The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland Read Free Book Online Page A

olive green and gray, with amber lights, seemed to deepen, as though they were seeing many things again. “I loved my husband, and moved in earthly heaven in his presence. He had a lover. I like to think, even now, that it was someone he knew before he married me, but that may not be so. I existed only when he touched me, and waited, breathing somehow, for the next soft word.”
    â€œDid you stop loving him?”
    â€œNo. If it’s really love, it doesn’t change when you find out. Everything—eating, sleeping, waking, watching the rain—everything becomes shaded because you know. You still have walks in the country and nights of love, but they’re darkened by what’s unspoken.”
    â€œSo what happened?”
    Graziela wrung out the wet rag into the bucket of dirtywater, twisting the cloth with a force I’d never seen in her before. “The husband of his lover found out, and killed him. Dragged him into the Tiber, where all such men are bound.” She stared down at the gray scum on the water. “A loss as vast as Egypt,” she whispered.
    â€œI had no idea. You seem so . . . peaceful.”
    â€œOne can achieve that.” She stood and lifted her bucket and brush and rags. “I’ll be right back. Wait for me in the third chapel on the right.” She pointed. “Volterre’s fresco of the Assumption is there. Take a good look. I just learned that the standing figure in the long red lucco on the right is Michelangelo.”
    She’d been married, I thought as I walked down the nave. I’d known her since I was twelve, yet this I’d never known. No wonder she was different from the other nuns.
    I looked through the wooden grating into the third chapel, and in the fresco there a man did wear a red cloak that hung straight to the ground. He had white hair, a white beard, and intelligent brown eyes. “Michelangelo,” I whispered. He was not looking up in astonishment as the Virgin in blue was taken up to Heaven as the other figures were. He was looking out at me with an expression of tender concern, looking into me even, giving me a kind of benediction. I was going to his city to live and learn among his works. Below his full sleeve, his hand was gnarled and scarred from chisels. Love surged up in me for those hands. Even a scarred hand can bring forth greatness. There was a connection between us, between our spirits, I dared to think. No man might ever see it, but there, in the silent church, God could, if He wanted to, bless a union of souls.
    Graziela found me. “Sister Paola is coming to say goodbye. I only have a minute.” She reached deeply into her sleeve and drew out a tiny muslin bag. She untied the drawstring and tipped into her palm two gold earrings, each witha large creamy perla barocca , the luster covering a gnarled surface like a whorled walnut. “Imperfect. Like humans,” she whispered. “I know it’s vanity. I should have sold them with the rest of my things to give a larger dowry to the convent. Marcello gave them to me on our wedding day.”
    â€œHow did you keep them all these years?”
    She chuckled thoughtfully. “Nine years. It hasn’t been easy. Sewn inside my underclothing most of the time. Once I had to keep them in the toe of my shoe.”
    She lifted one and let it dangle a moment. “If the beauties of the world were going to be denied me, then these, at least, would not be.”
    â€œThe world in a pearl,” I said.
    I thought how the pearl’s surface was secreted with infinite slowness to protect the live oyster from chafing and inflammation, like Graziela’s serene calmness year by year smoothing but not completely hiding the rough territory within.
    She laid one of the earrings in my hand. It felt warm against my palm. “I don’t need but one,” she said. “You can pin the other one on a dress.”
    â€œGraziela, no. I