Hidden Voices (30 page)

T
HE NEW CONCERTO
is so difficult that I have needed to spend many evenings in the choir loft alone, perfecting passages that trouble me. It has been some time since I’ve worried so about a solo or felt so unprepared for the degree of difficulty this intricate new work presents. Sometimes I find it hard to sustain the necessary energy throughout the passages of vigorous rhythm. It is difficult, as well, to maintain the freshness Father insists upon. The first movement is as agitated as any of his other concerti and has a curious aspect of urgency, while the second is typically languorous, a place where I may lose myself in the pleasure of the bowing, the calm and precise fingering, the sweet harmonious clamoring of string to string. I am surprised by the introduction of a refrain and then the repetition of it in a different key, something I have never heard before. It has the strange effect of invigorating the music further, and in practice sessions such as this, I do not have to be concerned that if I play with all the passion the music draws from me, I will attract another odious nobleman.

Tonight there’s just the light from my one candle, but I’m well acquainted with the shadows here and inured to all the noises, the heaves and moanings of this beautiful old structure. The tiny votive light above the main altar, a small pinprick of fire in the sacristy, assures me once again that my dear Lord is present there and watches over me.

I lose all track of time when here alone and have no notion of how long I’ve been trying to perfect one section, then another. I hear the heavy doors creak open once, and think it may be Prioress about her evening prayers or the custodian. There is another creak much later in the night when I am almost ready to depart. It is the heavy turning sound I’ve heard before that sounds so like a drawbridge being lifted for a boat to pass. I recognize at once the noise I heard that night when someone left Concerta on the wheel.

Breathless with hope, I place my viola upon the chair, take up my candle, and hurry down the several tiers of winding stairs so quickly that my little light can scarcely keep up with my feet. The church is as empty as I felt it was, no sign at all of who had pried the large doors open earlier. I rush right past them to the wheel, which does indeed contain a swaddled form. I unwrap the outer flannel at once to see exactly what’s inside.

This child is not so newly born as to be soiled with afterbirth. It is a girl, still in her swaddling bands, but with a flannel petticoat, linen shirt, and sturdy muslin overmantle. The cap has knotted fringes and silk braid and is quite finely sewn, as if there was much care expended in the making. The tiny hands are curled up tightly, the face as fair as any I have seen upon a newborn babe. Her eyes are shut in sleep, but she has what I’ve heard referred to as a rosebud mouth, which purses in and out as if to suck.

Sometimes there is a note with children who are left. When finding none, I gently lift the child and search within her garments, where I discover something so surprising that it makes me weep. My touch is quizzical at first at what I seem to feel, that is held tightly by the bands. When I loosen them and bring the object out into the candlelight, I nearly swoon. It is Rosalba’s pigeon mask for Carnival, the feathers just as sleek and shining as the day she fashioned it, the eyeholes that had framed her flashing eyes as empty as the hole within my heart where she herself is lodged.

I clutch this baby to me as if she is my very own, as I will strive to treat her henceforth. Part of me rejoices that Rosalba, for a certain now, is still alive and still in Venice. But it is tragic that she’s given up this child and still continues to be hidden from us. As tragic as the fact that I do not know of any way to find her. I’m comforted to think she heard my playing in the loft, and knowing that the music must be coming from my bow so late at night, she left this precious little girl into my care, for that is surely what she did intend.
Madre di Dio,
what a gift she’s given me. And what a great and wonderful responsibility.

Even knowing it must be too late, I put down the babe and run into the Calle to call and call Rosalba’s name into the night. I call so loudly that she must hear me from wherever she has fled so swiftly. I call so she will know for certain that her precious child has been discovered by her loyal friend

Back in the chapel, I lift the small sleeping form, hold it closely to me, and go with all speed to the nursery, where I wake Sofia to receive the child. When she expresses her surprise at the great care with which this one is dressed, I say only that it demonstrates the love her mother had for her. And when I hesitate to put the baby in her arms, she says, “Oh, not again, Anetta! Not another orphan you would make your own. You’d think you were a
commun
girl with time to spend on such domestic things. Signora tells me how she thinks we should discourage you from being here too often with the babies. She says you need the time upon your instrument and that you’ll soon be old enough to have a family of your own. And yet you choose to form a bond with any castoff such as this.”

“Concerta is not
any
castoff,” I tell her.
Nor,
I say to myself,
is this dear little girl, dearer to me than you can ever know.
When Rosalba comes back for her, my closest friend will find that her trust in me was not in vain.

“And what shall we call this one?” asks Sofia.

“Rosa,” I tell her, knowing it, for a certain. “Rosa is her name.”

There is only one other person I can tell the truth of this astonishing event: she whose voice has now come back to life and whose bright future seems assured. She’s been back here just one scant week, but the
maestri
have been encouraging her in every way, providing private voice lessons and making sure she is not stressed so she may learn the taxing music she is capable of singing. I see her now only at string ensemble or solfeggio, when she’s not otherwise engaged. Somehow I must find a private time with her when this momentous secret can be shared.

And so I plot to meet her when I know that she’ll be moving from one room into another in the school. (Always before, I knew her schedule, and it was very like my own. But now I’ve had to sleuth and scheme to find out all the places she is in attendance throughout the day.)

During the time that I have chosen, she has stayed behind to speak with a new teacher named Maestro Scarlatti, and it takes so long for her to come into the hallway, that I’m ready to give up my plan. Just as I turn to scurry to the class where I belong, however, she does emerge and seems surprised to see me there.

“What are you doing here, Anetta? I never know where you’ll show up.”

“I only have a moment as, I’m sure, do you. It was important that I find you.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“You will not think so when I tell you what I know. You will be glad you tarried for a little while.”

“Well, say it then,” she says, annoyed, the old Luisa traveling into her eyes. I cannot bear for that side of her to reappear.

“It is about Rosalba,” I blurt out. “She is in Venice. She is nearby.”

“How do you know?” She wants to be assured at once. “Where did you come by this new information?”

I have to pause to organize the words I want to say. It is a hard truth that I must pass on, and Luisa may not find it joyful in the least.

“I was practicing within the church last night, the way I often do.”

“Yes. What of that? It is your usual way.”

“A new baby was delivered to us on the wheel while I was there. She is a beautiful child, with something upon her person that I recognized at once.”

“You do create a mystery, Anetta. Please. Continue on.”

“It was a mask. Rosalba’s own blue-feathered mask. The one she made for Carnival.”

Luisa looks quite beset, but she doesn’t make a sound. I wonder if she understands the whole of what I’ve said. Slowly, her hands go up and rest against each cheek, her eyes grow round.

“Rosalba’s child?” she asks. “It cannot be.”

“If you were but to look at her, you’d know.”

“The infant’s here?”

“Within the nursery.”

She grabs me at the waist and dances once around, then stops and says, “We cannot tell a soul.”

“There is no one who needs to know,” I assure her.

“But knowing this ourselves, we must endeavor to take care of this small child, Rosalba’s child, as if she were our very own.”

“It need not be your obligation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that wherever your career may take you, I will be here.”

“How can you assure me of that?”

I had not meant to tell anyone, but perhaps what I reveal now to her alone will be another bond that she and I may share.

“I have been planning,” I say at length, “to stay and teach within the Ospedale.”

“What of those persistent dukes Signora keeps unearthing? What of a family of your own? Please be quite sure of what you want before you take the final steps to seal your future here.”

To think she worries for me is a gift I did not think to merit.

“I am,” I say. “I am quite sure.”

Sure that things can never be exactly as I might want them. Sure that a life with any duke at all, no matter how presentable or kind, would not be possible for me. Certain that my love is best expended on the children who are most in need of it and who will always give it back to me a thousandfold.

When Luisa still seems concerned, I take her shoulders and look purposefully into those conflicted eyes framed by the sweet face I love above all others. The temptation is so strong to kiss her full upon her blushing lips that I must bite my own and remind myself why I am here and how I wish with all my heart to set her mind at ease. If she should now recoil from me, it would spoil everything.

“And I can promise you,” I begin firmly.

“I need no promises,” she counters.

“You will want this one, I assure you.”

She smiles. “All right. What is it that you promise me?”

“I promise you, I swear upon Our Savior’s Holy Cross, that on the very day Rosalba comes to claim her child, I will be here and waiting.”

W
HEN EVERYONE DISCOVERED
that I could sing again, it was as if I were a sailing ship immediately told to change its course and ply new waters, deeper and more dangerous than any I have known before. The short time of sweet languor in the countryside became at once a distant memory and Alessandro placed so out of reach, I must fight hard to keep his touch, his beautiful face, alive within my thoughts.

Whatever influence Mother has, she has used all of it, and I am tutored in so many ways that it is quite dizzying. Diction, expressive singing, German, concert decorum — anything that I may need to aid my mother’s operatic aspirations for me. If Father Vivaldi, too, were not so insistent, I, perhaps, would balk, but it does please him so to hear me sing his melodies, and I am joyous beyond belief to have the best part of myself returned to me.

I’d missed the comradeship I had known within the Pietà, but lately I’ve once again been set apart as if I’m one of Father’s private students. Mother has been here so frequently to check upon my progress that she might go unnoticed if it were not for her bright swishing silk mantuas and stylish taffetas. Our little conferences, so longed for in the past, are becoming tedious, and I can’t help questioning the course we’ve embarked upon. She will not hear of this, and I’m forced to bottle up the things I feel.

“You must forget your little tryst,” she says one day, so unexpectedly I stare at her in great dismay. How had she learned of it? What does she really know?

“I see that look emerge within your eyes, that dreamy languid look that takes you far from me. And I know about the object of your fond affections. Signora told me.”

“She did not know a thing. She could not.”

“And was there much to know?”

“How could there be with Signora Ricci turned watchdog overnight?”

She grows suspiciously into a confidant, and seems about to comfort me.

“These young attachments. They can seem quite strong. But you are still a child, my dear, and only play at love.”

“It was not play. It was all good and true!”

“I’m certain that it seemed so at the time.”

“It
was
so. It was the worthiest, realest thing I’ve ever known.”

“You will recover from this love, though it appears at times, to you, that you will die of it.”

“I want no such recovery.”

“You will recover whether you should want to or not. Make no mistake. I have not used my wiles and kept some odious alliances just to see you throw your present opportunities into the wind.”

“Your many love affairs?” I thrust at her.

“If that is what you wish to call them. There is nothing I have ever done in my life without your future in my mind.”

If I believe her, what a burden! If I do not, I am still encumbered with the talent God has given me and with the many chances for its use that He has placed along my path.

When Anetta tells me of Rosalba’s child, it is hard to comprehend. Harder still that we may never know her reason for abandoning the babe, how the infant was conceived, or even see our friend again. The little that I know of what can pass from man to woman makes me realize that such a circumstance was almost mine. I can only make a supposition as to how it would have changed my life. This knowledge doesn’t lessen my longing for Alessandro. It does give pause when I consider running from a destiny that has appeared on my horizon like a great benevolent sun eager to warm me in its wide rays.