The Masquers

by Natasha Peters

  Together they managed to undress the limp form and to get her into a clean nightgown.

  “But how can you go back?” Alessandro wondered aloud. “How can you undo the harm you’ve done?”

  “You ask her to forgive you. And you tell her what you should have told her years ago, that you’re in love with her,” Emilia said tartly.

  Alessandro gave a humorless laugh. “She’d never believe it. Not in a hundred years. I—I couldn’t do it.”

  Emilia shrugged, as if to say that anyone who asked her advice ought to be prepared to take it.

  Alessandro looked down at his sleeping wife. “Get some flowers in here before she wakes up in the morning. Fill the room with them. White flowers. Don’t tell her—where they came from.”

  He gave her a handful of coins and stalked out of the room. He went back to the ballroom. Servants were cleaning up the debris. The last of the unwelcome guests had gone. The little immobile blackamoors that stood against the walls were festooned with fruit peelings and soiled napkins. The floor was littered with smashed glasses and blobs of cake and crumpled revolutionary pamphlets. A bluish cloud of stale cigar smoke hung in the air.

  Alessandro saw nothing. He was remembering what Raf Leopardi had said to him that day in the Tombs: “You’ll see to it that she’s ashamed. You’ll make her pay for this. I know you.”

  The next morning Fosca awoke to white roses and shame.

  The last thing she remembered was sitting in Loredan’s library and talking loudly and watching the frown on his forehead deepen like a fissure in the earth during an earthquake. But she couldn’t remember what she had said, or what happened afterwards.

  She pulled herself up in bed and gave the bellpull a weak jerk. Her head throbbed and her mouth felt like the Barnabotti had danced all over her tongue.

  The door at the far end of the room burst open and Paolo came in with a bound. “Good morning, Mama! Happy birthday!” He climbed up onto the bed and kissed her cheek. “Are you ill? Why do you stay in bed so late? It’s nearly time for lunch. Can you come out with me and watch me sail my boat?”

  She looked over his head. No Fra Roberto. No nurse. Not even Emilia. She was alone with her son.

  “But where is everyone?” she asked. “Fra Roberto? Why isn’t he with you? Does he know you’re here, Paolo?”

  “Oh, yes. He said I should come in and wish you happy birthday. Did you get lots of presents? May I see them?”

  “No, no presents,” she said softly. “Only these flowers, from my friends. And you. Oh, Paolo!”

  Paolo gave a resigned sigh and permitted her to hug him and to cry a little. Then he wriggled away from her and insisted that she get dressed at once and come play with him. It was her birthday, after all!

  XII

  LA GABBIANA

  Fosca craned her neck and leaned far over the railing of her box in the Fenice Theater.

  “I don’t believe it!” she said in an astonished whisper. “I simply don’t believe it!”

  On the stage, a ballerina whirled lightly across the floor and catapaulted herself into the arms of Gaetano Vestris, leading male dancer on the continent. Vestris twirled her around three times, so quickly that they were almost a blur, then dipped her elegantly arched body abruptly, so that her head nearly brushed the floor. The audience gasped at this incredible display of grace and daring, and burst into spontaneous applause. The dancers held their position for several moments, then Vestris set the girl on her feet and hand in hand they came down to the footlights to acknowledge their ovation.

  Vestris’ partner was Lia, the waif from the ghetto, the girl who had betrayed them and then saved Raf from the Tombs.

  Fosca knotted her hands. Her color mounted. At her side, Antonio, blissfully unaware of her rising fury, clapped and cheered as lustily as the rest.

  Fosca stood up. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

  “But my dearest angel, they’ve only begun,” he protested weakly. But she was gone. He grabbed up her cloak and fan, and followed her out into the corridor.

  “I’ve seen all I want to see,” Fosca seethed.

  Where did she come from? Who does she think she is, flaunting herself in public like that! Of all the nerve. A dancer! I should have known she’d pick a profession suited to her whorish talents!”

  “But my darling,” puffed Antonio in her wake, “La Gabbiana is the finest ballerina in Europe, everyone says so! I thought you’d be delighted with her. She and Vestris and their company have just returned from a brilliant tour! I had a devil of a time getting a box for this performance.”

  Fosca ignored him. “That little imposter. That—fraud! She’s nothing but a common acrobat, that’s all!”

  “It is true that many people object to the athleticism of her dancing,” Antonio admitted, but everyone agrees that she has brought new life to the art.”

  “A common street entertainer!” Fosca fumed. They passed through the theater doors to the square outside. They could still hear the thunder of applause for Lia and Vestris. Antonio asked her if she wanted a gondola but she paid no attention, and strode angrily through the narrow alleys towards San Marco. “What audacity! What impudence!” Fosca muttered. “I shall expose her, that’s what I’ll do! I’ll tell everyone what she was!”

  “But everyone knows her history,” Antonio said, stooping to retrieve a comb that had fallen out of his lady’s hair. “The dancer de Planchet discovered her performing right here in the Piazza, and took her in and taught her everything she knows. She’s a perfectionist, they say. And to see her and Vestris together—! She joined his troupe after de Planchet’s death. It was a brilliant move.”

  “That was the most nauseating spectacle I have ever witnessed,” Fosca raged. ‘I have never been so insulted.”

  “But they were exquisite together!” Antonio plunged on recklessly. “She’s so full of fire and passion and truth.”

  “I don’t want to hear another word about her, do you understand?” Fosca barked. “That wretched little tramp. That—whore!”

  They went to Florian’s for coffee and Antonio skillfully turned the conversation to other matters. But soon other devotees of the dance began to drift in and everyone was talking about Lia and Vestris.

  “What a triumph! I’ve never seen a finer dancer. Even de Planchet in her prime couldn’t match this girl. La Gabbiana is much more affecting and touching than de Planchet was.”

  “She is perfection, my dear, simply perfection!” another fan lisped. “I’ve never seen anyone move like that. She’s airborne!”

  “The critics were drooling, did you notice? Old Nerini from the Gazzettino was weeping at the end. He was that moved! I can’t wait to see what he writes. He’ll have to invent new words to describe her!”

  “I can’t listen to anymore of this drivel,” Fosca grumbled. “These Venetians have no taste where the arts are concerned. They like anything that’s new and different, and they think that anyone who can hop around on one foot without falling down is a genius!”

  Venice could talk of nothing else for weeks after the Vestris Company returned from their tour. They elevated Lia, La Gabbiana—“The Seagull”—to near sainthood, and marvelled at the way she and Vestris had changed the whole complexion of dance. It had been so stilted, so formalized in the past, just an elegant parade of elegantly dressed figures who never broke out of the stilted forms of the minuet and gavotte. But now—it was revolution! La Gabbiana wore skirts shortened to just below the knee and costumes made of fabrics that moved as she moved. Gone were the hoops and panniers of the past, the towering headdresses, the jewel-encrusted armor with which dancers had clad themselves.

  Priests mounted their pulpits to condemn this unseemly display of ankles and shins. The Inquisitors’ police were present at every performance, to study the immodest brevity of her costumes. But all of Venice flocked to see her. Members of the audience wept at the truth and pathos of her acting. Her strength, so different from the vaporish posturing
of the past, her beauty, her acrobatic suppleness were the subjects of many an ode and sonnet in the little newspapers of the day. In the cafés and salons, arguments raged over this new direction in the arts, but Lia’s detractors were overwhelmingly outnumbered by her supporters, who quoted their new goddess: “If they want pretty pictures, let them go to a gallery. Dance is movement!”

  “But of course she’ll remember me,” Alessandro’s mistress yipped. “We were bosom friends, when I was in de Planchet’s company. Lia was my dearest—Lia, darling!”

  Alessandro Loredan stifled a yawn and hung back while his companion shrieked and launched herself at the startled dancer. He looked around the cramped backstage area of the Fenice. It was grim, ghostly, and unappealing. Stage hands trooped past, lugging pieces of the set for La Fille Mal Gardée, the comic ballet of peasant life that had caused such an uproar in France before the Revolution, because of its sympathetic portrayal of the life of the lower classes. This was the underside of the illusion: a cardboard tree, the façade of a cottage, a painted backdrop representing a village street.

  His mistress grabbed his hand and literally jerked him out of his reverie. “Come and meet Lia, darling. I just know you’ll adore her! Look, Lia, this is Sandro. Isn’t he handsome? We both thought you were wonderful, tonight, didn’t we, Sandro? Oh, look, there’s Marianna! Marianna, it’s me, Laura, remember?” She squealed and ran off, leaving Alessandro alone with Lia.

  Alessandro bowed over the dancer’s little hand. As he straightened up their eyes met and held for a moment. Hers were cool and amused, with a serenity and wisdom that surprised him. Her wide mouth was curved into a most attractive, dimply smile. Her eyes were immense, large and dark with heavy lids and long lashes, and heavy brows. No wonder they had seemed so large from the audience. She was extremely small but not frail-looking.

  Alessandro realized that he was staring and still grasping her hand lightly. He released her and cleared his throat.

  “Well, did you. Signor?” she asked, eyes twinkling. “Think we were wonderful, that is? Or did our poor efforts to entertain merely lull you to sleep?”

  He had been unusually exhausted that night and had, in fact, dozed through most of the performance. But he said, “Certainly not, Signorina. I thought you were simply magnificent. I have never seen a lovelier, ah, more inspiring display of, ah—”

  She laughed deliciously. “I’m sure! The next time you come to the ballet. Signor, you must try and stay awake, at least until I’ve made my first entrance!”

  Her dark, warm gaze seemed to absorb his brain and all his thoughts. Her nearness and her beauty excited him. He stammered an apology, finding that his wit had fairly deserted him. She smiled enigmatically. At that moment his paramour returned.

  “Oh, Sandro darling, Count Flabonico is giving a reception at his palace tonight, for Lia and Vestris and everyone. Do you think we could go, just this once? I’m sure Lia wants you to come, don’t you, Lia?”

  The little dancer said softly, her eyes never leaving Alessandro’s face, “Yes, please come. I’m sure it will be a very dull affair without you.”

  “I think we might manage to make an appearance,” Alessandro smiled. His mistress squealed delightedly, knowing that he despised the dwarf Flabonico and that he detested gatherings of artists and theatrical hangers-on.

  Lia nodded and excused herself. “Until later. Signor. It was good to see you again, Laura.”

  Count Flabonico’s drawing room was overflowing with dancers from the Vestris company and their legion of admirers. When Alessandro and Laura arrived, Lia was already there. Alessandro caught her eye, and she smiled and looked away again. Their host rushed up to them and chirped happily.

  “Oh, my dears, this is an honor! Truly, Signor Loredan, I never dreamed that you would deign to grace this humble room—but of course, the dancers are the real attraction, are they not? Have you met the brightest star of all, the beauteous Lia, little Gabbiana? Come, come, permit me to introduce you. Lia,” he tugged at Lia’s hand and pulled her away from the little group that encircled her, “we are fortunate to have among our guests this evening another illustrious Venetian!”

  She smiled at the dwarf warmly. She had changed out of her costume into a simple gown—whose Parisian origins were obvious to every woman there—of blue silk sashed under the bosom with a pink satin ribbon. She carried a printed shawl. Her hair was simply dressed, as if for dancing, coiled into a thick knot at the nape of her neck and fastened with a deep pink rose. She looked vulnerable and childlike, and altogether lovely.

  She opened her mouth to tell Flabonico that she and the gentleman had already met, but Flabonico rushed on breathlessly: “This is none other than the esteemed Senator and Commissioner of the Seas, Alessandro Loredan. Isn’t it delightful that he could come, darling? Oh, my God, look at that: there’s Vestris flirting with La Gonzaga—he’d better be careful! Come on, Laura, let’s warn him!”

  He scampered off and quickly disappeared in the forest of taller people in the room. Laura followed laughing.

  As soon as Flabonico said his name, Alessandro saw the warmth vanish from Lia’s smile.

  He said, “It’s fortunate that we had this opportunity to meet again so soon.”

  “Yes, very fortunate,” she echoed hollowly. “I feel—rather uncomfortably warm—”

  “Let me take you to the balcony,” he suggested, offering his arm. She took it gingerly and they wended their way through the throng to the open French doors at the other side of the room. They went out and stood at the balcony railing and watched the play of lights and gondolas on the Grand Canal. He could feel the sudden awkwardness between them and said, “But perhaps I shouldn’t have inflicted myself on you—you might have preferred to be alone.”

  “I wouldn’t have come here at all if I had wanted to be alone,” she said with unexpected coldness.

  He felt puzzled at the change in her attitude. “If you look to the left you can see the ancestral pile of the Loredans,” he said lightly. “That barbarous collection of figures and sculpted ornaments and pillars of every size and description. My grandfather’s handiwork. He completely remodeled the existing structure, which must have been quite elegant in its simplicity. He wanted something that better matched his grandiose aspirations, I suppose.”

  “Yes.” She was not interested in the greatness of the Loredans. It was as if she had sealed herself inside a glass box. She was there, and beautiful, but at the same time remote and untouchable.

  “I often think about builders,” Alessandro said, hoping to put her at her ease. “These men who think that raising imposing structures will earn them a place in the memories of their descendants. How wrong they are. We can admire the works themselves, but so often even the names of the builders are forgotten. That’s the way it should be, I think. The Art survives rather than the artist, the servant.”

  “Except in the theater,” Lia replied. “Nothing survives of it.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Alessandro said thoughtfully. “I remember my father telling me about the great artists he had seen: the divas Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni. Farinelli—the greatest castrato of all. He remembered them vividly, and fondly. But the others—the Doges, the Senators he had known—he rarely mentioned. He remembered best the people who had given him pleasure in his lifetime. I envy you, Signorina Gabbiana.”

  “Me?” She gave an incredulous laugh. “Why in the world would someone like you—important, respected—envy a poor dancer who can barely read and write? You surprise me. Signor Loredan. You are esteemed, even feared.”

  “But not loved, as you are. The people hate those who govern. They hate anyone who makes them afraid. They want to be left alone, to live and to love, without any interference from the likes of us. Those of us who work at governing expect no thanks for what we do, and we are never disappointed. When we die, the people appear saddened, but only because they are afraid that someone worse may replace us.”

  They sto
od silently, watching a gondola glide under the balcony. Two lovers embraced. The gondolier sang a lilting love song.

  “Such a strange feeling,” said Alessandro Loredan softly, more to himself than to his companion, “to find one day that the mists have cleared, and that you can look coldly and clearly at your life, objectively, as though it belonged to someone else. It’s even stranger to find that you dislike what you see. Your work: worthless. Destined to disappear. Your friends: non-existent. Friends are a luxury that ambitious men can’t afford. But forgive me—I didn’t mean to bore you.”

  “You’re not boring me,” Lia said. “And what about love?”

  “Love? Love is as elusive as fame, I fear,” Loredan said.

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed. “Fame is like a beautiful bubble. It exists, but it’s so fragile.”

  “So you’ve found that out already,” Alessandro observed.

  “Oh, yes. Long ago, while I was living with de Planchet. Her health was failing, her career was dying. Friends deserted her when she could no longer dance. She should have stopped performing. She was only making herself ridiculous. But she didn’t. People made cruel remarks, very cruel.”

  “As people do,” he said.

  “Yes. I know very well that they don’t love me for myself, but because I amuse them. When I am too old to dance, they will forget me. But right now, while they adore me, I will take their money and their gifts and smile at their praises. I’ll have rich men for lovers, men who would never have looked at me before I became famous. I’ll use them as they use me. And when we’re tired of each other. I’ll turn my back on them, go to my little house, and tell them all to go to the devil.”

  “You’re a very wise young lady,” Loredan said approvingly. “You’ve learned a lot of wisdom very early in life. Some people never learn these things at all. You’re fortunate.”

  “It’s not fortune,” she said. “I know what people are like because I know what I’m like: selfish and greedy and jealous. It would be foolish to expect anything better of them. Except—from the people who love me,” she amended.