Casanova in Bolzano (25 page)

“It is certainly not running away in the snow,” the woman answered without raising her voice. “Nor is it all fever and fret nor big words nor even the situation in which we find ourselves now, you dressed as a woman, I as a man, both masked, in the room of an inn, like a pair of characters in an opera. None of this is life. I will tell you what life is. I have given it a great deal of thought. Because it was not only you who was locked in a prison where powerful, jealous hands deposited you, Giacomo; I have been in prison as long as you have, even if my bed was not made of straw. Life, my dear, is a whole. Life is when a man and woman meet because they suit each other, because what they have in common is what the rain has in common with the sea, the one always rising from and falling back into the other, each creating each, one as a condition of the other. Out of this wholeness something emerges, some harmony, and that harmony is life. It is very rare among people. You flee from people because you believe you have other business in the world. I seek wholeness because I know I have no other business in the world. That’s why I came. As I said, it took some time for me to be certain of that. Now I know. I also know that there is nothing perfect you can do in this world without me, that you cannot even practice your art, as you call it, for, without me, true and perfect seduction lies beyond you: the experience, the excitement, the thrill of the chase requires me; even the charm you exert over other women is imperfect without me. Why are you standing so stiffly there, Giacomo, with the poker and bellows in your hand, as if someone had hit you and you had tried to stand up too quickly? . . . Have you realized something? I am life, my love, the only woman offering you a whole life: you are incomplete without me, incomplete as a man, incomplete as an artist, as a gambler, and as a traveler, just as, without you, I am an incomplete woman, no more than a shadow among shadows. Do you understand now? . . . Because I do. If I were complete I would not have left the duke of Parma, who loves me and offers me everything the world has to offer: power, pomp, ambition, and meaning, and I am not betraying a confidence or stating something improper, believe me, when I say that it was he who introduced me to the sad, solemn faces of love and desire, because love has a thousand faces and the duke of Parma wears one of them. He is in his palazzo at this very moment, wearing an ass’s head because our love has hurt him and he is mortally sick with sadness. But he knows he has no choice, which is why he tolerates me being here with you at such an hour and why he wears the ass’s head so proudly. But the knowledge doesn’t help him nor does the fancy dress nor the agreement: nothing helps him. He has lived by violence and he will die in vanity. There is nothing I can do for him. But for you, I would never have left him, because I, too, had an agreement with him, and I was brought up to honor my agreements. I am a Tuscan, Giacomo,” said the mask, and the figure wearing it straightened a little.

“I know, my dear,” said the man, the poker in his hand, and it was as if his voice were smiling. “You are the second person to say that to me in this room today.”

“Really?” asked Francesca, drawing out the vowel in an almost musical manner, like an amazed, well-behaved schoolgirl. “Well yes, you have had a lot of visitors recently. But that’s how it was and always will be with you, you will always be surrounded by people, both men and women. I shall get used to it, my dear. . . . It won’t be easy but I shall get used to it.”

“When, Francesca?” the man asked. “When do you want to get used to it? Tonight? . . . I won’t be receiving any more visitors tonight.”

“Tonight?” the woman asked in the same calm, childlike voice as before. “No, later, during the rest of my life.”

“In the life that we shall spend together?”

“Perhaps, my love. Is that not the way you pictured it?”

“I don’t know, Francesca,” said the man and sat down opposite her, leaning back in the armchair, crossing his legs under his skirt, and crossing his arms under his false bosom. “That goes against the agreement.”

“That agreement was verbal,” the woman calmly replied, “but the other agreement, the one between us, is wordless and implicit. You will always have people around you, both men and women and that, you will not be surprised to know, will be neither particularly desirable nor pleasant from my point of view, nevertheless I shall bear it,” she said a little wearily and gave a short sigh.

“And when,” asked the man in a most respectful, matter-of-fact and reassuring manner, as though he were speaking to a child or some mad person it was unsafe to contradict, “when do you think, Francesca, that we will embark on this life? . . .”

“But we have already embarked on it, my love,” the woman answered brightly. “We embarked on it the moment I wrote the letter and when the duke of Parma passed my message to you, at which point I put on these man’s clothes. Now you are talking to me as people tend to talk to children or to lunatics. But I am neither of those, my love. I am a woman, albeit in man’s clothes and in a mask, a woman who is absolutely certain she knows something and therefore acts. You are silent? . . . Your silence indicates that you wish to know what it is I know with such certainty, with such ridiculous, lunatic, deathly certainty? . . . Only that however many people surround you—men, women, probably more women—and however that is likely to hurt me, we belong to each other. My life is linked to yours, Giacomo, as yours is linked to mine. That is what I know and what the duke of Parma knows as well as I do. That is why he brought the letter, and that is why he is in his palace now with his ass’s head, tolerating my presence here. That is why he hurried to make an agreement with you, and that is why you, too, Giacomo, hurried to make an agreement with him, because the agreement saves you from me, because you fear me as a man fears life, a whole life, the life that lies in wait for him . . . and everyone is a little frightened of that. I am no longer frightened,” she pronounced aloud.

“And what sort of life will we have? . . .” asked the man.

“It will be neither happy nor solemn. It will not be a lucky life. There are people with perfect pitch, who can hear intervals and harmonies and recognize wholeness. You are not such a man. I know I shall be alone a good deal, and that I will seem lonely to the rest of the world, because you will often leave me. I will not be happy in the billing-and-cooing sense of the word, which is what other people mean and desire, but my life will have meaning and content, perhaps all too heavy and painful a content. I know everything, Giacomo, because I love you. I have the strength of a wrestler because I love you. I shall be as wise as the Pope because I love you. I shall be a literary scholar and an expert gambler for your sake; I am learning even now how to mark the king and the ace without others observing me. I have had packs of cards and wax brought over from Naples. We shall prepare the cards together, you and I, before you go out to take on the rabble and scum of the world, and I shall wait for you at home while you cheat them and return in the morning or maybe only on the third day. And we shall spend this money, we shall let the world take it back, because we don’t need a fortune, because you never hold on to money, because that is your nature. I shall be the most beautiful woman in Paris, Giacomo, and you will see what a conquest I shall make of the chief of police when I dine alone with him: and no harm will come to you, for I shall guarantee you greater safety than the duke of Parma’s commendatory letter: every glint of my eye, every breath I take will be there to protect you, to see that no harm comes to you. Should some evil woman give you the pox, I will nurse you, rubbing your limbs with lotions, making you soup out of herbs for your convalescence. I shall be as devious as the spies of the Inquisition; I shall sleep with the doge and intercede on your behalf so he allows you to return home, so that you may see Nonna and Signor Bragadin again, or, if you like, the pretty nun for whom you rented a palazzo in Murano. I will learn to cook sensibly, my love, indeed have learned that already, and I know that you should not eat spicy food because it makes your nose bleed; I can make soups that will cure your headache, and I will go to the women that wink at you and flirt with you and act as your bawd so you should enjoy a free night with the famous Julia for whom the duke of Norfolk paid one hundred thousand gold pieces, and who was so cruel to you at the last Carnival in Venice. I have learned to knit, to wash, and to iron, because there will be times in our lives when we will have no money, when moneylenders’ agents will scamper after us and we will have to stay at worse inns than The Stag. But I will take care that you will always have clean, ironed shirts with decent frills to wear in public, my love, even if we haven’t eaten anything but dry fish cooked in oil for four days. I shall be so beautiful, Giacomo, that sometimes, when we have money, and you shower me with velvet and silk and jewels, and you take a box at the opera in London, everyone will look at me rather than the performance, and you will sit beside me, cold and indifferent, as we gaze over the audience, because I won’t have eyes for anyone but you on such occasions, and everyone will know that the most beautiful of women is yours, only yours. And this will suit you, because you are vain, inordinately vain, and everyone will know that your victory is complete, that I am the duchess of Parma who has left her husband with all his stately homes, to live with you; that I have thrown away my jewels and lands so that I may share a bed with you; that I accompany you as you flee across the highways of the world and sleep with you in damp and filthy hovels and never cast a longing look on another man, except only when you ask me to. Because you can do anything with me, Giacomo. You could sell me to our cousin Louis and his harem at Versailles, you could sell me by the pound and know that when strange men melt in my arms like lead in the fire, I remain yours alone. You could forbid me to even glance at another man, you could disfigure me, you could cut off my hair, brand my breast with a hot poker, infect me with the pox, and ruin my skin, but those would be the least of my worries, for you would soon see that I will still be beautiful for you, because I would find medication, brew potions, grow new skin and new hair, just in case you should sometime later desire me and want me to be attractive for you. I want you to know that all this is possible because I love you. I will be the most modest of women, my love, if that is what you want. I will live alone in our apartment: you can brick up the windows if you like. I would even go to mass only if you permitted it, accompanied by your servants. I would spend the whole day indoors in the rooms you marked out as my prison, caring for myself, getting dressed, and waiting for you. And I would be waited on only by women of your choosing, blind and dumb women, if you want. But if you wanted other men’s desires to spice up your own I would be flirtatious and depraved. If you wanted to humiliate me, Giacomo, you should know that there would be no humiliation I would not undergo for you, because I love you. If you felt you had to torture me you could strap me to a table and beat me with barbed whips, and I would scream and see my blood flow, all the while thinking of fresh means of torture to bring you greater and truer joy. If you wanted me to rule you, I would be ruthless and unfeeling, as I read some women are, in the books that the duke of Parma brought back from Amsterdam. I know such extraordinary secrets, Giacomo, that there is not a woman in the brothels of Venice who knows more than I do about tenderness, torture, the yearnings of the body and the spirit, love potions, small clothes, lighting, scents, caresses, and abstinence. If you wanted me to be vulgar I know such words in Italian, French, German, and English as make me blush sometimes when I am alone and think of them: I learned these words for you, and would whisper them only to you, if you wished. There is not a slave in the harems of the east, my love, who knows more about the pleasures of the flesh than I do. I have studied the body and know all its desires, even the most secret ones about which men think only on their death beds, when everything is all the same to them, and the scent of sulphur hovers about them. I have learned all this because I love you. Is that enough? . . .”

“It’s not enough,” the man replied.

“Not enough,” the woman repeated. “Well, naturally it’s not enough. I just wanted to tell you so you knew. . . . But do not believe that I for an instant hoped that it would be enough, that this would be all. These are just means, my love, I know too well, melancholy means. I have simply catalogued and enumerated them because I want you to know that there is nothing you could want from me that I would not give or hesitate to grant. You are right: it is not enough. Because love has two arenas, two theaters of war, where the great two-hander is played out, and both are infinite: the bed and the world. And we must live in the world, too. It is not enough to accommodate myself to everything you desire, everything your whims might demand of me, no, I have to discover what makes you happy and provide it. I have to find out what it is that you desire but cannot confess, even to yourself, not even on your deathbed when everything is all the same to you: I have to find out and tell you so that you know, that you should see what the good is, so that you can be happy at last. And because you are the unhappiest of men, my love, and I can’t bear your unhappiness, I have to name the thing you desire . . . though that is not enough, either, that is too little, too crude, and it would show poor skill on my part, because, should you doubt it, I, too, have my art, even if it is not quite as highly esteemed and complex as yours. What is my art? . . . Nothing more than my love of you. That is why I shall be strong and wise, modest and lewd, patient and lonely, wild and disciplined. It is because I love you. I have to find out why it is you run from deep feeling and from true happiness, and once I know why I must pass that sad knowledge on to you, but not in words, not by telling you, because such knowledge is terrifying and would not save you . . . words, however precise, can only name and catalogue the discoveries of mankind, but they solve nothing, as you, being a writer, will most certainly know. No, I must be tender, watching and waiting for ways in which to tell you the secret without words, to let you know what hurts you and what you desire, what you are not bold enough to admit: because it is cowardice and ignorance that are behind all unhappiness, as you must certainly know, being a writer. And so I must find out why you are afraid of happiness, which is not merely the touch of two hands, which is neither cradle nor coffin, but wholeness, a wholeness requiring something solemn, almost severe in our composition, the wholeness which is life and truth. I have to find out what it is you desire so badly you dare not admit it to yourself and then I have to keep that secret from you, because my words would only hurt you, and you, in your vanity, would protest and run away, cursing and denying: that is why I must stay silent, keeping the secret in my heart. And I must live so that, even without words, you should know and understand why everything is as it is, why you suffer loneliness, boredom, restlessness, yearning; why the gambling, why the orgies, why you have no home, why your art developed as it did, why all those women, why you are a seducer: and once you know all this through me, without my telling you, you will see that suddenly everything will be easier and better. You alone will be entitled to pronounce the secret. I can do nothing but wait, watch, learn, and then, silently, with my whole being, my life, my body, my silence, my kisses, and my actions pass the secret knowledge on to you. That is what I must do, because I love you. And that is why you are afraid of life and of wholeness, because there is nothing we fear so much, not the rack, not the gallows, as ourselves and the secrets we dare not face. And will all be well after that, my love? . . . I don’t know. But everything will be simpler then, much simpler. We will move across our two stages, the bed and the world, as accomplices, people who know everything about each other and everything about our audience, too. There will be no more stage fright, Giacomo. Because love is togetherness and harmony, not fever and fret, nor tears and screams: it is a most solemn harmony, the firmest of unions. And I undertake that union, even unto death. What will happen? . . . I have no plans, Giacomo. I am not saying, ‘Here I am, I am yours, take me with you,’ because those are only meaningless words. But you should know that even if you do not take me with you, I shall wait for you forever, secretly, until you think of me one day and your heart melts and you turn to me. I don’t need to make vows or promises, because I know reality, and that reality is that you are truly mine. You can leave me, as you did once before, taking to your heels like a coward, though it wasn’t the duke of Parma you fled from but the terrifying power of true feeling, the recognition that I was truly yours. You did not know as much in words, nor in your thoughts, but you knew it in your heart and in your body and that is why you fled. And escape was pointless because here we are again, face-to-face with each other waiting for the moment when we can remove our masks and see each other as we really are. Because we are still only masked figures, my love, and there are many more masks between us, each of which must, one by one, be discarded, before we can finally know each other’s true, naked faces. Don’t hurry, there is no rush, no need to grope for the mask you are wearing or to throw it away. It is no accident that we are wearing masks, meeting, as we do, after a long time, when both of us have escaped our prisons to face each other: we needn’t hurry to throw away our masks, because we will only find other masks beneath them, masks made of flesh and bone and yet as much a mask as these, made of silk. There are so many masks we have to discard before I can get to see and recognize your face. But I know that somewhere, far, far away, the other face exists and that one day I must see it, because I love you. Once, many years ago, you gave me a mirror, Giacomo, a present from Venice. A mirror was, of course, the only possible gift, a Venetian mirror, which is reputed to show people their true faces. You brought me a mirror in a silver frame, and a comb, a silver-handled comb. That is what you gave me. It was the best of presents, my dear. Years have passed, and every day I hold the mirror and comb in my hand, adjusting my hair, looking at my face as you imagined and wanted me to, when you gave me a mirror as a present. Because mirrors are enchantments—did you know that, you, a citizen of Venice, where the finest mirrors are produced? We have to look into mirrors for a long time, regularly, for a very long time, before we can see our true faces. A mirror is not just a smooth silver surface, no, a mirror is deep, too, like tarns on mountains, and if you look carefully into a Venetian mirror you will catch a glimpse of that depth, and will go on to detect ever deeper and deeper depths, the face glimmering ever farther off, and every day a mask falls away, one more of the masks that is examining itself in the mirror that was a gift your lover bought you from Venice. You should never give a woman you love a mirror as a present, because women eventually come to know themselves in mirrors, seeing ever more clearly, growing ever more melancholy. It was in a mirror, at some time, in some place, that the first act of recognition occurred, the point when man stared into the ocean, saw his face in its infinity, grew anxious, and began to ask, ‘Who is that? . . .’ The mirror you brought for me from Venice, a mirror no bigger than my palm, showed me my real face, and one day I saw that this face, my face, the face I thought was familiar and was mine, was only a mask, far finer than silk, and behind it lay another face that looked like yours. I am grateful to the mirror for that. . . . And that is why I am not making promises, vowing no vows, not demanding anything, however madly my heart is beating at this very moment, because I recognized my face and I know that it resembles yours, and that you are truly mine. Is that enough? . . .”