I sat on the stone floor. Closed my eyes. Thought of the weeks and months my great-grandfather had spent in a cell like this one, recording his life. Opened my eyes, took in the one barred window that looked into a corridor. I stood up as if propelled and grabbed hold of the bars. My hands, Vincent’s hands. How often had he gripped this same kind of bars?

Stefano offered to show me the corridor, a sort of tunnel, with corroded walls and floor. I remembered Vincent’s words again: There is one barred window—though not a window at all. It looks into a narrow corridor the guards use to spy on us.

I pictured guards patrolling, thought of the guard who had given him the journal and pencils, one small kindness in this hellhole.

There was another open cell, identical to the others, only here there were drawings.

I dared to touch them, my fingers tingling.

One wall had a pencil drawing of a soldier in an old-time uniform, another a series of incised lines that took me a while to recognize as a crudely etched female figure. In the next cell, there were drawings too, the profile of a modern-looking woman just beside a small cropping of medieval-looking buildings, worn and faded, obviously very old but still legible, and I realized the graffiti had been created at different times, that it spanned decades, possibly centuries. It was next to impossible that any had been made by Vincent, but still I pictured him crouched by the wall, using the stick he had found and sharpened to carve the drawing as a way to stay connected to the real world, as a way to hold on.

I sat back and stared at the drawings, my hands on the cold stone floor, lost in thought about my great-grandfather, the months and months he’d spent in one of these cage-like cells, how he had managed to survive and to write his story. I not only needed to know what came next but wanted to know it all, everything about him, this man I had come to care about in ways I could never have imagined.

51

I met Alex for dinner, still a bit off-balance from my time at Le Murate, almost as if I had just served a prison sentence. The restaurant, Alex’s choice, was family run, not chic nor expensive, and she seemed in a good mood. She asked if I was still going to Paris, and I said yes, thinking about my appointment at the Louvre and the other, unsolicited visit I was planning.

She said “good,” though I wasn’t sure she was happy about it. I told her I’d be back soon, and she said “good” again, then asked about my friend in Paris, and I made one up.

We skipped dessert and coffee. I was anxious to get going but didn’t want to presume we would be leaving together, though I was relieved when she said, “My place or yours?”