The Birth of Venus

  I picked up the volume I had been reading when his cries aroused me. While it did not have Botticelli’s illustrations to light it up, the very act of inscribing so many words onto paper was in itself the labor of deepest love. To which I now added my own, speaking slowly as I translated the haunting vernacular Italian into Latin, straining to find the right words with which to speak to him.

  Midway along the journey of our life,

  I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

  For I had wandered off from the straight path.

  How hard it is to tell what it was like,

  This wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn.

  Even the thought of it brings back all my old fears.

  A bitter place, death could scarce be bitterer. . . .

  I read on through the first canto of the Inferno, with its forests of despair and wild animals of fear, but always leading to that first glimpse of the sunlit hill above and a vestige of hope.

  The hour was early in the morning then,

  The sun was climbing up with those same stars

  That had accompanied it on the world’s first day,

  The day Divine Love set their beauty turning:

  So the hour and sweet season of creation

  Encouraged me to think I could get past. . . .

  I glanced up as I took a breath and saw that his eyes had closed. I knew he was not asleep. “You are not alone, you know,” I said. “I think many people at some point in their life feel darkness around them, as if they have fallen from the hand of God, slipped through His fingers onto the rocks below. I believe Dante felt that too. I think his great talent somehow made it harder for him. As if more was expected of him because so much was given. But if he could find his way back again, so can we all.”

  In truth I, like my husband, had found hell more familiar to enter than paradise, but there had been some moments where the light had always warmed my soul. I went looking for them now in the hope that they might warm his too.

  “When I was young,” I said, to cover the silence as I searched, “I used to think that God was light. I mean . . . people would tell me that He was everywhere, but I could never see Him. Yet those who were filled with Him were always painted with a halo of golden light around them. When Gabriel spoke to Mary, his words came into her breast on a river of sun. I used to sit as a child and watch the sun come through the windows at certain times of the day, studying the way it would splinter through the glass and send light spots over the floor. I would think of it as God dividing Himself into a shower of goodness, that each pinprick of light contained the whole world and God, as well as itself. I remember that it used to make my mind shake, just trying to hold on to the thought of it. Later, when I read Dante, I found some verses in Paradiso that seem to say the same thing. . . .”

  I was still looking when he started to speak.

  “Not light,” he said quietly. “For me it wasn’t light.”

  My fingers paused on the page.

  “It was cold.”

  He halted.

  “Cold?” I said. “How?”

  He took a deep breath, as if it were the first he had taken for a very long time, and then let it out again without speaking. I waited. He tried again, and this time the words came through.

  “It was so cold. In the monastery. Sometimes the wind came from the sea with ice in it. . . . It could freeze the skin off your face. Once the snow was so deep we couldn’t get out of the doors to the woodshed. A monk jumped from a window. He sank into a drift and took a long time to get up. That night, they made me sleep next to the stove. I was small, thin, like a piece of birch bark. But then the stove went out.

  “Father Bernard took me into his cell. . . . It was he who first gave me chalk and paper. He was so old his eyes looked as if he was crying. But he was never sad. In winter he had fewer blankets than the others. He said he didn’t need them because God warmed him.”

  I heard him swallow, his throat dry with the talking. Erila had left some sweetened wine on the bedside table. I poured him a small glass and helped him to sip it.

  “But even Father Bernard was cold that night. He laid me down on the bed next to him, wrapped me in an animal skin, then in his own arms. He told me stories about Jesus. How His love could wake the dead and how with Him in one’s heart one could heat the world. . . . When I woke it was light. The snow had stopped. I was warm. But he was cold. I gave him the skin but his body was stiff. I didn’t know what to do. I got out a piece of paper from his chest under the bed and drew him, lying there. His face had a smile on it. I knew that God had been there when he died. That now He was in me, and because of Father Bernard I would be warm forever.”

  He swallowed again, and again I lifted the glass to his mouth. He took another sip, then lay back down and closed his eyes. We sat together in the monk’s cell for a while, waiting for death to turn into life again. I thought of the chest under Father Bernard’s bed, and from my worktable I brought paper and chalk sharpened in readiness for the moment when his fingers might work again.

  I placed them on his lap.

  “I want to see what he looked like,” I said firmly. “Draw him. Draw your monk for me.”

  He looked down at the paper, then at his own hands. I watched the ends of his fingers curl. He pulled himself up in the bed. He moved his right hand to the fat pebble of chalk and tried to cup his fingers over it. I saw him wince with pain. I used the book as a rest for the paper and put it on his knees.

  He looked up at me. The despair moved across his face again.

  I hardened my heart to his pain. “He gave you his warmth, painter. It’s the least you can do for him before you die.”

  He started to move his hand across the page. The line began, then slipped. The chalk dropped and fell to the floor. I picked it up and put it back into his grasp. Gently I cupped the back of my hand over his, lacing my fingers through his, careful not to touch the wound, offering my muscles as ballast when he came to push the chalk. He let out another sharp breath. I made the first few strokes with him, letting him guide the line. Slowly, painstakingly, the outline of a face grew underneath our strokes. After a while I felt his fingers strengthen and took mine away. I watched as despite the pain he completed the drawing.

  An old man’s face appeared on the page, his eyes closed, a half smile on his lips, and while it did not quite glow from the love of God, neither was it frozen in emptiness.

  The effort cost him, and when he finished and the chalk fell from his fingers his skin was gray with the pain.

  I plucked some bread from the table and soaked it in wine, then put it to his lips.

  He took it in and chewed slowly, coughing slightly. I waited till he swallowed, then fed him some more. Little by little, bite by bite, sip by sip.

  Eventually he shook his head. Too much and he would be sick with it. “I’m cold,” he said at last, his eyes still closed. “I’m cold again.”

  I climbed onto the bed and lay down by his side. I put my arm underneath his head and he turned away from me, curling in on himself, like a child in my grasp. I wrapped myself around him. We lay there and he grew warm in my arms. After a while I heard his breathing even out and felt his body go slack against me. I felt peaceful and very happy. If I hadn’t been scared that I too might fall asleep, I think I might have lain there till early morning and slipped out before the household woke.

  I started to move stealthily, pulling my right arm gently from under his head to extricate myself. But the movement disturbed him and he moaned slightly, rolling over in his sleep, pinning me further to the bed with the weight of his shoulder and head and throwing his other arm over my body.

  I waited for him to settle before trying again. In the glow of the oil lamp his face was close to mine now. While hunger had sharpened his features, his skin seemed almost translucent, more like a girl’s than a boy’s. His cheeks were hollow, though strangely his lips remained full. I could chart the rise and fall of his lungs by the heat of hi
s breath on my face. Erila and Filippo had done a good job: his skin smelled of camomile and other herbs and his breath had the tang of the sweet wine to it. I stared at his lips. My husband had once pecked me on the cheek while leaving me at my doorway. That was the only kiss I would ever feel in my life from a man. I would be prodded and poked until I produced an heir, but when it came to tenderness or passion I would remain a virgin. Or, to quote my husband, my pleasure would be my own affair.

  I leaned over and moved my face nearer to his. His breath came in warm sweet waves. This time the closeness of him did not make me shake. Instead, it made me bold. His body was so dry I could see cracks in the surface of his skin. I put my fingers into my mouth to moisten them. My saliva was hot and secret, a transgression in itself. I ran the tips of my wet fingers lightly over his lips. The touch of him sent a sharp shock down into the pit of me, but thrilling, like the feeling I had had when I discovered my own injury inside me. I could hear my heart thumping in my ears, as in the afternoon when I had looked for God in the rays of sunlight and not found Him. Not all warmth has revelation built into it. Some you have to find yourself. I moved my fingers from his face down to his chest. The robe they had found for him was too big for his emaciated body and his shoulders were bare. My fingertip was the finest of brushes. I remembered the exhilaration of the bright line of my own blood that night in the darkness and imagined colors flowing out of me onto him, his skin turning to trails of indigo blue or wild saffron under my finger. His flesh was hot. He murmured at my touch, stirring in his sleep. My fingers stopped, hovered, then moved again. The saffron turned to hot ocher, then deep purple. Soon he would be alive with color.

  I moved my mouth closer to his. And lest you are in any doubt, I should tell you that I knew absolutely what I was doing. By which I mean that I and the doing of it were one. And I was not afraid. My lips met his, and their fleshiness made me turn over inside. I felt him stir against me and he stifled a dark groan as his mouth opened and I found my tongue moving against his.

  His body was so thin it was like holding a child. My flesh flowed over him, and as our torsos met I felt his sex rise up against my thigh. Somewhere in me a spark lit up and started to grow. I tried to swallow but I couldn’t find enough saliva. My whole life was present in the breath I now started to take. Once I had the air inside me what would I do with it? Would I kiss him again or use it to pull myself away from him?

  I never made the decision. Because now he moved, pulling himself onto me and kissing me back, the tongue clumsy and eager, fat with the taste of him. Suddenly we were together, fumbling and rolling breathlessly, my insides on fire, my skin like a raw nerve, and what followed was all so quick, his fingers on my flesh so muddled and so clumsy, that when he found his way to my sex I cannot tell whether it was shock or pleasure that I felt, though I know that it made me cry out so loud that I feared we might be discovered.

  What I do know, though, is that as I pulled up my gown and helped him to find his way inside me he opened his eyes for the first time and for that brief instant we looked at each other, no longer able to pretend that what was happening was not happening. And there was in that look such intensity that I thought however wrong it might be it was not evil, and that while man might not be able to forgive us, it was surely possible that God might. And I still believe that, just as I believe that Erila was right that innocence can sometimes be as dangerous as knowledge, though there are many who would say such thoughts simply prove the depth of my damnation.

  When it was over and he lay across me, winded by the second chance at life he had been given, I held him and spoke to him like a child, saying anything and everything I could to keep him from reconnecting with his fear. Until I ran out of things to say and found myself reciting what I could remember of those verses from the last canto of Dante, while choosing not to think what heresy my recitation might include:

  In that abyss I saw how love held bound

  Into one volume all the leaves whose flight

  Is scattered through the universe around;

  How substance, accident, and mode unite,

  Fused, so to speak, together, in such wise

  That this I tell of: one simple light.

  Thirty-three

  IN MY ROOM I WASHED MYSELF. IF I HAD HAD TIME I might have thought a million thoughts.

  “Where have you been?”

  I spun around. “Oh my God, Erila, you scared me!”

  “Good.” I had never seen her so angry. “Where were you?”

  “I . . . er . . . The painter woke. I thought you were asleep. So . . . I went to see if he was all right.”

  She looked at me, her contempt writ large. My hair was messed and I knew my face was flushed. I put down the cloth and arranged my gown, keeping my eyes on the floor. “I . . . um . . . I managed to get him to take a little food and wine. He’s sleeping now.”

  She moved fast, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me so hard that I cried out. I had no memory of her ever hurting me before. When the shaking stopped she kept her grip on my arms, her fingers digging deep into my flesh. “Look at me.” She shook me again. “Look at me!”

  I looked. And she held my eyes, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

  “Erila,” I said. “I—”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  I stopped mid-sentence.

  She shook me again, then just as suddenly let me go. “Didn’t you hear a word I said to you? What? You think I do all this for my own good?”

  She grabbed the flannel from where it had fallen by the basin and dipped it in the water. She pulled up my gown and started to flannel my skin, over my breasts and stomach and down my legs and in between, even into my cleft, rough, hurting me, like a mother with a recalcitrant child. After a while I started to cry, as much from fear as hurt, but it didn’t stop her.

  When she finally finished she tossed the flannel back into the bowl and threw me a towel. She watched while I sullenly dried myself, whimpering, swallowing down the tears, trying not to feel shame.

  “Your husband is back.”

  “What? Oh, my Lord. When?” And we both heard the panic in my voice.

  “An hour or so ago. You didn’t hear the horses?”

  “No. No.”

  She gave a loud snort. “Just as well I did then. He’s asking for you.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That you were tired and sleeping.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Which bit of it? No, I didn’t say anything. But I’m sure the servants will, if they haven’t already.”

  “Good,” I said, trying to sound reassured. “Well, I . . . I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  She stared at me for a moment. Then shook her head in clear exasperation. “You don’t understand, do you? Dear God, how’s it possible that between your mother and me we didn’t teach you. Women can’t do the same things as men can. It doesn’t work like that. They get destroyed by them.”

  But I was scared now and it suddenly felt that those who weren’t with me were against me. “He told me my life was my own,” I said angrily. “It was part of the bargain.”

  “Oh, Alessandra, how can you be so stupid? You don’t have a life. Not like he does. He can fuck what he likes when he likes. No one will ever accuse him. But they will accuse you.”

  I sat chastened. “I . . . I didn’t—”

  “No. Not again. Don’t lie to me again.”

  I looked up. “It just happened,” I said quietly.

  “Just happened? Ho!” She blew out her cheeks, half laughter, half fury. “Yes. Well, it always does.”

  “I didn’t . . . I mean, no one need know. He won’t tell. Neither will you.”

  She sighed angrily, as if she were dealing with a child to whom she had told the same fact six hundred times already. She turned on her heel and paced the room, back and forth, marching out her anxiety. Finally she stopped and turned to me.

  “Did he come?”
br />   “What?”

  “Did he come?” She shook her head. “If your street sense were as fast as your mind you could rule the city, Alessandra. Did his fluid come inside you?”

  “I . . . er . . . I’m not sure. Maybe. I think so.”

  “When did you last bleed?”

  “I don’t know. Ten days, maybe two weeks ago.”

  “When did your husband last poke you?”

  I dropped my head.

  “Alessandra.” She hardly ever called me by name, but now she couldn’t stop it. “I need to know.”

  I looked up at her and started to cry again. “Not since . . . not since the wedding night.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus. Well, he had better do it again. Soon. Can you arrange that?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it for a while.”

  “Well, talk about it now. And get it done. From now on you don’t go near the painter without a chaperone in the room. You hear me?”

  “But—”

  “No! There are no buts. The two of you have been star-crossed ever since you first set eyes on each other, only you were too young to know it. Your mother should never have let him in the house. Well, it’s too late now. You’ll live. And if he’s able to find your hole, I expect he’ll crawl his way back into life again. It’s the kind of resurrection that often sparks an appetite in men.”

  “Oh, Erila, you don’t understand; it wasn’t like that.”

  “Oh, no? So how was it? Did he ask your permission, or did you offer?”

  “I started it,” I said firmly. “It was my fault.”

  “And what, he did nothing?” And I think she might have been relieved to find my spirit back again.

  I gave a small shrug. She looked darkly at me one more time, then came over and pulled me roughly into her arms, hugging me tight and clucking over me like a mother hen. And I knew that if she ever left me again then so would my courage.