“You deserved to be cursed,” I told him, “for all the women you’ve mistreated in your life.” I was hoping to flatter him, by reminding him of his amorous career. But Flaminio was beyond flattery in those days. He responded to my little joke with a pained look, as if I’d stuck him with a pin.
“Columbina,” he’d whimper, “what shall I do? What shall I do to save myself?”
At last, one night, I lost my patience. I was sick of him treating me like he always did, asking for my wise advice, never loving me, never giving me anything in return. So I spoke my mind:
“Flaminio,” I said, “you’re wallowing in self-pity, just as you’ve always wallowed in everything. Listen: you should see yourself acting lately. You creep around the edge of the stage as if you were terrified of the audience’s noticing you. It’s disgusting to watch.
“Maybe the Andreinis have stolen your power. But they haven’t stolen your skill. You can still act as well as either of them, Flaminio. If you don’t do it, it’s your own fault.
“If you want to keep your fame, here’s how to do it: act circles around them. If Francesco is being outrageous, be twice as outrageous. If Isabella is intense, be three times as intense. That’s how you’ll get your fame back, Captain—as an actor, not just as the manager of The Glorious Ones.”
Now, as I look back on that advice I gave Flaminio, my heart hurts. I cringe. I think I should have kept my mouth shut. For, if Flaminio took my advice, does that mean I was responsible for what happened next?
Naturally, I’d prefer to think not. I’d prefer to think that, in those last years of his life, Flaminio was in no shape to take anyone’s advice. I’d prefer to think that he was going crazy, and that his craziness was the cause of that last tragedy.
He must have been crazy. Why else would he have done it at a time when it couldn’t possibly have made him famous—off season, when there was no one in the audience but street trash?
It was early in the fall. All over the continent the aristocrats were busy moving from their summer palaces to their winter palaces, doing whatever it is that keeps aristocrats busy. They were too busy to give parties, watch plays, or sponsor performances of The Glorious Ones. So we went back to the plazas, where, to tell the truth, I’d always liked it better anyway.
We’d been in Turin for almost a week when I began to notice a peculiar thing about Flaminio Scala.
His acting was improving. His voice had gotten resonant again. His jokes were funnier, his boasts grander, more convincing. He strode across the stage, slashing the air with his sword. When he bragged about the battles he’d fought, the ten thousand pygmies he’d strangled with his bare hands, even I almost believed him.
Everyone in the troupe noticed it; it was just like the old days. Andreini’s mouth dropped open. Isabella kept asking me what had gotten into the Captain, for she’d never seen him act like that. And, when she spoke to Flaminio, her face no longer wore that nasty look.
But they no longer met at the entrance to my tent. Flaminio had stopped visiting me, he’d stopped confiding in me. Once again, he began to treat me as he had before—one old man to another.
It hurt me. I felt cheated, abused. And perhaps that was why, on the night of that frightful show at Turin, I found myself watching the tragedy as if it were just another scenario which the Captain had outlined in advance.
It is a hot September night. Isabella, Columbina and the Captain are together on stage. While the Captain valiantly presses his suit, Isabella giggles coyly, cattily. Columbina scampers around, creeping up behind Flaminio’s back, mocking him, putting horns on his head.
“My darling Isabella!” cries the Captain. “Why will you not love me—I, who have leveled half the cities of Asia in your honor? Why will you not take me as your true love? Why will you not acknowledge that I, like some noble worm, have burrowed my way into the deepest places of your heart?”
“Because you are so old, Captain,” giggles Isabella. “And so silly. Now leave my house. I don’t want to see you any more.”
“But tell me, Captain,” she whispers seductively, a moment later. “What are you doing, later tonight?”
“Nothing, my dear,” replies Flaminio, rising to his tiptoes in expectation.
“Well, then,” says Isabella, dissolving into gales of laughter, “why don’t you take a bath?”
The audience roars. The Captain places one hand across his forehead, as if in mortal agony. Several minutes pass before the laughter dies down. Then, he speaks again.
“Isabella,” he begins, with a vibrant quaver in his voice, “if you do not agree to take me as your husband, I shall surely perish, by my own hand!”
“If you’re going to kill yourself, Captain,” says Columbina, “please, do it outside, so you won’t get blood on my nice clean floors.”
Without another word, the Captain rushes out the pasteboard door. The two women go to the window to watch him. He stands up straight, spreads his feet wide apart, draws his sabre with a sweeping gesture. He looks up at the sky, and crosses himself. Then, crying Isabella’s name, he pretends to plunge the sword deep into his heart.
It was then that the play became real. I ran across the stage, knelt down, cradled the Captain’s head in my arms. I heard his quick, shallow breathing. I dipped my finger into the red liquid staining his tunic.
It was not the strained tomatoes we used in duel scenes. It was real blood, flowing in big clots from the Captain’s chest.
“Flaminio!” I cried. “Has Andreini tricked you again? We never use real swords, the points are always dull. Did he switch them on you, behind your back?”
“No,” gasped Flaminio. “This time, I have tricked him. For now, despite everything he has done to subvert me, I will still become famous. I will be known forever, until the end of time, as the actor who killed himself on stage, who actually did it, whose performance was more real than that of any other man in the history of the theater. People will talk of it, I will be known for it. My body will die tonight, but my name will live forever in the memories of our illustrious audience!”
Obviously, he was crazy. There were only fifty people in the crowd that night—dumb, common yokels. They pressed up near the stage, bug-eyed, chewing their gums as they watched Flaminio die.
Suddenly, the Captain noticed that Isabella was standing above him.
“Whore!” he cried up at her. “I have beaten you! I have beaten the old curse! Now, you will not be able to erase my name from the earth. I will not be betrayed by a woman from the convent!”
Isabella’s eyes were flashing. “There is time enough in the world for you to be forgotten,” she replied. “There is still time,” she said, turning her back on the dying man.
For awhile, it seemed as if Flaminio were right. On the morning after his death, the story was all over the city. Painters sold watercolor medallions of him in the marketplace. He was looked on as a martyr, a saint of art. People came in droves to see the company whose leader had killed himself on stage.
And, despite Francesco’s efforts to dismiss the whole thing as a freak accident, even the nobles soon heard of it. And, when the season began again, our rich audiences were more impressed than ever. Those swine were quite charmed by the paradox—a company of clowns whose leader had taken himself so terribly seriously.
But people’s memories are short. Within months, Flaminio’s last performance was forgotten. We found ourselves playing to crowds who’d never seen him.
I alone have never forgotten the Captain’s last scene. And sometimes, it’s very much on my mind.
I’ve been thinking of it often lately. For one thing, it makes me certain that Armanda’s story is a lie. How could Flaminio have appeared to her from heaven, in a dream? The old man killed himself, he could never have gotten into heaven. And besides, I was the one who cradled his head in my arms during the tragedy. That silly little dwarf was off in another corner of the stage, flirting with some boy from the audience. Why would the Captain have com
e to her?
And lately, too, I’ve been thinking about Isabella’s part in that scene. Why was she so vicious to him, at the very moment of his death? What had he done to her? Nothing!
I’ve always thought that the answer lay in her great love for Francesco. She was so loyal to him, so worshipful. She would have killed for him—it was easy, to mistreat a poor old man.
And, for a long time after Flaminio’s death, it all seemed to make perfect sense. Francesco was our leader, but Isabella had the power. She was our queen, we loved her. Our feelings for her were out of control. We were more loyal to her than we’d ever been to Flaminio. There wasn’t that anger; she wasn’t the one who’d cast us in those terrible roles. Isabella worked us like puppets, but we didn’t mind; we were pleased to be in her puppet show.
But lately, everything’s changed. Lately, it’s hard for me to imagine that Isabella Andreini is the same woman who said those cruel things to Flaminio.
For Isabella’s grown quiet again, withdrawn, like she was in the beginning. She’s no longer my friend.
This time, though, I saw it coming.
“Isabella,” I’d say to her, before she stopped talking to me, “what’s gotten into you? Are you having trouble with Andreini? You can tell me. Or is it something else? Am I imagining it—or do I see a funny look in your eye every time that Pietro comes around? You can tell Columbina, she’s an expert on these things.”
“No,” she’d sigh. “It’s none of that. It’s the moon. I’m afraid that I want the moon.”
VII Isabella
SLEEP WELL, PIETRO. PULL the blanket over your head. I want to stay with you all night, but you know how a dream is. One hunger pang, one cat screeching in the yard, and it’s gone. You close your eyes, you curl up in a comfortable position, and concentrate on your dream. But it won’t come back. My image will dissolve, and you won’t be able to hear me.
Here in heaven, we don’t have dreams. There’s no need for them. But there’s no time to talk about heaven now. There are other things I have to tell you, and there isn’t enough time.
But maybe there will be time. Maybe you’ll sleep all night. After all, you must be tired. I saw you today, marching through Lyons with that huge procession. You were on your feet for hours. The sun was very hot, and the sweat streamed down the back of your neck. I blew on those streams, to cool you. Did you think it was a breeze, Pietro?
I don’t think you even noticed. You were too busy looking at the magnificent coffin they’d given me—white alabaster, with silver handles. You could just glimpse my body through the translucent walls. It was as if I’d been frozen in ice, as if I’d fallen asleep inside the moon.
How I wished you could have been one of my pallbearers, Pietro. I hated the way Andreini did it. He wanted it to be another show—an actor’s funeral, a real curiosity, like a gypsy’s funeral, or one of those Hindu rites he’d seen in his travels. He thought of us as freaks, members of another race; we even buried the dead our own way.
So he decided that The Glorious Ones alone should bear the casket. The Doctor and Pantalone lifted it up on their shoulders; the old men staggered beneath the impossible burden. Francesco bore the whole weight of the front; Columbina took up the back. Even Brighella and Armanda ran along beneath the coffin, jumping up and reaching towards the alabaster in some grotesque attempt to help. It was as if I’d turned into a carriage, a moon-carriage, drawn by a team of outrageously costumed horses.
Yet death has turned me into a simple woman. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the world with a circus. I wanted the same thing everyone else wants: eight sad, ceremonious pallbearers, dressed in black. Uncles, cousins, brothers, friends, sons. And I wanted you to be among them, Pietro, so that I could rest on those broad shoulders I used to stare at while you were changing costumes in the wings.
But you alone were left out. There was no reason for it, it was senseless, you were the strongest one of all. Except, of course, that Francesco must have known.
Did you wonder about that today? Did you watch Francesco carrying the coffin, and try to read the truth in his eyes? I doubt it, Pietro. You were never interested in the inside of Francesco’s brain, or anyone else’s. You were different from the others, in that way; that was why I liked you, from the start.
Besides, you were too distracted by the spectacle around you to worry much about Francesco. For my husband had finally outdone himself—it was greater than his greatest performance, grander than his most lavish production. A state funeral for Isabella Andreini—financed by the King of France himself!
Ten thousand people paraded solemnly through the streets of Lyons, sweeping down the main avenues, choking the narrow back alleys. Five hundred monks chanted the Dies Irae; five hundred nuns sang the Tenebris. There were two court orchestras, four military bands. A million lilies, planted in the windowboxes, filled the air with perfume. Banners with my face painted on them fluttered in the wind. Noblemen rode black stallions, soldiers wore black plumes in their caps. Grown men buried their heads in their hands and cried; women keened and wailed. And their children, too young to understand what was happening, jigged to the music of the fife and drum.
It must have confused you, Pietro, I know. It confused me too, for the same reason.
Just three months ago, I thought, I was a woman of thirty, an ordinary woman, sitting in your tent, complaining, bored, dissatisfied. And suddenly, I was dead, and the King of France was hailing me as a goddess!
He spoke well, King Henry. I was pleased, and a little surprised—because, after all, he was a politician, and not a poet. But I suppose some politicians can speak a certain kind of poetry. They can deliver a eulogy which will warm everyone’s heart.
And that was what he did.
“The first time I saw Isabella Andreini,” began the king, “I told myself that she could not possibly be a mortal woman. I thought that she was surely one of the gods, come down to earth in the guise of a young lady—to steal our souls, through our eyes, and ears.”
The king went on to praise my skill as an actress and a playwright. He compared my voice to that of the nightingale, and related a few anecdotes to illustrate the sharpness of my wit. He talked of the success I’d gained, of the honors I’d won. He held up the bronze portraits of me, the commemorative medals. He displayed my honorary degree from the University of Padua, and told how the French Cardinal himself had placed my effigy between a bust of Petrarch, and one of Tasso.
“The only consolation for having the lovely Isabella die so suddenly and tragically in our country,” concluded the king, “is the satisfaction of knowing that her remains will sweeten French soil until the Last Judgment.”
Though it confused me, I thought it was a good speech. I felt the king meant what he said; I didn’t worry if perhaps some of his praise was undeserved. Besides, the sight of a monarch commending an artist is a spectacle which people have learned to associate with noble feelings. The crowd was pleased and proud.
Only my spirit was discontent.
Perhaps I would have liked it better had I not been distracted by the sight of The Glorious Ones, weeping. For I knew that they were only pretending to weep, just as they’d always pretended to love me.
But wait. That’s too bitter. Maybe they did love me, just as they’d always claimed. Maybe Brighella loved me, and Pantalone, Columbina, the Doctor, Armanda, Francesco. Of course, Francesco. Maybe they could have loved me and still have wanted me to die.
Because that was the truth: they wanted me to die.
Even here, in heaven, where Jesus Himself preaches the Gospel to anyone who’ll listen, I find it hard to forgive them. Sometimes, I think it’s my punishment. I’m angry at the same sort of thing which so enraged Flaminio—I’ve been fooled, deceived, I had no idea. I never suspected until the end, when I was so sick, and they came to visit me, one by one.
By then, my fever was very high. It was a turning point; either I would live, and have the baby, or die, taking it with me. The fev
er made it hard to see them; I was watching them through a haze. I watched Columbina bathing my forehead, the Doctor taking my pulse, Pantalone sighing, Armanda and Brighella trying to make me laugh. Francesco reassured me, telling me he knew I would get better.
But, watching through that mist, I saw something deep in them, beneath their words and gestures.
They wanted me to die. They were directing me to die, begging me. They wanted it so badly that they killed me—not spiritually, Pietro, but physically—physically killed me!
Now wait. You’re getting excited, restless, tossing in your sleep. And I don’t want to wake you. Besides, there’s no time for accusations; they’re not important enough.
So all I will say is this: I knew that The Glorious Ones wanted me to die. But I would never have understood why if it hadn’t come to me in that fever dream.
Here is my dream, Pietro, my dream within a dream.
I was on stage, about to perform a new play. “How useful,” said my dreaming self, because sometimes whole plays came to me in dreams.
But soon, I knew that it was not going to be useful at all. For it was the kind of dream in which I’d never rehearsed, I didn’t know the lines, I’d never heard of the play. You know the dream I mean, Pietro; everyone has them.
As always, I felt my heart speed up; an alarm sounded in my head, like the noise I used to hear as a little girl, waking from a deep sleep to see ghosts in my father’s house. But, by the end of my life, I’d had that dream so many times that I’d learn to calm myself, to step back, like a member of the audience, to see what sort of play it would turn out to be.
In my fever dream, the drama was a strange one. I played a woman in labor.
All the time, I was aware of the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. Yet the acting seemed effortless; my body contracted rhythmically. There was no blood, of course; it was only a pantomime. And I thought I was doing well, pretending to give birth.
But suddenly the audience began to hiss. They booed, shouted, then left the theater in disgust.
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