Page 351 - The Grotesque Children's Book

of his situation hit him very hard suddenly. The San Trinita bridge beckoned. How much easier
it would be to fetch up those stones and put them in my pocket. One jump and then to the bottom
I would sink and no one would care. Oh, I suppose Allesandro Allori might care, but not
because of me; he would care because with two of his painters gone, the ceiling would remain
unfinished, and he wouldn’t get paid and his children would live the rest of their days in the
poorhouse or prison. Is that any reason for me to live? Perhaps, yes. But not sufficiently
forceful to outweigh the reason not to live. Life is too damn hard.

Aurelio picked up Santi’s folio, determined to take it with him to the bottom of the Arno.

And there was that demon.

It was staring at him from the cover of the folio, that smug grin on its face, those pointy
bat wings and splayed feet or wings or twigs or whatever it was he spurted for feet. A
tetramorph: four creatures in one: demon, bat, human, tree-or-bird. What a grotesque creature.
And yet, he was Santi’s creature. Born of artistic creation, filled with life and vigor and wicked
laughter and...meaning. Aurelius recalled the scribbles he’d made for Santi one of their drunken
nights at the Wheat and Chaff. I love our creatures, Santi. They're like my children: mangled
and grotesque though they might be. They're my family. My real family has turned their backs
on me, so my creatures are all I have.

Aurelio still felt that way. He felt he needed to stay alive, not for his own sake, but for
the sake of his creations, his own children. Damn you, Santi. Where are you? Where would you
have run once you had stolen the jewels?

It suddenly occurred to Aurelio that in one of Santi’s stories someone had stolen jewels
or goats, or jewel-goats or goat-jewels-whatever-they-were-never-mine-that-now-I’m-onto-
something. Aurelio flipped back to that picture. Yes, there was a little putto who stole two
goats. In the story...where was he from. That town in Switzerland, Vier-Something. Santi’s
wife had been from there. (flip-flip). Vierspitzen. That means four peaks. There were other
mentions of four peaks, weren’t there? Four peaks and three hills. Four peaks, three hills, two
goats, and maybe flying putti. I’m not looking for goats, I’m looking for a landscape! A
landscape with all those things in it: maybe an arch, too, shaped like an Omega. An arch or a
tree.

Aurelio never realized he’d forgotten about stones and pockets.

So intently concentrating was he on the ceilings, however, that Aurelio did not notice that
someone was watching him, lurking nearly out of sight, hidden in the shadowy darkness of the
octagonal room. It was a dark Southern Italian man with a small pair of gold spectacles. He had
been watching Aurelio stare at the folio, then up at the ceiling, then back at the folio, then up at
the ceiling. The man withdrew further into the octagonal room, but not so far back that he could
not watch Aurelio at all times. When Aurelio walked further towards the southern ends of the
long hall to look at other parts of the ceiling, the man stepped closer to the room’s arched egress,
but never so far as to be seen by Aurelio; just far enough so as to keep an eye on Aurelio. There
was little danger that the man would betray his own presence. He was good at his job. Very
good.

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