Casanova's Women (19 page)

Casanova appeared to fall into the latter category. Though the fifteen-year-old was revolted by his coarseness towards her and her adopted sisters, her feelings were complicated by the fact that she was secretly attracted to him. However, his crude behaviour with the Greek slave girl on board the Turkish vessel was the final straw for her. Unaware that Giacomo and the slave had encountered each other months before in Ancona's lazaretto where, locked up on separate floors of the building, they had attempted to have sex through a large hole in a balcony floor, Teresa decided to teach him a lesson. At a supper party laid on that night by Sancho Pico, she appeared as she did on stage: as a castrato disguised as a woman. Casanova was set on fire by her feminine beauty. He could not rest until he had discovered Bellino's secret. In his opinion the singer had obviously set out to arouse and confuse him, and he now demanded that he satisfy his curiosity. When Bellino refused to expose his genitals, Casanova held him down and forced up his skirt. One quick glance was enough to enlighten and shock him:
for, perhaps anticipating that this would happen, Teresa had glued on her false penis. ‘Astonished, angry, mortified, disgusted, I let him go,' Casanova wrote. ‘I'd seen that Bellino was a real man; but a man to be despised as much for his degradation as for the shameful calm which I had observed in him at a moment when I should have seen proof of his emotions.'
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The following morning, still furious at having mistaken the singer's sex, Casanova left Ancona for Venice. Since he had already promised to take the castrato as far as Rimini, where his next theatrical engagement was, he did not renege on this, so Bellino/Teresa accompanied him on the journey north while the rest of the family followed on. Teresa had perhaps supposed herself safe from Casanova's prurient interest now that he had glimpsed her genitals, but she was wrong. He still ‘could not look into (her) eyes without burning with desire'
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and as soon as the carriage left Ancona he began a long, vicious tirade against her in the hope that it would shame Bellino into letting him touch with his hands the evidence he had seen:

I told him that since his eyes were those of a woman and not a man, I needed to convince myself by touch that what I had seen when he had run away was not a monstrous clitoris ... I no longer care to see it; I only ask to touch it, and you can be sure that, as soon as I am certain, I'll become as gentle as a dove, for as soon as I've acknowledged that you're a man it will be impossible for me to carry on loving you … If it turns out that you truly are a castrato, permit me to believe that, knowing you perfectly resemble a woman, you have hatched a cruel plan to make me fall in love with you in order to drive me mad by refusing me that proof which can alone restore my sanity … You must also be aware that your obstinate refusal to give me the clarification that I ask you for forces me to despise you as a castrato. The importance you attach to the thing is puerile and malicious ... If you have a human soul you cannot persist in this refusal… . With my mind in such a state you must finally realise that I
must resolve to use force, for if you are my enemy I must treat you brutally as such … What has infuriated me is the display you have made of your charms, the effect of which, you must understand, you cannot ignore. You did not dread my amorous fury then, and do you expect me to believe that you fear it now, when all I ask of you is to let me touch an object which can only disgust me?
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This was Casanova at his most manipulative. Years of being indulged by his grandmother had led him to believe that he could get what he wanted at the instant he wanted it, and his bullying threats and guilt-provoking arguments in the carriage reduced the young impostor to tears. Still she would not give in to him. He was not her master, Bellino/Teresa reminded him, in fact she – or rather he – was travelling with Casanova on the strength of a promise he had made that he would leave him alone. If he persisted in persecuting him, Bellino would get out of the carriage and walk all the way to Rimini. Bellino assured Casanova that, had ‘he' been a woman, he would have loved him in return, but since he was a man he would not give in to his demands, ‘for your passion, which is now only natural, would all of a sudden become monstrous'. Casanova might perpetrate a brutal act of anal rape, or even murder ‘if I stopped you from penetrating an inviolable temple, whose gate wise Nature only made to open outwards'.
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By late afternoon Casanova had been shamed into submission. But his relentless onslaught had finally worn down the girl. When they reached the city of Senigallia, where they were to spend the night at an inn, Bellino/Teresa suddenly capitulated and offered to share his bed that night. The outcome was predictably passionate. Overjoyed to get his way – and hugely relieved to find out, once they were in bed, that the beautiful castrato he so desired was indeed a woman – the angry bully of the last few days instantly metamorphosed into a tender, thoughtful lover and confidant; Casanova at his best. He listened to Teresa's life story attentively, then asked her to show him how she glued on her catgut
penis. As the contraption ‘offered no obstruction to the well of her sex'
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it made Teresa even more sexually alluring to him, but their attempts to make love whilst she was wearing it were hopelessly comical.

During the course of that night Casanova fell deeply in love with Teresa. Donna Lucrezia, the great love he had parted from a matter of weeks ago in Rome, was now forgotten in favour of the fifteen-year-old singer. The following morning he impulsively asked Teresa to marry him. A civil ceremony could only increase their feelings and respect for one another, he reasoned to himself. It would also be necessary for them to marry if they were to be accepted by good society, and although he had been thrown off his original course of a clerical career in Martirano and Rome, he was still hungry for professional success and the approbation of his social superiors.

No sooner had he popped the question, however, than Casanova began to have misgivings. Did he really want to marry at such a young age, or indeed to marry Teresa? Her talent would ensure that they ‘would never lack the necessaries of life'
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but the idea that he had no job and might have to live off her terrified him. He decided to give her a starkly honest analysis of his position in life to test her out. Contrary to appearances he was not a rich man, he confessed. All he owned was ‘youth, health, courage, a modicum of intelligence, a sense of honour and integrity, and a few attempts at a literary career. My great treasure is that I am my own master, that I am not dependent on anyone, and that I am not frightened of misfortunes. My nature tends towards being a wastrel. That's your man.'
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Casanova was perhaps hoping to discourage Teresa, but instead his confession that she had not been the only one perpetrating a deception came as a relief to her. She was glad that Casanova had neither money nor rank because it put them on a more equal footing. She would travel with him anywhere he wished, she swore, and would marry him if he wished to have legal rights over her, although she assured him that the marriage ceremony would make her love him no more than she already did – a surprisingly emancipated attitude. Teresa would also give him a present which,
if he loved her, he would not be too proud to accept: the present was to be herself. She was all his, and from now on she would take care of him. ‘Hereafter think only of loving me; but only me,'
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she pleaded.

Her last words sounded the death knell of their love affair. Although Casanova swore he would marry Teresa in Bologna ‘day after tomorrow, at the latest' he must already have been looking for a way out of what he could only see as a claustrophobic relationship that would limit his future prospects. In truth he had no intention of getting married, certainly not at this stage in his life. Marriage was ‘the tomb of love' in his opinion and, as he said of the institution, just months later, ‘I hope never to find myself compelled to contract that tie.'
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But how was he to renege on his promise without dishonouring himself in his own eyes as well as in Teresa's? The answer was as simple as it was devious: he mislaid his passport.

In eighteenth-century Europe, as in modern times, passports – quite literally documents which allowed the bearer to ‘pass through a port' – had to be carried on most long-distance journeys, and travellers lost them at their peril. For identification purposes they contained a detailed description of the bearer. ‘It is commanded to safely and freely let pass: Jacques Cazanua Italian thirty-two years old, five foot ten and a half inches tall or Thereabouts Face long, plain Swarthy. Heavy long nose. Large mouth. Brown, highly intelligent eyes. Who is going to Flanders' read the passport issued to Casanova by the Due de Gesvres in Paris in 1757.
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Usually issued by government ministers, the military, or the Church or city authorities, such documents were essential when travelling through disputed territories such as central Italy, where the Austrians and Spanish were still battling over their possessions. When he set off from Senigallia with Teresa, Casanova placed his passport safely with his other papers, or so he claimed. Just four hours later, when a non-commissioned officer of the Spanish Army stationed in Pesaro asked to inspect it, he found that it had mysteriously disappeared.

Casanova was instantly arrested and told that he could go
nowhere until he obtained a replacement passport from Rome. Until then, he was to be imprisoned in a Spanish guard house on the edge of Pesaro while Teresa was allowed to walk free. She was distraught at the thought of parting from him. ‘She wanted to stay in Pesaro,' he later wrote, adding tellingly, ‘but I would not allow it.'
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Instead, he had his trunk untied from their carriage, gave Teresa a generous one hundred sequins and sent her on to Rimini alone.

Having glimpsed a more secure existence free from deception, Teresa could no longer carry on living as a castrato. The moment she reached Rimini she confided her secret to the impresario who had hired her as ‘Bellino'. The impresario congratulated her on her brave decision. Luckily for her Rimini fell within the ecclesiastical province of Ravenna, where the bar against female singers was no longer in force, so Teresa could legally perform as a woman. She was an immediate success, and not only with the audiences: by the time Casanova turned up ten days later, she already had a new male admirer in tow: an Austrian, Baron Weiss.

Casanova kept his promise to meet up with Teresa in Rimini, but by his hot-headed behaviour he ensured that he could only stay with her for one night. Although his time in captivity in Pesaro had been boring rather than unpleasant – he had whiled away the long hours playing faro and piquet with the soldiers – he impulsively escaped on a stolen horse before his passport arrived, and turned up in Rimini on the run, disguised as a muleteer. After spending only a few passionate hours with Teresa, he fled at dawn, promising that he would meet up with her again in Bologna in May and marry her then.

We shall never know if he intended to keep his promise. For within weeks of her debut as a female performer, Teresa was introduced to fifty-six-year-old Francesco d'Eboli, the Duke of Castropignano and Captain General of the Spanish Army in Naples. Castropignano instantly fell in love with her, and offered her a lucrative contract at the San Carlo theatre in Naples. Built in 1737, the magnificent San Carlo with its blue and gold décor was
regarded as one of the most prestigious opera houses in the world, and to be offered a year's contract there was a fabulous opportunity for any singer. Nevertheless, Teresa hesitated to accept it until she had consulted Casanova by sending him two letters. The first told him of her good luck, and contained the unsigned contract for the San Carlo theatre. The second contained a pledge to serve him all her life. ‘She said that if I wanted to go to Naples with her she would meet up with me wherever I wished,' he reported, ‘and that if I felt an aversion to returning to Naples I must disregard her good luck, and be certain that she could conceive of no fortune and no happiness other than to do everything within her power to make me content and happy'
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– an impossible task, had she but known it.

By putting her fate into Casanova's hands, Teresa reduced him to a state of the ‘greatest irresolution' in which his genuine feelings for her battled against his own needs and pride. It was a defining moment for him. He neither wanted to lose his latest passion nor to stand in the way of her success, yet he was not prepared to follow her to Naples without having first made his own mark in the world. Like his own mother Zanetta, Teresa was in the theatrical profession, a despised lower-class milieu which Casanova had always tried to distance himself from. And, like Zanetta, Teresa would soon be surrounded by male admirers – in fact, she had already had two in tow, Weiss and the powerful duke. Casanova knew he could never cope with competition from other, richer admirers, nor with the ignominy of living off a woman's earnings. Then there was his position to think of. During his previous stay in Naples he had made well-connected friends who believed him to be of high social rank. If he were to reappear in the city he had left with such high hopes only months previously as the penniless husband or lover of an actress, ‘a coward living off his wife or his mistress',
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he would feel disgraced, and rightly so. More than anything else Casanova was ambitious to rise in the world, and an alliance with an actress – one of his own kind – would inevitably lead to his social downfall: ‘Sharing her lot, whether as a husband or lover, I should find myself
degraded, humiliated, and forced by my position and profession to grovel. The reflection that in the fairest time of my youth I would have to renounce all hope of the high fortune which it seemed to me I had been born for gave the scales such a strong jolt that my reason silenced my heart.'
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