God, what a sight: five full-grown men, dancing around her in a frenzy, like chickens with their heads cut off. That’s what they looked like to me: decapitated chicken carcasses, twitching in the death throes.
Ugh. I couldn’t stand it. So I looked at Isabella instead. And, as I watched her, standing there, squawking like a duck, I saw something in her eyes. It was a certain look, which only another woman could know. And it was not the look of a crazy person.
“Nice work,” I thought, “for such a young girl. She’s crazy, like a fox is crazy.”
A moment later, something else crossed my mind, but I caught myself. “Columbina,” I muttered, “you may be clever, but your heart’s as stupid as always.”
Because my second thought had been for Flaminio.
So I liked Isabella from the very first day. But it was a long time before I got to know her. It wasn’t until she’d stopped doing that spooky moon girl routine, until she’d started acting like a normal person. It wasn’t until she’d changed her stage part from that of the Moon Woman to that of Isabella, the smart little virgin, out of her mind with love.
Frankly, I envied her those changes. I played the same part I’d always played—Columbina, the shrewd servant, the gossip, the expert on sex, the know-it-all. After twenty years of it, I was bored to death, I was ready to quit.
But after awhile, I stopped envying Isabella, and began to feel a little grateful. For she made my Columbina a whole different role.
Playing opposite Vittoria, I’d always sunk straight to my lowest level. On stage with her, I repeated the same stale, stupid jokes I’d traded with the whores at Parma. I became one of those women again, squatting in the street, gossiping, arching huge gobs of spit into the gutter.
Yet with Isabella, it was different. At the age of fifty-five I was light on my feet again, like a dancer. Our scenes together were magical. I waltzed across the stage, counseling Isabella, bantering with her, slandering the ugly old suitors, devising brilliant schemes for her secret meetings with Francesco. The ways I found to insult the Captain, Pantalone, and the Doctor were inspired, positively inspired. I’d never been in better form, not since my salad days in Parma, when I was courted by all those handsome boys who loved me for my wit.
So I thought Isabella and I would be friends, right away. But it wasn’t so simple.
Now, knowing Isabella so well, it seems incredible to me, our first real conversation.
It was late, after a performance. Though we’d been playing together for months, we’d never talked about anything except the scenes, the action, the dialogue. But on that night, when I went to her tent to return a pair of bootlaces, I found her sitting there alone, scribbling in a little book. I knew that the time had come to speak my mind, one woman to another. I knew I should begin treating her like a real person, with a real heart, and a real life, offstage.
“The time has come to ask her,” I said to myself. “How did you do it?” I wanted to know. “How did you pretend to be so crazy for so long? How could you fool the man you slept with every night? Where did you learn to act like that?”
But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Maybe you think she had me intimidated, like those quivering men. But listen: there wasn’t a man, woman, or child alive who could intimidate Columbina Barzetti, at the age of fifty-five. So maybe it was this:
As I stood there, watching her scribble in that little book, I began to feel that I was in the presence of a lady. I almost curtsied, that’s how she made me feel. And it made me polite.
So I wound up playing the same stupid game as the others.
“Tell me, Isabella,” were the first words out of my mouth, “what made you get better? I mean, why did you recover from that terrible black mood?”
Isabella stared at me, as if I were talking Chinese. She watched me with those clear, no-nonsense blue eyes. She didn’t even blink. Then, she smiled.
“I owe it all to the healing power of Doctor Graziano’s love,” she said.
My mouth dropped open, I stared back at her, like an idiot. I thought about Graziano—picturing him in my mind—those watery eyes, that alcoholic cherry-nose, that fat paunch, those rotten brown teeth, that bad breath…I burst out laughing.
Isabella began to laugh too, holding her stomach and rocking back and forth in her chair. At last, she stopped, and we looked at each other.
She knew that I knew the truth. There was an understanding between us. I forgot that feeling I’d had before, that I was in the presence of a lady.
And we finally became friends.
But still, it wasn’t like it was on stage. Not once did Isabella dance around my tent, shrieking out her love for Francesco, comparing his eyes to the stars, his hair to cornsilk, his muscles to the sinews of an ox. Not that I wanted to watch such a sickening display, in real life. But sometimes, I couldn’t help wondering why Isabella never even mentioned Francesco, why she never confided the secrets of her heart.
Yet perhaps, in those days, Isabella simply couldn’t get a word in edgewise. For it was I, Columbina the blabbermouth, who did most of the talking. Because there were certain things Isabella wanted to learn from me, things about the troupe, the past, the old days. Isabella was pumping me, and I loved it: Columbina the gossip’s fondest dream.
“There’s something fishy,” I said to myself, when she started coming to my tent, day after day, pestering me for old news. “Obviously, Andreini’s told her all this. Why does she need to hear it from me?”
It took me awhile to understand: Andreini was teaching her the history, as if it were the synopsis of a play. But it wasn’t enough. What she wanted was the dirt, the dreams, the gossip, the kind of things only women know. And that was why she came to me.
So I told her what she wanted to know. At first, I hesitated, still a little polite, keeping to the ones who no longer acted with The Glorious Ones. Gradually, though, my tongue got looser. I began to talk about Flaminio and his puppy-dog, Armanda. I told her about Flaminio and Vittoria, about Vittoria and Pantalone. It was hard, telling that part, and never mentioning Francesco. But I didn’t want to, I was too shrewd. I didn’t want to cross that hard-nosed Andreini by challenging his side of the story. So I let her learn about him herself.
It wasn’t until much later, of course, that she finally came right out and asked about my own story. By then, my tongue was so loose, I was ready to tell her.
“Bring a bottle of wine to my tent tomorrow night,” I said, “and we’ll see what I can remember.”
The next evening, Isabella came to my tent with a huge flask in each hand.
“Fuel for the memory,” I said, pouring a glass for each of us. “Let’s see if mine is warmed up yet.
“Isabella,” I began, a few moments later, “the sad fact of the matter is that I started out as a prostitute. I had no choice. By the time I was twenty, I had twenty boyfriends behind me. Who would marry me?
“But I was at least a thousand cuts above the other whores in Parma. For, in the fifteen years I walked the streets, I never had to work very hard. I wasn’t a common whore, one night at a time. I was too smart for that. I entertained more than anything else—I charmed, joked, and flattered, much like I do on stage.
“And that was why the other whores began to call me Columbina—because I smelled so sweet, like a flower. I wasn’t like them, always reeking of dead fish.
“Yet flowers don’t last forever, Isabella; that was the trouble with being a courtesan. It’s not a lifelong profession, it’s not something you get better at, with time.
“One night, I forgot to pull the shades when I went to bed. When I awoke, I saw myself, in the harsh, morning light. I saw the stretch marks on my belly, the thick veins on my breasts, the rolls of fat around my knees.
“ ‘Get smart, Columbina,’ I said to myself. ‘Time’s running out.’ Right then, I knew what I had to do. I decided to find one more wealthy lover. I’d take him for all he was worth, then retire, for good.”
“And Flam
inio was your last lover,” interrupted Isabella. “Bad choice.”
“That’s the playwright in you talking,” I said. “Always knowing the final scene. But you’re right. Flaminio Scala was my last lover, and the choice couldn’t have been worse. But I didn’t know it at the time. His acting was too good.
“It must have been good, Isabella. I was a whore, I’d had ten thousand lovers. You’d think I’d have known the ways of the world. And yet I let Flaminio Scala convince me that he was richer than Midas and Croesus put together.
“I sat there like a teen-age fool, listening to him talk about his Arabian emeralds, his Chinese silks, his Indian spices, his Persian rugs. Each morning, when I asked for my money, he’d tell me about the rubies he was going to bring me that night. Somehow, though, he always forgot. Something had come up, he said, his money was tied up. But I shouldn’t worry; he’d have it for me, within the week.
“And I kept on believing him, listening to his excuses, letting him come back…”
“But why?” Isabella asked. Of course, she couldn’t understand. She was thinking of Flaminio as he’d become by then—poor old Flaminio, the cringing hound. She couldn’t believe that someone could ever have loved him. “Why?” she repeated. “Why did you let him get away with it?”
It was a long time before I could answer her. “Isabella,” I said at last, “they say that women who do it for money have no hearts. They say we have cashboxes in our loins. When we do it with a man, we feel nothing more than if we were dropping a coin into a bank.
“And I suppose it’s true. It was that way for me, through most of it. But Flaminio—there was something about Flaminio which made me feel a little more than that. He made me nervous.
“I wish I could say it was Flaminio’s big heart, or his generous spirit. But both of us would know I was out of my mind.
“I could never tell the truth to a respectable married woman like you, Isabella, if I didn’t feel myself growing a little sentimental, even now. And that tear in my eye seems to make it all right, as if to say, ‘Look: I’m a good woman.’ For the truth of the matter is this.
“It was something about the way Flaminio touched me, as we lay together on the flea-bitten mattress. There was something that crackled in the air, something that happened inside my own body. It made me nervous, Isabella, it did.
“It seems so long ago, it’s hard for me to remember. And sometimes now, as I watch Flaminio slink around the stage like a mangy old dog, it’s hard for me to believe that it ever happened at all.
“Even at the time, I couldn’t believe it. ‘Flaminio,’ I used to say, ‘what can a rich young man like yourself see in a tired old whore like me?’
“ ‘I love you for your wit,’ ” he’d say, with his deep, booming laugh. “ ‘You’re smarter than the princesses of the realm.’ ”
“And that was how it happened. That was how I became a moon-woman, like the girl in your play. I was just as crazy, just as distracted. I daydreamed constantly, I didn’t know if I was coming or going. But, instead of worshiping the moon, I worshiped the man who shared my bed each night.”
“I suppose that’s healthier,” said Isabella.
“Don’t kid yourself,” I told her. “It’s no healthier, just different. Of course, the moon never speaks, never comes close, never responds. But no matter how close he seems to come, a man like Flaminio Scala never tells you the truth. You can’t get satisfaction from a man like that.
“But it took me a long, long time to learn it.
“One night, as I lay in bed, drifting off to sleep, Flaminio shook me awake. ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said.
“I held my breath. ‘There’s bad news in his voice,’ I thought.
“ ‘It’s time for me to move on,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow, early in the morning.’
“ ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘goodbye and good luck. I suppose you want me to forward your bill, so you can pay me later, when you get your hands on all those rubies?’
“ ‘I want you to come with me,’ he said.
“ ‘As your woman?’ I asked him. I was trembling, that’s how crazy I was. I could hardly speak. “ ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not in the script. Remember, you’re Columbina, the wise woman, the one men admire and fear for her wit. But you’re not the one they love, Columbina, not the one they marry. That’s someone else’s part.’
“ ‘Script?’ I shouted. ‘Part? What are you talking about, Flaminio? Have you lost your mind?’
“Right then, he told me about The Glorious Ones—though, at the time, it was just Flaminio and a few worthless friends. Right then, I knew: all that good love-making had just been his way of recruiting me into his miserable troupe.
“ ‘Go to hell!’ I screamed at him. ‘You can be the star performer, at Satan’s ball!’
“But that night, I discovered something which I already knew: I just couldn’t sleep in a bed I’d once shared with a lover. All night long, I tossed and moaned. I talked to myself out loud, to drive Flaminio’s ugly face from my brain. And, in the morning, I got up and joined The Glorious Ones.”
“And Flaminio?” asked Isabella. “How did he treat you? How do you feel about him now?”
I was drunk, but not too drunk to sidestep her first question. “I feel the way we all do,” I said. “I’m sorry for him.”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized my mistake. I was too drunk, my tongue had gotten so loose that it had slipped.
Because it was her fault that we all pitied Flaminio, hers and Andreini’s. They were the ones who’d changed him, broken his will. Day after day, I watched the Captain shrink, until he was no more than a shadow. And it was all the Andreinis’ fault.
So it must have sounded like I was accusing her. “Don’t misunderstand me,” I said, in the uncomfortable silence which fell between us. “That’s the way these things go.
“And you?” I said at last, trying to change the subject. “How did you happen to join The Glorious Ones?”
“It was just as Francesco said,” she declared, staring straight at me, hard as a diamond. “He rescued me from a convent.”
“Isabella,” I said, too foggy to pursue it, “why are you always so clear-headed? Why do you never drink as much as me?”
“Because I haven’t lived as long,” she replied. Then, she got up and walked out of the tent, leaving the half finished bottle behind her.
So that was our friendship. We were friends up to a point, but no further. And that point was Andreini. Her first loyalty was always to him; he’d tricked her well, just like the others. She loved him so much that, between the two of us, the truth had no meaning.
But the fact is: I wasn’t so honest with her myself. It wasn’t that I lied, when I said that I felt sorry for Flaminio. It was just that there was more to it than pity.
My ties to him went deeper. Of course, I didn’t love him any more, I wasn’t even sure I liked him. But somehow, I always felt my life was bound to his, in some way I didn’t understand, and didn’t really like. Maybe it was because I’d been in love with him; maybe it was because he was the only one of them who’d known me when I was young. Or maybe it was this:
Aside from Pantalone, Flaminio and I were the oldest ones in the troupe. And, in those last years, when success swooped down on us like a whirlwind, we were the only ones for whom it came too late.
Despite his seventy years, Pantalone loved it; his pouch had never been so full of gold. Brighella was ecstatic, the Doctor was more full of wind than ever. Even Armanda was happy, for suddenly, hundreds of cute young men came out of the woodwork, dying to make love to a famous freak of nature.
But I had nothing to spend the money on; I couldn’t buy myself a lover, a child, or a new body. And Flaminio had been cheated even worse. The Glorious Ones had been taken from him; even with all that money, he was poor.
And so Flaminio and I moved over to take Pantalone’s place at the sidelines. Like two homely girls at a
dance, we stood and watched, ignoring each other’s presence. We watched thousands of noblemen drool over Isabella’s hand. We watched three trips, to Spain, to France, to England. We watched the testimonials, the tributes, the parades in our honor.
But we were only watching. It was as if all The Glorious Ones were on stage, and Flaminio and I were alone in the audience.
So what I felt for him went deeper than pity. There was some leftover love in it, of course. And there was also some hate, for all those times he’d joked with me like some clever man, and refused to admit I was a woman.
Yet, in the end, it was obvious that no one would talk to him but me. Even Armanda was too busy with her new boyfriends; she’d forgotten him. So I let him come close, in a way I never would, if I’d still been in my prime.
It was hard, being friends with both of them at once. Sometimes, he’d arrive at my tent just as Isabella was leaving. And, though she never insulted him outright, like Andreini did, she always gave him such a mean look that he’d wind up shaking, trembling, stammering for five minutes before he could talk.
“Columbina,” he’d whisper. His booming voice had become a bird-croak, he never laughed any more. It was a pity to hear him. “Columbina, they are destroying me. They are taking away my power, the loyalty of the others, everything I have. They are ruining all my dreams of fame and immortality. Because of them, I’ll die obscure, unknown. All my work will have been in vain.
“How could he do this to me—Francesco, whom I loved like a son? After all I did for him, how could he turn on me like this, and stick his sword between my ribs?”
“Now you sound like Pantalone,” I said, “complaining about his daughter’s treachery.”
“And her!” cried Flaminio, too upset to see that I was teasing him. “What have I ever done to Isabella? We’ve hardly spoken. What have I done, that she should treat me this way?
“She’s a curse on me, I know it. She is a curse from the past, a curse sent down to punish me!”
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