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years and finally find happiness … And though maybe I shouldn’t tell you, I have to because you are the only person who will really be able to understand my motives, I hope. And I want someone to understand me so I won’t be completely alone with my wickedness. So I will have someone—and who else but you?—to share my guilt with.
    The thing is, Mirko—I met Kurt in Venezuela when I was married to Eduardo, and he was then, and still is, a kind, civilized, extremely intelligent, ‘cultured’ man, with whom I have a great deal in common. I met him then, as I say, but I had seen him before then. And maybe, just maybe—though this I shall never know and never want to know—he had seen me. I saw him in Poland during the war—in that place. I saw him quite often. I saw him when he beat my mother to death …
    I told him once that I had come to Venezuela before the war …
    How he got to South America I don’t know (though the same way as all the others I presume) any more than I know how he managed to hang on to the fortune he ‘acquired’ in those war years. (He was a fairly high-ranking officer, and was notorious for his great taste—in other people’s treasures.) But he did, somehow, and doubled or tripled it in Venezuela in one way or another. (Even there rumour had it that it was ‘another.’) And then, six years ago, he retired to Italy, where he has lived ever since in great luxury in his castle, and spent his time tending his gardens and his pictures and waiting , he claims, for me. Which, if he knows, may be true. Or even if he doesn’t?
    Anyway my dear—there we are. Do you think I am doing something too very wrong in marrying such a man? Possibly I am, but—apart from longing for some beauty again—there seems to be something so inevitable about the whole affair that even if I didn’t want to, I have a feeling that sooner or later I would. Perhaps I’m mad …
    I’ll phone you in a few days after you’ll have received this—I wrote because it was easier for me than telling you—and will let you know the actual day we are getting married, so you can come over.
    In the meantime darling—take care of yourself, eat properly, and—paint!

    All my love,
    Elisabeth.
    After she had finished writing this Mrs Vidozza re-readit. And when she had, she nearly tore it up. Because, she realized, it sounded so contrived and far-fetched that she doubted whether Mirko would believe a word of it—apart from the actual fact of her getting married. But then, after another couple of minutes, she decided she would send it anyway. Because whether Mirko believed it or not—and if he didn’t she would make him believe it when she saw him—this letter had, right from the moment the idea had come to her eight months ago, been the culmination of all her plans; and not to send it would defeat the object of the whole operation. She wanted him to paint—right, from now on he’d be able to. She also wanted him to paint something more than just beauty. And now, knowing what he did about the origins of the money that supported him, he could hardly fail to do otherwise. Could he? Well, that was a doubt she’d have to live with for a while, she thought, as she addressed the envelope. If, after a few months, he still painted in the same way—it would just mean that he wasn’t, and couldn’t be, a great painter, and that would be another disappointment she’d have to learn to live with; other ashes she’d have to taste. But if he did, at last, as she was so dreadfully giving him the means to do, paint the beast itself—paint it and capture it and transform it—then her marriage, this marriage that was so alien to her, would not have been in vain.
    *
    So she thought all that night, and so she thought next morning as she mailed the letter in Siena, where Kurt had taken her in order to buy her a ring, and to see his lawyer and change his will in her favour. But then, as they were driving home, a doubt came to her; a