After Flaminio had finished his story, I stared into his eyes, for a long time. Then, I spoke.
“Do you think she might really have been your mother?” I asked, very softly.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “There was no evidence to support her claim. And I would hate to think that I have been cursed so harshly by my own mother.”
Flaminio laughed, as if to show me that he took it as a joke. “But the fact is,” he continued, growing serious again, “as I looked into the crazy nun’s face, I saw that her features looked so much like my mother’s that she could very well have been her blood sister.”
At that moment, Francesco Andreini understood why the Captain had taken Armanda into the troupe.
In adopting a girl from the convent, he was opening his arms wide to embrace his worst fate. He was challenging his mother’s curse.
Of course, he was hedging his bet. Why else would he have chosen such a pathetic little creature, who could do him so little harm? He did not want to take too much of a chance. Still, he was tempting destiny at one of the weakest points of his life. And Francesco Andreini admired him for it.
But Andreini also knew that Flaminio Scala had given him the power to destroy him.
That night, after we returned to the camp, I lay on my mattress, trying to sleep. And the whole scheme came into my head, from beginning to end.
I saw it all. Naturally, there were chances, risks; things might not go as I desired. But I was a man of great practical experience, I knew the consequences. If my plan succeeded, I knew that I would win.
The next day, I began those little tricks with Vittoria; later, at Perugia, I showed my hand. She was so easy to twist and turn, poor Vittoria. I feel sorry now, that I had so much power over her, that I could not understand how she was suffering on my account. But, at that time, everything was in my control. Her experience was one which I had not yet had.
Flaminio, on the other hand, was a difficult one to deceive. It is a tribute to him, how hard I had to work in order to trick him. Perhaps I would have failed, had I not had his own dreams and madness working on my side. And certainly, I would never have succeeded, had I not seen the end so clearly.
For already, I had found the woman to take Vittoria’s place.
Isabella was hardly a woman then. She was sixteen years old. Francesco Andreini had first seen her leaving her house in Venice; and, because he was still such an adventurous young man, he arrived on her respectable doorstep that evening. He presented her parents with a hand-lettered card, introducing himself as Count Francois of Grenoble, and stating that he had come to court their lovely daughter.
Luckily for Andreini, the girl’s family had never met a genuine French count. And the five languages he had learned in his travels permitted him to carry off the charade by muttering to himself in French, while speaking Italian with an accurate and perfectly charming Southern French accent.
Believing him completely, Isabella’s parents allowed him to pay formal court to their daughter. He visited her regularly, sat and chatted politely in the main parlor. And, whenever the troupe went on tour, he invented some excuse, some aristocratic business which required him to be absent from Venice.
Andreini was charmed by Isabella. Never had he seen such an intelligent, beautiful, graceful girl. When he was away from her, she was often on his mind. He would remember some clever thing she had said, and burst out laughing.
But at last, after his suit had dragged on for almost two years, Isabella’s parents grew concerned, and felt obliged to press him concerning his intentions. Andreini, who always saw the consequences of things, knew that his casual game could no longer continue. And, in a typical act of high-mindedness and nobility, he decided to explain himself to poor Isabella, and to stop ruining her prospects for a decent marriage.
One night, after her parents had mercifully left them alone for a few brief minutes, Francesco took Isabella’s trembling hand in his. “Isabella,” he whispered, “I have a confession to make. I know that this will come as a terrible shock to you, but I am not Francois, Count of Grenoble.”
“I know who you are,” laughed Isabella. “You are Francesco Andreini, the actor. Three weeks before that first evening you came to my house, I saw you perform in the plaza. After that, I took to entering and leaving my home at the times I thought you most likely to pass by. I courted you well, Francesco,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Don’t you agree?”
I should have known right then. I should have seen that Isabella was more clever than I, that she was a woman to be wary of. But you do not think such things at the start of love. Your vision is clouded; for a moment, you cannot see the consequences.
At that instant, when Isabella revealed the fact that she knew my true identity, the only thing in my mind was that she was the perfect woman for The Glorious Ones.
So I prolonged my visits to her home as long as possible. At the same time, I stepped up my efforts to have Vittoria dismissed from the troupe.
Naturally, I succeeded. Vittoria was fired, and I persuaded Isabella to elope with me, to marry me, to join the company. And, through her, I conquered Flaminio.
I succeeded because I had a careful design. I had it all planned out, through the very last scene, the very last word I spoke in that eloquent introduction of Isabella.
We performed it theatrically, Isabella and I; there was no improvisation in it. Completely shrouded in a hooded black cloak, she followed me into the camp at dawn. I awoke each member of the company, one by one, and led them out into the clearing.
“Ladies and gentlemen of The Glorious Ones,” I began, when they had gathered around us. “Beneath this mysterious cape is the most remarkable woman in the world. She is the cleverest since Cleopatra, the most beautiful since Helen, the bravest since the destruction of the Amazon kingdom, the most spiritual since the Blessed Mother herself. She is graceful as the swan, as musical as the nightingale, as sly as the cat, as fierce as the tiger. Whole nations have been sacrificed for women with but a mere fraction of her charm. Empires have fallen for women unfit to wash her linen.
“Perhaps you are wondering where I discovered such a treasure? All I can tell you is that the story of our meeting is far more romantic and dramatic than any play yet written. I cannot even reveal the truth to you, my dearest friends. For there are certain important personages involved, certain indiscretions, certain crimes against public morality which might place us all in mortal danger.
“All I can tell you is this:
“Several months ago, I had occasion to visit the strictest and most prestigious convent in all Venice. It was a fearsome place, as I’m sure you can imagine, where tender young girls were forced to spend the nights of Lent in stone coffins lined with moss.
“During the course of my visit, as I dined with the vicious old abbess, I happened to notice a beautiful young woman scrubbing the floors beneath our table. Deftly and discreetly, I passed her a note, declaring my admiration. And it was then that our courtship began.
“Each day, I stood beneath her window, gazing upwards. She, in turn, stared back at me, with longing, pitiful eyes.
“At last, I could stand it no longer. I rode up to the convent on my stallion, bent the iron bars on her window with my bare hands. I saved her, rescued her, made her my bride.
“Ladies and gentlemen of The Glorious Ones, may I present to you: Isabella Andreini, our new Inamorata!”
For a few moments I paused. I had delivered my greatest lover’s soliloquy, which far surpassed any of those I had ever spoken on stage in praise of the Inamorata. I watched the expression which passed across Flaminio Scala’s face when he thought about this new woman from the convent. Then I raised my arm high, and swept the cape from Isabella.
Many years later, when Francesco Andreini looked back on that scene, he found himself remembering something which he had long forgotten. He remembered this:
During Andreini’s visit to the desert patriarch, so long ago, the old man had told
him not one story, but two. The second was a legend about Adam and Eve.
“Eve was not fashioned from Adam’s rib,” the patriarch had said. “She was created in another place, a distant country. But one day, after Adam had been alone in the Garden for several months, she knocked on the gates of Paradise.
“ ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ asked Adam. For, though he could not help noticing Eve’s beauty, he had experienced nothing, in those first months, which might have prepared him to deal with strangers.
“ ‘I am Eve,’ the woman replied. ‘I want to come inside the gates.’
“ ‘What will you do here?’ asked Adam.
“ ‘I will bring you suffering,’ she answered. ‘I will listen to the snake, and eat the apple. I will introduce evil into the world.’
“And Adam, who had at first been undecided about this newcomer, immediately opened the gate and admitted her to Paradise.”
V Dottore Graziano
AND DID FRANCESCO ANDREINI’S beauteous bride throw back her head and begin to warble like a nightingale? Did his pulchritudinous princess shut her emerald orbs and spontaneously compose poetry more elegant than the elegiac odes of Pindar? Did this Helen of Troy, this Cleopatra, this Aphrodite, this Venus—did she transfix us with a look of such heavenly hauteur that we immediately swooned in an apopleptic faint?
No, she did not. I, Dottore Graziano, Professor Emeritus, Doctor of Divine and Earthly Medicine, Healer of the Sick, Scourge of Death, Holder of Degrees from the Universities at Cairo, Paris, Moscow, Athens, Rome, and our very own Bologna, I, Dottore Graziano give you my most learned scientific opinion and my most sacred medical testimony that she most assuredly did not.
On that rosy-fingered dawn, when Francesco Andreini introduced his wife and drew off that burdensome black cloak, Isabella Andreini opened her mouth and began to quack like a duck!
At first, we laughed with delight. Armanda clapped her hands; Brighella snorted, and expectorated on the ground with satisfaction. How ingenious of Andreini, we thought, to bring such a wondrous comedienne into our troupe.
But, when she refused to stop quacking, when the squawking grew louder and faster and more intense until its cacophony made our aural organs ring, the smiles left our lips.
Francesco Andreini’s face turned bright red, as if he were afflicted with some roseate efflorescence, some hideous rash. He shook his wife gently by the shoulders, as if he wanted to slap her, but could not bring himself to do it.
The quacking continued. The thespians stood and gawked. And it is my most careful critical opinion that never, never in our finest moments on stage have any of The Glorious Ones ever delivered such an enthralling and captivating performance.
It was Brighella, of course, who broke our silence. “She’s crazy!” he shouted. “She’s mad as a hatter! Trust Andreini to bring a crazy lunatic into our troupe!”
“I am sorry, Francesco,” said Flaminio Scala. “I am afraid that this unfortunate girl will not do as a replacement for our Vittoria.” And, if I may venture a hypothesis based on my preternatural powers of perception, there was a look of relief on the Captain’s physiognomy.
But suddenly, instantaneously, Francesco’s bewilderment seemed to disappear, and he began to smile. “On the contrary,” he said. “It is merely a tribute to her great acting ability that she has managed to fool you all so successfully. Certainly, you should know better, Flaminio my friend—you, with your wide knowledge of thespian technique. You should know that my wife is only pretending to be mad.
“And now, just to prove my point, I will commit her to the observation of our esteemed Doctor Graziano, who, after an interval of several days, will no doubt bear out my contention that Isabella Andreini is saner than any of you.”
“Graziano!” cried that cretinous Brighella. “That drunken fool couldn’t tell a genuine madwoman from a rabbit’s asshole! He can’t even cure the wart on his own forehead!”
The others joined in Brighella’s laughter. It was typical of their niggardly natures, for they were always scoffing at my medical knowledge, my latinate language, my boundless store of esoteric wisdom. But, before they could utter another word, Andreini put one arm around his wife, the other about my own shoulders, and steered us off towards my tent.
All the way across the campground, Isabella kept on quacking. I peered at her out of the corner of my eye, calling on my vast experience with madness and derangement to determine the severity of her case.
In my tent, I dissolved my strongest tincture of opium in my finest wine. “For medicinal purposes,” I said, taking—I must admit—a small sip from the glass I offered her.
At last, the potion succeeded in sedating her. Then, I rolled back her eyelids, and passed my finger back and forth before her face. I tapped her knee with my gavel, palpated her breasts and abdomen, pushed, prodded, and poked. In short, I examined the patient as I had been taught in the finest universities of Europe.
When at last I had completed my inspection, I turned to Andreini. “She’s mad as a hatter,” I said, using language that I knew even a layman could understand.
Andreini paced nervously around my tent, looking at my bottles, my packets of dried herbs, my stacks of textbooks and treatises, at all the paraphernalia I had accumulated during my glorious career at the university. He studied the pointed hat, the long cloak, the magic wand I had used when regrettable circumstances reduced me to vending patent medicines in the streets of Florence, where Flaminio found me.
Finally, he spoke. “I had not planned this,” he said.
I respected Andreini. He was a practical, scientifically minded man, like myself. And, no matter how it went against my medical ethics, I felt a little—how shall I say—sympathetic towards him.
“Francesco,” I said, “if you are hoping to find a way out of this, I would estimate that you have three risings and settings of the sun and moon to come up with one. I can keep her here in my tent, and do my best to ameliorate her lamentable condition. But, after that, I cannot answer for her. For, as you know, things are not quite what they should be these days. The others will not take kindly to the idea of carting a madwoman around with them, like so much extra baggage.”
Half-listening, Andreini nodded sadly, and left my tent. I did not see him again for three days. During that time, the actors were quiet, tense, as if they were afflicted with some bilious disorder. They did not have an Inamorata, they could not summon the vital essences necessary to perform.
In point of fact, I wished that they had been a bit more rambunctious then; for perhaps their noisy voices might have drowned out the quacks, squawks, and screams which emanated from my dwelling in intermittent bursts. Because, just as a good physician always accepts and learns from his error, I must admit: those three days marked my first and last medical failure. Despite all my potions, salves, and poultices, I could not cure Isabella Andreini’s madness.
When at last Francesco returned to my tent, I placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, and prepared him for the worst. “I am terribly sorry,” I said. “But there is nothing that medical science can do to cure her.”
“I am quite aware that you will not be able to cure her,” said Francesco Andreini, with an odd self-assurance. And it is an incontrovertible tribute to my deep knowledge of human nature that, at that very moment, I realized that Andreini had found a plan.
“But tell me,” he continued, before I could reply. “Though I know that her illness is incurable, I am wondering if perhaps medical science has discovered a way to alter the varieties of madness, to control and shape its symptoms into a more manageable form? In other words, Doctor Graziano, do you have the equipment and skill at your command to suppress my wife’s unfortunate outbursts, and to turn her into a melancholiac, a depressive, mournful and withdrawn?”
“I have the equipment and skill to do anything! Except cure hopeless madness,” I hastily added. “But why would you want me to perform such a peculiar operation? What good do you expect to a
ccomplish? Do you really suppose that the others will love a quiet madwoman so much more than a noisy one?”
“Doctor Graziano,” replied Andreini. “If you will swear secrecy according to the most sacred ethics of your profession, I will tell you of an astounding event.
“Last night, as I searched through all my memories, my vast practical experience, and my intimate knowledge of four continents in my efforts to find some solution to this dilemma, the idea of searching through Isabella’s belongings occurred to me. Perhaps, I thought, they could furnish some clue, some key to her wretched condition.
“Isabella’s things were locked in the chest she had brought with her from the convent. At first, as I pried open the lid, it seemed that nothing in there would prove useful to me; for the box appeared to contain only Isabella’s black monastic habit, and a few thin linen shifts. But, when I reached beneath the piles of clothing, I discovered a sheaf of papers, which I eagerly lifted out.
“Imagine my surprise, Graziano, when I examined the manuscript, and discovered the substance of a play! Not some sketchy outline like those our Captain scribbles down, but a complete drama—written out from beginning to end, with all the scenes, stage directions, and dialogue executed to the finest detail.
“I suppose that Isabella must have composed it secretly—by candlelight, I imagine, during those dark nights at the convent. And it would seem that she began it after my secret messages had already filled her head with tales and dreams of The Glorious Ones. For we are all in there, Doctor; there is a part written in for you, for me, for Armanda, Brighella, Columbina, Pantalone, and the Captain.
“But the most impressive thing of all is the fact that my poor wife seems to have had some awful premonition of the tragic illness which would overtake her. For, instead of a normal Inamorata, there is the character of a beautiful madwoman, a divine melancholiac, so extraordinary and rare that, despite her sadness, despite her enigmatic utterances and long, brooding silences, she manages to win the love and devotion of all the characters, and of all the men in the audience. So what do you say, Doctor? Can you treat my wife in such a way that she can fulfill the requirements of her own role?”
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