The Girl With the Painted Face (7 page)

‘Won’t be a moment,’ Lidia says, peering out from inside the largest wagon.

Towards the back edge of the staging three holes have been cut in the boards, one at each corner and one in the middle. Each of the poles has a deep groove a few inches from its top and bottom ends. Laying them down on the ground in parallel, Beppe takes one of the lengths of rope and knots it around each of these grooves. Then, with Vico’s help, he lifts, positions and drops each of the three poles into the holes so that, feet on the ground, they project upwards from the staging some seven feet, like oversized bed-posts, with the rope stretched tautly between them. Beppe takes another length of rope and fastens it around the bottom end of each pole.

Lidia and Cosima appear, carrying between them a big pile of dark cloth. Grunting slightly, they throw their burden down onto the ground, where it lands with a dusty-sounding ‘flump’. Right around the front edge of the staging, at hand-span intervals, is a row of small iron hooks. Lidia and Cosima now begin lifting the cloth up onto the hooks so that it drapes down from the stage to the floor, effectively creating a large hidden storage area below where the actors will perform. As they do this, Beppe, Vico and Angelo are up on the stage, unrolling two huge lengths of canvas, on which are painted two halves of a scene. These they flap up and over the rope, weighting each down on either side with stones placed in little pockets at ground level, so that they hang – fairly evenly – right across the back of the stage, displaying a street scene: recognizably Bologna. A different picture (for a different show) faces out backwards.

Angelo now puts both hands in the small of his back and stretches. ‘I’m going back to the wagons. I need to start getting dressed,’ he says, to no one in particular. Without waiting for a response, he sits on the edge of the stage, then jumps down, landing neatly like a cat.

Nobody comments on his departure, though Vico raises an eyebrow and shakes his head, pushing his lips out and shrugging.

Agostino, standing back on the ground some few yards from the stage, shades his eyes with his hand and stares critically at the effect of the newly placed scenery. After a few seconds’ careful scrutiny, he nods and, muttering to himself, begins to walk back to the wagons.

He takes no notice of Beppe, Vico and Lidia, who are now hurrying from wagon to stage and back, putting into the storage space behind the curtains an odd assortment of items: two buckets, a long string of onions, three chairs, a pile of books, a cloak, a stuffed dog with a string around its neck and Beppe’s ladder, among many other things. Agostino clambers into the smallest of the wagons, to reappear a moment later with a slim leather-bound book in one hand, and a wooden board in a gilt frame tucked under the other arm.

He climbs to the hidden space behind the backdrop and props the board where it will be seen as the actors stand waiting for their entrances. Opening the book, he takes from it a handful of small squares of paper. Perusing these scraps, he places each carefully onto the board in a particular order, pinning each one with a tack. Once all twenty or so scraps are in place, Agostino stares at the board for several minutes. ‘Good,’ he mutters. ‘That will work very well indeed.’

‘All sorted, Ago?’ Vico says cheerfully as he crouches, knees high like a frog, to push a large plaster cake into the under-stage space.

‘Absolutely, absolutely.’ Agostino glances once more at his board, then climbs back down the little ladder from the stage to the ground. ‘Is everything where it should be?’

Lidia crawls out from under the stage, her skirts bundled in her arms. Getting awkwardly to her feet, she puts her arms around Agostino’s neck and kisses his cheek. ‘Stop fussing. Everything is
exactly
where it ought to be,
caro
– where you’ve
told
us it must be – where we
need
it to be.’

Beppe has balanced a walking stick on its tip on his index finger; his eyes are fixed upon its wobbling end. ‘Everything will be wonderful, as always,’ he says. ‘And, as always, it’ll be thanks to you.’

Agostino draws in a long, long, shuddering breath, closing his eyes and pushing his fingers up into his hair. Beppe flips the walking stick up vertically into the air and catches it one-handed as it falls back down.

Pointing at his actors with an accusatory finger, but smiling as he does so, Agostino says, ‘Go on, get yourselves dressed then! We start when the church clock chimes two.’

There seems to be a new purpose to the jostling of the crowd, Sofia thinks. Having spent the morning wandering through the great piazza, gazing at the riotous and colourful stalls, listening to the vendors and purchasers arguing and haggling, she has been pushing to the back of her mind, over and over again, the fears that have lurked like hooded intruders in the shadows of her consciousness since her flight from Modena. She has just spent two of Alberto’s precious coins on a slice of cooked pork, an apricot and a small flagon of ale, and has been sitting for several minutes on a stone ledge at the bottom of one of the piazza’s long colonnades to eat her purchases. She is cold again, and her finger aches; she wants to unwrap Signor Zanetti’s binding and see how it is healing, but has so far resisted temptation, afraid of not being able to refasten it once she has inspected the damage. Pulling the binding outwards at the top end and peering in at her fingertips, all she has been able to establish is that the finger is darkly bruised, and still considerably swollen. The tuft of wool smells quite strongly now – Sofia sniffs at it and pulls a face.

She watches the bustle of people moving through the piazza, everyone now seemingly heading out towards the north-eastern corner. Men and women are talking and laughing together, sounding excited, happy. Getting to her feet and brushing crumbs from her skirt, she begins to walk with them, listening to the jumble of conversations around her.

‘I saw them last summer – yes, right at the end of the summer, I think it was. Early September. I know it wasn’t as warm as it might have been.’

‘A little like today, then. What did you think?’

‘Marvellous.
Cara
, you were with me, were you not?’

‘I most certainly was. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

‘To be quite honest, I’d say they’re as good as the Gelosi…’

‘You’ve seen the Gelosi? Lord, you are lucky indeed! When?’

‘Oh, God knows… two, three years ago? They were superb.’

Sofia walks in step some two or three paces behind these conversationalists: four fashionably dressed women, animated and eager, each clearly relishing the prospect of whatever it is they are preparing to do.

Who or what, she wonders, are the Gelosi?

One of the women laughs then at a remark Sofia has missed. ‘Oh yes, I’m sure
she
was delighted. The Coraggiosi’s
inamorato
has to be
quite
the most beautiful man I think I’ve ever
seen
!’

‘He’s
adorable
, isn’t he? I can’t wait to see him again today.’

Much taken with the idea of seeing this paragon for herself, Sofia quickens her pace.

The Piazza di Porta Ravegnana is already teeming with people when she arrives there. She stares around her. Dominating the square are the Two Towers: close together, impossibly tall and narrow and decidedly mismatched. One of them leans drunkenly out to one side and they loom over the burgeoning crowd like a pair of giant, inebriated stilt-walkers.

And, out in front of the towers, is a stage. The size of a large room, with a busy street scene painted on a cloth at the back, it stands at chest-height above the cobbles, and curtains hang down from it right to the ground; several dozen people have already grouped themselves in front of it, and, even as Sofia watches, another twenty or so join them. Up on the stage itself, three chairs have been grouped to one side as though a small house party has recently broken up and the guests have just departed, and a broom stands propped against a painted archway.

More and more people are arriving now, and the piazza is becoming almost uncomfortably crowded. Sofia edges her way through towards the front, determined now to find herself a place where she will be able to see the action of the play when it begins. Finding a spot some ten feet from the front edge of the stage, she gazes about her, happily infected by the general air of enthusiastic anticipation.

‘Hey! Signorina! Signorina Genotti!’

Shocked at hearing her own name, Sofia spins around. The voice came from the crowd to her left. She stares towards where she thought she heard it and it comes again. ‘Over here! Signorina!’

6

Turning further around, she sees him. In his tall black hat, smiling broadly, Niccolò Zanetti, the little apothecary, edges his way through the crowd towards her, saying, ‘Oh, my dear, how pleased I am to see you.’

Sofia tries to speak, but finds she cannot – her words just stretch out into a smile.

‘You disappeared so quickly back in Modena, I didn’t have an opportunity either to bid you a proper farewell, or to offer you my… well, perhaps “hospitality” is too grand a word for it, but I
had
intended to ask you if you would care to ride out of town with me in my little cart, and there was to be a blanket for you to wrap yourself in for the night. I had had an idea, you see, and…’

Sofia puts her hand in front of her mouth.

Niccolò Zanetti says, ‘You ran off so fast. But what have you been doing since that day?’ He hesitates. ‘Forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, my dear, but I think it’s safe to say that, looking at you now, these past few days cannot have been easy…’

Sofia feels herself reddening. She stares fixedly at the ground, seeing, as though through Signor Zanetti’s eyes, her filthy dress and ruined shoes, and her tangled, dirty hair.

Niccolò Zanetti takes her hand and lifts it, touching the stained binding around her fingers. ‘Listen, child, I —’

He breaks off. Sofia looks up. The crowd’s loud murmuring dies to a hum, and then to silence.

Zanetti whispers, ‘We’ll talk later. They’re about to begin.’

Sofia stares up at the stage.

Two women slip out from behind the painted backdrop, followed by a stocky man in a baggy white suit and hat. The man’s face is painted white; his head bobs back and forth like a chicken’s as he walks and his elbows splay out sideways. One of the two women is strikingly beautiful; she is, Sofia sees now, dressed in a richly embroidered red gown, her hair is piled high in a mass of complicated curls and braids, and jewels glitter at her throat and on her fingers. The other woman – smaller, plumper, quicker in her movements – is dressed more simply. A servant, perhaps.

Although not as starkly white as the chicken-walk man, both the women’s faces are clearly much paler than nature intended – paler certainly than their hands – with enormous eyes and reddened lips.

The beautiful woman pulls her companion aside and, jerking her head back towards the man, she hiss-whispers, ‘
He’ll be asleep soon
.’

‘
Let’s hope so!
’ the little servant girl says, peering over her shoulder. ‘
With the amount of potion I’ve just given him, I’m amazed the fat fool’s still on his feet
.’

Even as she speaks, though, the man begins to sway and stagger, yawning widely and stretching his arms out sideways. A laugh slithers through the crowd.

‘
As soon as he drops, go and find Oratio! Be as quick as you can!
’

‘
Oh, I will – I’ll run like the wind, signora!
’

Sofia stares up at the stage, entranced.

Behind the backcloth, a few moments later, Beppe is listening to the lines being spoken on the stage, where Vico and Angelo are deep in conversation: just a minute or two until his entrance. Staring up at the cloud-heavy sky, he breathes slowly and deliberately. He stretches and flexes his fingers, his arms, rolls his shoulders, crouches and stands again several times, bends each leg up in turn and hugs it against his belly. Bouncing gently on the balls of his feet, he touches the fastenings of his mask and adjusts the position of his black hat, pushing it to sit a little further back on his head.

He checks the gilt-framed board, running his finger down the various scraps of paper – the
canovaccii
– on which are written the instructions for every scene in the play. Finding the one he needs, he reads it, although he already knows by heart what it contains, then he taps it with a finger as though dismissing its services.

Agostino, in his baggy white suit, climbs up to stand behind Beppe; he smiles, and Beppe gives him a swift grin in return. Reaching out for his ladder, Beppe picks it up and tucks it under his arm. As Vico and Angelo come back out, Beppe pauses for a second, then, crouching slightly, edges the end of the ladder out through the gap in the cloth and steps onto the stage, each foot raised high at each step, eyes wide behind the mask, peering around him fearfully.

The crowd murmurs.