soon ablaze with candles, the high windows turned to mirrors by the swelling light, and setting him down in front of her, she took out paper, tacked it to a board, and commenced to draw him in pastel, which she rapidly colored in as her fingertips became covered with it.
He was often lulled by the rhythmic scratching of the chalk while all around faces peered down on him, lush, magnificently fired, some men and women he knew, others spun to mythic size against massive skies and clouds so real they seemed on the very verge of predictable movement. From a distant frame the Cardinal Calvino towered gently over him, vibrant, unmistakably himself, and engraved there with a strength that vaguely tormented Tonio.
Her talent was beyond doubt. Her figures, robust, familiar or strange, closed in on him with irrepressible vigor.
And in the core of it all, she worked, her hair alive and writhing in the light, becoming more and more bizarre to him. He wondered would she be angry if she could guess his thoughts: that she seemed as exotic in this place as a white dove flown down from some lofty height to play with perfect time upon a harpsichord. So sensuous she was, so seemingly desire incarnate. How could her form contain wit and talent and such will? It was tantalizing to him beyond belief.
And feeling himself on the brink of trance, for his own sweet torment, he imagined her reading books, for surely she did all the time, or writing tomes of philosophy, for he wouldn’t have put it past her, and then he came round again to her furiously working hand caked with chalk as she broke piece after piece in two to make a small disaster of her workcase. She must have freedom to lay on colors in frantic little strokes, her face shimmering with absorption as he watched dully, wanting only to ravish her.
But there was time enough for making love.
And he feared the moment after, he would feel the pain all the more.
Some dim memory hacked at him of being in a splendid place full of music, and the music suddenly stopped, and fear creeping up to take hold of him. It seemed Vivaldi’s music, the racing violins of the Four Seasons. And he could feel the emptiness of the air when it was finished.
Finally she completed her picture. For ten whole days he had been in her thrall, given over to the opera and to her, and no one and nothing else.
It was near to dawn, and she held it up to him and he let out a small gasp.
Bland innocence she’d captured in that enameled miniature she’d sent through Guido. But in this he sensed a darkness, a brooding, even a coldness that he had never known he revealed.
Not wanting to disappoint her he murmured simple things. Yet he put it aside and came near her, sitting right beside her on the wooden bench and taking the chalk out of her hand.
Love her, love her, that was all he could think or feel or propel himself to do, and once again he had hold of her, wondering on the thin membrane that separated cruelty from overpowering passion.
To love someone like this, it was to belong to that one. All freedom went the way of reason, and happiness had for itself a perfect place, a perfect moment. He held her close, unwilling to speak, and it seemed her soft hot bones, tumbled against him, told him only the most terrifying secrets.
Love, love, the having of her.
He took her to the bed, he unfolded her, and laid her down; he sought to lose himself in her.
And there came that time together he had known so often with Guido in the past, when the body was at last still and he wanted only to be near her.
The table had been draped. The candles brought in. She lifted a dressing gown to his shoulders, and led him there where the old woman had laid out wine, and plates of steaming pasta. They dined on roasted veal and hot bread, and finally when it was all done, and too much, he took her on his lap, and both of them, shutting their eyes, began a small game of hands and kisses.
Soon it worked into this: that while he blindly felt the bones of her small face, she would blindly feel the bones of his; and as he clutched her tiny shoulders, she would hold onto his, and