“Of course I would. And I feel sorry for Marin, as sorry as I do for Sergio.”
“Marin is happy with Bianca,” says Agnola.
“Every other man in this city wants a son, an heir. Marin would trade Bianca for a boy any day. If he says different, he lies.”
“My brother doesn’t lie.” Agnola squeezes my fingers. “Besides, he looks on childbirth with open eyes. His first wife died. Lots of women die. He doesn’t want to lose Dolce. She means more to him than anything. I’ll bet he feels relief each month.”
“Sex when you don’t want children to result…that’s a sin. As bad as what homosexuals do. Those special police—the Signori di Notte—they punish men for that.” Franca presses her fists together. “Decapitation. Then they burn the body. Besides, it’s disloyal to the Republic not to want to have children. It’s everyone’s duty.”
“Every married person’s duty, you mean,” says Agnola.
“Stop,” I say. I cough and cough, stumble inside, collapse in the hall in a heap of coughs. Finally they cease.
Someone pats my forehead with a wet cloth. It’s Costantina, Franca’s servant. My head and shoulders now rest in Agnola’s lap. She has joined me on the floor.
Franca bends over me. “You’re ill.”
Such attention from women. “So what happens to us?”
“Us?” Franca looks alarmed. “I’m not ill.”
“If it’s a married woman’s duty to have children, what happens to us?”
Franca looks stricken. Why is it people are shocked when you say what’s on everyone’s mind? “Without children, I am nothing,” says Franca.
Ah, that’s why—it gives them license to say the worst. I wish I could suck back my words. “That’s not true. You will find a way to keep Sergio’s interest.”
“You can say that because you’re beautiful. But even a beauty like you worries. Look at your pink fingers.”
“What?”
“You dyed them. To be special, of course. You do odd things, say odd things, and I know you do it so that Marin will think he can never predict what you’ll do. You maintain the mystique we all have before marriage, but almost none of us have after.”
I hold my hands up to the light. “My pink fingers are part of my illness.”
“Really?”
I put my hands together as if in prayer and nod.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea, Dolce.”
“We better get going.” Agnola strokes my cheek. “I want to put you to bed. Lucia La Rotonda can make you a nice broth.”
Broth won’t put a child inside me. Maybe nothing will. Maybe Franca and I are both doomed.
Once at our palace, Agnola accompanies me to my room.
Marin is stretched out on the bed. His look speaks of the exhaustion I feel.
Agnola clutches my hand a moment, then lets go. “Excuse me.” She leaves and closes the door behind her.
Marin swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits. He looks at his knees. “You made a mirror again, didn’t you?”
I take a step backward and steady myself against the closed door.
“The answer shows all over you. Why?” He rubs his chin. “We agreed that you wouldn’t, Dolce. It makes you sick.”
“Someone needs a mirror.”
He scratches his chin. “Who?”
I look away.
“Whoever it is, after this you’ll find someone else to give a mirror to. Some other potential enemy. You want those women to be beholden to you for the extravagance of a mirror.”
He doesn’t know the true design of my gift giving any more than anyone else does. If he did, he’d say that a much cheaper way to do things is to buy the slaves’ freedom outright. But then it’s Marin’s money that’s doing the job. I need to have a part. “You said you didn’t care how much I spend.”
“I don’t. I have no heir, and Bianca’s sons will inherit from their father. You can spend all you want.”
“No heir…”
“It’s a fact, Dolce, not a complaint. Money’s not the point. You’re trying to stupefy everyone.”
“Stupefy? The mirrors I make are tiny.”
“They’re still costly. That awe that you manage to create—it’s become a fetish.” He drops his hand from his chin. “Making mirrors is a plague. It sickens you, body and soul.”
“Only for a little while,” I whisper.
“It seems like a long while. Last night you turned from me.”
I have to fight to keep my hand from going to my throbbing forehead. “A woman is allowed to refuse her husband at these times of the month.”
“Dolce, your head will ache. Your eyes will blur. You will have flashes of ill humor. I can’t bear it.”
“Franca says every man wants a son.”
“I am not every man, Dolce.”
“Franca says the Lord may decide to give only one child, but if He does, He should be fair and give a son.”
“Franca may be an idiot.”
“You really don’t care if you have a son?”
“No.”
“But you said Bianca will have sons. You didn’t say daughters.”
“Because I was talking about money. Inheritance passes to the oldest son.”
“Maybe you don’t know yourself, Marin. Maybe you want a son so bad, your teeth crack. Sometimes at night I listen to you grind them.” Maybe you’ll kill me if I don’t produce a son.
Marin’s mouth opens but nothing comes out. Good Lord, he looks as though I actually said the words in my head. He gets to his feet, opens his wardrobe, and spreads clothes out on the bed. He folds them precisely, edge to edge. He moves in some unreal place and time. Floating.
He drops a comb. It hits the floor with a thunk. This is real.
A little cry bursts from me. “Where to this time?” I ask.
“There’s always a next place.” He looks up at me. “Like you with your mirrors.”
“Don’t go.”
He smooths a jacket and tucks it into the small wooden chest he uses for traveling. He picks up the comb and runs his thumb along the teeth.
“Please, Marin.”
He shakes his head, slow and heavy. “Do you realize how much your words wound me?”
“My headaches…I can’t stop my mouth.”
“I don’t ask that you stop your mouth. I want you to tell me your thoughts. I just want the awful ones to end.”
I stagger to the bed and sit beside his growing mound of folded clothes. “I’ll try. I will. I promise.”
He reaches for a shirt.
I put my hand on the pile. “You should stay.”
“We need time apart.”
“I hate it when you’re gone. There’s nothing to do.”
“Do what other women do.”
“That’s the same as telling me to do nothing. Women of my position…I’ve never walked the alleys even closest to our palace.”
“The alleys you so long to walk reek with garbage and sewage, until the street cleaners come along each day. There are beggars. Pickpockets. The wheels on carts make a tremendous racket in stone alleys. Hawkers follow you. You would hate it.”
“I’d love to see it all, to hear it and smell it and, oh, to taste the food. I get tired of our fancy food.”
“Listen to yourself, Dolce. You chose to enter this life.” His eyes shine—tears. “Do you regret your choice?”
“No! No, I do not.”
“I hope that’s true, Dolce. While I’m gone, make no mirrors. Get well. Greet me when I come home. I want my wife back, my beautiful, sweet, plain-talking wife.”
“Glass,” I repeat as I walk across the front of the grand hall. “I want glass in every window.” I stop and look back at Antonin.
His mouth twists. “I can get workers to start tomorrow on the facade that faces the Canal Grande.”
“Front and rear.”
“But, Signora”—he spreads his hands—“glass costs….Everyone else still has oiled paper
on the rear windows.”
“Do you have to fight me, Antonin?”
“Of course not, Signora. I just wonder if we should wait until…”
“Until Marin comes home? He left yesterday. There’s no telling how long he’ll be gone. And there’s no reason to wait.”
“Can I help?” Agnola comes out of the sewing room with Bianca.
I knew I was speaking too loudly. “Oiled paper on the windows is ugly,” I say. “Don’t you agree?”
Agnola looks from me to Antonin. Her eyes plead for him to explain.
“I agree,” says Bianca.
I look right at Agnola. “Not many palaces on the Canal Grande still have oiled paper.”
Agnola nods slowly. “That’s true.”
“So,” I say, “glass, all around.”
“No one sees the rear,” says Antonin to Agnola.
“No one sees the rear,” says Agnola to me.
From somewhere deep inside me comes a flame. I cannot see, I cannot talk. I put up a hand in the halt gesture until vision returns. Then I run down the stairs to the kitchen.
Lucia La Rotonda looks at me in surprise.
I scan the counter. There’s the knife. My fingers close around the hilt so that the blade points down. I race back up the stairs.
Agnola and Antonin and Bianca look at the knife, dumbfounded. Why can’t they understand what I have to do?
I jab at the oiled paper on a long window. The knife’s tip bounces off the tough surface, but I’m pressing so hard that my hand keeps going forward, slipping along the hilt onto the blade. It cuts deep into my hand between thumb and fingers. Blood spurts. I transfer the knife to my other hand and jab at the paper. It cracks into sharp, stiff fragments that fall to the floor. I jab at the next window, and the next.
The room is filled with screams.
Someone has grabbed me from behind. Someone else tugs on my wrist with both hands.
“Stop, Mamma.” Bianca’s eyes are huge.
What have I done?
I uncurl my fingers and let Bianca take the knife away. I go limp.
Agnola puts her hand on my forehead and presses me against her. “It’s all right, Dolce. It’s going to be all right.”
We sit weakly on the big chest-bench. Agnola sniffles as she wraps my hand in the white linen that Lucia La Rotonda holds out. Each loop reddens before she can wind the next in place. Finally, the cloth stays white. Agnola holds my bandaged hand, still crying.
They need words. Please, come to me, words. “Glass lets us see out,” I say.
“Yes, it does.” Agnola nods at me.
I nod back. “Sometimes I feel smothered. Do you understand?”
Agnola keeps nodding.
“For women locked away inside, glass is the only access to the world.”
“We have balconies,” says Bianca. She sits on the floor with her arms wrapped around my legs. Her chin rests on my knees.
“Only when the weather is good. Why should we be prisoners of the weather?”
“Why should we be prisoners of anything?” says Bianca.
“Exactly. I miss the outdoors.”
“But you didn’t have to grab a knife,” says Bianca quietly. “You didn’t have to keep stabbing the windows when you cut your hand.”
“I wanted people to know…how much glass matters.”
“You scared us.” Bianca bites her bottom lip.
“Maybe for a moment…I wasn’t thinking straight.”
No one speaks.
“I want glass windows,” I say.
“You shall have them, Signora,” says Antonin. His face is ghastly pale.
Lucia La Rotonda looks horrified.
They must think I’ve gone mad. Have I? The bodice of my dress is blood-spattered, but my hand doesn’t hurt. I’m not sure I’m here in this body.
Bianca looks at me with a need sharper than any blade. Agnola cries.
Still, I press on. It has to be done right. “I want crystalline glass on the facade side. The whitest kind, made with kali.”
“Kali?” says Antonin, in a mollifying voice. “Signora, I don’t recognize the word.”
“It’s an herb from Egypt. It bleaches the glass. It makes it perfectly clear. It makes it the best.”
“You will have the best glass,” says Antonin. “With kali.”
“I want glass in the rear, too. But you can choose what kind.”
Antonin pulls his head back. “It’s not my position to choose, Signora.”
I look at him hard. But he’s sincere. I’ve tormented all of them. I am awash with shame. “For the rear, blue-green glass,” I say. “It costs far less.”
“Of course, Signora.”
“This whole floor will light up. Imagine it.” I look from Agnola to Bianca. “Sun sparkling everywhere. You want that, too, don’t you?”
Bianca nods.
“Ah! Let’s replace this big, old dark furniture with glass! We can be the crystalline palace. Glass table, glass chest-bench.”
“But then everyone will see our linens,” says Agnola.
“We can put flowers inside the chest,” says Bianca. “Bring the outside in to us.”
“Perfect. You, Bianca, you can choose them from the flower monger each morning.” I lift my chin to Antonin. “Have the glass chest-bench built first.”
“Of course, Signora.”
I look at Lucia La Rotonda, and hear my mamma’s voice in my head. “For the evening meal tonight, I’d like liver and lungs, please.”
“As you wish, Signora.”
“Serve dried apples for dessert,” says Bianca.
“Yes, little Signorina.”
I gently move Bianca off to the side and stand. “My apologies to you all. It will not happen again. And now I’m going to lie down.”
“Can I sleep with you?” asks Bianca. “I need you, Mamma.”
She’s not afraid of me. Good Lord, she’s afraid for me, but not of me. How lucky I am. I nod. Then I nod to Agnola. The three of us go into my room and lie with me in the middle. Bianca twines her arm around mine and interlaces her fingers with mine. She is the first to fall asleep; her breathing tells me.
Agnola presses against me, shoulder to hip. Her breathing also is regular, but there’s an alertness to it.
“I don’t entirely know what happened to me,” I whisper.
“Nor do I,” Agnola whispers back.
“It’s as though something else was in charge.”
“Don’t say that to anyone, Dolce. Rumor will spread that you’re possessed.”
“Maybe I am.”
“I pray not, Dolce. People lose their temper. Sometimes with justification. You are right that transparent glass will expand our world. Maybe it was simply a tantrum born of frustration. Something understandable. Let us both pray that’s what happened.”
“I don’t know if I am any good at praying. The Lord seems to give whatever He has in mind.”
Agnola kisses my cheek. “Women can live without having babies, Dolce.”
“Can men?”
“Marin has Bianca.”
Agnola finally falls asleep, but I can’t.
I didn’t lose my temper today. I lost myself.
I walk the long grand hall feeling weightless, singing to myself. I like this time of year, when the mornings and evenings are cool but the middle of the day yields to the sun. Everything feels good this morning; everything pats my cheeks lovingly. Today will warm like ripe fruit. I’m headed for the music room, where Bianca plays the harp most mornings. She plays like an angel, like the angel she is, a princess angel. I remember Mamma saying harps sound like angels singing. My smile lifts my whole self so much I have the sense I could fly.
I wipe sleep from my eyes and touch my teeth. They feel the slightest bit odd, but maybe that’s because I just rubbed them clean. They are pearls now. I run my hands down my arms. My skin is smooth cream. My loose hair curls teasingly around my cheeks. I am happy. I walk with confidence. Marin i
s not here to see me, but I pretend he watches me. I pretend I am basking in his admiration.
It took the first six years of marriage for us to reach a method of living together, but for the past year we have managed very well. He gathers his books; I don’t try to stop him from traveling or from squirreling away in the library when he comes home with new books; he doesn’t ask how I pass the time. When we are together, we are simply together—man and wife. We have much to rejoice in.
Crying comes from the music room. Faintly—the door is closed. I slip in.
But it is not Bianca in tears. It is Agnola who kneels on the floor in her fine dress with her back to me. Her shoulders scoop forward. Sobs rack her. I was twelve years old when I witnessed Mella’s grief, but the image still cuts me. I kneel beside Agnola.
She pets the body of Ribolin on the marble floor in front of her. The little dog is contorted and stiff. He must have died in pain, hours ago. Tears spring to my eyes.
I kiss Agnola’s cheek. “He lived a good, long life.”
She shakes her head.
“The fur around his muzzle is gray. Look.” I am whispering. “Look, Agnolina, little Agnola. And on the top of his head. And his chest. Gray. See the lumps and bumps on his eyelids? There are so many. He lived a long life, Agnola. Very long. And you treated him better than any mistress anywhere. He slept on pillows. He ate from bowls. It was a very good life.”
She turns to me like a child. “He was mine,” she says between sobs. “All mine.”
Animals are like that. Children, too. We think of them as ours.
Without Bianca, I’d be a shell. Hollow. I don’t know what I’d do. But even with her, I feel the lack. I know I have to be grateful for her…and I am, I truly am. Still, I remember Franca’s words that day years ago: the Lord should have made Bianca a boy. The Lord has been unfair to Marin. And to Agnola; here is a woman who deserves everything and has nothing.
I hug her tight and kiss the top of her head so she can feel it through her thick hair dyed silly pink. “I understand.” I rock her. “You can pick a spot in the courtyard. We’ll dig a hole. You and me.”
“And Bianca.”
“We’ll dig a hole and Ribolin can rest there forever. You can visit him every day.” You can talk to him like I talk to myself.
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