be sorrow—he drew her near to him to take her in his arms.
He held her face; he smoothed the hair back from her eyes, and he gave himself over to her as she surrendered, so that on a bed of hay they made love, bringing to each other their own warmth.
He dreamed of snow.
Not since Venice had he seen snow, and never such heavy snow, blanketing snow, snow that so obliterated everything. Yet he dreamed that he awoke in this very place to find the land covered with it, pure and white for as far as he could see. The naked poplars were glistening with ice, and snow shone in the crooks of their spiked branches. And soft flakes fell, weightless and magnificent, down over the whole world and into those broken windows as well, so that even the floor around him was carpeted with this stunning whiteness.
She was here with him; but not so that he might touch her. And he realized that on the far wall there were a hundred figures drawn whom he had not seen before, archangels with huge wings and flaming swords, driving the damned below, and saints who looked to heaven in constricted agony. Black chalk had formed these impressions which now seemed so swollen with life it was as if her hand had brought them out of the wall where they had lain captive; and he saw their knotted brows, the clouds above their heads boiling in the sky as below the flames leapt up to consume the defeated sinners.
It terrified him, this picture, its immensity, and her small form before it, her hair spilling down her back, her skirt swaying softly as she moved from place to place, her hand outstretched to blur the form of what seemed inevitable and immutable.
But when she turned he saw that she too was touched by the snow, that it drifted through the open windows to bright flecks upon her skirt, her breasts, her sloping shoulders. Her hair was alive with snow, and it blew in gently to cover both of them.
What did it mean, this snow, falling on this unlikely place? Even in sleep, he wanted desperately to know the answer. Why this extraordinary peace, this shining beauty? And then looking out over the rolling land again that lay beneath a pearlescent sky, he thought he was not in Italy at all, but far away from all he loved and feared and counted upon for meaning. Venice, Carlo, the slow progression of his life towards chaos, these things did not exist! He was merely in the wide world and no particular place, and the thin fall of the snow grew thicker, whiter, more dazzling.
He felt her arms around him as he stood there. He felt the angels and saints glowering from the wall, and he loved her and he knew he was no longer afraid of her.
He awoke.
The sun was hot on his face, and he lay in the straw alone and it was the end of the afternoon, and for a long time he did not move, not even to reach for her. Slowly through the shadows he perceived that a great cartoon did cover the wall just as he had seen it in his dream and surely before he’d fallen asleep, though he did not remember it. And she was there too, standing before it.
3
EVERY NIGHT after the final curtain, he rushed out, slipping from his carriage in the Via del Corso so that he might hurry through a muddy tangle of streets to the Piazza di Spagna to meet her in secret, as Raffaele’s bravos were still following him.
An old servant, withered and brown, was always scuttling about, dusting and arranging meaningless things, her tiny black eyes scorning Tonio as if he were “men,” and at the sight of her he felt an instantaneous fury. But out of the smoky colors of the room, Christina would disentangle herself to slip forward and quiet him. She took his kisses like a drug, her lids half mast, and melted silently to be held for a long time, before she begged to be allowed to paint him.
He was trembling. It seemed his love was an agony. All the pure excitement of the stage fused to make him hungry and desperate.
But he would nod his head. He let her step back and away, and never had he wanted anything in all his life so much as he wanted her and he felt helpless.