On the ninth day of my incarceration, I was ready. I let the chain slip through my fingers as Teresa came in with my evening meal. Her eyes locked on the gleaming silver, the sparkle of the diamonds.
“It can be yours,” I said. “You know what you need do.”
“But madonna, I would lose my place,” she protested, her eyes never leaving the jewelry.
“And how much would that matter?” I asked. “How long could you live off the money that this would bring you?”
Her silence told me that I had finally won. “Distract the guard tonight, and then return when he is away,” I said. “I will hand this to you and then be gone.”
“Very well,” she said, her voice low. “Consider it done.” With that, she set down the tray and vanished, leaving me to prepare myself for my flight.
* * *
I was ready when Teresa returned later that night to unlock the door, wearing my plainest dress and cloak and with the purse of gold and jewelry slung across my chest. In one hand was the strand of diamonds, in the other the pearls.
I did not know or care how she got the guard to leave his post. I know only that I heard the key turn in the lock, and that she opened the door for me, her palm outstretched as she stood alone in the hallway. “Thank you,” I said, placing the diamonds in her hand.
She did not speak, merely stepped aside to let me pass.
I went immediately to the servants’ quarters. A tall man I had never seen before slouched beside the door to Giuseppe’s room, head bowed. When he heard me in the darkened hallway he straightened up, wary.
I approached him and handed him the strand of pearls. “Be gone,” I admonished him. To my amazement, he did as I asked, even handing me the key. He was clearly some hired hand that had no loyalty to my father and no real need for this position.
I unlocked the door and slipped inside, shutting it behind me. Giuseppe bolted upright at my entrance. “Adriana?” he asked. He leaped from the bed and embraced me tightly. “How did you—”
“Bribery,” I explained. “Listen to me, Giuseppe. I am going now.”
He moved toward the door. “I will come.”
“No,” I said. “You must stay here, at least for a bit, so that I will not be found missing right away. If we are both gone, they will know. You can make your escape afterward. Once I am gone, our father will no longer feel any need to keep you here.”
“Adriana.” He put both hands on my shoulders. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
I laughed mirthlessly. “It is all I have thought about these days past. And I have had much time to think.” I embraced him, tightly, aware that if all went as I hoped, it would be some time before I saw him again. If ever. “Good-bye, fratello,” I whispered into his ear. “Grazie mille.”
He held me close, not speaking. “Godspeed, Adriana,” he said. “Mia sorella.”
It took all I had not to break down at those words, so I turned quickly and left, left Giuseppe, left the palazzo, and made my way to Vivaldi and to my future.
39
NOTHING LEFT
I tried the door of Vivaldi’s house and unsurprisingly found it locked. Peering in through the part in the curtains, I could see him seated at his desk, candles blazing around him as he composed some new masterpiece. The sight of him made me want to weep with relief, but there was no time for that.
I pounded on the door. “Antonio!” I hissed loudly. “It is I! Open the door!”
Hearing me, he quickly unbolted the door, and I stepped inside. “Adriana!” he exclaimed. “Cara, you cannot know how happy I am to see you! There has been no word for days, and I was worried.”
“And I am happy to see you,” I interrupted. “But there is no time for such now.”
His brow creased. “What is it, Adriana? What is wrong?”
Now that I was finally here, finally near enough to touch him, finally where I had wanted to be for so many interminable weeks, I found I did not know how to ask him to uproot his life. “I … we are undone,” I stuttered at last. “My father has discovered that I have a lover, but I would not tell him your name.”
As I spoke, I moved into the light so he could see the last traces of the bruises on my face, now an ugly yellowish color; the remnants of my split lip. His eyes widened. “It was worse still,” I said. “He has kept me barricaded in my rooms for over a week now. Giuseppe was similarly imprisoned.”
“Domine Deus,” he whispered. “So this is why there has been no word. Oh, cara.” He reached out and cupped my face in his hands. “How could I not have known? Please forgive me somehow.”
I shook my head. “There is nothing to forgive. My father’s spite and hatefulness are no fault of yours.” I took his hands in mine. “But there is good news, too, mio amore,” I went on, “beautiful news.” I placed his hands on the swell of my belly beneath my cloak, looking up into his eyes. “I am carrying your child.”
He did not speak for a long time. I felt his fingers stretch slowly over the curve of my abdomen as his eyes widened further in shock and wonder.
Suddenly, he drew his hand back sharply as though he had been burned. “Mater Dei,” he breathed, “this cannot be. How? I thought you said…”
I shrugged. “I had begun to think it impossible as well, yet clearly I was wrong. But none of that is important.” I stepped close to him, again taking his hand. “This is our chance, Tonio.” When he did not respond, I went on, trying to quell the uneasiness I felt growing within me. “We can leave tonight, before anyone knows we have gone. We can be together; have what we always thought we could never have. We can raise our child together.” I paused to clear my dry throat. “Come with me, amore.”
Again he was silent. “I … I have just been reinstated at the Pietà,” he said finally.
I could not fathom what this had to do with anything I was saying. “You … what?”
Silence.
His head was bowed, so I could not search his eyes for the truth I was so desperately afraid I would find there. Yet when he did look up at me, I wished he had not. “I … I cannot, Adriana. I cannot. May God forgive me.” He paused, voice ragged. “May you forgive me as well, though I have no hope of either.”
My breath caught in my throat. I pressed a hand to my chest and stumbled away from him, trying to steady myself, to convince myself that I had not heard those words from his lips. When I finally looked back at him, I could only manage one flat syllable, a wish and a prayer and a question and a denial: “No.”
Hurriedly he crossed the room to me. “Adriana, please. I never intended for things to happen this way—”
“But it has happened this way!” I said, staring hard at him. “All of it has happened, and you cannot now undo it. The child—our child—cannot go away at your whim!”
“Adriana,” he said, lowering his voice. “Think of what you are asking me to do.”
“Think of what you are asking me to do!” I shot back. “You are abandoning me! You are flinging me to my father’s mercy, and an abhorrent marriage.”
“Marriage?” he asked, almost hesitantly. “To whom?”
“Not that it makes any difference to you,” I said, “but Tommaso Foscari asked for my hand several weeks ago. Now he and his family will surely call it off once my father tells them I am with child. If he has not told them already.” I laughed harshly. “He thinks he can still find someone who will have me, and with the king’s ransom of a dowry he will give me simply to be rid of me, no doubt he is right.”
“And … what will become of the child?” Vivaldi asked.
I turned on him anew. “I have not the slightest idea!” I cried. “Do you not see what you have done? What you are doing? Can you not see the devastation you will wreak in my life, our child’s life?”
“I am not the only one who has made choices!” he all but shouted. “I would do anything to set this right, anything, but—”
“You could set it right,” I said. “You could, but you will not.” I t
urned my back to him and pressed my trembling hands to my forehead. “This is not how it was supposed to happen,” I whispered. “You were supposed to agree to come away with me, and everything would have been perfect.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them something, anything, would have changed. “This is a dream, a nightmare,” I murmured. I opened my eyes. “Please tell me this is all a dream. Please.”
“I wish it was,” he said, looking away from me.
“Why?” I asked. “Why, Antonio, why?”
“I have already told you,” he said. “The governors of the Pietà have—”
“I know that,” I said. “What I do not know is why that is worth abandoning your child, and the woman you claimed to love.”
“Surely you see how many doors this opens for me, and for my music,” he said. “It is only because I am a priest that I can be given a position at such an institution, and there are many more opportunities available to me if—”
“If what?” I interrupted. “If you cease to love anyone save yourself?”
“That is not fair.”
“Fair or not, it certainly rings true.”
He fell silent then.
So that was how it was going to be. He was choosing his music over me.
And yet … was that not why I had fallen in love with him in the first place?
This thought was unpalatable to me just then, so I let it drown in my sea of sorrow and self-pity and fear. I drowned with it, sinking to my knees onto the weathered floorboards. “Tonio,” I whispered. “Please. Will you make me beg you?”
“Please, cara, no,” he said. He moved to help me to my feet, but I shoved him away.
“Can you still call me so?” I cried. “I believed more in you than in God, and now both have forsaken me!”
“I … I will make this right someday, Adriana,” he said. “I swear I will, no matter what it takes.”
I laughed as I got wearily to my feet. “What can you possibly do that will make this right?”
He opened his mouth, but I put up my hand to stop him. “Please. Save your breath. Maybe saying such things will help you sleep well at night, but they can do nothing for me.”
“What in God’s name makes you think that I shall ever sleep well again?” he burst out.
“And yet you shall never suffer half so much as I,” I replied. I looked around me, at the room in which I had known so much joy, the room in which I had come to life and fallen in love and played the most beautiful music I had ever heard.
I never thought it would end this way, I thought, taking in the permanent clutter of parchment, of ink and quills and instruments. I have always known that it must end, but I was meant to leave him; never did I dream that he would leave me. “I suppose it is time for me to go, then,” I said aloud as tears filled my eyes.
“You cannot walk home all by yourself,” he said.
“No!” I choked out. “Do not dare tell me what I can and cannot do. Do not dare think of following me home.” I moved to the door, knowing that if I remained in his presence one moment longer, I would come completely undone. “Good-bye, Antonio,” I whispered. Then, while I was still able to do so, I tore myself away and went out the door.
On my walk home, I became aware of a second set of footsteps, following me. I did not have to turn around to know that it was him, that he was seeing that I got safely home despite my protests. Orfeo following Euridice back to the underworld, in a strange inversion of the tale.
I let the tears fall.
40
GOOD-BYE
As I neared the palazzo, I noticed that light streamed from a great many windows; too many for such a late hour. Surely I could not have been discovered missing already?
It did not matter, I decided wearily. I had nothing left.
As I approached the servants’ door, I whirled around to see the cause of my anguish still trailing behind me. “Why are you still here?” I spat. “You have made your choice, now leave me in peace!”
Even as I spoke, the door suddenly flew open, banging against the side of the house with a hideous cracking as my father stormed outside.
He stopped abruptly when he saw me, his surprise quickly hardening into rage. “Here she is!” he cried. “How good of you, signorina, to deign to join us and save me the trouble of rousing the whole of Venice to find you!”
I watched as his eyes moved from me to Vivaldi, still standing several paces behind me. Every bit of me ached with this final defeat.
“So this is him, is it?” he demanded.
“Let me pass, Father,” I said, deliberately ignoring his question and trying to push past him. His hand came down and clamped onto my shoulder so tightly that I had to grit my teeth to keep from crying out.
“You will go nowhere until I allow it,” he said coldly.
“How do you know I do not have a pair of shears, Father?” I asked.
He released me instantly, fear flashing across his face.
“Coward,” I spat.
But he ignored my taunt. Instead, he was staring hard at Vivaldi. “You,” he said suddenly. “I know you. You are that man they speak of … the violinist. Il Prete Rosso.”
Without warning, my father turned and struck me full across the face. I cried out as my knees buckled beneath me, and I dropped to the wet, dirty cobblestones. “You brazen slut!” he shouted. “How can you possibly have been so wanton as to seduce a priest?”
He raised his hand to strike me again, but Vivaldi stepped forward and caught his arm, shoving him backward against the wall of the palazzo, and held him there with one arm across his throat.
I heard the door bang open again and turned to see Giuseppe. He quickly helped me to my feet.
My father managed a disdainful laugh at Vivaldi. “You would strike me, padre? You, a priest, would deal in violence?”
“In your case, I would consider it,” Vivaldi growled. “But I can promise you one thing: you will have to kill me where I stand before I will allow you to harm Adriana again.” Abruptly he released him, glancing at me where I stood shakily, Giuseppe supporting me. “And I am not much of a priest, after all.”
Yet my father recovered his bearings quickly. “How dare you,” he said. He stalked over to me, shoving Giuseppe roughly aside, and seized me by the hair. “Not only have you defiled my daughter, but you dare to speak to me in such a manner?”
“Release her, Enrico!” Giuseppe said, moving toward him.
“As you wish,” he said. He flung me away from him with enough force to send me stumbling to the ground, but Vivaldi stepped forward and caught me tightly in his arms, cradling me against his chest.
What little pride I had left demanded that I pull away from him, but I could not force myself to move. This would be the last time he ever held me in his arms, and I could not bear to ruin it with spite and pride. I closed my eyes and rested my head against his chest, breathing in his familiar scent and reveling in this one last, deeply flawed moment of intimacy.
Dimly, I could hear Giuseppe. “Leave her be, Enrico,” he said. “Sell her in marriage if you will—I cannot stop you—but this abuse must stop. And I warn you, I do not make threats in vain.”
As Giuseppe went on, Vivaldi brought his lips to my ear, whispering, “I will make it right, somehow, someday, mia carissima Adriana. I swear that I will, even if it takes my very life.”
He moved to release me, but my arms tightened around him. “Do not leave me,” I whispered, making my final, futile plea.
He did not reply, only gently extracted himself from my arms. “Take care of her,” I heard him murmur to Giuseppe, “for I cannot.” Then his footsteps began to move away from me, fading into the night.
I remained rooted to the spot, trembling, my eyes closed so that I did not have to see him leave.
“Adriana,” my father’s cold voice bit out. Slowly I opened my eyes to find that Vivaldi was gone, had vanished into the fog that had begun to rise off the canals, and that this awful, endle
ss night had been all too real. “Get inside. Now.”
I swayed on the spot, remaining for a moment longer before obeying. As I turned to go inside, I became aware of moisture on my cheek. Touching my fingers to the damp spot, I realized that they were not my tears—they were his.
MOVEMENT FIVE
WITHOUT YOU
September 1711–September 1713
41
MY HEART IS BROKEN
As my father had commanded me, I went straight inside. I did not stop walking until I had reached my bedchamber and barricaded myself inside. He did not follow.
Giuseppe did, however. I had only just turned the lock in the sitting room door when he began to pound on it. “Adriana!” he called. “Open the door! Please, tell me what happened! Are you all right?”
“Leave me be, Giuseppe!” I screamed at the door, finally beginning to unravel, and at a speed I could no longer control.
“Please, Adriana!”
“No!” I shrieked. “Leave me! There is nothing you can do for me now!” My ragged voice caught in my throat as I fled into my bedchamber, closing that door as well to stifle Giuseppe’s shouts. “It is over,” I choked out, though I knew he could not hear me. “It is over, it is really over. And you were right: we have lost.”
Consumed by grief, it was all I could do to pull my heavy, ungainly body up onto the bed, burying my face in the coverlet as sobs shook my aching body.
So this is what it feels like, this heartbreak about which the poets write and the singers sing. You taught me so many wonderful and beautiful and difficult things, Antonio. Perhaps it is only fitting you would teach me this as well.
The Violinist of Venice Page 21