Anna and Benucci retired to this space below every night, near the end of the last act. Once there, they would fold themselves into a small wooden closet that the workers would gingerly raise through a trapdoor in the middle of the stage—so that the two lovers might emerge at last in a state of final marital bliss.
They had to practice it many times for safety and timing.
Benucci went in first, with his wide, foxlike grin. A lattice above the door let the light in. He held out his hand to Anna and she stepped up to join him, turning so her back rested snugly against his front.
He settled his arms around her. “Comfortable?” he asked, his voice sounding at once above her head and through her heart.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
The men slid the door shut.
“Just rest against me,” he said in a low, easy tone. “We’ll be out soon.”
She realized that she had been holding herself rather stiffly, and she sighed a little and let her head lean back against his shoulder. He had large, nice hands, and they held her easily. His face inclined in such a way that his calm breath touched her ear in soft and stroking intervals.
The men outside were talking. It was so dark and quiet where Anna and Benucci were that it seemed the outside must be far away. Anna could not help herself. She lifted Benucci’s hand and put it to her left breast. Her heart beat so fast that she thought she would faint.
His hand held at her breast and his breath caught. Still they did not move. Then he sighed through his nose and circled his hand and pressed there so that she was pressed totally against him. And then she took his hand and put it under her bodice and he pressed and squeezed there, while his other hand stroked her hip. She had never been held so raptly, so completely, with such open ardor.
There was a rattling at the door. Benucci quickly took his hands away. Anna giggled. She thought her eyes must be as big as an owl’s. The man outside explained what they were working on. He said that everything was very safe.
“Are you all right in there, or should we let you out?” he said.
“Perfectly all right,” said Anna.
“Not causing a stink, is he?” asked the man jauntily. “Not getting too ripe for the young lady?”
She smiled and said, “Signor Benucci perfumes himself in roses.”
The door closed again and the box lurched and seemed to hesitate. Benucci twisted down to kiss her and she turned up to meet him. They made no noise but rustling and sighs, the soft wet tsks of lips meeting and drinking and parting. There was a holler from without and the machinery cranked into motion, lifting their conveyance into the air. The sensation of weightlessness, of unhinging, brought a moment of fear, and with it, of greater exhilaration. Benucci pressed himself against Anna and flicked his tongue along the side of her neck, just near her shoulder, and she did not know or care where she was in the world or what she did, as long as there was this, forever. She was made of fluff and nothing, was wholly released, though she had never been so confined.
Up and down they went, more times than they could ever have hoped. If the compartment was constrained, if she could not turn totally to face him, at least they were alone. When they stepped outside it seemed at first they could hardly look each other in the eye, but then everyone remarked how well, how naturally, they moved and sang, as if they’d been working closely all their lives. And almost every other night, for more than a month, they could step into that lifted space and for five or ten minutes be alone together again, alone in their secret, before the door would slide open and they would come forward, flushed and laughing, to general applause, to sing their last number and be married for the hundredth, the five hundredth, time, just as all lovers dreamed.
Letters
Dearest Stephen,
I have not forgotten you. We have been so busy. There is no time to eat or think. If only you were here.
We are sorry that things are in such a dreadful state. When Mama read you were ill she went quite pale. We are enclosing some banknotes. Please do all that is necessary and for God’s sake take care. If you die there I shall never forgive you nor speak to you ever again.
I am so happy, except for missing you. It is all a dream. Send me a drawing and an English song. Do send them.
Have you met Maestro Rauzzini? Once you have met him you shall understand me better.
There is a buffo singer here who is quite drôle. His name is Francesco Benucci and we sing together like a charm. Someday you will meet him. He’s got the blackest eyebrows you ever saw—they are almost blue. But we laugh and laugh. I have never met such a fine buffo. After you meet him you can write him an aria.
Your silly sister,
Anna
Dear Anna,
Glad you’ve not forgotten me! I have written about the business matters in my letter to our mother. There is much to be done.
I love it here and never want to leave. I’m English and that is all. And you are becoming more Italian by the moment, aren’t you? I met your Rauzzini and heard him sing. The voice, my God! He sang something Mozart wrote him. Extraordinary, humbling. He liked my Italian and said I resembled you, and told me I should stand taller and not apologize for myself.
Be careful of that buffo. If his voice is as good as you say and his eyebrows as black, I don’t trust him. Remember your virtue and your worth. You are too young for buffos. I fear you are too soft. Why didn’t Rauzzini give you some of his steel?
I sold a watercolor to the father of one of my pupils and walked around as if I’d been knighted. I enclose a sketch and a song.
Ever your,
Stephen
Dearest Stephen,
I’m dismayed you are so happy and so English. You’ll never come back to us! Don’t worry about the buffo, he’s the best gentleman I know. Rauzzini gave me his phoenix pin and that is my steel. Next month I’ll be seventeen. Tom Linley was friends with Mozart, don’t you remember? In Italy when they were boys.
Benucci is really very grand. He makes me laugh till my sides hurt, and he sounds like a lion. Now I must go. I have already learned your song by heart and am singing it to you now. Can you hear?
With greatest affection,
Anna
P.S. Rauzzini is right, you mustn’t apologize, at least not for yourself. It’s good to apologize for some things, for instance if you tread on a lady’s foot or behave badly, but you should not apologize for your nature—after all, didn’t you sell a watercolor? But I’m sad you sold it, for it means I shan’t see it.
A New Maid
Benucci had a three-month engagement in Rome, and would be gone some four or five months in consequence. Mandini would take his place in the interim, as primo buffo at La Scala. Anna had known of Benucci’s impending departure for some time, but still it was horrible and she did not know what to do. For all their secret affections, and for all that she felt they were linked in their souls, still they barely spoke. There was never a chance—someone was always with them. She thought they had an understanding, and that he must love her, but he had never said he did, nor admitted that he wished to marry her. There could be no harm in marrying—there was nothing to prevent them—and yet somehow she was afraid to make it come to that. Her mother would say she was too young. Dorotea Bussani had married at fifteen and she was happy enough, but Dorotea had been poor.
Benucci was not like Bussani. Anna was afraid he might not love her. When they were with others he pretended as if she were nothing to him, and at times it did not seem like pretending. So she stayed quiet. She was confused and uncertain. Her doubts sometimes were as strong as her longing, and she had nobody to talk to, no confidante. She would not see him for four or five months, and after that perhaps never again. Perhaps he would not wish to return.
But then came a sudden security. The whole opera buffa company from La Scala was engaged to sing their Salieri opera in Venice, for Carnival. They would go there after Benucci had returned from Rome. He would sing it with them. Everything would
fit perfectly. Though the thought of being apart from him for almost half a year was unbearable, Anna would be reunited with him in Venice, in the richest and most decadent city that had ever been born, and when he saw her again she would be worldly herself, and beautiful and proud, and he would be amazed and enchanted.
“May I write you?” she asked him. It was their last performance before he departed. They were standing backstage during the duet between Mandini and Dorotea.
“Write me?” He smiled. “What would you say?”
She bit her lip. “Why, what people usually say in letters.”
He sighed and touched her waist. “I don’t like letters.”
“Oh,” she said, and moved away. Then Dorotea came crashing off the stage wanting to be complimented.
Anna wished to cry, but there was nowhere to do so safely. But when she went into the compartment with Benucci at the end of the last act, for the last time, he held and kissed her as usual, and whispered into her ear that he would see her in Venice, and she could not help herself, she abandoned her heart. He contained all her life. They would see each other in Venice, and in Venice she would be changed, changed almost beyond recognition. She would persuade her mother to give her more freedom.
After Benucci left, Stefano Mandini was her primo buffo. He was expert and precise on stage, sang clearly, acted well, never had to be told anything twice. They were doing a new opera by Sarti, and there was no closet, no reason to be alone together. Mandini was true to his wife. Anna could relax with him. Her thoughts were no longer frenetic and confused. She did not have to be always censuring her feelings. She slept more soundly and spoke more easily with the other singers. The five months passed almost without her noticing. They left Milan and arrived in Venice a few weeks before Benucci was due there, and she thought, as she gazed upon that beautiful city, a city like a painting, that perhaps she did not need to live for him after all. She was almost eighteen, and had made more money in the past year than she’d ever dreamed.
One night, soon after their arrival in Venice, Anna was out with Michael Kelly and her new chaperone when she noticed a girl playing guitar and singing popular songs in a corner of one of the casinos. The girl was tall, with a long face, a pointed chin, and a dark complexion. The Carnival mask she wore was unadorned, and her dress plain. Anna could not tell if she was pretty. But the voice was lovely.
“How do you do?” Anna asked warmly, approaching and introducing herself. The girl offered a shy smile and said she knew who Anna was.
Anna laughed. “Do you?”
“Everyone knows you.”
“They think they do. But what’s your name? You’ve such a pretty voice.”
The girl’s eyes were shadowed by the mask. Of course that was the appeal of the masks; they gave everyone so much mystery. “Lidia Martellati.”
“Not your real name, surely?” Martellati meant “little hammers”—a technique for singing fast scales. And Lidia was not a common name.
“The nuns wanted to call me Mariateresa.”
“Nuns?”
Lidia glanced around the room and shrugged. “I came from a music conservatory. I escaped.”
“All by yourself? But who is there to protect you?”
“Why, no one.”
Anna bit her lip. “Are you—then I suppose you must be someone’s mistress.” She could not think whore; this girl looked nothing like one.
Lidia smiled graciously. “No, I’m chaste. I play and sing, and work for a seamstress. I have a cousin who helped me.”
“Look here,” Anna said. She blushed suddenly and felt shy. “Would you ever consider—I don’t suppose you should—might you like to be my lady’s maid? I already have one but I can’t stand her. She’s over there. She’s my chaperone. She watches me at parties and sleeps in my bed. But she snores. Do you snore? I like you. I know we don’t know each other, but I think—I daresay we could be friends. I don’t see how I could do anything but like you when your voice is so pretty. We could try it out for a few weeks. You’d stay with me, and talk with me, and unpin my dress and hair at night. I’ve others to do the rest.”
In the face of this outburst Lidia seemed at a loss. She pressed her hands together and looked very thin indeed. Then she smiled and touched her heart and said, “I’d like that very much.”
Anna clapped her hands. “Splendid! Come see us tomorrow afternoon. Here’s my card. But you must act sober and dour. That’s what my mother likes and it won’t come off if my mother doesn’t approve.”
Lidia was from the Infanta orphanage in Naples. While in service there she had been trained in singing, guitar, cello, and violin. She had played in the girls’ orchestra and sung in duets and trios. Her voice was a sweet alto. It might have been a voice for the stage, had she learned to breathe properly, but she did not like to sing loudly and she did not like everyone staring at her. But music was all she knew, and since she did not care to become a nun, and no one wished to marry an orphan who was so tall and boney, she had at some peril come to Venice alone, from Naples, to make her way as best she could. The night Anna met her she had not had a good meal in three days.
Mrs. Storace looked Lidia over and pronounced her underfed and swarthy. However, she said, she liked the sternness of her bone structure and the modesty of her garments. Anna explained about the chaperone’s snoring and said that Lidia could read in Italian, Latin, and French, and was eager to learn English.
Mrs. Storace said, “She appears all right and proper. She is not loud but neither is she mousy. She is not afraid of me and yet she is deferential. You are becoming a woman, Anna. Someday you will have to choose a whole household. I will trust you in this, and woe to you both if she fails.”
“Oh, Mama,” laughed Anna. “You’ve been reading too many romances.”
Mrs. Storace shook her head. “You may kiss me, my dear, and bring me that fan from the other room. I think I will dine with you tonight. You may not go out. You haven’t practiced and you sounded weak in your low voice on Friday, although the last cadenza was well done. And you know I never compliment. But you must not forget to practice.”
Then she yawned and fanned herself and bade them a good afternoon.
Dear Stephen,
How I wish you could meet my Lidia. She is all virtue and sobriety but when she loves me she loves me wholly. I certainly have done nothing to deserve her. Really I’m such a silly girl! So silly! Last night we were out till four and today I look like death. But the gods are smiling and I don’t have to sing tonight.
Mama and I are all amazement to read you’ve moved to the country. Next we know you’ll be a monk! How can you be my only brother and so unlike me? How silly I am. I was very bad to stay out so late. Mama said so.
But here is Lidia with my tea! Dearest, sweetest, brown-eyed Lidia! Straight as a rod! How she cares for me—no matter that I’m a giggling creature. I would make her add a line to this letter so you could see her hand and meet her in that way, but she is so modest she’d run over the hills and dales.
Tonight we dine with Benucci and Michael Kelly. Benucci just got back and we’ll reprise our opera. I have missed my Titta, and he has missed his Dorina. Don’t frown, I’m not in love with him, I mean with Benucci. Only Titta. Titta is my love. But Michael is my best friend, apart from Lidia and you. Don’t be a monk, my Stephen. Do don’t be. I should need you too much. Now tea!
Yours ever, Anna
Columbina
The people of Venice sang as much as they talked, sang as they worked and wooed and slept, in gondolas and barges, on market squares, lubricated by drink and company and the place itself, a city in the water that waked by night and slept by day, that prized folly over sense, and saved itself for nothing, but spent all, risked all, for beauty’s flowering and pleasure’s gratification. A city that directed its people to go masked, that friends might meet as strangers and strangers as friends.
You might have found Anna, on nights she wasn’t performing, playing faro a
t the Ridotto, with her darkly fringed eyes shadowed by a golden half-mask, a columbina. She sometimes sang at the table—everyone sang in Venice—and that was how one knew her, even masked, even in so crowded a place as the Ridotto. Anyone who considered himself anyone in Venice in December 1782 could identify the voice of Anna Storace, so warm and sweet it was, so personal and beguiling. Names for her hung in the air like the smells of the lagoon and the songs of the gondoliers: La Storace, L’inglesina …
She loved to play faro but never risked much. Her mother thought she was too young for it, but Anna insisted it was politically necessary. She must mingle with her patrons and benefactors and be known. She enjoyed the game for the way it made her feel as alive as she felt on the stage, with a racing heart and warm jovial bodies all around her and sensations of peril and security rolling in delicious contradiction in her belly. She loved, too, how everyone at the table knew and praised her, and blushed, some of them, to be in her presence. Young men grown bored of throwing away money in their own names placed bets in hers, leaning over her cards and urging her to bid another hundred, another thousand, until they had no more.
If not at the Ridotto she might be found at the private casino of a friend or patron, playing the same games with smaller and more select company. Sometimes she would be asked to sing. At three or four in the morning she would leave for home with Lidia. Drowsily they’d float along the crowded torch-lit canals and disembark into the apartment where Anna’s mother was waiting, there to take off their sweat-stained masks (Lidia’s a hooded bauta), and then Lidia, suppressing her yawns, would undress Anna, and help her put on her nightgown, and comb her dark fragrant hair, and Anna, tired and intoxicated, would lean into Lidia’s flat chest as if she could not stand, and so they would fall into bed like sisters and sleep into the afternoon.
Vienna Nocturne Page 4