Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  I straightened my back with a groan, then tried to get up, but my knees were so stiff that I staggered. Tiziano hurried forward to offer me his hand. It was so large and broad that my own disappeared inside it. He lifted me up effortlessly and held me steady till my legs were able to hold me up. Then he went back to examine his painting again with a cool frowning glance. I walked around, looking at other paintings stacked up against the wall, a little disconcerted. Any other man would have tried to kiss me, or made a lewd comment about what else I could do while on my knees, but Tiziano seemed utterly absorbed in his painting.

  ‘May I see it?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose so. It’s not any good. The figure of Mary is beautiful enough, and I think I’ve caught some of your expression, but the rest is all wrong.’

  I stood beside him and stared at the canvas. ‘I like the countryside.’

  ‘I tried to capture the view as it looks from the village where I grew up: Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. The ground falls away into blue infinity, and you think you can see forever.’

  ‘You grew up in the country? Did you have a garden?’

  ‘The whole of the valley was our garden. You’ve never seen such flowers. When I was ten, I painted a Madonna and Child, with a little boy-angel, from juice squeezed from wildflowers and berries, on the walls of the Casa Sampieri. My family were so amazed that they sent me here to Venice, so I could be apprenticed to Zuccato, who made mosaics. It was not long before I realised it was painting I wanted to do, though, so I convinced the Bellini brothers to take me on and teach me.’

  He scowled at the painting. ‘I want to be even better than they were, though. I want to be the greatest painter ever. Yet it never comes out how I see it in my head. Something’s wrong. The balance. Or the shape.’

  ‘Why is Jesus wearing a hat?’ I asked.

  He glanced at me in surprise. ‘Well, it’s a gardener’s hat. When Mary first sees him in the garden of Gethsemane, she thinks he’s a gardener. See, he has a hoe too.’

  ‘I can see he might catch up a hoe to lean on, if he was as stiff and sore as I was when I first got up. But why a hat?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ he asked himself, under his breath, and laid one finger over Jesus’s head, hiding the hat, then drew it away.

  I gazed at the depiction of myself. I was only a small presence in the painting, my face in profile, my figure concealed beneath flowing white sleeves. To me, the single tree that struck across the top half of the painting seemed to grab the eye much more than my figure, crouching at its base. And the figure of Jesus, rather than being tempted by my beauty, seemed to be fleeing away from it. I said as much, trying to conceal my pique beneath a note of warm teasing.

  Tiziano just stared at the painting. ‘Would you kneel again, just as you were before?’

  I did as he asked, with a flounce of my red skirt. I tossed back my hair, braced my hand painfully on the jar and fixed my gaze upwards again. Tiziano called one of his apprentices, busy grinding powders at the far end of the studio, and ordered him to come and stand before me, dressed in nothing but a sheet knotted loosely about his loins. The apprentice was only young, a year or so older than me. He flushed at the sight of me kneeling at his feet and bent towards me, no doubt trying to peek down my bodice.

  ‘Yes,’ Tiziano whispered, and he began to paint furiously, sometimes throwing down his brush and smearing paint with his fingers. The apprentice stood frozen in place, holding his arm in front of him as if trying to hide his erection.

  Soon, my knees were screaming with pain again. The ache in my lower back spread slowly up towards my awkwardly braced shoulders, but I did not move or speak. It was as if I was having a silent battle of wills with Tiziano. Notice me. Notice I’m in pain. Notice that it’s dark outside, and I’ve been here for hours, and you’ve not even offered me a drink.

  At last, his apprentice gave a kind of moan and turned away from me. ‘I … I need to …’ he said and hurried away towards the door.

  ‘Poor boy. Do you think he needed to pee? He must’ve been holding it in for hours.’

  Tiziano lifted his head and glanced at me, as if surprised I was still there. ‘Has it been hours?’

  ‘Hours and hours,’ I responded. ‘May I be permitted to straighten my back? Though I am not at all sure that I can.’

  He lifted me to my feet. ‘I’m so sorry. Look, it’s dark. I had no idea it was so late. You should’ve said something.’

  ‘And interrupted the genius at work? I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘You should have spoken earlier, reminded me what time it was.’

  ‘You seemed absorbed. I did not want to break your concentration.’ Despite myself, my voice had softened a little. The feel of his warm hands tingling on my shoulder and back, the earthy, outdoorsy smell of him, combined to allay my displeasure.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Not just for being so patient for so long. Come and see the painting.’

  This time, I stood and stared in silence. The changes were small, but somehow the whole feeling of the painting had changed. The scarlet turmoil of my skirts showed I had flung myself down in some strong emotion. The brilliant splash of colour drew the eye irresistibly to me. My hair was disordered, as if I had just risen from a restless sleep. And now the figure of Jesus bent towards me, as though he longed to reach down and catch my hand, drawing me up against his almost naked body. Instead, though, he drew away the folds of his shroud, afraid that the merest touch of my fingers would unman him. The hat was gone, and the face looking down at me with such tenderness was that of Tiziano himself.

  EARTHLY LOVE

  Venice, Italy – 1512 to 1516

  Yet Tiziano did not try to seduce me, even as the year rolled towards autumn and he painted me once again.

  I didn’t understand why. I could tell he desired me. Sometimes, he stared at me with such intensity that I felt my loins clench. But no matter how I tempted him – brushing my thigh against his, crossing my arms so my cleavage deepened – he only frowned and looked away. He wanted me yet would not touch me.

  Instead, he ran his fingertips through the colours squeezed onto his palette, then caressed my painted form on the canvas. He wanted to capture me binding up my loosened hair, as if I had just risen from my lover’s bed. I stood there, my camìcia slipping off my shoulders, for days, pretending I did not feel the scorch of his gaze on my bare throat and shoulders. He would not let me see the painting, not till the last day when he was adding the last few touches with a brush as thin as the tip of a lock of my hair. I demanded to see what he had created. He refused. I threatened to never sit for him again. Reluctantly, he stood aside and let me see.

  I looked dreamy, satiated. My skin was illuminated with warm candlelight, my river of loose crinkled hair glowing like newly polished bronze. The vivid blue of the robe draped in the lower corner of the portrait only made me look more luminous. It took me a moment to notice I was not alone at my toilette. A man – Tiziano – stood behind me in the shadows, almost invisible. He gazed at me with such troubled longing, as if wishing he dared bend and press a kiss against my bare shoulder. In the mirror behind me was my dim reflection, a block of light angled above my head like a crooked halo.

  I stood still before this painting of me, filled with a most unusual sense of humility. I had seen my own face and form in a mirror before. I knew I was beautiful. Yet somehow, in Tiziano’s painting, I realised what Sibillia had meant when she said beauty was both a gift and a curse.

  I looked up at him. ‘In the painting, you look as though you desire me.’ There was no reproach in my voice, only a wish to understand.

  ‘I do …’ Tiziano cleared his throat. ‘I do desire you. Very much.’

  ‘Then why do you not take me to bed? You must know that you can.’

  ‘I cannot pay for love. It is something that should be given freely between a man and a woman.’ He looked away, his swarthy cheeks darkening. ‘Besides, I could not afford you.’

  ‘If y
ou give me this painting, you may have me in return,’ I said.

  Tiziano glanced at me quickly. ‘You love it so much?’

  I nodded.

  He frowned. ‘I need it. I must make a sale if I am to afford to keep on painting, and this is the best work I have ever done.’

  ‘Could you not make me a copy? To have for my own? I will keep it in my private rooms where no one will ever see it.’ I leant towards him so that he could see the pale curve of my breast and smell the warm scent of my body, anointed that morning with jasmine and rose for the sole purpose of arousing him. I cannot tell you why I wanted him to want me so much, when I was sick and weary with being wanted. It is not enough to think that it was simply because he made no move towards me. The reasons were more complex than that. I think now it was because I understood that he was the only man who could truly immortalise me, capturing me in all my fresh beauty on the canvas.

  ‘I could paint another one,’ he said slowly.

  ‘So we have an agreement?’ I was puzzled as to why he did not look at me, let alone seize me in his arms and devour my mouth with his. Sexual tension crackled between us, as it had done from our very first meeting. Yet still he stared away from me, his whole body rigid with unhappiness.

  ‘What is wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not think I can share you with anyone else. You’re a whore, Selena. You sell your body to men. I cannot bear to think of those fat rich men pawing at you. How can I make love to you when I know you have come to me from another man and will go from me to yet another?’

  I took a deep breath, feeling my ribs hurt. For a second, tears stung my eyes.

  ‘I have no choice,’ I said. ‘How else am I to live? My parents are both dead. My father was murdered, and his killers raped my mother. She poisoned herself and left me all alone. I was little more than a child. Tell me what else I could do?’

  Tiziano stared at me, eyes wide and shocked. Then his mouth twisted and he reached for me. I went into his arms and pressed my face against his strong shoulder. I may even have wept a little. Just a little. Then I lifted my face and blindly sought his mouth. For a moment longer, he resisted me, but I pressed myself against him, moulding my body against his, kissing his cheek, his throat, his mouth until at last he took a deep uneven breath and bent me back over his arm, his mouth frantically seeking mine. Although I had had sex till I was weary of it, I had never kissed before. I had never been able to bear it. Now, though, my mouth opened wide for him. I sucked his tongue deeper. My whole body melted. We fell to the floor, Tiziano tearing at the sash of my dress. The bare floorboards were below me, my skirt was rucked above my knees and he was wildly dragging at his hose, his urgent desire near bursting his seams. I laughed out loud and pressed my mouth to the pulse in the hollow of his throat. I felt gloriously, powerfully alive. Invincible.

  Our love affair was tempestuous. We made love, quarrelled, threw wine glasses, banged doors, swore never to see each other again, only to meet at a party and make love against the wall in the stinking alley outside. He sold his painting of me for a large sum, and we celebrated by getting drunk and spending the night dancing, kissing, gambling and making love in my gondola as the silver dawn turned Venice into a fairy-tale city of towers and domes wreathed in mist. Far to the north, the violet-blue shape of the Dolomites bulged above the panoply of clouds. Half-naked, Tiziano lay in my arms and gazed at their mysterious heights.

  ‘I was born there, you know. One day, I will buy a house that looks upon the mountains.’

  ‘You do not wish to go back, to live there again?’ I asked, drawing circles on his smooth back. My breast looked very white against his warm olive skin.

  He cast me a scornful look. ‘I would if I could. But there are no patrons in Cadore, no one to buy my paintings. If I am to make a living from my art, I must be here in Venice, or go to Rome or Florence or Mantua.’

  ‘But surely your art is something that you should give freely to the world?’ I mocked him. ‘God forbid that you should be paid for your labour.’

  He scowled. ‘It’s different. I’m a man. I need to support myself and my family.’

  ‘While I, being a woman, should be nothing but a man’s decorative possession, my life spent bound to another’s will.’

  It was an old argument, one with no solution. Tiziano wanted to marry me and keep me under his hand, with nothing better to do than sweep his filthy floor and shop in the markets for bread and cheese and wine, or whatever it is that housekeepers buy. I relished my freedom, however. I relished my palazzo and my witch’s garden, my stone chest full of books of magical lore, my own bed with clean crisp sheets that no one but me ever slept in, the cool rooms kept in perfect order by my housekeeper, a whiskery old woman who lived to sweep away cobwebs and polish silver.

  No man was ever permitted to step inside my high stone walls. Not even Tiziano. Some whores held court at their own house, their bills paid by a rich patron, other men knocking on their door at any time of day or night. Not I. My address was kept secret, as were my true name and my history. My gondolier came at dusk every evening and ferried me to the salon of my procuress, Angela, where men paid for the honour of my company for an hour. I sang and played the lute, and argued about art and nature and religion and politics, and occasionally allowed a man to clasp me in his arms and dance with me around the ballroom. No man was ever permitted to think he had a right to my time and my company, let alone my body. Sometimes, I allowed a man to take me to one of the bedrooms in Angela’s palazzo. More often, I refused, no matter how heavy the bag of coins dangled before my eyes. I was cruel and scornful and capricious, which only made me more eagerly sought after.

  It was a dangerous game, though, and I needed a bodyguard. I wanted a woman but soon realised that men held women in contempt, regardless of their size and strength. No woman would ever be able to give me that aura of invincibility that I needed.

  One day, I was searching through the Jewish quarter for old books when a giant of a man dressed in little more than rags came in to pawn a battered old cittern. As soon as he spoke, I was struck by his high shrill tone, the voice of a boy inside the body of an oversized man. I also saw the way his fists clenched and his brow lowered as he was mocked by the young bloods jostling to pawn their jewels. Rascaglione, they called him. Eunuch.

  I followed the eunuch out into the street. ‘Signor,’ I called.

  He turned, glowering. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for a singer, a musician, to play at my parties.’

  ‘I can sing no longer.’ As he spoke the word ‘sing’, his voice suddenly changed, growing deeper and more melodious.

  I raised one eyebrow, and he added gruffly, ‘The wind was in the wrong quarter when they took my manhood. I lost my voice.’ Again, the timbre of his voice shifted, squeaking like an old wheel.

  I considered him. He was huge, his fists as big as cobblestones. ‘I need a bodyguard. You must understand, though, that I demand utter loyalty.’

  He looked me over. ‘How much?’

  I named a sum, plus food and board. His face lit up. He glanced back at the pawnshop. ‘Can I have some in advance? To get back my cittern?’

  ‘You have no need of that,’ I said. ‘Your voice is gone and will never come back. It is no use dreaming of what can never be.’

  As his shoulders slumped and he fell into step behind me, I thought what I must do to make this true. Music was a jealous mistress, and I wanted no rival for his loyalties.

  Over the years, I found out most of Magli’s story. It was simple enough. A sweet singer as a child, his parents had sold him to the Pope’s men, who took him to a butcher in a back street to be castrated like a calf. They poured opium-laced brandy down his throat, put him in a cold bath and held him down while the butcher chopped away his small soft penis and left him with a mess of scars and a wounded soul. The butcher had botched the job, or it had been too late and Magli’s voice was already beginning to break, or he had been too
shocked by his betrayal. Who knows? His soprano did not survive the knife, so he was abandoned by the Pope’s men and left to beg in the streets. He was the perfect bodyguard, hating all men who had what he did not, and loving the woman who gave him a home and a purpose.

  Soon, I was as famous for my eunuch as I was for my beauty and my devilish temper. I bought myself a lynx and a small black girl to carry my train, and I wore dresses that were cut as low as my navel and left my long red-gold hair flowing freely like a banner of war. So I became the most expensive and eagerly sought-after courtesan in Venice.

  Poor Tiziano. I think he wished to murder me sometimes, and other times to lock me away with a key, to keep me all for his own. He adored me and hated me in equal measure. I could have married him, and won his heart forever, but that I would not do. No man shall have dominion over me, I declared. Ever.

  But Tiziano could not do without me. My face was making him his fortune. He painted me as Flora, with my camìcia slipping so low off my shoulder that the eye naturally sought a glimpse of my nipple. He painted me as Salome, cradling John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter like a haunch of roast pork. He painted me as a naked nymph in a sylvan landscape, listening to two musicians play, oblivious to my voluptuous presence. He painted me as the Virgin Mary, surrounded by adoring cherubs and angels, aloft on a cloud above a world of saints and sinners.

  I was now eighteen. I was beginning to fear the loss of my beauty and, with it, my power. Tiziano had found another model, a pretty enough little milksop called Violante, who began to appear in a number of paintings as a sweet blonde with a yearning face. I knew Tiziano well. He could not see so clearly into her soul without having slept with her. I accused him. He denied it. I slapped him and kicked him, and swore I would kill her. He was frightened and told me to leave her alone. ‘Just tell me the truth,’ I demanded. ‘It’s cowardly to lie. I hate cowards.’

  ‘Very well,’ he admitted. ‘I slept with her. Why shouldn’t I? You sleep with ten men a night.’