COUNTESS MATILDA and her daughter FRIDA. Giovanni bows and exits. Matilda is about forty-five years old; she is still beautiful although she repairs the inevitable damage with heavy but expert makeup. Belcredi is lean, prematurely grizzled, slightly younger. Frida is only nineteen. She’s already engaged to Count Carlo Di Nolli, a stiff young man in full mourning. They enter nervously, looking at the room with curiosity (except for Di Nolli) and almost whispering to begin with.
BELCREDI Incredible . . .
DOCTOR Fascinating! The dementia carried through to the last detail.
MATILDA Ah, there it is. Yes, yes . . . Look at it . . . My God . . . Frida, look . . .
FRIDA Oh, your portrait!
MATILDA No. Look. It’s not me, it’s you.
DI NOLLI What did I tell you?
MATILDA But it’s uncanny! Look, Frida—can’t you see it’s you?
FRIDA Well . . . really I . . .
MATILDA Look, Tito.
BELCREDI Wouldn’t dream of it, on principle.
MATILDA Idiot! He thinks he’s being gall-ant. You tell her, Doctor.
BELCREDI Psst—Doctor—for pity’s sake—don’t get involved in this.
DOCTOR In what?
MATILDA Ignore him. He’s insufferable.
FRIDA He plays the fool for his supper, didn’t you know?
BELCREDI Watch where you’re putting your feet!
DOCTOR Why?
BELCREDI Hobnailed boots.
DOCTOR Really?
BELCREDI And you’re about to step on somebody’s toes.
DOCTOR Oh . . . come on . . . what’s so strange about a daughter looking like her mother?
BELCREDI Crunch, too late!
MATILDA Why, what did he say?
DOCTOR Nothing special.
BELCREDI He said there was nothing strange about it. In which case, why did you act so stunned?
MATILDA (enraged) For the very reason that the resemblance is so natural—fool!—because that’s my portrait and to see my daughter looking back at me was an amazing thing, so I was amazed—all right?—and you can keep your insinuations to yourself.
Embarrassed silence.
FRIDA Oh God, it always ends in a row.
BELCREDI (apologetically) I wasn’t insinuating anything. I just happened to notice you didn’t share your mother’s amazement. If you were surprised at anything, it was at your mother being amazed.
MATILDA Well, obviously! She didn’t know me when I was her age. But I caught sight of myself and I saw I was . . . just like she is now.
DOCTOR No more than one would expect. Because for the daughter it’s just a picture, a moment caught and complete in itself. . . while for the mother it comes with a whole string of associations—how she moved, gestured, smiled, spoke, everything which isn’t in the portrait . . .
MATILDA Exactly.
DOCTOR . . . all sprung to life in your daughter.
MATILDA Thank you! But when I speak as I feel, he has to go and spoil it to annoy me.
DOCTOR (continues in his professional tone, turning to Belcredi) Resemblance, you see, my dear Baron, often resides where you least expect it—which is how . . .
BELCREDI Which is how some people might even find a resemblance between you and me.
DI NOLLI Please, please, we’ve got off the point.
FRIDA That’s what happens when he’s around.
MATILDA Which is exactly why I didn’t want him to come.
BELCREDI How ungrateful, after all the fun you have at my expense.
DI NOLLI Tito, I beg you—enough. The Doctor is here, we have serious business, and you know how important this is to me.
DOCTOR Good. Let’s make a start by getting a few things clear. How did this portrait come to be here? Did you give it to him back at the beginning?
MATILDA No, how would I? I was just a girl—like Frida—not even engaged. I let him have the picture three or four years after the accident because Carlo’s mother wouldn’t leave me alone about it.
DOCTOR (to Di Nolli) Your mother being his sister?
DI NOLLI Yes. We’re here because we promised her. She died a month ago. But for that, Frida and I would be on our honeymoon.
DOCTOR With your mind on other things—I understand.
DI NOLLI Mother died convinced that her brother was about to get better.
DOCTOR And can you tell me why she thought so?
DI NOLLI It was a conversation they had not long before she died.
DOCTOR Did they now? It would be useful to know what he said.
DI NOLLI I wish I could help you. All I know is she came back obviously upset. I gathered he’d spoken to her with unusual tenderness, almost as if he knew it was the last time . . . and on her deathbed she made me promise not to abandon him, to have him seen . . .
DOCTOR And here we are. So first, let’s see . . . sometimes the tiniest event can . . . This portrait, then . . .
MATILDA Oh, heavens, we mustn’t exaggerate its importance—it was just that I hadn’t seen it for so long.
DOCTOR Please . . . patience . . .
DI NOLLI Well, quite—it’s been there for about fifteen years.
MATILDA Nearer eighteen.
DOCTOR Please!—you don’t know yet what I’m
