Courtesan's Lover (19 page)

A raised eyebrow.

Luca said slowly, “What is it that is causing this distance between you and Gianni? Why did he hit you?”

A long pause.

Carlo finally said, irritably, “He can't take a joke.”

A cold thread slithered through Luca's head. “What have you done, Carlo?” he said quietly.

Carlo shrugged. “Nothing of any consequence, Papa. Gianni simply lacks a sense of humor. He always has. I need to pack.” And with that, he crossed the room, eeled through the door, and ran lightly up the stairs.

Luca's gaze rested on the empty doorway.

“If that boy were not my son,” he said to himself, feeling rather ashamed of his admission, “I am not sure I should care to know him.”

The two women arrived at a house in a narrow street near the church of Santa Lucia a Mare.

“There we are, Signora,” the woman said. “That's my house there—” She pointed.

Maria's heart began to thud. The only chance she might ever have to find answers to her increasingly unbearable questions was about to walk away from her. She was about to let it slip through her grasp.

She stopped, feeling her grip on the woman's arm tightening.

The woman turned to her. “Signora, is there something wrong? I hope that you are not now feeling inconvenienced—our journey has perhaps taken longer than you had expected. You must be tired. I'm sure I have been horribly heavy on your arm.”

“Oh, no, it's nothing like that.”

“But there is something troubling you, isn't there?”

Maria nodded. She was breathing through her mouth now—shallow, frantic little breaths like someone in pain. She had to speak. And it had to be now. Feeling sick, she said, “I have to know. I just have to. You're the only person I've ever met whom I could even think of asking.” She hesitated, unsure how to phrase what she wanted so badly to say. Then her words came rushing out of her like vomit. “I'm afraid,” she said. “Afraid that my husband may have…” she felt her voice fade almost to nothing “… unnatural appetites.”

The woman's expression hardly changed, though Maria felt sure she saw a gleam of prurient interest in the wide brown eyes. The woman said quietly, “What makes you think that, Signora?”

Maria put her free hand over her face and spoke through her fingers. “I can't believe it is natural…for him to wish to lie with me…so…so very often.”

“How often?”

“I see it in his eyes all the time. Every day.”

“How often does he ask you?”

Maria shrugged, unable to say anything, feeling tears behind her eyes, building up like swollen water pressing against a too-fragile dam. She could feel her bottom lip trembling, and bit it. It wobbled against her teeth.

The woman smiled. She took Maria's hand and squeezed it. “I would say that all the men I have met—
all
of them, Signora—quite certainly wish to”—she paused, and then laid a gentle emphasis on the next words—“to
lie
with
their wives every day, if not more frequently. They don't always get their wish, of course, but it doesn't stop them wanting it. And the less they do it, the more they think about it. I don't think that what you describe sounds unnatural at all.”

Then Maria saw her smile fade. The woman hesitated, checked to either side, as Maria had done before, and said in a lower voice, “Signora, does your husband ever…ever hurt you?”

Shame flooded into Maria's face and she stared down at the ground. How could she tell this woman what it was like between Filippo and herself? How could she explain that their every attempt to do what she understood most people enjoyed was—for her—never anything more than a struggle to avoid allowing Filippo to see how much pain she was in. She said to the hem of her dress, “He never means to hurt me. Never. I'm sure of that.”

“But?”

Maria looked up at her companion, paused and then said, “It always hurts.”

“Do you tell him?”

Maria shook her head.

“Has it always been like this?”

Wiping her eyes with the tips of her fingers, Maria nodded and said, “I've read the poets' accounts of love, and I've seen artists' depictions of it. I know what people say about it, but I simply can't equate that with…well, with what happens.” There was a long silence. Then she said, “Does it hurt
every
woman?” Surely now she would hear the truth. A whore would be honest about whether there was in fact a conspiracy of silence amongst women, a silence that she, Maria, knew nothing about, with everyone actually enduring the same pain she did but simply managing to conceal it with more stoicism than she could, or whether in fact the horrible truth was that she was alone.

Her companion's expression was suddenly one of pity and compassion. She shook her head. “No, Signora. It doesn't. Some people sometimes, but not everyone always.”

Maria pulled in a long breath through her nose, and let it out again slowly.

The woman in the crimson dress said, “Forgive me if I seem impertinent, Signora, but…do you care for your husband's company in other ways? At other times?”

Maria nodded. She knew she did. Despite everything. She loved him.

“I think you've been so brave—to talk to me like this. Much braver than I could have been.” The woman smiled. “Look, I've been working a long time, Signora. There have been many, many occasions when it hasn't…been easy. Times when it's been…terrible.”

Despite herself, with a tightening of the skin on her neck and arms, Maria began to imagine what those occasions might have been.

The woman continued. “There are tricks that you learn, when things become too difficult, as in any profession, I suppose. Perhaps…perhaps one or two of mine might be helpful to you, Signora.”

Maria felt her color deepening still further, but, trying to smile, she nodded. She had to know.

“Now we are here at my house, why don't you come in and have a drink with me in my
sala
. I'd like to sit down—my ankle is hurting like the very devil—but I have things to tell you. Things that might help. Would you care to do that?”

Maria drew in a breath and hesitated.

The woman saw her hesitation, paused, and then said, “I don't…work here. Ever. This is where I live, with my children.”

Maria felt her face burn. “I should very much like to come in, if I may,” she said.

The woman smiled. “Good. Then could you kindly knock for me?” she said.

Maria leaned forward, knocked, and waited; the weight of the red-sleeved arm still lying heavy upon her own. Now that they had stopped walking and she no longer felt responsible for preventing her companion from falling, Maria became uncomfortably aware of the warmth of the slim body within her encircling arm: they were pressed together and the woman's peach-scented arm lay snug around her shoulders. Their two faces were on a level, and now standing still, they were almost cheek to cheek. It occurred to Maria that this was probably as sustained a contact with another body as she had had in many years. It was not unpleasant. But, embarrassed now, Maria pulled her arm back from around the woman's waist and stood a step to one side, nonetheless keeping a supporting hand beneath the bent elbow.

The door was opened by a plump servant with a big slab of a face; her hair was quite hidden by a carelessly wrapped length of linen.

The woman spoke. “Ilaria, can you take my arm? I fell in the street outside the cathedral and wrenched my ankle. The Signora here has been so kind—she's helped me all the way home. I've asked her to come in for a moment. I'm taking her up to the
sala
—perhaps you could fetch us something to drink.”

The linen-wrapped servant said nothing but eyed Maria suspiciously as she stepped down into the street. Maria stood back. Taking the woman's wrist in one hand, and cupping the crimson elbow in the other, the woman called Ilaria began to help her limping mistress up the step and into the house, muttering irritably about the foolishness of walking barefoot in filthy streets.

Her heart now beating up in her throat and making her feel quite sick, Maria followed the woman and her servant up to a small but well-appointed
sala
, in which a bright fire was blazing. Two pretty little girls were sitting by the hearth; a square board lay in front of them, and one of them was shaking a small leather pot which sounded as though it contained dice.

They looked up as the three women came in.

“Good, Mamma's home,” one of them said to the other. Then, seeing her mother's limp, her smile vanished. She sat upright. “Oh, Mamma! What have you done to your leg?”

The woman limped across to a chair near the fire and sat heavily. She said, “Nothing much—I fell over and twisted my ankle.” She looked across at Maria and added, “This kind lady helped me home.”

Maria's face flamed again as the two children turned to stare at her. She watched as they scrambled across the hearth rug to where their mother sat, and pressed up against her legs. One of them lifted the hem of her mother's dress to inspect the injured ankle. Sounding surprised, she said, “But, Mamma! You're not wearing any shoes! Your feet are all dirty—have you been walking barefoot? You're always telling us not to. ‘The streets of Napoli are far too filthy to go barefoot'—that's what you always say.”

The woman leaned forward and kissed the top of her daughter's head. “You're quite right. But, Beata, Bella, listen—I need to talk to the Signora. On our own. Could you go with Ilaria, and help her choose us something to drink? You can each have a comfit, if Ilaria will get them down for you.”

The little girls nodded and stood without a word. They left the room with the servant and Maria heard their fading footsteps on the stairs.

The crimson-clad woman smiled at her. “Come and sit down, Signora,” she said. Maria sat. Wincing a little, as she shifted her weight, the woman began to talk. And Maria listened, rapt and open-mouthed, swallowing the advice and the instructions as though they were a life-saving physic offered by a compassionate apothecary. Which, she supposed on second thoughts, perhaps they were. And as the woman spoke, describing with ease—even humor—things that normally froze Maria into paralysis, she found that an odd sense of release was trickling down through her, unnerving and unsettling, but oddly refreshing.

***

Walking slowly away from the house in the Via Santa Lucia, Maria thought through every astonishing thing that she had just been told. It seemed to her that a window had been opened in the barricade behind which she had been imprisoned for so long. It was a small window, she knew, and awkwardly placed, high in the wall—not easy to reach—but fresh air from outside was already blowing through it. The heavy mass of congealed fear and guilt that had lodged for so long in her chest like a malignant growth seemed somehow to have shifted, lightened. Like a persistent background noise that only becomes apparent to the listener upon its cessation, it was only now, as she felt the familiar burden of her anxiety lift a little, that she realized how weighted down by her worries she had been for such a very, very long time.

She pondered on how extraordinary this encounter had been. The woman she had just met had not been in any way what Maria had expected. Had she ever really stopped to think about it, she realized now that she would have presumed a whore to be brazen and vulgar, unthinking, unlettered, crude, and flamboyantly predatory. Maybe some of them were. But her new companion had been kind and considerate, hospitable, softly spoken, and clearly a loving and capable mother. Those little girls had been quite charming—well-behaved and polite.

Maria did not know what to think.

She looked back once at the facade of the woman's house, and then, determined to make the purchase that the woman had suggested, before her resolve failed her, she quickened her pace, heading toward the long row of shops in the Via Toledo,
The
Book
of
the
City
of
Ladies
held tightly in her hand.

I am standing with my back to my big mirror and I twist around to look at my reflection over my shoulder. “What do you think?”

Modesto runs an appraising eye over my new blue dress, with its high neckline, discreet lacing, and simple, unslashed sleeves. My hair is parted in the middle and drawn back tightly into a simple knot at the nape of my neck. I have Filippo's string of pink pearls around my throat and more pearls hang from my ears. A single plain ring adorns my right hand. My face is pale. I have left it untouched: I have neither put color onto my lips, nor pinched it into my cheeks, and on this bleached canvas my eyes are quite different from usual—bigger, sadder, more wary, it seems to me. It is as well that the dress fully covers my ankles: one of them is still heavily strapped and continues to hurt like the very devil.

“Mmm,” he says. “I would say…chaste, virtuous, and entirely unlike a whore.”

“Good.”

“And…quite delicious, Signora.” He is trying not to laugh.

“That is
not
so good. I'm in
disguise,
Modesto. If anyone recognizes me for what I am, or worse—
who
I am—Filippo will be in complete disgrace, his friend will never speak to him again, and we will probably both be kicked out onto the Spaccanapoli like a couple of scoundrels.”

Another laugh. “Like the couple of scoundrels you both actually are, then?”

“That's enough,
sfacciato
! Remember who pays your wages.”

Modesto shrugs. “Well,
you
remember who procures the means to provide you with the money to pay my wages, then.”

“Not always.”

“Can you tell me the last patron you actually—”

“Oh, stop it!” I can never win these stupid arguments: Modesto can always find one more point to balance on top of the teetering pile, and it always seems to end by falling on to
me.

Modesto says, “Don't expect me to excite myself over an evening during which you are not planning on earning a single
scudo.
If the truth be told, I wish you weren't going. Are you intending that the Signore should pay for his entertainment, when he brings you home?”

I redden. He has guessed correctly and his scornful expression makes me feel foolish.

“I shall only say it once, Signora. Let word get out that you ever—
ever
—fuck
gratis
, and your standing in this city is in shreds. You lose your status as a courtesan and, in the eyes of potential new patrons, you become no more than a loose-moraled trollop who can be had by anyone. You know I'm right, I'm sure.”

I try to justify my decision. “But Filippo is taking me to this banquet. It seems only reasonable to offer him some sort of recompense…”

“Recompense?” Modesto says pityingly. “Recompense? Is that how you see yourself?” He shakes his head and his eyes flick heavenward. “What has happened to this sense of rivalry between you and the others? Does your reputation no longer matter to you? Do you imagine that Malacoda or Emilia Rosa would offer themselves—their
expensive
selves, in charitable
recompense
”—he says the word as if it tastes bad—“to anyone who performed some slight service for them?”

I say nothing.

I feel foolish now for ever agreeing to attend this ridiculous affair with Filippo, and I suddenly dislike my deceitful disguise. The unfamiliar image I see in the mirror cannot be me—it is some virtuous creature who resembles me but whose wholesome life I can scarcely imagine. Perhaps I have become that sweet-natured woman from another world—the world of the virtuous—who came to my aid when I fell the other day. Unlike her, though, with her naïve and compassionate curiosity, this unknown person in the glass is scowling at me, as though her contemplation of my harlot's existence is distasteful to her—something disgusting she would prefer to pretend does not exist.

But it does exist, and (amongst much else) I am still Filippo's whore. I have promised Filippo I shall go with him to his party and, despite Modesto's scorn, I shall not disappoint my needy patron. I wish Modesto would go away. I want a few moments to practice my disguise before it is time to leave.

“Can you leave me alone for a while?” I say, frowning critically at myself.

Modesto nods. I can see him behind me, reflected in the mirror. He says, “You may think I lack respect, Signora, but I don't. It is just that I shouldn't want anything to damage what you—and I—have worked so hard to achieve.”

I shrug.

“Don't lie with him
gratis.
It'll be damaging in the future.” He is almost pleading. Irritatingly, I think he is probably right.

“Very well. But you tell him, Modesto. I can't. He'll be here in an hour—perhaps a little more.” It is Modesto who shrugs this time; he leaves the room.

I turn to the stranger in the glass and wonder what it can be like to be truly as wholesome as I now appear to be. “Chaste, virtuous, and entirely unlike a whore,” Modesto says. I try to imagine myself as that sweet woman from San Giacomo. What would it be like to be in her position—beholden only to the desires and wishes of one man, cherished and cared for, walking securely along a virtuous path, rather than dancing up to the very edges of the pit, as I do every day? I think it would probably be very much easier than the life I lead. But her astonishing admission of her…her miserable
imprisonment
within her fear of her own body astounded me. Astounded me perhaps as much as her realization of the true extent of my licentiousness shocked her.

***

“Oh, perfect, Francesca. How absolutely perfect. I would never have believed you could look so…so…” Filippo struggles to find the word, then smiles and says, “demure.” He is obviously pleased to have found the perfect description. “That is the word. Demure.”

I cannot help smiling. This is not a word I have ever heard used about myself.

“They will all love you.”

“All? Who will be—?

Interrupting me, Filippo begins to describe the small group of his friends, but before he has got further than explaining that his friend Luca is a widower, Modesto appears in the doorway.

“Signora, can I ask you to go downstairs a moment? Lorenzo wants your approval of tomorrow's choice of dishes.” Modesto widens his eyes at me and flicks his gaze to the door. He wants to speak to Filippo.

I limp down to the kitchen, where Lorenzo is gazing lovingly into a large copper pan, smiling to himself, and tunelessly crooning a line from one of Modesto's favorite songs. Although my kitchen is spacious, Lorenzo's enormous body seems to fill the room with its soft bulk. Despite his size, though, my cook walks lightly on small feet and his hands are delicate. Neat-fingered, they do not suit him: they appear to belong to someone else entirely, and protrude as though from thick, fleshy sleeves at the end of Lorenzo's massive arms. A savory steam is rising from the pan; Lorenzo lifts a large wooden spoon and tastes his soup, eyes closed, a frown of ecstasy puckering the skin between his brows.

He turns to see me in the doorway and says, “Ah,
merda,
that's good,
padrona
—would you like some?”

I smile and nod. Lorenzo scrapes the back of the refilled spoon on the lip of the pan and holds it out to me, other hand cupped below to catch any drips. Holding my skirts back and out of the way, I lean forward.

A blast of rich flavour, subtle and savory. God, that is truly wonderful.

“Oh, Lorenzo—one of your best. You are an artist. What's in it?”

With an expression of rapt delight, Lorenzo begins to reel off the long list of ingredients.
Romagnola
beef, olive oil, tiny red onions, Signora—they cannot be more than
that
big
or
the
flavour
is
spoiled
—
melanzana, borlotti beans, parsley
—I quickly lose the thread, but Lorenzo continues his luxurious litany as though caressing me with it. It occurs to me then that he and I both, in our different ways, are equally adept at indulging the senses. It might be that I use eyes and tongue, legs, fingers, breasts, and buttocks to seduce those I choose to indulge, while Lorenzo uses only his legions of herbs, spices, and fragrant oils, but we are both true
virtuosi
and I know we take equal pride in observing the pleasing effects of our skills.

For a moment, and not for the first time, I imagine the roles reversed, and smile to myself at the picture of a startled Vasquez struggling with unexpected and suffocating mountains of soft flesh while I work alone down in the kitchen, singing to myself as I concoct some fragrant pot of something delectable.

I say, “We won't be home until much later, Lorenzo. I understand there's going to be some sort of meal at this concert tonight, but will we be able to have some of the soup if we are still hungry when we arrive back here afterward?”

“I should be grossly offended if you did not, Signora.” Lorenzo folds his arms (with difficulty) across his wide chest and feigns hurt feelings, but he cannot sustain the pretense for long: his face soon folds into a broad smile and the swell of his cheeks reduces his eyes to knife cuts in the dough of his face.

“Listen,” I say, “if I end up having stuffed myself like a sucking pig and can't manage another mouthful when I return, I
promise
I shall be sure to have some soup tomorrow,
caro
.”

He laughs.

Modesto's face appears in the kitchen doorway and Lorenzo's laughter dies away. They exchange their usual glances of mutual dislike. Modesto clears his throat. “Signor di Laviano now understands the situation, Signora,” he says drily.

I kiss Lorenzo on the cheek (it feels like kissing a warm, damp mushroom) and cross to Modesto. “Oh,
caro
, what on earth did you tell him?”

“The truth. I organize your money and your diary, and I won't let you fuck
gratis
.”

Lorenzo shakes his head but turns back to his soup and says nothing.

“What did Filippo say?”

“Not much. He wasn't pleased, but, then nobody is forcing him to stay after the party if he doesn't wish to part with his gold, are they?”

“You are hard on him, Modesto.”

“You're too soft and someone needs to redress the balance.”

We leave the kitchen and Modesto helps me up the stairs. I turn toward my chamber and he carries on up to his own rooms. He stops on the stairs and calls back, “The carriage will be here before long—I'll call you when it arrives.”

***

Filippo stretches out an arm to help me down from the little carriage. The great basilica casts a deep violet shadow across the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, and the sun has already dropped below the roofline. A number of people, obviously dressed for a night's entertainment, are already making their way into a long, low building to the right of the church, whose many windows glow yellow in the dusk, and I feel a shiver of anticipation at the sight. Within moments I shall be presenting my newly acquired persona to Filippo's friends: I hope I shall not let him down.

“Let me see you…” Filippo says; he puts a hand on each of my shoulders and crouches to bring his face on a level with my own. Without my
chopines
, I am fully a head shorter than Filippo. He strokes my hair flat, fiddles the pearl earrings until he is satisfied and then stands back to admire the effect.

“You look entirely delightful, Francesca,” he says. A hungry grin twists his mouth. “I think I shall have to ask you to dress like this on other occasions—the thought of corrupting an innocent such as you appear to be tonight, is really most appealing…”

He reaches forward, but I draw back and hold my hands up in front of me. “Stop it, Filippo! I am your
cousin
, now, remember, and you can have absolutely no interest in corrupting close members of your family in front of your friends. Do you want me to be able to convince them?”

“Of course!”

“Well, keep your hands to yourself then, and take that greedy grin off your face, or you'll give the game away in an instant.”

“Oh.” He deflates visibly. “Was it that obvious?”

I raise an eyebrow and say nothing.

His face falls, and I laugh and peck a cousinly kiss onto his cheek. “Well,
cugino
, are you going to take my arm and lead me in to meet your friends? Or am I going to have to limp in there unaided?”

“
Andiamo, cugina!
” he says with an extravagant bow. He holds out his forearm and I put my hand on his sleeve. Together, we make our halting way inside.

The great hall is lit by what appears to be at least a thousand candles, and the effect is exquisite. With no hangings at the windows, the candles reflect in the black glass and it seems to me as though each pane is studded with diamonds. The room is already bustling—guests in their bright evening best and servants in livery—and a dozen musicians are in place at one end of the room, tuning their instruments and assembling their music. Behind them an enormous square gilt-painted archway frames an elaborate set stage. Light shines somehow from behind the arch, making it glow, and the scene is lit from below as well, across the front of the span of the arch, by twenty or thirty candles in fretted silver covers. A tree—large as life and seemingly in full leaf—stands to one side of the stage, and the floor beneath it is scattered with rocks and boulders. I gaze at the scene and wonder how it can be that it seems to stretch so much farther back from the great golden arch than can feasibly be possible. As I stand and stare, the mosaic of voices and the fractured harmonies wrap around me, loud and insistent, and I am quite enchanted by the entire spectacle—I allow it to wash over me; my worries about the propriety of my deception begin to fade.