Zulietta motioned for me to sit down in front of the mirror. She arranged the dragonflies, light pink, yellow, and green glass, to shine in my hair. I felt her gentleness, and pure love for me.
“You are sure that Pier Antonio will stay with you all night?” she asked. “Do not let him out of your sight.”
“Of course,” I reassured her. This was obviously a little game we were playing. We both knew Pier Antonio was not the kind of brother who protected anyone’s reputation.
“Be careful, cara,” she said as she examined me in the mirror.
I stood and hugged her.
“What did I tell you?” I asked, grasping both her hands.
“That you will be fine?”
“Exactly.”
She gave me a worried look, and squeezed my hands until I finally eased them away.
* * *
It was near midnight when Pier Antonio and I left our house and headed up the Grand Canal. I tied on a simple black leather mask in the cabin of our gondola. A couple of the glass dragonflies fell out of my hair and landed on the velvet seat. I caught them up and pinned them back in. It was as if they were alive, flying in the night.
I opened the shutters to take in the scene around me. It was warm, and everyone had gathered on their balconies to watch the parade of boats on the Grand Canal. Silk banners and carpets hung on the balustrades. Our gondolier began to sing “If You Love Me” (“But if you think I should love only you . . . ”), and the next line came answering back from someone in the watery darkness (“Shepherd, you are surely deceiving yourself. . . . ”). I was in high spirits, singing along.
“Stop here!” Pier Antonio called out to the gondolier.
“What are you doing?” I turned to him. “Where are we?”
“The Ridotto,” he said.
“You are—stopping to play cards?” I asked. “Are you not coming to the opera with me?”
He slapped a purse of coins bulging in his breeches pocket and laughed. “Oh, no! Giacomo has paid me well to send you on to him alone.” He left me behind in the cabin and jumped out onto the wet pavement.
So—I had been bought for the night. I felt like a courtesan. But at the same time, it made me feel strangely valuable. Desired.
“How will I get back into the house?” I cried out to my brother through the open window, suddenly remembering.
“Oh, right,” Pier Antonio called back. “I told mama I lost my key. She’s going to leave the waterside door open.” He gave me a mock bow and strode away.
What a good-for-nothing! The gondolier stared at me, waiting. “À Teatro San Samuele,” I commanded him. “Voga!”
The boat slipped on through the night. I sat back on the soft seat and hugged myself for comfort. My hands were clammy, and I wiped them on my dress. Zulietta’s dress. What would she think if she saw me now? Alone outside my home for the first time in my life, headed to meet my lover?
My heart was fluttering. I had little idea what lay ahead. But—Giacomo was waiting for me.
CHAPTER 11
“Ah. Finally. We are truly alone.”
Giacomo greeted me by the lantern-lit steps in front of the theater. He wore the traditional Venetian costume for Carnival: a long, black cloak and hood that hid his head and shoulders, black tricorn hat, and white, angled mask that resembled a beaked bird. This, he had pulled aside so that—along with recognizing his unusual height—I would be able to find him in the swarming crowd.
I felt alive to the tips of my fingers at the sight of him in the menacing disguise. He took my hand in his—large, warm, and commanding—and led me inside.
Teatro San Samuele struck me as resembling a huge golden jewel box. I had never seen anything so splendid, even in church. Candles with gold-orange flames burned everywhere, throwing light on four tiers of gilded boxes rising from the stage. Thousands of gold stars sparkled on a sapphire blue–painted ceiling.
We started upstairs. Up and up, all the way to the fourth tier.
“Why—so—high?” I asked, becoming short of breath. I regretted having laced my dress so tight.
“I will show you,” he said, leading me over to a balcony edge.
We peered down into the pit. I could see peddlers moving among crowded benches hawking wine, sausages, fruit, nuts, and seeds. Cries in imitation of cocks and hens rose up, laughter, and shouts. Seeds and pieces of fruit were being thrown about for fun, and there seemed to be some sort of contest as to who could make a bigger fool of himself.
“Men are apes on the outside, swine on the inside,” said Giacomo, keeping a straight face. “It’s a line from the Bible.” I gave him a disapproving look, but could not suppress an amused grin.
“I adore your dimples when you smile,” he said, touching my cheek just below my mask. After he dropped his hand, I could still feel the sweet echoes of his fingers on my skin. I touched my cheek, as if I could seal the feeling in, forever.
We went to find our private box. It was stifling inside, high up and surrounded by what seemed like thousands of burning candles. A waiter came to offer us sorbet, which we eagerly bought. Giacomo removed his cloak and mask, but I left my own mask on, fearing I might be recognized by someone who knew my father.
“Is this your first time at the opera since your return to Venice?” I asked him.
“It is,” Giacomo said, savoring his lemon sorbet and offering me a taste from the delicate spoon. I had ordered my favorite, blood orange.
“I chose this opera for you because the soprano, Agata Ricci, is a crowd favorite,” he explained. “We might be lucky and see doves let loose by her admirers at the end, with bells tied around their necks so they make their own music as they fly . . .” His voice trailed off and he gazed out to the stage, as if remembering something.
“I take it you’ve been to this theater before?” I ventured.
“Why, yes.” He regarded me. “Many times. In fact—I used to be a musician, a fiddler in this very orchestra.”
“Oh!” I was not sure how to react. To be an acclaimed musician, that was one thing. Society admired a master in his art. But a fiddler?
“I was terrible,” he continued, as if reading my mind. “I earned a scudo a day scraping away at my violin.”
I laughed, because I adored how Giacomo laughed at himself without appearing obviously to do so. But I was also beginning to sense he was hiding failures, losses, and regrets.
“All that is behind me,” he was quick to reassure me. “I’ve become a different man.”
Nothing about him was adding up. Who were his family, and why did he never speak of them? How did he go from being a fiddler, to someone my brother would approach for money?
“How is it your fortune changed?” I dared to ask him.
“I will tell you,” he answered, smiling at me a bit wickedly. “One night changed the entire course of my life.”
“Truly?”
“Truly. I was twenty-one years old at the time. I’d been playing in an orchestra at Ca’ Soranzo, for a wedding. I left maybe an hour before dawn. As I went downstairs I saw a man in a red toga—a Venetian senator—drop a letter on the ground as he was taking a handkerchief out of his pocket. I retrieved the letter, and, returning the favor, the senator offered me a ride home.
“Three minutes after I take a seat in his gondola he begs me to shake his left arm. ‘I am numb,’ he tells me. ‘I feel as if I’ve lost my arm.’ I shake him with all my strength but now he tells me he feels he has lost his leg. I hold a lantern close to his face and see that his mouth has curled to his left ear.” Giacomo put a finger in his mouth and pulled his lip aside to show me. I pretended I was disgusted, but actually, he was as handsome as ever.
“The senator was near dead by the time we reached his house. I carried him upstairs with the help of a servant. We fetched a doctor to bleed him. Two other friends arrived, and I learned that the senator’s name was Matteo Bragadin. His friends told me I was free to go, but I felt it was my duty to stay.”
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br /> I nodded. I learned later that Giacomo had a kind heart for the sick and unfortunate. Which did not mean he didn’t make people sick and unfortunate; only that he did his best to stop misery if he felt it was in his power.
“The next morning,” he continued, “the doctor applied a mercury salve to Signor Bragadin’s chest. The aim was to cause a violent brain disturbance, which would then move to other parts of the body and revive the circulation of fluids.” Giacomo shook his head at the idiocy, and I breathed in, transfixed.
“By midnight, Signor Bragadin was on fire and very agitated. I saw death in his eyes. I told his friends we had to deliver him from the thing that was killing him! Without even waiting for their response—I washed off the mercury salve. In three or four minutes Signor Bragadin was relieved, and fell into a deep sleep.”
Che consolazione, I breathed out. Relieved to hear that Giacomo had not killed a nobleman.
“The doctor came the next morning and was pleased to see his patient thriving. But when he learned what I had done—interfering with his cure—he called me a charlatan. Signor Bragadin dismissed him. He said that a violinist clearly knew more than all the doctors in Venice!”
We laughed together over the happy ending. Giacomo’s dark eyes glittered in the candlelight. He was bewitching.
“From this time on, Signor Bragadin has listened to me as if I were an oracle sent to lead him.” He paused here, taking measure of my reaction.
“As if you have something of the . . . supernatural in you?” I asked, trying not to lose myself in his fiery eyes.
He nodded. I felt he was daring me to make sense of it. Was I supposed to believe in his magical abilities? I couldn’t tell. But I learned later what was true.
“He rewarded me with rooms in his house, a servant, a gondola, and a generous allowance,” Giacomo finished. “He has adopted me like a son.”
“Ah—” I smiled. Now many things made sense: his fine clothes, jewels, and self-confidence. “But it is more than good fortune that vaulted you into the place of a nobleman,” I noted. “Your own judgment, wits, and daring allowed you to alter your destiny.”
“Bene,” he said. “That is one way to see it. A flattering view. I like seeing myself through your eyes.” He leaned in and gave me a soft kiss on the lips. Our first kiss—long and ineffably sweet. His warm mouth tasted like lemon syrup. “You make me a better man, Caterina,” he whispered into my ear, and my heart soared.
By now, the candles around us had started to burn out. Only two oil lamps remained to light the stage. The strings began to play.
The Upside-Down World is a comic opera about a reversed society. Men are willing—if incompetent—slaves to the women they love. They knit clothes, bring hot chocolate in bed, even empty the chamber pots. At one point, a man runs onto the stage with a pair of knitting needles, singing: “I have been knitting very fast and in three months I have knit half a stocking!” We laughed hardest at that part.
The late-night hours passed. Amorous feelings grew up like vines around our box. In the midst of an aria about being powerless in the sea of love, Giacomo slid his chair behind mine. From this hidden spot, he laid kisses on the back of my neck. I shivered with delight.
He reached around with his hands, his fingers playing at the lace edge of my bodice, in and out. One time in, they caught something. He pulled it out for me to see. It was one of the shiny glass dragonflies—a pink one—that must have fallen into my dress in the gondola on the way to the theater. It had been hiding all this time, waiting to be found.
He kissed it, and I could feel him smiling hot against my skin. He let the insect trace some golden loops of thread, as if in slow flight. No destination. Just happy to be on me. Then it flew back in. Giacomo untied my dress and followed the dragonfly in with a hungry hand.
My breathing was coming very fast. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to; I wanted to drown in whatever I was feeling. Maybe we could be seen, I thought, maybe I could even be heard over the singing, moaning with pleasure, but I didn’t care. I felt greedy, crazy with longing.
He moved a hand under my skirts. And I became a slave to love.
CHAPTER 12
“Don’t take me home yet—please.” I sighed, leaning my head against his shoulder as we left the theater. There were maybe two hours left until dawn, I judged. Campo San Samuele was still alive with lantern lights and throngs of theatergoers, but soon enough, it would be just us beneath a starry sky.
“Shall we take a walk?” he suggested, kissing me on the temple. I giggled, feeling playful and more content than I ever had before. This, I guessed, was love.
“I will take you on a tour,” he announced, giving me a deep, sweeping bow in his black cloak. He tied on his beaked mask again. “Something like the Grand Tour of Europe, only maybe not as grand. It will be a secret tour of this part of Venice.”
“Secret?” I was intrigued.
“Secret,” he responded, taking my hand and steering us to a narrow street that led out of the square.
The reassuring lamplights and noises of the crowd soon faded behind us. At the end of this street he turned down another, this one even more cramped and dark. Every house was locked and shuttered. Giacomo kept us walking as quickly as cats. “Just a little farther,” he called softly over his shoulder. I had paused to look behind, fearing some stranger with a knife.
Giacomo stopped suddenly and I practically fell into him, laughing at my clumsiness. “Shh.” He began laughing, too. “We’ll wake the whole neighborhood.”
He took a powder tinderbox out of his pocket and knelt down. I could hear the fast scraping of steel on flint, and soon saw sparks. He lit a small candle. When he stood and held it above our heads, I saw we were in front of a grated iron entrance door. Everything smelled damp, as if no one had opened the door in a long time.
“Where are we?” I asked. Looking higher up, I saw a plain brick-and-stucco house. Nothing like my own splendid home, which was covered in porphyry, rose and green marble brought to Venice from as far away as Egypt.
“This is where I was born,” announced Giacomo.
“Oh!” I made an effort to sound admiring.
I heard him take a long breath, perhaps steadying himself. “My mother was the only child of a shoemaker. My father—an actor—was performing with his troupe at Teatro San Samuele. He caught sight of her here, sixteen and a perfect beauty, and fell in love. Nine months later, I was born.”
He blew out the candle and I stood very still, listening. I could make out his black cloak, the white mask he now untied from his face. His eyes were glittering—a gambler’s eyes. Taking a gamble he could be honest with me.
“I lived here until I was eight years old,” he continued. “I was a pitiful child, with a disease that baffled everyone. I bled profusely from my nose. As a result, I was extremely weak. I had no appetite, was unable to apply myself to anything, and looked like an idiot.”
“I do not believe it,” I interjected. “That sounds nothing like you.”
“All true,” he insisted, keeping his usual straight face. “I was cured by a witch.”
“Giacomo!” I protested, incredulous.
“Well—that part might not be true. I can’t be sure. All I know is, my grandmother—whose pet I was—took me to a witch to cure me. This witch lived in a hovel on Murano. She locked me in a chest, recited spells over me, sang, wept, and thumped on the lid. I had no idea what was going on but was too stupid to be afraid. Somehow this encounter cured me. I bled less and less. Within the month, my wits improved and I finally learned to read.”
“Do you think it was a miracle?” I asked, becoming excited.
“I have no belief in miracles, my angel. The greatest power God gives us is reason.”
“Oh,” I agreed, feeling disappointed. “Well—miracle or not, che consolazione, that it all ended well.”
“Ah—almost,” he said, taking the back of my hand to his mouth and kissing it softly. “My father died si
x weeks later. A sudden abscess in the brain.”
“Oh, Giacomo!” I threw my arms around him. He bent his head over mine, and I kissed his cheeks. I found myself crying for him, my tears eventually mingling with his. I knew about grief, having comforted my mother.
“And your mother—was she forced to remarry?” I asked, when he had collected himself.
“My mother was left a widow at twenty-five, with six children. She had to make a living.” He sounded bitter, but I couldn’t tell if he was angry at her, or only the circumstances. “She became an actress and—still young and marvelously beautiful—was in high demand. Within the year, she left for Saint Petersburg, and then accepted a lifetime engagement in Dresden.”
“Who raised you, then?” I asked, feeling anxious for him.
“My grandmother, Marzia. Every few years my mother would return to Venice and make a dazzling appearance, but my grandmother was the one who took care of me. She died ten years ago. And when that happened, my mother sold the house and everything in it. By then I was eighteen years old—a grown man—but I took it all quite badly. I went completely to the dogs. I wasn’t ready to lose my home, and go to live in a boardinghouse.”
“Good God,” I said, understanding these were the misfortunes—at least some of them—Giacomo had alluded to in my father’s study.
We began walking back toward the square in slow silence. Giacomo had wanted to show me his home, but it had made him pensive, and sad. I took his hand to comfort him.
After a few minutes, we passed the east end of the church of San Samuele. “And here”—Giacomo gestured broadly, becoming cheerful again—“is the site of my fine—if short-lived—career as a preacher!”
“No!” I retorted.
“Yes, my angel,” he responded, making a mock blessing over me. “I was destined to be the greatest preacher of the century. Or so my mother and grandmother believed, when—at only fifteen years old, and studying ecclesiastical law in Padua—I was given the honor of delivering a sermon right here on the pulpit.”
He spied a pile of empty vegetable crates outside a shuttered shop, grabbed one, set it down, and stepped on top with a flourish. It could not support his weight for more than a moment, and he quickly leapt off. I was laughing merrily: He was ridiculous.
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