The Marriage Portrait, page 17
She knows what will happen. She thinks she knows. She has been told. She has grasped the mechanics of it, believes herself possessed of a sufficiently clear idea. She is fortunate, she tells herself, to have been united with a man who is considerate and kind, not to mention pleasing to the eye. Has he not promised that he will never hurt her? Not all girls are as lucky. And she knows herself to be possessed of a toughness, a resilience that will carry her through. She is not easily cowed, can withstand pain and discomfort and fear. She can get through this. She can. There will be a time, and soon, when it will be over. It must happen, it must be borne, and she can do it.
But she had not expected this: for him to walk up to the bed and remove his clothes, layer by terrifying layer, until he stands before her, unclothed and smiling. She tries not to laugh. She tries not to cry. She does not want to look, and yet she does, and yet she cannot. She had not expected him to lie down beside her, and then near her, and then nearer still. And she had not expected him to talk, to make conversation, to ask her questions, some of which are about her journey or foods or how she liked this fresco or that, which is her favourite, what music she prefers, what instrument is most pleasing to her ear, lute or viol, does she like madrigals, he has heard Florence is famous for its madrigals. Such ordinary topics to be discussing, such things that might be said in a salon or at dinner, and all the while his fingers are patient yet restless, touching filaments of her hair, brushing against her face, tracing the outline of her lips, as if they will gather information about her. She had never expected that.
There had been dogs at the palazzo, and cats. She had seen them in the act, the male preoccupied and evasive, often looking off to the side, the female beneath, face resigned. And Sofia had told her, as best she could. She had gestured outside Lucrezia’s gown, around the area of her navel, and performed a mime with her thumb sliding into her curled fist. She had given her a vial of ointment, stoppered with wax and string, and told her to apply it before he came to her, for the first few weeks. Her mother had pressed her palms together, as if in prayer, and made vague statements about “God’s will” and “a woman’s duty” and “part of marriage.” So she has a notion of what will occur next.
His calm surprises her, his matter-of-factness, his single-minded approach, and the time he takes.
“Don’t worry,” he murmurs, cupping her cheek in his palm, while lower down the bed she can feel his shin slide between her feet. “Don’t be frightened.”
“I’m not,” she whispers.
He smooths her brow with the pad of his thumb. “I shan’t hurt you,” he says, “I promise.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust me?”
“I do.”
She has to believe him. What choice does she have? She is miles and miles and days away from her family. There is no one else here.
“You trust me?” he says again, taking her hand and placing it flat on his chest.
She has not yet touched him, not yet made acquaintance with his skin, with his unclothed form. The iron hardness of it startles her, the muscle and heat and bone of it, the animal rhythm of his heart.
“Of course,” she says, and she sees she has answered well because he smiles. He presses her hand to his chest and then, shockingly, he places his other hand on the corresponding part of her, the neckline of her shift, beneath which is the hollow between her breasts. It makes her flinch—she cannot help it—and he sees this but he does not take his hand away. Is it her imagination or does a flicker of sympathy pass over his face? She thinks so—she hopes so. It is his right, she knows, as her husband, to touch her wherever he wishes, and Sofia had warned her of it, but, still, it is a shock. But the fact that he sees her plight, and comprehends it, is reassuring. He will not hurt her, he has said. She has nothing to fear.
He lifts her hand away from his chest and places it on his shoulder, again mirroring the motion so that his palm lands on her shoulder, curving over the rounded bone there. With a smile, he next moves her hand to his throat, then his cheek, then his ribs, then his waist, with his hand following suit. The places where he has touched her feel seared and cold at the same time, as if his hand has printed her shift with some kind of invisible marker or ink. Her hand, meanwhile, as he guides it, is learning the different textures of him: the rough grain of his stubble, the puckered skin of his lips, the satin of his bare shoulder, the whorled hair on his chest. It is interesting to her, and the repetition, the game of it lulling. Chest, shoulder, throat, cheek, waist, then back again to chest. They are still talking at this point, about his three hunting dogs, and their different natures, about the food she likes most of all to eat, and everything between them is strange, yes, but calm. She feels soothed by the repetition of his mirroring game; she can do that, she can cope with that. Perhaps, she thinks, things will go no further tonight; perhaps he means to do this game and nothing else.
She is unprepared, then, unready, when after they are touching each other’s waists, he moves her hand not back to his chest but down, further down, much further, to a place she has never seen, never allowed herself to dwell on.
There are statues of naked men and gods and cherubs, all over her father’s palazzo: no mystery, then, what is down there. She grew up with brothers, of course. She saw them, as young children, standing in tubs of water as the nurses washed them. She has seen what males have, the pouched appearance of it, and the appendage, so vulnerable-looking, so comic, all curled and folded into its own little jacket, like a creature afraid of showing its face to the world. Her sister Isabella had intimated to her that men varied in size in this respect, and Lucrezia had asked how Isabella could say this as, surely, she had known only one man in this way, her husband, Paolo, and, mystifyingly, it had made Isabella let out a peal of laughter as she landed a somewhat painful smack on Lucrezia’s leg.
She had not expected this. She had not thought she would be required to touch it with her hand. That someone would take her fingers—those same fingers that have turned pages and tied ribbons and sewn with needles and broken bread and lifted cups and written words and drawn pictures—and wrap them reverently yet firmly about it so that they could learn its ways. She had not known of the transformation this part of the body undergoes, how it alters its form, metamorphoses into something quite other. And she had not known that this change spreads itself throughout the man, that he becomes a different person, enslaved to this part of himself, losing himself, that everything beyond that moment is different and swift and charged.
The talk is mostly silenced now. There are no more questions about favourite frescos. He asks, in a voice hoarser than usual, if he may remove her shift, and when she says yes—because what else can she say?—he does it with the urgency of a creature under a spell, and then his hands, like ravenous animals, begin to rummage about, insistent, purposeful, as if searching for something lost in the crevices of her.
She had not known he would need to lie on top of her, that she would be pinned down, covered by his body. She had not known that she would be required to fold up her legs in such an ungainly way, like a cicada, or that the bones of her spine and pelvis would creak under his weight.
He says again that he will not hurt her, she must not be scared, he will not hurt her, he will not, he promises, the words whispered in his new rasping voice.
And then he hurts her anyway.
The pain is startling, and curious in its specificity. It tunnels a scalded route into a most private space in her, a place of which she had previously only the dimmest sense. She has never felt discomfort like it: burning, invading, unwelcome, overfull. She is aware of her face twisting into a grimace, of a whimper escaping her lips.
He hears this, she is sure. He brings up a hand to cradle her head. In apology, she believes, and now he will stop, surely. Because he promised her that he wouldn’t hurt her—he may not have meant to but nevertheless he has. Because he has done what he intended to do. Because he has fulfilled his part of the marriage contract, and so has she. Because he cares about her, loves her perhaps, and would not want her to be in pain. Because now it can finish and be over, he has done what he came to do, she has done what was required, he can let her go.
Strangely, though, he does not stop. He does not withdraw. He remains in the place of pain, inscribing more pain over the original pain. He says to her that she is fine, that she should hold still, that all will be well, she is fine, she is fine. But how can he say this, how can he think this? I am not fine, she wants to hiss, it hurts, you are hurting me, you are breaking your promise.
She had thought she knew what would happen. She had believed herself prepared; but she had not been, not at all. Isabella told her that it might be sore for a moment and then it would stop, and later she would come to enjoy it. These statements swoop through her mind, backwards and forwards. They are the only thoughts she can allow.
She, herself, her frame, her being, is pressed between mattress and another person, like a sheaf of papers between the covers of a book: it goes beyond astonishment, beyond shock.
The heat, the labour, the noise of it, is appalling—she had had a vague expectation of a mingling of a celestial or spiritual sort, a gentle confluence of beings, in silence—but how close this seems to fury, with its constant and repeated motion, its pounding action, its invasion, the distortion of his features, the panting like one possessed.
She had known. She is sure of this. She had known but, also, she had not. The idea that she had once perceived the male organ as shy or afraid seems so distant, so misplaced, that she believes it must have been some other girl who stood before her father’s painting of Jupiter and covertly examined the curious tube of flesh that peeped out of a nest of hair.
Lucrezia counts the thuds of her heart. Up to twenty, then forty. She loses track after sixty. How long does this go on? Impossible to know. Why hadn’t she asked Sofia or her mother or even Isabella?
The weight of it—of him—makes it hard to catch enough breath.
Outside, she can hear a wind starting up. It has presence, this wind, and a character. It frisks against the shutters, sliding narrow fingers between the slats, rattling the locks. It purses its lips and blows down the chimney, scattering fragments of soot on the hearthrug. It rubs itself against the tiles of the roof above her head, as if it will prise them off with its insistent fingers.
Difficult to know where to put her hands. She wants to clear the hair from her face, from her mouth, but he is so much larger than her, there is so much of him, and he has two muscled arms that are pressing down into the mattress on either side of her so that she cannot move, and they are pressing down, too, on hanks of her hair. One of her palms, which has been flailing in the air, grazes some part of him, his back, perhaps, his hip, and the damp fleshy burn of it, the flexing motion, is so frightening, she removes it at once. Better then, she decides, to let her arms fall aside, apart, out of the way.
In the dining room, before any of this happened, as the rabbit stew was being cleared away, he had asked her if she would loosen her hair from its bindings for him, so that he could see it. She had done so. She had sat there, at the table, and undone the wedding plaits on one side of her head, while Emilia, who had been summoned for the task, did the others. This was in the before-time, prior to any of this, while they were finishing dinner. He had watched, reaching for a peach from the bowl set on the table, a paring knife in one hand. He had insisted she try the fruit, telling her that they were grown here, on the estate, that he had ordered they be picked for her, that the valley was a beautiful fertile plain, with perfect soil for agriculture. She had looked away at the word “fertile,” as perhaps he had known she would—when she looked back, there was a smile on his face and he was holding out a slice of orange-pink peach flesh to her, not unkindly. Go on, he said, try it. And he reached out and placed it between her lips, as if such an act was entirely natural—she had to open her mouth to accept it, she was left no other option but to take food from his hand. The taste of it instantly flooded her mouth, trickling down her throat so that for a moment she thought she might choke. It was startling, soft as moss, nectar-sweet with an edge of tartness. Well, he had murmured, watching her, leaning forward on his elbows, how do you like it? It tastes, she said, of the sun. It’s like eating sunshine. It must have been a good reply because he laughed and repeated the phrase to himself. Her hair, unravelled, still held the impression of the wedding plaits, rippling like wheat down her back.
Bed: once a place for sleep, or for staying awake to listen to the breathing of her siblings, to the nocturnal noises of the palazzo. And now another person may pull back the covers and enter it, and do—this.
The wind filters through a gap in the window. She can feel its cool, whispering caress on her cheek, like an invitation or a suggestion.
She discovers that if she turns her head to the side, it is easier to breathe, possible to draw in air that doesn’t feel as though it has already been shared in the small gap between them, sucked in and out again, in and out.
And with that breath comes a sensation like the weft and warp of fabric separating in two, and some part of her, the best part perhaps, answers the wind’s call. It shakes itself free. It gets up from the bed, leaving the bodies there, to do what they will, and moves away. The relief at putting distance between herself and that bed. The self, the part of her that is leaving, seems amorphous, shapeless. It is at once padding on noiseless feet across the floorboards and also floating somewhere up near the ceiling. This bodiless Lucrezia brushes past the rafters, the painted cherubs; it reaches out a hand to trace the lines of the rainbow. It is enormous, stately; it is minuscule and obscure.
Where the two people are stretched out on the bed, the form of one obscuring the other, is far below. That is a place of shadow and darkness. There is nothing to see of it. What is happening there is of no consequence to her now.
She passes through the walls, disintegrating and dissolving into plasterwork, beams, struts, wattle, brick, and then she coalesces again, in the air on the other side.
She is here now, outside the walls of the villa, where the night has painted its own version of the valley, in bold indigo strokes; where the wind animates this mysterious shaded landscape, setting the trees in motion, flinging night birds up to the blue-black air, driving angry blots across the unreadable face of the firmament. She is on the pantile roof, creeping along gullies and gutters, feeling the ministrations of the spirited wind, the spring of moss beneath her feet, but she is also down there on the ground, where the branches of the trees fan themselves out for the breeze, tugging one way, then the other. Where small, sharp stones push themselves up into her bare feet. Where the forest is a dark shape beyond the manicured hedges, beyond the pollarded fruit trees. It crouches, waiting.
Lucrezia is vigilant. Lucrezia is herself. Lucrezia can choose her own tempo, can increase it, can slow it down. She can gallop, sprint, through the gardens; she can spring over the hedges and paths, her body a streak of colour in the dim light, her ribs a vessel for her leaping heart. And when she reaches the forest, the trees will close about her, all the animals and birds within will send up their questions to the sky in squawks and cries, and she will wait with them, watching, for the first rays of cold morning light, which will feel restorative and forgiving on the complex silk of her skin.
* * *
She wakes with a gasp, flinching from a dream in which Maria is pulling her by the hand along a corridor, urging her on, and Lucrezia cannot disentangle herself because, strangely, she and Maria are inside a single dress, a stiff, weighty gown, and Lucrezia is trying to keep up with her sister, who will not slow down, and Lucrezia is worried about tripping over the hem. Just as she falls, her dream-feet tangling with Maria’s, her dream-self about to strike her head on the floor, she lurches from sleep to consciousness in the space of a heartbeat.
She finds herself lying on her side, at the very edge of a bed, in an unfamiliar room, the ceiling high, the walls pale and glowing with an inconstant dappled yellow light. Maria is gone, the shared dress is gone. Her hair has been spilt, like liquid, all over the pillows and the bed; it falls in confused gilded streams down to the floor; it tangles in her fingers and covers her mouth. What is going on? Something must have happened. She never goes to bed without weaving it into a long rope that lies obediently beside her all night, like a pet or a familiar.
From behind her comes a noise so unnerving and unaccustomed that her scalp shrinks. The suck and draw of breathing. The rise and fall of another’s chest. It is heavy, measured: the sound of someone’s slumber.
Lucrezia’s mind leaps like a flea from the sight of her hands up close, the alluvial puckers and creases that striate their innards, to the ache she feels in her lower body, which seems to pull down, as if her interior is attached to a rope, to her unfastened hair, to this edge of the bed and the rug beneath it, to the dust motes circling in the golden slabs of light, to the ache, to the breathing behind her, to the ache, to her hands, up close.
She raises her head, slightly, ever so slightly: she does not want to wake the person behind her, so she is careful to move herself an infinitesimal amount at a time, barely rustling the bedclothes.
There he is. The sight of him is a shock. Hair like black feathers on the pillow, face devoid of any expression, as if whatever dreams he is having soothe and transport him, the stubble on his chin and cheeks emerging like a miniature forest on a mountainside.
Lucrezia stares at him, as if she were considering a sketch: Man, Asleep. Ruler, at Rest. When he is awake, she is unable to look at him for long—the fact of him, the presence of him, is too overwhelming. The way his gaze seems to miss nothing, to take in every detail, his mind always working and interpreting and assessing, that knack he has of being able to pluck your every idle, private thought from the air and consume it so that it is part of himself, comprehended, filed away. This, she supposes, is what it means to be a ruler. But like this, his eyes shut, his mind at ease, she can examine him without embarrassment. He is, just for now, not the ruler of Ferrara, not the newly appointed head of a powerful court, but a being asleep, no more and no less.
