The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen (6 page)

“You’re very athletic, Nicolà,” he said.

And not at all ladylike, I thought with alarm. “Yes, sir,” I said meekly.

“And how do you play the clarinet?” he said.

“She plays beautifully,” Julietta said.

He nodded thoughtfully, turning away. “I shall look forward to hearing her.”

How stupid of me to show off like that, I told myself; I should have let the apricot go, but I acted on blind instinct—as if I were still Nicolò Zen. The girls I’d known, like my sisters, were certainly capable of athletic play, of tussling, but a poised, well-mannered girl would resist diving into a flowerbed. Even if she wanted to, anyone who had worn a dress all her life would know instinctively that it was a bad idea. In short, I could disguise my voice all I wanted, but if I made mistakes like that, I would quickly be found out. It had taken very little to rouse the suspicions of a sharp-eyed man like Bartolomeo.

If Julietta suspected anything at all, she didn’t let on. Instead, she said, “At last, Nicolà. Here is my surprise.”

Still brushing my dress clean, I looked up as Adriana approached
us from the dormitory entrance. My heart skipped a few beats, but I tried to conceal my excitement.

“My new friend here has been eager to meet you,” Julietta laughed.

Adriana smiled at me. “And why is that, Nicolà dal Clarinetto?”

She said my new name in a singsong, trilling the
l
’s and
t
’s. For a moment, I was tongue-tied. Then I replied, inanely, “Because I am interested in the viola.”

She pursed her lips. “And not in me? I hoped we would be friends—you and Julietta and I.”

“Yes, of course, I hope so, too,” I said.

“Good,” she said, sitting down beside me. “Then tell me about yourself. Or have you already told Julietta everything?”

“Hardly,” Julietta put in. “All I know is that she was playing in the streets for soldi when Luca invited her to audition.”

“And where did you live?” Adriana asked.

“Here and there,” I said. “Pensiones, boardinghouses—sometimes a bench in the Campo San Vio.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Adriana said. “And cold. But you look very healthy, despite all that.”

“Maybe because of it,” I lied, and it frightened me to hear what a fluent liar I had become.

“What do you mean?” Adriana said.

“I mean that maybe the experience made me stronger. You know, having to stay on my toes, persevering so I could eat.”

“And you weren’t afraid? I would have been.”

“Only a little,” I replied, thinking of my two dubious roommates of the previous week, Giorgio and Filippo.

“All of us here have our stories,” Adriana said, no longer smiling. “What is yours?”

I went on to tell the two of them how I had lost my family, including my three sisters and my supposed brother, Alessandro.

“That’s terrible,” Adriana said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Julietta said. “Then you were only performing in the street for a short time.”

“I think one night would be quite enough,” Adriana said.

“It wasn’t so bad,” I said, wanting to change the subject from myself. “I got lucky, after all. What about you, Julietta? How did you come to be here?”

“That is a long story. I’ll tell you sometime.”

At that moment, Carita appeared in the doorway to the dormitory.

“Uh-oh,” Julietta murmured.

“Signora Marta will not appreciate your absence from dinner,” Carita said.

“She sent you?” Julietta said.

“Of course. We’ve already finished our soup. She is not amused by your absence, so you had better hurry,” she added before disappearing.

We rushed to the dining hall, and indeed, Signora Marta was very unhappy.

“You don’t think you’re going to dine with everyone else, do you?” she shouted as we prepared to take our seats. “You will stand at your places until the others are finished, and then go to bed. You will eat nothing. Anyone who gives you food will answer to me.” She looked around the room. “Does everyone understand?”

Adriana was on the other side of the room, but Julietta, beside me as usual, whispered, “Don’t say anything. Just do as she says.”

Later, I undressed hurriedly and slipped on my nightclothes. Every time I had to dress or undress, bathe, or use the toilet, I realized more fully what I had gotten myself into. It was not just the matter of concealing my sex; the girls of the Ospedale had habits my sisters could only have dreamed of, for the simple reason that my sisters had never enjoyed the luxury of brushing their hair with a fine-bristled brush until it shone, or applying a lavender cream on their faces and hands to keep them soft, or whitening their teeth and freshening their breath with fennel water and crushed cloves. Sometimes as I learned about hair, and facial balms, female clothing, and the like, I rued the fact I was not gaining knowledge of the clothing and accoutrements a boy of higher station would wear. For example, instead of learning how properly to polish a pair of boots, I was practicing tying my hair back with a ribbon without standing before a mirror. Though the chances of my becoming a gentleman who moved in society were very slim, the chances of my doing so as a young lady were nil. Why I felt I had the luxury of ruminating on such matters I don’t know. At that moment, I had no business fretting about the future when I could barely deal with my present circumstances.

Like Julietta, from whom I kept trying unsuccessfully to avert my eyes as she sat not six feet from me brushing her long hair, her breasts visible through the thin shift that had replaced her dress. She had fuller breasts than most of the other girls, some of whom—like me!—were flat-chested. She caught my glance, and smiled, offering me her brush, but I shook my head.

I was very hungry. But only when we had gotten into bed did I remember the apricot in the pocket of my dress, which was hanging on the wall at the foot of my bed. I waited for several minutes after Signora Marta had extinguished the candles before slipping out of bed and retrieving the apricot. But no sooner had I gotten under my blanket again than I heard a match struck as Carita lit a candle, blinding me as she thrust it toward me and shouted, “Nicolà is eating in bed.”

I had never hit a girl, but I had to restrain myself from jumping up and slapping her. I rationalized that I would be doing this as a girl, after all, but the moment passed, and with it any hope of escaping the wrath of Signora Marta, who appeared at my bedside, flushed and furious. After snatching away the apricot, she grabbed my shoulder.

“Who gave you this?” she shouted, shaking me.

I wouldn’t answer.

“Who?”

“Signor Cattaglia.”

“You dare to mock me?”

“He gave it to me, before dinner.”

“It’s true,” Julietta piped up. “I saw him do it.”

“Who gave you permission to speak, Julietta?”

“You can ask him, signora,” I said. “I swear to it.”

“You swear? You can swear to Luca tomorrow, you liar. You’ll learn to follow the rules here, or you’ll be out in the street again.”

She stormed off, and as Carita blew out her candle and pulled up her covers, Julietta hissed, “You bitch. I hate you.”

“I warned you to watch your tongue, Julietta.”

“Go to hell.”

“Shut up, the both of you,” someone cried from out of the darkness.

It took me a while to fall asleep, not so much because I was agitated over Signora Marta’s threats as the fact that I was hungry. I thought she was more bluster than substance, and after all the death I had experienced the previous week, her threats felt hollow. I consoled myself with the notion that somehow, in some way, I would take my revenge on Carita.

In the morning, I was awakened by a pair of angry voices. Drowsy, I imagined for a moment that Julietta and Carita were still arguing. Then I saw that it was Signora Marta and Carmine, the porter, beside Julietta’s bed. The bed was neatly made, and her bedside chest had been emptied. Her tiorba was gone, too.

“How could she have just disappeared?” Signora Marta demanded.

“All the doors were locked,” Carmine replied in his hoarse, squeaky voice, “except the front door, and I never left my post.”

An hour later, Adriana and I waited outside the practice rooms, with another of her close friends, Prudenza dal Violette. Prudenza was a slight girl with black hair and brown eyes and a ready smile.

“Julietta’s run away,” she observed.

“I only wish that were the case,” Adriana murmured, sending a chill through me. “Meet me in the courtyard after rehearsal,” she whispered in my ear.

Waiting for Adriana, watching the shadows creep across the rooftops, I kept thinking that, just twenty-four hours before, Julietta had sat beside us on that same bench. I could still hear her voice and see the wind ruffling her hair.

When Adriana appeared, she looked distracted. It was cool out, despite the bright sunlight, and though we were both wearing our cloaks, she had also wrapped a shawl around her neck. Still not accustomed to female clothing, I had not thought to take one myself from the large chest in the dormitory common room where sweaters, hats, and gloves were also available to us. I wondered how girls could stand to wear dresses when they offered so little protection from the cold dampness that rose from the canals. My legs and privates grew numb after just a few minutes outside.

“Julietta is the third girl to disappear,” Adriana said. “With the other two, there were legitimate explanations, which may or may not have been true. But that is not the case with her.”

“Three disappearances? When did the others disappear?”

“November. You said Julietta told you that all is not as it seems here.”

“She didn’t say why.”

“Because she probably knew no more than I do.”

“But if she didn’t run away, what’s happened to her?”

She shrugged. “I only know that she isn’t the type to run, unless she was very frightened.”

“Of Signora Marta?”

“No, no. I mean, frightened for her life.” She paused. “You’re new here, Nicolà, but that’s not the only reason I trust you. There’s something else about you. Julietta noticed it, too.”

Yes, I thought. I only wish I could tell you what it is.

“Think about who was threatening Julietta,” she went on.

“Carita. But why?”

“The second girl who disappeared like this was Lutece dal Cornetto. Just two months ago.”

“Cornetto?”

“Yes. Carita replaced her as Prima Cornettista. We were told that relatives had come for Lutece. A wealthy cousin from Mantua who discovered she was here and took her home.”

“Who told you?”

“Luca. He announced it to all of us at dinner, as if it were a happy event.”

“And no one saw her leave?”

“Only Genevieve. She told us her departure had come about very quickly. Julietta and I didn’t believe her. Both of us knew that Lutece was not like that. She had many friends and would never have left without a word to them. And she never mentioned any connection to Mantua. As for Genevieve, at the time I thought it was a coincidence.”

“That she was the last to see her?”

“No, that she was also the only one to say farewell to the first girl to leave suddenly, Silvana dal Basso.”

“And where did she go?”

“Naples, supposedly, for a reunion with her long-lost brother, a ship’s captain. Luca made no announcement about her. After all, it didn’t seem so unusual at the time. Girls come and go, it’s the nature of the place. They’re married off to suitors, or they take positions in other orchestras, or are hired as music teachers. But until Silvana, they always said goodbye. In fact, there would often be a small gathering, with tea and cakes, to send them on their way.” She shook her head. “I’m frightened, Nicolà.”

I took her hand and tried to hold it as I imagined another girl would, though I wasn’t sure I got that right. “There are things you’re not telling me,” I said.

She looked surprised.

“I can see it in your face.”

She squeezed my hand. “I
can
trust you. It’s like this: Julietta told me a terrible secret. I didn’t believe it at first, not because I doubted her, but because it just doesn’t seem possible. She said that Aldo and one of the girls—one among us—were taking other girls to the wine cellar. They would give the girls wine, and one thing would lead to another … against the girls’ better judgment, perhaps against their will. Afterward, Aldo would be able to threaten and blackmail them into doing more of the same, or worse.”

I tried to take all this in. “Aldo? Which of the girls would help him do such things?”

“Julietta didn’t know who it was.”

“And this is what she thought happened to the two girls who disappeared suddenly?”

“She didn’t say that. Maybe there is no connection. But it’s
possible their encounters with Aldo were only the beginning of their troubles. In this city every kind of vice is close at hand. You must know that, Nicolà.” Adriana looked up and scanned the windows of the Ospedale that overlooked the courtyard on three sides. “Don’t you feel as if someone is watching us?”

I hadn’t, until that moment. “Even if they are, they can’t hear us.” I glanced up and thought I did see someone in the shadows beside a curtain in a fourth-floor window. Your imagination is getting away from you, I told myself. “Do you think it’s true about the wine cellar?” I asked.

Adriana hesitated. “I do. Because of something I myself saw. One night several weeks ago, when everyone was asleep, I heard someone crossing the dormitory. With the candles extinguished, it becomes pitch-dark, as you know. But I caught a glimpse of her face: it was Genevieve dal Flauto. For a moment, I thought she might be going to the privy. But she wasn’t wearing a nightdress; she had on a dress and a coat. When she reached the door, I saw someone waiting for her. He held a small candle down low, so as not to illuminate his own face, but I could make it out in the darkness. It was Aldo. Beside him was another girl—all I could make out in the shadows was her long hair. I couldn’t sleep after that. Two hours later, just before first light, Genevieve returned to the dormitory with Bellona dal Cembalo. Have you met Bellona?”