Whispers of Vivaldi

by Beverle Graves Myers

  Perhaps Torani’s loyalty had something to do with the uncanny gondolier’s instinct that had led Peppino to affix the boat’s cabin before the rain settled in. Inside that cabin, the old man would be as safe and dry as a tortoise inside its shell.

  Taking Torani’s arm, Peppino hustled his master down the steps, through the downpour, and into the waiting gondola. Then the boatman donned his wide-brimmed beaver hat, unlocked his oar, and kicked away from the stones.

  There was no reason to stand under the portico with damp seeping into my bones and drips from the eaves staining my jacket. I shivered. The wind had picked up and it was growing colder. I should have gone in, but as Peppino steered down the canal toward more highly traveled waterways, something kept my feet rooted to the spot. Deep in my gut, disquiet uncurled like a snake waking in the warmth of a summer morning.

  I tried to shake the feeling off. The company was waiting. Balbi would be quieting his musicians’ complaints. The singers would be drifting around the stage, gossiping or threatening to retire to their dressing rooms. Majorano would be devising heroic poses that I’d only have to make him unlearn. Get to work, Tito.

  I’d turned to re-enter the theater when a flash of movement caught my eye. A second gondola darted out from under an arched bridge fifty yards or so up the canal—a two-oared gondola with boatmen fore and aft pushing their oars like mad. I ran down the steps, ignoring the needles of cold rain.

  The boat shot past the landing. Its sleek blackness, unrelieved by a coat-of-arms or identifying shield, was swiftly gaining on Torani’s gondola. It carried no passenger, only the pair of stout-shouldered boatmen. Their eyes were shaded by tilted hat brims, the lower half of their faces covered by kerchiefs.

  Their malicious intent was clear. I ran along the pavement overhanging the canal, yelling at Peppino’s receding back. Despite the weather, he was oaring in his usual lazy strokes, but my warning fell on deaf ears, lost in the pounding of rain on stone, tile, and water.

  I looked around frantically. The shops and homes along the pavement were shuttered—the rain had driven everyone indoors. Neither was help to be found across the canal where the houses came right down to the water. A flat-bottomed punt was moored at one house’s door, but I saw no sign of life within.

  I ran on.

  Through the slanting sheets, I saw Torani’s gondola draw near the intersection of a wider canal. The faster boat had nearly caught them. As Peppino angled to make the turn, the chasing gondola’s bladed, serrated prow bore down on Torani’s boat like a snapping dog leaps at a cornered boar.

  It rammed the smaller gondola direct center. Wood splintered and cracked. The cabin toppled.

  Peppino flew off his deck, mouth open in a scream. Where was the old man?

  I sped the last few yards tearing off my jacket and waistcoat. Half-leaping, half-slipping from the edge of the slick pavement, I dove into the chill, salty water. It covered my head, but I quickly bobbed to the surface. Like every Venetian boy, I’d learned to swim soon after I could walk. In a city crisscrossed by waterways, it was a necessity.

  Peppino was splashing in the water amidst the wreckage. “Where’s Torani?” I yelled. He shook his head before disappearing behind the floating cabin hood.

  A blow to the back of my head caught me by surprise, an invisible hammer swinging out of the mist above the roiling canal. A burning swallow of saltwater stung my throat. Had the bravos in the chase boat come about to launch another attack?

  I whirled around. It was Torani! Thrashing and flailing in a desperate attempt to keep his nose above water, the old man had clonked me. I clutched at his white collar, a visible target in the dark water, but it slipped through my fingers. We struggled. The old man was in a panic, resisting the very efforts that would save him. Finally his head went under and didn’t come back up.

  With a huge breath, I ducked under the surface. It was too dark to see, but after several terrible seconds I made contact with a limp arm. I pulled mightily, fighting to find solid footing amid the refuse on the canal bottom. Impossible! Weighed down by his drenched clothing, the maestro was as heavy as a baleen whale.

  My lungs were near bursting when Torani’s body suddenly lightened. Peppino had found us. He sent me a triumphant grin as we broke the surface with Torani between us. I tipped the old man’s chin back; Peppino pointed toward the pavement. A few men had gathered there. We floundered toward them, and strong hands pulled us from the water that lapped and sucked at the mossy stones.

  Trembling, heart pounding, and as weak as the proverbial kitten, I could only sit with my arms around my knees as a sturdy, white-aproned barber applied his knee to the middle of Maestro Torani’s back. When the maestro’s head rose from the pavement, coughing and sputtering, I knew he would survive.

  Crisis averted, I began to feel the cold through my sodden shirt and breeches. I was suddenly very tired. The hubbub caused by the gondola crash seemed to recede into the distance, as if a giant’s hand had scooped me up and set me down on the next campo. Shivering, I found myself hunching forward, hugging my neck with my right arm. Though my throat was no longer golden, the instinct to protect it remained. I was barely aware of someone—Peppino?— throwing a cloak around my shoulders.

  More than anything in the world, I wanted to close my scratchy eyes and forget this flagrant attack—along with the bewildering events of the past few days. Instead, I twisted around to survey the intersecting canals.

  The wreck of Torani’s gondola had come to rest at a landing across the wider canal. The oaken ribs showing through its lacquered, crumpled hull put me in mind of our Christmas goose once most of the meat had been stripped from the carcass. Several sbirri were inspecting the stricken boat, poking the black frame with long rods. The constables turned to each other with puzzled frowns and impatient gestures, then started questioning the small crowd that had gathered. The men and women immediately backed away, shook their heads, and spread their hands. Even beyond earshot, their message was clear: “We saw nothing.”

  The rain continued to fall, lighter now, but miserable just the same. All was drizzle, haze, and fog. The marauding gondola had vanished into the mist.

  ***

  The Savio alla Cultura was quickly informed of Torani’s accident—the gazette’s eventual and totally misguided term for the brazen attack—and named me interim director of the Teatro San Marco on the spot. I wanted to wait to see how Maestro Torani fared, but Signor Passoni insisted. While I was still in my dripping clothing, he graced my palm with a pouch containing twenty gold ducats and told me he expected great things for our coming season.

  Receiving unexpected purses from the Passoni family was becoming a habit.

  Torani set about his recovery without serious consequences, but the ordeal left him rheumy and weak. Doctor Gozzi confined the old man to bed and called in every day to see that his orders were followed. Each time I visited, I recalled an old porter who’d swept my boyhood campo and run errands for its inhabitants since time immemorial. My elderly Aunt Carlotta would point to his stooped frame and declare, “That facchino is nothing but gristle, bone, and leather, but he’ll be pushing his broom long after I’m gone.”

  Torani was much the same. Tough. I expected to be interim director for a short time only.

  There was no official inquiry into the incident, even though I reported what I’d seen to the sbirri. Once Torani was settled at his lodgings under Tedi’s watchful eye, I’d gone to the guardhouse on the San Polo side of the Rialto Bridge, a turreted pile of brown stone that housed Venice’s peacekeepers. The uniformed sergeant at the reception counter gave me scant consideration.

  Why the callous dismissal?

  Very simple. Carnival was coming. Foreigners were already taking up residence in preparation for the famous fete that began on the first Sunday of October, a good four months earlier than in any other city. Cafés were setting out extra tab
les, shop windows displayed tempting goods, and a gaudy riot of pennants, flags, and posters decorated the piazza. Frivolity and excess filled the air. The sbirri had a host of pickpockets, sandbaggers, fraudsters, and sneak thieves to worry about; they had no time for an operatic feud.

  Even when I demanded to be shown into the presence of Messer Grande, the aptly titled chief of the peacekeeping force, I found uninterested ears. Messer Grande had once been my ally in the investigation that led to the loss of my voice. I called him by his Christian name, Andrea, and considered him a friend. But as our work proceeded in different worlds, we had seen less and less of each other, and on this day my old friend seemed preoccupied. Andrea gave me ten minutes to lay out my suspicions.

  I wasted no time in blaming Lorenzo Caprioli for Torani’s terrible state. Andrea agreed that there’d been a long-term rivalry between the two theaters, and he could well believe that Caprioli’s latest ambition was to wrest the Senate’s sponsorship away from the Teatro San Marco. But when I pointed out that Caprioli’s brutish sedan bearers could probably row as effectively as they shouldered his chair, Venice’s principal lawman began to shake his head.

  “You must listen,” I said, putting passion behind my words. “The announcement about Angeletto’s upcoming arrival has taken the city by storm. The minute he heard the news, Caprioli would have immediately recognized the advantage it gave us—Maestro Torani’s acquisition of such a prize would be sure to raise the Teatro San Marco’s stock with the Senate. In his crude fashion, Caprioli took steps to right the balance. Such a thorough villain would see the attack as merely another move in the game.”

  Andrea kept shaking his head. “Tito, Tito,” he murmured as he leaned back in his chair and clicked open a malachite snuff box. I observed my friend while he took his tobacco. The current Messer Grande was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with ruddy cheeks, deep-set brown eyes, and bushy eyebrows that seemed to speak a language of their own. The fleshy platform between thumb and forefinger where he placed his dab of snuff was thick and meaty, leading me to think he had more than a few peasants in his ancestry. But Andrea also came down from a more illustrious line. He’d always worn a heavy crested ring on his left hand, and, after all, a man was not appointed Messer Grande without prominent family ties.

  Before he carried the snuff to his nostril, he gave a dry laugh. “Based on your flimsy tale, I would never be able to take Signor Caprioli before the Quarantia Criminale. What have you given me? A swift black gondola. A pair of anonymous bravos. Not many of those in Venice, eh?”

  Andrea pinched one nostril closed and inhaled his snuff though the other. After the resulting sneeze, he fixed me with a somber stare. “I often see Maestro Torani prowling the city in the wee hours—completely on his own. Your best course of action, my friend, is to see that he keeps to his fireside where a man of age belongs.”

  I shrugged. The maestro was always keyed up after a performance. He liked to call in at the Ridotto for a little faro or relax in a tavern, sometimes with Tedi, sometimes without her. I’d sooner chase a bear out of his lair than order Torani away from his favorite haunts.

  Andrea showed me out with a trace of his old friendliness. “At least this gives you a chance to shine, Tito. Yes, I heard about your new appointment. About time isn’t it?” He placed a hand on my back, with just the slightest pressure to ease me through his office door. “When he is well, tell Rinaldo Torani I order him to go straight home after the opera. A man in his bed behind a couple of doors with stout locks isn’t going to be much of a target, is he?

  “And, Tito…” Messer Grande peered at me for the space of a long breath. “You’d best be careful, too.”

  “To be sure.” I made my bow and left the guardhouse with a new worry burrowing into my soul. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would become a target, but it made perfect sense.

  I was in charge of the Teatro San Marco now.

  Chapter Eight

  I had scarcely three weeks for preparation. Not optimal for a four-act opera, but time enough if I went about it the right way. Unfortunately, by the time Angeletto arrived in Venice, insulated by layers of Vanetti females, battle lines had been drawn. Imaginary lines, but there were so many of them, the San Marco seemed more like an armed camp than an opera house.

  The family’s journey from Milan, as arranged by Maria Luisa, took closer to a week than the several days she’d promised. I used the time to accustom the company to The Duke’s idiosyncrasies. Ziani, our machinist, voiced loud complaints over having to produce a shipwreck in short time, but once he finished grumbling, he had his men push Prometheus’ rock into a corner of the workroom and started sketching.

  The next loudest complaints came from the solo singers, who I now required to sing in chorus, blending their voices and actually cooperating instead of striving to outshine each other. At first, the tenors and basses barely concealed their sneers, and the sopranos complained in whispers behind angrily fluttering fans. Eventually, little by little, my troupe warmed to Rocatti’s new technique.

  Majorano presented the worst sticking point. As I’d predicted, the celebrated castrato felt supplanted and dug his heels in at every turn. He actually became something of a troublemaker, whispering against me in the ranks. Then word circulated that Majorano intended to hire a claque—audience members paid to cheer and applaud him and, in turn, to boo and hiss his rival. Rocatti’s opera called for a warm bond of brotherhood to develop between Angeletto as the duke and Majorano as the huntsman. Totally unbelievable if the pair of them were throwing vocal daggers across the stage.

  “I think you should arrange something to introduce Majorano and Angeletto,” Torani said when I visited him at his lodgings on the Calle Castangna. “You know, present them as equals.”

  “Something?” I repeated wonderingly. Did the maestro think these two huge personalities would become instant comrades over a dish of coffee at Peretti’s?

  “A reception. Their first meeting should occur on neutral territory—not the theater.” Torani squirmed on a wide bed hung with green damask draperies, propped up on three fat pillows. His forehead sported a gash on the opposite side from his scabbed wound. Tedi was intent on bathing both with a cloth that smelled of pine spirits. The maestro pushed her hand away with an impatient gesture.

  “I don’t suppose your Liya could rise to the occasion?” he asked with raised eyebrows, plucking at the counterpane.

  I tried to imagine the opera stars facing each other across my homey sitting room, the Savio and other political luminaries supping on Liya’s plain fare, and Benito in a full-blown lather serving Champagne from a quivering silver tray. An alternative scenario formed in my mind’s eye.

  “Perhaps the Savio would agree to host a reception,” I suggested.

  Torani and Tedi both nodded enthusiastically.

  But then the soprano said, “It’s true that Majorano and Angeletto would both be on their best behavior at the Ca’Passoni, but it would give young Beatrice a golden opportunity to make trouble.”

  “What do you think she might do?” I asked.

  Shaking her head, Tedi rose with her basin and cloth. “Oh, I don’t know—some nonsense calculated to embarrass all of us.”

  “I shouldn’t worry, my dear. Castrati expect young women to make fools of themselves over them—older women, too.” Torani attempted a jocular chuckle. “Am I right, Tito? I’m sure both Angeletto and Majorano know how to handle Beatrice.”

  I had to agree. After a few more minutes’ discussion about the guest list, I noticed that the old man was growing weary and took my leave. Tedi saw me out. I missed her at the theater. I’d been counting on her experience to balance Angeletto’s stirring but less practiced gifts, and had been disappointed when she’d withdrawn from the prima donna role. Torani had laid down the law on that one point. He needed Tedi at his bedside. Oriana Foscari, our secunda donna, was reveling in the unexpected o
pportunity for advancement.

  Tedi had made light of it, saying, “It’s for the best. I’d make a poor milkmaid, wondering if everything was all right here. Besides,” she’d laughed, “Isis decided to have her kittens in the box that held my only peasant wig. It’s ruined.”

  At the entrance, poised on the red-and-black tiled doorsteps lapped by the canal, I spoke of something else—delicately—as I had no wish to frighten Torani’s good lady. “Nothing…untoward has happened, has it?”

  “Untoward? How cryptic you are, Tito. Are you speaking of bravos lurking in the shadows with drawn stilettos? Masked ruffians climbing the vine up to the balcony?” Her forced smile belied the shadows under her blue eyes, the stained bodice, the frowzy bun at the back of her neck. Had Tedi dismissed her maid? “There’s no need to fret,” she continued. “The old fool is going to be just fine.”

  Tedi was a brave woman, perhaps a bit too brave. Did I need to remind her of recent events?

  She went on, leaning against the door jamb, slender white hand pressed to her cheek. “When I call Rinaldo an old fool, I mean it. He’s managed to cause us a great deal of trouble, but it’s over now. I’ve seen to that.” She finished with a firm nod.

  A surprised “Eh?” escaped my lips. Did Tedi have some hold on Lorenzo Caprioli that had escaped my notice? I asked as much.

  Tedi let my question float in the air a moment, then said quietly, “You must let a lady have her secrets, Tito.” She blinked anxiously. “If you want to worry about something, worry about Girolamo Grillo. He’s spewing his filth again, even more publicly. I thought you were going to put a stop to it.”