The Remedy: A Novel of London & Venice

by Michelle Lovric

  Then I also laughed out loud to remember that Mazziolini loathed the bread-and-butter English, how, for some reason, they revolted him above all races. Anglosassone was his foulest epithet for anything to eat or look at. The fact that Mazziolini would abhor the London assignment served to sweeten its prospect for me.

  The play they chose for London was L’Italiana a Londra, in which Domenico Cimarosa’s music perfumed a dull text. It seemed perfect fare for a London audience. My English was by now excellent. My looks demonstrably appealed to Englishmen: Politicians and noblemen of that race had been among my proudest trophies, much to Mazziolini’s contempt. Yet I had never actually been to England: My conquests had been made among the peregrinatory tribes of adventurous Englishmen who frequented the courts of Europe, seeking advantages for their countries and preferment for themselves. In view of this, I had often wondered why my employers never sent me to London, the font of all Englishmen, and I had answered myself thus: They do not want me to seek out my first lover. They fear the consequences; they mistrust my lack of control.

  They did not know that I no longer desired his love. I was not even curious to know what lay before him, be it Heaven or Hell. I was well cured of his tortures.

  • 3 •

  A Gargle with Myrrh

  Take red Astringent Wine 1 pint; powder’d Myrrh 2 drams, mix.

  It Detergeth, Astringeth, Repelleth, Drieth, Healeth. Is a most excellent Wash for swell’d, fungous, flaccid, bleeding, eroded and putrid Gums; cleanseth and freeth the Mouth from foulness and ill scents; Healeth (even Venereal) Ulcers of the Jaws and Throat. Moreover it may be injected or snuffed up into the Nose, to good Purpose in an Ozena, where putrid Matter lodg’d in the little Caverns of the spongy Bones, sends forth abominably stinking Effluvia.

  London seemed to offer more than I could have hoped for. When I saw that an elegant Englishman of evident means was violently smitten by my stage persona, I was only too happy to let him think that he might take advantage of what passed for my true self.

  As for me, he roused a strange and sudden ambition in my soul: a very specific one—to be his wife. As the wife of an English aristocrat, I saw myself beyond the grasp of my Venetian employers, who could never reveal their hand in a public altercation. Relations between Venice and London must be seen to run smoothly. They would sacrifice their hold on me rather than their discretion.

  So I chose him, after overhearing that one conversation with my nominal padrone Massimo Tosi, liking his face, even liking his name. For who could not enjoy the flavor of those syllables, Valentine Greatrakes, upon the tongue and the ear?

  I must confess, as well, he was easy on the eye, drew it to him, even. Exceptionally so. That evening I first saw him he was attired as if specifically to please me and my overpetted weakness for fine clothes. His greatcoat was expensively tailored and buckrammed to an infallible crispness of line. His double-breasted waistcoat was of a coming style, as was his fantail tricorn. He wore a plain linen shirt with an immaculate stock of stiffened cambric fastened at the back. His black solitaire ribbon was tied close with a perfect bow. His breeches were fitted with the latest in silver fixings for catching up his stockings. And I caught my breath when I noticed that his shoes featured what could only be an Artois buckle of Sheffield plate: such a thing I had heard of but not yet seen.

  I was determined to be pleased by him. He was my selected destiny. Even so, he took a little getting used to. Accustomed to the ceremony of European courts, I was surprised by the brusque informality of his preliminaries in seduction. But then England was known to be a coarse country, I told myself. I should not have expected to find it overloaded with civilities. And therefore I supposed that his approach via Massimo Tosi, unintroduced, marked the zenith of the polite arts of romance insofar as they were developed in London.

  In contrast, my own preparations for him were thorough, both practically and mentally, though all in a spirit of cheerfulness. I reminded myself constantly that I actually Liked the look of this man.

  I was not lacking in self-confidence. When I made an assault upon a man’s heart, he had need of all his faculties to defend it. I was not often successless. But this was different: My life was riding upon it, not merely the gainful employment of a few heady months.

  I reviewed my stratagems. I groomed myself to behave as I must. Better to let him speak, I must say little myself: This was one of the first tricks of seduction I had learned from the old actresses. Yet I would frequently lean so close, listening to him, that he would smell the sweet myrrh on my breath. To make him bold, I would be meek. And for the first evening we would spend together—for that I would contrive such a feast as to blind him to anything but lust.

  I put it about the theater that I was in need of the best French chef in London and that expense was no object for one night of his services. Borne on the wings of rumor, there came to my dressing room two or three cringing dwarfs, ejected from the kitchens of noble houses, their palates and their skills already ruined by servitude to English tastes. I tasted the sample sweetmeats they had brought in grimy covered baskets, and despaired. They could not answer my questions about certain foods, and I dismissed them.

  Finally there arrived a trim Frenchman who interrupted me to say, “So you want a man to eat so that he must spend? Why did you not say so?” At the word “spend” he moved his hips slightly so that I was in no doubt that I had found the right man. I handed him all the coins in my purse and he widened his eyes. The fact that this money was supposed to be spent on another lover entirely, a politician in the sights of my employers, struck my mind most pleasurably, as did the fact that I had conducted all this business under the pretext of rehearsal, and so Mazziolini knew nothing of it.

  No doubt he watched me leave that first night on the arm of Valentine Greatrakes, but by then it was too late for him to intervene discreetly. For the first time, I had managed to surprise my custodian. I exulted in my success.

  That night I fed Valentine Greatrakes anchovies, artichokes and asparagus, ruinous to buy in London, but known to porter heat to the genitals. And the sea course was of Barbel fish, infallible in rescuing men from incipient effemininity, and French eels. Instead of water there was an infusion of the Cubeb pepper berry, alternating with a muscadel cloudy with the powder of bruised acorns. The kidneys were served in cream. To accompany the desserts (spiced plentifully with candied ginger) there was angel water, made of the essence of orange blossom, rose, and myrtle, plus distilled spirit of musk and a dash of ambergris. And finally a glass of brandy with an egg yolk beaten into it.

  I rose from my chair two or three times on the pretext of serving him and performed complete circles as if it were the most undesigned thing in the world, so that he might admire me in the round. Then I sat down again, as though restlessly, like a cat afflicted with a seasonal imperative for lovemakmg but lacking an understanding of her own condition.

  Meanwhile, his hands shook so that he sputtered the sauces over the damask cloth I had hired so expensively After the third such incident I renounced hope of that tablecloth and looked upon it as mine, for I should most certainly be required to pay its full value now.

  And then I sang for him. To steady my nerves, and to remind myself what I was about, I selected a cynical little refrain from a Venetian opera buff a, but I sang it as if it were the tenderest love song, all the while gazing deeply at him. He drank it up, little guessing what the words meant.

  They say beware

  of love, of love —

  It melts your heart

  in waxen pools.

  They say beware

  of love, of love —

  They say love hardens

  as it cools

  They say beware

  of love, of love.

  But not with us

  of course, of course.

  Not with us.

  Of course not.

  Fool.

  He was touchingly nervous, a state of mind that infected me too
. Something was afoot, something different. It seemed that instead of the usual bloodless spasm, he too wished to make this coupling finer. It must be done, certainly, or the evening would end unsatisfactorily. But it was not the whole object. It was as if the lovemaking must be got over for the deeper intimacies to begin.

  I saw that tears came to his eyes. I asked him in sign language, “But why do you weep? The song is not sad.” And I smiled, encouraging him to feel pleasure in the midst of the bittersweet pain. I was feeling it myself and thought I must have taken too much wine,

  He answered simply, “I do not understand it. It is as if you have possession of my eyes now. You have commanded tears, and so they come.”

  This was so satisfactory a response that I sang the same song again but, as I sang, I found myself despising the brittle words. I wished I had chosen a sweeter song. This Valentine Greatrakes was worthy of better. He was worthy of kindness. I liked this idea. I saw more than convenient lust on his face, and I own that I was pleased to see it. I was more than pleased, and not in my habitual way, for in my professional seductions such a sign of weakness meant profitable information. I liked his enthusiasm because—strangely—it met my own,

  On his face I saw speculation, and anticipation, and I saw something rarer: hope. I felt it myself: At least that is how I identified the liquefying of all my calculations as I looked at him. Yes, I wanted to put myself outside him, get a bellyful of him. But I wanted more. The wine seemed to be headier than usual. That was the only way I could account for my tooth-numbing, eye-widening sense of anticipation.

  I excused myself briefly and in the corridor I seized my pocket sprunking glass and checked the freshening effect of singing upon my complexion. I dropped into my mouth another pastillo di bocca, a perfumed lozenge to sweeten my breath, I loosened my clothes with practiced speed. I did not wish to be seamed with their imprints when he saw me naked. I wanted to look new as a child. A part of me longed not to part with my clothes at all, though I wanted above all things to be intimate with him. But a greater part was not yet ready for the naked confession of the secrets of my person with thus man, those same secrets that I bartered so cheaply for information with men selected for me by my employers.

  For the first time, I did not arrange the three Inquisitional chairs at the foot of my bed.

  Something about this English nobleman had contrived to do what I had thought impossible. There was about him a quality of humanity that served to rub the rust off my heart.

  • 4 •

  An Hysteric Electuary

  Take conserve of stinking Orrach 4 ounce; Oil of Amber 48 drops; mix. The Dose is the quantity of a Chestnut.

  Every 6 or 8 hours, according as the Case shall require.

  The overtures being played out swiftly, we were united. And I was lost.

  I knew this because I was sad; a tender elegiac melancholy evoked in me the sensation of slow music. Instead of the usual hard bud of professional triumph or the acrid tingle of mere animal satisfaction, I felt a melting sense of renunciation. From a woman who had no heart, I had been transformed into one who had found hers and lost it in the same moment.

  I felt certain that he actually loved me too. His stammers and his silence declared his sincerity. Mechanically, I filtered his behavior through my specially adapted wits, monitoring flattering symptoms in his mode of address or the lingering of his eyes. Not in his gifts. All men offer gifts. And he was not to know that I have never cared for the cold glare of diamonds, not since a trifling incident in my adolescence.

  Initially, I had exalted his drinks with certain ready-bought English preparations, to calm him and dispose him for seduction, but I soon desisted, for I found that I wanted to spend time with the whole man, not just a shadowy edition of him. I was no longer capable of stage managing an operatic romance; I myself was the music being played.

  Sometimes I regretted dimly that to transmit my honest rapture I had only the ways of an actress, the face and hands of an actress. The motions were the same as those I had gone through so many times. Now they were the truth, and yet I did not know how to renovate them, how to uncounterfeit myself.

  From time to time I roused myself from my abstracted state and gloated over my unexpected good fortune. Here, finger-tame in my hand, was a man who would be desired not just for his position and wealth but for his innate attractiveness. I felt a twitch of anger at the unfairness of my work, that in the course of my duties it had never sent me any man half as appetizing as this one. I had been given to dozens of men. Yet for myself I had to find—and illicitly too—the only one who truly pleased me.

  It was of little matter to me that he could easily afford the cost of my entire maintenance. In my whole life I had never met anyone who was actually poor, except the despised converge nuns at San Zaccaria. I had grown up in a luxurious palazzo and my adult work had been among powerful voluptuaries. If they were possessed with the gambling vice or desired women as expensive as myself, these men could afford it all, from the deeps of their ancestral coffers. Money was nothing to such men as they never earned it, and yet Valentine Greatrakes—for all his wealth—seemed to intuit my lack of it, unlike any man before. My new lover automatically seized any little bills of account that he saw upon my bureau, and instantly paid off a number of trifling sums that had been bothering me. This meant that I had a little ready money at my disposal for once, and I squirrelled it away in my glove case. Until now my way of accumulating cash was to save on the normal articles of femininity such as perfume. Instead I had used my craft and acted the part of a perfumed woman to great effect.

  Every word he spoke of himself was a cordial to me. He talked with the utmost naturalness of his “manor,” which I took to be his country house in Ireland; his horses, which I understood to be thoroughbreds; and his stables, which I assumed to be situated in the parks of his ancestral home.

  Yes, I liked him extremely. I liked his looks, his style, even his careless accent, something affected—so I had been told—by many English aristocrats. I liked his luxurious rooms in Bond Street. I liked the untouched copies of the Gentleman’s Magazinescattered carelessly on the table, even old issues. I liked the fact that he had so much time to give me, and thought with gratitude on how many fashionable assemblies at fine London houses he must have renounced in order to stay sequestered with me. I was exceedingly sensible of the fact that a man such as he must daily receive crisp snowstorms of invitations to other nobles’ houses, and I appreciated the delicacy with which he kept them discreetly tucked away so I should not even have to see them.

  One simply couldn’t help liking him. In fact, I soon developed an unrestrainable greed for his company. I loved talking with him. He had a by no means contemptible supply of brains. And yet it was easy to frighten him. That ridiculous incident with my hair feather that he thought was a bat! Even that episode nourished my tenderness for him, however, and my anxiety.

  It is so very easy to put a man off his pursuit. The tiniest thing can make the sex falter.

  At first it seemed that I was playing on velvet with my new lover, that I could do nothing wrong in his eyes, nor he in mine.

  Then came a surprising irritant from an unexpected quarter. At first I thought it a trivial interruption to our happiness, but in that I was most grievously mistaken. A poisoned pinprick can make a nasty wound.

  The problem was with his ward, the daughter of a close friend and employee who had recently died in circumstances he did not properly explain to me. I gathered that a business rivalry had gone fatally wrong, but I saw that the subject gave him pain so I did not press him on the details.

  I never saw the daughter, but I assumed that she resembled her parent enough to keep the sentimental dolor liquid in his heart whenever my lover beheld her.

  And that chit of a girl kept him wrapped around her small finger, no doubt perfectly aware that he suffered under a delusion of responsibility for the death of her father. About this cunning little she-goat, my lover was fawnin
g and stupid with indulgence, and I did not like to see him so debased.

  Young as she was—it seemed from what he said that the child’s years most likely numbered about eight—she appeared to think that she had an inalienable right to be cared for by my lover; it was all one to her whether he performed his duties with pleasure or pain, so long as she received what she wanted. I could not but draw bitter comparisons. Since my parents had consigned me to San Zaccaria, I had never enjoyed that luxury. I had always needed to earn any favors I was given, often in ways that were expensive to my self-respect.

  From visits to his ward he always returned miserably tense. What a job of work she gave me, to soothe and comfort him! What distresses I smoothed out; what dark unspoken fears I assuaged. It was exhausting. I soon grew to hate the little girl, the more so for the allowances he infallibly made for her.

  A sore punishment it clearly was for him to be in her company.

  For I felt that he did not like her, despite her parentage. She did not seem to give him any pleasure in return for all his efforts.

  I heard him instructing his gray little butler Dizzom (for whom, with characteristic simplicity, he dispensed with livery): “And she has told me that she dislikes her French teacher. The woman has reprimanded her in front of others for something or other. That teacher is to be dismissed, understand?—not just from teaching Pevenche but from the school.”

  “And another thing. It seems that they are feeding her some articles she does not care for. I’ve written down this list of things she has dictated and they are to be kept out of the kitchen. And replaced with these.”

  Other ragged lists were brought forth from his pocket, and once a snippet of some ribbon that another girl owned and she grieved not to have. Dizzom was to find it and have three yards cut and delivered in the instant.