Tommaso paid no attention to these courtesies. “Do not tell your father that we have spoken of marriage; it would not do for him to hear of it before it is proper. I only wished to set your mind at ease, to let you know that my intentions are honorable.” He kissed my hand, joy alight in his eyes. “Hopefully we can be betrothed by the end of the summer.”
“That sounds wonderful,” I said, unsuccessfully trying to sound excited.
He eyed me worriedly. “This is what you want, is it not?” he asked. “You do want me as your husband?” His gaze probed mine. “I know that you are a modest woman, Adriana, but I confess that I thought—hoped—that you felt as I did, that you would be more excited…”
Thinking quickly, I learned forward and boldly kissed him on the mouth.
His response was instantaneous. His arms went around me as he deepened the kiss, keeping it gentle yet insistent. He need not know I was imagining that he was someone else.
* * *
The next day, I sent Giuseppe to Vivaldi’s house, asking if I could come to him that night. He replied in the affirmative, and if he wondered why I should want to return now, after what had passed between us last time, and our lack of communication since, I had no way of knowing. All that mattered was he still wanted me to come to him.
When I arrived that night, I threw myself into his arms without so much as a word of greeting. He was surprised at first, but within seconds his ardor rose to match mine, and no words were needed.
After we made love, he drew me tightly against him, my back to his chest. He was silent a long time before finally speaking. “You will always be mine,” he whispered. “You will always be a part of me.”
And I knew, for better or worse, what he said was true.
30
COMPOSITION
The beginning of April brought with it Easter and the end of Lent. Unfortunately, the end of the gloomy season also brought with it a fresh start to the opera season, and Vivaldi was again much occupied.
It was all too much—that I would likely be betrothed to Tommaso by summer’s end, that I would lose Vivaldi, that I barely even saw him. And since I had no other outlet for my turmoil, I poured my anguish into the music I wrote. I spent every moment I could on it, and soon it seemed that my time and suffering had paid off: finally, one day just after Easter, I finished the first movement of a concerto that I was ready to show to Vivaldi.
Despite my newfound confidence, my thoughts stumbled when it came to how I would present my work to him. Much as I would like to play it for him—or so I told myself—I had never played it on the violin myself, nor could I while in my father’s house.
I also thought of handing it to him one night and asking him to play it, without explaining further. Almost instantly I rejected that idea as well.
Yet once I had thought that this one, finally, I would show him, I could not change my mind. It was a challenge, one from which I could not allow myself to shrink.
Finally, I decided subtlety was best. One night, while Vivaldi was not looking, I slipped the pages onto his desk. I had signed my name across the top, so as to leave him in doubt as to what it was.
I was even more anxious than usual in the next few days—mercifully only three, this time—that passed before we could meet again. Surely he had seen it, but had he played it? Did he like it? Or was he trying to think of the kindest way to tell me that I should keep to playing the violin, instead of writing for it?
As Giuseppe and I approached Vivaldi’s door at last, I could not decide whether I would rather run inside or turn and dash in the opposite direction. I had not even been this nervous the night I first offered myself to Vivaldi. Showing him my work was somehow far more intimate and dangerous than making love.
“I shall return in a few hours, madonna,” Giuseppe said as he left me outside the door.
I nodded briefly, barely hearing him.
As I stepped inside, Vivaldi came down the stairs almost instantly. “Buona sera, cara,” he said, and I stepped gratefully into his embrace, some of my nervousness ebbing away at his touch.
Luckily, he did not keep me in suspense for long—I probably would have thrown myself into the canal outside his door if he had. “I believe you left something on my desk when last you were here, no?” he said, releasing me and taking a step back.
“I did,” I said to the floor. “What did you think?”
“I will not tell you unless you look at me,” he said, his voice that of the maestro, the teacher. I dragged my gaze up to his. “Why do you act ashamed, cara? It was quite well done.”
“For a woman, you mean,” I said, immediately wishing I had not.
He eyed me sharply. “For anyone,” he said. “Do you think I would lie to you? Do you think that I would say it is well done if it is not?”
I wrung my hands. “No,” I said. “I did not know what you would say, if you would simply try to be kind, or if you would be harsh, or—”
“I will be honest, if that suits,” he said, and—damn him—there was a touch of amusement playing at the corners of his mouth.
“You are laughing at me,” I accused.
“Not at all, Adriana,” he said. “Forgive me; I only remember the first time I showed one of my compositions to someone else—my father, in my case. You are comporting yourself better than I did, I must say, but only just.”
I decided to stop speaking and simply listen to what he had to say. He drew another chair to his desk and slid his own chair over so that there was room for me beside him. The pages of my concerto were already there, waiting.
“Now then,” he said, casting his eyes over the pages. “B minor.” He flashed a smile at me. “The same as our favorite concerto, yours and mine.”
I returned his smile. “I know. I did not realize it until after I had written it. It simply came from my quill in B minor.”
“I know just what you mean,” he said. “But to business. Let us start with your violin melody. The backbone of any concerto, and the strength of yours, as I might have expected.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “I think I see some influence of my own work here, if I may presume.”
“Naturally,” I said.
“Yet altogether…” He shook his head as though words failed him. “Very different from anything I would write. I could not have written this, Adriana.”
I frowned, unsure of his meaning.
“I have never seen or heard anything like it before. It is … wild, like a storm on the sea. Beautiful.” He looked up at me with pride, respect, and—did I imagine it?—a trace of awe as well. “What you have written here, this melody … this is something new. Something I do not think anyone has heard before.”
“Surely—” I began to protest, but he cut me off.
“I mean what I say, Adriana. I told you I would be honest, and so I am.” He smiled ruefully. “Now I must continue to be honest, and give you some constructive criticism, if I may.”
“Of course,” I said, feeling foolish at my hope he would adore it unequivocally.
“Your orchestral parts are in need of some adjustments, and understandably so, for when have you worked with a full orchestra?” He smiled. “Here, for example, you have the viola d’amore playing a lower note than the cello; a simple mistake, I am sure. All you will need to do is switch the two, and—”
“I did that deliberately,” I interrupted.
He raised his eyebrows. “You did?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice smaller now, hoping I had not committed some grave compositional error. “From what I know of it, I like the viola d’amore. It has a very rich, somber sound, but passionate in a way. And this piece…” I gestured to the pages. “It is about suffering, about anguish, about screaming…” I trailed off as we each caught the other’s eye and quickly looked away. “I wanted to explore the fullness of the viola d’amore’s range, to the very bottom end.” I shrugged, suddenly unsure of myself. “I know it is not what is usually done, but it made sense to me when I
wrote it.”
“Hmmm.” He looked at the score again, considering this. “Indeed. I see now why you made such a choice.” He smiled. “In truth, I am quite eager to hear it aloud. We may need to hire ourselves an orchestra.”
“It sounded well enough in my head, though I know that that does not necessarily mean much.”
“Often that is all we have to go on, at first. Very well, we will leave your crossing parts alone for now. On to your modulation.” He indicated a few measures on the second page. “You slip very briefly into major mode here, then go right back to minor. The major section needs to be fleshed out a bit more. I know it may seem counterintuitive, given your subject matter, but as it stands, it will be a bit jarring to the listener, when all the parts are played together. You see?”
“Yes, I think I do,” I said, studying the measures.
He shrugged. “It should be an easy correction; insert a few more measures, perhaps. You have the same problem here.” He indicated a spot on the following page.
He also pointed out a few places where he had made suggestions for the redistribution of the orchestral parts. I scribbled furiously on a piece of parchment as he spoke, impatient to get back to my harpsichord and consider it all anew.
“And when may I expect to see the second and third movements?” he asked, once he had finished.
“The second is almost complete,” I said. “I should have it ready the next time I see you.”
“Excellent.” He swiftly rose from his seat, taking his violin from its case. “And now, maestra,” he said, sweeping me a bow, “I presume you would like to hear your work?”
A shiver went down my spine. Maestra. “You have played it?” I asked.
“I took the liberty, yes,” he said. “It is my hope that you will teach me how to play it properly.”
For a moment, I was taken aback. “I, teach you how to play it?”
“Of course,” he said. “Who better?”
“But I have not even played it myself yet.”
“That is of no consequence,” he said. “You know how it is supposed to sound in a way that I cannot.”
I shook my head. Me, teaching Antonio Vivaldi how to play something? What strange, wondrous new world was this? “If you insist,” I said. “But first, play on.”
So he did.
It sounded better than I ever could have imagined, this melody that I had conceived and given birth to. I knew, suddenly, how he had felt all those times, when he told me I had played something just as he heard it in his mind. It was thrilling, beautiful, eerie, and frightening all at once.
But even so, the more analytical part of me remained apart, revising the melody as I heard it, adjusting a note here and there that was out of place.
Yet by the time he finished, I was close to tears. I felt as if I had created some living thing that now had a life of its own, apart from me. How was that even possible?
“It … it is beautiful,” I said. “I did not think…”
He set his violin on the desk and knelt before my chair. “It is beautiful,” he affirmed. “And if I have taught you nothing else, remember this: we will never, ever find enough beauty in this world to satisfy ourselves. And so we must make our own, and never stop making it.”
I could not speak; I only nodded. A single tear slid down my cheek as he cupped my face in his hands and kissed me.
31
THE SIREN
The rest of April passed with my head in a cloud of music. Within two days after working on the first movement with Vivaldi, I had finished the second, and sent a copy to him via Giuseppe. I could not wait until the following night’s visit to show him.
The second movement had the same “voice” as the first. In truth I had come to think of the violin part as a character all her own, like the prima donna in an opera. She seemed to me to be a water nymph, a mermaid, singing her song of sorrow and longing to the untamed sea.
It began softly, then eventually the cantabile melody would grow louder and higher in pitch, only to suddenly fall off in volume and move back to the lower end of the violin’s register. I meant it to mimic the rhythm of sobbing, almost as if the strings of the violin were saturated with tears. The tutti sections, where the entire orchestra joined in, were quiet and hushed, attempting to console this bereft siren. Or so I thought in my more fanciful moments, and so I settled on La sirena—The Siren—as a title for the work.
Vivaldi was equally enthusiastic about the second movement, declaring it to be just as fine. He had some comments for revision as well, which I was already using to rework the piece even as he spoke them. Now I understood how he could compose hours into the night without being aware of the time; how he could write so many new works so quickly. Once I had entered into this haze of creation in earnest, it seemed endless melodies and harmonies drifted through my mind, and all I wanted to do was write them down.
I finally had the chance to play my own compositions, with Vivaldi looking on. The two movements were both easier and more difficult to play than I expected. Though I had virtually every note committed to memory, to actually execute those notes upon the violin was another thing entirely. Now I was back in the role of player, of performer: my fingers needed to commit the notes to memory, to find the best way to get from one to the next, an action that I found I had not considered during the composition process.
It embarrassed me that I could not play my own compositions flawlessly, but Vivaldi saw nothing odd in it. “Just because you wrote it does not mean you do not need to learn to play it,” he said. “You did not write it in one sitting without error, did you? Why should your playing of it be any different? And consider, you wrote all this without benefit of a violin beside you to test out certain sections. I have never written that way myself—not for the violin, in any case.”
Quickly enough, though, I could play both movements with a level of competence that satisfied me, and I soon gave in to Vivaldi’s demands that I teach him. I was certain that the entire thing was an exercise in futility—surely he could already play them both better than I—but, to my surprise, this was not always the case.
“You are dotting that rhythm, Tonio,” I interrupted, for what felt like the tenth time.
“Yes, but does it not sound livelier that way?” he asked, stopping.
“Yes, but the dotted rhythm comes in the repeat of that section, not here. The contrast is important, as the listener will not expect it.”
He sighed but did not protest further.
“Now back to the beginning of the solo section, if you would,” I said.
In the second movement, I was forced to criticize him for playing too stridently.
“It is a lament, like weeping, do you see?” I said. “Gentler, caro.”
When he finally played it as I intended, the result moved me to tears—something that had been happening all too frequently for my comfort of late.
“I hope the next piece you write will be happier, cara,” he told me later that night, as I was curled up next to him. “Something bright, and not so full of sorrow.”
But we both knew the true sorrow was yet to come.
* * *
I had been delaying telling Vivaldi about my impending summer visit to the Foscari villa, the official invitation having been tendered and accepted long ago. Yet as mid-April came, I knew it could be put off no longer.
He remained silent for a moment after I explained the Foscari family’s desire to get to know me—and my father—better. When he looked up and met my eyes, there was a strange, wistful half smile on his face, as though he were already missing me. “And by the time you return to Venice, you will no doubt be betrothed.” It was not a question, and he did not phrase it as one.
“Tommaso has told me that is what he wishes.”
He looked at me for a long while with that heartbreaking expression on his face. Finally, he asked, “Do you love him?”
Reeling, my breathing quickening, I turned my back to him, under the guis
e of situating my violin in its case.
“Do you? Even a little bit? I would know the truth, Adriana.” He paused. “It is just … this would be easier, if you loved him.”
My eyes were filled with tears, making the pane of glass in his front window look as though it had dissolved into a sheet of water. “I cannot love him,” I said. “I love you.”
He stepped close behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and drawing me close against his chest. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying futilely to hide my sobs from him.
“I am sorry,” he whispered in my ear.
He held me for a long time. And even as I clung to him like a castaway to a rope, part of me wished that he would let me go, so that I might get on with drowning.
32
WILD ROSE
The Festa di San Marco came on April 25, sending all of Venice into a frenzy of celebration as she honored her patron saint. There were boat races on the Grand Canal, musicians and performers and dancing in the streets, and parties—in maschera—held by all those who could afford them.
I was, of course, on Tommaso’s arm as we attended a party hosted by his friend Paolo. As soon as we were seated in the gondola, Tommaso took my hand in his. “I had hoped to be able to present you with a betrothal ring by this time,” he said, smiling ruefully. “But I fear I must settle for something more traditional.” He produced a single red rosebud, such as men typically give to the woman they love on the Festa di San Marco.
I smiled as I moved to take the flower from his hand. “Oh, Tommaso. Thank you.”
Instead of handing it to me, he slid closer and tucked it into the curls of my elaborate coiffure. His hand trailed down the bare skin of my neck and shoulder, causing me to shiver. He turned my chin toward him and kissed me, gently forcing open my lips with his tongue.
I tried to relax my body into his, as a woman in love would. In response he deepened the kiss, pressing closer to me, pushing me back so that I was falling back, slowly, onto the seat. His hand trailed down my neck to my chest, and his fingers spread out to cup my breast in his hand.
The Violinist of Venice Page 17