Venetian Mask

by Rosalind Laker

  Elena’s improvement became noticeable during the time of Elizabetta’s sojourn in the palace. The sight of the child’s bright face peeping around the door at her before she entered the room, the little jokes between them, and their reading together filled Elena’s days with happiness. Between visits Elena rested or slept while the child went out with a nursemaid or played with her toys in the library where Sister Giaccomina, at Pietro’s request, had resumed the cataloguing of the books.

  Maria Fondi, reinstated as the patient’s lady’s maid, was a reliable standby now that intensive nursing had given way to daily care, which enabled Marietta to spend some time at the shop and to be with Melina as well as giving Lucretia her lessons. At night Marietta and the nun took turns sleeping on a truckle bed in Elena’s room, for she often needed reassurance when she woke in distress from a nightmare that she was still incarcerated.

  “Mama says you and she are both my mamas,” Elizabetta said to Elena one morning. “Just as you are both godmothers to Bianca. So I will call you Mama Elena.”

  Elena, deeply moved, cupped the child’s face in her hands and kissed her.

  When at last Marietta was able to move back home, Elizabetta stayed on at the palace for a while. The child enjoyed the full attention she received, for at home she had either to share it with Melina or be one among Adrianna’s children. The mask-shop was continuing to do well and Marietta was well satisfied with the new musical section. Recently Leonardo’s hopes had been realized when the shop neighboring his became vacant, and he soon opened it for the sale of musical instruments.

  While Sister Giaccomina was content to combine caring for Elena with her library work, it was time for Bianca to return to the Pietà. Pietro made the decision.

  “Bianca should return to her musical studies,” he said to Marietta, who agreed. Bianca’s feelings were mixed once more. She did not want to stay any longer in the palace, but she had lost interest in her flute-playing. Her life had been jarred and disrupted and changed about so much that she did not seem to belong anywhere, probably least of all at the Pietà.

  Pietro spoke to Bianca privately before she left. “I’ve been able to see that this palace is far from the best environment for you. I can only guess at some of the unpleasant associations it has for you, and what I do know should never have happened. I’m no more at ease here than you are.” He raised his hands expressively and let them fall to his sides again. “I don’t want to live an idle life of pleasure, putting in an obligatory appearance at the Hall of the Great Council now and again. I’m not a statesman or I would aim toward high office. My talents lie elsewhere. Medicine is my calling and as soon as I am able to do it, the Palazzo Celano will be closed and I shall return to my hospital in Padua.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” she questioned, although she believed she knew.

  “I want you to have the facts and to understand why I wish you to return to the Pietà.”

  Sister Sylvia came to escort Bianca. As the ospedale came into view from the gondola, Bianca saw it in a new light. It had become for her a place of waiting.

  BIANCA HAD BEEN back at the Pietà for a month when on an April day a French ship on patrol in the Adriatic sailed into Venetian waters to seek shelter from a storm. With tension growing daily over French intentions, the commander of the Venetian fort ordered warning shots to be fired across the intruder’s bow. As a result, a Venetian ship in the vicinity took up the fire. Several French seamen were killed, the vessel was taken into custody, and the survivors were clapped into irons.

  The incident acted like a spark to tinder. Napoleon Bonaparte became a madman in his fury. Venetian envoys arriving at his camp to discuss the matter with him were subject to outrageous insults and verbal abuse. He shook his fist in their faces.

  “I shall be an Attila the Hun to the State of Venice!” he roared.

  The envoys returned with demands that made the Doge shake, completely at a loss in the face of such a violent threat. His confusion and lack of guidance threw the Senate into a similar state. Pietro, attending a gathering of the Great Council, was appalled at the total lack of initiative. He tried to make his voice heard, but few listened and none took heed. Rumors flew. Word came that French troops were marching toward Venice.

  Early on the first day of May, Pietro went to the Hall of the Great Council again to hear the final ultimatum the Doge had received from the French on the previous day. He was dismayed by the depleted number of councillors present, many nobles having fled during the night after getting wind of what was in the offing. When the Doge entered in his corno and robes he was weeping. Almost in disbelief Pietro heard him announce that the French had set up cannons on the mainland to fire upon Venice and that a vast number of enemy troops had mustered near the lagoon. The French minister in Venice was demanding that Venetian ships under French command should convey these same troops to strategic points throughout the city. It was an implacable call for total surrender.

  Even as the Doge called upon all those present to cast their votes in favor of accepting these terms, there came a spate of gunshots outside. Immediately there was an undignified rush to cast votes and disperse. Only a few councillors remained, Pietro and Sebastiano among them.

  Tearfully the Doge spoke his last official words. “The Most Serene Republic of Venice is no more!”

  Pietro bowed along with the others as the Doge slowly walked from the chamber, looking neither to right or left. When he reached his private apartments, he removed the golden corno from his head and handed it to his servant.

  “Never again will this be needed.”

  Pietro emerged from the palace to pause in the sunshine at the top of the great flight of stone steps he would probably never ascend again. In the thirteen hundred years since its founding, Venice had never before known a conqueror. From a great maritime nation whose trade and riches were the envy of the world, it had destroyed itself through hedonism and excess, becoming no more than a decadent oligarchy that had fallen and split apart like an over-ripe plum. The French were about to descend on it like a swarm of wasps. A glorious, unmatched era was at an end.

  THE FRENCH MOVED in swiftly. The barnabotti, who had long harbored grievances and jealousies against the powerful nobility upon whose charitable generosity they existed, welcomed the invaders like brothers. Most other Venetians knew only a degrading sense of shame that La Serenissima should have been delivered into the hands of the French without a fight. Many had wanted to take up arms and had already banded into groups with workers from the arsenal, only to discover it was too late.

  Soon Marietta had a new kind of customer in her mask-shop. French officers tried to flirt with her, inviting her to supper, to the theater, and to other entertainments still available in the fallen city. She refused them all. They bought masks and had them boxed as gifts for wives and sweethearts at home. She loathed serving them, seeing each one as a despoiler of all that was Venetian. They tied up their horses to the columns of the Doge’s Palace and stacked bales of hay within the colonnade itself. In St. Mark’s Square a Tree of Liberty had been set up in readiness for a celebration on Whit Sunday. A scarlet Phrygian cap, symbol of the French Revolution and the new regime in France, topped it arrogantly. The Golden Book with all the noble names of Venice had already been destroyed, for Bonaparte’s colonel in command of the city was carrying out the imperious orders he had been given without delay. Some of the greatest paintings, as well as church plate, sculptures, manuscripts, and other priceless treasures, were being officially removed in readiness for shipment to France.

  The only good news for Marietta was from Lucretia, who came running into the shop one day after an errand.

  “Signora Torrisi! I’ve just heard that all the political prisoners are about to be released by the French officer in command of the city!”

  Marietta was in the middle of serving a customer and without a word she snatched a handful of coins from the money drawer and ran as she was from the shop, hatless
and with a mask still in her hand. She tried to hail a gondola, but joy-riding French troops seemed to be occupying every one.

  On she ran across the Rialto Bridge, throwing the mask away as she went. People turned to stare at her as she flew by, her rich red hair tumbling from its pins and streaming after her. When she failed to get transport from the Riva del Carbòn, she gave up trying and plunged through the calli. Now and again she had to stop, doubled over and leaning against a wall, to catch her breath. Finally she reached St. Mark’s Square, came to the Piazzetta, and passed the main entrance to the Doge’s Palace to arrive at the door leading to the cells. A crowd had already gathered but she thrust her way through in time to see a few men emerging and waving exuberantly as they came.

  Her guess was that these were Francophiles, arrested after the first French threats and put out of harm’s way. There were several joyful reunions and then the crowd began to disperse.

  Immediately she realized that Domenico had probably been among the first let out and she had missed him. Seeing Captain Zeno about to go back into the palace she called to him.

  “Captain Zeno! Please wait!”

  He turned and came back a few paces to meet her, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t be here, signora.”

  “Which way did Domenico go? Did he take a gondola?”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but the French officer in command of the city won’t allow him to be released.”

  “Why not?” she cried in disbelief.

  “He abhors traitors. Since your husband did no service to France through his actions against the deposed Venetian Republic, he says Domenico must remain in prison.”

  Marietta collapsed and he caught her as she fell.

  THE FRENCH-ORGANIZED CELEBRATIONS took place on Whit Sunday with full stands and crowds to watch a procession, led by French troops, of Venetian children carrying flowers and people dancing and singing, their numbers swelled by the barnabotti bearing the tricolor. There was dancing around the Tree of Liberty with the former Doge, devoid of his ceremonial robes, joining in. Countless Venetians were aghast at the general support of what they saw as the most tragic day in the history of La Serenissima. It seemed as if their fellow citizens were viewing the festivities as just another celebration day and that on the morrow they would wake up to find their city back to normal and the French gone.

  That was far from the case. On the seventeenth day of May Marietta was calling at Leonardo’s shop when a commotion in St. Mark’s Square drew them outside. General Bonaparte had arrived. He stood with several officers, a short, stolid figure in his uniform, surveying the glittering gold and mosaic façade of the Basilica with its four bronze horses above the magnificent entrance, and then slowly he turned to view the grandeur of the entire square.

  “This is the finest drawing-room in Europe!” he declared in admiration.

  If Venetians needed final evidence of the conqueror’s heel, it came when a crane was set up at the Basilica to lower the four gilded horses from the position they had held on its façade since the middle of the twelfth century. As they were loaded one by one onto wagons for shipment to France, it was as if the heart of Venice had been cut out.

  Pietro came to see Marietta on the day this operation commenced. She had closed the shop temporarily because the French commander, carrying out Bonaparte’s orders, had announced the abolishment of Carnival. The wearing of masks was no longer permitted. Pietro found Marietta and her assistants busily packing away masks and installing displays of musical instruments instead.

  “I can’t make this shop pay with masks anymore,” she explained, “so it’s fortunate I had already established a musical section.”

  “I’d like to speak to you alone,” he said after describing what he had just witnessed at the Basilica.

  Marietta took him upstairs to her salon. “What else has happened?” she asked anxiously when they were seated, for she was able to see that he had nothing good to tell.

  “Those papers were returned to me from Padua.”

  “Don’t say it was a task in vain,” she implored.

  “No, quite the reverse. From the indentations of the quill pens, slight though they were, my friend produced an exact copy of all that had been written. From the samples I sent, he was able to confirm that the original writings were in Maurizio’s hand. It was all exactly as Elena had told me. Domenico was innocent of any treachery toward La Serenissima as you have always upheld. The papers hold full accounts of plans made, bribes paid to induce perjury by witnesses, and so forth.”

  If he had shown the least enthusiasm for what had been uncovered, Marietta would have taken heart, but his expression was grave. “So?” she breathed guardedly.

  “When I received all this evidence I went with it at once to the French commander, who declined to see me. I tried again when General Bonaparte came, since he talks of justice for the common man, but I was informed he was too busy to grant interviews. I handed a copy of the evidence to his staff, asking that it be shown to him before he left the city, but nothing came of that request. I doubt it was ever brought to his attention.”

  Marietta was daunted that such determined attempts had met with rejection. Her eyes were tragic. “I can only thank you for what you have tried to do for Domenico.”

  “There is still one more thing I can do. I have paid for some special pamphlets that will be circulated throughout Venice starting tomorrow. Printed on them will be the main points of the evidence of Filippo’s trickery, revealing to all that Domenico was unjustly imprisoned. There is also an apology from me as the head of the House of Celano for such shameful action against an innocent man. The final paragraph is my command that the vendetta be at an end forevermore and that friendship exist hereafter between our two families, starting with myself and Domenico and his legitimate heir, Danilo.”

  She could hardly speak for the rush of her tears. “It will mean everything to Domenico to have his name cleared and his son acknowledged. He has never wanted a pardon that would leave a web of lies around him. Even if the French refuse to listen, all Venetians will know the truth.”

  “Tomorrow these pamphlets will be handed to every member of the new municipality when they meet at the ducal palace. They should be able to engage the French commander’s ear on the matter. All is not yet lost.”

  It was to no avail. The new municipality had no voice except on minor matters, the French officer in command of the city deciding all important governmental issues. Suspicious of all things Venetian, he saw the taking up of the Torrisi case by three or four of the members as a challenge to his authority. Since it was also linked to the old decadence of Venice and the deposed patrician families, he saw it as some trick to regain power and undermine French law and order. The Torrisi case was struck off the agenda.

  Marietta saw all that she and her friends had striven for finally and irrevocably fade beyond hope. And as if that were not enough, the French colonel forbade the Torrisi prisoner all privileges, including letters. Captain Zeno, who dared to protest, was dismissed from his post, but not before he had handed in one of the pamphlets to Domenico.

  ELENA’S FIRST OUTING was to visit her old friends at the house in the Calle della Madonna. Pietro was invited too. Adrianna and Marietta had arranged a little party to celebrate Elena’s return to health. Despite the shadow cast by Domenico’s continued incarceration, Marietta was determined to make it a happy occasion, as he would wish. It was a double celebration, for Pietro’s decree to all Celanos had enabled Marietta to fetch Danilo home, and he and Melina were toddling about her skirts.

  “Welcome back to us here!” Adrianna cried joyfully as she and Leonardo embraced Elena and made Pietro feel at home. Everybody wanted to greet Elena, but Elizabetta was the first of the children to exchange hugs and kisses with her. When the two nuns had taken their turn, Bianca found herself facing Pietro.

  “How are you, Bianca?”

  “Existing,” she replied hesitantly. “Nothing more.”
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  “That will change.”

  Those were the only words of conversation they were to exchange throughout the party, but neither forgot them.

  They all sat down at a long table decked with the best Savoni damask and silverware. Leonardo was an excellent host and there were toasts to Elena and Pietro as well as a special one for Domenico. It was by following Marietta’s example and expanding into a music shop that Leonardo had been saved from financial ruin. The market for masks had collapsed. Foreign travelers were staying away from Venice, and this, combined with General Bonaparte’s abolishment of Carnival and other festivals, was bringing many mask-makers to bankruptcy.

  For the three former Pietà girls and Bianca the party was a time for the gathering up of old threads. Their friendship had been through fire and emerged stronger than ever. Yet nothing was the same. Adrianna had been only indirectly affected by the events that had reshaped the lives of Marietta, Elena, and Bianca, but in her own mind she ranged herself alongside them in sharing their present hopes and difficulties.

  Each of the children had made Elena a little gift, and after the repast they gathered in the salon where she unwrapped them all with exclamations of genuine delight. The children crowded around her to explain how this or that had been sewn or carved or otherwise taken shape. When the excitement had died down, Leonardo made a presentation to Elena on behalf of the adults. He bowed as he held out the slim wooden box to her.

  “May this bring music and happiness back into your life!”

  Elena knew what it was even as she took it from him and opened the lid. It was a new flute. Everyone applauded and called for her to play. Smiling, she put the instrument to her lips and her fingers danced as she began to play the well-loved Columbina tune. The children all joined in singing with the adults. Bianca, who had come prepared, waited a few minutes and then brought out her own flute to accompany Elena.