Glorious Ones (17 page)

But I couldn’t rest. There was something bothering me, something besides the shock of the Captain’s death. There was something important which I couldn’t remember, which I needed to know.

I thought for a long time, trying to figure out what it was. And then, suddenly, I felt Flaminio’s spirit possess me. I felt him take hold of my mind, and lead it through the corridors of my memory. At last, his spirit paused, and opened the door of a dark chamber. And at that moment, I knew.

Long ago, when Francesco was courting me with his stories, he told me a peculiar anecdote. It concerned an unsuccessful actor—poor, unrecognized, down on his luck. One day, the actor accepted the sad fact that he would never find immortality through his art. So he decided to kill himself, in the middle of a performance, in a last heroic grasp at eternal fame.

“Francesco!” I thought to myself, the moment I remembered. “You knew it! You knew it in advance! Is that what you meant by foresight, by knowing the ends of things? If you knew it, why didn’t you try to stop it? Or did you plan it that way, did you plan the Captain’s death? If these are the sort of plans you make, Francesco, then what are your plans for me?!”

Now, it seems so foolish: I was like one of those crazy monks, driven to despair by the sudden realization that God has allowed evil to enter the world. But that night no one could have told me it was foolish.

I left the tent, and walked out into the night. For three hours, I paced through the camp, raging at Francesco in my mind. I felt betrayed, as if I’d married a villain, a monster, Satan himself. I despised him, and I was mortally afraid. I decided what I would say to him, I rehearsed it, word for word. I planned out my last scene, my accusation, my farewell.

“How clever of Flaminio,” I thought, “to take his vengeance so soon, while his corpse is still warm.”

But that night, when I returned to the tent and found Francesco already there, I began to see that the Captain’s revenge wasn’t yet over. And it was much, much crueller than I’d imagined.

As soon as I looked at Francesco, I became confused: was the Captain the one who’d died? Or was it my husband?

For there was no life left in Francesco’s body. There was no light in his eyes. He seemed like a corpse, an empty hull, a dried-out kernel.

I began to accuse him. I tried to say the things I’d been rehearsing in my mind all night. But he didn’t have the spirit to fight with me. He no longer loved me enough to make it worthwhile.

“How clever of Flaminio,” I thought, “to have taken my husband’s spirit with him to the other world.”

And it was true. All at once, I realized: Francesco’s whole life had been centered around that struggle with the Captain. Everything had come from it—his skill, his talent, his love for me. That love and hate for Flaminio were the only real feelings he’d ever had.

At the moment of Flaminio’s death, Francesco’s life had left him. I was married to a corpse.

My heart sank; my accusations crumbled. So what if Francesco had foretold the Captain’s death? What good had it done him?

“Francesco,” was all I could say, “is this how well you foresee the consequences of things?”

The death of love is terrible, Pietro; sometimes, I think it’s worse than physical death. We were lucky that I died when I did. For, if you ever loved me, you can think of me now with the sweetest memories, the fondest regrets. But if I were still alive, and we stopped loving one another, it would be much, much sadder.

After the death of love, the corpse is always with you, filling the air with a rotten smell. You can’t touch it, you can’t talk to it. You can’t kill it, and it won’t go away.

That’s how it was with Andreini and me. He was no longer a god to me, no longer a hero. Except when he was directing me on stage, we barely spoke. We never laughed together, we never discussed our work. And, though we shared the same bed, we rarely made love. Our hearts had dried up. Our bodies had turned to stone.

Perhaps you never saw him that way, Pietro. By the time you joined the troupe, he’d healed himself enough to project a show of competence. But I saw the difference. Brighella and Columbina spotted it right away. And by the end of that first year after the Captain’s death even the audiences knew.

Every time Francesco and I played the Lovers together on stage, I heard impatient murmurs coming from the crowd. We had to shout out our lines, in order to be heard above the whispers, the coughs, the noise of crackling paper. The audiences couldn’t accept us as the Lovers any more. The truth was too obvious. They couldn’t be deceived.

So something had to change.

Francesco was beside himself. This was a consequence he’d never foreseen. He didn’t know what to do. So he tried to pretend that nothing was happening.

But, one by one, all The Glorious Ones perceived the truth. And they were delighted to see Francesco caught unprepared.

At last, after a particularly unsuccessful performance, Armanda Ragusa spoke out. “Your role is wearing thin, Andreini,” she said, tapping her finger against his chest. “What business did you have playing the Lover in the first place? You should have left the role to Flaminio, who was so good at it. What did you ever know about love?”

“Go to hell, Armanda,” replied Francesco. “You were always on Flaminio’s side. Your opinions on this subject are worthless.”

But Francesco knew that Armanda was right: he and I could no longer play the Lovers together.

The next morning, Francesco announced his desire to assume the role of the Captain. Then, he went out in the street, to find a new actor to play the Lover’s part.

You were the one he came back with, Pietro. Remember that afternoon? I emerged from my tent to find my husband standing with his arm around your shoulders, telling the others why he had chosen you.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “may I introduce to you Pietro Visconti. He is a professional, this boy—not a rank amateur, like we were when we first joined The Glorious Ones. For twenty-seven years, he’s been living by his wits, on the streets. He’s recited verse, sung ballads, performed small skits for whatever he could get. He’s rented his voice to merchants who wanted their products advertised in the alleyways. He’s even dabbled in a bit of confidence trickery, this clever fellow. And whenever his luck ran out he disguised himself as a beggar, and played the part to perfection.

“He will make an ideal Lover, my friends. He is so handsome, he’ll make the ladies break into cold sweats. He is so magnetic, he’ll make them faint dead away. He has talent, experience—and, despite his age, he seems to know his way around.”

That’s what my husband said about you, Pietro. Remember?

He was lying. Flaminio would have cast the ideal lover to play the Lover’s part; that was something the Captain would have done. But my husband’s motives were exactly the opposite.

He didn’t want you to be the ideal lover, Pietro. He didn’t want you to be the kind of man I could ever love. He didn’t want that to happen, he couldn’t take that chance.

Of course, you never knew. Telling you seemed like an unnecessary cruelty. I suppose we could have laughed about it later, when I’d fallen in love with you, and proven Francesco wrong. But by then it was already too late. I came to your tent, and couldn’t speak.

I saw Francesco’s true motives, right away. How can I explain? There was something about your physical presence which he thought I’d consider beneath me. Your frame was broad; your body seemed solid, heavy. It wasn’t that you looked like a peasant—how could a street actor have eaten well enough to resemble a peasant?

But there was a strange looseness in your arms and legs; your limbs weren’t sinewy, like Francesco’s. Your skin wasn’t alive with raw nerve endings. And your eyes didn’t burn like his once did. They were calm, clear blue, a little sleepy; there was no fire in them.

That was why Francesco thought I couldn’t love you. Didn’t he realize that I’d been burned in that fire long enough?

I looked at you for a long time, that first day. Idly, I wondered if you were the one who would give me human love. Then, suddenly, as I stared at you, the blood stopped running in my veins.

“Francesco!” I thought. “Not only can’t you see the future—you also cannot see the past!”

For, at that moment, I saw that you were the beggar, Pietro, the same one who’d thrown himself at my parents’ feet so long ago! I recognized your face; it was unmistakable. You were the one who’d demanded all the money in the pouch.

You had already claimed my generous heart.

Right then, I knew that we were witnessing the final act of Flaminio Scala’s clever revenge. The Captain had trained my husband well. He’d taught him how to cast the roles. And, no matter what Francesco did, Flaminio’s spirit was still in control.

Despite himself, Andreini had found the perfect Lover in you, Pietro. You played the part in life, just as you did on stage.

You had already stolen my father’s ducats. Now you had come back for his daughter.

Now do you remember, Pietro? Do you remember that evening when you threw yourself on the ground? Probably not. What difference does it make?

And that’s just what I told myself at the beginning, when I started to play opposite you. “What difference does it make?” I thought. “What does it matter that I met this man before, many years ago?”

When we rehearsed our scenes together, I concentrated on my acting. I tried to regard you as another actor, a talented newcomer, nothing more. I tried not to see you as a likely source of human love. My life would have made that love too complicated; it could never have been the simple thing I desired. And I wanted to keep my life simple. So I kept my distance.

But you know the old story. You’ve seen it, in every one of the plays.

I began to think about you constantly. I thought how much I liked you—you seemed so sensible, so funny, so kind. I began to laugh and joke with you; I began to wonder what it would be like to sleep with you. After awhile, you were always on my mind. When I praised you on stage, I meant every word.

At last, I realized that I’d fallen in love. You’d won my generous heart, you’d charmed my craziness. For the second time, you’d spoken to my natural voice—the voice that shouted and squawked.

A few days later, I discovered I was pregnant.

Wait, Pietro. I see you wincing in your sleep. I know what’s running through your mind. You’re afraid that I’ll say something silly, that I’ll claim the baby was fathered by the power of love. Rest easy. I’m not that kind of woman. I know the simple facts of nature. I couldn’t believe such nonsense.

And yet, I’ve always wondered if perhaps the opposite was true. Was that why none of the The Glorious Ones had ever fathered or conceived a child? None of them had ever really loved, not even Armanda or Columbina; for there was always hate in it. Is that what made them sterile?

And why, after ten years of marriage, using no precautions, should I suddenly conceive Andreini’s child? Why, when he and I had only slept together twice that spring? It was love which opened the doors of my womb, Pietro. What else could explain it?

I mean it metaphorically, of course. Because it couldn’t have been your child. On that day I came to your tent to offer myself, I couldn’t even speak. I was afraid that I’d disgrace myself; I’d ask you, and be rejected. I didn’t believe you loved me, I thought I was imagining those long looks of yours.

Now, looking back, it seems so strange. I was Isabella Andreini, the greatest actress and playwright in all Europe. And you turned me back into a sixteen-year-old girl, with much less nerve than I’d had at sixteen. It was that odd sensation of becoming a virgin again. You know, Pietro: the poets speak of it.

And I know how you did it.

That was the likeness I spoke of before, the tie that bound you, me, and Flaminio. There was something we shared in common: we were the ones with whom everyone fell in love.

And it was all because we were such dreamers. We lived so close to our own imaginations, we’d learned how to reach in and play with other people’s dreams. We made them believe that we loved them; at the very same time, we made them think our love was all in their minds, a fantasy of their own creation. It confused them, made them unsteady, afraid. In that way, we bewitched them, and pulled them into our web. It was the source of much of our power.

Flaminio knew those tricks. He played them on Armanda, on Columbina. No wonder those women loved him so much. I’d learned them long ago, so that I could work my magic on Francesco, on The Glorious Ones, on the King of France himself. And you, Pietro? You did it to me.

Yet we never meant to harm anyone. It wasn’t our fault. For the truth of the matter was that
we
never knew what we really felt, and what was just in our imaginations.

But on that afternoon I visited you in your tent, I knew exactly what I felt. That was why I was so frightened.

That was why I couldn’t speak.

Two days after we reached Lyons, the pains began. Early in the morning I opened my eyes to see the velvet canopy in my bedroom at the king’s palace. Then, I looked down, and saw the bloodstains on the white satin sheets.

“Columbina!” I cried. “Quick! Get help!”

And that was when I knew The Glorious Ones were going to kill me. Columbina moved sluggishly, like an old woman. It took her almost an hour to fetch Francesco from the dining room, where he was breakfasting with the nobles. They entrusted me to the Doctor’s care—Graziano, who knew nothing about medicine! Pantalone quibbled about the pennies needed to buy me infusions, herbs, and leeches. Brighella and Armanda stood outside my room, fighting constantly, sapping my strength with their racket.

And Francesco? Francesco refused to let me see you. So he must have known, he must have noticed how I’d watched you, during those last months.

“No,” he insisted, ignoring all my pleas. “That one will make you worse. He’s as unruly as a child, as clumsy as a bull. He won’t know how to behave at an invalid’s bedside.”

So I lay there, praying to Mary. I thought that, as a woman, she would understand. “Please,” I begged her. “Let me get well. Let me get well so that I can go to Pietro and tell him. Don’t let me die, so he’ll never know.”