The Passion of Artemisia Read Free Page B

knees. Oh, let the floor open up and swallow me. Just like I had wished when, as a little girl, I had opened the bedroom door with a fistful of dandelions for Mama, tufted seeds tearing away as I rushed into the room, and found Papa naked with his back to me and Mama on the bed, knees up, skirt raised, showing that secret territory between her legs. Shock had seared me. How I’d cried for days and wouldn’t talk to her, wouldn’t even let her near me. That was how they wanted to display me—as if caught in the act.
    â€œIt is as she has said,” I heard the thin woman say beside me.
    â€œState the report for the record.” The Locumtenente’s voice was casual, as if they had just performed some inconsequential, routine task.
    â€œI, Diambra Blasio, have touched and examined the vagina of Donna Artemisia, and I can say that she is not a virgin. I know this because I have placed my finger inside her vagina, and found that the hymen is broken. I can say this because of the experience of being a midwife for ten or eleven years.”
    I tried to shut my mind to everything around me.
    â€œAnd you?”
    â€œI, Caterina of the Court of Masiano, have examined . . . touched her vagina . . . put a finger . . . deflowered . . . hymen broken . . . a while ago, not recently . . . my experience . . . fifteen years.”
    I waited there on the table until the court was adjourned, looked that notary dead in the eye, and dared him to lift one scornful eyebrow at me over that hook of a nose.
    Papa and I were all the way home with our door closed before either of us said a word. “If Mama were here, you’d have been ashamed.”
    â€œI’m ashamed now.”
    â€œOf what? Your daughter lying there for all the world to see, or yourself?”
    He shook his head, like a dog shaking off water.
    â€œ Madre di Dio , what’s going to be next?” I said.
    â€œBut it proves it, don’t you see? The damages I claimed.”
    â€œI am not a painting,” I shouted. “I’m a person! Your daughter.”
    He tipped over a jar of brushes, gathered his painting things, and left. Just like that. Off to paint in Cardinal Borghese’s Casino of the Muses in the Palazzo Pallavicini where he had been working with Agostino before the trial. Like it was any other day. As if nothing had happened. As if there would be no consequences.
    I didn’t want to be there when he came back. I put on my short gray cape and, as I left, I pulled the hood over my head even though the heat shimmered up from the ground ahead of me. On the way down Via del Babuino to Piazza di Spagna, I kept my head down so our apothecary might not recognize me from the door of his shop. Going up the Pincian hill, I straddled the ruts and avoided loose stones as I made a wide arc around the shiftless men who always lounged on this steep course between city and church. They’d be the first to shout some epithet at me. Toward the top of the hill, I climbed more slowly, up to the twin bell towers of Santa Trinità dei Monti. Breathing heavily, I turned at the church and went up the long stairway next to it, which led to the convent. I pulled the bell rope.
    I knew Sister Paola would come to the door. As one of the few Italian nuns in this French convent, it was her job to answer the bell, to sell the medicinal herbs the nuns cultivated, and to communicate with the outside world.
    â€œOoh, Artemisia! So good to see you.” Her smile always reminded me of Cupid’s mischievous grin in paintings ofclassical subjects, but now her face was drawn into worry lines.
    â€œHave you been well?” I asked.
    She opened the creaking wooden door to let me into the small anteroom. “As well as God wishes, which is good enough for me.” Her voice rose and fell like birdsong. An otherworldliness hung in the air of the convent. I felt myself