The Masquers

by Natasha Peters

  Fosca knew immediately who she was: Lia, the girl who had lived in Raf’s house, who had betrayed both of them to Pietro Salvino because she didn’t want Fosca to have him. She could have made no better reparation for her crime than saving him from the executioner’s ax. Fosca pictured them together and became almost sick from jealousy.

  She saw her son, Paolo, every day. His nurses brought him to her in her rooms, and later she visited him in his nursery. But she was never permitted to be alone with him. Someone always hovered nearby. Spies, spies, all ready to run to Loredan with any seditious remark that might corrupt the child and turn him against his “father.”

  At Ca’ Loredan or their country villa, she and Alessandro passed each other in the corridors or courtyards without a word, without even a glance. Every time he cut her, every time he walked past her as though she didn’t exist, Fosca felt the sting of his loathing and disapproval, the slap of his smugness and hatred, and her own hatred boiled up inside her. She longed to fly at his face with her claws bared, to revile and insult and shock him out of his silence. But she didn’t; she couldn’t. He might forbid her to see her son, and then she would have nothing left of Rafaello.

  Disappointingly, little Paolo seemed more Loredan than Leopardi. His mind was logical and cool. He wasn’t emotional and only endured his mother’s displays of affection because he sensed that it gave her pleasure to hold him and baby him. He liked to play alone, or with Alessandro. He learned to read at an early age, to play the piano, to speak a little French and Latin. He was quietly observant, and his eyes always said more than his tongue. A little diplomat, and a conservative. He disliked change and disturbances in his routine. He was certainly not a rebel, like his real father.

  Fosca blamed Alessandro for alienating his attentions, for molding the boy into his own image. But she recognized the natural affinity between them. It was this, her exclusion from the affection they shared, and Paolo’s genuine love for the man he believed to be his father, that hurt Fosca more than anything else. She felt that she had nothing left of her great love, nothing but faded and tattered memories. Everyone had gained but her. Raf was up to his ears in revolution somewhere, she was sure, and enjoying it immensely. Even Alessandro Loredan, the wronged, cuckolded husband, had gained a son. Only she, Fosca, had lost everything.

  The Roman ambassador advanced to greet her with his hands outstretched. “My dear, I’m so glad! I was afraid that you wouldn’t want to venture out in this filthy weather!”

  I would venture into Hell itself rather than stay in that house, she thought, but she smiled and said, “Doesn’t it rain in Rome?”

  “Never,” he said stoutly. “The Church forbids it! Now, come and sit by the fire and warm yourself. Let me take your cloak. How beautiful you look tonight! You are the only woman I know who looks more beautiful than my memories of her. Oh, I have some excellent wine to offer you tonight, a Bordeaux, from before the Terror. A fine example of what a royalist society can produce.”

  “I don’t care for any right now,” she said. She began to undo the rows of buttons on her tight-fitted sleeves. “Why don’t we just get on with it?”

  “Of course, my dear,” the Ambassador said with a shrug. “If that is your wish.”

  He put his arm around her waist and they went up to his bedroom. The Ambassador was a knowledgeable and generous lover, unlike some she’d had. When it was over he hitched himself up in bed and looked down at her. He was one of those men who had grown handsomer with the onset of middle age. Graying hair gave distinction to an otherwise ordinary face, and the endless whirl of pleasures in Venice had worn away some of the paunchiness gained during years of sedentary service in Rome.

  “You’re a strange woman, Fosca,” he said.

  “Oh? In what way?”

  “Your attitude towards love. It’s more like a man’s than a woman’s. You know what you want, and it isn’t romance.”

  “Does that bother you?” she asked with a little smile.

  “Dear me, no! Quite the opposite. I find it exhilarating and refreshing to be able to dispense with all that folderol. Although I confess that I forget myself very easily when I’m with you—I really can’t help praising your beauty and flattering you.”

  “I don’t mind. So long as you mean it.”

  “I do mean it,” he said warmly. “You’re using love as a potion, aren’t you? An aid to forgetfulness?”

  “Not at all. I have used other things to help me forget my troubles: wine, religion. They both put me to sleep. A good enough way to forget, I suppose. But love—I use love to help me remember what I’ve lost.

  Raf. The nights they spent together in each other’s arms. His smile. His warmth. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes and felt a man moving against her, she could almost believe that she was with him again.

  She had been greatly shocked to find, in the months following the birth of her son, that she wanted a man, wanted one more urgently than ever before. The time she spent with Raf had accustomed her body to love, and even though her mind rejected the idea and saw it as betrayal, her body persisted in its cravings. Doubt was like a peeping mouse; desire like a roaring lion.

  Her first lover was her cicisbeo, Antonio Valier. He was an obvious choice. Hadn’t he always been sweet and attentive, and passionately in love with her? And she wouldn’t even have to venture beyond the walls of her boudoir.

  “Antonio,” she announced one evening, “I want you to make love to me.”

  “My dearest goddess, don’t I make love to you every hour of the day and night, with every breath—”

  “No, I mean real love. In bed. Will you?”

  He was embarrassed and upset by the directness of her request, but he pretended to be flattered and delighted. He swore that he had dreamed of such a consummation ever since he met her; but he hadn’t the courage, the audacity, to suggest it himself.

  They were all alone. She told him to lock the doors, and she drew the curtains around the bed. They undressed, backs turned to each other. Antonio was trembling like a leaf, and so was Fosca. They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, as nervous as a couple of adolescents, and fondled each other a little.

  Antonio was terrified of failing. Fosca was too fresh from heartbreak and too preoccupied with her own problems to have much patience with him. They lay next to each other, each submitting to the other’s passionless caresses, and nothing happened. Finally Fosca, frustrated and annoyed, jumped up and announced a craving for coffee. Antonio was ready to weep, from relief or shame.

  Their friendship suffered, as Rosalba Loredan could have told them it would. Antonio continued to call upon her, to escort her around town, to spend hours a day with her, but it wasn’t the same. There was restraint between them, and they never again felt so relaxed and easy in each other’s presence.

  Two weeks later, on the feast of the Ascension, one of the most brilliant feast days of the year, Fosca tried again. The populace was given permission to mask. The elaborate golden ship, the Bucintoro, was brought out of storage. It carried the Doge and his party out past the Lido to the Adriatic, where he threw a golden ring into the sea and proclaimed it the bride of Venice. A regatta was held, a parade of decorated gondolas and other boats. In the town there were bullfights, boxing matches, contests and celebrations of every kind. It was Carnival for a day.

  Fosca spent the day boating with Antonio and Giacomo. When she came home, she told Emilia that she was exhausted and suffering from headache, and she wanted to go to bed early. When the coast was clear, she dressed again, put on her mask, and slipped out of the house.

  She walked briskly to the Rialto, the only bridge across the Grand Canal. She wanted to go to the Ridotto or the Piazza but she didn’t want anyone, even a gondolier, to see her. A few streets away from the Rialto, she encountered a sailor. He was lounging against a wall and staring glumly at the waters in the canal. He had a heavy-jowled, somewhat craggy face. The light was poor. Fosca decided that he resembled Raf. He
didn’t, of course. But she wanted him to be Raf, and thought that if they shared the same profession they would share the same flair for love.

  She approached him boldly and asked sweetly for directions to the Rialto. He regarded her stupidly for a moment and replied in an almost incomprehensible accent that he didn’t understand. He was a Neopolitain.

  “So you’re no good at giving directions,” she said with a flirtatious smile. “What are you good at, then? Dancing, perhaps?”

  He may not have understood her accent, but he read correctly the message in her eyes. He had a nice smile, and she didn’t resist when he put his arm around her waist and drew her deeper into the shadows.

  She let him kiss her under her mask. He wasn’t used to coping with masks, for he gave an impatient snort and ripped hers off, scratching her face slightly. He tossed the mask into the canal.

  “Stop that!” she gasped. “How dare you—!”

  He paid no attention to her protestations, but dragged her deeper into the shadows. She had fallen into his lap, as it were, a gift from the heavens, and he wasn’t about to let her get away. He had just spent his last cent in a tavern and had been wondering how he was going to relieve the nagging hunger in his loins.

  Fosca struggled futilely, recognizing the danger she was in. She started to scream, but he struck the side of her head with his fist. Her brain buzzed. For a moment she couldn’t see anything, but she could hear his breathing, like a roaring furnace in her ears.

  He flipped her onto her back into a foul, fishy-smelling puddle, and ripped away her underthings. He entered her roughly and strained and heaved while she kept her eyes clamped shut and thought. “What a fool I was. What a bloody, simple-minded idiot.”

  He finished and hauled her to her feet. He wanted her to buy him some wine. She shook her head. She felt dizzy and sick, and when his grasp slackened, she slipped away from him and started to run. He caught up with her easily, thinking that she was just playing some kind of game. She jerked her knee up and caught him squarely in the genitals. He howled with pain and let her go. Then she gave him a tremendous shove and sent him sprawling backwards into the canal. She picked up her skirts and ran back to Ca’ Loredan. She managed to get to her room without being seen, but Emilia heard her come in and found her sobbing hysterically. Emilia undressed her and helped her to bathe and didn’t say a word.

  For the next three weeks, Fosca stayed in her room and never left the house. She hated herself and berated herself and called herself every kind of name, but she couldn’t quench the fires that burned inside. Soon after that, Alessandro requested that she attend a reception at the Doge’s Palace, and there she met a young senator. He flirted in a civilized and amusing fashion. Fosca saw Alessandro glowering at them from across the room, but knew he couldn’t fault her conduct. She and the senator left the ball together and became lovers that same night. He was kind and considerate, and he restored Fosca’s self-esteem. At least one man in Venice found her beautiful and desirable.

  Their affair lasted through the summer. He was a frequent visitor to their country villa. But on the eve of the Loredans’ return to Venice, they parted.

  “I just don’t understand you, Fosca,” he said miserably. “I love you so much. I’ve done everything I could think of to make you love me. But you don’t.”

  “I can’t love you,” she said gently. “I can’t love anyone, ever again.”

  She kept her word to Alessandro. She was as discreet as a nun, publicly as virtuous as anyone in Venice. After the incident with the sailor, she never took as a lover anyone who didn’t fit the mold of what Venice considered suitable.

  Even Alessandro’s acknowledgment of Paolo as his son could not salvage Fosca’s reputation completely. Word of her affair with the Jew spread surreptitiously through the circles in which she used to move. She felt the taint of scandal. When she entered a crowd she detected a new electricity in the air. She was no longer invited to the most fashionable salons, and a couple of her father’s old friends cut her off completely. The rest tolerated her because she was, after all, the daughter of a Dolfin and the wife—however discredited—of a Loredan.

  She found herself on the fringes of a class whose existence she never really noticed before: the outcasts. These were noblewomen who flaunted their lovers like prizes; who thrived on scandal and cared nothing for their reputations; who sneered at convention, routinely cuckolded their unconcerned husbands, disgraced their noble names. There were men, too. Not so impoverished as the Barnabotti, they still lived by their wits as spies and adventurers and procurers for these high-class whores.

  One day on the Liston, not long after her confinement ended, Fosca met the notorious Princess Gonzaga, Alessandro’s old mistress, whose lovers were more numerous than the years of her age.

  Gonzaga greeted her with the cry, “Ah, another noble Venetian whore joins our ranks. Welcome, Donna Fosca!”

  Fosca ignored her and passed on, clinging to Antonio’s arm. He was scarlet with shame. She never spoke of the incident, and never forgot it.

  A few days later, she was approached in the Ridotto by a young man with slate-colored eyes whom she recognized as a friend of Gonzaga’s, one of those opportunists who used other people’s misery for their own gain.

  “It’s so marvelous to see you again, Donna Fosca,” he gushed, bowing deeply. “You have been sorely missed during your long convalescence. I trust your health is restored?”

  “Completely, thank you,” Fosca replied coldly.

  “I am delighted to hear it. Will you take coffee with me?”

  Antonio had excused himself for a moment and she just happened to be standing alone and unprotected. She could hardly refuse. He slid his hand under her elbow and led her towards one of the smaller salons where refreshments were served.

  “Very often,” the man observed, moving a tiny spoon in swirls around his cup, “a lady who has been absent from society finds herself in rather special circumstances when she returns. Old friends have forgotten her. Old debts continue to haunt her. Now I would hate to think that you were plagued by such worries, Lady. It would distress me to think that you lacked friends, or money.”

  She said, “One can never have a surfeit of either.”

  “That’s quite true, quite true,” he nodded approvingly. “You can never have a surfeit of either,” he repeated. “You know, I have an acquaintance who would agree with you. He has money, and he desires a friend. I foresee a relationship that could be mutually beneficial. I would be delighted to perform an introduction. I assure you, he is absolutely respectable. You need have no fears on that score. Why—”

  She dashed her cup of steaming coffee into his face. He sputtered and blinked at her through a liquid brown curtain.

  “I do not need a pimp,” she said through gritted teeth. “If you ever speak to me again—even so much as a greeting—and if you ever mention my name to any man, I will inform the Inquisitors about your nasty little business.”

  She stalked out of the Ridotto and never returned.

  Fosca spent more time with her brother Tomasso. He was the only one to whom she could speak freely about Raf. Occasionally, through his connections with the revolutionary underground and the French Jacobins, he received news of a radical who called himself Leopard. This Leopard had worked hard for the enfranchisement of French Jews, survived the Terror, risen to a position of prominence in the First Directory.

  The French were at war with everyone in Europe except Russia and Spain. In March of 1796 the Directory ordered a three-pronged attack on Austria, their most dangerous and aggressive enemy, and they appointed the Corsican general Napoleon Bonaparte to lead the Army of Italy and to expel the Austrians from the Italian territories they coveted for France.

  Late in March, Tomasso met Fosca in Florian’s café to tell her that he had learned that Leopard had left Paris and joined Bonaparte’s staff as a captain.

  “But I’ve heard that there’s fighting in the Piedmont,” Fosca sa
id worriedly. “Do you think he’s safe?”

  “Of course he’s safe,” Tomasso reassured her. “He’s an officer, isn’t he? Officers don’t fight. They just watch the action from a safe vantage point on a hillside somewhere.”

  “Oh, why hasn’t he sent word?” she wondered disconsolately. “Six years, Tomasso. Six years and never a sign that he still cares about me. Why, I wouldn’t even know that he was alive if it weren’t for you! There are French spies all over Venice. He knows who they are, if he’s as important as you say he is. He doesn’t try to write because he doesn’t love me anymore.”

  “That’s foolishness and you know it,” Tomasso said briskly. “He can’t communicate with you. It’s too dangerous, for both of you. And right now he’s in the thick of battle. What do you want him to do, ask Bonaparte to call off the war for a couple of weeks so he can ride over and say hello?”

  “Six years is a long time,” she said thoughtfully, not even listening to him. “He’s forgotten all about me. He’s found someone else.”

  “I don’t know why I talk to you about him at all,” Tomasso said crossly. “It only upsets you. I can’t bear to see you like this, Fosca. You’ve changed so much since—. You used to be so full of joy, and love of life! ”

  “And now I’m one of the walking dead, eh, Tomasso?” she smiled grimly.

  “I’ll never understand why you didn’t leave Loredan. No, that’s not fair. Knowing him, you probably didn’t have any choice. All right. So make the best of a bad situation. He’s given you a fair amount of freedom.”

  “Oh, yes, he’s been quite civilized about it,” she said with bitterness.

  “Then take advantage of it. Find someone else to love and forget Leopardi. Only new love can heal a broken heart.”