In Lucia's Eyes Hardcover - 2005

Excerpt

Amsterdam 1758

The evening on which I came to see everything in a new light, I was planning to dine, as I did every Thursday, with Mr. Jamieson, a wholesaler of skins and tobacco, and then perhaps to go dancing with him. It was only after an attack of gout had forced the good merchant to cancel our appointment that I decided to visit my box at the theater.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not used to luxury. Since the calamity, I have been at life's mercy and am very frugal. I've had to be. For a long time I had no idea what the next day would bring: whether I would go hungry, whether anyone would shelter me, whether I would be attacked and forced to move on. Even after I'd finally attained a certain status in Amsterdam, I always limited myself to a bare minimum of finery--only what was expected in the circles I was obliged to move in and the sundries I needed to practice my profession. I never allowed myself extravagance. Nor did I feel the want of any. In the last couple of years, however, I did allow myself one thing: a permanent box seat at the French theater on the Overtoom, which I visited whenever time permitted.

I was on my way there that evening in mid-October. As usual, I had hired a small but respectable boat. There was a chill in the air. In Amsterdam the cold on the canals is worse than in Venice. More piercing and insidious, it sets in months earlier and tends to settle in the bones rather than the lungs. All the same, I prefer a boat to a carriage. The people on the quays tend to ignore those who pass them on the water. More or less unnoticed, I am able to study others at my leisure. On the evening in question I was doing just that, partly for my own amusement and partly for professional reasons.

In the curve of the Herengracht, two gentlemen caught my eye. One of them I already knew: Jan Rijgerbos, a stockbroker. A friendly, cultivated widower, Rijgerbos is fit, well built, and undemanding. His companion was unknown to me. He had a dark complexion and a striking profile. It was the latter feature that immediately attracted my attention. His appearance touched me in a way I could not explain. I asked the boatman to row faster so that we might stay abreast of the two men walking on the quay, and I continued to study the stranger. His face was oval, and a blond wig framed it to advantage. Although not particularly handsome, he soon aroused my desire quite unexpectedly.

This annoyed me.

I am the one who arouses desire.

He was too slight for me anyway, I decided. What's more, dressed as he was according to the latest Paris fashion--in breeches of yellow silk that showed his calves--he cut an absurd figure in such bleak weather. I lost interest and began surveying the other pedestrians. As we passed under the Leidsebrug, however, Rijgerbos and his friend were just crossing it and I managed to catch a snatch of their conversation. They were speaking French: one with difficulty, the other with apparent ease. I liked the sound of the Frenchman's voice and ordered the boatman to stop beneath the arches of the bridge. We waited there in the shadows until the two men were out of sight.

Were it not for the recklessly low neckline I was wearing, or that my thoughts that evening were far from elevated, or that I am scarcely the kind of woman a higher power would squander ten minutes of thought on--were it not for any of these incontrovertible facts, you might imagine that God, or maybe the devil, had arranged the whole thing for His entertainment. A coincidence like this! How rare it is that we are allowed a glimpse of the grand scheme within which all our lives are arranged. All the years of being buffeted by fate had not prepared me for what would follow. All that time I had been constantly on guard. And now, just as I was beginning to think that fortune had finally grown bored with tossing me about, it rose up again, coming to feral attention to seize me by the throat.

This time I cannot but accept that some catastrophes do have a purpose. It does make sense to persevere. I have been furnished with proof of that. Or at least, God willing, I soon will be.

I took my seat as usual shortly after the performance had begun, so as to offend as few spectators as possible. The opera was an old pastoral play that had recently been put to music by a composer from Grenoble. The performers were mainly the theater's regular company, and ovations welcomed the favorites. The lead, a shepherdess, was being played by a soprano who had triumphed in this role all over Europe.

Midway through the first act, Jan Rijgerbos knocked at the door of my box.

"Well, this is a surprise," I said. "I had no idea you liked the theater. I don't recall ever seeing you here before."

He was too well bred to show his discomfort at talking to me, but he did take care to remain out of sight of the audience below. I am used to that--no harm--and I didn't hold it against him.

"I must confess that the music is too mannered to my ear, but what do I know of it? No, I have a guest, a friend from France. He is visiting our city as an agent of the French treasury and insists on attending the theater every evening, as he does in Paris."

Rijgerbos stepped aside to reveal his guest, whom he introduced as Monsieur le Chevalier de Seingalt.

"They sold us our seats in the pit with the assurance that we'd have the best view of the performance," the man said in French, bowing to kiss my hand. "But no one warned us that the evening's most beguiling spectacle would not be onstage."

There is nothing a man can say to a woman that I haven't heard before. Compliments about appearance in particular always depress me, especially on a first meeting. From the outset, their sense of obligation seems to weary them. Dispatched on a mission they have no faith in, they inevitably stumble, like plow horses pressed to perform dressage, and their fatigue in the face of the task is evident from the outset. Some women live for sweet talk. I would rather go without. But how is a man to know that? Most aim to please with little understanding of our pleasure.

I cordially invited the gentlemen to join me in the box. Jan concealed himself behind the curtain, but Seingalt stepped forward unembarrassed in full view of everyone below. The yellow silk of his conspicuous suit seemed to light up in the glow of the downstage candles.

It was only when he was sure all eyes were upon us that he sat down and deliberately slid his chair closer to mine. This could mean only one of two things: Either Jan had told him nothing about me, or he had told him everything and Monsieur le Chevalier was an absolute fire-eater. Either way, I decided to like him.

We listened to the rest of the aria in silence, I all the while aware of Seingalt looking at me. He was trying to make out the outline of my face through the lace I was wearing as a veil. Although I knew he would not succeed, his attempt disturbed me. I had to master my breathing to avoid betraying my excitement. His eyes, large and black under heavy lids, would wander, sometimes down over my body, sometimes up in the hope of catching my expression.

When the big chandeliers were lit for the interval, I moved aside into the shadows. The chevalier began to inform me of his recent arrival from Paris and of his mission to ease France's beleaguered financial position by selling to the Dutch French government bonds that had depreciated because of the war. He was staying at the Star of the East, on the corner of the Nes and the Kuipersteeg. When he said this, he probed once more for an expression on my face, to no avail. Eventually he asked what no one in his position had dared to ask before: whether I would reward his friendly curiosity by allowing him a glimpse of my countenance. He was clearly unused to a woman's refusing him anything, because later he tried again, less politely. Finally he asked forthrightly why I would begrudge him something for which his desire had only deepened as we spoke.

"If you owned a valuable gem," I said, "you wouldn't oblige everyone who asked to gawk at it, would you?"

He smiled, conceding. "No, I would keep it in perfect safety."

"That is just how I keep myself, monsieur."

From the day I first decided to wear a veil, I have found its effect on men to be remarkable. More than anything, men want that which has been withheld. A happy certainty is no match for a mystery denied. Given a choice, a man will always take the unknown.

"This gem of yours must be unique in the world," the savior of France remarked with a pout, letting his gaze glide mischievously down my bare throat, "considering that you have no qualms about exposing other treasures to the idle gawker."

"Give up, sir," I advised. "You have met your match."

I toyed with him a little longer until he fell silent and pretended that the singers, who had returned to the stage, were demanding his attention. Not to dash his hopes entirely, I opened my fan and laid it on the plush before him, a sign well understood all over Europe.

For years I was accustomed to seeing myself in the eyes of others. I judged myself by their reactions to me. The looks they gave me were the key to who I was. Then I hit upon the idea of drawing a curtain over all that.

At first I covered my face only to go out. Constraining myself in this fashion, I found a freedom I could remember only from my earliest childhood. Since putting on the veil, I have lived as if reborn. Unseen by others, I have no need to look at myself. Delivered from the image that had eclipsed my every other sense of reality, I move once again through a world without danger, like a child among protective elders. They allow me more latitude, no longer seeing me as one of them. I don't have to join in their serious discussions. While they sit at table, I imagine myself crawling around on the floor between their legs. Children are aware of the judgment of adults but don't let it weigh on them. That is the lightheartedness I rediscovered in my disguise. And it pleased me so much that in the last few years I have drawn my veil over almost all my waking hours, even at home, sometimes even alone. At work I always wrap myself in it. It's what has made me so successful.

The play takes a dramatic turn. The squire warns the shepherdess: His son may be in love with her, but he will be disinherited if they marry. To preserve her beloved's happiness, she pretends to love another, then abandons her flock to join a convent. Just after she has become a bride of Christ, the lovesick youth comes knocking at the gate. He has discovered the whole scheme, but too late. She allows him one last look at her beauty. Then she dons the wimple and is lost to him forever.

"What desecration!" Seingalt sighed, as the soprano disappeared under her habit. His indignation was genuine and the words just slipped out. "Hiding something so beautiful; that must surely count as a mortal sin!"

"I am happy to leave the judgment of our sins to Him who invented them, monsieur."

He looked at me with a wry smile. "Perhaps He would take the same opportunity to explain why someone like you would choose to hide herself."

Soon after, I closed my fan and put it away. Heroines who sacrifice themselves needlessly should not count on my sympathy. I'm annoyed by silly geese who let their minds overrule their emotions, and glad to see them get what they deserve. Rather than sit through the rest of the act, I asked the gentlemen to excuse me. The pastoral was upsetting, and I come to the opera to be diverted, not disturbed.

It was hardly the first time I had been accused of hiding behind my veil. A frequent misconception, since quite the opposite is true.

I hide the world.

I have lowered a curtain before it.

Through that haze of lace and silk it looks so much softer.


2

I don't remember any boundaries. Pasiano, the estate where I was born, extended out over the hills as far as the eye could see. The doors were always open. I could walk for hours and, whichever way I went, everything was familiar. My parents never worried about me. In the morning, when I raced off after a bird or a rabbit, they weren't afraid to see me disappear. They knew that by midday the smells spreading out over the fields from the kitchens would lure me home for lunch. While still young I befriended the horses in the meadows, and in time they let me ride them, with my hands clinging to their manes and my heels in their flanks. The chicks from the fowl yard were my toys, and the overseer's dogs were my playmates. Together we rolled down the golden slopes and ran through the woods. The streams in the valleys were warm and shallow, and until my tenth birthday the gamekeepers were forbidden to set traps. At Pasiano there was no danger. There were no limits to my happiness. I spent my childhood fearless and unjudged.

I had no reason to believe that things in the world beyond its grounds were any different.

Like everyone else, I learned to feel before I learned to think. It was only after people had begun to teach me that I began to distinguish things and recognize facts. But I never put what I was taught above the things I knew intuitively. Even now, I am reluctant to admit disagreeable realities. Self-delusion has the benefit of letting us believe that everything is still possible. I have a talent for that. It makes me feel less afraid. Were the devil staring me straight in the face, I would still convince myself that my visitor was an angel. I'm sure I could even set Lucifer to doubting.

I believe in dreams. I understand them, feel at home in them. For my first fourteen years, I lived one. That doesn't mean I won't see the truth. I actually see it much too clearly.

Media reviews

“Enthralling . . . Packed with the color of 18th-century life . . . A complex examination of thwarted love . . . A marvelous reversal of hunter and prey, with a soupcon of Dangerous Liaisons . . . Lucia’s slightly arch voice throbs with as much searching intelligence as sexual passion . . . What makes In Lucia’s Eyes so fascinating is its melding of disparate veins: It’s a painful story that arrives at profound insights about the nature of love, but it’s spiked with bodice-ripper suspense and humor; it’s an intensely private testimony of one woman’s peculiar survival, but it’s laced with a fascinating survey of 18th-century intellectual history. Brace yourself with all the skepticism you want, you’ll still be seduced.”
–Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World

“An irrisistible subject . . . Lucia is a prostitute with a 24-karat intellect. By the end of a novel that consistently pits reason against emotion, she has found the means to satisfy each.”
–Kathryn Harrison, New York Times Book Review

“Japin has done his historical homework . . . A mesmerizing look into a Europe of long ago.”
–Condé Nast Traveler

“A dark intrigue . . . Vivid . . . Startlingly poignant . . . unfolding in intricately plotted flashbacks and divan-rattling love scenes . . . Through Lucia, we’re able to discern firsthand the secrets of Casanova’s success.”
–Megan O’Grady, Vogue

"Inspired by a character in Giacomo Casanova's History of My Life–a once beautiful girl disfigured by small pox whom the great seducer meets again in the brothels of Amsterdam–Arthur Japin spins an enthralling tale on the mystery of first love and its endurance in the face of a lifetime of hardships."
–Andrea Di Robilant, author of A Venetian Affair

"To see the world through Lucia's eyes is to see it in the fullness of wonders and dangers most never notice."
–Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist