Courtesan's Lover (35 page)

The silence was close and congealed: it filled the room, seeping thickly into Luca's ears and mouth, and when he spoke at last, it felt as though he were forcibly pushing the words out into the air around his head. “What's happening here?” he said.

Gianni and Francesca both immediately looked away from him. Francesca dropped her gaze to her hands, and Gianni stared at the floor; his color deepened. Francesca was paler than ever, and the gash on her cheek stood out black against her pallor. A sharp jab of fearful anger caught painfully in Luca's throat. “
Santo
cielo!”
he said, his gaze flicking from one to the other, “What the hell is going on? What are you two hiding from me?”

Francesca put her hands over her face.

“Gianni?”

Gianni shook his head.

Feeling now as though he were facing an adversary in court, Luca heard himself say, deliberately calmly, but feeling his voice tremble as he spoke, “Francesca, do you know who hurt you this evening? Was it someone you know?”

Putting her hands back down into her lap, she nodded.

“And…do you know
why
this person might have done this to you?”

Another nod.

Gianni's gaze was still fixed upon the floorboards.

Struggling to keep his voice steady, Luca said, “Do you think you might be able to tell me anything about it? Gianni seems to have some idea already…but…”

With a sickening twist in his belly, he stopped speaking, it having suddenly occurred to him that it could have been Carlo who had hurt Francesca, but, in a voice barely more than a whisper, he heard her say, “It was a man called Michele di Cicciano.”

Gianni gasped.

Luca frowned. “Cicciano? But…but I know that name. Cicciano's a friend of Carlo's. How do you? I…I had no idea that
you
knew him.” Oh,
Dio
—she had another lover. Dreading what she might say, he said, “Has there been something between you and this man? Did you—
do
you—love him?”

He steeled himself, ready to see guilty confusion on her face at his question, but to his relief, a naked, transparent dislike was all too obvious in the shudder that shook her and in the twist of her mouth as she said, “No. I don't love him. And I never have. Never.”

“Then how—”

She interrupted him. Held up both hands. Drew in a long breath. And, in a voice that shook, she told him how.

It took several minutes.

He could not take his eyes from her face as she told him what he realized immediately was the truth: as she shattered into razor-edged fragments the exquisite, blown-glass bubble of the past few weeks. Her voice was low and—almost—steady, but she trembled visibly as she spoke, and Luca felt—for the second time in his life—a liquefying sense of disbelief that tore through him and left him lightheaded and terrified. He stood unmoving, as he had done ten years before at the foot of his wife's bed, gazing down at Lisabeta's newly lifeless body—and he knew again the suffocating enormity of a truth too big to comprehend. “Then,” he said, trying to order his thoughts, “how was it that you came to be at the play at San Domenico that day?”

“It was just a stupid idea of Filippo's, something that he suggested when his wife didn't want to come with him.”

“Filippo? Then…?” Luca could not finish his sentence.

Her eyes brimming with tears, Francesca nodded.

The smothering silence draped itself over the three of them again. Eventually, Luca looked away from Francesca to where Gianni still stood, hunch-shouldered and stiff in the doorway, and, as he caught his son's eye, Gianni reddened still further and bit his lip.

The liquefaction in Luca's belly turned in an instant to ice.

He stared at his son and then at Francesca. “Oh, God, no. Please, Francesca, tell me I'm mistaken…”

Nobody spoke.

Luca felt sick. “When?” he said. “When, Gianni?”

After another long, screaming silence, Gianni said to the floorboards, “A few weeks ago.”

Fighting to keep his voice steady, Luca said, “Just once?” He faltered. “Or was this a regular occurrence?”

An almost inaudible mutter. “Just once.”

Luca saw that Francesca's face was now slick with tears.

“I gave it all up the day I met you,” she said, her voice distorted with the effort of controlling her weeping. Her lower lip was visibly quivering. Despite everything, seeing that quiver sent a hot little thread of wanting down through his belly.

She said, “I gave it all up
because
I had met you. I sold this house—my house, not Modesto's—sold all my things, knew I would never have any more to do with any of it.”

Luca stared at her. His mind was quite numb. He had no idea what to think. He listened to what she said, but hardly heard her. He continued to stare at her but hardly saw her. A courtesan. She was a
courtesan
. Had been. Was. Which was it? Did it matter? She had lied to him. Not a widow. A courtesan. A
whore
. He thought back a few hours, remembered how the two of them had spent that morning—could it possibly be only that morning?—lying together on the springing grass in the little clearing at Mergellina. A judder of irrepressible longing physically shook him as he remembered Francesca's fingers and mouth moving over his body, awakening his senses in a way he had never known before. He had been astonished at her inventive dexterity, entranced by the touch of her lips and her tongue and her fingers on his skin, marveling at the thought that fate had introduced him to such a creature and that such a creature actually seemed to care for him.

And then she had wept and, at the sight of her tears, he had cursed himself for causing them, for compromising her reputation so thoughtlessly. Luca felt another wash of nauseous anger sweep through him. Her reputation! “Reputation” was hardly the word; “notoriety” might be more apposite. She was a professional. An amoral professional. Had she done these same extraordinary things…to Gianni…a few weeks ago? Here? In this room? And to Filippo—how many times had she entertained
him
in that way? And Carlo's friend Cicciano, who had been so angry at the withdrawal of his pleasures that tonight he had exacted this painful revenge? What had been
his
preferred choice of activity? And—Luca could hardly bear to even think it—how much had all these men
paid
her? They and how many others?

A horrible, distorted image of Francesca pushed its way into his mind. She was facing away from him, naked but for a glittering, beaded wrap that hung loosely, low on her back; jewels glittered at her throat and wrists, and her hair was down. She turned to look at him over her shoulder and he saw that the sweet smile he had come to love so much in these last few weeks had gone—in its place was a twisted mask of lascivious invitation.

A sense of betrayal and anger, of confusion and incredulity swelled and billowed in Luca's head. He raised his hands, balled them into fists, and held his breath, as the sensation expanded within him.

“No! Papa, please!”

At the sound of Gianni's voice, at the sight of his son stepping forward protectively from the doorway, the glittering courtesan he had conjured vanished, and he saw instead an exhausted, frightened, ash-pale woman, flinching and pulling back from him to sit huddled against her pillow, her face soaked and swollen with tears. Her mouth had opened, and she was staring at his fisted hands, holding her breath, quite obviously in expectation of being struck.

For a moment he stood irresolute, his insides crawling, then he uncurled his fingers and put his hands over his face. He pressed in hard against his skull. For long seconds he stood unmoving, in the hot palm-darkness, feeling the rise and fall of his rib cage against his elbows, then he lowered his hands.

“Were you…were you ever going to tell me?” he said.

She nodded. “I wanted to. From the first moment. I've hated lying—but I didn't know how—I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to do it.”

A long pause.

“No. I can see that.”

“After everything that happened this afternoon, after…what you asked me,” she said, “I had decided to tell you as soon as we arrived back at the house. Whatever the outcome, I was going to tell you the whole truth. I wanted you to know everything.

“Whatever it meant. And then we arrived back, and…” She trailed off.

Luca looked across at Gianni. Through the numbness that seemed to be paralyzing him, he felt a sudden flare of naked jealousy: for a second Gianni was not his son, but simply another man—a rival—and a fierce and painful desire to knock him down filled Luca to the point that he struggled to breathe. But then a tear swelled, broke, and ran down Gianni's cheek into the soft fluff of hardly visible downy beard that ran around the edge of the boy's jaw, and Luca's anger left him.

He was empty. Dry and hard and empty like a shriveled gourd skin. If he moved now, he thought, his insides would rattle inside him like a handful of desiccated seeds. “I'll take you home,” he said to Francesca. “You need time to rest and heal. You can't stay here, in this empty house—you or the children.”

The children…

He stopped and turned to Gianni, and said for a second time that evening, dreading further unbearable revelations, “Why are you here, Gian? How is it that you came here to this house, with those children?”

Gianni's mouth opened, but no words came out. He closed it again.

Luca's heart beat faster. “Why, Gian?” he said again. “Where were you? Where have you been? Why were they with you?”

Gianni swallowed uncomfortably. He flicked a glance at Francesca. “Papa, Carlo had them.”

“Carlo?” Luca said, frowning quizzically. “Carlo? Then…where is he now?”

“I don't know. I left him—down in the
sottosuolo
.”

“The
sottosuolo
? But—I don't understand. Why? Why did Carlo have Francesca's children?”

Gianni swallowed again, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He breathed in slowly. Luca's pulse raced. What in heaven's name was Gianni struggling to admit? Francesca, he saw, was now staring from him to Gianni and back. “Why, Gianni?” he said again. “If you know, please tell me. Why did Carlo have the twins?”

Still no answer.

With a creak, the door to the bedchamber opened a little wider.

Luca, Gianni, and Francesca all turned to see who was there.

Modesto stood foursquare in the doorway. The little girls were pressed against him, one on each side, each with a wilting handful of flowers in her hand. Speaking clearly, in a voice that quivered with suppressed dislike, Modesto said, “Forgive me for interrupting, Signore, but, as I've just discovered, it appears that your elder son was planning on handing these two over to a privateer friend of Signor di Cicciano's.”

Luca could think of no reply.

“Luca,” Francesca said into the silence, her voice quivering with tears.

Luca turned to her.

“Michele told me. He said he thought Carlo might have them. He just sneered at me. He said they would be taken away. Over the sea. And…sold.”

Luca looked at the little girls. They were huge-eyed and silent, clinging to Modesto. Francesca was tear-soaked and trembling. And Gianni—across Gianni's face Luca could see the same confused mixture of horror and guilt that he was feeling himself. That Cicciano could have spoken so heartlessly of such a proposition was terrible enough, but to think of his son—his own son—actually carrying it out…Luca thought he might be sick.

Hardly aware of what he was saying, he looked from Modesto and the children to Francesca and said quietly, “I was going to take you back to Santa Lucia, but I think now you had better come with me back to my house. You'll all be safe there.”

He saw Modesto nod his approval of this suggestion.

“But…
he…he
won't be there, will he?” Francesca said.

Seeing her fear, Luca's insides twisted painfully. “No,” he said. “I'll make sure Carlo doesn't come anywhere near you.”

It soon became clear to Maria that Filippo was unhappy. Since the previous Wednesday, when her husband had crept into the house, well past midnight, trying to avoid waking her—as he had so often done on Wednesday nights—he had been uncharacteristically taciturn and lethargic. He had not been in to work, he had risen late in the mornings and retired early each evening—always to the smallest bedchamber. He had barely spoken to her, had avoided catching her eye whenever he could, and so had consequently spent much of his time in the house over the previous few days staring either at the floor or out of the window.

“What on earth is the matter with Filippo?” Emilia said to Maria after a few days of this miserable lassitude, as the two women stood together in the kitchen, preparing vegetables for a soup.

Maria heard the lack of compassion in her sister's question and swallowed down a bite of irritation. “I don't know. Perhaps he is sickening for something,” she said. Or perhaps, she thought to herself, he is sickening
because
of something. Or someone. She cut down hard through a chunk of carrot, gripping the handle of the knife so tightly that her knuckles stood out white.

“You may be right,” Emilia said. The problem was clearly not troubling her excessively, for she added in a voice of supreme indifference, “If that's the case, then a nice bowl of soup might cheer him up.”

If he is here to eat it, Maria thought. Its being a Wednesday.

***

But, much to Maria's surprise, Filippo stayed at home that evening, and it was quickly apparent that the bowl of soup he had been offered had done little, if anything, to raise his spirits. He pushed his spoon about in the bowl a great deal more than he lifted it to his lips, and he shredded far more of his bread than he ate. Maria watched him; she said nothing, but felt, as she watched, a strange tension in her limbs and a tightness within her chest as though she were physically restraining her own body from reacting to her husband's obvious misery. Though why don't I react, she thought, as her left leg began to twitch. Why do I not just ask him what's troubling him? Hold his hand?

She thought through some of the things she had written in her vellum-bound book. She had read and reread her own sentences so many times she knew many of them by heart: unfettered outpourings of bitter self-criticism, tentative explorations of her own opinions, and of course the long passages of vivid—if clumsy and probably ignorantly inaccurate—descriptions of what she had imagined her husband had been doing during his regular Wednesday evening absences. Looking at him now, as she had done countless times, she pictured Filippo, doing those things she had described; imagined his hands; imagined—with a shard of ice in her throat—the expression on his face as he did them. Imagined the unknown woman. Having no idea who the woman might be, but finding that she needed to put a face to the invisible threat, Maria had, over the weeks, begun to picture her husband's anonymous lover as the beautiful whore in the crimson dress, who had fallen that day outside the church of San Giacomo. The woman who had told her to write. Her leg twitched a little faster and her heartbeat quickened.

It was the first Wednesday in well over a year, Maria thought, that Filippo had remained at home. There had to be a connection between that alteration to his routine and this palpable misery. Had the woman—whoever she was—told him that she no longer wished to see him? Another thought struck her: had she perhaps
died
? Maria felt slightly sick. Was Filippo
grieving
for whoever it was? This thought hurt in her chest, like a painful breath dragged in after too much running.

“I'm very tired, Maria. I think I'll go up to bed,” Filippo said then.

Maria looked at him. He held her gaze.

“You didn't eat your soup,” Emilia said from the other side of the table.

Filippo shook his head and, though he answered his sister-in-law politely, he still looked at Maria. “No. I'm sorry—I don't seem to have much of an appetite just at the moment. Nothing to do with the soup—it…it was a very good soup.”

Maria breathed in slowly.

The woman in crimson had told her that day that writing down her thoughts—even her most shameful, forbidden thoughts—might help her to unlock the barricades behind which she had hidden herself for so long. And for weeks now, she had done what the woman had said—she had written, page after page, in her vellum-bound book. Much of it, whenever she read it back, embarrassed her very much and made her insides creep, as though she had a fever, but she knew that somehow the woman had been right. Committing to paper what had been festering inside her for so long had changed her. She might still be sequestered behind her barricades, but, even if they were still locked, Maria thought that she might now have fashioned herself a key. She just had to summon the courage to use it.

She said, her eyes still fixed upon Filippo's, “I had thought I might go for a bit of a walk before I go to bed, Filippo. To get some air. Would you like to come with me? It might help you sleep.”

Filippo didn't answer, and Maria wondered if he had heard her. She wondered too if he could “hear” anything of what she was not saying, and, fully expecting a refusal, she sighed, feeling her shoulders droop.

But Filippo said, “Yes. I think a little air might do me good.”

“What?”

“Thank you. I'd like a walk.”

Maria's pulse raced. “Good,” she said. “I'll fetch my coat.”

***

Above them the sky was the greyish blue of the heart of a candle flame, but nearer the roofscape of the city, the blue had softened and blurred into a deep, pinkish red. The sun had already sunk out of sight. Within minutes, Filippo thought, it would be quite dark. They walked without speaking for some moments along the Via Santa Chiara, Maria's skirts rustling rhythmically with her steps. Filippo found himself soothed by the sound.

After a time he looked sideways at her, just in time to see her risk a glance at him.

She flicked her gaze back to the street in front of her feet, with a little jerk of her head, but then looked back up at him and said, “I'm sorry you are not feeling well at the moment.”

“I'm not unwell.”

“But you are not happy.”

“No.” Filippo gave Maria a tight smile. “No, I'm not very happy at the moment. I'm sorry.”

There was a short pause, and then Maria said, “Is it anything I have done?”

Filippo answered with an emphatic negative straight away, but realized, in the brief hiatus of silence that followed his reply, that he supposed the entire situation was in fact—at least partly—his wife's fault. Then, feeling that thus apportioning complete blame would be horribly unfair on Maria, he allowed that his own appetites were probably to some degree equally as responsible for his current unhappiness as was Maria's lack of them. These thoughts, though, made him feel confused and awkward, so he kept his eyes on his shoes as they continued walking. At every step a deep horizontal crease appeared across each shoe, the leather creaked quietly and a little corner like a dog's ear pushed in and out as each foot rose and fell.

He knew Maria was curious. Tension was emanating from her like heat; she was, he thought, almost crackling with it. And, much to Filippo's surprise, he found this tension fleetingly arousing. He looked across at her again and saw, with a jolt of his insides, that she had tears in her eyes.

“What on earth is the matter?” he said.

Maria ran the tip of her finger under her lashes: first one eye and then the other. “I hate to think of you being unhappy,” she said.

Filippo stopped and turned toward her. In a flash of confused emotion, he saw not Maria but Francesca as she had been the other day, crying and begging him to keep her secrets from Luca. He saw himself, putting his arms around his courtesan and comforting her even as he acknowledged his own yawning fear of a future without her ministrations. He felt again Francesca's warm body trembling within his embrace.

And then he saw Maria.

His wife.

His face burned as he remembered how long it had been since he had last held Maria in tenderness, as he had held Francesca that final time. Every touch he and Maria had shared—for years—had been tainted with tension, taut with anxiety, weighted down with the threat of yet another possible failure. He had been quite hollow with loneliness for a week, wrapped up in his own misery, but now it struck Filippo that he had not given a thought—in nearly two years—to her possible feelings of isolation. A cold drench of shame washed over him.

“Please,” he said. “Don't cry.”

And he reached out toward her.

She stared at him for a moment, then stepped forward. Filippo folded his arms around her and held her in close to his body. She was small and angular, and the points of her shoulder blades jutted against his forearm.