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Although nowadays it is more of a snarled traffic nightmare, Florence’s austere city gate was once the site of the Fiera dei Contratti — the Contracts Fair — at which fathers sold their daughters into a contracted marriage, often forcing them to dance provocatively in an effort to secure higher dowries.
This morning, several hundred yards short of the gateway, Sie
That can’t be for us, Langdon thought. Can it?
A sweaty cyclist came pedaling toward them up the Viale Machiavelli away from the traffic. He was on a recumbent bike, his bare legs pumping out in front of him.
Sie
“E chi lo sa!” he shouted back, looking concerned. “Carabinieri.” He hurried past, looking eager to clear the area.
Sie
Sirens wailed in the distance behind them, and Sie
We’re trapped in the middle, Langdon thought, sca
The sirens grew louder.
“Up there,” Langdon urged, pointing thirty yards ahead to a deserted construction site where a portable cement mixer offered at least a little bit of cover.
Sie
“Follow me,” Sie
That’s not a toolshed, Langdon realized, his nose crinkling as they got closer. That’s a Porta-Potty.
As Langdon and Sie
Langdon slid in behind her just as a jet-black Subaru Forester came into view with the word CARABINIERI emblazoned on its side. The vehicle rolled slowly past their location.
The Italian military police, Langdon thought, incredulous. He wondered if these officers also had orders to shoot on sight.
“Someone is dead serious about finding us,” Sie
“GPS?” Langdon wondered aloud. “Maybe the projector has a tracking device in it?”
Sie
Langdon shifted his tall frame, trying to get comfortable in the cramped surroundings. He found himself face-to-face with a collage of elegantly styled graffiti scrawled on the back of the Porta-Potty.
Leave it to the Italians.
Most American Porta-Potties were covered with sophomoric cartoons that vaguely resembled huge breasts or penises. The graffiti on this one, however, looked more like an art student’s sketchbook — a human eye, a well-rendered hand, a man in profile, and a fantastical dragon.
“Destruction of property doesn’t look like this everywhere in Italy,” Sie
As if to confirm Sie
Langdon and Sie
The half-buried si
Perhaps it was on account of the smell of human waste, or possibly the recumbent bicyclist with bare legs flailing in front of him, but whatever the stimulus, Langdon had flashed on the putrid world of the Malebolge and the naked legs protruding upside down from the earth.
He turned suddenly to his companion. “Sie
Sie
For a split second Langdon was back in Vie
“Before we meet Satan,” Langdon declared, his deep voice resonating over the loudspeakers, “we must pass through the ten ditches of the Malebolge, in which are punished the fraudulent — those guilty of deliberate evil.”
Langdon advanced slides to show a detail of the Malebolge and then took the audience down through the ditches one by one. “From top to bottom we have: the seducers whipped by demons … the flatterers adrift in human excrement … the clerical profiteers half buried upside down with their legs in the air … the sorcerers with their heads twisted backward … the corrupt politicians in boiling pitch … the hypocrites wearing heavy leaden cloaks … the thieves bitten by snakes … the fraudulent counselors consumed by fire … the sowers of discord hacked apart by demons … and finally, the liars, who are diseased beyond recognition.” Langdon turned back to the audience. “Dante most likely reserved this final ditch for the liars because a series of lies told about him led to his exile from his beloved Florence.”
“Robert?” The voice was Sie
Langdon snapped back to the present.
Sie
“Our version of La Mappa,” he said excitedly. “The art has been changed!” He fished the projector out of his jacket pocket and shook it as best as he could in the close quarters. The agitator ball rattled loudly, but all the sirens drowned it out. “Whoever created this image reconfigured the order of the levels in the Malebolge!”
When the device began to glow, Langdon pointed it at the flat surface before them. La Mappa dell’Inferno appeared, glowing brightly in the dim light.
Botticelli on a chemical toilet, Langdon thought, ashamed. This had to be the least elegant place a Botticelli had ever been displayed. Langdon ran his eyes down through the ten ditches and began nodding excitedly.
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “This is wrong! The last ditch of the Malebolge is supposed to be full of diseased people, not people upside down. The tenth level is for the liars, not the clerical profiteers!”
Sie
“Catrovacer,” Langdon whispered, eyeing the little letters that had been added to each level. “I don’t think that’s what this really says.”
Despite the injury that had erased Langdon’s recollections of the last two days, he could now feel his memory working perfectly. He closed his eyes and held the two versions of La Mappa in his mind’s eye to analyze their differences. The changes to the Malebolge were fewer than Langdon had imagined … and yet he felt like a veil had suddenly been lifted.