Glorious Ones by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online

so-called stinginess, my obsession with money. And it was all because of what I was—the outsider, the watcher. I knew what was going on inside their hearts, and it made them uneasy.
    As a matter of fact, I was no more obsessed with money than the rest of them. So what, if I was the only one who saw all that trouble with the church in terms of gold and silver? It wasn’t my church; I was the only one who didn’t feel that secret thrill of terror in his soul.
    But, knowing how sensitive I was, they loved to torture me about it; they went out of their way to find new excuses to hurt me. That was why they made me the treasurer.
    “Pantalone will be good at the job,” said Flaminio Scala one night, after a long day of drinking. “He is an expert at hoarding his own money. Surely, he can be trusted with ours.”
    The others laughed uproariously. They were bored with each other again—there was nothing to do but pick on me. So they held a general election, and I was appointed to carry the cashbox, to keep the accounts, to divide the money, and settle the wrangling which went on as those dogs all scrambled after the same pitiful bones. It was also my job to foil them in their constant attempts to cheat me of my rightful portion; it was just as we played it on stage.
    As it happened, I was good at the job. And, though they called me a greedy usurer, a lying cheat, a thieving Jew—still, my word was often the only thing which kept them from killing each other over pennies. I was good at it, all right, but not for the reasons they thought. It wasn’t that I was born with a talent for finance in my blood, with a neat stack of coins for a heart, with eyes that added and subtracted like wondrous machines.
    No, the reason I handled the money so well was this: the money was all I had. It was my only raft in that vast sea of disappointment.
    I hadn’t gotten any of the other things I’d hoped to find in Flaminio’s troupe. I hadn’t moved any closer to the heart of life. I was still the outsider, watching the others as if a needle and thread were always passing between us.
    I’d wanted thrilling adventure; I’d gotten nothing but the great pleasure of being kidnapped, scared to death, almost massacred. I’d dreamed of wild love, but there was none of that for me. I suppose I could have had Armanda for the asking, and Columbina with a little effort, or any of those little girls who flocked to our tents after the shows. But that wasn’t what I wanted. Were I forty years younger, I might be persuaded to take on that Isabella; but there’s no chance of that on this earth. And on those rare occasions when I did meet a lady who appealed to me—a mature actress from another troupe, perhaps—something about me always seemed to drive her away. Maybe it was the fact that I was no longer a young man; I was foolish to have expected more.
    Of course, it was love of a kind I got from Vittoria, but it wasn’t the kind I’d imagined. After those first times I played Pantalone to her Inamorata, she began to treat me as she did in the scenarios—as the old man, the trusted uncle. When she wasn’t too busy with her lovers, she’d often confide in me. I resented it, going straight from the role of the son to that of the father, with nothing in between; I’d wanted something else. And the truth was: I didn’t really like Vittoria and her coarse ways. I despised her when she joined the others in mocking me.
    But I took what I could get. And so, for many years, I listened to Vittoria tell me the story of that strange struggle between Francesco and the Captain. I heard her version; but of course, I could have guessed those secrets just as well on my own.
    She was right in the midst of it—my dumb, fat, loud, arrogant daughter. They tossed her around like a bean-bag, those two. She was nothing but a pawn to them; I told her so a million times.
    “Don’t play the know-it-all old man with me,” she’d snap. “I’m a grown woman. I can