The Art of Discretion
By Dian Parker
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One hundred ways to speak with a hand fan. Opened slowly, like a demure minuet, means Wait for me. If the fan is fully expanded and fluttered wildly, then you mean all is not well and the meeting is to cease, immediately, in other words Leave the premises now! I am engaged. To let the fan glide along the cheek means I want you. And to open and close the fan fitfully means You are cruel.
Tosca’s fan was black, fringed with emerald green tips that glistened when she snapped the fan open in one swift flick of her tiny wrist. The fan and hand were one, as if she grew silk folds instead of fingers. Her fan swirled and cascaded in the still air of the grey studio, and I was in Restoration England and she had just received a dozen billets-doux from fops and cits and wits and Beaux Street beaux.…
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