The Religion by Tim Willocks Read Free Book Online Page B

naïve genius she brought to their study of music, Amparo revealed a love deeper and more enduring than most mortals know. They were strange friends, then, yet no two friends were ever closer.
    Did Carla love the girl, she sometimes wondered, because of some spell cast in the mirror of recognition? That mirror in which all those who've been cast out may see themselves? Or because, in her isolation, she needed someone to love and the girl just happened to be there? Or was love not always some conspiracy of isolation, recognition, and chance all intermingled? It didn't matter. The girl won her heart. It was Amparo, who had no past, who'd inspired and propelled Carla on this quest to redeem her own.
    "I won't go to Messina until you tell me," said Amparo. "Shall we play for him or not?"
    Carla's heart quickened at the thought. Such things weren't done. To invite a man-a man of dubious reputation-to a strange villa and without so much as an introduction subject him to their Art? It was unheard-of. Tannhauser would consider them mad. Her mind told her that to play for him would be folly. Her heart said it would be magnificent. Amparo waited for her answer.
    "Yes," said Carla, "we'll play for him. We'll play as we've never played before."
    Amparo said, "You will take me with you, won't you? If you left me behind, I couldn't bear it."
    She'd asked this question innumerable times since they'd started on this journey but from now on things might change. Would Starkey permit it? Would Tannhauser? For the first time, Carla answered without knowing if she could keep her promise. "I'll never leave you behind."
    Again, the unsmiling glow of joy illuminated Amparo's face, and another inspiration sprang forth. "Wear the red dress," she said.
    She saw Carla's face.
    "Oh yes, the red dress," insisted Amparo. "You must."
    Carla had commissioned the dress, during their sojourn in Naples, for reasons she couldn't fathom even at the time. The bolt of silk had captured her: a fantasy of color that had traveled across desert and sea from Samarkand. The tailor had seen its reflection in her eyes and had clasped his hands in communion with some vision of her own that she couldn't yet see, and he'd promised her a union between the silk and her heart's desire whose harmony would delight a pillar of stone.
    When she'd first donned the dress a week later, her skin had sighed and her heart had hammered and something close to panic had choked her throat, as if she'd been reminded of something in herself that she feared above all things, and which she'd long since determined to forget. When she'd left the dressing room, Amparo's eyes had widened and swum with tears. When she'd stood before the looking glass, she'd seen a woman she didn't know, and who could not be. And though at once she prized it more than anything she owned, she knew she'd never wear the exquisite garment, for the moment in which she might become the woman in the glass-would dare to be that woman-would never come. The dress was made for a woman in bloom, and she was a woman whose spring and summer had gone. The dress lay in her trunk, swaddled by the tissue in which its maker had wrapped it.
    "The occasion has never been apt," said Carla. "And surely is not so now."
    "If not now, then when?" asked Amparo.
    Carla blinked and looked away. Amparo persisted.
    "If Tannhauser is to walk the razor's edge, then you must match him."
    There was logic to this, but it was Amparo's logic. "No matter how remarkable he may be, he'll not be wearing red silk."
    Amparo took this in and shook her head with sadness.
    "Now, enough of these foolish fancies," said Carla. "Please, be on your way."
    She watched Amparo run toward the house and wondered what it must be like to live without fear. Without guilt or shame. As Amparo lived. Carla had felt an intimation of such a life on that morning in the springtime recently passed, when they'd started out for Sicily from Aquitaine. Two madwomen on a journey that she