The Painter's Apprentice

by Laura Morelli

  I return the key to the drawer, but instead of returning the box to the mantel, I carry it to my own worktable. I push back the drape that covers my table, and set the box on the lower shelf, pushing it back into the dark clutter among the jumble of painting and gilding supplies. In the shadows, I reach for the box I have made with my own hands, my feeble first attempt at copying the box on the mantel.

  Would anyone know the difference?

  Chapter 40

  Something is wrong.

  Before I am fully awake, I know it. I cannot put my finger on it, but my body feels strange. Different. I run my hand across my midsection, which binds into a ball for a moment, then falls still. I turn on my side and feel my muscles relax, but the sense of foreboding remains.

  I reach my arm out in the bed. The sheets are still warm but Antonella is gone.

  Gone.

  Did she flee in the night with that boatman?

  Bright sunlight filters through the narrow window of the bedchamber, and the silhouette of the brick chimney pots across the narrow canal come into view.

  Pascal Grissoni and his father. They are coming. The painter’s wife has told me to be prepared. “Of course, my husband would like to honor the contract he made with your father. But under the circumstances, if you receive an offer of marriage, you must not feel beholden to us,” she told me. “You must honor your father’s wishes for you, not for us.” I know that the painter’s wife wants me out of the house as quickly as possible, but she is trying to be polite. “Besides,” she says, “any girl might count herself so fortunate to make such a match. Especially the daughter of a gilder.”

  Reluctantly, I rise and take the dress that the painter’s wife lent me for the party from a hook on the wall. What else am I to wear for such an occasion, I think? I bind my midsection with the roll of linen, then awkwardly step into the painter’s wife’s dress.

  As I fasten the last silk-covered button at my waist, from somewhere downstairs, a sudden howl, a blood-curdling scream, breaks the silence.

  The painter’s wife. My heart stops.

  I imagine Donata standing before the empty mantelpiece in the painter’s studio, and I struggle for what I might say to her.

  On the stairs, the journeyman presses his lanky frame past me, jogging down the crooked treads, still in his nightclothes. I grip the handrail to avoid pitching forward into the darkness of the stairwell.

  “I am sorry, Maria,” he says as he passes. “Signora!” he calls out. “What is it? What has happened?”

  I stop on one of the treads, doubling over with a gripping pain in my abdomen. My breath comes in ragged huffs for a few moments, then the grip subsides.

  Another shriek echoes up the stairwell. The sound that comes from her mouth is hard to describe, but it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The baby begins to wail in unison with her mother.

  When I finally arrive at the bottom of the stairs, I realize that the shrieks of despair are not coming from the painter’s studio as I had judged. Instead, the painter’s wife stands in the kitchen, peering down into the boat slip from the doorway at the top of the stairs.

  “Boatman!” she yells, a crazed tone in her voice that echoes into the dank space. “Where is he?!”

  “Signora,” I say. “What is it?”

  Her answer comes out as a wail, and the journeyman and I crowd into the doorway alongside Signora Trevisan so that we can see into the boat slip.

  Where the silhouette of the gondola should appear, I only see the prow forks barely visible above the surface of the water.

  The gondola is sinking.

  “Boatman!” the painter’s wife yells again.

  “I will go look for him, signora,” the journeyman says, jogging back up the stairs.

  “I knew it!” the painter’s wife howls in my direction. “I knew it!” She tears at her hair. “Rotten. Rotten! I told Benvoglio a hundred times that we should not have trusted that boatman, that it would all come back to us in a way that we could scarcely imagine. And look what has happened! Santa Lucia!”

  To quiet her squalling infant, the painter’s wife has jerked down the top of her dress and pulled out a skinny breast without taking time to cover herself. She presses the baby to her, tugging the small blanket around the baby’s body. Her young son appears at the bottom of the stairs now, his eyes still sagging with sleep, two fingers in his mouth. He presses his face into his mother’s skirts. “I need to go to the latrines, mamma,” he says.

  “Antonella!” the painter’s wife yells. Silence.

  “Boatman is not here, madam,” says the journeyman, reappearing in the kitchen. “His things are gone from his bedchamber.” Now I know that Antonella is gone, too. Both of them, with a worthless box they believe to be filled with gold leaf.

  The journeyman lopes down the stairs of the cavana with agility, and is already at the edge of the boat slip when the painter’s wife, with the baby attached to her breast and her son tugging on her skirts, begins to make her way down. I follow them tentatively, trying to ignore the new gripping feeling across my midsection.

  “He had the keys to the gate!” the painter’s wife says, gesturing to the great wrought iron door that normally keeps the boat slip closed to the vagaries of the canal. “That is the only explanation. That blasted boatman! He is the only one who could have done this!”

  “Look, signora!” the journeyman says. “That is the reason it is sinking.” We see that the boat has a great gash in the hull, a ragged gap just visible above the water line. Below the water line we can see the wavering reflection of a pile of giant rocks loaded into the boat to make it sink.

  “Antonella!” the painter’s wife yells again.

  “Signora, she was not in our bed,” I say quietly.

  The little boy begins to cry, tugging on his mother’s skirts as she presses the wall to balance her unwieldy body. The baby, hearing her brother’s sob, detaches from her mother’s breast and joins him in a wail that reverberates around the cavernous structure of the boathouse.

  The journeyman grasps a rope from the detritus in the back of the boathouse, and loops it around one of the metal cleats driven into the stone. He makes several flailing attempts to capture one of the prow forks with a loop on the other end of the rope.

  “We must send a message to Benvoglio,” says the painter’s wife. “And report this to the authorities!”

  “The oarlocks are gone, signora,” says the journeyman. He has succeeded in looping the fore prow fork with the rope, and pulling the boat out of the water far enough that I can see the brocade upholstery, turned dark and soggy.

  “Benvoglio is going to be furious!” the painter’s wife says. The little boy screeches again and stamps his feet.

  The journeyman pulls the keel slightly up out of the water, but his lanky frame is not strong enough to hold it, and the boat splashes back into the water. “It is too heavy, signora,” he says. “I cannot hold it.”

  “We need help,” she says. “Quickly, run to the neighbors’ house. Tell them to send as many men who can help us. Give me the rope.”

  The journeyman hesitates. “Signora, in your condition…”

  “Give me the rope!” she insists. “Now quickly. Run!”

  The journeyman hesitates for another second, then scrambles up the stone stairs and disappears into the house to make a run for the landside door.

  “Maria,” she turns to me. “We must do what we can to keep it from sinking. Do you think you can hold the other end of the rope?” I can hardly hear her over the wails of the children, which echo and fill the chamber with horror.

  Not knowing what to say, I bend over and grasp the other end of the tether.

  The painter’s wife pulls one side, and I pull the other. She strains to pull on the rope, her large belly protruding.

  I pull on the rope and im
mediately my back begins to ache. Suddenly, I feel something that is more than pain. It is as if my entire midsection has pulled up into a ball.

  “Oh,” I say, holding the rope with one hand and putting the other on my back. The boat falls down a few inches and the painter’s wife attempts to grab her side harder. The boat makes a loud splash in the water and falls on its side. It starts to sink lower.

  The painter’s wife screams, and the children wail even more loudly. I stumble forward and squat down to prevent my body from pitching forward into the water on top of the sinking gondola.

  At that moment, Pascal Grissoni and his father come to claim my hand in marriage.

  The two men appear at the canal-side opening of the boathouse, dressed in their finest clothes. I can see the prow of their own gondola, which is docked at the entrance to the painter’s workshop. Pascal Grissoni, wearing a brown velvet ensemble, looks as if he has gone to great lengths to groom himself. His father, no less elegant, stands behind him. For a few moments, they stand at the entrance to the boathouse as if frozen.

  “Signore!” the older man cries suddenly, and he ambles as quickly as his ample body will move to the painter’s wife. He pulls the rope from her hands. She presses her hands to her stomach and stumbles backward to lean against the stone wall, the two children attached to her. With all his strength, the old man pulls one side of the boat almost completely above the surface.

  At that moment, several men from neighboring houses rush into the boat slip, along with several wives and children whose curious faces appear around the opening.

  “Maria, hang on!” Pascal Grissoni yells to me across the boat slip, and he leaps over piles of rags, stacks of wood, and other clutter to get to me. I hear his voice at my ear. “Thank goodness I came when I did. When my boatman dropped us at the dock we heard the commotion in the boathouse and came right over. Who did this?”

  I cannot answer. The contraction comes again in a wave, as if taking over my body. I fall to my knees and pause on my hands and knees like a frightened cat, my head hanging, the rope pressed under my palm.

  “Maria!” Pascal Grissoni’s voice again at my ear. “Are you all right?” His voice echoes across the stone. Suddenly he is crouching over me, his hand on my back.

  “Maria!” the painter’s wife yells from across the boat slip. “What happened? Are you injured? What is it?”

  “No, not injured,” I say. I lift my head. Before me, the faces of at least a dozen people are turned in my direction: the painter’s wife, the children, Pascal Grissoni and his father, the curious neighbors. I feel that my eyes must look wild, crazed, and I wonder if they can see that I feel the air itself is going to crush me. “It’s just that...” A huge wave of contraction overtakes me and I cannot help but emit a grimace of a type I have never made before. I let go of the rope and the boat heaves into the water on its side with a great splash. It takes several more deep breaths before I find my voice again.

  “It’s just that... I think I am having a baby.”

  Chapter 41

  For months, I have carried a secret child in my womb. And now, as my contractions come in waves, I am surrounded by an unlikely audience. In addition to the painter’s wife and children, and the man my father intended for me to marry and his own father, there is also the journeyman and a half-dozen neighbor men who have answered the call for help. While a few of the men work together to hoist the boat and tie it off to a mooring, another man runs for more help to pull the boat from the water. The men try to avert their gaze, but they cannot tear their eyes away from me, the painter’s apprentice making her childbed in the corner of the boathouse.

  “Antonella!” the painter’s wife screech echoes through the boathouse. “Where is that woman when you need her?”

  But of course, Antonella is nowhere to be seen.

  “Send for the midwife!” the painter’s wife says to a neighbor woman whose husband has called out to her from across the canal.

  “No!” I say. “I have already caused you too much trouble, signora. Please. I must go to the convent of the Vergini.”

  “Maria,” says the painter’s wife. “Come inside and lie down. We will have the midwife attend to you.”

  Another wave of contractions wracks my body. I lean over and press my hands to the stone wall. From the corner of my eye, I see the pained look on Pascal Grissoni’s face, and I cannot begin to imagine what is going through his mind.

  “Antonella!” the painter’s wife screeches again.

  “She is not here, signora. Please, I beg you,” I say more loudly, “take me to Santa Maria delle Vergini. My aunt will help me.”

  “Master Grissoni,” says the painter’s wife. “Call for a gondola from the traghetto.” The painter’s wife shoos him out of the boat slip with her hand. The neighbor men have succeeded in tying off the boat to an iron ring in the wall.

  “Signora,” says Pascal Grissoni’s father. “You may take our gondola. Our own boatman will be of service.” He gestures to his son to fetch the gondola, and Pascal Grissoni scrambles out of the boathouse. I imagine that he is relieved for an excuse to leave this strange scene.

  The crisis averted with the boat, the painter’s wife now turns her attention to me. The poor journeyman paces back and forth, bewildered about what to do or how to help.

  “Sit, Maria,” the painter’s wife drags a small wooden stool over and gestures for me, but my back aches and I feel like standing and leaning with my palms against the wall. I watch droplets of water drip down the stones. The painter’s wife pats the small of my back where it hurts the most.

  “Let us get her to the boat,” the elder Grissoni says.

  “Oh!” A contraction comes, and I cannot hold back my sobs this time. I slump down onto the floor as it wracks my body. The painter’s wife does her best to kneel down on the floor beside me.

  “Do you think she will make it all the way to the convent?” the painter’s journeyman chews his nails, his brow wrinkled. “What if the baby comes in the boat?”

  “The boat is ready, signora,” one of the neighbors calls.

  “Help her up, please!” the painter’s wife calls. The journeyman springs into action, grasping my forearm with both of his hands.

  “She is young and it is her first child,” says the painter’s wife, putting her arm behind my back and offering her other hand to help me stand. “It will take some time.”

  “No, signora, please,” says the journeyman. “Do not strain yourself. Allow me.”

  Pascal Grissoni has reappeared, and he and his elegant, grey-haired father stand on either side of me. They lift my arms.

  “I expect it will be many hours before the child is born,” says the neighbor woman. “Better that she is there among the women in the convent than here with you. They will know better what to do and can take care of them better than we can.”

  “What’s wrong with the lady, mamma?” little Gianluca asks.

  “She is in child labor, caro,” the painter’s wife says, and I hear the fear in her voice.

  “She is going to have a baby?” he looks up at his mother with huge, innocent eyes.

  “It appears so.”

  I feel Pascal Grissoni’s arm under my own, but I dare not meet his eyes. I cannot imagine how the pain could possibly get worse than it is now, or that I will endure many hours like this. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other. The two men propel me carefully forward, step by step. I make it halfway across the boat slip when a contraction possesses my body as if a demon has taken it over. I bend over, gripping the painter’s wife’s hand and grimacing as they support my arms.

  The painter’s baby starts to sob again.

  “Cristo santo,” whispers the painter’s wife.

  “Don’t worry, signora,” says the journeyman. “I took care of my younger brothers and sisters. I will take care of the children wh
ile you take Signorina... Signora Maria to the convent,” he says.

  “No,” says the painter’s wife. “Come with us. We will all go.”

  “That’s it,” she says to me as the men help me hobble to the Grissoni’s fine gondola docked outside the painter’s house. “One foot in front of the other,” she says assuredly, but when she looks at me I see that she has gone white as a sheet. “Let us get her to that boat.”

  I hardly feel that I can walk, but the two men propel me toward the canal-side door. I grip the doorjamb and look out to see the polished black prow and the gilded lanterns and dolphins decorating the front of the gondola. There are two boatmen, one at the fore deck and one at the aft. The young man at the foredeck wrinkles his brow when he catches sight of me hunched over, supported by the two men. He leaps onto the landing and quickly ties off the boat, then approaches me to offer his hand.

  The painter’s journeyman takes Trevisan’s little son by the hand, and the two perch themselves on the foredeck near the boatman. I slowly lower myself into the gondola, hands all around me, and Trevisan’s wife helps me duck inside the dark passenger compartment, her hands at my back. I seat myself on a plush, silk-covered cushion and breathe a sigh of relief. The painter’s wife props her baby on her bulging abdomen. With her other hand, she fans my face with a piece of parchment that another passenger has discarded in the bottom of the boat. The contraction has passed, and I allow myself to exhale loudly.

  “Maria, why on earth did you not tell us?” the painter’s wife says.

  My mouth opens, but it takes a few moments. “I guess I could not find the words.”

  “Who is the father?” Her voice is low, and she looks at me with trepidation.