The Big Question: Marcel & Nico

What they want is simple: reassurance that they will be safe in the coming battle, skirmish, whatever is pending. Nico is the one whose palm is being read, but he might not have been the first; the look on Giorgio's face knows the future--he might not have had his palm read, but if not, he knows some other way. If he has, Alessandra has been cryptic, but he knows.

Anyway, I'm considering Nico and Marcel. I think Marcel is deciding whether to have his read, and as he's listening to the woman's interpretation of Nico's hand, he's weighing whether he'd rather know or just imagine what she might say to him.

But the core question for both is the same: will I walk away from the battle, all my body parts intact, all my blood still swishing around inside me?

Could be....

Alessandra is not the character who first catches my attention; Giorgio is. His haunted look resonates with me, and I think that when his palm was read, he knew that the battle they're heading for will be his last. I'm not sure that he was actually told that, though. Delving into Alessandra is how I'll decide if Giorgio was told straight out that he's going to die, or if Alessandra is a charleton, or too nice--couching her reading in vague platitudes. Not sure yet. That's one of the things to be explored as I go through this process.

Here's what I do notice, however. Alessandra, a fortune teller in a tavern, perhaps even a gypsy, is dressed in the colors usually reserved for the Virgin Mary--with the addition of the deep blood red. Foreshadowing the blood to be shed on the battlefield? I think so. But the Madonna-ish tone to her... still thinking about that. Is she a prophet? Holy? Doesn't feel right...Is she pure in some sense? Maybe. More on this later, I'm sure.

Day Two

On the far right is the character who haunts me. When I look at the painting in the Great Gallery in Toledo, that’s the character who is looking straight back at me. It’s hard to see him well in the small reproductions, but he has a look of resignation, pain—in Jesus Christ Superstar, Pilate describes Jesus’ expression as “a haunted, hunting kind.” That’s what I see here. Also, he strongly resembles George Harrison during the Maharishi phase, so I am naming him Giorgio.

A quick name, needing no explanation: the dwarf is Herve.