Vivaldi's Virgins (17 page)

I’ve come to believe that music is the one companion, the one teacher, the one parent, the one friend who will never abandon me. Every effort I give to it is rewarded. It never spurns my love, it never leaves my questions unanswered. I give, and it gives back to me. I drink, and—like the fountain in the Persian fairytale—it never runs dry. I play, and it tells me my feelings, and it always speaks the truth.

We are placed here to pray for Venezia and the grace of the Republic in God’s eyes. But I have found the secret treasure in this task of ours, and it has nothing to do with any higher good but only my own satisfaction.

There—you see how self-serving I am. And perhaps I am, in truth, my mother’s daughter. No doubt it serves you best to keep yourself hidden from me.

The priest and the Prioress and everyone else here would have us believe that nothing in this life is important at all, when compared with what comes later. And yet the afterlife holds no attractions for me, as I know it will be my lot to suffer when I am sent there. I will burn in Hell for these bad thoughts of mine. And pray God that no one in
la Serenissima
but you is ever party to them!

Dante Alighieri wrote letters to his beloved Beatrice from the time they met as children until long after she died. Letters that he never sent and she never read. When I wake at night and cannot sleep, I am possessed by the thought that my letters to you are like Dante’s letters to Beatrice—like music played in an empty room.

I will give this letter to Sister Laura after I seal it. I like to think of you breaking the seal on my letters. I reach out to you across the void that has separated us and will perhaps separate us forever. I write and write even though I am afraid that you never read these letters—that no one reads these letters, nor ever will. That Sister
Laura simply throws them in the fire, satisfied that I have been given the illusion of being someone’s daughter.

Across that void, nonetheless, I send my kisses to you. I send my love.

Anna Maria dal Violin

T
here was much I left out of my report of Marietta’s letter. I may have been fearless in my writing when it came to betraying my own blasphemous thoughts, yet I was determined never to reveal information that might betray my friends.

But Marietta wrote without censoring a single thought or deed. Each time I receive one of her letters, I’ve contemplated burning it. More than one in the pile I have here has singe marks on it from the initial impulse that made me throw it into the fire after my first reading.

Marietta’s letters were and have been a secret indulgence for me. I read them whenever I am feeling dull or bored, and I’ve hidden them—along with all my other secret things—so carefully that they will not be found.

All my letters—and my one little book, if not the other—must be hidden, at least until I am dead. But, for now, they are a companion to me such that I have never had in my lifetime, there for me whenever I want them. They are like a passageway into my youth again, and a window onto the sort of life I know I will never have.

Annina,

What a foul place this is! All but a few of the nuns are vile creatures who get their jollies by making life as miserable as possible
for the novices and other young people—like me—thrown into their midst.

You can imagine what hay they made of my pregnancy. It’s only the fact that my darling dolt has two aunts here that kept the most self-righteous of the old biddies from throwing me down a well! I told them that I didn’t
want
to be pregnant, and would be quite obliged to them if they could give me some herb or push me down the stairs or something to make it go away. But then all I got was more sermons about how I’m more wicked than the Grand Caliph and Genghis Khan put together for wanting to do away with Tomasso’s precious baby. I thought if I could get hold of a couple of those aunties and drop a hint or two that Tomasso had nothing to do with the state I was in, I might get a bit of help.

And then I heard from one of the choir nun’s private maids that my name was being bruited around for the role of Poppea in Handel’s opera. She’s the one who’s loved by every one of the male characters—and so she has to be beautiful as well as a brilliant vocalist, and able to sustain her role for a full five hours or so.

That was the last straw for me. I sent for my future mother-in-law and told her that if I didn’t get her help, I’d be giving birth to someone else’s bastard. Of course, I was a bit more refined in the way I said it, but clear enough not to leave her in any doubt about what to do.

She’s a whirlwind, that future mother-in-law of mine. No sooner had she left than one of the nuns came in from the apothecary with what she said was a sleeping draught for me.

I drank it down with a prayer that Mamma Foscarini hadn’t decided to go the easy route and just poison me. She’s quite fond of Tomasso, though, and I was banking on her not wanting to tell him that his fiancée just happened to drop dead after a visit from her.

The bleeding started after Vespers and went on and on through the night and well into the morning, great clotted masses of it, and all the while the nun—who stank!—stood by and kneaded my belly as if I’d been a lump of dough. It hurt, too, worse than any period you can imagine. But the nun told me that she had no particular need to please the Foscarini, and that if I screamed she’d kill me.

When everything had all come out and I realized I wasn’t going to die, the nun put a powder of dragon’s blood in my opening, and gave me another foul-smelling potion to make me sleep. And it was as if, in sleep, I became a virgin again.

Oh, Annina, you cannot imagine the relief of waking up and knowing that I was no longer with child! I’ll bear children—because I’ll need to. And I’ll probably even love the little blighters. But it’s far too early now, and, really, it wouldn’t be fair to give Tomasso a child that wasn’t his own.

When did a sense of fairness ever enter into my plans? Don’t be too quick to judge me. I have as much a sense of right and wrong as the most pious-seeming nun in this place. It is just that my sense of justice is mingled with the practicalities of living in the world. And I do not hide my evil, unlike the rest of them.

A message came from Handel, just as I knew it would. He’d found everyone for his opera—the great fat soprano Margarita Durastanti to play the title role of Agrippina; the bass Antonio Francesco Carli to sing the role of Claudio; two
castrati
who get treated like gods, Giuliano Albertini and Valeriano Pellegrini, for Narciso and Nerone; the contralto Francesca Maria Vanini-Boschi, wearing breeches for the role of Ottone; and her husband, Beppe, a bass, to sing Pallante.

But Handel couldn’t find his Poppea, he wrote, because his Poppea was hidden away in the convent of San Francesco della Vigna.

The mother-in-law again intervened—and I can see why, too.
If I become an opera star, no one will remember the gossip about how I snagged her son. The more famous I become, the happier she’ll be—as long as I behave myself from now on. And believe me, she extracted just such a promise from me, promising in turn that she wouldn’t hesitate the next time to have me poisoned if I dared ever cross her. And yet she as much as told me that I’d have my
cicisbeo,
providing he was from a noble family and we comported ourselves with discretion.

I think I’m going to like this mother-in-law of mine.

All right. I know you’re reading this and asking, yes, that’s all very well, but what about the thing Marietta promised to do for me?

I haven’t forgotten,
cara.
I was just saving the best news for last.

Just as I said I would, I asked around about who might have a brother or uncle who’s been in financial trouble lately. It seems that just about everyone does—so that led nowhere. But then my mother-in-law let something slip about Tomasso—how she hopes I’ll take a strong hand with him and straighten him out, as he’s really been going to Hell in a handbasket lately.

I played as dumb as I dared, expressing the opinion that nobles have it all over the common people when it comes to moral behavior. Mamma Foscarini gave a great big snort and advised me to keep a close eye on my jewels (as if I had any!), as Tomasso had lately stooped so low as to steal something out of his own sister’s room and pawn it in the Ghetto.

So maybe every duke and duchess in Venezia steals one from the other, as far as I know. But the situation seems to bear a passing resemblance to the one you described. Wouldn’t that just be something if the man you’re looking for turned out to be Tomasso!

Trust me, Annina, I’ll find a way to worm out the rest of the tale and whether this path will lead you anywhere or suddenly end. I think it’s a big mistake for you to try to find out in the first place.
There’s a reason we’re stuck in these holes. Don’t imagine that your mother, if she lives, is going to thank you for throwing back the curtain and showing the whole of Venezia what she has probably gone to a great deal of effort to hide. But I’m bound to help you, and help you I will.

I don’t know yet which sister had her property purloined, as Tomasso has a handful of them, and each one—married, cloistered, or dead—still has a bedroom at the Ca’ Foscarini.

As soon as my mamma-to-be noticed how interested I was in her story, she clammed right up. But I’ll figure her out and find out more—don’t worry. This
zentildonna nobile
is more like my own sainted mother than I would ever have thought possible before I started to move among the gentry.

I’ve told Handel that he must speak to Vivaldi—or speak to someone—who can arrange for all of you to come hear me sing. How I long to have everyone see the flowers and poems my fans will throw to me, and hear the ovations! I’ve already won all sorts of praise from among the cast and their servants and all those others who hang about during our rehearsals. The
parlatorio
looks like a garden, it is so filled with flowers my admirers have sent to me.

The wedding is to be in March—and, believe me, the relief is great in this family that the bride will not be pregnant! I will make sure that the procession stops beneath your window so that you can get a really good look at me in my wedding dress, which is sure to be ten times more beautiful and costly than old Madalena’s. And I’ll have one gondola filled with enough chocolates to make all of you sick for a week.

Mille baci,
Annina! I will look for a husband for you.

Marietta

I
t was suddenly a season of letters arriving one after the other, after a lifetime of almost no contact from the outside.

I’ve wondered a lot about this lately. Why is it that one thing seems to make way for another similar thing that follows? Are the passageways of communication like the passageways that water cuts through the land? The first trickle marks the rivulet’s pathway, making it possible. And a dry place, over time, is turned into one that is wet and lush, a place where things can grow.

Soon after I received and devoured Marietta’s letter, I found a very different sort of note stuck beneath my pillow. My life was transformed, in that moment of finding it, from a friendless desert to a fertile plain. Whole vistas opened up before my eyes when I unfolded the scrap of thin paper, the type that is used in making patterns.

Signorina Anna Maria,

I have information that will be of interest to you—but you will have to pay for it. Go to the water gate tomorrow night. Silvio will come for you. Bring your violin.

Rebekkah

T
he day she named was a Friday. I remember that it was October 17, because we drank the health of Sister Laura that evening, to mark her birthday. At the celebration, I told Bernardina that I had a headache and gave her my measure of wine.

At least leaving the
dormitorio
without being detected would be easier, now that my friends were gone. Of course, Bernardina would be watching, awake or asleep, drunk or sober, and I had
to be clever if I hoped to escape right out from under her nose. Ever since our lessons had begun, she reminded me at every opportunity of her membership in the
coro
, and I knew she took careful note of everything I did, hoping yet again to catch me doing something wrong.

I waited until I heard her snoring. And then I tiptoed over to her bed and placed my pillow up against the side of her head and slipped her own pillow out a little, so that her head fell into the trough between them and both her ears were covered.

She stirred a little and moaned, but her eyes stayed closed. Then I dressed myself, grabbed my violin and peeked out into the hallway.

La Befana was the
settimaniera
that week, which was bad news for me. I waited behind the door until I heard her footsteps.

She paused at our doorway, listening, I suppose, to see if anyone stirred. I could hear her breathing. She’d drunk her fair share of wine at the celebration—I was praying she didn’t slump to the floor right there on the other side of the door.

I held my breath, my cheek to her loathsome cheek, with only the door between us. I thought about what Sister Laura had told me about la Befana—and it made me reach up to touch my own cheek, making sure that the skin was still smooth, instead of pitted and scarred and horrid and old. I remember how afraid I felt that la Befana would open the door and find me there, fully dressed and poised to leave.

Finally, I heard her sigh and walk away, continuing her rounds.

I said a prayer and then slipped out, holding my shoes in one hand and my violin in the other. The marble of the stairway felt cold beneath my stockinged feet, but I scampered so fast that I was warm enough by the time I’d run down the three stairways and reached the water gate, triumphant because I hadn’t met so
much as a mouse along the way. Thus it startled me to see that the lowest reaches of the orphanage were lit by candles.