Glorious Ones

by Francine Prose

  But he was wrong. I didn’t know it would happen to me; and, once it did, I didn’t know what to do. All I could do was shout and squawk. My spirit had left my body, and I couldn’t get it back. I couldn’t come close to anything, I couldn’t touch anyone, I couldn’t talk.

  Finally, the Doctor began to give me opium, and it helped. At least, the fear was gone, and I could dream in peace.

  Yet over and over, I had the same vision. I took to staring at the moon, for that was where I saw it.

  I saw the dream of my childhood, the dream of that convent girl who lay awake and gazed at the moon. I saw the dream of that night Francesco Andreini rescued me from my parents’ house.

  And that was the reason I stared at the moon so longingly—I was trying to get back into my dream. But the moon had its eyes closed; it wouldn’t look at me.

  Then slowly, very slowly, I began to stop caring. Gradually, I began to notice the signs: I was feeling better, I could recognize the traces of my old self.

  How strange, that it should have taken the Doctor’s hot breath on my neck to finally awaken me. He was like that god, bringing his chick-pea child to life. But that was the way it happened.

  One night, while the Doctor was assaulting me with some absurd sexual proposition, I turned my eyes from the moon, and saw the plain truth—despite myself, I still remembered all those little skills, those talents, that ability to please. And they still worked. They’d worked on the Doctor, on Pantalone, Columbina, Armanda, Francesco. They’d worked on titled aristocracy, on people with money, on the King of France! How blind of me, not to have noticed!

  Soon, I felt whole again. I became confident. I began to take pleasure in my writing, my acting, my singing, in all the things I’d learned to do. I began to look around me, to enjoy the fame, the wealth, the success. The Doctor became my admirer, Columbina my friend; I made Pantalone and even Brighella come to like me. And I began to love The Glorious Ones.

  Francesco and I became lovers; gradually, our love changed to that of husband and wife. And it was comfortable, it was good. We were kind to each other, we helped each other with the work. We fought and argued, like all married people, yet there seemed to be love in it. I had no reason to complain.

  Sometimes, as I played opposite Francesco, I’d stop for a moment, and stand back. “These are the hours I’ll look back on when I’m old,” I thought to myself. “I’ll remember them as my happiest times, the times when my life shone with light.”

  But now, looking back, I see I was mistaken: there’s no light shining from those hours. All I can see is that something was wrong, right from the start. And it was this.

  I worshiped Francesco too much. Though I’d tricked him into marrying me, I still believed he was infallible. Though I wrote the plays, starred in the dramas, won the audiences’ hearts, I still looked up to him, as if he were my superior. I worshiped him, as if he were divine.

  And indeed, with his strange monologues, his two sides, his half-wild feline nature, he seemed as mysterious and unknowable as a god.

  I had complete faith in him, in his vision, his ability to predict the future. I was under his direction, I did as he said, I even tortured poor old Flaminio, for his sake.

  Francesco was a hero to me. I was so pleased, so flattered, every time the hero wanted to sleep in my bed. And, just as I’d thought, it got better. I began to like it more, to let myself feel the pleasure. But still, there was something wrong: you can’t make love to a god, it’s not right. It’s not like making love, it’s like going to church. There’s no room in the bed, for a mortal woman, and a god.

  So I knew that there was something wrong. Yet I would never have known what it was if Flaminio Scala hadn’t shown me the way.

  One night, as I sat in Columbina’s tent, she told me the story of her love affair with the Captain, twenty years before. She tried to pretend that it was all in the past, that she didn’t care about him any more, that she pitied him. But I knew the truth.

  I began to feel a certain uneasiness, a physical longing, like shivers. “That’s what I want,” I thought. “Plain human love. I’m tired of worshiping a god. I want something different, better. I want an ordinary man, with a mortal body, and a loving heart.”

  That night, when I returned to my tent, I couldn’t sleep.

  Now, looking down from this place where the angels are so clear-sighted that I long for the smoke of hell, I begin to understand.

  I see what a clever trickster Flaminio was; though we never suspected, he was much better than Francesco. And I see that Columbina’s story was but the first of his many tricks, of those tricks he continued to play on us from beyond the grave.

  For, in giving Columbina that taste of human love, that story she remembered all her life, Flaminio had unsettled me. He was telling me about a kind of love I’d never dreamed of, on those nights I lay awake in my parents’ house. It was something I wanted, even more than I wanted the moon.

  And that was the beginning of my discontent.

  But, at the time, I said nothing. How could I have explained myself? Francesco was the last one I could talk to. Even Columbina would never have understood.

  So I tried to ignore it. I concentrated on my acting, my writing. I told myself that I should be grateful for my marriage. I had a good life, better than most people had. It was, as Francesco said in that funeral oration, a blessing from God.

  Yet God has a way of revoking His blessings, as soon as we begin to see them as our rightful due. And that is just what happened.

  For, on the night of Flaminio Scala’s death, all my contentment suddenly disappeared. And all my love for Francesco Andreini turned to anger, and fear.

  It’s hard, Pietro, talking to you about Flaminio. He was dead before you joined the troupe, you never knew him. And God knows what you’ve heard about him from the others.

  I myself never knew him well. I didn’t even meet him until late in his life, when he was already weakened, damaged by Francesco. I never saw him at his best, at the height of his career—when, according to Columbina, his gaze could jolt the audience like a thunderbolt. In those last few weeks before his death, I got a hint of what he must have been like, and it was awesome. But I never really knew.

  Still, I liked the Captain. As soon as I was well enough to tell one actor from another, I began to feel an odd affection for him. There seemed to be certain likenesses between us, though I didn’t really know what they were. Only now do I see.

  Neither of us were practical people, like Andreini. We were both hopeless dreamers, and his case was just as serious as mine: he had immortality on his mind; I wanted the moon. And we were similar in another way, which I couldn’t identify until I saw it in you, Pietro; you share the same magic.

  Yet my affection for the Captain was always mixed with pity; I felt sorry for him, even before he’d lost all his power. For the cards were stacked against him from the start. He was doomed to be alone. The others could never really have loved him, he didn’t have a chance.

  They were furious at him—furious at those horrible parts he’d cast them in. They hated him for those rules, those caricatures of themselves. They wanted him to die, too.

  I remember how strangely they behaved at the Captain’s funeral. They seemed completely out of character, the very opposite of their normal selves. Brighella was kind and solicitous; he held our hands to comfort us, and spoke of eternal life. Pantalone doled out fistfuls of gold, to finance the Captain’s wake. The Doctor seemed meek and humble. And Armanda, who insisted on delivering Flaminio’s eulogy, revealed a woman of passion and deep intelligence beneath that clownish mask.

  I’d have thought they’d gone crazy, if I hadn’t understood. They were flaunting it in the Captain’s face, forcing his spirit to witness. “Look!” they were saying. “We’re not those people we play on stage. You were wrong about us, Captain. You didn’t know us.”

  Yet the very next day, they were their old familiar selves again. And they blamed the Cap
tain for it, just as most men blame God. That was why I pitied Flaminio.

  But at the time, I couldn’t let that pity stop me. For the part I was to play opposite Flaminio Scala had already been written out. I was to help Francesco subvert him, weaken him, destroy his will. I was to help my husband bring about his downfall.

  I played my part well, Pietro. I never faltered. Even at the moment of Flaminio’s death, I never allowed a sign of sympathy or regret to cross my face. As I quenched Flaminio’s last hope, as I raised the axe to finish off that dying bull, I was absolutely unrepentant, calm, controlled.

  But, later that night, Flaminio Scala began to play another of his nasty tricks. Before his corpse had grown cold, the Captain’s ghost began its vengeance.

  Flaminio’s body had just been taken from the stage. Francesco went off to make the funeral arrangements. And I returned to my tent, hoping to get some rest, to erase that frightful spectacle from my mind.

  But I couldn’t rest. There was something bothering me, something besides the shock of the Captain’s death. There was something important which I couldn’t remember, which I needed to know.

  I thought for a long time, trying to figure out what it was. And then, suddenly, I felt Flaminio’s spirit possess me. I felt him take hold of my mind, and lead it through the corridors of my memory. At last, his spirit paused, and opened the door of a dark chamber. And at that moment, I knew.

  Long ago, when Francesco was courting me with his stories, he told me a peculiar anecdote. It concerned an unsuccessful actor—poor, unrecognized, down on his luck. One day, the actor accepted the sad fact that he would never find immortality through his art. So he decided to kill himself, in the middle of a performance, in a last heroic grasp at eternal fame.

  “Francesco!” I thought to myself, the moment I remembered. “You knew it! You knew it in advance! Is that what you meant by foresight, by knowing the ends of things? If you knew it, why didn’t you try to stop it? Or did you plan it that way, did you plan the Captain’s death? If these are the sort of plans you make, Francesco, then what are your plans for me?!”

  Now, it seems so foolish: I was like one of those crazy monks, driven to despair by the sudden realization that God has allowed evil to enter the world. But that night no one could have told me it was foolish.

  I left the tent, and walked out into the night. For three hours, I paced through the camp, raging at Francesco in my mind. I felt betrayed, as if I’d married a villain, a monster, Satan himself. I despised him, and I was mortally afraid. I decided what I would say to him, I rehearsed it, word for word. I planned out my last scene, my accusation, my farewell.

  “How clever of Flaminio,” I thought, “to take his vengeance so soon, while his corpse is still warm.”

  But that night, when I returned to the tent and found Francesco already there, I began to see that the Captain’s revenge wasn’t yet over. And it was much, much crueller than I’d imagined.

  As soon as I looked at Francesco, I became confused: was the Captain the one who’d died? Or was it my husband?

  For there was no life left in Francesco’s body. There was no light in his eyes. He seemed like a corpse, an empty hull, a dried-out kernel.

  I began to accuse him. I tried to say the things I’d been rehearsing in my mind all night. But he didn’t have the spirit to fight with me. He no longer loved me enough to make it worthwhile.

  “How clever of Flaminio,” I thought, “to have taken my husband’s spirit with him to the other world.”

  And it was true. All at once, I realized: Francesco’s whole life had been centered around that struggle with the Captain. Everything had come from it—his skill, his talent, his love for me. That love and hate for Flaminio were the only real feelings he’d ever had.

  At the moment of Flaminio’s death, Francesco’s life had left him. I was married to a corpse.

  My heart sank; my accusations crumbled. So what if Francesco had foretold the Captain’s death? What good had it done him?

  “Francesco,” was all I could say, “is this how well you foresee the consequences of things?”

  The death of love is terrible, Pietro; sometimes, I think it’s worse than physical death. We were lucky that I died when I did. For, if you ever loved me, you can think of me now with the sweetest memories, the fondest regrets. But if I were still alive, and we stopped loving one another, it would be much, much sadder.

  After the death of love, the corpse is always with you, filling the air with a rotten smell. You can’t touch it, you can’t talk to it. You can’t kill it, and it won’t go away.

  That’s how it was with Andreini and me. He was no longer a god to me, no longer a hero. Except when he was directing me on stage, we barely spoke. We never laughed together, we never discussed our work. And, though we shared the same bed, we rarely made love. Our hearts had dried up. Our bodies had turned to stone.

  Perhaps you never saw him that way, Pietro. By the time you joined the troupe, he’d healed himself enough to project a show of competence. But I saw the difference. Brighella and Columbina spotted it right away. And by the end of that first year after the Captain’s death even the audiences knew.

  Every time Francesco and I played the Lovers together on stage, I heard impatient murmurs coming from the crowd. We had to shout out our lines, in order to be heard above the whispers, the coughs, the noise of crackling paper. The audiences couldn’t accept us as the Lovers any more. The truth was too obvious. They couldn’t be deceived.

  So something had to change.

  Francesco was beside himself. This was a consequence he’d never foreseen. He didn’t know what to do. So he tried to pretend that nothing was happening.

  But, one by one, all The Glorious Ones perceived the truth. And they were delighted to see Francesco caught unprepared.

  At last, after a particularly unsuccessful performance, Armanda Ragusa spoke out. “Your role is wearing thin, Andreini,” she said, tapping her finger against his chest. “What business did you have playing the Lover in the first place? You should have left the role to Flaminio, who was so good at it. What did you ever know about love?”

  “Go to hell, Armanda,” replied Francesco. “You were always on Flaminio’s side. Your opinions on this subject are worthless.”

  But Francesco knew that Armanda was right: he and I could no longer play the Lovers together.

  The next morning, Francesco announced his desire to assume the role of the Captain. Then, he went out in the street, to find a new actor to play the Lover’s part.

  You were the one he came back with, Pietro. Remember that afternoon? I emerged from my tent to find my husband standing with his arm around your shoulders, telling the others why he had chosen you.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “may I introduce to you Pietro Visconti. He is a professional, this boy—not a rank amateur, like we were when we first joined The Glorious Ones. For twenty-seven years, he’s been living by his wits, on the streets. He’s recited verse, sung ballads, performed small skits for whatever he could get. He’s rented his voice to merchants who wanted their products advertised in the alleyways. He’s even dabbled in a bit of confidence trickery, this clever fellow. And whenever his luck ran out he disguised himself as a beggar, and played the part to perfection.

  “He will make an ideal Lover, my friends. He is so handsome, he’ll make the ladies break into cold sweats. He is so magnetic, he’ll make them faint dead away. He has talent, experience—and, despite his age, he seems to know his way around.”

  That’s what my husband said about you, Pietro. Remember?

  He was lying. Flaminio would have cast the ideal lover to play the Lover’s part; that was something the Captain would have done. But my husband’s motives were exactly the opposite.

  He didn’t want you to be the ideal lover, Pietro. He didn’t want you to be the kind of man I could ever love. He didn’t want that to happen, he couldn’t take that chance.

  Of course, you never
knew. Telling you seemed like an unnecessary cruelty. I suppose we could have laughed about it later, when I’d fallen in love with you, and proven Francesco wrong. But by then it was already too late. I came to your tent, and couldn’t speak.

  I saw Francesco’s true motives, right away. How can I explain? There was something about your physical presence which he thought I’d consider beneath me. Your frame was broad; your body seemed solid, heavy. It wasn’t that you looked like a peasant—how could a street actor have eaten well enough to resemble a peasant?

  But there was a strange looseness in your arms and legs; your limbs weren’t sinewy, like Francesco’s. Your skin wasn’t alive with raw nerve endings. And your eyes didn’t burn like his once did. They were calm, clear blue, a little sleepy; there was no fire in them.

  That was why Francesco thought I couldn’t love you. Didn’t he realize that I’d been burned in that fire long enough?

  I looked at you for a long time, that first day. Idly, I wondered if you were the one who would give me human love. Then, suddenly, as I stared at you, the blood stopped running in my veins.

  “Francesco!” I thought. “Not only can’t you see the future—you also cannot see the past!”

  For, at that moment, I saw that you were the beggar, Pietro, the same one who’d thrown himself at my parents’ feet so long ago! I recognized your face; it was unmistakable. You were the one who’d demanded all the money in the pouch.

  You had already claimed my generous heart.

  Right then, I knew that we were witnessing the final act of Flaminio Scala’s clever revenge. The Captain had trained my husband well. He’d taught him how to cast the roles. And, no matter what Francesco did, Flaminio’s spirit was still in control.

  Despite himself, Andreini had found the perfect Lover in you, Pietro. You played the part in life, just as you did on stage.

  You had already stolen my father’s ducats. Now you had come back for his daughter.

  Now do you remember, Pietro? Do you remember that evening when you threw yourself on the ground? Probably not. What difference does it make?