Massimo found Ulysses in the square. The two men held one another till a hundred silent words had passed between them. How’s it your side? said Ulysses. So bad. And Massimo recounted what he’d seen and heard: Embankments had been washed away. The Biblioteca Nazionale was still completely cut off by water and inundated. Santa Croce no one can get inside. Street after street of overturned cars, and dead cattle. The Baptistery doors have been ripped from their frames—the mayor and a film crew are over there now—and panels from the Gates of Paradise are missing.
