Inamorata (30 page)

S
OPHIE

I
t was a comedy—I could not understand Italian, but it was something about an innkeeper who was a flirt. “Many consider it Goldoni’s masterpiece,” she told me, explaining the plot as it went along, so I could follow it well enough even if I couldn’t read its subtleties.

“Oh, my dear, there are no subtleties,” she’d laughed.

Just watching the people was enthralling, and the Teatro Goldoni was so opulent it was like being inside a candle flame—flickering everywhere with gilt and gaslight. The production was well costumed and staged so there was always something to see, and she had candied fruit and wine sent up. But I could not really enjoy it. The conversation my brother and I’d had that morning sat like a stone on my heart.

When the play was over, she said, “Let me take you to dinner.”

Just as I began to make our regrets, Joseph accepted for the both of us. It was close to midnight—the play had been preceded by a ballet and a shorter piece—and I’d been up most of the night before with Nicholas. I just wanted to go home, but instead I managed a dull smile and put on my cloak.

It was still raining hard when we left the theater, and the street before us was beneath at least an inch of water, the sky black as pitch, all color lost, the gaslamps a sickly dim yellow, their light absorbed by rain. It was like stepping into an underwater world, deep and mysterious—but for her. She managed somehow to look bright and shining in the middle of it.

The Little Horse restaurant was small and owned by Germans, she said, though it looked as Venetian as everyplace else. It was nearly full, the sound of talk loud, the musty smell of wet wool pervasive, along with those of polenta and oil and fish. She had wine brought, and a plate of the little fried crabs called
moleche
. My brother picked one up by its claw and ate it in a single bite. She laughed at him, and he smiled back as he chewed.

I understood his fascination with her. She was elegant and refined and beautiful, but I couldn’t help wondering why she’d wanted me to come, why she worked so hard to charm me now.

She poured wine into my glass and fastened that strange gray gaze on me, leaning her chin upon her hand. “You enjoyed the play, Miss Hannigan?”

“Yes, very much so.”

“Do you like opera? The La Fenice opens just after Christmas. And there is the Teatro Rossini too—though the operas there are second-rate, they are still entertaining. Would you like to go? Shall I get tickets?”

Again I wondered at her effort. “I do love the opera. But you mustn’t go out of your way—”

“If not for you, then who should I go out of my way for?” she said. “I have taken a great interest in both you and your brother, Sophie—might I call you that? It seems so formal to keep saying Miss Hannigan. Not at all as I wish to be.”

For my brother’s sake, for everything he’d said to me this morning, I tried to smile. It was all I could do to say, “Of course.”

“And you must call me Odilé. Sophie, tell me what you most want to do while you are in Venice. Make a wish, and I shall make it come true.”

“I want Joseph to be famous,” I said without hesitation.

“Yes indeed, we all wish for that. But surely there must be something you want for yourself?”

I shook my head. “No. That’s our dream. It’s the one we’ve always had.”

She raised a finely arched brow. “Ah, how lovely. Twins dreaming together. Inspiring each other. But . . . you do not have a dream that is just your own?”

I thought of all the stories I’d invented over the years, the things I’d wished for. Escape. Relief. Forgetfulness. But they were all too private to mention to anyone but Joseph, who shared them. And I would not tell her my only other dream, the one I hoped was coming true. It was not for her to know. “Not really. No.”

Odilé frowned—so small, nearly imperceptible, as if she were puzzled. It was fleeting, but I saw it.

Joseph smiled and said, “It’s not just for me. It’s for Sophie too. We’re together in this. In everything.”

After this morning, his words were reassuring.

Odilé looked at me and said, “ I think that is not quite true, is it? Perhaps it is what your brother wishes to believe, but I see something else in your eyes, my dear Sophie. Your friend has become your lover at last, and you think of him now.”

I felt my brother tense. She sensed it too; I knew it by the way she said to him, “Come,
cheri,
you mustn’t be so selfish. Your sister has given you everything, has she not? But the inspiration you require draws a great deal of strength. Perhaps it is time to release her to find happiness on her own.”

I felt a quick panic. “Oh no. No, I don’t mind it at all—”

“Of course you do not,” she said thoughtfully. “But a man recognizes when he is not singular in one’s affections. I cannot help thinking it is perhaps why you have never known the kind of love you yearn for. Your brother is in the way.”

The truth of what she said took me aback. The past fluttered at the edges of my vision. The look on my brother’s face reminded me of this morning, his head in his hands, his confusing reaction to my words, as if he saw something he had never before seen, an uncertainty and awareness that worried me.

Odilé went on, “Do you know there is a heart in the archway of the
sotoportego
of the dei Preti? Legend says that if two lovers touch it at the same time, they are destined to love forever. If a person alone touches it, he or she can make a wish to find true love. There is a story to go with it—about a pair of lovers, of course—but it hardly matters. The superstition is all that remains of them now. Perhaps you should go there, my dear. Or take your lover with you. Such a promise will reassure him.”

Joseph stared at me and I felt a surrender in him I didn’t understand. Outside the wind howled. The restaurant sign squeaked loudly back and forth. Odilé glanced toward the door, shuddering delicately. “This storm feels ready to break open the world.” She reached for the wine as if it were a restorative. “Ah, there is no more.
Cheri
, will you get us another? And tell the waiter it must be a Bordeaux—an old one.” She smiled at Joseph, who rose to do her bidding, and the moment he left the table, she looked at me, saying urgently, as if she meant to get the words out before he returned, “How much do you wish for his fame, Sophie? How much does he?”

Her voice had such power. My heart pounded as I heard myself say, “It is all we’ve worked for.”

Her eyes seemed to glitter. “What would you sacrifice for it?”

“Anything. Everything.” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. I felt as if I’d confided some terrible secret. I felt as if I’d given her a way to imprison me.

“Ah.” She smiled a little, reaching for a crab, dangling it for a moment over her plate before she dropped it and picked up her fork, breaking the tiny crab apart with the tines, making a fatal cut, splitting the crab’s back. It was nothing now but scattered crumbs on her plate, crabmeat and bits of fried batter. She laid the fork aside and picked up a bit with graceful, slender fingers. Her bracelets slipped and gyrated about her wrists as she dropped it into her mouth. I felt the weight of her gaze. For a moment, I felt as if we were connected—fatally, perfectly.

And again I saw in her Miss Coring. The same gaze, the gleam of reflected lamplight.
Come, Sophie. Come and dance for me and your brother. Take off your nightgown and dance. . . .

“I need you, Sophie,” Odilé whispered, startling me from the memory. “More than you can know. If I were to ask you to . . . do something for me, would you promise to do it?”

“What is it?” I heard myself asking.

“Release your brother. Leave him to me.”

“Leave . . . Joseph to you? What do you mean?”

Her gaze held me tight. “Put Joseph in my hands, and I will make him a king. I will have the whole world lauding him. I will make him more famous than he has ever dreamed.”

I did not bother to ask how. I didn’t need to. The promise in her eyes burned. I saw truth in it. I felt her yearning calling to mine, her promise steeped in the pulse of my blood. And that promise felt as binding as the stories I’d told myself, years and years of story—spinning in my head as I danced in a nursery room for my governess and my brother as they lay entwined and writhing, the spell I cast as I held my brother’s gaze, my every twirl and dip embedding the charm deeper and more true. As long as neither of us looked away, we stayed in the world I made for us. Miss Coring did not exist. He was mine and I was his, and nothing could come between us. I was the princess rescuing both herself and the prince from the demon-queen in the tower. A golden bridge to salvation, crossing miles of river, of ocean, of canals that snaked through a city built of Faustian bargains and nightmares that did not frighten me because I’d put them there. I had made them.
I will save us. I will save us. I will. Save us.

The urge to promise was overwhelming. I opened my mouth to say the words, to say
Yes, yes
—

And then Joseph returned. He sat heavily, saying, “He’s looking for a Bordeaux, but he doesn’t think he has one.”

“Ah.” Odilé made a delicately fatal shrug, very French, and threw me a glance full of meaning. “Well, then, perhaps it is a sign that the evening should end. How lovely it has been though, has it not? I must thank you both for sharing it with me.”

She paid the bill and we went out into the storm. The night was wild, the wind rushing, the rain blowing in torrents. Above our heads, the restaurant sign swung violently. Everything seemed strange—skewed, weirdly shadowed, off perspective. I put my hand to my eyes, feeling suddenly dizzy. “It all looks so odd.”

Joseph took my arm, a reassuring warmth. “It’s only the storm.”

But I wondered how he could not see it. How his artist’s eyes, which daily saw things I’d never noticed, could miss the sudden strangeness of the world.

We hurried to the gondola. Once we were inside, Odilé asked me, “Should we take you home, Sophie, or to your lover?” and it was only then that I realized that of course Joseph would go with her, that I’d felt his impatience to be with her all night and had not let myself acknowledge it. In this, I realized, she was not like Miss Coring. Joseph had never wanted another woman enough to leave me, but I felt that to be true now. Because Odilé
was
desire, more than any woman I’d ever known, and Joseph needed that. He needed to drown himself in it, to forget. But understanding why he wanted her didn’t make it any less painful. I felt afraid and abandoned. As if she sensed it, she put her hand to my cheek, leaning close so I smelled her perfume of almonds and musk, swirling about my nose, into my head, dizzying and sweet and wonderful, and whispered, “I will make him a king,” and I heard Joseph saying, as if from far away, “We’ll take her home.”

The journey was too quick; before I knew it the gondola stopped. I was unsteady enough as I disembarked that Joseph helped me while Odilé waited in the
felze
. He had my arm firmly in his grasp as we stepped to the door, and I turned to him, saying urgently, “Don’t go with her, Joseph.”

He gave me a chiding glance. “You know I have to. We need the money. There’s the commission to think of.”

“And you
want
to be with her.”

He glanced away uncomfortably.

“Why don’t you just admit it? You’d rather be with her tonight than me.”

His gaze leaped back. I saw a terrible, aching sadness. “What of it? You’re no better, are you? You’d rather be with Dane.”

“No, I—”

“You’re in love with him, Soph. D’you think I can’t see it? You’ve gone and done it despite everything I’ve said.”

He waited for me to deny it. I felt his hope, and I wanted to reassure him. But I couldn’t. “Perhaps I am.”

He froze. A long moment of silence passed between us. Then he said, “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” and kissed me. His lips were cold, wet from the rain. He stepped away, back into the gondola, and I stood there watching as he disappeared into the
felze
, watching helplessly as her gondolier took him away.

I heard guttural cries from somewhere, the rush of the rain, the snakelike hiss of the wind through cracks in the walls. In that moment, I believed that Venice was full of ghosts and devils, that demons haunted its shadows, that I was one of them. A spirit left to haunt the
calli
and
rii
of a city that was to make our dreams come true. I could not shake myself of the sense that I was fading, that in my quest to be special in my own right, I was losing Joseph, that I had already lost him.

Our rooms felt empty—more than empty, deserted—and the house pressed against me as if to say that I didn’t belong here. I went into the
sala
and lay down on the floor, staring up at the blackness that was the gilded-sunset ceiling, trying to remember how it had been to lie here with my brother, to watch the morning dance, but the memory would not come. I felt his absence as a hole in the world, something too big to feel, unfathomable. I closed my eyes, imagining an old, old story: a princess alone in a room, a prince returning from a battle, the demon-queen slain and her blood upon his sword, triumph in his eyes.
Do you see what I’ve done? I’ve killed her, my love. I’ve killed her for you, for the both of us—