Glorious Ones (2 page)

Then, at the very end of the play, something occurred which actually convinced me that the prioress had been right all along. I began to shake with terror, for I knew that I had lost my heart to a demon.

The other actors had left the stage; the nuns and orphans were cheering and applauding. All alone, you strode to the front of the platform, and bowed to us.

“I thank you for your kindness,” you said, “and for your help in lightening my burden of sin. But, most of all, I would like to thank the Blessed Mother Maria Rosaria for having permitted me to adopt one of her precious charges into my troupe.”

“So he has talked the prioress into letting him take one of us!” I thought. “Then the power of Satan is a million times greater than anything I’d suspected!”

Yet, all of a sudden, I did not care if my savior was a demon; and, from then on, it was the old fairy tale come true for me.

Do you know the story of the Princess in Rags, Flaminio? Her enemies, the wicked courtiers, imprison her in a coalbin when the handsome prince arrives to choose a wife. The girls of the palace are paraded before him, but he rejects them, one by one, until—drawn by some mysterious and irresistible force—he moves through the castle and finds his destined mate.

“I want that one,” you said, pointing towards the corner in which the nuns were holding me back.

And did I glide from my dungeon with the grace and presence of a natural-born queen? Did I greet you with the sweet half-smile of a goddess receiving her due? No, Captain, you know I did not. My mouth fell open; I felt dizzy, nauseated, sick; I tripped and stumbled my way across the courtyard, until, at last, I stood on stage, between you and the prioress. I was trembling, straining to understand: why in the world had you chosen me?!

Mother Maria Rosaria was asking you the same question, as she held me by the shoulder with such distaste that her great meaty hand felt like dust on my sleeve.

Of course, she could hardly demand to know why you had chosen the ugliest girl in the convent; no one in the convent was supposed to notice things like ugliness. Instead, she quietly suggested that perhaps you might be better pleased by one of the more devout young women. And she mentioned a beautiful girl whom I hated for her clear blue eyes and thick black hair.

“On the contrary, Mother Superior,” you replied, running your eyes over my body like the coarse brushes with which the nuns made us scrub. “This one is perfect. How old is she?”

“About fourteen,” answered the prioress.

“Just as I thought,” you cried. “And yet, who would ever think to call this specimen a woman? Look at her flat chest, her short, stubby body, her rubbery skin! Look at that strawlike hair, those wandering, half-crossed eyes, that moustache on her upper lip! Perhaps, if we are lucky, she will grow a beard like mine.

“Yes, this beauty suits my needs perfectly. Even without a mask, she will have my audience howling with laughter. And certainly, I could parade her naked across the stage, and the blessed pope himself would never accuse me of sins against chastity!”

Sweet Jesus, Flaminio! What devil prompted you to say those things? Did you think I had no heart, no mind? Did you believe that a body like mine could not have a soul?

I think you knew the truth, Captain, you with your famous eye for character. But why, why did you insult me that way?

For five years, I asked myself that question, day after day after day. I whispered it into the mirror when I put on my makeup; I pestered the gypsies we met on the road. Sometimes, when I shrieked and somersaulted on stage, it was all an effort to drive the sound of it from my ears. For five years, that question echoed in my mind so loudly that I never heard the cheering, the applause. And yet, when I finally found the courage to speak it aloud, I whispered as softly as if I were at confessional, in church.

Remember? It was the first thing I asked you on that morning I awoke to find you beside me. How strange! That question seemed so important that it kept me from saying how much you had pleased me; it kept me from thanking you for having reconciled me with my own flesh. Tell me, Flaminio—if I had said those things, would that have persuaded you to spend a little longer in my bed?

But this is what I said: “Flaminio Scala,” I asked, “why did you say those terrible things about me, that day you saved me from the convent?”

For a moment, you looked startled, confused. Then you sighed, and kissed me tenderly on the forehead.

“Ah, my darling Armanda,” you said. “If only you had asked me earlier. How easily I could have explained this matter, which has obviously caused you great pain and confusion. For as always, the truth is far prettier than these loathsome scenarios we enact.

“Rest easy, my dear. I only invented those lies to expose the hypocrisy of that vain and silly nun. I assure you, Armanda, my decision had nothing to do with your physical appearance. No, the real reason I chose you for my troupe was this.

“Even in that crowd of ragged, pitiful orphans, your beautiful spirit shone through to me with an almost blinding light. It was a vision of sorts, Armanda, a vision which I have never forgotten. Over the years, it has given me hope, inspiration, and the courage to keep myself chaste. But it has also intimidated me, and kept me from declaring my perfect love.

“Finally, last night, I could stand it no longer. Searching for that pure light, I forced myself on you with bestial rudeness. And now, I am wondering: how can I
ever
make you forgive me?”

“There is no need to apologize,” I answered coldly. “You were not the first one. There is a shortage of women in this troupe.”

By then, you see, all my pride was back. For I had not wanted you to say any of those things, Flaminio, I had no desire to hear your praises of my soul. I had wanted you to tell me that my face and body were ethereally lovely, painfully beautiful! But how could I have expected you to lie?

And so I settled for something less, and made it suffice: I settled for your vision of my beautiful soul.

Are you wondering why I believed you, when I had heard so many of your lies? I swear to you, Captain: it was not the heat of love which convinced me, but the cold argument of logic. For once, I had no cause for doubt: what else but the folly of passion could have brought you to the bed of a woman like me? And it was true that you had kept yourself chaste. If you had ever paid the slightest notice to the crazy women who pressed their bodies against you after the performances, Armanda Ragusa would have been the first to see. Had you loved another actress in our troupe, I would have killed her with my taunts, my vicious tongue, my only weapons: you know me, Flaminio.

But, with no reason to doubt, I believed in your vision of my beautiful soul. It gave me back my pride, and helped me restrain myself from asking you why, after that one night, you never came to my bed again. Instead of tormenting you with my lovesickness, I took to staring at you, to watching your every move on stage, just as I had done that morning at the convent. And sometimes, sometimes Flaminio, I fancied that I could see your vision of my beautiful spirit, burning deep behind your eyes.

Now listen to me, listen to the way I have told this tale: One summer night, a man named Flaminio Scala slept in the arms of the homeliest woman in Europe. Surely, the Captain would never have bothered to visit my dreams if this were the greatest glory of his life; surely, there were finer moments in his career. Of course there were! Flaminio Scala, the leader of The Glorious Ones, was a man of history! And it is for the sake of that history that I will stop this foolish woman’s dreaming, and begin again.

But how, exactly, to begin? Shall I repeat the Captain’s own account of his early years?

“My friends,” he told us one night, after a week of shoddy performances, “I started in life as a master criminal, a confidence man, a swindler. One day, languishing in prison, I searched my brain for some way of putting my natural dishonesty to some honest use, and walked out of jail an actor.”

Yet why should Armanda Ragusa help spread these lies? Flaminio Scala was never a bandit—he was merely seeking some clever new way of insulting his troupe. I laughed, to show him that I understood the joke; in fact, I knew the joke was more absurd than even he would have admitted.

Flaminio Scala could never have fooled me. I had not forgotten the fierce eyes of the young priests who sometimes came to help with convent business; and as soon as I saw those eyes in the Captain’s face, I knew that it had begun for him in the seminary.

Still, I must confess some difficulty in seeing him there—Flaminio, with his boasts and his swagger. But perhaps that was the way with all the students who were troubled by what the theologians referred to as “doubts.”

Doubts! Those priests could never speak the language. Flaminio and his friends had no doubts—they were fighting for their lives!

Late at night, huddled in the damp cold cells, they were struggling to save that part of themselves which the priests wished so badly to destroy—that part of themselves which still loved the beauties of the earth. In the course of that battle, the acting began—the jokes, the songs, the dances, the innocent showing-off. Soon, it had become a craft for them, and, hour after hour, they labored to perfect the cruelty and precision with which they imitated their professors. At the start, they spoke in whispers, for fear of offending the others. Then, one night, they could no longer resist the temptation to speak out loud.

The stage is set to resemble a school chapel. Alone in the confessional, a young priest shivers in the December chill, awaiting the midnight bells which will permit him to return to his cell.

Flaminio Scala enters stage left, swaggering in a manner designed to show the audience that he is up to something; the encouragements of his friends are protecting him like a suit of armor. He kneels gracefully, presses his lips against the smooth wood of the confessional, and begins to speak:

“Father,” he whispers, then stops, struggling to contain his laughter. “Father,” he continues, in a steadier tone, “I am begging your forgiveness, though I myself am not quite sure if I have sinned.”

“Most likely you have,” replies the priest, recognizing the voice of his most rebellious student.

“No,” Flaminio murmurs intensely. “It is not what you think. It is something much more serious, more perilous. Listen: over the past few months, I have been wrestling with the conviction that I myself am the Lord Jesus Christ Almighty, returned to usher in the Judgment.”

“You are talking nonsense,” the priest answers nervously.

“And so it was that you doubted me the first time!” Flaminio Scala cries, in a voice so majestic, commanding, and ominous that the altar, painted on the backdrop, begins to pitch and sway.

The young confessor is trembling now. Has he heard the voice of God? “Tell me more,” he whispers, clutching the inside of the confessional door.

Flaminio Scala tells him more. In a calm, authoritative tone, he speaks to him of life terrestrial and life divine. He laments his fifteen hundred years of exile, recalls all the agony of his passion. As he describes the unimaginable sweetness of his seat at God’s right hand, his words seem to swell and resound like the notes of an organ.

Just before the curtain comes down on this scene, a few members of the audience notice that the priest has begun to weep.

In a brief epilogue, set on the next morning, Flaminio and three accomplices are expelled for their sinful and blasphemous defiance of the First Commandment.

Armanda Ragusa, I ask myself, what sort of lover are you, to take such delight in the image of your beloved and his friends scrambling for pennies, fishing breadcrumbs from the canals of Venice? What sort of woman are you, to have such contempt for those four spoiled children, so unwilling to dirty their hands with honest labor? And yet, I am not so unlike them that I cannot understand: they had just escaped from prison! They wanted to be free!

And so Flaminio and his companions came to devise the perfect plan. They would support themselves with the same spoiled foolishness which had so amused them in the seminary—they would be actors! Unburdened by rehearsals, repetition, scripts, their wit would be the freshest thing in Venice! They needed no leaders, no direction, no prearranged dialogue—they would improvise! The plazas of the city would be their stage, their audience—the people of the street! How could they possibly fail!

What sort of woman am I, to imagine the enthusiasm in their voices, and feel such bitterness?

Yet perhaps my sin is only the simple, understandable envy of easy success. For, as it happened, Flaminio and his friends proved absolutely right. In no time, they were drawing huge crowds, swarms of urchins, messenger boys on errands, cooks on their way to market, merchants’ sons walking home from school. Young men told their mistresses, children brought their friends; distant acquaintances stopped each other on the street to describe Flaminio’s antics. The people of Venice were desperate for entertainment, and the actors’ caps grew heavy with coins.

Sometimes, I wonder why Flaminio never spoke of those days with fondness and nostalgia. Surely, it was the only time in his career when he was not alone on top, alone with the worries of a leader. Surely, he was happier then, when there was no Andreini to plague him with vicious tricks.

But all he ever told us was the story of his friends’ destruction, that gruesome tale which he repeated again and again, like a litany, a sermon against the sins of recklessness and disloyalty.

“One March evening,” the Captain used to say, “myself and three companions were invited to perform before the Doge of Venice. In retrospect, I see that it was the end of the social season, and the Duke had invited a few stray guests whom he deemed unworthy of anything more than some local amateur talent. But then, I was not yet a man of deep wisdom and wide experience, fully conversant with the subtle machinations of the aristocratic mind; then, I was merely a poor, ambitious boy, who mistook the doors of that gilded hall for the very portals of Paradise.

“With characteristic good sense, I suggested that I play the Crafty Venetian, and that my friends enact the Three Roman Thieves. The courtiers were cool at first, but, gradually, as it became apparent that I would consistently trick and frustrate that absurd trio of scoundrels, the Duke began to bellow with laughter and beat his fat fists on the table.