The Remedy (8 page)
The difference between those chinless toothpicks and myself is that I could be there if I wanted. I know the manager of this place and it would be the work of a few minutes to have him owe me a tangible favor.
The story onstage plays itself out to its inevitable conclusion. The heroine averts her sweet eyes as the hero delivers the villain,
swaddled in chains, to her feet. She even throws herself on her knees to beg mercy for the man who had desired to ruin her.
It must be the pain of Tom’s dying that has wedded my eyes to this woman, and it must be lust for life, provoked by his stark lack of it, that gives me such a sheer molten need to have her.
After all, the preliminaries have already been played out on the stage. It but rests with him to conclude the act, to perform the act of generation itself upon the woman. It is natural; it is fitting. He is panting ripe to have her. He’ll briefly rub off the sadness upon this actress, this cunning little piece of Venice, this Mimosina Dolcezza.
It’s a fine idea, with some handsome curlicues upon it.
There’s the clatter of hands rising. The opera is over. Valentine simmers in his chair while his neighbors jump to their feet, clapping their hands at her like twinned castanets. They call the actress back, again and again. She feigns reluctance and the stage manager is forced to march her back onstage and to hold her in front of him, where she droops with downcast eyes, as if she is too fragile to withstand the power of their rampant adoration. Yet, from those lowered lids, she shoots off grateful glances like sparks in a foundry. Men caught in their direct trajectory jerk with pleasure, ducking their heads and shrugging bashfully.
Valentine gazes up at her now, and thinks rapidly:
How many men before me? Will she cry out someone’s name? I wonder if she speaks God’s own English. Does it matter? Tom would have loved those green eyes.
Take Barks of Tamarisk 4 ounces; of Capers and Ash-tree, Woods of Guaiacum, Sassaphras, each 1 ounce; Herbs of Agrimony 4 handfuls; Wormwood, Dodder, each 2 handfuls; cut and boil these in 6 gallons of new Ale to 4 gallons, into which hang Filings of Needles half a pound; Crude Antimony 4 ounces
.
When it hath Fermented enough, and is become clear, give half a pint twice a day.
So the thing is, how to get her.
Stepping out under the star-stuttered sky, Valentine is pummelled by a bitter wind. He feels the sudden tiredness of a man who has fought a battle and changed the landscape. It is true. In the scenery of his heart, his rage and pain have smelted down into something else entirely.
Mimosina Dolcezza, the pride of Venice, the miraculous beauty who has enchanted courts and Royal Families from Russia to Naples
—so declares the playbill he still holds in his hand as he strolls west of Drury Lane, his carriage following at a discreet distance. He halts under a lamp to smooth it out and look at her likeness etched on the paper.
The delicacy of her has already informed Valentine that it would not do to send a purse and scrawled card to her dressing room, the coachman curling his whip like a dog’s tail in his hand and averting his eyes while she read and felt for the purse’s bulge.
He has no scant feeling that this lady is of the type that requires to be forcibly adored all the way from her high horse to her last, grateful whimper.
And this meets nicely with my own feeling that a quick once is not going to give more than brief respite from all the hurting.
No, he wants a sought-after coupling, one that costs him something and so is worth something. He craves a spending that is waited for, hoped for, not even inevitable. The more intricate the plot of getting her, the more he can soak his mind in it, the more it will crowd out those insupportable images of Tom.
He had no small eye for those Italian ladies, Tom, unpetticoating them by the dozen, with a great tongue on him for their lingo. Sure, no woman was safe from the fellow, not on the Thames or the Grand Canal, and all and every one of his ladies kept in Turkish ignorance of her rivals.
Valentine Greatrakes takes himself for a promenade around the Seven Dials, for a restful eyeful of tarts. Some men like to go to the sea when they want to think profoundly. Or to the countryside. Or the inside of a tavern. But Valentine holidays his worries best on a flutter of Covent Garden nuns.
Of course the sight of all those willing women and the fact of their availability does not bypass the trout, the rig, the handsome pissworm of Valentine Greatrakes but communicates directly with it. So often the result of a quiet contemplation is indeed a quick, refreshing clicket, though it is rarely the main object of his going out on such perambulations.
He strides along Monmouth Street and pauses at the Seven Dials, the delta of the local streets, and the richest pickings of whores in all London, where there are situated any number of convenient places to buy love ready-made and kept warm at all times. At the sight of the girls strewn around the seven corners, in his trews the friend of Valentine Greatrakes and his friend’s two friends yollop about.
“You hungry, boy?” he asks out loud, looking at what’s on offer. “You on for your greens?”
A
twitching yespleasenow
fetches a smile to his lips and he resolves to make a speedy selection. This new enterprise, the winning of Mimosina Dolcezza, is not something to work on from a point of sensual famine. Better to contemplate that special copulation from the relaxed state that comes with an intermediate satisfaction. He considers one whore after another, a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, some proud in the theater-glow of the lanterns that adorn every tenth frontage, others eschewing the revelations of the light: Many
here are wrinkled and some scarred, and some indeed no kind of lady, but male-misses, for every taste can be accommodated here at the Seven Dials.
Pausing in front of each genuine female, Valentine silently asks his friend, “This one? Her? You want to go a-goosing in Hairyfordshire?”
He wanders about, letting his imagination sample what the various whores suggest verbally and with gestures. They sink before him, as if he winnows through a cornfield of women, each raising her skirts to one side in the time-honored gesture to confirm her availability. Some speak to him in winning, confidential tones. Trembling quirks of music beckon from lady accordionists with subsidiary talents. Others writhe briefly like rashers on the griddle as he passes, or mince a few dance steps of the highest quality.
He does his devoirs to each proffering lady: “Lovely,” he smiles encouragingly. But none tempts him sufficiently. He strays to the less populated fringes of the street, the territory of the girls less in demand, who loiter almost apologetically, like paltry coins left contemptuously on a counter, not even worth the counting.
At last he spies a fake flower-seller, who, with the travesties of a profession, mimics not to be a harlot. She displays a poor stock of flowers, and she is outstandingly incompetent with her wares: They slide through her hands all the time, the blooms all wearied from being twice handled. A knot of men has collected around her and they cannot bring themselves to move on because it is somehow delicate and indelicate, this mauling of the flowers, and the tiny wan girl wilting herself.
“Now that’s the one,” he says, looking at her taut little face.
Hey-up lass
, he winks at her, and she drops the entire drooping stock of flowers on her feet. He pulls a silver coin out of his pocket and waves it in the air. The other men shrug their shoulders and melt away. She walks, dreamlike, toward the guinea. He is amused, and moves the coin to the left and then the right. Her whole face follows each maneuver.
She’s hungry
, he realizes, and is pleased to think that she’ll dine well later.
Valentine summons the carriage that crawls behind him and draws her into it with his silver coin.
A few circuits of St. Giles and still it is not done. Valentine Greatrakes fumbles but fails. The girl is encouraging and blames herself. This predicament is unknown to him. She gently suggests that a glass of warm wine will set him up. He shakes his head, rebuttons, stares straight ahead. Passing another stall, he leans out and buys the girl a new bunch of flowers to maul and deposits her back at the Seven Dials. He assures her discretion with the additional tribute of a shilling.
His head is far from clear. This is not at all what he intended.
Worse, his eunuched encounter with the flower girl gives him cause for worry about the Venetian woman. He does not like to envision her similarly available for such use.
I don’t want to be throwing apples into an orchard.
He shrugs off the thought and orders the carriage back to the theater, where he is unsurprised to find the manager still at his desk, working by a mean rushlight. It is a desk that hosts two sets of books: one that records the ingoings and outgoings of the theatrical side of the business, and another that keeps record of the items “free-traded” into London in the costume coffers of the troupes he imports from Italy, often in alliance with his esteemed colleague Valentine Greatrakes of Stoney Street, Bankside.
“Greatrakes, you great scoundrel, how goes it?
Tutto bene?”
Massimo Tosi, bulky and fragrant as a hay-bale, lumbers from his desk. Seamed into his cushioned face is a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. It’s a finely judged thing, to call Valentine Greatrakes a scoundrel. And it seems Massimo has miscalculated tonight. His visitor regards him coolly, greeting him: “And what can you do for me? Isn’t that right?”
“Exactly, exactly,” simpers Massimo. “All was well with the shipment? You need a box for some of your foreign colleagues? Champagne buffet? Some girls for after?”
“Maybe you’d do me the courtesy of thinking sweeter, Massimo.”
The manager’s face grows troubled. “The leading lady’s not… available this time, Valentine.”
“Soon you’ll be telling me she’s a nun! An actress? An Italian actress?”
Valentine makes the appropriate voluptuous gestures, pouring a torrent of enthusiasm into the motions. Even his large hands are almost musically attuned.
It is a pleasure to watch him
, thinks Massimo.
What a shame the business is impossible.
Aloud, he responds: “She is not like the others. She’s—she’s a genuine oddity. I don’t know what it is with her. Never came here before, and she was substituted at the last minute. The original was taken with child or some such thing. She is competent, as you saw but there’s something not quite right about her, anyway. Don’t waste your time on her. You are not the first to come to me with an interest in her.”
Valentine feels a lurch in his stomach at the unforeseen presumptuous bastards who have attempted to get there first. His mind’s eye drenched rosily with images of revenge, there’s a buzzing in his ears.
But the manager is explaining that no man has obtained what he sought from Mimosina Dolcezza, that the actress does indeed live, most unusually, a blameless existence when she’s not on the stage. She seeks no dalliances, not for pleasure, nor for gold: that purses are regularly sent back to their owners and there are no late suppers in her rooms. Those rooms are not in the usual garish quarters in St. Giles but in Soho Square, a salubrious area more favored by foreign ambassadors than actresses. She does not let her creditors’ notes decay. To add to this strangeness, she is always quiet and modest in her bearing; she makes no outrageous demands, not even upon the patience of the dressing women. She seems afraid of everyone greater or lesser than herself: In fact, in all ways she appears to resemble the trembling and virtuous maiden she plays, though—Massimo Tosi lowers his voice—she is of course a trifle older than the part she performs. She shuns the other actors as if they offend her delicate sensibilities. After each performance she quickly resumes her own simple clothes and returns—in an irreproachable sedan chair—to her rooms.
She has been in London but a few days and already she is a cult. Men are asking for her likeness to be painted on snuffboxes. Some are willing to pay monstrous sums to be seated where her glance
falls meltingly at certain stages of the play. There are grand polemics about her special allure; some say it is her skill in performance, for she excels in comical attitudes but is also well capable of pathos. Others say it is her offstage virtue that heats their blood and has them waiting like dogs under the windows of her apartments, which she is not seen to leave except on guiltless errands. It is, all in all, an extraordinary departure from normal behavior and the entire company is mystified by it.
Massimo Tosi has shaken all possible insinuations out of his sack. Ducking his head, and turning saintly eyes to Valentine, the theater manager mourns the hopelessness of the situation, as a brother. After all, if an actress is cooperative with well-to-do admirers, Massimo too stands to gain, as his dear friend must see.
Valentine remains silent when this performance is over. He seems to be waiting for more satisfactory news. The features of the manager tighten in rictus. Massimo has omitted mention of one thing: the troubling existence of the wordless Venetian man who has accompanied the actress to London, who haunts the theater at all times, and, while he is never seen to come into actual contact with her, is never far from her side and who is rumored to have taken rooms in a street that overlooks her own.
Watching Valentine’s face, Massimo is already scribbling the address on a piece of paper and holding it out to him.
Valentine lets the hand stay suspended in the air. In five seconds the pleasant gesture of offer has become one of abject imprecation. They both look at Massimo’s outstretched hand. The manager’s face crumples. “Graving your condescension and saving your grace, Valentine, there is nothing else I can do.”
