It was there I waited to see if I would be joined.
I had left Paris without having received any further word from Aristafeo. Here was where I was to wait for him, to pretend to be surprised when he returned with word the tenor had not shown for their duel.
The quiet in the wing of the Milanese palace that I occupied was such that I spent much of that first evening following the sound of what turned out to be a wandering dove inhabiting a lonely ballroom, rising and descending in and out of a beam of light that came in through the crystal windows lining the ceiling. As it leapt, blue feathers glowed from underneath, as if from a lamp hidden under its wings.
I wondered if it had hatched there in the dark ballroom or if it had flown in and become lost. Or if, perhaps, it was some lover under a spell, doomed by a sorceress to stay there forever.
This Milanese prince had not invited me for being lonely. He asked only that I dine with him once, an invitation I accepted gladly, and there I was introduced to his wife, as stylish as a Parisienne, but more voluptuous, warmer, and more generous. She was a dark-haired beauty with the large, firm breasts of a mermaid and a dolphin’s appetite. She came to dinner in a chic gown of exceptional black silk satin and velvet set off by a collar of rubies and diamonds. She seemed aware of her beauty in the manner of someone with something she is determined you should enjoy. Their two daughters and one son, also at dinner, all took after her, all beautiful and proud of their beauty.
She did not seem to my mind a conventional Milanese, but rather something more southern his line had dipped itself in.
They smiled when I thanked him, and I thought of how rare real affection was in noble families.
He stroked the bottom of his wine goblet. You’re very welcome, he said. The rooms are so numerous there are inhabitants entirely unknown to me.
An odd stillness stole in when he said this, as if his family and servants watched their own secrets move in the air for that moment. The inhabitants were known to him is what this said; this his way of telling us all this was so.
All palaces of this size usually hid at least a mistress or more, perhaps even the children of the mistresses, some his, some not, all of these in apartments alongside the others’. Perhaps even one of the young footmen who’d helped me with my trunks was his bastard from some woman half remembered, who now patched his wife’s linens.
I’ve met one, I announced. And then told the story of the dove, which made them laugh.
I returned to my apartment after the dinner by carriage, driven across to the other side of the estate. That night, as I waited, unable to sleep, I went farther in my explorations. I walked with an oil lamp through more grand rooms covered in the frescoes of nymphs, satyrs, gods, and goddesses typical to the apartments of royals of the age. The furnishings covered in muslin made the rooms seem like the ghosts of still other rooms, and here and there in the dark flashed a bit of gilt and crystal. The mirrors were shrouded.
The echoes of my footsteps in the marbled halls were all that kept me company. Only when I paused could I hear the silence return, filling in my footsteps behind me.
I found a music room, with paintings of Apollo and his lyre, of Pan and his flute. It was a contest between them for Pan’s flute, made from the canes of a reed that was once a nymph whom Pan had pursued. She’d changed into a reed in order to escape, and he found her, cutting and then binding her to make what was left of her into this instrument that plays at his will.
I stood for a while, waiting, sure my hopes were lost, looking out of the nearest window.
I also had changed into a reed in order to escape a god. Was there a way to change back?
What then? I asked myself.
In the dark, the vast shapes of the palace seemed like the pieces of ancient nights remade into this place at the prince’s will. Sure my vigil had finally come to some lonely end, I left for Sant’Agata after the run in Milan concluded.
There, the Verdis greeted me with great affection. They told me they’d heard the tenor had been killed in a duel and expressed their condolences. I expressed shock and grief, kissed them, and sat down to listen to Giuseppina tell me what she knew.
§
After a very long, very fine dinner, I bid the two of them good night and went back to my rooms.
I felt it before I entered, the warmth ahead of me in the dark as I walked the halls to my rooms with a lamp. I heard the fire in my apartment and moved toward it quickly, expecting Doro to appear and help me dress for bed. Doro had refused me when I gave her notice, insisting I was not well, and saying, Would you really refuse me a trip to Italy?