He takes a step toward her, looks closely at her face. “Perhaps you are right; perhaps I have not portrayed you faithfully. It was difficult to see your features well in the dim light of the church, from so far away. I should take a closer look, in this light.” He is an arm’s length away now—closer than he has ever been to her, except for that brief conversation in the cloistered garden. He reaches out, tucks the stained knuckle of his index finger beneath her chin, and lifts her head slightly. He leans closer, adjusts his hand so that he holds her chin lightly between thumb and index finger, and then turns her head slowly from side to side, scrutinizing the planes and highlights and hollows of her face. “I did my best,” he says at last, “but you are right, I must confess. I did not capture your true self. Here, for instance.” Lifting his other hand, he brings his index finger to a spot just above the right corner of her mouth. “You have a little mole right here.” He grazes it with his fingertip—perhaps he strokes it lightly, or perhaps his finger is simply trembling. “I failed to see this mole. I’m sorry. I should have included it—it punctuates the line of your mouth.”
He leans back to glance at the portrait, but his hands do not leave her face, and now his finger traces her upper lip. “I am sure I have the bow of this lip right,” he says, “but I fear that I have not given enough ripeness to your bottom lip.” He slides the finger along her lower lip now, pressing slightly; the finger catches and tugs on the lip. She is quaking now, and her breath is fast and ragged. He takes the lip between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing and rolling it, and she gasps, then whimpers softly. “Your jawline,” he murmurs, stroking its edge, “I know I did not get that wrong. But these wisps of hair on your neck, I could not see them in the gloom.” Both his hands now float across the loose tendrils of hair; he does not touch the skin of her neck, only the down, and it feels to her as if a spring breeze is caressing her. His hand returns to her mouth, his fingers tugging and teasing the front of her lips, then grazing her teeth, then easing between their edges. “If only the Mass had made you smile,” he whispers, “I could have shown your teeth.” He presses the edge of his hand against them; they part slightly, taking in the meaty flesh and then clamping down, causing him to groan. Her face is flushed, her breath is ragged, and her pupils dilated almost to the outer edge of her irises. He slides his other hand down her arm and lifts it, raising the mirror. “Look in this glass again and tell me now: Is this a woman of stone, or of flesh and blood and fire?” She stares at the image she sees there; her breath catches, her knees buckle, and she sags against him. He lifts her with his paint-stained hands and sinewed arms, carries her to the table, and with exquisite tenderness begins to undress her.
HE MAKES TWO SMALL CHANGES IN THE PORTRAIT, painting bare chested as she cleans herself with a damp cloth he has handed her. Near the corner of her mouth, he adds the mole, and on the bodice of her dress, between her breasts, he adds a small tongue of flame. As he finishes the flame, she buttons her dress, smooths the silk, and repins her hair. She inspects herself once more in the mirror, comparing herself with the portrait. This time she smiles as she tucks the glass back into the hidden pocket. They do not speak. She takes the paintbrush from his hand and lays it on the ledge of the easel, then places his hand on her breastbone, exactly where he has portrayed the flame. Pressing his hand tightly against her, she kisses him on the mouth, and then on each cheek, and then she slips out the door and into the street that will carry her from him.
The final, fading notes of the Carmelite choir waft in through the open door, entwining with the dissipating scent of her perfume and their musk. He wanders to the table, picks up the cloth she has used, and presses it to his face, inhaling their scent. It is the scent, he thinks, of forbidden fruit. The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The next day he bundles up the portrait and sends it to Petrarch. He puts no note in the package; nothing but the picture. Besides breaking faith with Giovanna, Simone has broken faith with the man who is both his client and his friend. He knows this, and he suspects there will be a price to be paid, a penance to be done. But it must be a private penance, he resolves, one that he must impose on himself; a burden he must carry alone, to spare the feelings of those he has wronged. Inextricably bound to his memory of how she caught fire beneath his touch, Simone will bear the burden of his secret guilt.
Two weeks later, a courier brings him a package from Petrarch. It contains twenty-five florins—the balance of the fee for the portrait—and a poem. Petrarch has actually done it: taken Simone’s jest in earnest and penned a poem praising the portrait. Simone scans the poem’s opening lines, which declare that if all the best painters competed for a thousand years, they could capture only a fraction of Laura’s matchless beauty. The next lines proclaim, “Surely my Simone was in Heaven, the place my gracious lady comes from; there he saw her, and portrayed her on paper, to prove down here—where souls are veiled in bodies—that such a lovely face exists.”
Martini reads it a second time, and then a third. “Where souls are veiled in bodies,” he says aloud, shaking his head and adding, “foolish man.” He crumples the page with the strong, stained hands that gripped her ardent flesh.