting on the floor engaged in a game of Tarocchino Bolognese. She did not understand the rules well enough to know who was winning. “You must thank him for inviting you. As soon as you meet, and then again before you depart.”

“I do have manners.” There was a hopping sound as Endrizzi put on one leg of a piece of clothing.

“You have the manners of a lord because your father is a lord – which is to say you have no manners at all. You are like a cow: perfectly acceptable in a field but awkward at all other times and in all other locations. Professor Lombardi is the son of a cloth merchant—”

“How do you know that?”

“I asked.”

“Oh.” Endrizzi sounded surprised. “Well, my manners are better than those of some cloth merchant.”

Alice tutted. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Lombardi has bourgeoise manners – which is to say excellent. He is conscious of his social position, which is, in fact, beneath yours. He will display his manners tonight as a sign of respect and he will be insulted if you don’t reciprocate.”

“I thought this was supposed to be fun.” There was a solid thud from inside as a man-sized object fell heavily on a floor-sized object then got up again. “It’s fine! I’m fine.”

“Tonight will be fun. Don’t worry. Just make sure you do everything right. You must compliment his wife on the appearance of their home and remark on how much you enjoy the food. At a suitable point you must ask her about their son’s medical practice in Ravenna.”

“How do you—? Never mind. But presumably it’s going well, and you know, so I know, so why am I asking?”

“This kind of idiocy is why Italy hasn’t been a country for thirteen centuries. It doesn’t matter how it’s going. You ask the mother about the son, I will ask the father about the daughter, and whatever they tell us we will be most impressed.”

“What if both of their children have recently died under tragic circumstances?”

“Then their deaths will be very impressive. What an impressive death – you must be very proud. I hope one day to die half as impressively. And so on. When Signora Lombardi compliments you on your brother becoming a bishop, you must appear to be very happy about this—” Endrizzi groaned loudly. “You must appear to be very happy, and you must thank her.”

“Perhaps I could open my wrists with a knife instead?”

“You aren’t good enough as a surgeon to open a second wrist with a hand that you’ve already butchered.”

After a brief silence, Endrizzi replied, “That is fair.”

“Say it after me. Thank you, signora, you are very kind.”

“Thank you, signora,” Endrizzi mocked her accent. “You are very kind.”

“I will pass on your congratulations to my brother.”

“I will fucking not!”

The children playing cards giggled.

Alice repeated, “I will pass on your congratulations!”

“I will pass on your congratulations to Lucifer himself, on infiltrating the church with one of his greatest devils, and soon shall I see him, for the seventh seal is broken and judgement is at hand.”

Alice continued, “To my brother whose love shines upon me like the golden light of the morning sun and the infinite grace of Jesus Christ combined.”

“You have come directly from hell to torture me.”

“Good God! If I had a father who was a count and an older brother who was a bishop, I would already be married to a handsome Duke. Or to a man who owns a dozen mills! You have no idea how lucky you are, Endrizzi. Lombardi wants to help you, and when the time comes he could place you – with a single letter – in any hospital within three hundred miles. You have been given a ladder – all you must do is climb it.”

He chuckled and replied, “I didn’t think you the marrying kind. Haven’t you turned down five offers already this year?”

“From men who are going to be doctors – if they aren’t beaten senseless by moneylenders. I’m going to be a doctor, Endrizzi. I don’t want to be married to some… to someone who—”

Endrizzi’s face appeared in the gap in the doorway. He grinned wickedly and was now fully dressed. “Who what? Ah! Say it! Someone who’s not as clever as you? Who’s not going to be as good a doctor as you?”

“I am not about to marry beneath me.”

“Principessa!” Endrizzi slipped out of his room and took her face gently in both of his hands. “There is no man above you.”

Alice frowned and stepped away, saying, “You flatter me.”

“I did not mean to. I meant to warn you.”

The door to Endrizzi’s room opened and a man exited and began to immediately descend the stairs. Alice caught only a glimpse of him – tanned skinned, simple clothing, a red neckerchief – before he had reached the landing on the floor below and moved out of sight.

Endrizzi took a key from his pocket and his hand shook as he locked the door to his rooms. Still facing the door, he took a breath, then turned back to Alice with an affected smile.

“Shall we go?” he said. Alice nodded and followed Endrizzi. The street outside was now lit by the small windows of houses, and the sky had revealed its brightest stars. She took his arm as they walked.

“You would like Paris,” she said.

Endrizzi replied, “I like it here.”

​Alice said, “This is not Paris.”