Excerpt from The Innamorati: Anna Surrenders

Anna's personal journey into the maze has to do with her belief that her anger at lost love incited her miscarriage. Within her own body she "feels" the curse like the twisting of thorns which keeps her in constant pain and makes it impossible for her to create the masks she loves. She believes, as do all pilgrims on entering the maze, that walking through its twists and turns will unravel the curse and leave it behind her. But the maze is not an exercise in forgetting and losing, it is about confrontation with the self -- a terrifying prospect. She has brought the masks with her and they call out to her from the depths of the bag. But even they tremble at what the maze might do to their beloved Anna.

"Oh, my beauties, where did I take the wrong turn?" Anna asked. She was lying on her back staring up at the flutter of silvery leaves. The air was redolent with the scent of green grass and spicy olive wood. The sun was warm on her face, easing the panic she had felt at discovering herself quite alone in the maze.

"Leaving Venice," said a miffed Pantelone from inside the bag.

"Not studying the classics!" Il Dottore objected.

"Not bringing enough to eat," complained Arlecchino.

"Not bringing any wine.'" grumbled the satyr.

"Loving the devil who cursed us," said the nymph, rustling her leaves.

"Not having a dowry for Mirabella," piped the ingenue.

"Letting the drunkard Spaniard take up space in the bag," groused Pulcinella. "Prickless coward! When I get out of here, I'll give you a hundred whacks where it hurts the most!"

"Wart-faced whelp of a worn-out whore, what do you know of courage!" demanded II Capitano. "Anna should have chopped you up for the moths to eat."

Anna rolled her eyes and pinched her fingers together. "Basta! I didn't ask for your opinions about my life. I only asked where I made the wrong turn in the maze and lost Mirabella and the others?"

The masks were silent a moment before they all started to chatter at once.

"At the cedars, you should have—"

"By the fountain of naked nymphs—"

"The bridge, stupid—"

"What about those dead trees—"

"It's clear that the rountunding ambrage, reticulating the reversals—"

Anna put her head in her hands.  "At least now I don't feel so badly. Clearly, I'm not the only one to be hopelessly lost."

"Why are we here at all?" asked Pantelone.

Anna lifted her face to the olive trees. "Because I have been cursed by an evil man, of course."

"Of course," repeated Pantelone.

"I gave him my love, and he gave me thorns," Anna said, clenching her hands.

"You embraced the thorns, Anna," Pantelone said gruffly.

"No, they made me miserable, they tore my heart into shreds," Anna argued.

"It wasn't your heart," said the ingénue.

"But your womb," finished the nymph.

"And it wasn't he that cast the rake over your flesh. It was you who scoured with it your rage," said the satyr.

"You let grow in its place a vine of thorns," Pantelone complained.

"And you watered it with wine," Pulcinella added.

"Fed it pieces of self-loathing seasoned with anguish," II Capitano said.

"And what of the precious seed, already, growing that was lost, Anna?" asked Arlecchino.

"What slipped out between your legs in the rivers of blood you sweated for this lost love?" asked the ingenue.

"I didn't know," Anna whispered. "I didn't know, until too late. Until the thorns had done their worst."

"Bring back the vine that grows the sweet grapes, Anna," the nymph pleaded.

"That's enough!" commanded Anna, rising. "You are masks.' I made you! What right have you to speak to me thus?"

"Its true, we are masks, Anna," answered Pantelone. "We are limited to knowing only what each of us represents—cunning, cowardice, braggadocio, foolishness. The man on whose face we rest, he must change to suit us. We are always the same. But you Anna, you have changed."

She shrugged. "It's the way of all human beings."

"But you no longer know yourself. You wear a mask to hide your true nature rather than to reveal it, as we do," Pantelone insisted. "You are afraid, Anna. Of yourself."

Pantelone's words stung her like blown sand. Tears started in Anna's eyes as the thorns began to twist in her womb. They were her punishment, planted there by her lover's words and her own rage. The masks were right. She laid her hands against her belly. She pressed, feeling the thorns tear at her soft interior. They had destroyed everything and she had permitted it. She might live in a drunken woman's mask or a bawd's mask, revel enough to drown the shame. But only in her own face could she acknowledge the truth.

Anna glanced up at the sounds of tinkling bells. At the far edge of the olive grove she saw a group of women processing through the trees. Some clanged little cymbals between their fingers, some beat small drums or shook metallic rattles. The lead woman held high a thyrsus, an ancient staff topped with a pine cone and wreathed in ivy. The women twirled in a slow dance, their feet stamping out a path in the long grass for a cart, hauled by four women, on which sat a pale naked youth whose black curling hair was wreathed in a leafy vine. The cart was decked with clusters of grapes and draped with the skins of spotted fawns and black panthers. As Anna watched, the youth upended a flask of wine, sending a thin stream of amber liquid into his open mouth.

Anna licked her parched lips. The sound of the bells chimed louder in her head. Her pulse quickened to the beat of the drums. She could smell the heady odor of fermented grapes, a sweet, sticky perfume in the air, and beneath it, another scent, rank and pungent. Flies buzzed noisily around the animal skins. The procession stopped and the women approached her, their hands held out in welcome. Anna saw that their faces and arms were covered with white clay and that they wore white masks festooned with acorns and tiny pine cones about the brow. They came close to her, speaking softly in a language she didn't understand. Their hands stroked her hair, her shoulders, and her back. One woman touched her belly, and Anna felt the thorns wither. Another brought forth the skin of a fawn and bent low to present it to Anna.

She took it, the flies buzzing madly in her face. The skin was stiff, an unfinished hide with dried blood and threads of sinew still clinging to the back. She trembled as she placed it over her shoulders. The woman laughed and passed her a bowl of wine. She raised it to her lips and drank the dark wine, which washed away all her fear. She looked into the face of the youth and fell deeply in love. Eyes of polished onyx absorbed her pain, caressed it, transformed it into a burning desire.

"Will you wear a mask and join our revels?" he asked. He handed her a peach-tinted mask of a young woman.

Anna took it. It was one of hers, but not hers, not exactly. The arched brows were severe, the nose finished in an arrow point. The lips had lost their youth, the wide sensual mouth opened in a sardonic leer. She took the mask and weighed it in her hands. Once she put it on, she would not be Anna. She would be this mask of the revel, this creature belonging to the naked youth, to the band of women, to the animal skin, and to the drunken passion of the night.

"Anna, wait," called Pantelone.

It was too late. She had already slipped the mask over her face and felt the change pour through into her veins. She looked at the youth and knew who he was—Bacchus. The sight of him filled her with cravings. She wanted to drink until she was insensible. She wanted to dance until she collapsed. Her thighs twitched and her feet found the tamping rhythm of the drums. She wanted to couple with the Lord of the Revel. She wanted to hunt, to tear down a running beast with her hands and taste the warm flesh. She took a pair of cymbals and rang them between her fingers. The sharp chime was like a knife, cleaving Anna from the past, from the thorns, from Mirabella. From the masks.

"Anna, wait!" cried Pantelone one last time.

But his voice was an echo, sliced off by the knife edge of the chiming cymbals. Anna turned slowly in a circle, finding her place among the dancers as they moved up the hill of the olive grove.

 

 

Photo credit: Didaskalia: Journal for Ancient Theater