The Girl with the Painted Face

by Gabrielle Kimm

  ‘Oh God, Beppe, I hope we are doing the right thing,’ she mutters as Beppe, standing beside her, runs his finger down the pinned canovaccii.

  He does not reply directly, just says, ‘Look, there – remember this. It’ll be just after that moment there…’ He points to one of the scraps of paper. ‘… just after Vico has crept away from Cosima and Angelo, and just before you and I are due back on for this scene here, look.’

  Sofia nods. Her chalked and pearled face is itching again, but she resists the temptation to scratch.

  ‘It’ll just be you on the stage with Cosima and Angelo, then Cosima will go off there, see, to find Vico, and I’ll be there, ready in Fosca’s mask and hat and a long black coat. Vico won’t need to be on stage until then’ – a finger on the relevant scrap – ‘and he’ll be waiting behind the backcloth to come on and react to Fosca’s announcement.’

  Agostino appears, costumed, his face now thickly white-painted. ‘All ready?’ he says cheerfully.

  Sofia swallows awkwardly as she assures him that she is looking forward to the start of the performance.

  ‘Not too anxious – after last time?’

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘Good, good. Just a little is just what we want – a performance is never as good without that flutter of fear in the belly beforehand, I always say, don’t I, Beppe?’

  ‘You do – and you’re quite right.’

  Appearing from the room behind, Federico nods to Agostino. ‘Shall I blow the trumpet? Are we all ready?’

  ‘Yes, I think so, don’t you?’

  Federico smiles, then slips out between the two halves of the backdrop. Sofia hears the reedy notes of his trumpet, heralding the beginning of the play. As they have done each time, her insides begin to squirm.

  Beppe squeezes her hand. ‘All will be well,’ he says, bending and planting a swift kiss on the top of her head.

  Cosima and Lidia are there, ready to go on with Sofia. Cosima is as beautiful as ever in one of her most sumptuous dresses, mended and rebeaded by Sofia last night; Lidia looks pink-cheeked and pretty, and Sofia wonders again – if only momentarily – about the reason for the slight thickening of her friend’s waist.

  Over to one side stands Angelo. A muscle is twitching in his jaw, and he is chewing at his lower lip, but otherwise he is still and silent, his arms hanging by his sides. Sofia looks at his hands, wondering. Are those hands guilty of what she and the others believe them to be? Angelo glances up and meets her gaze; she looks away quickly, glad that the flush of colour she can feel rising will be hidden by the chalk and the pearl.

  The fanfare dies away.

  ‘Come on, off we go,’ Cosima whispers. Pushing aside the hanging, she walks out onto the stage, already in conversation with Lidia. Sofia trots behind, a small basket in one hand.

  ‘I cannot deny that you are still beautiful,’ Angelo says to Cosima.

  ‘And I cannot deny that your charm would – still – bewitch an angel.’

  ‘But it has to be said…’

  ‘That I curse the very day…’ Cosima points an accusatory finger, her face set as though she has a mind to spit at him.

  ‘The very day?’

  ‘That I set eyes upon you.’

  ‘What use is beauty…’ Angelo sneers the words.

  ‘If it is tainted with lies?’

  ‘Stained with falsehood?’

  ‘Defaced by deceit!’

  ‘You have proved yourself false,’ Angelo says dismissively, and Cosima rounds on him.

  ‘I will not stay a moment longer —’

  ‘If you won’t stay, then go!’

  ‘Do not expect to see me again…’ Cosima says in a voice of deadly quiet. Chin tilted high, she spins on one slipper-shod foot and, flipping aside the backdrop, disappears from the stage. Sofia can hear the audience shifting in their seats and murmuring to each other.

  Angelo turns to her. ‘And what are you staring at, signorina?’ he says. Knowing what is about to happen, Sofia draws out the pause before she speaks.

  ‘I’m staring at a man who has little idea what consequences his actions are about to pull down upon his head,’ she says, and Angelo’s frown of incomprehension is genuine. This is a line he has not once heard in rehearsal. ‘Deceit and falsehood are sinister companions,’ Sofia says now. ‘Once they have been invited to spend time with a man, that man will often find that they are reluctant to part company with him – and they frequently invite other, even less welcome, friends to join them. It can end up as quite a crowd.’

  The hangings move behind her as she speaks, and a figure in a long black coat and hat slips out, keeping his back to the audience. He sidles along towards where Sofia and Angelo are facing each other, then turns around slowly so that he stands a little behind and to one side of Sofia, facing Angelo. Sofia hears a gasp ripple through the audience and knows, even though she cannot fully see, that Fosca’s masked face has shocked them.

  Death is a constant near neighbour to all of us, after all, she thinks. He is feared and disliked – dreaded – and his unexpected appearance in such a guise on a stage is unsettling. Even she is unnerved by Beppe as Fosca, and she was expecting his appearance.

  Angelo’s mouth has dropped open and his eyes are wide.

  ‘You seem surprised to see me, signore,’ Fosca says, his voice a hard, aristocratic drawl to match Angelo’s own.

  Angelo does not reply.

  ‘Though by rights you should have been expecting me, should you not?’

  The uncomprehending frown deepens between Angelo’s brows.

  ‘You’ve been playing me at my own game, haven’t you? Doing it for years, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’m the one who decides when someone is at the end of his allotted span, am I not? I’m the one – the only one – who has been given the liberty of creeping up behind a man unannounced…’ Fosca moves stealthily around to stand behind Angelo, bent-kneed, each foot placed slowly and silently. He lowers his voice to a piercing hiss. ‘… yes, unannounced. It is I who have the right to whisper to him that his time has come, and to tell him that he should accompany me.’ He shakes his head and, taking a handful of Angelo’s hair, pulls his head a little backwards. ‘I should be doing that. Not you.’

  Angelo’s mouth opens slightly wider as his head tilts back.

  ‘It’s far easier to end a life by omission than by action, do you not think?’ Fosca says in a voice of silk. ‘I do it often. I frequently, for example, stand by and watch as a man gasps his last, when I know that a simple draught might have saved him. And on a number of occasions I have watched as a man has been put to death, when a mere word in the right ear could have prevented it. Has such a thing ever happened to you?’

  Fosca’s face is close to Angelo’s now; he is holding Angelo’s head in against his in a parody of a lover’s embrace, his mouth next to Angelo’s cheek, his fingers in Angelo’s hair. Sofia can see from where she is standing that Angelo is trembling.

  Pointing out across the audience now, his arm stretching out over Angelo’s shoulder, Fosca says, ‘Imagine the scene… a man… let’s call him a cook… is accused of a murder he did not commit. He is dragged to the gibbet, protesting his innocence, sobbing out his terror at the thought of… of meeting me…’ Fosca smiles out at the audience, who are motionless and silent. ‘What would you do, signore? You know he’s innocent. You have the power to stop what is happening. But you… say nothing, fancying yourself, perhaps, as Fosca’s apprentice? Was that what it was? Is that what happened that day? You fancied yourself my apprentice?’

  The audience murmurs at this.

  ‘I don’t know what you —’

  ‘Oh, I think you do.’ Fosca pauses.

  The audience waits in breath-held silence.

  Then, releasing his hold, Fosca strides back towards Sofia, who, as Colombina, shrinks away from him, her hands clasped in front of her mouth, her eyes wide with
fear – a fear that is not altogether counterfeit. Fosca eyes her for a moment with the blank, dead eye-sockets, then appears to dismiss her.

  Angelo’s gaze is fixed upon the grotesque death mask.

  Staring at Angelo now, Fosca moves backwards down to the front of the stage. There is a shifting in the audience as he comes closer – a drawing back – then a gasp as he spins round and stares from one individual to another. Crouching on his heels, he leans precariously out towards those people closest to the stage; then, swinging down from the trestles, he steps forwards towards the front row.

  ‘Oh yes, nearly time for this one to come with me,’ he says, grinning and ruffling the hair of a big man with sparse, greying hair seated near the host’s family. ‘Won’t be long now, chick.’

  The man stiffens, saying nothing. His friends laugh nervously, but his own face remains stolidly unsmiling.

  ‘And you, signore, I’ll be back for you before long,’ Fosca croons to another greying man in a finely embroidered doublet, running a hand around the curve of his jaw, then patting his cheek. ‘Once I’ve dealt with our friend back there. Him first, I think, given the liberties he’s been taking.’

  He vaults back onto the stage in one swift movement, and the audience gasps again. Pushing a hand into a deep pocket, he pulls out a small brown glass bottle. ‘See this?’ he says, holding it high to show it to the audience. ‘See this? Oblivion in a bottle, this is. A liquid counterfeit of the pleasures of my company. And he’ – he points back towards Angelo – ‘has come to rely on it. A little too much.’

  Angelo’s mouth has opened in outrage, though he says nothing.

  Fosca continues: ‘Be assured, signori and signore, that desire for that oblivion grows by what it feeds on.’ He throws the little bottle high and catches it neatly one-handed. ‘It grows to be irresistible in the end. Quite irresistible.’ Striding back to Angelo, he moves around behind him again, and speaks into his ear. ‘And the things one will do when desire has become… irresistible… can be very terrible, can they not, signore?’

  Again, Angelo says, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Fosca crosses to where Sofia is still standing, hands clasped, eyes wide. He moves to stand directly behind her. ‘Imagine, signore, that this little girl here was standing in between me and the realization of my desires. How might I dispose of her as an obstacle, do you think?’ He places a hand on each of Sofia’s shoulders. Running them down her arms, he grips hard around the crooks of her elbows and lifts. Sofia’s feet leave the ground. She squeals. ‘Pick her up and dump her elsewhere?’ He puts her down. ‘I think not.’

  ‘What the hell is this —’ Angelo begins, but Fosca ignores him.

  Pulling a long length of fine dark-coloured lawn out from under his coat, he wraps it tightly around Sofia’s body. ‘Cocoon her in silk like a spider’s supper and send her spinning off into nowhere?’ He flaps at one end of the lawn, and Sofia staggers a little, turning around and around as it unwinds. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Then, bending into the shadows at the edge of the stage, where the backcloth touches the trestle boards, Fosca picks up a candlestick. Holding it high above Sofia’s head, he says, ‘Or how about this?’ He swings it around and feints a downward lunge with it and several people in the audience shout out their shock. Sofia screws up her eyes and hunches her shoulders in anticipation, but Fosca pulls up short before the candlestick strikes her skull. He spins it and holds it up on the tips of the fingers of one hand. ‘That would work, would it not?’ he says. ‘A quick and easy way to rid oneself of a problem one had come to despise…?’

  Angelo’s face has drained of all colour. ‘I’m not staying here to listen to this,’ he says, turning to leave the stage.

  Fosca shakes his head. ‘Go if you will, signore. But I’ll find you when I want you, don’t worry. I always do.’

  Angelo pushes his way untidily through the gap in the hangings and disappears to a spatter of applause from the audience. Even as he leaves, Vico appears, apparently unconcerned, whistling and walking jauntily with his hands pushed deep into his pockets. Seeing Fosca, he starts wildly, leaping backwards with a strangled yelp of shock, and rolling onto his backside. The audience laughs nervously.

  ‘Oh my dear heavens!’ he says.

  Fosca chuckles. ‘Don’t worry, little man,’ he says. ‘I’m not expecting your company any time soon.’ He turns to Sofia. ‘Or yours, chick.’ Bowing low, he adds, ‘We’ll see each other again one day – but not for a while.’ He blows her a kiss. ‘In the meantime, I have a nobleman to find. If you will both excuse me…’ Picking up the candlestick, which appears surprisingly light, he balances it on the tip of a forefinger for a second, then tucks it under one arm, bowing equally low out towards the audience. They cheer loudly as he leaves, clearly relieved at his departure.

  The flush of bewildered anger on Agostino’s face is visible even under the thick white paint; an ugly, pinkish stain has spread across both cheeks. As Beppe appears behind the backdrop and starts stripping off Fosca’s mask, hat and coat, and reaching for Arlecchino’s diamond-patterned jacket, he rounds on him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, Beppe? What in God’s name is going on out there?’

  ‘We couldn’t tell you beforehand, Ago —’

  Agostino jabs his fingers into his hair, clutching at a clump near the top of his scalp. ‘Why? Why not? What on earth —?’

  Beppe drops his voice and leans in close to Agostino. ‘He did it, Ago. We’re sure he killed da Correggio. We wanted Fosca to frighten him into admitting it.’

  ‘What? How do —? What in heaven’s name makes you th–? But —’ Agostino can do no more than splutter. He glances at the scenario board. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’m due on in a moment. There are…’ He checks the board more carefully. ‘… four canovaccii to go. The moment we’ve finished, Beppe, I want a proper explanation.’ He points an accusatory forefinger at him. ‘The very moment. And where the hell is Angelo? He’s due on in a second.’

  Angelo elbows past Beppe, without looking at him. ‘I know when I’m due on, thank you, Agostino,’ he says, and his voice cracks as he speaks. ‘And I’ll be on stage exactly when I’m needed, no thanks to that fucking Bergamese peasant there.’ Glaring at Beppe, he hesitates for a moment, breathing slowly though an open mouth, then he climbs the ladder up to the space behind the backcloth.

  41

  The large and florid merchant embraces Agostino, then Cosima, then Sofia and Lidia in turn. He bows low to the other members of the troupe, his smile so wide it distorts his voice when he finally manages to speak. ‘Oh my dears, that was a triumph! A triumph! I’m so very proud that we are the first household in the area to have succeeded in engaging such a…’ He struggles to find the apposite word. ‘… such an extraordinary group of performers so soon after their arrival in the province. You will go on to great things in Toscana, I’m quite certain. Great things. And you performed here first!’

  Agostino’s smile of gratitude is equally wide and clearly heartfelt, though Sofia can see anxiety tautening his features. ‘You are too generous, signore,’ he says, bowing to the nobleman.

  ‘Indeed I am not. Merely honest.’ The merchant clears his throat. ‘Now, you shall have a couple of rooms here in the villa in which to stay tonight, if you want them, and as much as you wish to eat and drink.’

  Agostino opens his mouth to speak, but the merchant, frowning a little now, continues, this time with a note of apology in his voice. ‘I do most earnestly beg your forgiveness, though… I shall be unable to join you for your meal this evening. I had so very much hoped to do so, but I’m afraid another – far less enjoyable – commitment has arisen and is rudely demanding my presence.’

  Agostino assures him that his absence, though of course regrettable, will not diminish their pleasure in the extremely generous hospitality he has offered them, and, amidst numerous bows, and smiles and handshakes and repeated paeans of praise, the merchant takes his le
ave, leaving the Coraggiosi in the care of three of his servants, who immediately show the troupe through to a large room at one end of which a vast fire is merrily blazing.

  ‘Signori and signore, we shall return shortly with food,’ the thinnest of the servants assures the Coraggiosi, backing out of the room with his two companions. ‘Please make yourselves comfortable whilst you wait.’

  As the door shuts behind the servants, Agostino turns to the troupe, and, with a frisson of anxiety, Sofia sees that the smile has quite faded from his face.