And I suppose that is the way with great geniuses like myself—sometimes, we can predict the future, we can speak the truth without even being aware of it.
For it was not until much later that I realized: Flaminio was indeed terrified of Isabella. In fact, it was not until I, Dottore Graziano, the most rational and logical man on earth, had begun to stand somewhat in awe of her myself.
It happened slowly, I can assure you. Men like myself are not so easily led astray from the path of reason. Nevertheless, it happened.
Gradually, very gradually, I began to develop a peculiar attachment to my melancholy young patient. Often, I found myself cogitating about her. At night, when she’d depart for Andreini’s tent, I found myself wondering what he did in bed with that sad girl.
In the beginning, when she had sat in my tent, I’d hardly paid attention to her; I’d viewed her as another patient, whose case was only slightly more interesting than that of the typical melancholiac. But gradually, I found myself becoming constantly aware of her presence, examining her frequently, wondering what she was thinking about when she stared so longingly at the distant moon.
As you know, I am more than a doctor—I am also an eminent man of advanced and respectable age. Despite the foolish, scorned, cuckolded clown which I occasionally play on stage, Dottore Graziano is in fact not the sort of man who falls in love with eighteen-year-old girls.
Certainly, I might have grown quite confused about my odd fascination with Isabella, had I not been able to diagnose my problem at once: I was not stricken with love, but with an attack of lust. It was the sort of thing which often overtakes men of my years, particularly older doctors with beautiful and helpless young patients.
So I knew what I must do. “Physician,” I decided, “heal thyself.” And I knew that the only efficacious remedy would be the satiation of my desire.
I did what I knew best. Slowly, subtly, I began to dose Isabella with small amounts of the same aphrodisiacs I had given Flaminio Scala. I fed them to her with her other medicines, so that she would not notice. And I waited patiently for them to take effect.
Six months later, on the trip home from our triumph in France, I at last decided that my potions must have had sufficient time to do their amorous work. Besides, the company was so joyous then, so wealthy, so certain of success that I suspected that their gaiety might even have affected Isabella.
And so, one night, as we camped just west of the Italian border, I resolved to press my advantage.
Isabella was sitting silently in my tent, staring out the opening in the canvas at the dark sky. In short, everything was just as usual. But, on that night, I began to fancy that she too was stealing sidelong glances in my direction.
So I went and sat very close to her on the narrow bed.
“Isabella,” I said, gently taking her hand, “I have something to discuss with you.”
She nodded, without moving away; for, as her physician, I often touched her in that affectionate, solicitous way.
On that evening, however, I went beyond the bounds of professional care, and began to run my fingers up the inside of her arm. “Isabella,” I said, in my most seductive tone, “has anyone ever told you that you are a beautiful girl?”
As she turned to look at me, there was no expression on her face. Or, more precisely, there was that vague, distant expression, as if she were staring straight through me at the moon.
“My dear,” I continued, “from the first moment I saw you, I knew that you were a
real
woman.”
Isabella kept on staring, in such a way that, if I had not had utmost confidence in the power of my medications, I might have been discouraged from continuing. But I was unshakeable in my faith.
“The only thing that troubles me, my sweet,” I went on, moving my hand up to that soft hollow at the base of her neck, “is the fact that you always seem to be so sad. As your doctor and your friend, I have begun to think that there is only one thing which might really restore you to health and happiness.
“Yes, Isabella, it is just as we play it on stage. It is my final medical judgment that only the power of love can awaken the joyous young girl who lives in secret, deep within your soul. And, as your physician and your admirer, I am prepared, this very evening, to volunteer my own body for the performance of that necessary yet pleasant task.”
For a long while, Isabella gazed at me so blankly that I wondered if she had heard, or understood. Then, all of a sudden, she began to laugh.
Even now, the memory of it pains me like an attack of acute gastric distress. But, in the interests of science and history, I feel I must describe Isabella’s laughter.
It was rich and full. It filled the tent, and seemed to make the canvas walls bend and sway. It was not a hysterical laugh; I, as a doctor, could most certainly recognize the fact that it was not a hysterical laugh. Still, it did not stop for almost five minutes.
Then, Isabella spoke. Not in the flat, melancholy tone she had used during those long months under my care but, rather, in the bright, confident voice of a healthy young woman.
“Doctor,” she said, sputtering and choking with laughter, “I would have to be
crazy
to sleep with you!” And she began to giggle again.
For several moments, I sat there, gasping with amazement, unable to move. Then, I jumped up, grabbed Isabella by the hand, and dragged her out of my tent.
I shouted at the top of my lungs, until all the other actors were awake, and had gathered in the courtyard between the tents.
“Ladies and gentlemen of The Glorious Ones!” I cried. “I, Dottore Graziano, physician and surgeon, graduate of fifteen universities etcetera etcetera, have effected a most miraculous cure. Isabella Andreini is sane again, as sane as the sanest of you. It is all due to my medicine, to my marvelous command of the science of pharmacology and toxology.
“And now, we have no more need of this woman. The play of the Moon Woman is done, finished, it can no longer be the same. And we need no longer have Isabella in our troupe.”
But gradually, I noticed that none of them were looking at me. They were all staring at Isabella, who was smiling sweetly, bowing, greeting each one of them in turn.
“Beloved friends,” she said, in a voice so musical and yet so commanding that it brought tears to their eyes. “The play of the Moon Woman is indeed over. We have taken it as far as we can. Tomorrow morning, we will begin rehearsing a new drama, which I have just finished writing.”
The thespians were smiling as blissfully as if an angel had come down and kissed them on their foreheads. I stood on the sidelines, clenching and unclenching my fists, unable to forget how she had laughed at me in my tent.
But, after the others had gone back to their beds, Isabella leaned towards me and whispered something in my ear which made all that old desire return. Despite myself, Isabella had reclaimed her place in my heart. I knew I could never be her lover; but, at that moment, I felt myself becoming her servant.
“Dottore,” she whispered. “You were absolutely right. It was indeed the power of your love which restored me.”
The tone of her voice confused me. Even I, with all my knowledge of medicine, philosophy, and logic, even I, with all my degrees and certificates, even I was thoroughly confused. Because, to this very day, I have never been able to tell whether or not she was serious.
“S
HE’S NOT CRAZY,” I SAID
to myself, the first time I saw Isabella Andreini. “She’s driving all the others crazy.
They’re
the ones who are crazy!”
God, what a sight: five full-grown men, dancing around her in a frenzy, like chickens with their heads cut off. That’s what they looked like to me: decapitated chicken carcasses, twitching in the death throes.
Ugh. I couldn’t stand it. So I looked at Isabella instead. And, as I watched her, standing there, squawking like a duck, I saw something in her eyes. It was a certain look, which only another woman could know. And it was not the look of a crazy person.
“Nice work,” I thought, “for such a young girl. She’s crazy, like a fox is crazy.”
A moment later, something else crossed my mind, but I caught myself. “Columbina,” I muttered, “you may be clever, but your heart’s as stupid as always.”
Because my second thought had been for Flaminio.
So I liked Isabella from the very first day. But it was a long time before I got to know her. It wasn’t until she’d stopped doing that spooky moon girl routine, until she’d started acting like a normal person. It wasn’t until she’d changed her stage part from that of the Moon Woman to that of Isabella, the smart little virgin, out of her mind with love.
Frankly, I envied her those changes.
I
played the same part I’d always played—Columbina, the shrewd servant, the gossip, the expert on sex, the know-it-all. After twenty years of it, I was bored to death, I was ready to quit.
But after awhile, I stopped envying Isabella, and began to feel a little grateful. For she made my Columbina a whole different role.
Playing opposite Vittoria, I’d always sunk straight to my lowest level. On stage with her, I repeated the same stale, stupid jokes I’d traded with the whores at Parma. I became one of those women again, squatting in the street, gossiping, arching huge gobs of spit into the gutter.
Yet with Isabella, it was different. At the age of fifty-five I was light on my feet again, like a dancer. Our scenes together were magical. I waltzed across the stage, counseling Isabella, bantering with her, slandering the ugly old suitors, devising brilliant schemes for her secret meetings with Francesco. The ways I found to insult the Captain, Pantalone, and the Doctor were inspired, positively inspired. I’d never been in better form, not since my salad days in Parma, when I was courted by all those handsome boys who loved me for my wit.
So I thought Isabella and I would be friends, right away. But it wasn’t so simple.
Now, knowing Isabella so well, it seems incredible to me, our first real conversation.
It was late, after a performance. Though we’d been playing together for months, we’d never talked about anything except the scenes, the action, the dialogue. But on that night, when I went to her tent to return a pair of bootlaces, I found her sitting there alone, scribbling in a little book. I knew that the time had come to speak my mind, one woman to another. I knew I should begin treating her like a real person, with a real heart, and a real life, offstage.
“The time has come to ask her,” I said to myself. “How did you do it?” I wanted to know. “How did you pretend to be so crazy for so long? How could you fool the man you slept with every night? Where did you learn to act like that?”
But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Maybe you think she had me intimidated, like those quivering men. But listen: there wasn’t a man, woman, or child alive who could intimidate Columbina Barzetti, at the age of fifty-five. So maybe it was this:
As I stood there, watching her scribble in that little book, I began to feel that I was in the presence of a lady. I almost curtsied, that’s how she made me feel. And it made me polite.
So I wound up playing the same stupid game as the others.
“Tell me, Isabella,” were the first words out of my mouth, “what made you get better? I mean, why did you recover from that terrible black mood?”
Isabella stared at me, as if I were talking Chinese. She watched me with those clear, no-nonsense blue eyes. She didn’t even blink. Then, she smiled.
“I owe it all to the healing power of Doctor Graziano’s love,” she said.
My mouth dropped open, I stared back at her, like an idiot. I thought about Graziano—picturing him in my mind—those watery eyes, that alcoholic cherry-nose, that fat paunch, those rotten brown teeth, that bad breath…I burst out laughing.
Isabella began to laugh too, holding her stomach and rocking back and forth in her chair. At last, she stopped, and we looked at each other.
She knew that I knew the truth. There was an understanding between us. I forgot that feeling I’d had before, that I was in the presence of a lady.
And we finally became friends.
But still, it wasn’t like it was on stage. Not once did Isabella dance around my tent, shrieking out her love for Francesco, comparing his eyes to the stars, his hair to cornsilk, his muscles to the sinews of an ox. Not that I wanted to watch such a sickening display, in real life. But sometimes, I couldn’t help wondering why Isabella never even mentioned Francesco, why she never confided the secrets of her heart.
Yet perhaps, in those days, Isabella simply couldn’t get a word in edgewise. For it was I, Columbina the blabbermouth, who did most of the talking. Because there were certain things Isabella wanted to learn from me, things about the troupe, the past, the old days. Isabella was pumping me, and I loved it: Columbina the gossip’s fondest dream.
“There’s something fishy,” I said to myself, when she started coming to my tent, day after day, pestering me for old news. “Obviously, Andreini’s told her all this. Why does she need to hear it from me?”
It took me awhile to understand: Andreini was teaching her the history, as if it were the synopsis of a play. But it wasn’t enough. What she wanted was the dirt, the dreams, the gossip, the kind of things only women know. And that was why she came to me.
So I told her what she wanted to know. At first, I hesitated, still a little polite, keeping to the ones who no longer acted with The Glorious Ones. Gradually, though, my tongue got looser. I began to talk about Flaminio and his puppy-dog, Armanda. I told her about Flaminio and Vittoria, about Vittoria and Pantalone. It was hard, telling that part, and never mentioning Francesco. But I didn’t want to, I was too shrewd. I didn’t want to cross that hard-nosed Andreini by challenging his side of the story. So I let her learn about him herself.
It wasn’t until much later, of course, that she finally came right out and asked about my own story. By then, my tongue was so loose, I was ready to tell her.
“Bring a bottle of wine to my tent tomorrow night,” I said, “and we’ll see what I can remember.”