When the spasm was over, his sense of humor seemed to desert him and a terrible fury took hold of him. “I see I have lady visitors,” he muttered through clenched teeth, his voice cracked and sibilant. He crossed his arms across his chest. “What a privilege, dear ladies!” He bowed deeply, ornately, disposing both hands and legs in a parody of courtesy, as if he were in a corridor at Versailles, greeting ladies of the French court on a fine morning, while the king, plump-bellied and purple-faced, was still fast asleep, or as if he were idling away his time with flâneurs and toadies, practicing manners with them. “What a privilege,” he repeated, “for a gentleman of the road like myself! For a fugitive who has only just escaped the hell of a damp, rat-infested prison, having seen not one friendly face nor met a single expression of tenderness in over a year and a half! What honor, and what privilege!” he mocked and minced in a somewhat threatening way. The women felt the threat in his voice, drew closer together like hens in a storm, and slowly backed away toward the door, Lucia using the lower half of her body to feel her way along the wall. The man took slow deliberate steps toward them, pausing at every stride. “To what do I owe the good fortune,” he began, then continued in a cracked but louder voice. “To what do I owe the good fortune of discovering the assembled beauties of Bolzano crowded in my room as I wake? What has prevailed upon the ladies of Bolzano to visit the fugitive, the exile, the man rejected by the rest of society, who is even now pursued by police dogs and wolf packs over borders, whose trail the mercenaries of the Holy Inquisition are trying to follow through bushes and across forest floors with pikes and lances in their hands? Are the ladies not afraid that they come upon the poor fugitive in one of his less charitable moods, at this precise time, the morning after he has spent his first night in a bed fit for human occupation, not on straw that smells of incontinent dogs? Are they not afraid of him now that he has woken and begun to remember? What do the beauties of Bolzano desire of me?” he asked, by now at full volume, his voice breaking with fury. He straightened up in a single violent movement and it was as if, for a moment, he had grown more handsome. His face was bright with anger, like a bare landscape lit by lightning. “Who, after all, am I that the ladies of Bolzano should steal into my room when I have come to claim rights of hospitality in the temporary lodging of the homeless?” It was clear to see that he was enjoying the effects of his speech, the panic it wrought in the women and the advantage it gave him in the situation. His confidence was growing: by now he was playing with them the way a swordsman plays with a lesser opponent, coming closer with every step, his every word like a swish of the blade. “Beauties of Bolzano! You, the haughty brunette, yes you! You, with your virtuous looks and the rosary beads over your cloak! You, with the ample bosom there in the corner! And you, old lady! What are you all looking at with such curiosity? A fire-eater or sword swallower might have arrived in town to demand your attention, but here you are, sneaking about, gaping at a poor feral creature like me! This is not a cage in a traveling circus, ladies. The feral creature is awake and hungry!”
He laughed again, but bitterly now and in ill humor. “Where have you come from?” he asked with quiet contempt. “From the market? From the inn? There is already talk in town that I am here: spies are sniffing round and keeping their ears open, women are gossiping in parlors and in boxes in the theater, as are you in the market, I suppose. He’s here, they are saying, he’s arrived, how entertaining! What honor you do me!” he repeated indifferently, with just a hint of complaint. “So, here I am. Look at me! This is what I look like! This is the way I really am, not the way I appear in the evening, wigged, lilac-coated, with a sword at my side and rings on my fingers! This is what I’m like, not a whit more handsome, not a day younger! Do you like the look of me? Do you fancy me? Do I live up to my reputation? What do you expect of me? Why don’t we elope, all six of us, hop on a mailcoach and set off to see the world? Am I not Giacomo, itinerant lover, servant to all and exploiter of all, at your ladyships’ service, whenever, wherever you desire? Go away, you brood of hens, clear off!” he cried, his voice terrifying, his brilliant black eyes beginning to glimmer with a faint green light, or so Lucia said later, as she wept and trembled in the marital bed one night, confessing all to her husband. “Imprisoned for sixteen months in the name of virtue and morality! Have you any idea what that means? Sixteen months, four hundred and eighty-eight days and nights on a bed of straw with the stink of human misery in my nostrils, prey to fleas and lice, in the company of rats; sixteen months, four hundred and eighty-eight days in the dark, without sunlight or even real lantern light, living like a mole or a rat, alone with my youth, with the ambitions and desires of manhood, alone with my memories, memories of the life I lived, memories of waking to brightness and of the sweetness of retiring to bed; alone, excluded from the world, in the name of virtue and morality, of which I am the sworn enemy — or at least that is what the messer grande said when he had me arrested! Four hundred and eighty-eight days stolen from life, erased from it; four hundred and eighty-eight nights when others could look upon the moon and the sea in the harbor and on people’s faces illuminated by lantern light, on women’s faces at the moment the lantern goes out when the only light remaining is that reflected in the eyes of lovers!” His own speech had intoxicated him by now and he was talking extremely loudly, like someone who had been silent for a very long time. “Why are you backing away?” he bellowed and stretched forth his arms. “Am I not here! I have come! You, granny, why are you cowering by the door, and you, you vain silly brown-eyed creature, why don’t you come closer? See, this is the arm that has squeezed many a woman’s waist, these are the hands you have longed to see! Are you not frightened of them?… They can twirl a sword and flick through a pack of cards, but they are capable of caressing too! You, you delicate blonde powderpuff, are you acquainted with these fingers? Even in the dark they can tell clubs from spades, but they can also tickle your fancy so you scream out at their touch, and later, when you are toothless, you can lisp to your grandchildren about the time when these fingers closed about your neck! Ladies of Bolzano! Go forth into town and declare that I am here, I have arrived, the performance is about to begin! He is here, the fop, the lady’s consolation, the healer of broken hearts with his arcana of remedies for heartache, the man who knows the recipe for the meal that must be fed the lackluster lover so that he may rise again, virile and amusing in bed the next night! Tell them how you managed to break in, that you have seen me with your own eyes and can certify that I am truly here and have not wasted away in prison: that you have seen this arm, this heart, these shoulders, and all the rest, all present and correct, all in working order! Spread my fame, ladies. And tell your husbands at some appropriately intimate moment, just as you undo your belts and let your skirts drop, that Giacomo, the man who was consigned to prison, darkness, and the underworld, all in the name of virtue and morality, has arrived and is now a truly virtuous and moral creature who craves their forgiveness and support. Do beg for mercy on my behalf, dear ladies, and appeal to the mighty and virtuous, those so clearly without a fault that they dare to, and are able to, pass judgment upon sinners! For a sinner is what I am; go therefore and proclaim how Giacomo repents of his sins. I am a sinner because I know all there is to know about men and women, and because my reputation says that I respect life all the more for it! Go and spread the news that I have arrived.”