Masques
Night leaped from the Arno, unfolded in the sky like a priest’s cassock and dropped to blot everything at once. The buildings, the bridges, the hills and slanted tower all winked out, and formlessness took the world. Shadows reared and melted against the streets and river. A stray lamp in a window, a candle in a wanderer’s hand floated free of all ground and lit up fragments of grotesques, long-nosed masks and hoods pulled over faces. “Be killed!” they cried, and sprang on one another, trying to blow out the candles. The murderous calls echoed before and behind, and blind objects whipped through the air.
It was the depth of historical night. Remember the Middle Ages; imagine the old barbarities come up from centuries of burial. The sun of enlightenment had set on Italy before it
