Casanova in Bolzano Read Online Free

respectable citizens who are responsible for the security of the town gates, for putting out fires, for the maintenance of water supplies, and for the defense of the town in case of attack by hostile forces, not knowing, all the while, whether to gag with laughter or to call the police. And so they walked and talked till noon, still lost for a plan. Then the women began to pack their stalls away and respectable citizens went off to lunch.
    It was now that the stranger woke. Teresa had let the women into the darkened parlor. “Show us . . . what is he like?” the women whispered, screwing up the corners of their aprons and cramming their fists in their mouths; and so they stood in a half circle by the door that led into the bedchamber. They were pleasantly frightened, some on the point of screeching with laughter, as if someone were tickling their waists. Teresa put her finger to her lips. First she took the hand of Lucia, the hazel-eyed, plump Venus of the marketplace, and led her to the door. Lucia squatted down, her skirt billowing out like a bell on the floor, put her left eye to the keyhole, then, blushing, gave a faint scream and crossed herself. “What did you see?” they asked her, whispering, and gathered round her with a peculiar flapping like rooks settling on a branch.
    The hazel-eyed beauty thought about it.
    “A man,” she said in a faint and nervous voice.
    It was a moment before they could take this in. There was something idiotic, strange, and fearsome in the answer. “A man, dear God!” they thought and cast their eyes to the ceiling, not knowing whether to laugh or run away. “A man, well, would you believe it!” said Gretel. The ancient Helena clapped her hands together in a faintly pious gesture and mumbled meekly through her toothless gums: “A man!” And the widow Nanette stared at the floor as if recalling something, and solemnly echoed: “A man.” So they mused, then started giggling, and one by one took their turn to kneel at the keyhole and take a peek into the room, and felt unaccountably good about it all. Ideally, they would have brewed up some decent coffee and sat down round the gilt-legged table with coffee mugs in their laps, waiting in a ceremonial and gently impudent manner for the foreign gentleman to walk in. Their hearts beat fast: they felt proud of having seen the stranger and of having something to talk about in town, at the market, round the well, and at home. They were proud but a touch anxious, particularly the widow Nanette and the inquisitive Lucia, and even the proud, somewhat dim Gretel felt a little nervous, as if there were something miraculous and extraordinary about the arrival in town of “a man.” They knew there was something foolish and irrational about their heightened, coltish curiosity, but, at the same time, they sensed that this improper curiosity did not account for the whole feeling of excitement. It was as if finally, albeit only through the keyhole, they had actually seen a man, and that husbands, lovers, and all the strange men they had ever met, had, in that moment of glimpsing the sleeping figure, undergone a peculiar reappraisal. It was as if it were utterly unusual and somehow freakish to find a man that was ugly rather than handsome, whose features were unrefined, whose body was unheroic, about whom they knew nothing except that he was a rogue, a frequenter of inns and gambling dens, that he was without luggage and that there was something dubious even about his name, as if it were not really or entirely his own; a man about whom it was said, as of many a womanizer, that he was bold, impudent, and relaxed in the company of women: as if all this, despite all appearances, was in some way extraordinary. They were women: they felt something. Faced, as they were, with the mysterious stranger, it was as if the men they had known were coming out in their true colors. “A man,” whispered Lucia, faint, anxious, and devout, and they felt the