“I had thought,” said he, “that the little rapscallion who could never observe the rules might have grown wise, punctual, and obedient in my absence.”
“Me? Rapscallion?” I countered. “Have you not noticed that I am a maestra this year. Think of that! Surely the board would not reward me for bad behavior.”
“Perhaps,” he said, more somberly it seemed to me. “But be that as it may, I am frankly astounded at the improvement in your playing. It has given me a wonderful idea for a concerto for you.”
I was so taken aback by this unexpected praise and his offer of a new piece especially for my instrument, that I played the fool again and said, “You can’t already be trying to make me the bait of some duke. Surely it is too soon.”
He smiled. “Too soon, indeed, little renegade. I am simply planning ahead. Always planning ahead.”
More grateful for his kind words than he could know, I stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, but he blushed so furiously that I quickly rushed away from him and right out the door.
“Come down with me,” I tell Luisa now. I am already late for the class in solfeggio, in which we tediously learn strange sol-fa syllables that note the tones of the scale. I must not miss it again, even though it is sure to bore me to my undergarments. But she shakes her head and doesn’t rise from her cot, while I say something about languishing up here that makes her laugh.
“You go. I’m not ready yet.”
“You’ll have to make a start sometime.”
“And I will. But not just yet. And don’t tell Anetta I am here.”
Luisa will not be teased about Anetta’s great attachment to her, and so I offer her something in the way of consolation.
“I will tell her that when you do get back from hospital, she must not crowd or pester you. Does that please you?”
“If only she would listen!”
“Her heart is as soft as a pillow and can be shaped, truly, if one takes the trouble. Believe me, I will make certain she doesn’t oppress you. I will.”
As I start down the steps, Anetta is on her way up. At first I think she must have been told about Luisa and am relieved to discover that she is only looking for me.
“You are lucky that you were not caught slipping out from Latin this time,” she scolds me.
“It was not luck. It is never luck. I always know just what I’m about.”
“I should have said both cocky and lucky.”
I take her hand and turn her around. “Come with me to solfeggio. If we run all the way, we will be there before Maestra bolts the door.”
She locks step with mine, and we start off at a fast trot.
“She only does it to teach you a lesson.”
It amuses me when Anetta becomes so solemn. How she manages it at such a pace is confounding. Just as we approach the door in question and try the knob, I ask, “Is there no end to the lessons I must learn?” Then “Madre di Dio!” I exclaim as the door opens and swings wide. “What luck!”
I’m happy to see that there are quite a few who are missing, the ones I noticed on our way here who were hanging out windows to watch a spindly parade of street musicians. There will be much better things to take our attention later in the week. According to my plan, I will bide my time for a bit until the running of the bulls begins. I feel such a kinship with those animals when they are set free. It is all I can do not to follow after them.
AT FIRST I WAS OFFENDED at the way in which Rosalba spoke to me after solfeggio. I could not believe she was faulting me for my care and concern for Luisa or that she was privy first to the information that Luisa would soon be returning to us. But after a few moments of a little jealousy at Rosalba’s new role as Luisa’s confidant (yes, I do admit it) and no little anger, my relief at knowing my dearest girl will soon be in good health eased the unworthy feelings aside. They had come upon me like a flash fire and seemed out of my control at first. As I was slowly restored to my better self, however, I could not help thinking how impossible it would be to harbor such resentment of my own true friend, Rosalba, for very long. I will not feel at peace until I confess this to Father Luigi.
“Luisa will no doubt be very fragile for a while, considering her weakened condition,” says Rosalba, “and so we must all try not to intrude upon her as she recuperates.”
I am confounded. “Intrude? Have I ever intruded?”
“At times. In your zeal for her welfare. But no one would fault you for it.”
“Intruded how?”
“In . . . affectionate, small ways. Enthusiastic hugs. Too much touching of her hair and brow. Some small exaggerations of her many accomplishments.”
“I don’t understand. These are all good things.”
“And . . . a good deal of . . . hovering.”
“Hovering?
“Being always about,” Rosalba continues with a small sigh. “Going wherever she goes. Placing your chair nearest hers. Attending to even her unspoken needs.” She pauses for quite a time. “Sleeping in her bed.”
I feel my cheeks burn.
“How will she know that?”
“I will not mention it, but you can be sure that Silvia will.”
“Oh.”
“So it’s best, don’t you see, if you simply stand off for a bit to let her get used to the life here again.”
“Yes, I see,” I tell her, though the idea of restraining my deepest feelings seems pointless to me. If by some mere chance it will make Luisa feel better, however, I am determined to try.
“And,” says Rosalba, “there is one other thing. Do not gaze at her overlong with such calf’s eyes. She does find that oppressive, I’m told.”
“By whom are you told?”
“By Luisa.”
“Calf’s eyes?”
“I believe that’s what she called it.”
My veins run cold at this affront by Luisa herself, and at the thought that I have done this oppressive thing, apparently time and again, without my even knowing.
“What kind of monster am I then?” I ask in words so soft Rosalba has to lean her head toward me to hear them.
Ever kind to me, she has a ready antidote.
“No monster at all, dear sweet Anetta. Just overzealous in your deep love for her.”
“Can love be such a bad thing?”
“Never bad,” says Rosalba. “But it should be tempered if it is not returned in the same measure that it’s given.”
Tempered is a word I do understand. It is so like a diminuendo, when the music gradually decreases in intensity until the pure harmonies can barely be heard. It is difficult to do this well on the viola d’amore. It will be even more difficult to tame my feelings for Luisa.
My attention to these hurts, however, is taken away completely when Signora Mandano bustles into our conversation and pulls me aside.
“Come to the nursery when you can, Anetta.”
“I have some free time now,” I tell her. “Is something wrong?”
My thoughts go to Concerta and all the possibilities and unforeseen events that can occur with infants.
“Do not alarm yourself. It is a small thing really, but Concerta runs a fever, and I thought you’d want to know.”
From my work in the nursery, I’ve learned that fevers can indeed be little things or they can be swift messengers of death. Hardly bothering to bid good-bye, I gallop up the back stairs and arrive breathless by Concerta’s little crib, where she is motionless with sleep, her golden head damp and glistening, her tiny thumb resting against a small blister on puckered lips that have stopped sucking. She’s so still and tranquil that I wonder if indeed Signora Mandano can be right. When I touch her brow, however, heat rises through my fingertips.
“Do not wake her,” says the wet nurse, who had evidently come to suckle Concerta but is busy now with another infant. “I couldn’t rouse her long enough to feed. Such heavy sleep may bring her round.”
Or take her from us, I think, and cannot help searching the space above for a hin
t of wings. I long to lift her little form and hold it close, but resist when thinking of the better good. I cannot leave her, though, and so I pull a chair beside the small bed, implore Our Blessed Lady with a litany of prayer, and rest my own head against the little fence around her cot until I feel a hand upon my shoulder.
“Have you been here all this time?” asks Signora Mandano. “Why, it’s the middle of the afternoon.”
I rise up in some kind of trance with Rosalba’s earlier words to me and Concerta’s fitful breathing all entwined in something like a dream. The wet nurse is no longer in the room.
“You can’t continue sleeping here beside Concerta, Anetta.”
My mind begins to stumble back to life.
“If it is truly so late, I’ve missed the sectional for contraltos. Maestro Scarpari must have wondered what became of me.”
“I’m certain he’ll understand. You’re usually such a punctual girl. But there’s nothing you can do for this child right now. We’ll watch her carefully and tell you if there’s any change.”
“Are you certain there’s nothing?”
“Very certain.”
Nothing I can do. There is nothing I can do, it seems, for anyone I love.
ROSALBA TELLS ME there is a sectional for sopranos this afternoon. She says it will not be taxing and that I must begin somewhere to enter back into the life here.
“You can’t just sit up here and rot,” is how I believe she put it.
So I won’t have to converse with anyone, I make my way there late. Maestra Loretta is at the continuo and looks up when I enter, delight upon her face and such surprise that her single eyeglass slips from her eye and bounces, still on its ribbon, upon her ample bosom. When the students all turn to look at me, I realize there is no possible way I could have come in unobserved. Two of the iniziate scurry over with fistfuls of musical scores, and I quickly sit down on an empty stool near the back of the room while Maestra shushes the commotion I have created.
The singers are in the middle of their scales. And though they are disturbed for a moment by my entrance, Maestra quickly regains order and they resume their exercises, mouthing the vowels while keeping their jaws slack and forming the notes with their tongues against their teeth. She motions to me to join in, and when I don’t, she looks over with concern but does not badger me, I’m happy to say. Opening my mouth to sing and drawing breath into my lungs even for such an exercise seems quite out of the question at present. Just arriving here, without having fainted at some point in my trip down the stairs and across to the school, is feat enough for one afternoon. I will tell Maestra this if she presses me. When she doesn’t, I am much relieved.
It is a great temptation, however, to try to join in when the score itself — another new cantata from Father Vivaldi — is being sung. I wonder whom it is intended for this week, whose voice it will put on display, and am certain it cannot be mine, as Father could not have known I would be returning and as it is fully within the range of most of the other sopranos. It is such a lovely lyrical piece, so full of light trills and pastoral refrains, that I find myself transported during the singing of it to a place where small birds fill the trees. Of all the things that I have sorely missed, it is the making of music, or the absorbing of it as it is played or sung by others, that I have missed the most. At times during the rehearsal, I feel the new melodies rise into my throat and earnestly desire to simply open my mouth and let out what is building there. My fear at attempting this is so enormous, however, that I listen ever more intently during the entire sectional — listen to Geltruda softly attempting the notes I would have been able to sing with ease, to Loretta trilling so unevenly, to Marietta warbling like a giant thrush with no thought to the careful modulation that her part requires. Since Father very rarely makes notations for dynamics in his texts, she can be excused. A more sensitive singer, however, even in the absence of indicated slurs, ornaments, and other markings, would be aware of his preferences and distinctive style.
Afterward, when Maestra asks when I will be well enough to be assigned a solo, I find myself telling her that I’m not quite sure.
“Certainly not for another few weeks,” I say.
She is so encouraged that I wonder if I have misspoken. I should have told her I am not strong as yet and may not be for quite a time. I should not have given her false hope.
After the sectional, the girls are very dear and welcome me as if I’ve been abroad and not just in another wing of the Ospedale for weeks. Up close, they seem too rosy and plump, too animated. Their continual chirping is overloud and discomfiting, their eyes too bright. When Lucretia links arms with me, I gently pull away. Is this truly the world I left behind?
Just as I am turning from the group emptying into the hallway, I spy Anetta coming toward me, and I freeze in my footsteps. To my great surprise, she also stops stock-still, an uncertain hint of a smile upon her lips. The smile grows when I return it as best I can. She gives a slight wave of one hand, enters another schoolroom, and shuts the door behind her. This new demeanor is more shocking to me than her usual smothering behavior. I can only think that Rosalba has done as she said she would and that Anetta has listened to her. I am not an ungrateful person, however, and, remembering Anetta’s great care and regard for me, I am a little ashamed that I behave toward her in this way.
Father Vivaldi and I pass in the Calle della Pietà, and he seems overjoyed to see me. Although he is never given to embracing or other touches of endearment, I can discern his delight from how his eyes glint and the lids briefly flutter, how his voice rises in a joyful greeting, and from his earnest words.
“Luisa! We have missed you indeed.” He holds up the beads that he always carries, his fingers continuing to move upon them. “You have been in my Aves for weeks. How happy I am to see for myself that my prayers have been answered. And,” he adds, “you’ll find your little finch in great good health and voice as well. She puts my own sweet bird to shame.”
That he has been praying especially for me is a humbling thought, even as I realize I am not known for such a virtue. And that he did indeed procure a little bird for me, some living creature of my very own, is most touching and kind.
“I have been reining in my notes to accommodate the others,” he tells me then. “Next week I’ll begin a seranata that makes full use of your range.”
Not yet, I long to tell him. Not yet.
But he disappears into the school before I can utter a single word and just as Rosalba swings the door to the Ospedale wide and almost knocks me over in her great haste.
I NEARLY TOPPLE poor Luisa as I rush into the Calle on my way to tell the news of how the senior girls, the ones so newly turned Maestra, will not be going to the puppet show and have to suffer through those silly wooden fetes or listen to the drones who try to sell all manner of strange potions on the side. Indeed, our treat is something that I never dared to hope that I would see: the Commedia dell’Arte, true theater with men and women acting out their love upon the stage, I’m told, and even kidnappings and tragedies, while performing tricks and such.
I hold on to Luisa with both hands and jump up and down.
“Can you believe such good fortune?”
She stands as still as a high-backed chair and seems about as overjoyed.
“I’m happy for you,” she says at last. “And for the others. I’m sure it will be great fun for all of you.”
“And for you. Surely you will come with us?”
She hesitates, and I believe she is considering it, but then she says, “Not this year. I simply cannot tax myself by doing anything but what I must.”
“Even something so enjoyable? Something so transporting? Really, Luisa, it is a most unusual chance. Next year the fickle Board of Governors might well decide a puppet show is just the thing for all of us.”
“Truly. I cannot.”
“Don’t say that yet. The play isn’t until Wednesday afternoon. By then you may feel differently.”
�
�Oh, Rosalba. You’re always hoping for things to change. For people to be who you want them to be.”
“Not always,” I tell her. “For an instance, I have completely given up on Silvia.”
She laughs. I have made her laugh.
“As well you should. What is upsetting is the fact that she doesn’t even care.”
“Nor must we. Enough of her. I do implore you to attend the comedy. It will be such great fun. All you’ll have to do is sit and watch.”
“And walk for quite a way until we reach the theater.”
“It isn’t far. I passed it on my way to get your medicine, so many weeks ago now, and saw the posters by the door and could have wept for my desire to attend. Oh, Luisa, there are fine ladies and harlequins and even devils pictured. It is a whole entire world up there upon the wall.”
She is about to resist again when I think of something that will surely make her want to come.
“Perhaps your mother will be there?”
Just then a little troupe of acrobats goes tumbling by on the Riva in white leggings and tight jerkins that show each muscle of their sinewy bodies. We are so stunned to see them just appear like that, that we’re speechless until they’re out of sight and on their way.
I deliver news about the Commedia to the junior maestre, who are all chattering at once like a covey of baboons, and I am just about to go back across the Calle when I see him, the wig-maker’s assistant. He is carrying only one dressed wig today and walks languidly as if in no particular hurry, gazing at the boats in the lagoon and humming a pretty tune I’ve heard sung in the street before. It is the time of day when shadows fall upon the chapel side of the street all the way to the wheel, and I shrink into them and simply watch him as he strolls by. If I had only thought to bring my feathered mask, so I could flirt with him. But even if I had, the dresses that we all must wear would be an obvious clue to the Ospedale, and if he was amused by his first sight of me, I couldn’t bear it. So I stay hidden. This close, he is even more handsome than I had thought, taller, more finely turned out, as if he could put the wig he carries on himself and fool almost anyone into thinking that he’s a young duke. His breeches cling to rounded calves and thighs, and he wears a jaunty jacket of carmine-colored wool with ribbon trim.
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