IN ALL HIS THIRTY YEARS OF PAINTING, SIMONE HAS never worked this way before; has never had to squint and strain and sneak to snatch furtive glimpses of the face or figure he’s painting. Often, in fact, he’s had the opposite problem: a model whose ripe lips or plump breasts were offered not just to his artistic eyes but to his strong hands; a woman—or occasionally a man—whom Simone had to push away, but gently, so as not to spoil the sitting and hinder the painting.
At first, he hated watching the young woman, hated following in Petrarch’s pathetic shoes—lurking in doorways near her house on Sundays; trailing her to Mass, or lying in wait inside the church to snatch a glance at her forehead or eyes; lurking across the aisle or behind a column as he studied her profile; dashing to his studio after the benediction to sketch and paint before the details of her face fade from his memory for a week. Gradually, though, Simone has been forced to admit that he likes the challenge—painting someone he can scarcely see—and he looks forward to studying her each week.
One Sunday as she kneels, he sees her head slump and her shoulders slacken; then, with a jerk, she awakens, wide eyed, and suddenly he hears her laugh—in church!—when she realizes what she has done. The matron beside her gives her a sharp, reproving look, and she forces her face back into its mask of composed piety. But Martini has now seen something else behind the church-face mask, and his curiosity is aroused.
That night, as he lies beneath the covers before going to sleep, he plays a painter’s game with himself, imagining how he might paint her face in various scenes, with various expressions and emotions: worry, gratitude, tranquility, terror, irritation, delight, lust. And then, when Giovanna rolls her body against his in the dark, and her fingers seek him out, stroke him to hardness, and guide his flesh into hers, it is Laura’s face, and Laura’s breasts, and Laura’s moans that he imagines and that make him gasp and shudder with a fiery passion that Giovanna’s simple honest love has never managed to ignite.
THE NEXT SUNDAY, SHE IS NOT THERE. HE CHECKS HER usual stations—the side chapels where she always pauses to light candles—scanning the congregation with confusion and growing dismay. Somehow, because she has always been here, he has taken it for granted that she always would be here.
His surprise gives way to another feeling, one he recognizes as fear—no, as panic! What if she’s gone for good—moved away to Paris, or killed by a sudden fever? How can he possibly finish the portrait until every detail of her is etched in his mind? How will he explain his failure to Petrarch? And then: How will he fill his Sunday mornings, and the other hours of his days and nights that she has come to occupy? Good God, he thinks, I am worse than the poet. I have a good wife, a sweet and faithful woman who loves me, and yet I am turning into a schoolboy over this woman—this girl—who is thrice forbidden to me: She is married, I am married, and she is beloved by my friend Petrarch. In a state of consternation, he stumbles over the feet of the other worshipers in his pew, turns up the side aisle of the nave, and makes for the door.
Just before he reaches it, he feels a tug on his sleeve. He turns, and there—hidden by a pillar—is the woman herself, a sight so unexpected he almost cries out in surprise. She watches him regain control of himself, then says, “Monsieur, vous me cherchez?”: Sir, are you looking for me? Working with French painters and seeking French patrons, he has mastered much of the language by now, but he is so taken aback by her sudden appearance and blunt question that he resorts to a well-worn ploy, shaking his head and shrugging to indicate that he does not understand her, and adding “Sienese” to make sure she gets the message.
“Ah, Siena, una bella città,” she says, switching to his own language so fluently and effortlessly, she might have grown up next door to him. “A beautiful city,” she repeats. “If you are Sienese, sir, I envy you.” She glances down briefly, then looks up at him again, and when she does, the intensity with which her eyes probe his is almost palpable: as if she were a blind woman, exploring his very soul with her fingers. She lays a hand on his arm. “Come. There is a garden in the cloister. I would speak with you.” She leads him out a side door, through an archway, and along a loggia to a far corner of the cloister, to a bench tucked into an alcove of boxwoods. She sits, and motions for him to sit beside her.
“Now, sir. Tell me why you were looking for me. Don’t pretend you weren’t.” Again he shrugs—not, this time, to feign incomprehension; this time, to acknowledge that he’s been caught, and has no defense. “I’ve noticed how you watch me. Not just today, but for weeks. Every Sunday I feel your eyes on me. Why?”
“You…you are a beautiful young woman, my lady. What man could resist looking at you?”
Slowly she shakes her head. “Many men look at me. Some with contempt, some with longing. But no one else looks at me the way you do. You study me; you examine me, as if I were a flower or an insect whose parts you wish to catalog. Why?”