Whispers of Vivaldi

by Beverle Graves Myers

  Andrea couldn’t contain himself. “What does Torani gain from this arrangement?”

  “The maestro needed money.” I ticked points off on my fingers. “He needed an ingenious opera that would draw subscribers back to the Teatro San Marco. He needed to end his career on a high note, so that he could sail off to his mainland villa with Tedi and bask in the rosy glow of remembered triumphs. The only risk was that someone would recognize the composition as Vivaldi’s and expose Rocatti for a thief and Maestro Torani as an idiotic dupe. Or worse, as a party to the deception. However,” I paused, the next words sticking in my throat, “Torani skillfully manipulated that risk onto my shoulders.”

  “All right.…” Andrea was warming to my theory, I could tell. A sharp knock sounded at the door and a constable cracked it open. “Get out!” Andrea yelled, and the door immediately clicked shut. Andrea turned back to me. “Then what do we suppose happened? How did Torani’s one teasing comment suddenly turn the mild, retiring Signora Passoni into a murderous virago?”

  “Don’t all women have a touch of the virago where their children are concerned?”

  After a brief nod, Andrea took up his pacing again, back and forth from desk to window. To judge from the condition of the carpet, it was a well-worn path. Were his present thoughts in agreement with mine?

  I soldiered on. “Maestro Torani’s quip showed Giovanna Passoni the precariousness of her son’s position. If anyone guessed the truth of the opera’s composition, not only would Rocatti’s musical career be destroyed, her own reputation would be held up for scrutiny. Perhaps her son’s bastard parentage would finally be revealed to one and all. Can you imagine the depth of the Savio’s humiliation? So…let us suppose that after fuming over Torani’s comment for a bit, Signora Passoni sent Franco to conduct the old man to a tête-à-tête in the card room. She admonished Torani, really got the old man’s back up. His wig was off, remember—it had been tossed on the sofa like he always did when he was aggravated. Perhaps he upbraided her fears as ridiculous. Perhaps he disparaged Rocatti’s talents…or…I don’t know…” I pressed fingertips to my throbbing forehead. “No one can say what angered the killer enough to attack him except for the one who committed the deed.”

  Andrea narrowed his eyes, still pacing. “I see a problem here, Tito. Torani had as strong a motivation to keep the true authorship of The False Duke a secret as Signora Passoni. Though he could always shift the worst of the blame to his dim-witted assistant,” he softened his words with a grin, “the opera house would still suffer if Vivaldi’s role was known. Why did he gibe at the signora?”

  I sighed. “Maestro Torani often wagged his tongue without consulting his brain.”

  “Hmm.…I see another problem. This card room sounds terribly busy—was there sufficient time for all these secret meetings, this flouncing in and out?”

  “Plenty of time. By the time Torani came to the card room, Grillo had escaped, I’d cleared out to tend to my wound, and Beatrice had been in to remove any evidence of her amorous activities.”

  My companion halted in mid-stride and pulled his chin back. “You know this from the girl’s lips?”

  I shook my head. “The Savio would never let me near the girl. But she must have gone back to the room. Grillo had left his cloak behind, and at Torani’s funeral that green cloak sat atop Beatrice’s shoulders.”

  “Perhaps Maestro Torani came upon Beatrice in the card room.”

  “I doubt it. It took nearly a quarter hour for me to clean up at the basin in the water closet—plenty of time for Beatrice to take the cloak and for her mother to send Franco after Torani.” My head was swimming again. Steadying myself with a hand on the desktop, I managed to croak out, “Still, the girl is a nosy little busybody, she may have witnessed something. Could you question her?”

  “A brilliant suggestion,” Andrea said with a dash of sarcasm. “I simply march into the Ca’Passoni, request an audience with the Savio’s daughter, and interrogate his little princess about a grisly murder.” He shook his head. “Some people are untouchable, my friend, and most of them are aristocrats.”

  I experienced several things at once: a sense that our conversation had veered off course, a galling premonition that Maestro Torani’s killer would never be found out, and…the very odd sensation of the floor tilting under my feet.

  Andrea threw an arm around me, turned me about, and set my feet into motion.

  “What…where are we going?” My words seemed to echo up from a deep well.

  “I’m taking you home, Tito. You’ve done enough sleuthing for a sick man. You must leave this in my hands.” He opened the door and propelled me through. “And I’ll brook no argument.”

  ***

  That night, after I’d snuffed out the candle, I tossed and turned beside a gently snoring Liya. Eventually she rolled toward me. In the darkness, she found my forehead with her palm.

  “Are you feverish, Tito? Is that why you can’t sleep?” Her voice was husky with concern.

  “I’m all right. I just needed some rest.” Indeed, I’d fallen asleep on the sofa the minute Andrea had delivered me to my door. A long nap had set me right again, but now my eyes remained stubbornly open while my brain rummaged through the details of the day like the rag-and-bone man picks through Carnival refuse.

  “What is it, then? Are you worrying over Benito?”

  Yes, there was that. The longer Benito was gone without word, the more uneasy I became. The lack of even a brief letter made me think my manservant had traveled far afield, perhaps to a backward part of Italy where the mail was uncertain and brigands plentiful. I sat up in the blackness. Though the delinquent Benito was ever on my mind, it was something else that troubled me.

  “Liya,” I asked. “Is it possible for a girl to hide a belly swollen with child? During the entire nine months, right up until the baby is born?”

  I felt my wife push up on one elbow. “Would it have been possible for Giovanna Passoni to hide a pregnancy from the nuns at the Pieta, you mean?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m wondering.” I’d recounted the fruits of my day’s interviews over dinner.

  “It could be managed, depending…” She sighed. “I knew a girl in the Ghetto who shocked her family with an infant that no one suspected. It was her story that convinced me I could keep Titolino a secret. You remember what a disaster that became.”

  I nodded, though she couldn’t see me.

  “My hips are narrow. Titolino couldn’t settle into my pelvis, so my belly looked like a pumpkin before I was even five months along. But other women are different. Perhaps Giovanna is blessed with pelvic bones as wide and deep as a soup kettle—it’s impossible to tell through layers of skirts and petticoats and panniers.”

  “I know so little of this.…Could a birth be hidden, as well?”

  “Again, it depends. She would have needed help, a trusted friend or perhaps a sympathetic young nun, and a few hours of privacy. The Pieta is a huge building…there must be lots of alcoves and nooks. So sad, if that’s true.…” She finished on a yawn and rolled over. In a moment she was snoring.

  I continued to toss in my sheets, trying to imagine Giovanna Passoni as a girl. Would the quiet, mature, aristocratic wife have been as capricious and strong-willed as her daughter, Beatrice? Had she pursued her violin teacher with fluttering lashes and bold smiles? Or had Maestro Vivaldi seduced an innocent virgin? Had Vivaldi arranged for the infant who became Niccolo Rocatti to be cared for by the elderly pair that Andrea had mentioned? And later become his bastard son’s musical mentor?

  One minute I was certain that my theory made perfect sense. Then, after pondering only a few minutes more, I decided it was shot full of moonbeams. Before sleep came to me, I heard the city’s bells toll midnight, then the first hour of the new day.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Several days of storms followed. The wind drove
showers of cold rain slantwise, whipping our quiet canal into a furious river. The cisterns beneath the surrounding pavements, designed to catch the rain and provide drinking water, were quickly overwhelmed. Their drain covers spurted like the fountains of Rome. Above our heads, the roof-tiles made a brave stand against the constant assault, but were finally beaten into submission. Liya and the maid were forced to raid the kitchen for pots and pans to catch the leaks. With bluster, pounding, and gurgling outside and a symphony of drips within, my home became a noisy, uncomfortable place. Liya’s sullen refusal to discuss her lingering inability to decipher her scrying instruments only made things worse.

  By Saturday, the day before the official opening of Carnival and the premier of The False Duke, I would have sacrificed the last few ducats in my strongbox for any distraction. Happily, paupering my family wasn’t necessary. Gussie called in. Heedless to the depredations of wind and rain, my brother-in-law appeared cheerful and invigorated. Perhaps our current weather reminded him of his homeland that I’d found so frigid and rainy.

  “No, I won’t sit,” Gussie said, standing in our foyer in a dripping oilskin cloak and beaver hat. His rosy cheeks were running with damp, and his sodden plait made a lank rat’s tail down his back. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Annetta has been fretting.”

  Liya rolled her eyes skyward. She leaned on a mop she’d been using to chase drips. “Tell her we’re fine, as long as the roof doesn’t open up and drown us.”

  “If it comes to that, you must stay with us,” Gussie said solemnly, nodding. My solid-thinking brother-in-law often took Liya’s sarcasm at face value. “Though Isabella will bother you to death about her kitten. She thinks of nothing else, and is marking off the days with a piece of chalk.” He flexed his eyebrows. “You don’t think Aldo has forgotten, do you?”

  I shook my head. “He won’t forget. It’s all arranged. But tell us, what’s the news around town?”

  “Well…a violent storm has breached the sea wall at Malamocco. They say its docks are ruined beyond repair.”

  I wasn’t surprised. That ancient port guarded a narrow inlet on the Lido, a long sandbar that separated our lagoon from the Adriatic, and took the brunt of the Sirocco winds. “What about the piazza?”

  “Pretty wet.” He shook a hail of raindrops from his sleek beaver hat, and my wife went to work with her mop. “Oh, Liya, beg pardon, I wasn’t thinking.…Anyway, at high tide the water is lapping at the porch of the Campanile. It’s driven everyone indoors. The Ridotto is five punters deep at the faro tables, and you can’t find a seat at a café at any price.”

  I clasped my hands under my chin. “Everyone at the Teatro San Marco better be praying that the piazza stays underwater until tomorrow night.”

  Liya thumped her mop on the tiles. “Well, I hope it doesn’t. The Savio deserves to have the opera fail—after how he treated you. Nothing could make me set foot in that opera house again—nothing.”

  Gussie nodded severely. “Annetta and I feel the same. Tomorrow, our box will be dark, and it will stay that way as long as I have the key in my possession. I don’t know but what I should go down to the box office and turn it in for a refund on my subscription.” He screwed his tricorne onto his head. “Will they give my money back, do you think?”

  “I couldn’t say,” I replied quietly. I shuffled my feet, cleared my throat. There was one thing I’d neglected to mention to either my wife or my brother-in-law.

  “I appreciate your sentiments…but, from the beginning, I’ve been so involved with The False Duke that I would hate to miss it. And I confess I’m eager to see how Venice welcomes Angeletto.” I spread my hands apologetically. “Messer Grande has invited me to watch the premier from his private box—the Savio be damned.”

  For once, both Liya and Gussie were speechless.

  ***

  It was my decision to attend the opera premier—mine and mine alone. I could have pleaded illness, thanked Andrea for his kind offer, and simply stayed home.

  How I wish I had.

  The weather was still beastly—cold, wet, and blustery—but it didn’t stop the flow of spectators streaming into the theater, crowding into every nook and cranny. On this first day of Carnival, no matter what the weather, Venice and her visitors were as one in their determination to celebrate. Masks—black velvet and white satin on the women, leather on the men—were the order of the day, throughout the pit as well as in the boxes. Only the gondoliers who crowded the benches near the stage made no effort to conceal their identities. The boatmen cared nothing for the Carnival whirl. They had paid their soldi to hear the music and cheer their favorite singer. I wondered if any of them formed a claque in Majorano’s pay.

  Angeletto had declared that he and his family were ready for any jealous singer’s trick, but did the Vanini family realize just how passionate a Venetian audience could be? If they loved you, the stage would be awash with flowers and sonnets folded and ribbon-tied into easily thrown declarations of love. But if they hated you…oh, my. Overripe fruit was nothing—at least that was soft. It was the hard candle stubs that could raise a bruise.

  As I was recalling several performance-halting incidents, my attention was diverted by a hulking, broad-shouldered man pressing in among the gondoliers and passing a word here and there.

  I leaned over the box railing and squinted my eyes. Those shoulders looked particularly familiar. Turning, the man confirmed my suspicion. The puckered scar that ran from ear to chin was visible even three tiers below. Scarface, Lorenzo Caprioli’s chief bravo, had come to watch The False Duke. And right behind him was his fellow chair-bearer, the one with the broken nose. I sank back, more concerned than ever. Had the pair been sent to spy on the production for the Teatro Grimani or simply to cause trouble? For Maestro Torani’s sake—despite the director’s frauds and deceits—I wanted The False Duke to be a success. It would end up being my mentor’s legacy.

  Accustomed as I was to backstage life, this elegant third-tier box served as an unfamiliar vantage point for me. It contained only Andrea and me and several empty, gilded chairs. My friend, who was busy studying the program he’d purchased in the lobby, had thrown his red robe of office over a severe black suit. I wore my best wine-red brocade coat, shirt trimmed with Burano lace, stockings of the whitest silk, and paste-buckle shoes. In Benito’s absence, I’d been forced to summon a friseur to arrange and powder my hair. No mask. I wanted to be recognized—by those opera goers who still remembered my stage triumphs and especially by the Savio.

  My desire was soon fulfilled. While Giuseppe Balbi and the rest of the orchestra tuned their instruments in a cacophony of sound that was barely audible over the general din, I kept my eye on a curtained box a quarter of the way around the tiered crescent. Presently, the drapes were thrown back, and the Savio’s second-tier box sprang to life. Footmen lighted candles on torchieres and wall sconces and scurried to hold seats for the richly dressed party divesting themselves of cloaks and bautas. Their masks fooled no one. The Passoni box enjoyed the best view in the house except for the Doge’s and had been in that aristocratic family’s possession since the theater had been founded. Their neighbors bowed as the Savio, elegantly bewigged, eyes and nose masked in white leather, stepped to the railing and surveyed the house. Choosing his moment well, he drew himself up and extended a welcoming arm that seemed to include the entire auditorium. Beneath his mask, his lips stretched in a wide grin. Someone raised a cheer that gathered strength as it rolled through the pit.

  Andrea and I shared a withering glance. A subtle smile played around the Messer Grande’s lips.

  It was actually Franco who spotted me first. Under the dusky glow from the great ceiling chandelier, I felt the intense stare behind his black satin eye mask, then saw him lean down to whisper to Signora Passoni. He aimed his long arm with its pointing finger up one tier, across the smoky gulf, straight toward me. The signora had been hiding
her face with a jeweled mask on a stick. She lowered it and tilted her head musingly. Beatrice also lowered her own mask to follow her mother’s gaze.

  The Savio was still returning bows and accepting accolades, but he bent to his daughter when she tugged at his sleeve. Beatrice spoke into his ear. His posture stiffened. His eyes snapped to our box.

  I came to my feet and made a low bow, accompanied by a graceful flourish of my hand. Was it only my imagination that a few more cheers rang out?

  The Savio’s head whipped toward the rear of his box. At his rough gesture, a pair of bravos sprang out of its shadowy depths. They shifted their weight from foot to foot, awaiting orders. Signora Passoni pushed through them, using her wide panniers to sweep the men aside. At the railing, her small figure challenged her husband’s noble height. Heedless of the gabbling audience’s stares, she argued with the Savio. Her upturned chin wagged like a marionette’s, and the blue feather atop her wig bounced up and down. Was the signora taking my part? Reminding him why he couldn’t have me tossed into the canal?

  The nobleman aimed one more black look toward me, then waved his men away. A few people—loyal supporters from the old days—applauded. Then the Savio showed me his back. Gazing down at the curtained stage, he stood remote and still as a marble statue. Ah, I was to be pointedly ignored.

  I grinned at the Savio’s obvious frustration. He could have had his men stop me at the door or lay hands on me in the corridor, but he had missed his chance. Once Andrea had ushered me into his box as his guest, I was beyond his reach.

  The boxes as the Teatro San Marco, indeed at every Venetian opera house, functioned as miniature salons, luxurious outposts of the subscribers’ homes. Seats lined the railings for those who wished to follow the opera—or for those intent on training their glasses on the assembled company and gossiping with friends in adjacent boxes. In the scarlet-and-gold interiors, candlelight fell on reclining couches or on tables laid for intimate suppers, which would be delivered and served by liveried footmen who spent the evening either outside in the corridor or crammed into a small, square anteroom just inside the door. The corridor door opened only to the boxholder’s key and was made ready and attended only by servants in his employ. Thus, the Savio had no more power to eject me from Andrea’s box then he would from Andrea’s home.