“And why only ‘possibly,’ caro?” asked Serafina.
“I have to make a trip to Bologna for my studies, and my tutor has not yet told me when I am to travel.”
“How tiresome of him. Well, I hope very much that your dates are settled soon and that we shall be able to have the pleasure of your company, Gianni,” Serafina said with a smile.
“I hope so too, Signora.” Gianni turned to Luca. “Papa, can you excuse me—I have one or two things I need to finish before tomorrow.”
“Of course—off you go—but would you be able to walk Signora Parisetto home when she’s ready?”
Gianni nodded. “I’ll be upstairs when you need me, Papa,” he said. He smiled, bowed briefly to Serafina and left the room.
As he left, the cat walked silently around the table and jumped up into Luca’s lap. He scratched the back of its neck; the cat’s claws stretched and curled in pleasure, needling into Luca’s leg and making him wince.
“Oh, Luca, Gianni is such a lovely boy,” said Serafina. “If Paolo and Benedetto grow up to be even a quarter as delightful as he is, I shall be entirely overjoyed.”
“They will, Serafina—they are enchanting children, as you well know.”
“Yes, well, they are only three and one, so we have many years for things to change.”
Luca laughed. “Why do you always seem so very determined to see the absolute worst in your lovely boys—”
“The worst? Oh, heavens—if you want to know the worst—just listen to what my darling Benedetto did last night…”
The pair of them discussed the tribulations of parenthood with animation and amusement for a few moments until Serafina sighed and pushed back her chair. Luca stood too.
“I must go, Luca—my mother-in-law will be anxiously waiting for me to get back, I am quite sure. Patience has never been her most obvious virtue.” Serafina raised an eyebrow and Luca laughed again. Serafina said, “Thank you for your hospitality, caro. I do hope the time between now and the banquet, or play, or whatever it is, passes quickly. I simply cannot wait to see Filippo again, and to meet his cousin. Poor thing: I cannot imagine what I should do if I were ever to lose Piero—” She stopped abruptly, one hand across her mouth. “Oh, cielo, Luca…how appallingly tactless of me.”
Serafina threw her arms around Luca in consternation, but he kissed the top of her head, placed his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him.
“Stop it, Serafina—don’t think of it for a moment. For goodness sake, it is—what?—nearly eleven years now. I am…quite mended now, I think.”
“Well, nevertheless, it was horrible of me to be so thoughtless. I am sorry.”
“You don’t need to be. Don’t think of it. Wait—I shall just call Gianni for you.”
***
Luca leaned against the door jamb, swinging his spectacles in one hand. He watched the two figures move away up the street: his long-limbed son and a woman whose head barely reached Gianni’s shoulder. Luca could see that she was taking two steps to every one of Gianni’s slow strides. Gianni carried Serafina’s big basket.
He smiled at the sight, turned back into the house, and closed the front door. Does one ever fully accustom oneself to the sight of one’s replication in one’s children? Seeing Gianni now, it was as if he saw himself at seventeen. The over-long legs, the tangled curls, the slight stoop—Luca had not forgotten wanting to hide his height at Gianni’s age. Gianni’s eyes were Luca’s, his straight nose, his wide mouth—at times the resemblance was unnerving. The day Gianni needed spectacles, the picture would be complete.
And Carlo? Luca sighed. Carlo most closely resembled Lisabeta’s Venetian father, he thought. Slight, good-looking; much fairer-complexioned than he and Gianni. Carlo did not look Neapolitan at all.
Did physical similarity or difference influence filial closeness?
For he and Gianni understood each other, liked each other. They laughed and wept at the same things, could thrash out a discussion for hours, keeping easy pace with each other—both were fascinated by the intricacies of the law and, stupidly, both even shared a marked aversion to broad beans.
But Luca had very little notion of what happened inside the head of his older son. He had almost no conception of how Carlo earned his money, or of the identity of his friends. Shadowy individuals occasionally visited the house, but never stayed to talk, and Carlo carefully avoided the particular if he was ever asked about what he was doing. Rarely, if ever, did Carlo seem truly happy, except perhaps at odd moments (and usually at someone else’s expense). He remained a worrying mystery to his father, and over the years Luca had spent many, many painful hours in fruitless arguments with himself, trying to decide whether he should blame this unsettling separateness of Carlo’s upon his, Luca’s, miserable withdrawal from his children at the time of his bereavement.
He consistently pushed from his mind his almost certain conviction that his older son was a sodomite. The terrifying threat of the agonies of the strappado—or the stake—should this be the case, and should Carlo ever be accused—and convicted—made Luca feel physically sick. He knew he was wilfully forcing himself to ignore the possibility of Carlo’s unpalatable predilections, simply because he could not face their reality.
“Papa?”
Luca started at the sound of Carlo’s voice, and felt himself reddening, as though he had been caught rifling through his son’s possessions.
“Carlo.” He made himself smile.
Carlo slid onto a chair where he sat with one knee twitching. “I wanted to tell you, Papa—I have to be away for a week or so: I will be gone from tomorrow for about ten days.”
Luca waited to see if Carlo would expand upon this sparse information, but though his son smiled at him, he offered no illuminating detail. Luca, however, wanted to know. He said, “Where will you be going?”
“Rome.”
Luca’s desire to know more about the trip seemed to swell inside his chest, and he felt his hands ball in tension as he fought not to question Carlo further. He did not wish to be seen to interfere.
But nevertheless on one matter he could not help himself. “Carlo?”
A raised eyebrow.
Luca said slowly, “What is it that is causing this distance between you and Gianni? Why did he hit you?”
A long pause.
Carlo finally said, irritably, “He can’t take a joke.”
A cold thread slithered through Luca’s head. “What have you done, Carlo?” he said quietly.
Carlo shrugged. “Nothing of any consequence, Papa. Gianni simply lacks a sense of humor. He always has. I need to pack.” And with that, he crossed the room, eeled through the door, and ran lightly up the stairs.
Luca’s gaze rested on the empty doorway.
“If that boy were not my son,” he said to himself, feeling rather ashamed of his admission, “I am not sure I should care to know him.”
Seventeen
The two women arrived at a house in a narrow street near the church of Santa Lucia a Mare.
“There we are, Signora,” the woman said. “That’s my house there—” She pointed.
Maria’s heart began to thud. The only chance she might ever have to find answers to her increasingly unbearable questions was about to walk away from her. She was about to let it slip through her grasp.
She stopped, feeling her grip on the woman’s arm tightening.
The woman turned to her. “Signora, is there something wrong? I hope that you are not now feeling inconvenienced—our journey has perhaps taken longer than you had expected. You must be tired. I’m sure I have been horribly heavy on your arm.”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that.”
“But there is something troubling you, isn’t there?”
Maria nodded. She was breathing throug
h her mouth now—shallow, frantic little breaths like someone in pain. She had to speak. And it had to be now. Feeling sick, she said, “I have to know. I just have to. You’re the only person I’ve ever met whom I could even think of asking.” She hesitated, unsure how to phrase what she wanted so badly to say. Then her words came rushing out of her like vomit. “I’m afraid,” she said. “Afraid that my husband may have…” she felt her voice fade almost to nothing “… unnatural appetites.”
The woman’s expression hardly changed, though Maria felt sure she saw a gleam of prurient interest in the wide brown eyes. The woman said quietly, “What makes you think that, Signora?”
Maria put her free hand over her face and spoke through her fingers. “I can’t believe it is natural…for him to wish to lie with me…so…so very often.”
“How often?”
“I see it in his eyes all the time. Every day.”
“How often does he ask you?”
Maria shrugged, unable to say anything, feeling tears behind her eyes, building up like swollen water pressing against a too-fragile dam. She could feel her bottom lip trembling, and bit it. It wobbled against her teeth.
The woman smiled. She took Maria’s hand and squeezed it. “I would say that all the men I have met—all of them, Signora—quite certainly wish to”—she paused, and then laid a gentle emphasis on the next words—“to lie with their wives every day, if not more frequently. They don’t always get their wish, of course, but it doesn’t stop them wanting it. And the less they do it, the more they think about it. I don’t think that what you describe sounds unnatural at all.”
Then Maria saw her smile fade. The woman hesitated, checked to either side, as Maria had done before, and said in a lower voice, “Signora, does your husband ever…ever hurt you?”
Shame flooded into Maria’s face and she stared down at the ground. How could she tell this woman what it was like between Filippo and herself? How could she explain that their every attempt to do what she understood most people enjoyed was—for her—never anything more than a struggle to avoid allowing Filippo to see how much pain she was in. She said to the hem of her dress, “He never means to hurt me. Never. I’m sure of that.”
“But?”
Maria looked up at her companion, paused and then said, “It always hurts.”
“Do you tell him?”
Maria shook her head.
“Has it always been like this?”
Wiping her eyes with the tips of her fingers, Maria nodded and said, “I’ve read the poets’ accounts of love, and I’ve seen artists’ depictions of it. I know what people say about it, but I simply can’t equate that with…well, with what happens.” There was a long silence. Then she said, “Does it hurt every woman?” Surely now she would hear the truth. A whore would be honest about whether there was in fact a conspiracy of silence amongst women, a silence that she, Maria, knew nothing about, with everyone actually enduring the same pain she did but simply managing to conceal it with more stoicism than she could, or whether in fact the horrible truth was that she was alone.
Her companion’s expression was suddenly one of pity and compassion. She shook her head. “No, Signora. It doesn’t. Some people sometimes, but not everyone always.”
Maria pulled in a long breath through her nose, and let it out again slowly.
The woman in the crimson dress said, “Forgive me if I seem impertinent, Signora, but…do you care for your husband’s company in other ways? At other times?”
Maria nodded. She knew she did. Despite everything. She loved him.
“I think you’ve been so brave—to talk to me like this. Much braver than I could have been.” The woman smiled. “Look, I’ve been working a long time, Signora. There have been many, many occasions when it hasn’t…been easy. Times when it’s been…terrible.”
Despite herself, with a tightening of the skin on her neck and arms, Maria began to imagine what those occasions might have been.
The woman continued. “There are tricks that you learn, when things become too difficult, as in any profession, I suppose. Perhaps…perhaps one or two of mine might be helpful to you, Signora.”
Maria felt her color deepening still further, but, trying to smile, she nodded. She had to know.
“Now we are here at my house, why don’t you come in and have a drink with me in my sala. I’d like to sit down—my ankle is hurting like the very devil—but I have things to tell you. Things that might help. Would you care to do that?”
Maria drew in a breath and hesitated.
The woman saw her hesitation, paused, and then said, “I don’t…work here. Ever. This is where I live, with my children.”
Maria felt her face burn. “I should very much like to come in, if I may,” she said.
The woman smiled. “Good. Then could you kindly knock for me?” she said.
Maria leaned forward, knocked, and waited; the weight of the red-sleeved arm still lying heavy upon her own. Now that they had stopped walking and she no longer felt responsible for preventing her companion from falling, Maria became uncomfortably aware of the warmth of the slim body within her encircling arm: they were pressed together and the woman’s peach-scented arm lay snug around her shoulders. Their two faces were on a level, and now standing still, they were almost cheek to cheek. It occurred to Maria that this was probably as sustained a contact with another body as she had had in many years. It was not unpleasant. But, embarrassed now, Maria pulled her arm back from around the woman’s waist and stood a step to one side, nonetheless keeping a supporting hand beneath the bent elbow.
The door was opened by a plump servant with a big slab of a face; her hair was quite hidden by a carelessly wrapped length of linen.
The woman spoke. “Ilaria, can you take my arm? I fell in the street outside the cathedral and wrenched my ankle. The Signora here has been so kind—she’s helped me all the way home. I’ve asked her to come in for a moment. I’m taking her up to the sala—perhaps you could fetch us something to drink.”
The linen-wrapped servant said nothing but eyed Maria suspiciously as she stepped down into the street. Maria stood back. Taking the woman’s wrist in one hand, and cupping the crimson elbow in the other, the woman called Ilaria began to help her limping mistress up the step and into the house, muttering irritably about the foolishness of walking barefoot in filthy streets.
Her heart now beating up in her throat and making her feel quite sick, Maria followed the woman and her servant up to a small but well-appointed sala, in which a bright fire was blazing. Two pretty little girls were sitting by the hearth; a square board lay in front of them, and one of them was shaking a small leather pot which sounded as though it contained dice.
They looked up as the three women came in.
“Good, Mamma’s home,” one of them said to the other. Then, seeing her mother’s limp, her smile vanished. She sat upright. “Oh, Mamma! What have you done to your leg?”
The woman limped across to a chair near the fire and sat heavily. She said, “Nothing much—I fell over and twisted my ankle.” She looked across at Maria and added, “This kind lady helped me home.”
Maria’s face flamed again as the two children turned to stare at her. She watched as they scrambled across the hearth rug to where their mother sat, and pressed up against her legs. One of them lifted the hem of her mother’s dress to inspect the injured ankle. Sounding surprised, she said, “But, Mamma! You’re not wearing any shoes! Your feet are all dirty—have you been walking barefoot? You’re always telling us not to. ‘The streets of Napoli are far too filthy to go barefoot’—that’s what you always say.”
The woman leaned forward and kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “You’re quite right. But, Beata, Bella, listen—I need to talk to the Signora. On our own. Could you go with Ilaria, and help her choose us something to drink? You c
an each have a comfit, if Ilaria will get them down for you.”
The little girls nodded and stood without a word. They left the room with the servant and Maria heard their fading footsteps on the stairs.
The crimson-clad woman smiled at her. “Come and sit down, Signora,” she said. Maria sat. Wincing a little, as she shifted her weight, the woman began to talk. And Maria listened, rapt and open-mouthed, swallowing the advice and the instructions as though they were a life-saving physic offered by a compassionate apothecary. Which, she supposed on second thoughts, perhaps they were. And as the woman spoke, describing with ease—even humor—things that normally froze Maria into paralysis, she found that an odd sense of release was trickling down through her, unnerving and unsettling, but oddly refreshing.
***
Walking slowly away from the house in the Via Santa Lucia, Maria thought through every astonishing thing that she had just been told. It seemed to her that a window had been opened in the barricade behind which she had been imprisoned for so long. It was a small window, she knew, and awkwardly placed, high in the wall—not easy to reach—but fresh air from outside was already blowing through it. The heavy mass of congealed fear and guilt that had lodged for so long in her chest like a malignant growth seemed somehow to have shifted, lightened. Like a persistent background noise that only becomes apparent to the listener upon its cessation, it was only now, as she felt the familiar burden of her anxiety lift a little, that she realized how weighted down by her worries she had been for such a very, very long time.
She pondered on how extraordinary this encounter had been. The woman she had just met had not been in any way what Maria had expected. Had she ever really stopped to think about it, she realized now that she would have presumed a whore to be brazen and vulgar, unthinking, unlettered, crude, and flamboyantly predatory. Maybe some of them were. But her new companion had been kind and considerate, hospitable, softly spoken, and clearly a loving and capable mother. Those little girls had been quite charming—well-behaved and polite.
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