[The gods of antiquity tossed saints and sinners, lovers and chimeras up into the heavens, making sure that there was a thumping good yarn behind each stellar formation. Just so, I’m certain that a kind of logic connects these three characters, and I begin to suspect that I am more implicated in it than I thought. Perhaps I was not just a witness but one of them, a fourth outsider at our villas: I, the foreign writer; Ombretta, the Venetian recluse; Francescon, the master painter; Remo, the wild spirit. Perhaps we were a story, and didn’t know it.
I’m still searching for the thread, aided by a few clues in my own house. An iron bed, and the melancholy voice of an Ecuadoran girl who calls me occasionally, asking for news of a letter; the fat-cheeked face of a putto, peering out of a garland of dog roses; and a few ribbon-bound sachets of lavender, crumbling into aromatic dust.]
—From “Three” in the New Yorker, 9/28
Why oh why did it take me so long to discover Andrea Lee? Interesting Women will be my next great reading love affair, I just know it.
