Flashback Video (MV)

Colonel
Captain, I cannot thank you enough.
Your kindness to my cousin have meant a great deal.
Giorgio
You have no reason to thank me.
Colonel
Any attention that is paid to her means so much.
Signora Fosca has always had a shortage of friends.

(Fosca is revealed at her writing table)
Fosca
My dearest Giorgio. I am writing you even though the
Doctor has forbidden it. What a joy to have someone
to whom I can tell my feelings. To share my past.
Colonel
I was a young man when my parents died. And Fosca's
mother and father welcomed me into their house
whenever I was on leave.
(Music under as we go back in time)
As a child -
Fosca
As a child -
Colonel
She was lonely -
Fosca
I was happy -
Colonel
Her parents doted on her -
Fosca
My parents doted on me -

(Fosca's Mother and Father enter)
Both
They said:
Mother, Father
Beautiful.
Mother
So sensitive.
Mother, Father
So beautiful.
Fosca
They told me to be:
Mother
Careful -
Colonel
Of course -
Mother
- Fosca.
Colonel
- to them she was.
Father
A girl as beautiful as you are has to
Fosca
And so -
Father
- be careful.
Fosca
- I thought
That I was beautiful.
Fosca, Colonel
And then she (I) reached the age
Where being beautiful
Becomes the most important thing
A woman can be.
Colonel
An unattractive man -
Fosca
As long as you're a man,
You still have opportunities.
Colonel
- can still have opportunities.
Mother, Father
Beautiful...
Colonel, Fosca
Whereas, if you're a woman
You either are
a daughter or a wife.
Mother, Father
A woman is a flower.
Fosca, Colonel
You marry -
Father
- you're seventeen.
Colonel
- or you're a daughter
all your life.
Mother, Father
Now is the hour...
Colonel
I'd met this nice young man.
Fosca
I'd seen this nice young man -
Colonel
He'd introduced himself -
Fosca
- passing by -
Colonel
- at my club.
Fosca
- just below my window.
Colonel
So -
Fosca
One day -
Colonel
- one evening I invited him -
Fosca
- he tipped his hat to me.
Colonel
- home.
Count Ludovic -
Fosca
I must admit that I was flattered -
Colonel
- this is my Aunt Theresa and my Uncle Bruno.
Mother, Father
A count?
Father
From where, if I may ask.
Ludovic
Austria.
Father, Mother
Austria...
Mother
What a beautiful place.
Colonel
Fosca, we have a visitor!
Fosca
Imagine my surprise...
Colonel
I'd like you to meet a new friend. Count Ludovic.
Fosca
He was even more handsome up close.
Colonel
I was amazed to see the Count take such an interest in my cousin.
Ludovic
If I had know you where here, Signorina -
Fosca
"If he had known..." Of course he knew.
Ludovic
- I would have brought you many flowers.
Colonel
If I had known...
Ludovic
You do like flowers?
Fosca
Yes.
Colonel
I should have known.
Ludovic
I've seen you at your window.
Mother
Won't you stay for dinner?
Father
Do. Yes.
Ludovic
I've watched you every day since I arrived.
Fosca
I had my suspicion.
Colonel
I had no suspicion.
Fosca, Colonel
I chose not to see.
Ludovic
The way you move,
The way you gaze at the sky...
Fosca
For love had made me blind -
Colonel
How could I be so blind?
Fosca
- or what I took for love.
Colonel
Within a month, he had asked for her hand.
Giorgio
Signora Fosca has been married?
Colonel
Yes.
Father, Mother
Austria... Count Ludovic of Austria...
Fosca
I sensed in him a danger,
Deception, even violence.
I must admit to some degree
That it excited me.
Father, Mother
Austria... Count Ludovic of Austria...
Colonel
Once they were married, once he'd received
my uncle's sizable dowry, he traveled a great
deal, was unavailable to Fosca.
Fosca
He gambled away the dowry. I was forced to go
to my parents to borrow from what little savings
they had left.
Colonel
Then one day, as she was coming from market...
Mistress
Excuse me. You're the wife of a Count Ludovic ?
Fosca
Yes.
Mistress
You fool.
The man's a fraud, a fake.
The trips he said he had to take abroad
He took them so that he could be with me.
He calls himself a Count, but he's not.
He's never had a title in his life!
He doesn't have a title,
But he does have a wife
And a child in Dalmatia.
Fosca
No, you must be mistaken.
Mistress
Oh, yes.
He only wants to bleed you
Until the day he doesn't need you.
I warn you he'll abandon you
As he abandoned her and me
And countless others, I've no doubt.
I'm telling you, the man was born without a heart.
You fool...
Fosca
I confronted him with this information, and
he made no attempt to deny it.
Ludovic
A well, at last you know the truth, Signorina.
But you as well must face the truth.
I've no desire to deceive you any more.
But do admit what you ignore:
We made a bargain, did we not?
And we got what we bargained for.

You gave me your money, I gave you my looks
And my charm and my arm.
I would say that more than balances the books.
Now it's done
Where's the harm?

If women sell their looks,
Why can't a man, if he can?
Besides, the money wasn't even yours,
It belonged to those ridiculous old bores,
Your parents.
Forgive me, my dear, but though you are no beauty,
I fear, you are not quite the victim you appear.

Well, let us part by mutual consent and be content.
And so good luck and goodbye.
I must go.
Oh, and yes, we haven't paid the rent
Since July...
Just so you know...
Fosca
I returned home, to find my parents impoverished and in poor health.
Colonel
Fosca's health failed...
Fosca
A woman's like a flower...
Colonel
She began to suffer her first convulsions.
My aunt and uncle nursed her as best they could.
Fosca
A flower's only purpose is to please...
Colonel
I spent months looking for the man.
Fosca
Beauty is power...
Colonel
By then, of course, he'd vanished.
Fosca
Longing a disease...
Colonel
To this day, I dream of finding him and realizing my revenge.
Fosca
My father died not long thereafter.
Colonel
How could I be so blind?
Fosca
I couldn't face the world.
Colonel
It took her many months to leave her bed.
Fosca
It took me months to leave my bed.
Colonel
When her mother died, she had nothing really.
No one.
Fosca
And so I went to stay with my cousin, who in
some way felt responsible for my circumstances.
Colonel
Why could I not admit the truth?
How could I not have seen through the veneer?
I told myself,
"As long as she seems happy, why interfere?"
Or was I just relieved to know
That somebody would want her for a wife?
In war you know the enemy,
Not always so in life.

The enemy was love -
Selfishness really, but love,
All of us blinded by love
That makes everything seem possible.

You have to pay a consequence
For things that you've denied.
This is the thorn in my side.
Mistress
As long as you're a man,
You're what the world will make of you.
Mistress, Mother
Whereas if you're a woman,
You're only what it sees.
Colonel, Father, Ludovic
A woman is a flower whose purpose is to please.
All
Beauty is power, longing a disease...
(As we segue to the next scene, Clara
enters in a robe, her hair down)