“Home? Where is that, Francesca?” asked the mask. “I have no home, not a stick of furniture, anywhere in the world.”
“Home is with me, Giacomo,” the woman answered. “Wherever I sleep, that is your home.”
Her two palms curved very gently, as though she were holding a delicate piece of glass, and stroked the man’s mask.
“You see,” said the woman, her voice now faintly singing, her mask a living, smiling radiance, “I am kneeling before you, in fancy dress, like a courtly suitor attempting to charm a lady. And you are sitting before me, in a female costume, masked, because fate has playfully ordained that, for one night only, we should exchange roles. I am the gallant suitor, and you are the lady I am courting. What do you think? Is this not more than coincidence?… I had no idea this afternoon that I would be wearing a male costume tonight, nor did you know this afternoon that the duke of Parma would seek you out, bring you my letter, invite you to the ball, and that you would be dressing up as a woman… do you think this is all just coincidence? I don’t understand human affairs, Giacomo, I only have my imagination, and I begin to suspect that no vital, no unique situation is coincidental, that deep down, at bottom, everybody, men and women alike, is a similar blend of feelings and desires, that our characters and roles are not wholly distinct, that there are moments when life toys with us and shifts about those elements within us that we had believed to be unique and fixed. That is why I am not astonished to be kneeling before you, rather than you before me, as the duke of Parma had ordained in his agreement, and it is I who am endeavoring to woo you. So, you see, everything is proceeding according to the agreement, even though the actors are not precisely in the parts the duke of Parma had designed for them. I am begging you, my dear, to accept my love. I want to console you because I love you and cannot bear your unhappiness. I am the suitor, the besieging force, not you. I have come to you because I must see you. And here we are now, and you are silent. It is a powerful silence, a proper, tight-lipped silence, as it has to be, considering your role, and I echo the last words of your speeches precisely as the agreement demands. But you are still restrained, Giacomo, still acting: you are too true to your part. Are you not afraid that our time will run out, that night will pass, and you will have nothing of interest or satisfaction to report to the man who commissioned you?… Don’t you want me, my love? How terrifying you are when you keep quiet like this, so utterly in character. Not enough and too much, you said, when I offered you everything a woman could offer the man she loved. Look at the fire, Giacomo, see, it has flared up as if it, too, wanted to say something. Perhaps what it wants to say is that it is necessary to be destroyed by the fury of passion and be born anew in feeling, because that is life and wholeness. Everything that has happened might catch light and burn in our hearts if you so desired, if you took me with you or if you let me take you — it is all the same, Giacomo, who goes with whom — but we will have to start everything again, from the beginning, because that is how love works. I will have to give birth to you, to be both your mother and your daughter; my love will cleanse you and I, too, shall be clean in your arms. It will be as if no man had ever touched me. Are you still quiet?… Don’t you want me?… Can I not console you?… How terrible, Giacomo. In vain do I offer you delight and peace, cleanliness and renewal, I cannot drag you into feeling, cannot prize you from your art, cannot change you or see your true face, the last face, without its mask, as I wanted in my letter…. Is it possible that you are stronger than I am, my love? Will the strength of my love break against your cold art and impregnable character?… I promise you peace and wholeness, and you tell me it is too much and not enough. Why don’t you say just once that it is enough, perfect, just right?… Can’t I offer you anything that will draw you out of your orbit? Can’t I say anything to make you finally step out of character and cry, yes, it is enough!… Look, here I kneel, I am twenty years old. You know perfectly well that I am beautiful. I know it, too. I am not the most beautiful woman in the world, because the most beautiful woman does not exist anywhere, but I am still beautiful, my body is perfect, my face is alive and full of curiosity, repose, delight, understanding, cheer, and solemnity all blended together. It is the blend that gives it its beauty. Because that blended animation is what beauty is. All else is merely a malleable combination of skin and flesh and bone. You still believe in the kind of women who ostentatiously draw attention to their beauty, Giacomo, who strut about proudly, not knowing that beauty is what dissolves in the crucible of love, that a month or a year after the successful wedding, no one notices beauty anymore — face, legs, arms, a fine bosom, all melt away and disappear in the flames of love, and there remains a woman who may still be able to soothe, to hold, to help you, to offer something, even when you can no longer see the beauty of her face and figure…. My beauty is like that, Giacomo: I am true metal, gold through and through. Even if I were worn on someone’s finger, or buried deep beneath the earth, I would be true because I am beautiful. The Creator has blessed me with beauty and he has given me the odd beating, too: I am beautiful and therefore have a purpose in life, which is to please your eyes, though it is not only your eyes I must please, Giacomo. For I cannot pass through life with such beauty without being punished for it, because wherever I go I rouse passions: I am like a water diviner who discovers underground streams, who can feel them bubbling beneath her. I have to suffer a great deal on account of my beauty. I offer you the beauty and harmony with which the Creator has blessed and cursed me and you are still uncertain, saying now too much, now not enough. Are you not afraid, Giacomo?… You made my acquaintance when I was still in bud, calling me your ‘wild nettle,’ but you permitted the duke of Parma to buy me, and fled because you feared and still do fear me, even though I represent truth and wholeness. Are you not afraid that human ties might not be enough, that maybe I am just a woman who may tire of waiting, of agreements, deals, and promises? Are you not afraid that I might be tired already and that I visit you only to confirm the fact and tell you so?… Because the desire and devotion that burns in my heart for you is itself a terrifying and self-consuming passion! Are you not afraid, Giacomo, that I have secrets of my own? Are you not afraid that I may be able to stir feelings in you that are not entirely tender or calm, that I might, if I very much desired, entertain you with stories that will make you cry out and finally demand, ‘Enough!’ I am truly yours, Giacomo, nor is there anything I desire more than to save you and to save myself, and having done that, to live with you as people do, through whatever hells we may have to face. But if your attachment to your art, to the duke of Parma’s contract, and to yourself demands something more, it may be time for me to weaken and to confess that, while this flame has continued to burn within me ever since I first met you and that it is indeed unquenchable, I was unable to resign myself to your running away, to your cowardice, but allowed other men to kiss me before I gave myself to the duke of Parma. I could regale you with stories about the consolations required by a rejected fifteen-year-old girl. Shall I tell you what it was like after your flight in Pistoia, when I threw myself at the gardener — you know the man? Are you not afraid of hearing about that night, Giacomo? I remember it very well, in every detail, just as you, in your turn, will remember the gardener who gave me flowers on your behalf: a tall, powerful, violent man, a man of few words. Shall I tell you the story of the night after your duel and your escape?… Would you really like to hear it in all its detail? And what about the other things that followed as the months and years passed, when I had no news from you, and this flame, that is worse than the flames and fumes of hell, worse than the flames suffered by poor victims of the Inquisition, burned me through and through? Shall I tell you the story of the house in Florence? About the palazzo on the bank of the Arno by the Ponte San Trínita, where you will find my nightgown, my slippers, my comb, and the Venetian mirror you gave me? Should I tell you about the house I frequented that I, too, might have used as a casino, Giacomo, the secret palazzo in Murano that, like you, I once enjoyed? Should I tell you all this? Should I tell you what it is like when a woman who wants to give everything that a young body and soul has to give to the man she loves is disappointed in love and begins to burn with fury, like a torch made of flesh, hair, and blood, a torch that burns in secret, like a flame in the half-light, scorching and blackening everything she touches, so that despite all the power, strength, and wariness of the duke of Parma, he is helpless to put the fire out? Should I tell you what it is like when a woman is obliged to seek the tenderness she desires from one man alone, a man who has run away, in the embraces of ten, twenty, or a hundred men? Would you like names, Giacomo? Would you like proof?… Would you like to know the names of those noble lords, gardeners, courtiers, comedians, gamblers, and musicians, together with their addresses, every one of them kinder and more tender to me than you have ever been?… Do you want to know what it is like when a woman begins to move through the world like one possessed, touched, and branded by fate, without a scrap of peace in her heart because she loves somebody and has been rejected? Because I could tell you about that too.”