One Sunday as she kneels, he sees her head slump and her shoulders slacken; then, with a jerk, she awakens, wide eyed, and suddenly he hears her laugh — in church! — when she realizes what she has done. The matron beside her gives her a sharp, reproving look, and she forces her face back into its mask of composed piety. But Martini has now seen something else behind the church-face mask, and his curiosity is aroused.
That night, as he lies beneath the covers before going to sleep, he plays a painter’s game with himself, imagining how he might paint her face in various scenes, with various expressions and emotions: worry, gratitude, tranquility, terror, irritation, delight, lust. And then, when Giovanna rolls her body against his in the dark, and her fingers seek him out, stroke him to hardness, and guide his flesh into hers, it is Laura’s face, and Laura’s breasts, and Laura’s moans that he imagines and that make him gasp and shudder with a fiery passion that Giovanna’s simple honest love has never managed to ignite.
The next Sunday, she is not there. he checks her usual stations — the side chapels where she always pauses to light candles — scanning the congregation with confusion and growing dismay. Somehow, because she has always been here, he has taken it for granted that she always would be here.
His surprise gives way to another feeling, one he recognizes as fear — no, as panic! What if she’s gone for good — moved away to Paris, or killed by a sudden fever? How can he possibly finish the portrait until every detail of her is etched in his mind? How will he explain his failure to Petrarch? And then: How will he fill his Sunday mornings, and the other hours of his days and nights that she has come to occupy? Good God, he thinks, I am worse than the poet. I have a good wife, a sweet and faithful woman who loves me, and yet I am turning into a schoolboy over this woman — this girl — who is thrice forbidden to me: She is married, I am married, and she is beloved by my friend Petrarch. In a state of consternation, he stumbles over the feet of the other worshipers in his pew, turns up the side aisle of the nave, and makes for the door.
Just before he reaches it, he feels a tug on his sleeve. He turns, and there — hidden by a pillar — is the woman herself, a sight so unexpected he almost cries out in surprise. She watches him regain control of himself, then says, “Monsieur, vous me cherchez?”: Sir, are you looking for me? Working with French painters and seeking French patrons, he has mastered much of the language by now, but he is so taken aback by her sudden appearance and blunt question that he resorts to a well-worn ploy, shaking his head and shrugging to indicate that he does not understand her, and adding “Sienese” to make sure she gets the message.
“Ah, Siena, una bella città,” she says, switching to his own language so fluently and effortlessly, she might have grown up next door to him. “A beautiful city,” she repeats. “If you are Sienese, sir, I envy you.” She glances down briefly, then looks up at him again, and when she does, the intensity with which her eyes probe his is almost palpable: as if she were a blind woman, exploring his very soul with her fingers. She lays a hand on his arm. “Come. There is a garden in the cloister. I would speak with you.” She leads him out a side door, through an archway, and along a loggia to a far corner of the cloister, to a bench tucked into an alcove of boxwoods. She sits, and motions for him to sit beside her.
“Now, sir. Tell me why you were looking for me. Don’t pretend you weren’t.” Again he shrugs — not, this time, to feign incomprehension; this time, to acknowledge that he’s been caught, and has no defense. “I’ve noticed how you watch me. Not just today, but for weeks. Every Sunday I feel your eyes on me. Why?”
“You…you are a beautiful young woman, my lady. What man could resist looking at you?”
Slowly she shakes her head. “Many men look at me. Some with contempt, some with longing. But no one else looks at me the way you do. You study me; you examine me, as if I were a flower or an insect whose parts you wish to catalog. Why?”
He opens his mouth to speak, but he can find no words. If he lies, she will see through it; if he tells the truth, she will hate it. He looks away, fixes his eyes on a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and sighs. “Forgive me, my lady.”
“Sienese.” She says it slowly, musingly, turning it over in her mind as she turns it over in her mouth. She looks down, then she reaches down, taking his right hand in hers, lifting it, examining his rainbow-tipped fingers. “You are a painter. The Sienese painter. Simone of Siena.” He bows slightly in awkward confirmation. “I have seen your frescoes in Siena. They are wonderful. I was glad to hear that you had come to Avignon.” He bows again, more deeply, and when he straightens up, he meets her gaze frankly for the first time. Her eyes continue to bore into him, but there is no anger in them, only curiosity, as well as the glimmer of something else crystallizing in her mind. “Why do you study me with your painter’s eyes, Simone of Siena?” How can he even begin to explain? He does not have to. “Do you paint me, Master Simone?” He hesitates, then nods slowly. She looks away, and when she looks at him again, her expression has changed. “Do you paint me for him — for the poet who puts me on a pedestal?” He nods again. She looks down, and when she looks up, tears are beading at the corners of her eyes: dewdrops on a gray autumn morning. “I did not ask to be his goddess, Master Simone. I do not want to be his goddess. Why do I not have a choice? He has pinned me to the pedestal, in view of everyone, and now, no matter what I do, I cannot get down. With his eloquent and unrelenting insistence, he has made me into what he imagines. I’ve heard a story, Master Simone, about a Greek sculptor long ago who managed to turn a statue into a woman. This poet is transforming me from a woman into a statue.”
“Forgive me,” he says again. “I did not know — did not consider — how his…attentions…might affect you. I should never have accepted the commission. I will destroy the picture this very day.”
“No!” Her eyes widen, and she puts a hand to her throat. “No. Wait.” Her breath is rapid now, her cheeks flushed. “First, you must tell me about this picture. How are you painting me, Master Simone? What scene am I in? What biblical figure do I portray?” The corners of her mouth twitch. “I cannot be the Virgin Mary. Am I the woman caught in the act of adultery?”
The question makes him blush; can she read his nighttime thoughts? “Of course not, my lady,” he says, perhaps a bit too swiftly and loudly.
“Am I Elizabeth, the withered old wife of Abraham, who finally conceives at age ninety?” Her eyes twinkle, and he’s both shocked and delighted by the boldness of her teasing.
“Old and withered? Far from it, my lady. In my painting, you are young and beautiful. In my painting, you are no one but your own true self.”
She smiles. “I knew you were a fine painter, Master Simone. I did not know you were a skilled flatterer, too.”
“No. I have no gift for words. Only my brush can speak, and it says you are lovely and luminous.”
She pinks. “And in this secret picture, what does your brush say that I am wearing?”
“You are wearing your green silk gown with the collar embroidered in gold, the one you were wearing when Petrarch first saw you. The one you were wearing when I first saw you. Pearls — the choker, not the long strand — encircle your neck. Your hair is pinned up, as it is now, but it is the cloisonné comb, not this tortoiseshell, just above your left ear. Your head is turned a little to the right, which is why we can see the comb, but your eyes are looking straight at the viewer. Straight at me.” As he says the words, her eyes are indeed locked on him, just as in the portrait; just as in his imaginings. He continues, “The irises are mostly green — almost emerald at their edges — but flecked with gold, especially near the center, where the iris meets the pupil.” He is leaning closer now, staring at her eyes, talking almost in a whisper, almost to himself. “I wish I could paint the way the pupils pulsate in time with your heartbeat: larger, smaller; larger, smaller. But even at their smallest, they are large. I have never seen pupils so large as yours. They are quite…remarkable.”