Read Online The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland - Free Book Online

We’ve been saying it to each other for thirty years.” He spooned in the juice with a sucking noise.
    â€œThirty!”
    â€œGoes by fast as a bat’s wing. How long have you been married, eh?”
    Pietro and I exchanged sheepish looks.
    â€œFour or five.” He chuckled. “Hours.”
    â€œEhi! Madonna santa. Auguri.” The man stood up and announced it in a loud voice to the whole room.
    â€œAuguri,” they shouted.
    Two young men sent up a whoop and everyone sang a ribald song about a milkmaid’s knowing fingers. At the end, one round workhorse of a woman let out a piercing laugh like a chicken cackling. Pietro laughed too, and then noticed I was bewildered and so he stopped. He stood up, straddled the bench, and held out his hand for me. “Let’s go upstairs.”
    The men grinned and whooped again, and the laughing woman squeezed my wrist after I got up and drew me down to her. “ Senti, bellezza , you’ll like it after he breaks you in.” She cackled again, even louder.
    To avoid her, I turned to go upstairs quickly, and everyonelaughed again, thinking I couldn’t wait. The heat of embarrassment rose in my throat and cheeks.
    Pietro lit a lantern with a stick from the fire and held it before us as we climbed the stairs together. “Don’t pay her any mind,” he said.
    Santa Maria, let him not be rough.
    The upper chamber was unheated, so I undressed hurriedly, facing the wall, far away from the lantern. Even in this marriage of convenience, I had an obligation to comply, but I couldn’t stand to think of his hand touching me where Agostino had forced himself, where the notary had looked. The thought made me queasy. I slipped into bed quickly. Leave it in Rome , I reminded myself.
    His first touch sent a shock through me and I shuddered.
    â€œYou’ll be warm soon.”
    Grazie a Dio . He thought I had shivered.
    There was a softness in his voice. This would not be rape. It would not be by force unless I resisted. Let me not resist. Let me not cry out.
    With his arm around my waist, he drew me toward him. Every muscle in my body was taut as a stretched canvas. He pressed himself against me. His skin was cold. Like mine. We had this likeness. The same damp cold I felt, he had felt too. It made me feel tender toward him.
    His hands stroked my thighs. I squeezed shut against him. Try, I told myself. He waited. His hand between my knees urged me. Open. Open. A little at a time. It wasn’t him that was making this difficult. It was me. I felt myself relax, a little at a time. Slowly, his hand moved up my leg and sent a quiver up to the center of me. A soft murmur, not words, just sound. Was it him or me? His weight didn’t rest completely on me. He was being careful. In the surprising hope of becoming precious to him, I put my hands on his back. Let them not be too cold, I thought. I offered up my fear and hetook it, gently enough at first, until he lost himself in a temporary madness and I braced against the slamming of his frenzy.
    I ached so badly afterward that I had to hold myself, and then I felt a new sensation—his relaxing into sound and heavy sleep. No stealthy departure. No hurry. No crying. Just stillness.
    Grazie, Maria . He did not make me feel ashamed.

7
Florence
    M ilk-white oxen wearing flowered wreaths and hauling carts of olives blocked the road, but Pietro didn’t seem to mind. “I like that wooden chuk-chuk-chuk sound of the olive pickers, the way it echoes through the orchards,” he said.
    Out the coach window, netting covered the ground under olive trees made ghostly by vapors of morning fog.
    â€œIt seems like the whole world is outside with something to do,” I said, happy to have a normal conversation.
    â€œIt’s hard work looking up all day long for weeks. Giovanni and I did it at my uncle’s orchard when we were young. Hard on the neck.”
    â€œLike Michelangelo