The other mask responded obediently, his voice flat.
“Why, Francesca?”
“Because I am not an object of seduction, my love, not material for a masterpiece, not the subject of a sage agreement. I am not the sweetheart who hastens to her lover’s side at midnight. I am not some silly goose waiting vainly for a man, chasing shadows and illusions of happiness. I am not the young woman with the elderly husband, dreaming of hotter lips and more powerful arms, setting out in the snow in search of opportunity and recompense. I am not a bored lady of leisure who cannot resist your reputation and throws herself at you, nor the sentimental provincial bride who is unable to pass over the appearance of her dazzling childhood suitor. I am neither whore nor goose, Giacomo.”
“What are you, Francesca?” asked the man.
The voice sounded strange through the mask, as if it were addressing the other at a great distance. The woman replied in the silence across an enormous distance.
“I am life, my love.”
The man stepped toward the fire, careful that his skirts should not catch fire, and threw two fresh logs onto the flames. He turned round with the remaining logs still in his arms, as he was bending over.
“And what is life, Francesca?”
“It is certainly not running away in the snow,” the woman answered without raising her voice. “Nor is it all fever and fret nor big words nor even the situation in which we find ourselves now, you dressed as a woman, I as a man, both masked, in the room of an inn, like a pair of characters in an opera. None of this is life. I will tell you what life is. I have given it a great deal of thought. Because it was not only you who was locked in a prison where powerful, jealous hands deposited you, Giacomo; I have been in prison as long as you have, even if my bed was not made of straw. Life, my dear, is a whole. Life is when a man and woman meet because they suit each other, because what they have in common is what the rain has in common with the sea, the one always rising from and falling back into the other, each creating each, one as a condition of the other. Out of this wholeness something emerges, some harmony, and that harmony is life. It is very rare among people. You flee from people because you believe you have other business in the world. I seek wholeness because I know I have no other business in the world. That’s why I came. As I said, it took some time for me to be certain of that. Now I know. I also know that there is nothing perfect you can do in this world without me, that you cannot even practice your art, as you call it, for, without me, true and perfect seduction lies beyond you: the experience, the excitement, the thrill of the chase requires me; even the charm you exert over other women is imperfect without me. Why are you standing so stiffly there, Giacomo, with the poker and bellows in your hand, as if someone had hit you and you had tried to stand up too quickly?… Have you realized something? I am life, my love, the only woman offering you a whole life: you are incomplete without me, incomplete as a man, incomplete as an artist, as a gambler, and as a traveler, just as, without you, I am an incomplete woman, no more than a shadow among shadows. Do you understand now?… Because I do. If I were complete I would not have left the duke of Parma, who loves me and offers me everything the world has to offer: power, pomp, ambition, and meaning, and I am not betraying a confidence or stating something improper, believe me, when I say that it was he who introduced me to the sad, solemn faces of love and desire, because love has a thousand faces and the duke of Parma wears one of them. He is in his palazzo at this very moment, wearing an ass’s head because our love has hurt him and he is mortally sick with sadness. But he knows he has no choice, which is why he tolerates me being here with you at such an hour and why he wears the ass’s head so proudly. But the knowledge doesn’t help him nor does the fancy dress nor the agreement: nothing helps him. He has lived by violence and he will die in vanity. There is nothing I can do for him. But for you, I would never have left him, because I, too, had an agreement with him, and I was brought up to honor my agreements. I am a Tuscan, Giacomo,” said the mask, and the figure wearing it straightened a little.
“I know, my dear,” said the man, the poker in his hand, and it was as if his voice were smiling. “You are the second person to say that to me in this room today.”
“Really?” asked Francesca, drawing out the vowel in an almost musical manner, like an amazed, well-behaved schoolgirl. “Well yes, you have had a lot of visitors recently. But that’s how it was and always will be with you, you will always be surrounded by people, both men and women. I shall get used to it, my dear…. It won’t be easy but I shall get used to it.”
“When, Francesca?” the man asked. “When do you want to get used to it? Tonight?… I won’t be receiving any more visitors tonight.”
“Tonight?” the woman asked in the same calm, childlike voice as before. “No, later, during the rest of my life.”
“In the life that we shall spend together?”
“Perhaps, my love. Is that not the way you pictured it?”
“I don’t know, Francesca,” said the man and sat down opposite her, leaning back in the armchair, crossing his legs under his skirt, and crossing his arms under his false bosom. “That goes against the agreement.”
“That agreement was verbal,” the woman calmly replied, “but the other agreement, the one between us, is wordless and implicit. You will always have people around you, both men and women and that, you will not be surprised to know, will be neither particularly desirable nor pleasant from my point of view, nevertheless I shall bear it,” she said a little wearily and gave a short sigh.
“And when,” asked the man in a most respectful, matter-of-fact and reassuring manner, as though he were speaking to a child or some mad person it was unsafe to contradict, “when do you think, Francesca, that we will embark on this life?…”
“But we have already embarked on it, my love,” the woman answered brightly. “We embarked on it the moment I wrote the letter and when the duke of Parma passed my message to you, at which point I put on these man’s clothes. Now you are talking to me as people tend to talk to children or to lunatics. But I am neither of those, my love. I am a woman, albeit in man’s clothes and in a mask, a woman who is absolutely certain she knows something and therefore acts. You are silent?… Your silence indicates that you wish to know what it is I know with such certainty, with such ridiculous, lunatic, deathly certainty?… Only that however many people surround you — men, women, probably more women — and however that is likely to hurt me, we belong to each other. My life is linked to yours, Giacomo, as yours is linked to mine. That is what I know and what the duke of Parma knows as well as I do. That is why he brought the letter, and that is why he is in his palace now with his ass’s head, tolerating my presence here. That is why he hurried to make an agreement with you, and that is why you, too, Giacomo, hurried to make an agreement with him, because the agreement saves you from me, because you fear me as a man fears life, a whole life, the life that lies in wait for him… and everyone is a little frightened of that. I am no longer frightened,” she pronounced aloud.