I tighten my hold on Isabel and Paulina, who cannot tear their gaze from the puppet clown, who is now cavorting wildly with a dog. There are no strings, just someone’s fists beneath the garish outfits and molded puppet heads, and yet the audience shouts out to these strange dolls as if they’re real. “Take that, you numbskull!” “Hit him again!” “Run for your life!” The street performers who had taken my attention have packed up and gone, but I still feel their melodies within my loins and almost can’t resist the need to dance along the cobblestones.
“The frittelle,” Signora Mandano reminds me. “That vendor over there! Hurry, Rosalba, before the baker folds up his tent.”
I pull the line of little girls with me as I hurry, and Signora is whipped along almost faster than her chunky boots can manage.
This time our charges are allowed to eat their treats right on the spot.
“They’re much too young to wait,” declares Signora, and it’s probably true, though all the hands are so sticky on our walk back to the Ospedale that each child seems glued to the next. For the trip here I was in the lead. This time I dawdle behind and, as the light begins to fade, cast a fond eye over all that we are leaving. In the distance, heading toward the Grand Canal, I see the little troupe of traveling musicians I had watched earlier. What a carefree existence they have, playing right from their hearts and not having to endure, I’m sure, hours of practice and instruction. How close they are to their audiences. How loved by everyone who hears them. I noticed there were many gold coins in their basket, too. Quite enough, I’m sure, for all the things they need to live in this free and happy way.
“Rosalba,” calls Signora Mandano, and many high little voices begin to call my name as well. “You’re slowing down the line. I promised we’d be back in time for vespers. Pick up your feet!”
It is unnatural, this being set free among all the festivities, then thrust back immediately into the staid and regulated life we lead within two cold, damp buildings.
THE BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED since I’ve returned is that I’ve taken up my violin again and begun rehearsals with the others for next Sunday’s concert in the organ gallery, where a somewhat smaller audience than usual is to be entertained. When Father Vivaldi suggested it, it seemed a good first step, and though I felt quite tentative and unsure, I found that the music did indeed restore me. By the end of the first three-hour session I was more energetic than when it began. We will be playing a concerto in D minor for violin, organ, oboe, strings, and basso continuo. It is as vigorous as most of Father’s inventions and as rich in harmony and lovely melodies. Anetta will play the solo violin part, and Rosalba was to have played oboe. When she didn’t attend the first rehearsal, however, Father assigned her part to Constancia’s cello.
After rehearsal, walking beside me on the way to the refectory, Father broaches a subject that I suspect has been on his mind for quite some time. He dances round it, complimenting my playing, noticing that my cheeks are pinking up a bit, and asking how I’m feeling after so long a practice session.
“I’m feeling much better than I had expected,” I tell him. And, in truth, the pores of my entire body seem to breathe again.
“You are like a tree in springtime,” he suggests, “stretching up to catch the light after a long dismal winter.”
Not unless it is a tree that has felt death lodged in its throat, I want to tell him, but I cannot speak of that to anyone and am uncertain why it haunts me still. And then he begins to talk about the oratorio he is planning to stage and how he is already assigning parts to it in his thoughts and how there is a wonderful soprano part for me. He goes on to say that he cannot imagine anyone else being able to sing this part that he intends to feature in what he is calling Moyses Deus Pharaonis.
“And I suspect,” he continues, “that your voice will spring right back in the same way as your skills upon the violin. With such a voice, all that it will take is a few extra sessions with Maestro Scarpari to put you in top form again. I’m certain of it.”
“Scusi,” says Prioress, coming upon us before I’ve had a chance to reply. “Is Rosalba still within the practice room?”
“She hasn’t made an appearance there at all today,” says Father. Well aware that she and I are friends, he asks, “Do you know where she is, Luisa?”
“No,” I can say truthfully, for she was simply . . . playing with the things she keeps within her trunk when I saw her last. There is no other word for how she takes her treasures out and gazes at them. She cannot be there still. “Perhaps she’ll be at the noon meal.”
“Well, she wasn’t at breakfast,” continues Prioress, “and it seems that no one’s seen her since she returned yesterday after the puppet show.”
Prioress has not asked me if I’ve seen Rosalba. And Father has only asked if I can say where she is right now. I want to reassure them that she’s still within these walls, but why would they suspect otherwise, and how can I be sure, and what exactly do I tell them?
Rosalba does not join us for the meal in the refectory, which is especially disappointing when I see there is polenta with red sauce, her favorite dish, and a plate of the small herring she loves, prepared with herbs and wine. Anetta sits across from me and also asks about her.
“Perhaps she isn’t well,” I say, although I know this isn’t true. Then Anetta turns to Geltruda, and I am pleased to see that she talks more to her throughout the meal than she does to me. If she continues to behave in this way and does not hang upon my every word and gesture, perhaps I won’t need to avoid her in the future.
Immediately after saying the grace at the end of the meal, I hurry back to our bedchamber to see if Rosalba, has, in fact, sequestered herself there all morning. The mystery is solved, however, before I even climb the stairs, for I decide to go first down a narrow hallway to the small front parlor, which has many windows onto the lagoon. There I spy the top of her head at once. She is curled into a chair and facing away. If she is trying not to be seen, she is under a delusion, for no one could mistake the deep red flashes all through her thick dark curls, so visible against the yellow brocade of the chair back.
When I creep up upon her and suddenly appear, she cries out.
“Luisa! You have given me a fright. I was prepared for Prioress and have been listening for the loud clap of her hard, wide heels.”
“And she is looking for you, to be sure. She can’t imagine where you’ve disappeared to.” I will not miss a chance to tease her. “And when I tell her where you are, she will be so indebted to me. Perhaps I’ll merit a second dish of prunes at tea.”
“You must not say a word,” says Rosalba, rising and trying to clap her hand over my mouth. “It will spoil everything.”
I push her away.
“What is it that I can so easily spoil?”
“The running of the bulls! You know how every day of Carnival they charge through a different neighborhood. Well, today, I learned from Cook, they will be let loose on the Riva. I’ve been here all morning long and will stay until I hear them gallop past our door.”
“You’ve seen it all before,” I tell her.
“And will see it every year until I die.”
“They’re just bulls. They’re just big black frightened bulls.”
“Oh, Luisa. They are much more than that. They are . . .”
“What are they, Rosalba?”
“They are animals set free and running for their lives.”
“They will be caught.”
“But not before they’ve thundered down the street and chased away whatever — people, dogs, cats — is in their path, before they’ve felt their own dark blood run wild, run absolutely free.
“Listen,” she says, and hurries to the window. “Don’t you feel it? Can’t you feel their hoofbeats through the very floor?”
There is something — a resonance I can’t identify at first, something reverberating through the floorboards, that, as it begins to grow, discharges such a rumble that it rises
into the air and makes it feel as if the room itself will crumble and collapse.
“Come look, Luisa! Watch them tear along the Calle!”
She is standing on a footstool and has flung the window wide. The scent of field and dung and hot bull breath envelops everything, until I also climb upon the stool and stretch to see what she sees and hold tightly to her so that neither one of us will fall.
THE NURSES WHO HAVE BEEN so occupied ministering to the sick with canker rash are now back in the nursery for part of every day, so I am not as needed there. It has been good to be so near Concerta for so many days, and the need to care for her has helped to keep my mind and attentions from Luisa. I am behind in all my lessons, however, and must endeavor to make up the things I’ve missed, including practice sessions for the concerts, which, during Carnival, attract a great many tourists and must be better prepared than ever.
This Sunday I will be playing the violin solo again, and Father, knowing I am disappointed, has promised me for the second time a new concerto for viola d’amore. I will believe him when I see it. Why is my instrument such a sticking point for him?
Luisa is also upon the violin for this performance, which is some consolation. We are five seats apart and do not speak, however. If we could, I would commiserate with her. What would Rosalba have to say to that? I wonder. Cannot I be Luisa’s true friend in any way?
The session is so long that I can’t help but be troubled for her, as she is still not strong. She does appear revived, however, at the end of it and not as sallow as she looked at first when she sat down and lifted up her bow.
At the conclusion, when we pass each other on our way to put aside our instruments, our skirts swish together for an instant, and she does acknowledge me long enough to say something about my propensity to worry and to encourage me.
“It is not such a difficult part this time, Anetta. You play it very well already.”
What does she mean by “very well”? Does she mean just good enough, or does she mean competently? Has she really been able to hear my part while concentrating on her own? Father immediately begins to ask about her health and other things, and there is no opportunity for me to say more than “Thank you.”
At lunch I sit across from her and exchange pleasantries as if we barely know each other and ask about Rosalba. Though it pains me more than I can say, I make myself turn away then and speak with Geltruda throughout the meal. From the corner of my eye, however, I can see how Luisa picks at her food, and it disturbs me a great deal. I am also concerned about Rosalba’s whereabouts but would never discuss such things, or anything important for that matter, with Geltruda.
I’m certain that Luisa knows where Rosalba is. But I do not intend to ask her anything more, for I would not want Silvia to be privy to whatever Luisa might confide. Perhaps Rosalba is simply studying, as I must do, in order to catch up on the things she’s missed of late — solfeggio, a language quiz, the rehearsal just past.
When Luisa rises to leave the room, it occurs to me that if I wish to know where Rosalba is, I should follow her. I must do it without attracting attention, however, and must move rather more slowly than Luisa does, not entering the hallway until some minutes after she has disappeared into it herself. As it happens, just as I pass under the lintel of the doorway, she is at the end of one corridor and turning down another that is rarely entered. I trace Luisa’s steps as quietly as possible and am much surprised to find, at the end of the second corridor, both girls together in the smallest of the parlors. In making certain not to be observed, I cannot, in fact, hear all of what they say, and their talk, though agitated, is in low tones.
When I do finally infer from a few intelligible words that they’re talking about the running of the bulls, that thunderous event is already causing the very walls to shake and Luisa and Rosalba to embrace each other in fear or joy or both. I am much distressed to see this, for it is a surety that Luisa would never cling to me in such a way. Even their being cosseted together in this remote room makes me sick to the core of my being and causes me to wonder if Rosalba’s cautions to me about my behavior haven’t been for my own good, as she has always insisted, but for hers.
I am not used to this new sentiment, which I am horrified to think may be the capital sin of envy, and don’t know what to do with it or how I should proceed henceforth with either of the two people I have for so long considered my closest friends.
After vespers, Rosalba does appear at dinner and seems ravenous, wolfing the roasted fowl and root vegetables in an unseemly manner. She is not as talkative as usual, which is not surprising, as her mouth is always occupied. Her serving of panna cotta with dried berries lives only seconds upon her plate, after which she scurries into the kitchen to wheedle second helpings from Cook. If I did such a thing, I’d be considered gluttonous; Rosalba, on the other hand, is merely thought of as resourceful, something even the maestri and maestre eating with us look upon with amusement and good humor. I, too, have often excused her carefree attitude toward any of the rules, but wonder now how she survives her escapades. It seems as if Signora looks away on purpose and rarely chastises her for absences. Is it from habit, or from some disposition toward her, coaxed from all of us over the years by the jolly flippant temperament we’ve learned to coddle?
“I will not join you in the drawing room tonight or attend the small rehearsal Father has just announced,” she says at length.
When I don’t ask her what she does intend to do, she continues.
“I need some extra sleep, you see. Silvia’s snoring keeps me up most half the night.”
Silvia, who has been listening from across the table, snorts with indignation and rolls her eyes.
“It doesn’t bother me,” I say. “I am so tired when I finally do retire, that even cannon shot would not disturb me.”
“Yes. You do sleep peacefully. It is the gift of a good conscience.”
If she but knew of my new penchant to be envious and of my great lack of patience. I cannot help but try to warn her nonetheless, but I do it in a whisper.
“Rosalba,” I tell her. “You cannot shirk your duties as you do and not get found out eventually or have your tasks as maestra taken from you along with the small
stipend they afford.”
“I am careful,” she confides. “You worry more for me than for yourself. A very noble thing, to be sure, but quite unnecessary. What troubles me the most is that you blame yourself when I don’t listen.”
“Perhaps I should solicit the help of Luisa. Perhaps you would listen to her.”
“There seems to be some meaning in those words that I don’t understand.”
“I merely wonder if another voice would encounter your deaf ear so often.”
“I do hear you, Anetta. I do. But if I make mistakes, they are my own. You cannot, you must not, blame yourself. Ever.”
Those are the words I think of when entering the bedchamber myself at the proper time and finding Rosalba’s bed as tightly made as in the morning, with her crucifix upon the pillow in the prescribed way. There is a shadow across the coverlet from her watteau and apron hanging lifeless from a wall peg.
Looking for answers, I pull open the cover of Rosalba’s trunk and find a great empty space and then nothing but two woolen petticoats, some extra undergarments, and a paper advertisement for the next play at the Commedia dell’Arte.
THE STREET STILL SMELLS of bull, and there are splatted bull turds all along the Riva. Lanterns for Carnival along the lagoon cast enough light to keep me from stepping in the great clots of manure. I keep to the shadows and pull my cloak about me and watch as, in the lantern glow, perfect strangers, it would seem, embrace one another, flirt and kiss and go off together. There is laughter close by and bursts of it carried on the air from a distance. Costumed figures dart between gondolas at the pier; songs float across the water from boats on their way to parties and palaces, magnificent places that I can only imagine.
Earlier today, when I saw the wig-m
aker’s assistant going by the Ospedale for the second time, I mustered my courage and tossed a note from the window. He looked up immediately to see from whence the little paper had drifted, and I, of course, stooped down where I couldn’t be seen. Soon enough, I thought at the time, soon enough I will make myself known to him. The note had said: Meet me tonight at first dark across from the Calle della Pietà, near the gondola of one Guissepe.
I wanted to say more, to let him know what I would be wearing and to declare my love, but on the other hand, it seems to me that there is always some suggestion of mystery in any great romance. It took me most of the morning to decide what the note would include, and then, when he came by again, as I had dared to hope, it was necessary to compose it in great haste. “The Blue Dove,” I decided at the last, would be my nom de plume.
When the gondolieri begin to light their lamps, I have my feathered mask in place and have slipped my cloak down from my shoulders to reveal the velvet girdle and the golden snake that rests just at the place where my breasts begin to swell. I stand this way for many minutes, no doubt turning pigeon blue in the raw weather. To dispel the cold, I tap my feet up and down and rub my hands together. I search the Riva with my eyes from one bridge to the next. And just as I tell myself that he is not coming and turn to leave, hoping the Ospedale door has not yet been locked, I see him, dodging bull turds the way I did as he runs toward me. He wears no mask at all but is as well turned out as I have seen him on his missions to the dukes, with velvet breeches and a silken coat. I let my cloak drop down so he can see my small waist and rounded bosom and the lovely colors in my gypsy skirt purchased from a vendor only yesterday. Perhaps he thinks I am a gypsy. What does he think? Who does he imagine that I am? When he comes close, I know only that he is pleased at what he sees. He hands the note to me and bows a little.
“Signorina. Does this belong to you?”
Hidden Voices Page 10