Excerpt From The Innamorati: Anna and The Masks

Very early in the novel I sought to establish a fantastic relationship between Anna Forsetti and the Commedia masks she creates. It had to do with the idea that art and creativity have a fertile capacity when we dig deep and pull the unexpected from ourselves. (Writing this novel was a constant source of surprise for me -- even re-reading it makes me wonder where it came from.)  The masks speak to her, they are very alive and responsive to her mood. For Anna there is an interconnection between the womb which creates a life within it and a mask like an exterior shell that transforms the actor wearing it. Within and without. Anna's inability to work at the beginning of the novel is complicated but centers on the anguished belief that her vital self has become a knots of thorns.

 Anna opened the door to her studio, letting the afternoon sun chase into the room before her. She waited on the threshold. The studio was cool and dry, the dust swirling up from the unswept floor in the slanted sunlight. Her awls and gougers were scattered over the workbench as if thrown. A mold lay upturned like a beetle on its back and in its depths was the tattered paper remains of a mask.

Nervously, Anna fingered the strings of her cap and stepped into the room beneath the masks hanging from the rafters. She inhaled the earthy fragrance of clay and wood shavings, the pungent fumes of old liniments and paints and closed her eyes, dizzily. This was where she belonged — heart, soul, and belly. Anna pressed her hands over her middle. A low pain woke with a gentle throb.

"Please," she whispered. "Not now. I must work. I need to work."

The coils of cursed thorns writhed slowly within her. Anna dropped her hands and moved with determination toward the windows. As she threw open the first shutter with a loud bang, sunlight filled the hollowed backs of three Gorgon masks hanging over the lintel. The twisting snakes over their brows hissed to life, their green scales brightened by the touch of day. They opened their heavily lidded eyes and the sun shot gold tongues through their parted lips.

"Anna, you are here," they called.

"Good day my beauties." Anna saluted them.

The eyes of the Gorgons followed Anna as she crossed the room to the other window. She threw back the second shutter and the sun woke the sleeping faces of a satyr and his nymph, hanging side by side. The satyr was painted a silky black. His hair and brows were flecked with gold and two gold horns coiled around his temples. He grinned at Anna, a tongue pressed between his sharp teeth while, beside him, his nymph woke more slowly. Her drowsy face was wreathed with dried flowers and leaves. Anna reached up and touched the faint blush on the mask's cheek. The nymph sighed and the leaves shivered in the new breezes.

All of the masks were waiting like old friends and Anna moved around the room, greeting each one. How could she be afraid to be here? she wondered, a finger smoothing the puffed leather cheeks of a fool's mask, the long nose of II Capitano, the lace trimmed forehead of the ingenue.

Her fingers tingled with the memory of work. The slow task of sculpting an idea for a mask, watching a face emerge from the red clay, then meticulously translating it into carved wood. She loved the sharpness of the gougers, peeling back coiled strips of wood from the planes of a new face. She loved stretching leather over the wooden form and gently tooling it into the carved features.

On her work bench she saw the sleeping image of her own face molded out of plaster.

Even though the eyes of the mold were closed, there was a liveliness to her expression, a boldness, as though at any moment the eyes would spring open, the mouth part with a laugh or a curse. Anna laid her palms against her cheeks. Where had that woman gone?

She sat down by an unfinished clay head swaddled in linen cloth, peeled back the cloth, and studied it. It was a Commedia mask: the comic face of Arlecchino with his snub nose and carbuncle over his left eye. She smiled at the sly expression and started to work the clay.

Bent over her work, she sensed the hush of the masks above her. Had she returned to them? Anna tried not to think as she laid her hands on the face of Arlecchino. Her fingers warmed over the clay and the face changed expressions under her hands: one moment stupid and dull-witted, the next cat-eyed and hungry. She knew the joy of creation that she had known before her world had soured.

Before.

The word stung like a wasp. Before her life grew barren. Before she was cursed. Her hands faltered over the mask; the foolish grin turned cruel. How could love make your life so hateful? The fool's face beneath her hands opened wide its eyes and then died, suffocated by the rough twisting of her hands on the clay. Cupping the clay cheeks Anna leaned down close to the mask, her lips nearly touching it. "Breathe, my love, and I will give you the prettiest of actresses to kiss before the world," she promised. She laid her own lips against the mask to seal the bargain.

But when she pulled away, she saw that the clay lips were flat and lifeless. The skill she had once possessed was scattered like the dust on the studio floor. In her belly, the thorns twisted and gouged at her flesh.

"Cursed," Anna said to the masks above her. "Do you see how he cursed me that day? He so poisoned my heart with black bile that nothing grows, and nothing here"—her hands gripped her belly— "will ever flourish again."

Anna pushed away from her workbench and stood, swaying. She felt the heat of the sun, saw the gold light spilling over the studio floor, and then shivered as the past returned in a sudden gust of chilling fog.

She dug her fingernails into her palms with the effort to stay in the warm present. But the swirling mist came between her and the bright sunlight of the afternoon and she was trapped in the darkness of painful memory.

She had been foolish to love him at all. She had vowed when her husband had died that she would remain independent and alone. She had a daughter to raise and an art to learn. It was Carnevale and a noble, masked as the young Bacchus, appeared at her shop with his friends. Without meaning to, she had fallen deeply in love with the sensual face of the god. For a year their affair had been full of passion and many promises.

But the promises had all been lies, his love a mask.

When Carnevale had ended the following year, he came to her studio, a cold Lenten fog cascading around his shoulders. He told her that he was to be married after Easter to a much younger and, in his opinion, more suitable bride, not a widow like Anna. Out of loyalty to their former romance, he would continue to share her bed, though not as frequently. With each word he spoke, Anna grew more furious at being set so callously aside. They fought in words and then her temper exploded. She attacked him with a gouger, opening a small gash on the side of his cheek before he hit her hard with the back of his hand and sent her reeling to the floor.

He touched the wound and pulling back, saw the blood on his fingers. "You wear the mask of the rose," he snarled down at her, "but beneath the facade, the bloom has long since withered. In you, there remains only thorns. Wretched whore, may you choke on those thorns. May they tear your flesh into shreds."

Lying on the floor, Anna had wept into her palms, while above her in the rafters the masks witnessed her humiliation.

In the months that followed, her tears and rages fed the thorns that, even now, tore at her. And everything that once bloomed within her— every spark of life, every creative desire—died, torn apart by the bitter thorns her lover planted with his curse.

"Why didn't you save me!" she cried to the Gorgons.

"His heart was already stone," they answered.

"And you, my beloved satyr. Where were you?"

The satyr rolled his eyes to one side. Next to him the nymph sighed, dew like tears in her eyes.

"Of course," Anna said. "You were caught in your own snare. I should have put II Capitano over my door! A sword to fall on the bastard's neck when he cursed me and left me lying there like a fool." Anna said, the blood surging in her veins, the old anger returning. "Pezzo di merda. That miserable piece of shit! I hope his ass is covered with boils, that he shits piles, that he vomits blood, that his whey-faced bitch of a wife chokes on his poisoned seed."

The thorns in her belly unfurled their sharp points. Anna cried out, and, with an outstretched arm swiped all the tools off the workbench. She dashed jars of old paint against the walls and tore stacked paper into tatters. High on the wall an Arlecchino mask barked with laughter.

"Hey! S'iora!" a voice called from the door. Anna, still shouting obscenities, stopped and turned slowly, the plaster mold of her face in one hand. A small boy with a runny nose hovered at the threshold, his dark eyes watching Anna warily. In his hands he was holding a rolled piece of vellum, sealed with red wax.

"What do you want?" Anna snapped, her pulse racing.

The boy hesitated.

"What do you want, boy?" she demanded again, waving the plaster mold in the air.

"Man give this to me. To give to you," the boy said.

"What is it?"

"Don't know. Just give me a coin to give it to S'iora Anna Forsetti, the maskmaker. That's you isn't it?" He peered at the masks with a fearful wonder.

"Yes. That's me. Come here, boy." Suddenly realizing it was heavy, Anna carefully lowered the plaster mold to the workbench and brushed stray locks of her hair out of her face. "Don't be afraid. I won't bite."

"I'm not afraid," he answered quickly, but his dark eyes were lit with caution. "Just in a hurry." He held out the vellum. As soon as Anna touched it, he scampered off.

Anna caught sight of the tools lying scattered on the floor. "Madonna, what a madwoman I've become." She sat on her stool and woefully surveyed the mess she had made of her studio. Overwhelmed, she stared down at the rolled vellum in her hands instead.

It was a smooth and milky skin that she recognized as the kind of parchment used by monasteries in their illuminated books. Small hairs adhered to the outer surface of the calfskin. She studied the red wax, but there was no seal impressed on its surface. With mild curiosity, she cracked the wax and unrolled the vellum to lay it on the workbench, where she studied it with growing interest.

On the vellum was a drawing of a maze, the black lines spiraling in patterns to create an impenetrable knot of paths....