Glorious Ones (16 page)

The coins were for the beggars, who surrounded us constantly, reaching out their filthy hands, pointing to their goiters, pinching their skinny babies to make them cry. At such times, my father would take a coin from his purse, and hand it to me. He wanted me to have the satisfaction of presenting it to the beggars, of watching them mumble politely and shuffle away.

But one night, as we entered the main plaza, a ragged boy came running towards us. He raced across the square, then threw himself down on the ground at our feet.

“Here,” said my father, unaccustomed to such extreme displays. “Take this penny, and go away.”

But the beggar wouldn’t move. Crouched on the ground, he looked up at me, so that I could see the tears streaming down his face.

“No!” he cried. “I want more! I want it all!”

Grumbling with disgust, my father took my hand, and tried to steer us away. But suddenly, a strange feeling came over me. I began to scream, to flap my arms in the air. And then, for the first time, I began to squawk like a duck.

“Give it to him!” I shrieked. “Give him all the money!”

Hoping to avoid a scandalous scene, my father dumped the contents of his pouch on the ground, and dragged us off. All the way home, neither of my parents spoke. But later that night, my mother called me to her room.

“Isabella,” she whispered, stroking my hair. “You are too young to understand this now. Still, I must tell you: already, you are a little crazy, and your heart is a little too generous. You must be careful, for such things are not always wise in a woman. They can make you very unhappy.”

So that was why they encouraged my talents—so that I could protect those other parts of me. And I learned my tricks well. By the time Francesco started coming to my home, I’d learned them perfectly. And, while he courted me with those wonderful stories, I used them, every one. I charmed him, pleased him, delighted him; I did my best to weave a spell.

It was an old trick, Pietro, a joke. You’ve seen the Inamorata do it on stage, a thousand times. I wanted Francesco to love me, to take me with him, to let me join the troupe. But I made him think it was his own idea.

That is a trick most women know, Pietro; already, at sixteen, our acting is that good.

Now, looking down from heaven, I suddenly see: in a way, Francesco was telling the truth. My home might just as well have been a convent.

For that’s how I looked at it, when I lay awake in my bed, staring out the window at the moon, praying that Francesco would rescue me. And on that night when he finally rode up to my window, and I climbed out of my elegant bedroom onto the back of his stallion—no nun could have been happier to leave her cold stone cell.

That night was magical, Pietro. There was a full moon in the sky. And, as I rode along behind Francesco, I felt as if we were riding into the moon, the way I’d heard poets sing of it, in love ballads.

We were married by a local priest, who made some bad joke about Andreini’s unruly hair. But I hardly heard him. I was asleep, in a dream, riding the moon above the earth.

That night, I slept with Francesco for the first time. It wasn’t like I thought it would be. “Is that it?” I wondered, lying beside him afterwards. “Surely, there’s more to it than that.” I was sure there was more to it, so I told myself it would probably change with time. And I fell asleep.

But the next morning, when I awoke, I knew that my dream was over. When Francesco gave that preposterous speech about me, and drew off my cloak, I found myself staring into the faces of The Glorious Ones, the faces of strangers. And suddenly, I was staring at them, and at myself, as if I’d risen a million miles into the air, and was looking down from heaven.

I saw it clearly, face to face. I saw it all. I was married to Francesco Andreini until the day of my death. I was an actress, touring with The Glorious Ones. And these complete strangers were my new family—these freaks, these dwarfs, these maniacs were my life.

I was no longer a young girl in my parents’ house, dreaming about the adventurous life I would be leading with Francesco Andreini. I was actually leading that life, and it terrified me.

Suddenly, all my skills, all my tricks, all my talents deserted me. I couldn’t help myself; I began to scream. I quacked and squawked like a duck.

Because that was my natural voice—the true voice of my craziness, and my generous heart.

Francesco never understood. At the time, he was confused, concerned, solicitous. But later, when I was better again, and I tried to explain, he refused to listen. He accused me of having faked the whole thing, just to throw him off balance.

“After all,” he’d say. “You knew it beforehand. You had it all written out, in the play.”

“Yes, I wrote it,” I agreed. “But I
didn’t
know. Hasn’t that ever happened to you, Francesco? You write something which you think has nothing to do with you, and yet it comes true? Don’t you know what I mean?”

“No,” he replied. “I always see ahead. I always know how things will turn out. And you do too, Isabella, though you’re too clever to admit it.”

But he was wrong. I didn’t know it would happen to me; and, once it did, I didn’t know what to do. All I could do was shout and squawk. My spirit had left my body, and I couldn’t get it back. I couldn’t come close to anything, I couldn’t touch anyone, I couldn’t talk.

Finally, the Doctor began to give me opium, and it helped. At least, the fear was gone, and I could dream in peace.

Yet over and over, I had the same vision. I took to staring at the moon, for that was where I saw it.

I saw the dream of my childhood, the dream of that convent girl who lay awake and gazed at the moon. I saw the dream of that night Francesco Andreini rescued me from my parents’ house.

And that was the reason I stared at the moon so longingly—I was trying to get back into my dream. But the moon had its eyes closed; it wouldn’t look at me.

Then slowly, very slowly, I began to stop caring. Gradually, I began to notice the signs: I was feeling better, I could recognize the traces of my old self.

How strange, that it should have taken the Doctor’s hot breath on my neck to finally awaken me. He was like that god, bringing his chick-pea child to life. But that was the way it happened.

One night, while the Doctor was assaulting me with some absurd sexual proposition, I turned my eyes from the moon, and saw the plain truth—despite myself, I still remembered all those little skills, those talents, that ability to please. And they still worked. They’d worked on the Doctor, on Pantalone, Columbina, Armanda, Francesco. They’d worked on titled aristocracy, on people with money, on the King of France! How blind of me, not to have noticed!

Soon, I felt whole again. I became confident. I began to take pleasure in my writing, my acting, my singing, in all the things I’d learned to do. I began to look around me, to enjoy the fame, the wealth, the success. The Doctor became my admirer, Columbina my friend; I made Pantalone and even Brighella come to like me. And I began to love The Glorious Ones.

Francesco and I became lovers; gradually, our love changed to that of husband and wife. And it was comfortable, it was good. We were kind to each other, we helped each other with the work. We fought and argued, like all married people, yet there seemed to be love in it. I had no reason to complain.

Sometimes, as I played opposite Francesco, I’d stop for a moment, and stand back. “These are the hours I’ll look back on when I’m old,” I thought to myself. “I’ll remember them as my happiest times, the times when my life shone with light.”

But now, looking back, I see I was mistaken: there’s no light shining from those hours. All I can see is that something was wrong, right from the start. And it was this.

I worshiped Francesco too much. Though I’d tricked him into marrying me, I still believed he was infallible. Though
I
wrote the plays, starred in the dramas, won the audiences’ hearts, I still looked up to him, as if he were my superior. I worshiped him, as if he were divine.

And indeed, with his strange monologues, his two sides, his half-wild feline nature, he seemed as mysterious and unknowable as a god.

I had complete faith in him, in his vision, his ability to predict the future. I was under his direction, I did as he said, I even tortured poor old Flaminio, for his sake.

Francesco was a hero to me. I was so pleased, so flattered, every time the hero wanted to sleep in my bed. And, just as I’d thought, it got better. I began to like it more, to let myself feel the pleasure. But still, there was something wrong: you can’t make love to a god, it’s not right. It’s not like making love, it’s like going to church. There’s no room in the bed, for a mortal woman, and a god.

So I knew that there was something wrong. Yet I would never have known what it was if Flaminio Scala hadn’t shown me the way.

One night, as I sat in Columbina’s tent, she told me the story of her love affair with the Captain, twenty years before. She tried to pretend that it was all in the past, that she didn’t care about him any more, that she pitied him. But I knew the truth.

I began to feel a certain uneasiness, a physical longing, like shivers. “That’s what I want,” I thought. “Plain human love. I’m tired of worshiping a god. I want something different, better. I want an ordinary man, with a mortal body, and a loving heart.”

That night, when I returned to my tent, I couldn’t sleep.

Now, looking down from this place where the angels are so clear-sighted that I long for the smoke of hell, I begin to understand.

I see what a clever trickster Flaminio was; though we never suspected, he was much better than Francesco. And I see that Columbina’s story was but the first of his many tricks, of those tricks he continued to play on us from beyond the grave.

For, in giving Columbina that taste of human love, that story she remembered all her life, Flaminio had unsettled me. He was telling me about a kind of love I’d never dreamed of, on those nights I lay awake in my parents’ house. It was something I wanted, even more than I wanted the moon.

And that was the beginning of my discontent.

But, at the time, I said nothing. How could I have explained myself? Francesco was the last one I could talk to. Even Columbina would never have understood.

So I tried to ignore it. I concentrated on my acting, my writing. I told myself that I should be grateful for my marriage. I had a good life, better than most people had. It was, as Francesco said in that funeral oration, a blessing from God.

Yet God has a way of revoking His blessings, as soon as we begin to see them as our rightful due. And that is just what happened.

For, on the night of Flaminio Scala’s death, all my contentment suddenly disappeared. And all my love for Francesco Andreini turned to anger, and fear.

It’s hard, Pietro, talking to you about Flaminio. He was dead before you joined the troupe, you never knew him. And God knows what you’ve heard about him from the others.

I myself never knew him well. I didn’t even meet him until late in his life, when he was already weakened, damaged by Francesco. I never saw him at his best, at the height of his career—when, according to Columbina, his gaze could jolt the audience like a thunderbolt. In those last few weeks before his death, I got a hint of what he must have been like, and it was awesome. But I never really knew.

Still, I liked the Captain. As soon as I was well enough to tell one actor from another, I began to feel an odd affection for him. There seemed to be certain likenesses between us, though I didn’t really know what they were. Only now do I see.

Neither of us were practical people, like Andreini. We were both hopeless dreamers, and his case was just as serious as mine: he had immortality on his mind; I wanted the moon. And we were similar in another way, which I couldn’t identify until I saw it in you, Pietro; you share the same magic.

Yet my affection for the Captain was always mixed with pity; I felt sorry for him, even before he’d lost all his power. For the cards were stacked against him from the start. He was doomed to be alone. The others could never really have loved him, he didn’t have a chance.

They were furious at him—furious at those horrible parts he’d cast them in. They hated him for those rules, those caricatures of themselves. They wanted
him
to die, too.

I remember how strangely they behaved at the Captain’s funeral. They seemed completely out of character, the very opposite of their normal selves. Brighella was kind and solicitous; he held our hands to comfort us, and spoke of eternal life. Pantalone doled out fistfuls of gold, to finance the Captain’s wake. The Doctor seemed meek and humble. And Armanda, who insisted on delivering Flaminio’s eulogy, revealed a woman of passion and deep intelligence beneath that clownish mask.

I’d have thought they’d gone crazy, if I hadn’t understood. They were flaunting it in the Captain’s face, forcing his spirit to witness. “Look!” they were saying. “We’re not those people we play on stage. You were wrong about us, Captain. You didn’t know us.”

Yet the very next day, they were their old familiar selves again. And they blamed the Captain for it, just as most men blame God. That was why I pitied Flaminio.

But at the time, I couldn’t let that pity stop me. For the part I was to play opposite Flaminio Scala had already been written out. I was to help Francesco subvert him, weaken him, destroy his will. I was to help my husband bring about his downfall.

I played my part well, Pietro. I never faltered. Even at the moment of Flaminio’s death, I never allowed a sign of sympathy or regret to cross my face. As I quenched Flaminio’s last hope, as I raised the axe to finish off that dying bull, I was absolutely unrepentant, calm, controlled.

But, later that night, Flaminio Scala began to play another of his nasty tricks. Before his corpse had grown cold, the Captain’s ghost began its vengeance.

Flaminio’s body had just been taken from the stage. Francesco went off to make the funeral arrangements. And I returned to my tent, hoping to get some rest, to erase that frightful spectacle from my mind.