Casanova in Bolzano Read Online Free PDF

about, gaping at a poor feral creature like me! This is not a cage in a traveling circus, ladies. The feral creature is awake and hungry!”
    He laughed again, but bitterly now and in ill humor. “Where have you come from?” he asked with quiet contempt. “From the market? From the inn? There is already talk in town that I am here: spies are sniffing round and keeping their ears open, women are gossiping in parlors and in boxes in the theater, as are you in the market, I suppose. He’s here, they are saying, he’s arrived, how entertaining! What honor you do me!” he repeated indifferently, with just a hint of complaint. “So, here I am. Look at me! This is what I look like! This is the way I really am, not the way I appear in the evening, wigged, lilac-coated, with a sword at my side and rings on my fingers! This is what I’m like, not a whit more handsome, not a day younger! Do you like the look of me? Do you fancy me? Do I live up to my reputation? What do you expect of me? Why don’t we elope, all six of us, hop on a mailcoach and set off to see the world? Am I not Giacomo, itinerant lover, servant to all and exploiter of all, at your ladyships’ service, whenever, wherever you desire? Go away, you brood of hens, clear off!” he cried, his voice terrifying, his brilliant black eyes beginning to glimmer with a faint green light, or so Lucia said later, as she wept and trembled in the marital bed one night, confessing all to her husband. “Imprisoned for sixteen months in the name of virtue and morality! Have you any idea what that means? Sixteen months, four hundred and eighty-eight days and nights on a bed of straw with the stink of human misery in my nostrils, prey to fleas and lice, in the company of rats; sixteen months, four hundred and eighty-eight days in the dark, without sunlight or even real lantern light, living like a mole or a rat, alone with my youth, with the ambitions and desires of manhood, alone with my memories, memories of the life I lived, memories of waking to brightness and of the sweetness of retiring to bed; alone, excluded from the world, in the name of virtue and morality, of which I am the sworn enemy—or at least that is what the
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said when he had me arrested! Four hundred and eighty-eight days stolen from life, erased from it; four hundred and eighty-eight nights when others could look upon the moon and the sea in the harbor and on people’s faces illuminated by lantern light, on women’s faces at the moment the lantern goes out when the only light remaining is that reflected in the eyes of lovers!” His own speech had intoxicated him by now and he was talking extremely loudly, like someone who had been silent for a very long time. “Why are you backing away?” he bellowed and stretched forth his arms. “Am I not here! I have come! You, granny, why are you cowering by the door, and you, you vain silly brown-eyed creature, why don’t you come closer? See, this is the arm that has squeezed many a woman’s waist, these are the hands you have longed to see! Are you not frightened of them? . . . They can twirl a sword and flick through a pack of cards, but they are capable of caressing too! You, you delicate blonde powderpuff, are you acquainted with these fingers? Even in the dark they can tell clubs from spades, but they can also tickle your fancy so you scream out at their touch, and later, when you are toothless, you can lisp to your grandchildren about the time when these fingers closed about your neck! Ladies of Bolzano! Go forth into town and declare that I am here, I have arrived, the performance is about to begin! He is here, the fop, the lady’s consolation, the healer of broken hearts with his arcana of remedies for heartache, the man who knows the recipe for the meal that must be fed the lackluster lover so that he may rise again, virile and amusing in bed the next night! Tell them how you managed to break in, that you have seen me with your own