The Mascherari: A Novel of Venice by Laura Rahme

Author:Laura Rahme [Rahme, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2014-08-10T23:00:00+00:00

Yours in faith,

Catarina Contarini

Giacomo’s Diary

Journal of Antonio da Parma

27 December 1422

Today, I read and reread Catarina’s remarkable confession and having done so, I then burned the candlelight over Giacomo’s diary.

The first thing I endeavored was to retrieve the ink portrait. In it, Magdalena appeared much younger than in the painting hanging in Francesco’s atelier.

I had only met Magdalena in dreams yet I experienced a tightness in my chest as I laid eyes on her.

It is at once strange and pleasurable, this sadness one feels, when in the face of beauty. Could it arise from a pining for something we have once known and long to regain? Or perhaps the realization of our own submission to a being that consumes us, even as it evades us and will never be within reach.

Those lips, that delicate nose, those languorous eyes beneath strong brows. Her hair seemed to rest on naked shoulders, as though Giacomo had taken liberties with his model. With the pout of her moody lips, she appeared to speak out to the artist, reaching out for him with her eyes, always with her eyes—calling him to bare his soul.

Giacomo had possessed a secret talent. He had admirably captured the light behind her. It descended on her hair like a sensual caress. I deduced that at the time of drawing, Giacomo must have regarded her as a muse, an idol to be worshipped. It was evident that he had drawn her while in Verona, during the days of their courtship. The details he had carefully reproduced of the pendant round her neck hinted to the length of time he must have spent with her.

I reached for the pendant which I had taken from Rolandino’s corpse and had since wound round my neck by way of a leather cord. I compared it to the pendant in the portrait. Every aspect of that silver charm had been reproduced with careful attention.

Branching out from each of the rue’s six stems, I could discern the proud crest of a cock, a dagger, the curve of the crescent moon, the coil of serpent, there, a key and finally, hanging from the last stem, a tiny flower that looked to be vervain. Giacomo had traced them all.

Long into the night, when Carnivale revelers had dispersed and I could no longer hear the murmurs in the campo, I abandoned myself to the tarnished pages of Giacomo’s journal. I lay on my back, stretched upon my bed, reading every line, forgetting Catarina’s tale of jealousy and discontent.

I dived selfishly into Giacomo’s secrets. I was now, in a fantastical sense, his rival. I wanted to discover all he had known and felt about Magdalena Di Napoli when she had been the young woman in Verona. Who was this woman? From whence had she come? What perfume had she worn when he had embraced her? What of her dreams?

But there was nothing in these pages to satisfy my curiosity. Giacomo was meticulous, ordered, obsessed with figures and a plain bore. He had none of that insight which I had seen in Lorenzo, none of that passion even toward his own wife.

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