He turned on his heel and, seeing her not ten paces away from him, was certain that she had turned her head to look at him just as he had looked at her!
Yes, she had done that.
She was looking at him from out of that darkness. He despised her, even as he knew his eyes were full of some lustful glitter, as he gave her his slow, his adoring smile. Always the same insolence, this coquetry, this game of cat and mouse while the grief beat inside of him: you think I want you, you think I desire you, drink you down like wine I will, and cast you aside before you even know what happens to you. But her! Now that was love that time could not touch. No, it took him to destroy it. "Tonio!" and she did not speak another word until she died.
He took the brandy too fast; it spilt down the side of his face and onto his clothes.
Someone had greeted him, bowed, and moved off hurriedly seeing the state of things. But they would forgive; everyone forgave; his wife dead, the children crying for her, and him crying for her. And somewhere five hundred miles to the south that disgrace, that old scandal. "Ah, Senator Carlo Treschi," they must be saying to themselves, "what he has had to bear."
Something else. Federico at his elbow. He stared at the woman in black. She was definitely attempting to lure him. "I told you to leave me alone."
"...is in, and no one was on it, Signore."
"On what? I can't hear you."
"The packet, Signore, there was no..."
Graceful, feline whore, something unmistakably elegant, the sway of her dress, and the way she bent with the wind. He wanted her, wanted her, and when this was over he would go down on his knees in the confessional: "I killed him, I had no choice, I did not..." He turned round and tried to see Federico more clearly. "What did you say?"
"There was no one on the packet, Signore. There was no message"--and lowering his voice so it wasn't even a whisper--"no message from Rome."
"Well, there will be." He drew himself up. And so the wait goes on, and the guilt with it. No, not the guilt, merely the discomfort, the tension, this feeling of being unable to breathe.
He almost dreaded it finally, the message. They had said, "We will bring you proof," after the first outrage when he had questioned their integrity. "Oh, will you, and what will that be?" he had asked. "His head in a bloodied sack?"
He had laughed, and even they, those assassins, had been aghast, straining to conceal it behind faces that looked as if they'd been carelessly carved out of wood and never polished. "You don't need to bring me proof. You only need to do it. The news will come to me fast enough."
Tonio Treschi, the singer, people actually called him that now, even to Carlo, even to his brother, they dared, Tonio Treschi, the singer!
Years ago, those others had said they would bring proof, and he had dismissed it. And when they put that mess of viscera and blood before him, the linen dried and cracking with it, he had knocked over the chair to get away from them, roaring, "Get it away from me, get it away from me!"
"Excellency..." Federico was talking to him.
"I will not go home."
"Excellency, there is still no message and that means there is the chance..."
"What chance!"
"...that they failed."
Just a touch of exasperation in Federico, and a touch of anxiousness, his eyes darting over the piazza, passing blindly over that dark-clad woman who had suddenly appeared again. You don't see her? I see her. Carlo smiled.
"Failed?" He sneered. "He's a Goddamned eunuch, for the love of God. They could strangle him with their bare hands!"
He lifted the bottle, giving Federico that almost intimate push to move him from this perfect vision. Yes, she was there again. "All right, beautiful one, come to me," he said under his breath, and quickly drank the brandy again.
It was a great swallow this time, cleaning his mouth and his eyes. The rain was soundless and without weight, just a swirling of silver.
And the burning in his chest was luxurious; he hadn't taken the bottle down from his mouth.
In her last days, Marianna ran round and round tearing open drawers and cabinets. "Give it to me, you have no right to take it, I put it here, you won't keep me in this house."
And the old physician warning, She will kill herself, and finally Nina running through the halls. "She does not speak, she does not move"--wailing, wailing.
Four hours before she died, she knew it. She opened her eyes and said, "Carlo, I'm dying."
"I won't let you die! Marianna!" he had insisted, and long after, he had awakened at her slight movement, saw her eyes open, heard her say: "Tonio!" She never uttered another word.
Tonio and Tonio and Tonio.
"Signore, home...if it was not done as it should have been done, there is a danger that..."
"That what? They went to wring a capon's neck. If they have not done it, they'll do it. I don't want to talk of this, get away from me...."
Tonio Treschi, the singer! He sneered.
"There should have been some message on the packet."
"Yes, and proof!" he said. "Proof." His head in a bloodied sack. Get that away from me, get that away from meeeeee...!
She had never stopped asking him: "You didn't do it, you didn't do it!" He had whispered his denials a thousand times, a thousand times in those early days when everyone was on him like so many birds of prey ready to strip his flesh from him; behind closed doors, she clung to him, making her hands into claws. "My son, my only son, and our son, you didn't do it!"
"So now you say it." He had laughed and laughed. But no, my darling, a thousand times, I could not have done such a thing. In his rashness he did it. And then her face would soften, just for a little while at least, in his arms, she would believe.
"...no good to mourn like this."
"Who said that?"
He turned around too fast, and saw a pair of figures retreating, the heavy black vesti patricie, the white wigs, his unforgiving and ever vigilant peers.
Federico was far, far away, watching from the arcade, and with him those others. Four good stilettos and muscle enough to guard him against anything save madness, save bitterness, save her death, save endless and terrible years without her, years and years....
A sodden loneliness overtook him. Wanted her, my Marianna, how to describe it, even her crying in his arms, her screaming for her wine, and those drunken eyes accusing him, those lips drawn back over the whitest teeth. "Don't you see I'm with you now," he had said to her. "And we're together and they're gone, they can never separate us again, you are as beautiful as you ever were, no, don't look away from me, look at me, Marianna!"
And just a little while the inevitable softness, that yielding: "I knew you couldn't have done it, not to my Tonio, and he is happy, isn't he? You didn't...and he is happy."
"No, my darling, my treasure," he had answered. "He would have accused me if I had. You have seen the papers he signed with your own eyes. What would he have to gain by not accusing me?"
Only the time to plot to kill me, that's what he had to gain, ah, but first my sons, my sons for the House of Treschi, oh, yes, all for the House of Treschi, for which he kept his counsel, Tonio, the singer, Tonio, the swordsman, Tonio, the Treschi!
Would the gossip never stop?
I tell you the Neapolitans are positively in fear of him; they do anything to avoid crossing him. They say he was in a fury when the young Tuscan insulted him; he slashed open the boy's throat. And that brawl in the tavern, he slew the other boy, he is one of those dangerous eunuchs, very dangerous....
Where is my whore in black, he thought suddenly, my beautiful lady Death, my courtesan wandering so boldly alone in the piazza? Put your mind on the living, forget the dead, the dead, the dead.
Yes, living flesh, warm flesh, under all that black, you had better be beautiful, you had better be worth every zecchino. But where was she?
And the water, as the wind lifted the rain from the surface, had become a perfect mirror once again. And in that mirror, he saw
a great dark dressed form approaching. No, it stood before him.
"Ah."
He smiled, looking down at the reflection. "So my bold little seductive bitch in black, it's come to this."
But the only word his lips formed for her was "Beautiful." Could she see that?
And what if I gather up that veil and throw it back? You wouldn't dare trick me, would you? No, you'll be beautiful, won't you? And simpering, and mindless, with a tongue like brass! A lot of haggling disguised as coquetry, and all the time you think I want you. Well, I have never wanted anyone in all these years save one woman, one beautiful and crazed woman: "Tonio!" and she died in my arms.
She was so close to him now, this anonymous woman in mourning, that he could see the embroidered edge of her veil. Black silk thread, Lenten flowers, beads of jet.
And then some white movement under the veil, her naked hands.
Her face, her face, give me the face.
She stood so still, and so far from him, much farther than he had realized when he had stared at her reflection in the water. She must be a giant of a woman! Or was this just some confusion? Let her turn away again, he wouldn't follow her, not with this much brandy and this much misery. He almost lifted his hand for Federico.
But she didn't turn away.
It seemed her head beneath that long shroud moved gently to one side, and all of her long body seemed to yield to him, and all of his vague and sentimental thoughts were suddenly dispersed by the gesture: yes.
"Yes, my darling?" he whispered, just as if at this distance she might have heard him.
But others were coming, some little knot of men in dark garments plowing into the wind. They divided her from him, never for a second aware of it, but he fixed his eye on the lone enticing figure staring straight at him through that mourning veil.
And just when he felt a little panic that he might lose sight of her, he saw her over the shoulder of the man in front of her, that veil rising in her white hands, and then her face.
He was stupefied for an instant.
She moved away. He knew he was not so drunk he was seeing visions. She was beautiful! She was beautiful as all of this was beautiful, and she had known it, moving towards him. She had come as if conjured by him, never faltering, a face like a magnificent mannequin, a confection, a life-sized doll.
Porcelain, that is what it looked like, perfectly white, and those eyes!
Now it was he who was following, the rain swirling in a silver light so that he squinted and shivered, trying to catch a glimpse of her, as over her shoulder she showed that face again. Yes, after her. After her.
And boldly, splendidly, she now beckoned for him!
Oh, this was rare, and so delicious, and so what he needed, the pain vanquished just for a little while.
She walked faster and faster.
Then when she reached the edge of the canal ahead of him, she turned. The veil came down slowly.
But that was all right, that was lovely. He overtook her and she was already beneath him by several steps. Her skirts almost touched the water. He fancied he could see the rise and fall of her breath.
"Bold as well as beautiful," he said to her, though she was still just a little too far away to hear him. She turned and gestured for the gondolier.
He saw his men clustering behind him. He saw Federico approach.
And turning, he came down towards her in a rush, stepping heavily and awkwardly into the boat as it rocked under him and all but pitched him down after her into the closed felze.
As he slid back on the seat, he felt the taffeta of her dress against him.
The boat moved. The stench of the canal filled his nostrils. And she rose up before him, breathing under that magnificent drapery.
For a moment all he could do was catch his breath.
His heart hammered, and the sweat broke out over him, the price of his rushing. But he had her, though he could barely see her in the light of the parted curtains.
"I want to see it," he whispered, fighting an ugly pain in his chest. "I want to see it..."
"You want to see what?" she whispered, her voice husky and low and absolutely without fear. And Venetian, yes, Venetian, how he had hoped for that!
He laughed to himself.
"This!" He turned on her, snatching up the veil. "Your face!"
And he fell forward on her, his open mouth covering her mouth, and forcing her back against the cushions so that her body stiffened and her hands went up to hold him off.
"What did you think?" He righted himself, licking his lips and looking directly into her black eyes that were no more than a gleam in the shadows. "That you could play games with me?"
She had an expression of the most peculiar astonishment. Nothing of coquettish outrage, nor feigned awe. She was merely looking at him, as if she were dimly fascinated by him, studying him, as one might study something inanimate, and she was as perfectly beautiful in this shadowy place as any creature he had ever seen.
Impossible beauty. He looked for the limit of it, the inevitable disappointment, the inevitable flaws. But she was so lovely to him, at least for this instant, that it seemed he had known this beauty always, in some private compartment of his soul where he had whispered lustily and gracelessly to the god of love, "Give me this, and exactly this, and this, and exactly this." And here it was, with nothing in this face alien to him. Her eyes, so black, and those lashes curling upward, and the flesh so tight over the cheekbones, and that long, luscious and exquisite mouth.
He touched her skin, ah! He drew his fingers back and then he touched her black eyebrows, and those bones, and that mouth.
"Cold, aren't you?" He breathed the words. "Now I want you to really kiss me!" It was spoken like a groan coming out of him, and taking her face in both hands he forced her back and took it from her, sucking her mouth hard and then letting it go, and sucking at it again.
It seemed she hesitated. It seemed for one second she was frozen, and then with a deliberation that amazed him, she gave of herself, her lips softening and her body softening, and he felt the first stirring, through all his drunkenness, between the legs.
He laughed.
He sank back on the cushion. The light flashed colorless and dull in the gap between the curtains, and her face seemed almost too white to be human. But she was human, all right, that he could taste.
"Your price, Signora." He turned to her, drawing so close to her that her white powdered hair tickled his face. When she looked down he felt her eyelashes against him. "What is it, and what do you want?"
"What do you want?" came that deep, husky voice. It hit a pitch that made a little spasm in his throat.
"You know what I mean, darling...." he purred. How much for the pleasure of ripping off your clothes. "Such beauty requires its tribute," he said, brushing her cheeks with his lips.
But she raised her hand. "You waste what you might savor," she answered. "And for you, there is no price."
*
They were in a room.
They had come up long stairs, up and up, damp stairs, he did not like it, such a neglected place. There were rats everywhere, he could hear them, but she had fed him those succulent kisses, and that skin, that skin, was enough to kill for.
And now they were in a room.
She had been pressing him to eat, and the wine was like water after the brandy.
He didn't know this house.
He knew the district, however, the houses all around, many a warm bedchamber with a courtesan he liked well enough, but this house...
The candles hurt his eyes; the table was crowded with food that was no longer hot, and beyond loomed the frame of a bed carelessly hung, it seemed, with gold-threaded curtains. The heat of the enormous fire was too warm.
"Too warm," he said. She had bolted all the shutters. And something bothered him, or perhaps several things, that there were so many spiderwebs under the ceiling, and that it was so damp here, it smelled of decay.
Yet all these rich
es in the midst of it, the goblets, the silver plate; there was something about all of it that reminded him of a stage set when you're so close to the stage you can see the rafters and the wings.
But something bothered him, something in particular. What was it? It was...her hands.
"Why, they are enormous...." he whispered. And hearing the sound of his own voice, and seeing those long, long white fingers had brought him up out of a stupor, anxious suddenly, and pieces of the afternoon were missing.
What had she said? He couldn't remember getting out of the gondola.
"Too warm?" she whispered. That same husky voice that made you want to touch her throat.
And as his vision cleared he saw her, almost as if for the first time. Not her hands, but her. If there had been any other moment that he had seen her, he could no longer recapture it, and he thought, out of habit, that surely, surely, his men were nearby.
But her. He was looking at the blurred outline of her, blinking now and then, straining against the drunkenness as he lifted the cup. The Burgundy was delicious though it was weak.
"You will not mind, my dear," he said as he pulled the cork from the flask in his hand.
"You ask me that again and again." She smiled. It was like breath, that voice; it was like part of her, and when had the voice of a woman ever been like that?
She wore a French wig. Flawless, white curls spilling over her shoulders, pearls embedded in ringlets, and oh, she was so young! So much younger than he had imagined her in the gondola where she had seemed ageless or ancient, and unquestionably Venetian, though he did not know why.
"A child," he said to her gently now, his head suddenly pitching forward so that he felt his limits sharply, and with an attempt at dignity brought himself back up. Her lips were not rose, not pink, but some deep natural color. No, there was no paint. In the gondola, he would have tasted it and smelled it She was just this vision, and those eyes, staring at him.
And the dress with its tight embroidered band across her breasts. He wanted to slide his hand between her breasts and that tight band and tear it loose, just set them free.
"Why have you waited all these years to come to me!" He laughed playfully.
But her face suddenly changed.
It was as if all of a piece she had moved. Yet it happened so quickly, he was unsure of his perception. And now she settled back and that long luscious mouth spread easily in a smile that crinkled her black eyes at the edges.