I had read about my great-grandfather’s arrest and trial, his trip to the prison, stripped and searched, standing naked with other inmates under cold showers, shivering and humiliated, brought to his cell, door slammed shut, the sound of metal against metal as the locks were drawn, all of it written in excruciating detail. I could see it now as I took the steps slowly, the space tight and confining, already a prison, the only light from a window way above, casting everything else in darkness. Marco and Stefano were walking fast, disappearing ahead of me, and I could feel the years disappearing too.

The first-floor landing was a study in erosion: painted gray walls that had long ago started to peel revealed the stone below, fissured and water-stained, the floor a reddish-colored diagonal stone, scuffed and faded.

Stefano called out, and I was startled—I’d been lost in the past, picturing prisoners being led down this hall, my great-grandfather among them.

We headed up another flight of stairs.

Here, just off the landing, a round-ceilinged hallway maybe twenty feet long and eight feet wide and a series of heavy wooden doors. I stopped at one, stone molding with chunks of it missing, thick iron hinges top and bottom, a corroded iron bracket maybe ten by twelve inches with a bar that slid across and fit into another iron receptacle to lock it securely. In the center of the door, a small square window, hinged and locked. But at the next door, that same square window was open. I squinted, but it was too dark to see anything. Stefano signaled me down the hall to another cell, the door open.

But it was not a cell; it was a cage.

For a moment, I was unable to move, then I took a step in. Stood there. No toilet. No sink.

I recalled Vincent’s description of the weekly gang shower under frigid water and the “shit sloppers,” as they were called, the men tasked with the odious job of emptying the buckets.

The place was more a dungeon than prison, something out of The Count of Monte Cristo, so horribly real it seemed fictional, impossible.

I steadied myself, a hand to the wall. It was damp and cold. I shivered. Stefano pointed out that the prison had never been heated, though in fact it was warmer now due to the heat rising from the bottom-floor art space.

Stefano and Marco went into the hallway, but I stayed alone in the cell, Vincent’s words echoing in my head: I count my steps, one foot in front of the other, six steps one way, nine the other. I placed one foot in front of the other, toe to heel, and it was exactly as he had said, six feet wide, nine feet long. I felt as if I were walking in his shoes, back and forth, back and forth. I thought how he had kept sane by plotting revenge against Valfiero and Chaudron, my mind, his mind.