Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Read Free

blue.
The color that had made Humilità famous, named for the painting of Christ’s Passion in which she had first used it. How many times had Giulia seen this formula in Humilità’s book of paint recipes—her book of secrets—written out in the incomprehensible cipher Humilità used for the most precious of her colors? How many times had she tried to imagine what special ingredient, what exotic technique, made Passion blue so luminous and alive? And here was the answer.A list of materials—some expected, some surprising—and a detailed, exacting preparation procedure.
    Giulia had not understood, when Humilità had first taken her into the workshop, why a paint recipe should be so valuable. Paint was paint, was it not? Surely it was only a matter of mixing and combining, like making bread or simmering soup. But as Humilità initiated her into the secrets of paint making, Giulia began to realize how difficult it was to create colors that kept their brilliance as they dried, that did not alter or darken under layers of lacquer, that resisted the ravages of cold and heat and damp and time. A single ingredient, a fraction of a measure, was all the difference between a pure color and a corrupted one, a color that endured and one that faded. Color was the painter’s language, and Passion blue was a new word in that language, a word of matchless beauty that had not existed before Humilità invented it. A word only Humilità had been able to speak—until now.
    It was almost disappointing to see it written out this way, its mysterious essence reduced to black marks on a white page. Yet thrilling too: Humilità’s crowning achievement, coveted by so many, and now Giulia’s, Giulia’s alone. Giulia felt her fingers burning as they did when some face, some scene, some trick of light demanded that she draw or paint it. She imagined following the instructions on this paper, step by careful step. She imagined the paintings on which she’d lavish Passion blue, glowing like stained glass—dozens of paintings. Scores of them. As many as she could make in the lifetime that lay ahead of her.
    And I’ll hear it singing. I will hear its voice, the first color song I ever heard and the most beautiful, sounding just for me.
    For an instant a new world seemed to open at her feet, dazzling. But then she thought of Humilità, skull-like againsther pillows, and felt a rush of guilt. How could she take pleasure in the secret when it was hers only because Humilità lay dying? She had the burden of keeping and defending it now too, which Humilità had also passed to her. She thought of Matteo Moretti and shuddered.
Perhaps he’s forgotten me. Perhaps she’s wrong, and he will not come
.
    Oh, how I wish everything could be as it was!
    Her throat was full of tears again. She dropped the paper and bowed her face into her hands. At her side, barely audible, the drying paints of her Annunciation sang whisper-harmonies.
    At last she straightened. She retrieved the paper and tore away its margins to make it as small as possible, then folded it into a tiny square and stowed it inside the waxed canvas pouch she wore at her neck, concealed beneath her shapeless novice gown. The pouch also held a fragment of her natal horoscope, which she’d carried with her since she was seven years old.
    Two secrets, safe against her skin.
    She left her cell. In the main hallway she paused, overwhelmed by the desire to return to Humilità, to sit by her in the dimness and hold her hand. Perhaps she’d be sleeping now, with her poppy dose. But perhaps she’d be awake, and Giulia could whisper in her teacher’s ear, at last, her own secret of the color song.
    Only knowing that Domenica might punish her by forbidding her to visit Humilità at all made it possible to resist. Reluctantly Giulia turned toward the workshop, and the many tasks that waited for her there.
    —
    Humilità never woke from the poppy she took that afternoon. She lingered for another day and