The Painter's Apprentice

by Laura Morelli

  My aunt has also told me that the abbess has heard of my vocal talents, and that she has thought about having me work with the cantor to teach the orphan girls some of the liturgy. That will come in time, she says. For now, I must learn to work the dough.

  Patiently, Lauretta recites the convent’s secret recipe for fritters in my ear, and I cannot help but wonder what Antonella would sacrifice in exchange for this information. Six libre of goats’ milk, fresh butter, sugar, rose water—that’s the real secret, she tells me—finely sifted flour, a little salt, and a pinch of saffron. After everything is mixed in a large copper bowl, that’s when the eggs are added, one by one. Let it rise overnight, she tells me, and only uncover it when the nuns outside the great doors to the orchard have the lard hot enough to make spitting sounds.

  I hear the now-familiar din of chattering voices from the corridor. “Here they come.” Lauretta presses her elbow into my side, then wipes her doughy hands on a rag.

  Small fingers and wide eyes suddenly appear over the tall counter ledge. Orphans. On Sundays the nuns allow them to visit the convent kitchen, to peer over the counters and ledges into the cavernous, vaulted space with its flour-covered worktables and great brick ovens. Their eagerness brings a smile to my face, along with a sharp pang of loss.

  Almond cakes. Jellied fillings. Egg glazes and sugar dusted on the top. Their excitement has been building all week. From the back worktable, the nun who oversees the Sunday kitchen brings a large wooden tray to the counter, and passes out the small delights into their pudgy hands. Their chattering falls silent, and all that is left are expressions of glee.

  “Bambini,” the nun in charge of the gaggle of children calls, “you must be grateful that you are housed in the convent with the most famous pastry kitchen in Our Most Serene Republic!” Her voice rises to a high, shrill octave, and the words come out like a song.

  She is right. The pastry kitchen is a marvel. Much like our Republic’s great shipyard, the Arsenale, the convent kitchen is staffed by specialists. Certain nuns concoct the dough, as much alchemists as bakers, calculating the right amount of flour, eggs, water, and sugar gauged through years of experimentation. The novices are tasked with breaking the eggs and kneading the dough until the right consistency has been reached for each type of sweet: almond cookies, jam-filled cakes, carnival twists, and an infinite variety of other treats. A brawny, ever-perspiring nun named Elisabetta manages the great brick ovens, and barks orders to two assistants. Along one wall are the finishing touches: pine nuts, raisins of purple and gold, shriveled cherries and plums. At the front of the kitchen large metal dishes hold finished pastries.

  Just outside the kitchen doors rolled open on a track, two nuns are responsible for tending the fire underneath a great copper pan mounted on a metal tripod. There the fritelle and other sugar breads are fried into crisp, golden puffs. Another nun stands by, armed with a large metal sugar sifter and a small pitcher of honey.

  Beyond the doors, the convent orchard spreads out to the limit of the walls. There are several tidy rows of grape vines for making wine, and several dozen neatly tended fruit trees now close to harvesting. These are the orchards of pear and plum trees where we make jellies, Lauretta has told me. Before the little sisters and cousins come to visit, the nuns press small cakes and cookies into the branches, and convince the wide-eyed visitors that the convent is a special place where such treats grow on trees. Too late, the girls discover that only the fruits grow on the trees, not the cakes, and that they are responsible for harvesting the fruits and making the cakes themselves. By then, their hair has been shorn and they too are closed behind the walls for the rest of their days.

  My aunt has shown me the recipe books, the great leather-bound tomes thicker than many of the thickest liturgical books in the convent library. She has reviewed our nearly endless annual litany of sugary treats, a yearly calendar for the kitchen to follow that is as sacred as our own litany of holy offices observed in the church. Dry, hard almond biscuits to be dipped into sherry or vin santo; square-shaped baicoli flavored with pistachios; thumb-sized essi, small cookies shaped like the letter S; flat oval biscuits billed as the tongues of cats or mothers-in-law; weightless meringues the color of canal water; speckled ovals that resemble quails’ eggs but are filled with jelly.

  At Carnival, my aunt has told me, we pull in several apprentices from the bakers’ guild to help us keep up with the volume of the crunchy slivers of biscuit called galani; oval-shaped fried dough studded with raisins; pastry dough filled with zabaione, custard cream.

  “These are only for the personal family gifts of our most wealthy sisters.” Then she showed me the recipe that called for small gilded stripes painted across the tops of the tiny cookies some of the sisters give their families on feast days.

  My aunt’s eyes lit up when she showed me the small pots of liquid, edible gold they kept in a locked cabinet. “For you,” she said, placing a small paintbrush in my hand.

  When the bell rings for matins in the novices’ dormitory, I hear the others stir, but I lie still for as long as I can. In those moments between sleep and wakefulness, my mind is filled with the world outside the convent walls.

  The painter’s gilded box. My father’s house. My cousin’s laugh. My lover’s hands.

  Has the painter’s wife given birth to her baby? Has the painter returned from his excursion to terra firma? What chaos has he found at his home? Has the painter’s half-sunken gondola been pulled from the water? What of my father’s workshop? Does it stand empty and forlorn? Has it already been sold to the gilder down the alley?

  These questions remain obscure and unanswered. Unless someone calls me to the visitors’ parlor, I have no way of knowing any of it. I pray for the gastaldo to come and give me some shred of news, some information about my former life on the other side of the great wall.

  “Wake up, bellisima.” I feel Lauretta’s hand give a gentle shake on my leg. “I have a gift for you.”

  I open my eyes to see her pudgy, eager face before me. In between my face and hers, she dangles a necklace with beads the color of fire, probably coral. I reach out and turn their smooth, round surfaces between my fingers.

  “Bella,” I say.

  “It’s yours,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “My mother sent me others.”

  I sit up in my narrow bed and swing my feet to the floor. On the bed alongside mine, Lauretta has laid out several lovely necklaces with colored beads of glass, amber, and coral. Two other novices have come to sit on the other edge of Lauretta’s bed, running the strings of colored beads between their palms.

  They are only the latest baubles to catch the novices’ attention. Across the dormitory, the girls have stashed gems, dresses, hair adornments, elaborate undergarments, and other treasures, pressed under their mattresses, in their sparse drawers, or in trunks at the ends of their beds. There is no shortage of wealthy daughters in the convent, I realize. Most of them are the unfortunate second, third, fourth, or fifth-born daughter, whose eldest sister was handed off in marriage along with a handsome dowry to secure the family’s future in this world. The rest were promised to the convent along with more meager donations, where they secured the family’s future in the World to Come.

  The families, for their part, ring the bell to the visitors’ parlor on Sundays bearing gifts for their daughters and nieces. Some of the women here, I am told, hold large collections of dresses and jewelry, wear fancy clothing under their habits, and exchange their expensive baubles in games of dice and cards, which are also smuggled in as gifts. I have even seen a few gilded boxes among the older nuns’ possessions, though none as special as the one I copied in Master Trevisan’s studio.

  “You can hide it under your habit,” Lauretta giggles.

  I fish my habit from the meager trunk at the end of my bed, which otherwise stands empty. I place the coral necklace Lauretta has given me inside the barren trunk, a
nd as I do, I think of another, more precious necklace I once hid between my dress and my shift.

  A lifetime ago.

  I pull my habit over my head, then follow the line of sisters filing from the nuns’ dormitory to the church for the matins prayers.

  An older nun shushes the chattering that echoes in the vaulted hallway. “Quiet, ragazze!” she whispers loudly. “We have reason to pray as well as give thanks this morning. Our confessor brings news that the pestilence is continuing to lift its mantle from Our Most Serene City.”

  A nun in front of me whispers to Lauretta. “My sister told me that they have removed the barriers in Cannaregio.”

  Lauretta makes a sharp turn backward, grasping my arm.

  “Isn’t that wonderful news, Maria?” Lauretta turns her smiling eyes on me. “Cannaregio! Isn’t that your quarter? Did you hear? They are removing the barriers on the streets! Finally!”

  “Thanks be to God,” another sister says, clasping her palms together, then pressing her hands on my shoulders. “Our prayers have been answered!”

  “Yes,” I say, hearing the words but finding them strange, unbelievable. “Wonderful. Thanks be to God.”

  In the upper nuns’ choir the air is stifling. We crowd together into the wooden stalls, our bodies sticky and warm under layers of black wool. Pale hands pass small fans from one sister to another. Small huddles form around whomever holds a fan in her hand, waving wafts of air in the faces of her sisters.

  Each sister carries a different style of fan made of thin wood, paper, leather, or parchment. Two of the elderly nuns at the front refresh themselves with fans in the shape of flags, small wooden handles and leather flaps with stamped and gilded decoration. Another woman near me holds a fan with an exquisite ivory handle and a scene painted on the lightweight wooden paddle that reminds me of the engraving of Pyramus and Thisbe from the book of engravings in Trevisan’s studio.

  The priest’s monotonous voice rises up from the altar below. I cannot see him, and can only hear his dull intoning of the Latin scriptures. Unlike many of these women, I have never had the privilege of learning Latin and it sounds strange to my ear. My sisters tell me that I will learn it in due time. We sit high in the nun’s choir so that we are not visible to visitors who may be present below us. They have placed me in the back row with the other novices, most younger than twelve, whose families have bound them to follow this life.

  From this vantage point, I can only see the top of the altarpiece that Master Trevisan, the journeyman, and I have made with our own hands. It has only been weeks since I laid the gold leaf on the poplar panels, to the glittering surfaces that appear luminous from where I sit. From behind, the nuns’ heads look the same, but I recognize my aunt several rows ahead because of her diminutive size. She seems happy and satisfied to have brought me here, having spread word of my talents throughout the community as if she herself might take credit for them.

  The priest’s dull voice stops, and along with the others, I lift my voice to sing. The chant transports me, and for a long moment I close my eyes and allow myself to be present in the music. Everything else falls away.

  As I sing, I run my fingertips over the armrest of the choir stall. It has been rubbed smooth over the years by the many hands of sisters who have sat in this seat. I imagine that it may be gilded, and I open my eyes to look. I see that it was once gilded, but the gold leaf has rubbed off over many years. Only a light patina of gold appears, the red bole exposed by years of palms running over it. I imagine how the sheaves of gold were beaten, how the gesso and bole were laid down, how the leaf was laid on top.

  I feel a pang in the pit of my stomach. The gold. I want to work the gold. I realize that as much as my heart and my hands long for my child, they long also to work the gold. I cannot imagine that I will spend the rest of my days here inside these walls, never again having the chance to work. It is what I am supposed to do, I realize. I do not know why it took me so long to accept it.

  And the gold is not dead, a voice seems to speak to me from inside my own head, perhaps from somewhere deep inside my soul. The gold is not dead. It is still very much alive, perhaps always will be. The truth hits me as clear as the summer sky outside the convent windows.

  With a start, I stand and press myself against the nuns beside me in the choir stall. “Scusate,” I say, pressing past their knees. As if she can sense my movement all the way from the front row, my aunt turns around. Seeing me pushing myself past the row of sisters, she launches out of her seat and rushes after me. Some of the nuns shush her and pull at her habit to make her sit back down, but her feet move swiftly to the aisle.

  I am halfway down the stone spiral staircase when she catches up to me and reaches for my shoulder. I grip the iron rail to prevent myself from hurling down the stairs.

  “Tutto bene, cara? You are not feeling sick, are you?” Her urgent whisper fills the stairwell. “Where are you going?”

  I pause and meet her eyes. “I am leaving,” I say.

  “Leaving?” Her brow wrinkles.

  “I am sorry, zia,” I say. “I have changed my mind. I am grateful for everything you have done to help me. Truly, I am. But I cannot stay here. I have made a terrible mistake.”

  My aunt grasps the sleeve of my habit. “You cannot make such a rash decision, Maria. You are now a novizia. You are to be a bride of Christ; you cannot simply walk out the door. Let us get you some help. Our badessa will know what to do. Wait here.”

  I pull my arm away from her grip. “This is not where I belong, zia. I should have recognized it before. I belong in my father’s studio. Everyone has tried to convince me that my destiny lay somewhere outside my father’s house, that the gold was dead. They were all well-intentioned. You were well-intentioned, zia. For that I am grateful. But I was wrong to think that the gold was dead. And I was wrong to think that I was meant to do anything but continue my family’s legacy.”

  My aunt’s forehead forms deep creases. “You are not thinking rationally, Maria. How will you make it on your own?”

  “I do not know. All I know is that I am going home.”

  Chapter 45

  I hardly recognize my father’s house.

  In the weeks that I have been in the convent, the quarter of Cannaregio has begun to come back to life, but the house remains a silent shell of what it was. My father’s worktable still stands under the window, and a few tools remain scattered across the surface, small pots overturned, the evidence of ransackers who came through in a haste and, finding nothing of value, left. The pillagers have taken what meager vegetables were put away in the root cellar. I stand alone in the middle of the barren room, the first day of the rest of my life, and I try to fathom where to begin.

  A warm swath of sunlight pours through the open door of the workshop, and an orange cat tiptoes into the pool of yellow. It bends its body around the doorjamb and squints at me through orange eyes. After a moment another feline head appears in the doorway. The second cat, with stripes of grey and black, slips around the orange cat and trots across the floor toward me with its tail held high in anticipation. The striped cat weaves its way around my ankles, and I feel its skinny, warm body begin to vibrate against my leg.

  As I make my slow inventory of my father’s workshop, the cats follow me, the striped one eager, the orange one more tentative. I suspect that they must be among the cadre of felines that once occupied old Signora Granchi’s quarters upstairs. Bereft of their mistress, most of the ragged animals seem to have wandered off in search of better prospects, but these two, at least, have lingered. The cats leap onto my father’s worktable and settle themselves there, watching me sweep grey ashes from the hearth.

  The gastaldo, after recovering from the initial shock of seeing me back in my father’s workshop, began soliciting help. He has already arranged for a boatman from the traghetto to fetch my trunk from the painter’s house. The gondolier,
an old man with a limp, helped me press the trunk—now holding all of my earthly belongings in it—against the wall where it always stood in the days before I left my father’s house. This small gesture brings me some comfort, and I lift the lid.

  On top of the small heap of clothing, I find a collection of tools that someone—perhaps Master Trevisan’s journeyman—has gathered from my workbench in the back of the painter’s workshop. There are also the tin molds that Trevisan taught me how to use on the gilded boxes. I remove them, running my fingers over their bumpy surfaces, then lining them along my father’s nearly empty workbench.

  I push the striped cat aside as I examine the small glass jars containing our powdered pigments lined up along the wall. The bench has been toppled over. As I return it to its proper position, an image flashes through my mind of my father sitting on this very bench, firing the bellows to melt gold and solder jewelry when our gilding work slowed. A small pot of gesso that we use to prepare panels is also left intact. I unpack my meager gilding supplies from my trunk and lay them out on the table alongside my father’s. The orange cat paws at one of the palette knives, then stops to scratch his ear vigorously with a back leg, sending flecks of dust and orange hairs spinning into the wash of sunlight.

  Earlier in the morning Signora Gardesano, the wife of another indoradòr across the alley, has stopped at my doorway to let me know that more than half of the neighbors on the street have gone to the World to Come. “Our guild will take care of us,” she tells me. But I know that she is trying to make me feel better. The guild saves our dues for such unfortunate events, but its coffers have been depleted by the number of people who have perished in recent months, and the number of families that need assistance.