Casanova in Bolzano

The Guest Performance

The door opened, the candles flickered in the draft. A masked young man in a party cloak stood on the threshold. He was wearing short silk pantaloons, buckled shoes, a three-cornered hat, and carrying a slender gold-handled sword at his side. He bowed and spoke in a clear, sharp, almost childlike voice as if he had brought the coolness and good temper of the snow in with him.

“It’s I, Giacomo.”

He closed the door carefully and stepped forward fastidiously, a little awkwardly, as if not quite accustomed to wearing boy’s clothes. He bowed in masculine fashion and baldly declared, “I waited for you in vain. So I have come to you.”

“Why have you come?” the man asked, a little hoarse behind the mask, taking a step and getting tangled in his skirt.

“Why? But I explained in my letter. Because I must see you.”

She said this pleasantly, without any particular stress, as if it were the only reasonable explanation, the most natural answer a woman could give a man. The man did not respond.

“Did you not get my letter?” she asked anxiously.

“I certainly did,” the man answered. “Your husband, the duke of Parma, brought it to me this evening.”

“Oh!” said the woman and fell silent.

The “oh” was a quiet and simple acknowledgment, like a bird call. She leaned her slender boyish figure against the mantelpiece and fiddled with her sword. The mask she was wearing stared at the floor, solemn and empty. Then, even more quietly, she continued.

“I knew it. I was waiting for the answer and knew somehow that there had been some problem with the letter. You know it is very unusual for me to write letters. To tell you the truth it was the first letter I had written in my life.”

She turned her head aside gracefully, a little embarrassed, as if she had confessed her most intimate secret. Then she started laughing behind the mask, but it was a nervous laugh.

“Oh!” she said again. “I really am sorry the letter fell into his hands. I should have expected it. Do you think the groom who volunteered to bring my letter to you is still alive?… I should be sorry if anything happened to him, as he is still young and has a very sad and languishing way of looking at me when we are riding, and besides, he has a large family to support all by himself. Was it the duke himself delivered the letter?… Poor man. It can’t have been easy for him. He is so proud and so lonely, I can imagine what he felt when he set out to bring you the letter in which I said I must see you. Did he threaten you? Offer you money?… Tell me what happened, my love.”

She pronounced the last word loudly, confidently, enunciating clearly, as if she had articulated an important formal concept or subject with it. The mask was staring fixedly at the fire now, pale as death.

“He both threatened me and offered me money. Though that wasn’t the main reason he came,” the man replied. “He came primarily to give me the letter whose contents he analyzed in great detail. Then we came to an agreement.”

“Of course,” she said, with a brief sigh. “What agreement did you come to, my love?”

“He instructed me to dedicate my art to you alone, tonight. He asked me to make this night a masterpiece of seduction. He offered me money, freedom, and a letter of introduction that would protect me on the road and see me over frontiers. He told me you were ill, Francesca, diseased with love, and asked me to cure you. He told me that he was making us a present of this night, which should be as brief and as long as life, long enough for me to perform the impossible, so that we may experience in a single night all the ecstasies and disappointments of love, and that in the morning I should leave you to travel the world, go as far away as it is possible to go, wherever fate takes me, and that you should return to the palazzo with your head held high, where you may brighten and warm the remaining days of the duke of Parma. That is what he said. And he explained the meaning of your letter. I do believe he understood it, Francesca, every word of it. He did not raise his voice, but spoke calmly and quietly. And he also requested that I should be tender with you but hurt you enough to guarantee that everything should be over between us by morning, so that we could put a full stop to our sentence…. Those were his instructions.”

“He told you to hurt me?…”

“Yes. But he asked me, in parting, not to hurt you too much.”

“Yes,” said Francesca. “He loves me.”

“I think so, too,” the man replied. “He loves you, but it’s easy for him, Francesca. Love, as he loves, is easy, especially now that his time is running out… or rather, has ‘almost’ run out, and he kept repeating the word ‘almost,’ which seemed to be very important to him for some reason, if I understand him properly. It is easy to love when life is almost over.”

“My dear,” said the woman very gently and compassionately, like an adult addressing a child, and at the moment her unseen lips pronounced the words it was almost as if the mask itself were smiling. “It is never easy to love.”

“No,” the man obstinately insisted. “But it’s easier for him.”

“And so,” the other mask inquired, “did you come to an agreement?”

“Yes.”

“What were the terms of the agreement, Giacomo?…”

“I agreed to the terms he demanded and which you yourself declared in your letter. That we would meet tonight. That we would embrace each other, because there is a secret bond between us, Francesca, because love has touched us both. It is a great gift and a great sadness. It is a great gift because I do in fact love you, in my fashion, and because I regard love as an art; but it is also a great sadness because my love will never be easy or happy, can never grow wings and soar like a dove… because ours is a different kind of love from his. So we agreed that we would ‘know’ each other, in the biblical sense, and that you would then finish with me, cured and disillusioned, and after the morning we would never see each other again. That I would not be the shadow across your bed and would not haunt you when the duke of Parma leaned over you as you lay on your pillows; that I would be a memory for a while, but later not even that: that for you, I would be nothing and no one. That is what I agreed. It is what I must do tonight, in words, with kisses, with tears, and with vows, using all the tricks of my trade, according to the rules of my art.”

He stopped and tactfully, curiously, waited for an answer.

“Then go ahead, Giacomo,” said the woman quietly and calmly. And she tipped her head on one side so the mask stared indifferently into the air. “Go ahead,” she repeated. “What are you waiting for, my friend? Now is the moment. Begin. See, I have come to you, so you needn’t go out into the storm, for as you may have noticed a storm sprung up at midnight, an icy northern blast screaming and sweeping towers of snow along the street. But it is quiet here, warm, and scented. I see they have prepared the bed. Attar of roses and ambergris. And the table is set for two, carefully, in the best of taste, as custom dictates. But it is past midnight, and it is time for supper. So let us begin, Giacomo.”

She sat down at the neatly spread table, pulled off her gloves, breathed on her fingertips, and rubbed her bare hands together, her posture suggesting anticipation, good manners, and propriety as she looked over the foodstuffs, very much as if she were expecting the waiter to arrive so that she might start to eat.

“How will you begin?” she asked, he having made no move, then continued, now intimate and curious. “How does one seduce and then disabuse someone who has come of her own free will because she is in love?… I am very curious, Giacomo! What will you do?… Will you use force, guile, or courtesy? It is, after all, a masterpiece you have undertaken, and that is bound to be difficult. Because, you see, we are not entirely alone, for we are here with his conscious blessing, so it is a little as if there were and will continue to be three of us in the room. Naturally, he knows that you will immediately tell me everything, or almost everything: he doesn’t think you capable of crude workmanship, of lying to me, and hiding the secret of his visit, of not revealing the terms of your agreement. He couldn’t have imagined, not for a moment, that events would proceed otherwise than they have already done; he knew very well that you would begin with a confession, and how we should go on from there, the two, or is it three, of us? But I myself don’t yet know. After everything you have told me I am merely curious. So do begin.”

Both masks remained quiet awhile. Then the male mask began talking, at first in a little boy’s voice, then, slowly, as it warmed to its subject, modulating into something more feminine, as if every trace of roughness and strangeness had fallen away.

“Then perhaps I could begin… since I, too, am here, if not entirely according to his will nor entirely according to yours, either: I am here of my own free will, albeit masked and in male costume, in other words dressed for fun and games… and for all we know, the disguises help us. Do begin and perform a miracle. It should be fascinating. So this is what you said to each other, you two, the man I love and the man who loves me?… And by that token I must be merely obeying his instructions by being here. So, however this night turns out, it will all be according to his instructions, just as it is according to his instructions that we two, you and I, should ‘know’ and hurt each other? How marvelous,” the voice continued indifferently. “And this is all that he could think of: this is all that you have agreed to? Could you not have devised something more ambitious, more ingenious? Two such intelligent and remarkable men as you?… He brought you my letter, he explained and interpreted it? But Giacomo, my love, his interpretation may not be complete. Because when I committed those words to paper, the first sensible, properly related words I have ever written in my life, and I did so all by myself, I was suddenly frightened by how much words can say when one chooses them responsibly and carefully joins the letters up…. Only four words, you see, and he is on his way from the palazzo, acting as postman, ascending these steep stairs, and there you stand, dressed in female costume…. Four words, a few drops of ink on paper, and how much has already happened as a result! All those events set in motion on account of a few words I had written! Yes I, too, wondered and shuddered. And yet I think he may not have understood the letter as completely as he thinks. He interpreted it, you say?… No, let me do that, Giacomo! Let me do it, even if I do it with less literary skill than you two have done. Do you think I am the kind of woman who on a whim, a desire, leaves her home at midnight to seek out a man who is only just out of jail, whose reputation is so bad that mothers and older women cross themselves at mention of his name?… Do you know me so little? And the duke of Parma, with whom I share a bed, is his knowledge of me so shallow?… Did you imagine I learned to write because I was bored and wanted to amuse myself by sending a naughty letter inviting myself to a midnight rendezvous with you?… Did you bind yourself to a contract that would see me come to you for a night of romance as you had planned, you two wise men, for a fling, for a single night, between two turns on the dance floor? Did you imagine that I would hurry over from my home, masked, enter a strange man’s room, and then, before the dancing is quite over in the ballroom, hasten back to the palazzo to join the other couples?… Do you imagine that in writing to you I am seeking some childish night to remember; and that when I come to you, when I think of you, when I warm your memory with my breath, when I count the days you spend in jail, I mean to steal over to you for a night, for a secret rendezvous, just because you happen to be here, passing through the town where I live with my husband, or because once in my girlhood I knew you and there was some romantic feeling between us?… Is this the much-vaunted wisdom of the mighty duke of Parma and the omniscient Giacomo, who knows women’s hearts?… Do you imagine that I am like a simple child, chasing shadows of the past, when I finally write the words that inform you, and yes, the duke and the whole world, that I must see you? It may be that I am not quite so simple and childlike, Giacomo, my love. Perhaps it was I that directed the groom’s footsteps so that he should walk into the trap set for him by the duke?… Perhaps I, too, have struck a bargain tonight, with myself and my own fate if no one else, and this bargain may be as binding as the coffin, even if it bears no seal and contains no vows? Perhaps I know better than the duke of Parma why I should have climbed these stairs. What do you think, my love? Why did I write the letter? Why did I send the groom on a secret mission? Why did I wait for you? Why did I dress in a man’s clothes? Why did I sneak from my palazzo? Why am I standing in this room? Having made the agreement, you should answer.”

The other mask responded obediently, his voice flat.

“Why, Francesca?”

“Because I am not an object of seduction, my love, not material for a masterpiece, not the subject of a sage agreement. I am not the sweetheart who hastens to her lover’s side at midnight. I am not some silly goose waiting vainly for a man, chasing shadows and illusions of happiness. I am not the young woman with the elderly husband, dreaming of hotter lips and more powerful arms, setting out in the snow in search of opportunity and recompense. I am not a bored lady of leisure who cannot resist your reputation and throws herself at you, nor the sentimental provincial bride who is unable to pass over the appearance of her dazzling childhood suitor. I am neither whore nor goose, Giacomo.”

“What are you, Francesca?” asked the man.

The voice sounded strange through the mask, as if it were addressing the other at a great distance. The woman replied in the silence across an enormous distance.

“I am life, my love.”

The man stepped toward the fire, careful that his skirts should not catch fire, and threw two fresh logs onto the flames. He turned round with the remaining logs still in his arms, as he was bending over.

“And what is life, Francesca?”

“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?…”

“It’s not enough,” replied the man.

“Not enough?” the woman asked in the same singsong voice. “No, Giacomo, this time you have not been entirely sincere. You yourself know that this is not to be dismissed, that it adds up to something, maybe even more than something. It is not a little thing, not in the least, when two people know they are meant for each other. It took me a long time before I understood it. Because there was a time when I did not know myself, and that is the way I grew up in Pistoia, behind thick walls, a little neglected and unkept, like wild nettles — and you courted me then on a whim, with mock gallantry, but both of us knew that whatever we said, something true was passing between us! You found me various pet names adapted from plants, animals, and stars, as lovers often do when they are still playing with each other and trying out words, in the early days of love when they lack the courage to call each other by their true names, such as ‘my love’ or ‘Giacomo’ or ‘Francesca.’ By that time all other words are superfluous. But at that stage I was ‘wild flower’ and even, somewhat discourteously, ‘wild nettle,’ because I was wild and I stung and you said that your hands burned and came out in a rash when they touched mine. That’s how you courted me. I think back to those times and feel dizzy or find myself blushing, because I am sure that I knew you the very first time I saw you, in the large hall on the ground floor of the house in Pistoia among those scrappy bits of furniture with their broken legs — I remember you were just showing the cardinal’s letter to my father and exchanging a few pleasantries with him, lying about something with considerable fluency. And I knew more about you at that moment than I did later, when conversation and social games hid your real nature from me. I knew everything about you at that first instant, and if there is anything I am ashamed of, or hide from myself in embarrassment, it’s the consequent period of our love, when you flirted with me using those names of animals and plants and stars, when you acted gallantly, when you were false and alien to me — it is that period that fills me with shame. You were a coward then, Giacomo, too much a coward to do as your heart commanded that first moment you saw me, before we had spoken a word to each other, before you started addressing me as ‘wild nettle’ or anything else. It is a great sin to be a coward. I can forgive you all those things the world will not forgive: your character, your weaknesses, your maliciousness, your boundless selfishness; I understand and wholly absolve you of all those, but I cannot forgive your cowardice. Why did you allow the duke of Parma to take possession of me, to buy me as you might a calf at the cattle market in Florence?… Why did you let me take up residence in strange palaces and foreign towns when you knew you were truly mine?… I woke at dawn on my wedding night and stretched out my hand looking for you. I was in Paris in a coach under the plane trees, on the stony road to Versailles, with the king on my right, and I didn’t answer when our cousin Louis addressed a question to me, because I imagined it was you sitting beside me and I wanted to show you something. And I asked myself continually: why is he such a coward when he knows we belong to each other? He is not afraid of knives or jails or poison or humiliation, so why should he fear me, his true love, his happiness?… I kept asking myself that. Then I understood. And now I know what I have to do, Giacomo — it is the reason I learned to write, and to do so much else that has nothing to do with pen and ink and paper. I learned everything because I love you. And now you should truly understand, my love, that when I say the words I love you, I do not say them in a languishing or misty-eyed sort of way, but speak them aloud; that I shout them in your face like a command, like an accusation. Do you hear, Giacomo? I love you. I am not trifling with these words. I am addressing you like a judge, do you hear? I love you, therefore I have authority over you. I love you and therefore I demand that you take courage. I love you so I am starting again from the beginning. Even if I have to drag you from your orbit as if you were a star in the firmament I shall take you with me, I shall tear you from your natural place in the universe, remove you from the laws of your being and from the demands of your art because I love you. I am not asking you, Giacomo, I am accusing you: yes, I am accusing you of a capital crime. I am not inviting you to join a game, I am in no mood to dally or flirt with you, I am not making sheep’s eyes at you or melting with tender sighs. I am staring at you with anger, with fury: I look upon you as one looks at an enemy. I shall kidnap you for love, if not now, then later, nor will I let you off the leash for a single second, whatever borders you cross, however you try to flee me with the little serving maid at your side, the one that opened the doors for me, who started back into the shadows like a fawn that scents danger, sensing that under the man’s clothes I was a woman and a rival, for I sensed that she had something to do with you, too, that she was plotting with you against me, like all the other women. That is how life is and how it will continue to be. But I am stronger for my love. I tell you this directly, and I say it aloud, like a slap across your face, do you understand?… Do you hear?… I love you. I cannot help it. It is my fate to love you. I have loved you for five years, Giacomo, from the moment I saw you in the old garden in Pistoia, when you were telling that thumping lie, after which you called me ‘wild nettle’ and fought over me, stripped to the waist in the moonlight, at which point you fled and I despised you and loved you. I know you are afraid, are still afraid of me. Don’t try shutting your eyes under the mask, because I can see through the holes: yes, now at last I can see you beneath the mask, and your eyes, which were bright before, like a wild animal’s contemplating its prey, have clouded over, as if some veil or fog had descended on them. Your eyes are almost human now. Don’t shut your eyes or turn away, because I want you to know that I shall not let you go, however complicated an agreement you have come to with the duke of Parma, because despite the agreement you remain the man that is meant for me, and I am the woman that is meant for you; we belong together like murderer and victim, like sinner and sin, like the artist and his art, as does everyone with the mission he would most like to escape. Don’t be afraid, Giacomo! It won’t hurt much! I must make you a gift of courage; I must teach you to be brave in facing yourself, facing us, the fact of us, a fact that may be sinful and scandalous, as is every true and naked fact in the world. Don’t be afraid, because I love you. Is that enough?…”

“It’s too much,” said the man.

“Too much,” said the woman and gave a short sigh. She fell silent, her hands against her mask, and stared into the fire.

The fire spluttered and carried on with its monotonous singing. They listened to its song, full of life, full of reason. Then the woman moved warily, as if afraid of tripping over her sword, and knelt before the man; raising her two long, slender arms and very gently and carefully laying her fingertips on the man’s mask, she took his hidden face in her hands and whispered, “Forgive me if my love is too much, Giacomo, I know such love is a great sin. You must forgive me. Very few people can bear the burden of absolute love that is also an inescapable duty and responsibility. It is the only sin I have committed against you. Forgive me. I will never ask anything more of you. I will do everything to reduce the suffering it causes you. Are you afraid that boredom might one day grip you with its damp palm and strangle you as you wake beside me?… Don’t be afraid, my love, because this boredom will be as satisfying and good humored as when you stretch and yawn, and the meaning of the boredom will be that I love you. You don’t know, you cannot yet know, what it is like when someone loves you. I must explain love to you because you know nothing about it. You fear your desire and curiosity, you fear all the women who will smile at you from windows, from carriages, in every inn and in every foreign marketplace, because you fear that you will not be able to pursue them, tied as you are to me, by love…. It is not certain that you will want to pursue them, Giacomo, knowing I love you. But if you were to leave me one day, out of curiosity and boredom, I would carry on living and waiting for you somewhere. And one day you will grow tired of the world, having known and tasted everything, and you will wake with a sense of disgust, your limbs racked with some awful disease, your bones riddled with woodworm, and you will look around you and remember that somewhere I am waiting for you. Where should I wait, my love?… Wherever you wish. In the country house I may retire to after the death of the duke, in the big city where you first abandoned me, perhaps here in Bolzano, in my palazzo, to which I would have had to return and wait for you once the night was over? You must realize that I will wait for you forever. And wherever I make my bed, be certain one pillow will be reserved for you. Every dish I cook or is placed before me by a servant will be your dish too. When the sun shines and the sky is blue, you must be aware that I will be staring at the sky, thinking, ‘Giacomo will be enjoying the same sky.’ Should the rain come down, I will be thinking, ‘Now he is standing at a window in Paris or in London, fractious and in a foul mood, and someone should really be lighting a fire in the room to keep his feet warm.’ When I see a beautiful woman I will think, ‘Perhaps she may afford him an hour of pleasure so he may be less unhappy.’ Whenever I break a loaf, half of it will be yours. I know it is too much, this love, and I beg you to forgive me. I want to live a long time so I can wait for you to come home.”

“Home? Where is that, Francesca?” asked the mask. “I have no home, not a stick of furniture, anywhere in the world.”

“Home is with me, Giacomo,” the woman answered. “Wherever I sleep, that is your home.”

Her two palms curved very gently, as though she were holding a delicate piece of glass, and stroked the man’s mask.

“You see,” said the woman, her voice now faintly singing, her mask a living, smiling radiance, “I am kneeling before you, in fancy dress, like a courtly suitor attempting to charm a lady. And you are sitting before me, in a female costume, masked, because fate has playfully ordained that, for one night only, we should exchange roles. I am the gallant suitor, and you are the lady I am courting. What do you think? Is this not more than coincidence?… I had no idea this afternoon that I would be wearing a male costume tonight, nor did you know this afternoon that the duke of Parma would seek you out, bring you my letter, invite you to the ball, and that you would be dressing up as a woman… do you think this is all just coincidence? I don’t understand human affairs, Giacomo, I only have my imagination, and I begin to suspect that no vital, no unique situation is coincidental, that deep down, at bottom, everybody, men and women alike, is a similar blend of feelings and desires, that our characters and roles are not wholly distinct, that there are moments when life toys with us and shifts about those elements within us that we had believed to be unique and fixed. That is why I am not astonished to be kneeling before you, rather than you before me, as the duke of Parma had ordained in his agreement, and it is I who am endeavoring to woo you. So, you see, everything is proceeding according to the agreement, even though the actors are not precisely in the parts the duke of Parma had designed for them. I am begging you, my dear, to accept my love. I want to console you because I love you and cannot bear your unhappiness. I am the suitor, the besieging force, not you. I have come to you because I must see you. And here we are now, and you are silent. It is a powerful silence, a proper, tight-lipped silence, as it has to be, considering your role, and I echo the last words of your speeches precisely as the agreement demands. But you are still restrained, Giacomo, still acting: you are too true to your part. Are you not afraid that our time will run out, that night will pass, and you will have nothing of interest or satisfaction to report to the man who commissioned you?… Don’t you want me, my love? How terrifying you are when you keep quiet like this, so utterly in character. Not enough and too much, you said, when I offered you everything a woman could offer the man she loved. Look at the fire, Giacomo, see, it has flared up as if it, too, wanted to say something. Perhaps what it wants to say is that it is necessary to be destroyed by the fury of passion and be born anew in feeling, because that is life and wholeness. Everything that has happened might catch light and burn in our hearts if you so desired, if you took me with you or if you let me take you — it is all the same, Giacomo, who goes with whom — but we will have to start everything again, from the beginning, because that is how love works. I will have to give birth to you, to be both your mother and your daughter; my love will cleanse you and I, too, shall be clean in your arms. It will be as if no man had ever touched me. Are you still quiet?… Don’t you want me?… Can I not console you?… How terrible, Giacomo. In vain do I offer you delight and peace, cleanliness and renewal, I cannot drag you into feeling, cannot prize you from your art, cannot change you or see your true face, the last face, without its mask, as I wanted in my letter…. Is it possible that you are stronger than I am, my love? Will the strength of my love break against your cold art and impregnable character?… I promise you peace and wholeness, and you tell me it is too much and not enough. Why don’t you say just once that it is enough, perfect, just right?… Can’t I offer you anything that will draw you out of your orbit? Can’t I say anything to make you finally step out of character and cry, yes, it is enough!… Look, here I kneel, I am twenty years old. You know perfectly well that I am beautiful. I know it, too. I am not the most beautiful woman in the world, because the most beautiful woman does not exist anywhere, but I am still beautiful, my body is perfect, my face is alive and full of curiosity, repose, delight, understanding, cheer, and solemnity all blended together. It is the blend that gives it its beauty. Because that blended animation is what beauty is. All else is merely a malleable combination of skin and flesh and bone. You still believe in the kind of women who ostentatiously draw attention to their beauty, Giacomo, who strut about proudly, not knowing that beauty is what dissolves in the crucible of love, that a month or a year after the successful wedding, no one notices beauty anymore — face, legs, arms, a fine bosom, all melt away and disappear in the flames of love, and there remains a woman who may still be able to soothe, to hold, to help you, to offer something, even when you can no longer see the beauty of her face and figure…. My beauty is like that, Giacomo: I am true metal, gold through and through. Even if I were worn on someone’s finger, or buried deep beneath the earth, I would be true because I am beautiful. The Creator has blessed me with beauty and he has given me the odd beating, too: I am beautiful and therefore have a purpose in life, which is to please your eyes, though it is not only your eyes I must please, Giacomo. For I cannot pass through life with such beauty without being punished for it, because wherever I go I rouse passions: I am like a water diviner who discovers underground streams, who can feel them bubbling beneath her. I have to suffer a great deal on account of my beauty. I offer you the beauty and harmony with which the Creator has blessed and cursed me and you are still uncertain, saying now too much, now not enough. Are you not afraid, Giacomo?… You made my acquaintance when I was still in bud, calling me your ‘wild nettle,’ but you permitted the duke of Parma to buy me, and fled because you feared and still do fear me, even though I represent truth and wholeness. Are you not afraid that human ties might not be enough, that maybe I am just a woman who may tire of waiting, of agreements, deals, and promises? Are you not afraid that I might be tired already and that I visit you only to confirm the fact and tell you so?… Because the desire and devotion that burns in my heart for you is itself a terrifying and self-consuming passion! Are you not afraid, Giacomo, that I have secrets of my own? Are you not afraid that I may be able to stir feelings in you that are not entirely tender or calm, that I might, if I very much desired, entertain you with stories that will make you cry out and finally demand, ‘Enough!’ I am truly yours, Giacomo, nor is there anything I desire more than to save you and to save myself, and having done that, to live with you as people do, through whatever hells we may have to face. But if your attachment to your art, to the duke of Parma’s contract, and to yourself demands something more, it may be time for me to weaken and to confess that, while this flame has continued to burn within me ever since I first met you and that it is indeed unquenchable, I was unable to resign myself to your running away, to your cowardice, but allowed other men to kiss me before I gave myself to the duke of Parma. I could regale you with stories about the consolations required by a rejected fifteen-year-old girl. Shall I tell you what it was like after your flight in Pistoia, when I threw myself at the gardener — you know the man? Are you not afraid of hearing about that night, Giacomo? I remember it very well, in every detail, just as you, in your turn, will remember the gardener who gave me flowers on your behalf: a tall, powerful, violent man, a man of few words. Shall I tell you the story of the night after your duel and your escape?… Would you really like to hear it in all its detail? And what about the other things that followed as the months and years passed, when I had no news from you, and this flame, that is worse than the flames and fumes of hell, worse than the flames suffered by poor victims of the Inquisition, burned me through and through? Shall I tell you the story of the house in Florence? About the palazzo on the bank of the Arno by the Ponte San Trínita, where you will find my nightgown, my slippers, my comb, and the Venetian mirror you gave me? Should I tell you about the house I frequented that I, too, might have used as a casino, Giacomo, the secret palazzo in Murano that, like you, I once enjoyed? Should I tell you all this? Should I tell you what it is like when a woman who wants to give everything that a young body and soul has to give to the man she loves is disappointed in love and begins to burn with fury, like a torch made of flesh, hair, and blood, a torch that burns in secret, like a flame in the half-light, scorching and blackening everything she touches, so that despite all the power, strength, and wariness of the duke of Parma, he is helpless to put the fire out? Should I tell you what it is like when a woman is obliged to seek the tenderness she desires from one man alone, a man who has run away, in the embraces of ten, twenty, or a hundred men? Would you like names, Giacomo? Would you like proof?… Would you like to know the names of those noble lords, gardeners, courtiers, comedians, gamblers, and musicians, together with their addresses, every one of them kinder and more tender to me than you have ever been?… Do you want to know what it is like when a woman begins to move through the world like one possessed, touched, and branded by fate, without a scrap of peace in her heart because she loves somebody and has been rejected? Because I could tell you about that too.”

“I don’t believe you,” the man said, his voice cracking.

“You don’t believe me?” echoed the woman in her sweetest, most childlike, most astonished manner. “And if I had proof, Giacomo?… If you had the list of names and addresses that would act as proof, would you believe me then? Because I could give you the names and addresses. Is that enough?…”

“It is enough,” said the man. He stood up and with a quick movement seized the dagger hidden in his breast.

The woman, however, did not move. Still kneeling, she turned the stiff gaze of the mask on the man, and spoke quietly and modestly.

“Oh, the dagger! Always the dagger, my love. It is the only answer you have for the world that inflicts itself on you! Put the dagger away, my dear; it is a one-word answer that explains nothing, it is a stupid, needless answer. And why answer me with a dagger when you are simply a coward afraid of loving me, when I can offer you neither true delight nor true pain, when all this is just a game, the pièce de résistance of a hired conjuror, a guest performance by a remarkable artist who is only passing through? The dagger is not part of the agreement, my dear. I say it again, put the dagger away, and don’t bother reaching for the mask with those trembling fingers. Why should you take off the mask? What could the face beneath the mask tell me? I wrote to say that I must see you, and now I have seen you. It wasn’t so much a face I wanted to see, Giacomo, but a man, the man I truly loved, who was a coward, who sold me and ran away from me. But it was all in vain. It was in vain that I knew who and what kind of man you were; in vain that, for five years, the fires of Gehenna have been blazing inside me; in vain that I made futile attempts to extinguish the glowing embers of that fire and to heal the wound with the kisses of other men while never ceasing to love you; in vain that I have carried this wound about with me like a bloody sword wherever I have gone, challenging everyone who crossed my path with it; in vain that I cursed it in secret, in the depths of my soul, a hundred times or more, for I was still hoping that one day I would have enough strength to tear the mask from your face and see you, as my note demanded, to see you and forgive you. That is why I asked the castrato to teach me writing. That is why I wrote and sent you the letter. That is why I waited for you, and that is why, when you did not come to me because, true to your art as ever, you were drawing up a contract with the duke of Parma, I came to you, in men’s clothes, masked, just once more, so I could see you. I told you everything, that you are truly mine and that I am the woman to whom you are eternally bound, and you knew it was true. I offered you everything I had. And your only reply was, ‘too little,’ or ‘too much.’ But finally I have got you to say, ‘enough.’ That was the word I wanted to hear. Good. Now listen carefully, my love. Everything I told you is true. And now that I have seen you like this, I have no wish to see you any other way. I will go back to my house and to my guests. And you will go out into the world to live and to lie, to loot and to steal, to snatch at every skirt you come across and to roll in every bed you find. You will continue, faithful to your art. But all the while you will know, whether you are awake or asleep, even as you are kissing another woman, that I was the truth, that I meant everything in life to you, and that you hurt me and sold me. You will know that you could have had all that life has to offer but preferred slyness and cowardice: that you chose to work to a contract and that henceforth life will offer you nothing but contracts. You will know that my body, which is partly your body, will never now be yours but will belong to anybody who asks for it. You will know that I am living somewhere, in the arms of other men, but that you will never again hold me in your arms. I too am faithful in my fashion, Giacomo. I wanted to live with you like Adam and Eve in the Garden before there was sin in the world. I wanted to save you from your fate. There is no passion, no misery, no sickness, no shame that I would not have shared with you. You know what I say is true, you knew my letter was sacred. You knew but kept silent, true to your agreement with the duke of Parma. And you should know that, now that I have seen you, I have sentenced you to unhappiness, you will never again have a happy moment in your life, and whatever sweetness you taste you will think of me. You may have seen me but you do not know me in the biblical sense, and yet you do know something, if not everything, about me now. Our time is running out. Do not forget that my sex and the name I bear demand a certain modesty and tact. You know something about me and the rest I leave you to imagine at every hour of leisure between one task and another, one contract and another, one masterpiece and another. Because you will think of me, Giacomo. I am confident in the knowledge that you will think of me. That is why I came to see you, why I promised you all a woman can promise a man, and why I tell you now that there is nothing a corrupt imagination can invent that I will not turn into reality in the future, at the very moment you think of me. That is why I came to you masked, at midnight, wearing a man’s clothes, with a sword at my side. And now I can go home to my palazzo and to the rest of my life, which I know for certain will be only half a life without you. Now go: live and create masterpieces, my friend. Perhaps one day your own life will become a masterpiece, a masterpiece glowing with cold, corrupt light. The laws of your being may be what most concern you: my concern, however, was for you yourself, my love, and now, this night being over, I know that your heart is condemned to eternal pain. Because it is not a matter of having seen you as I wished to: you have seen me, too, and having seen me, you will never forget my face, the face under the masks I show the world. Because revenge can console us, Giacomo. You may not understand that at this very moment, but you will as soon as I have left this room and vanished forever from your life, then you will suddenly understand and your whole life will be filled with that understanding. I am nobody in particular, Giacomo, not a great artist, not a man, just a woman, Francesca from Tuscany, unfit to occupy a leading place among your great works of art. But from now on I shall have some kind of place there, I have made sure of that. I have infused my being into yours, I have infused you with the knowledge that I was the truth you threw away, that you brought shame to someone who loved you and will always love you in whatever situation she chooses for herself in exacting the revenge she has vowed to take. I wanted to take other vows with you, Giacomo, vows for life. You rejected them. Life will go on, however, even like this…. But your life will not be what it was before, my love: you will be like the man who has been fed some exquisite slow-working poison and feels the pain at every moment. I have taken care of that. Because I, too, have my weapons, subtler than daggers. Put the dagger away, my love. I may not have been strong enough to overcome you through love, but I shall be stronger in revenge and your dagger will be useless. Put the dagger away. Or, if you want, you could give it to me as a memento of this night. I would look after it well, in Florence, keeping it together with your other gifts, the mirror and the comb. Would you like to exchange mementos? Look, I will draw this slender gold-handled sword that I strapped to my side this evening, and I will give it to you in exchange, the way enemies used to exchange hearts and arms when they had finished fighting each other. Give me the dagger as a memento. Thank you…. And receive in exchange this sharp, highly refined weapon, and take it with you wherever you go. You see, we have exchanged arms, if not hearts, Giacomo. And now we should both return to our respective places in the world and live on as we must, if only because you were too weak to step out of character and reject your art. I thank you for the dagger, my love,” the woman said and stood up, “and thank you for this night. Now I, too, can live on, more settled than I have been these last five years. Shall I hear anything of you?… I don’t know. Should I wait for you?… But I have already said, Giacomo, that I will wait forever. Because what we share will not pass with time. It is not only love that is eternal, Giacomo: all true feelings are, including revenge.”

She drew the sword and handed it over, attaching the Venetian dagger the man had wordlessly handed over to her to a link of the golden belt she was wearing. “It’s almost dawn,” she said in a voice as clear as glass. “I must go. Don’t see me out, Giacomo. If I could find my way here by myself I can find my way back, too, to life, to my home. How quiet it is…. The wind has died down. And the fire, too, has gone out, you see, as if speaking its own language, which tells us that every passion, all that passes, must eventually turn to ashes. But that is not something I want to believe. Because this night has, after all, provided us with an encounter and a chance of deepening our acquaintance, even if not quite as the duke of Parma imagined or the Bible describes. Now you have a seal on your agreement, Giacomo, that seal being your consciousness of all I have told you. It is the seal of revenge, a powerful seal, as strong as love or life or death. You can tell the duke of Parma that you were true to your agreement, that you did not cheat him, my love, nor did you fail, but have earned your fee and merit your reward. By the end of the night everything had happened as you had agreed, and now that I have got to know you I am returning to the man who loves me and is waiting for me to ease his departure from life. Travel well, Giacomo, trip through the world on light steps. Your art remains infallible and the task you took on is accomplished, not quite as you imagined, you two clever men between you, but it’s the result that matters, and the result is that I know you, that I know I have no real hold on your heart, and can therefore only resign myself to my fate, the only power remaining to me being revenge. Take this confession, this promise with you as you go, for your road will be long and certain to be fascinating and full of variety. But I want something from you, too, by way of farewell. Rather unusually for me, I wrote a letter: if ever you feel that you have understood my letter and wish to answer, don’t be lazy or cowardly: answer as is fit, with pen and ink, like the well-versed literary man you are. Do you promise?…”

And when the man did not answer, she continued, “Why will you not answer? Can the answer be so terrifying, Giacomo?”

“You know very well,” the man replied, slowly and somewhat hoarsely, “that if I were ever to answer you in this life, the answer would not be given in pen and ink.”

The woman shrugged and responded calmly, almost indifferently, with the trace of a smile in her voice. “Yes, I know. But what can I do?… I will live and wait for you to answer my letter, my love.”

And she set out toward the door. But halfway there she turned to him in a gentle, friendly manner.

“The game and the performance are over, Giacomo. Let us return to our lives, taking off our masks and costumes. Everything has turned out as you wanted. I am sure that everything that has happened has happened according to some unwritten law. But you should know that it has happened as I, too, wanted it: I saw you, I was tender to you, and I hurt you.”

She stood on tiptoe, looked briefly into the mirror, and with an easy movement placed the three-cornered hat over her wig. Having adjusted it, she added solicitously: “I hope I did not hurt you too much.”

But she did not wait for an answer. She left the room without looking back, her feet swift and firm, and silently closed the door behind her.