How no you behave when you know the conventional honors are dross? When you
have come to believe with Marcus Aurelius that the opinion of future
generations will be worth no more than the opinion of the current one? Is it
possible to behave well then? Desirable to behave well then? Now Rinaldo
Pazzi, a Pazzi of the Pazzi, chief inspector of the Florentine Questura, had
to decide what his honor was worth, or if there is a wisdom longer than
considerations of honor.
He returned from Paris by dinnertime, and slept a little while. He wanted to
ask his wife, but he could not, though he did take comfort in her. He lay
awake for a long time afterward, after her breathing was quiet. Late in the
night he gave up on sleep and went out to walk and think.
Avarice is not unknown in Italy, and Rinaldo Pazzi had imbibed plenty with his
native air. But his natural acquisitiveness and ambition had been whetted in
America, where every influence is felt more quickly, including the death of
Jehovah and the incumbency of Mammon.
When Pazzi came out of the shadows of the Loggia and stood in the spot where
Savonarola was burned in the Piazza Signoria, when he looked up at the window
in the floodlit Palazzo Vecchio where his ancestor died, he believed that he
was deliberating. He was not. He had already decided piecemeal.
We assign a moment to decision, to dignify the process as a timely result of
rational and conscious thought. But decisions are made of kneaded feelings;
they are more often a lump than a sum.
Pazzi had decided when he got on the plane to Paris. And he had decided an
hour ago, after his wife in her new peignoir had been only dutifully
receptive. And minutes later when, lying in the dark, he reached over to cup
her cheek and give her a tender good night kiss, and he felt a tear beneath
his palm. Then, unaware, she ate his heart.
Honors again? Another chance to endure the archbishop's breath while the holy
flints were struck to the rocket in the cloth dove's ass? More praise from the
politicians whose private lives he knew too well? What was it worth to be
known as the policeman who caught Dr Hannibal Lecter? For a policeman, credit
has a short half-life. Better to SELL HIM.
The thought pierced and pounded Rinaldo, left him pale and determined, and
when the visual Rinaldo cast his lot he had two scents mixed in his mind, his
wife and the Chesapeake shore.
SELL HIM. SELL HIM. SELL HIM. SELL HIM. SELL HIM. SELL HIM.
Francesco de' Pazzi did not stab harder in I478 when he had Giuliano on the
cathedral floor, when in his frenzy he stabbed himself through the thigh.