Gio Batta awoke because he was asked to return his blanket. He found the request so reasonable that his first impulse was to apologise. The wool had bunched beneath his shoulder; he had to raise himself, pull it free, and shake out a little dust. The turnkey took the bundle without looking at the man offering it. A blanket would serve again. In that room, it was the object with the greatest future.
Gio Batta asked for water. It was brought to him in a cracked bowl, the rim of which he wiped with his sleeve before drinking. The habit startled him. Since the previous evening, he believed he had done with petty precautions; yet his body went on taking them. He even kept a cool mouthful under his tongue, swallowing it slowly. Down the corridor, men were talking of a misplaced key. The door remained ajar, but one of them stood before it. A key might well be lost; the prisoner was not forgotten.
He had spent his life receiving curt commands. Carry this up, fetch that, wait, return. In the houses where he had served, his Christian name had been spoken more often than those of the masters, but solely to bid him leave the room. In the morning, he could divine people’s humours by the way their shoes had been thrust beneath the bed. A shoe kicked afar promised reproaches; a pair neatly aligned demanded an irreproachable day. He knew how to read such tokens. Today, no one had left shoes for him to gather.
The turnkey told him to put on his own. A lace was missing. Gio Batta bent down, attempted to knot the two frayed ends that were far too short, then checked himself with sudden anger. He would not go barefoot. It was not out of vanity; he had worn those shoes through all weathers, greased them, had them mended, set them to dry far from the hearth lest the leather stiffen. They belonged to him. The thought that this final road might strip them from him before all else seemed insufferable.
“Give me a piece of twine.”
The man hesitated, as though the request concealed some snare. Then he fumbled in his pocket and drew forth a bit of cord. It was too thick for the eyelet. He split it with his thumbnail, teasing out a single strand. Gio Batta watched him work. Those few seconds engaged them both; at last, the turnkey had something to give him that was neither a command nor an appointed hour. The knot held. Gio Batta set his foot to the floor, tested the shoe, and stood up.
In an adjoining room, a man robed to attend the condemned was waiting for him. He spoke in a gentle voice. Gio Batta listened, but the words reached him only in fragments; he caught a syllable, lost the next, and grew vexed at failing to comprehend so simple a sentence. The comforter thought it best to begin anew. Gio Batta then asked that no one speak to him for a time. The indulgence was granted. He fixed his gaze upon a fissure in the wall. It climbed crookedly, broke off beneath a stain, and resumed higher up. He sought to see how far it ran.
When they stepped outside, the glare compelled him to shut his eyes. Rome was already at work. A cartwheel struck a paving stone, a shopkeeper propped up his awning, a woman took inside the basket she had set before her threshold. Curious eyes followed the small procession. Gio Batta would have liked to know what each of them saw: a name, an offence, a spectacle, or merely a man whom none would recognise on the morrow. Mostly, he noticed hands. Some went on with their labour; others had paused mid-motion. A boy held a bitten apple, forgetting to raise it to his lips.
The way led uphill. At the first incline, his foot slipped within the ill-fastened shoe. He shortened his stride. The man walking beside him slackened his own pace to match this slowness, and Gio Batta was grateful, though he could not say so. He had imagined he would be shoved. He would almost have preferred brutality: it would have given a shape to his fear, an adversary against whom to stiffen. This tender consideration to let him walk made him feel that everything was settled. Henceforth, they could afford to be patient.
Once, he halted. It was neither to plead nor to resist. Between two tenements, he had caught sight of a terrace where linen hung drying. A shirt, bellied out by the breeze, collapsed, then swelled once more. In one of the houses where he had served, the great washdays meant hauling water up a narrow stair; he had hated that staircase, the clattering buckets, the rebuke dealt him for a few spilled drops upon the steps. He would have given anything to climb it again. That toil, which had once wearied him to death, now appeared to him whole—fatigue and all—as a day of pure wonder.
A hand touched his arm. He resumed his march. The terrace vanished.
At the Capitol, waiting still claimed its due. A passage had to be cleared, the jostling onlookers pressed back, and a man intent on some wholly unrelated errand persuaded to cease his untimely clamour. Gio Batta stood motionless. He had dreaded being reduced to a thing; he now discovered that even a thing must wait its turn. A clerk looked at him, consulted the paper in his hand, and called out his name. Gio Batta answered. The reply altered nothing. It merely attested that he had duly arrived.
The executioner drew near. Gio Batta had prepared words to fling at the man; before him, they slipped away. This face bore no resemblance to the creature he had conjured in the night. The man was intent on his business, watchful of his footing, vexed by those who stood in his way. Gio Batta asked him what he was to do. The habit of servitude had returned, older than terror. The other showed him where to kneel. He obeyed, then raised his head one last time—not to scan the crowd, but to seek a patch of sky between the rooftops.
His companion resumed the broken prayer. This time, Gio Batta followed a few words. He did not hear the end of them. The axe severed that brief exertion even as it severed the sound of his breath, the pain in his foot, and the days he would so dearly have wished to begin again. Around him, the men instantly set about their tasks. The square had to be cleared. The boy with the apple, had he followed, could now go home.
Of a servant’s life, the Roman treasury preserved a single disbursement. Under the date of 13 July 1515, the executioner received three julii for having cut off the head of Gio Batta. Centuries later, Rodocanachi would unearth the entry among the accounts of the Capitol. The register paused neither for the road nor for the hours of waiting. There remain only the Christian name, the servant’s station, and the fee. He who had so often answered when his name was called had left just enough of a trace for his execution to be paid in full.