Vivaldi's Virgins (5 page)

He was surprisingly agile for such a large man. “That’s right, my poppets,” he murmured when we’d crossed the threshold. His robes ballooned in the wind, sheltering us from the rain.

“Can’t we get out now?” I pleaded with Marietta.

Much to my surprise, because I’d spoken in a low murmur, Matteo answered, “Not yet—the old bat will be watching from the window until we reach the embankment. Stand closer to it, Marietta—there’s a good girl.”

It was a great confusion in that noisome place beneath Matteo’s robes. But I saw how Marietta, while holding tight to the turkey drumstick, shoved herself up against the doorkeeper’s fat thighs. I felt the shiver that ran down his folds of flesh. I have, I told myself, died and been sent to Hell for my sins.

As soon as we turned the corner, Marietta flung his robes aside and we burst out, gasping, into the storm. Matteo’s face was suffused with a look of ecstatic torture, his eyes rolled back and the whole of him trembling like a leaf in the wind.

Marietta thrust the turkey into his arms, wiping her hands on the front of his robes, which were wet from the rain. Much more tentatively, I handed him the wine.

Putting up the hood of her cloak, Marietta looked him up and down and then spat. “I will not thank you, Matteo, as it is you who are in my debt now!”

M
arietta knew the way so well that I wondered how many times she had already left the
ospedale
under Matteo’s robes. We had no torch, and there was no moon because of the storm. In fact, we were not much more noticeable
than two brown rats would have been, scuttling from one alleyway to another and through the greater darkness and momentary respite from the rain of a covered passageway. The wind howled and the rain soaked us, seeming to come up from the ground and down from the sky at the same time. I was so utterly lost that I could not have found my way back to the Pietà if my life had depended upon it (which well it might have if Marietta had decided, in one of her moments of supreme selfishness, to abandon me). I clung to her with all the force of my fear.

It was easy to stay in the shadows, for there were only shadows. Despite the weather, there were people abroad in the night, mostly merrymakers, all of them masked, their torches smoking in the rain. We huddled down into our cloaks and walked as quickly as we could, although it was hard to see.

We were far from the Grand Canal then, in a district that seemed inhabited principally by cats, rats, and noxious smells. Marietta dragged us into an alleyway and pounded on a disreputable-looking door. She had to pound and shout for a long time.

Some ladies—I use the word guardedly—leaned out of a window above. When they saw no one but two poorly dressed girls, they emptied a pot of slops that landed not an arm’s length away from us, then shut themselves in again, ignoring Marietta’s curses and cries.

I had heard tales of errant maidens who were drugged and stolen away only to wake in a harem of Arabia, there to be robbed of their virtue by a dusky infidel with hundreds of wives. In the past I’d dismissed these tales as fables designed to frighten us into obedience. But now, as Marietta pounded on that door, I sensed that I may have made the greatest error of my short lifetime.

At length, the door opened and a horrible hag appeared before us—a witch with a toothless mouth and eyes that gleamed yellow
in the darkness like a cat’s. I crossed myself. Her clothes were rags; she reeked of spirits. Holding a candle up to our faces, she laughed then turned to lead us inside.

“Come!” Marietta said as she urged me into the passageway.

“I won’t!” I cried. “You are the most wicked girl I have ever known!”

“Don’t be an idiot, Anna Maria! There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

I turned to run, but she and the old hag held on tight to me. When I started to shout, one of them covered my mouth. I tried to bite, but was soundly slapped.

“What’s wrong with her?” rasped the old woman.

Marietta answered through gritted teeth, “She’ll be fine. Just get her inside!”

They pushed and shoved me down a dark passage and through another door and into a chair. After barring the door, the creature threw her loathsome arms around Marietta.

Marietta suffered herself to be embraced, and even kissed the wretched creature. My face streamed with tears and I asked myself how many gold ducats I’d been sold for to put this Judas with dimpled cheeks and lustrous curls in such a loving mood. Finally breaking away, Marietta said in the humblest tone of voice I’d ever heard her use, “Anna Maria, I would present to you my mother.”

Suspended halfway between relief and horror, I ducked my face and mumbled some polite words. When I stole another look at the wretch, I could see something of Marietta’s verdigris eyes in that face that otherwise seemed as different from hers as a privy is from a throne.

Marietta was also scrutinizing her, but with a look of expectation. “Well? Do you have them?”

“Of course, of course I have them,
figlia mia
. Somewhere
…” She looked about uncertainly. Her room, lit by the light of a single candle, was the filthiest I’d ever seen. Following her unsteady gaze, I saw that some of the bundles stacked against the walls and both on top of and under the furniture were children, all of them apparently in the profoundest slumber.

“So little I ask of you!” Marietta burst out.

The poor wretch picked at a sore on her head, examining the blood on her finger and then licking it absentmindedly. “
Ecco!
” she cried out, as if the taste of her own blood had restored her powers of recollection. “Here they are!” She moved a child (who stirred but didn’t wake) and rummaged in the pile of clothing that made its bed, handing Marietta two lumpy sacks, each held together with a length of rope.

Marietta undid first one and then the other, dumping their contents out onto the floor and cursing in a manner she would never have dared use at the Pietà. Each sack contained a none-too-clean set of men’s clothes—not a nobleman’s raiment, but the most common sort of garb: leggings, a tunic, and thick shoes. Marietta was shaking with wrath. “You drunken fool! You thief!”

“Marietta, my pet—”

“Two ducats! Two gold ducats!”

The old woman gestured around the room. “I have many mouths to feed.”

“And an endless thirst!” Marietta began to weep. “They were to be women’s clothes! Proper clothes!”

“
Pace, bella!
You and your young friend will be much safer dressed as men. And look—look, my pet! I bought you these!”

She rummaged in another pile, moving yet another apparently unwakable child. “Here—look at these beauties!”

She held up two masks of the type the Jews of Venezia are supposed to wear when they go abroad during Carnival, with noses as big and pendulous as the bananas I have seen on the
vegetable barge passing by. Others also wear them—as a joke, I suppose—during the months of merrymaking.

Marietta, quite beside herself, stamped her foot. “I have never hated you more than I hate you now!”

“Hush!” I urged her. “It is your mother to whom you speak!”

“Would that I had no mother!”

The canny woman clutched at her heart and groaned.

“What now?” said Marietta. But I could hear the concern behind the coldness in her voice.

Steadying herself against one of the more precarious pieces of furniture, Marietta’s mother stumbled, sending a child, in the process, tumbling from its perch with a cry. She shouted at it to be quiet. Then, making sure she had our full attention, she recovered her balance and spoke in a voice overflowing with the tender strains of self-pity. “I take comfort knowing that my requiem, at least, will be well sung.”

Marietta laid her head on her mother’s breast that seemed so in need of laundering, and shook with sobs.

“I spent the money on medicine,
carissima
.”

This was too much even for Marietta. Raising up her head, she said, “You spent it on drink, old liar!”

And suddenly both mother and daughter burst out laughing.

Marietta noticed me then. “Come change your clothes, Annina! Why are you making that face at me?”

Marietta tugged a set of clothes on and tucked her hair under the hat that came with them. “There!” she said, stuffing her own clothes and shoes from the
ospedale
into the sack.

I was so relieved to know that I wasn’t to be sold into slavery. It was with a light heart that I did as Marietta did and changed my clothes. “You’re much too pretty to be a boy,” I told her.

“And you, Annina. If I were not a boy myself, I would fall quite
in love with you.”

I put the mask on. “Kiss me, then!”

In the commotion that followed as we chased each other around the room, several of the children wakened and began to cry.

“Now see what you’ve done! Go back to sleep, you naughty beggars! You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.” Marietta’s mother, who had fully regained her strength and vigor, hustled us out the door.

“I’ll have my ducats, old whore!” Marietta just managed to shout before the door was closed in our faces.

The wind and rain, before ending their duet, had put a hard, bright polish on the stars. I watched one fall but took note too late to wish upon it. Marietta, raised to be so much more alert to opportunity than I, had closed her eyes and whispered a prayer while I was still adjusting to being out in the night again. She looked so funny in her costume. But, then, I imagine I looked equally droll.

“Are they all your brothers and sisters?” I wanted to know.

“Brothers, sisters, cousins, and a few strays she’s picked up here or there.”

“How they sleep!”

“She works them hard. Believe me—I know!”

“How can you bear it, Marietta?”

She looked at me, shaking her head with an irony intensified by the leering look of that horrible mask. “How do we bear anything? How can I bear having such a mother? How can you bear not having any mother at all? We are alive,
bellina
—and I for one intend to make the most of it!”

M
ARIETTA PULLED ME ALONG
through the sparkling night, our heavy shoes ringing on the cobblestones. There were more people abroad now, and the streets were full of their laughter and snatches of song.

The farther from her mother’s abode we walked, the less certain Marietta seemed of her way. We twice passed a sign that read,
CALLE DELLA MANDOLA
, but I failed to see even one almond tree. When I asked Marietta about it, she laughed at me. “
Mandola, bambina
, for the shape of a woman’s sex. Those are the only almonds to be found in this part of San Marco.”

As a group of men came up behind us, she pulled me into the shadow of a doorway under another sign that read,
CALLE DELLA CORTESIA
, and I was able to understand then without Marietta’s help that this was a district of courtesans and their transactions. From the safety of the shadows, Marietta raised her mask and looked around. I could tell she was lost. “
Terra dei assassini
,” she read out loud.

“For the love of God,” I said, “where have you brought us?”

She led me away from that place, onto an alleyway that ended suddenly on a canal, beneath a sign that read,
RIO DI SAN LUCA
. We flattened ourselves against the gritty stones of a building as first one gondola and then four others glided by, filled with laughing people dressed in masks and evening clothes.

“I knew it!” said Marietta. “They’re on their way to the theater.”

“It could be any theater! And unless you plan on swimming there, we cannot follow them. Ask someone the way, Marietta! How can you be so stubborn?”

“All right—
pace!
” She pulled me into the shadows again. “But we must choose with care. Any one of these people might be a spy.”

Of course, she was right. The agents of the Inquisitor were then, as they are now, notoriously clever in their disguises. “What about him?” I whispered, pointing out a passing juggler who seemed at least to be young. He was scurrying along with his head bent low, walking as fast as he could without running. I reasoned that a spy would be walking more slowly and looking carefully about him. And it also seemed to me that a juggler—a real juggler—was bound to know where the theater was.

Marietta cleared her throat. “My friend, good evening!” she sang out in a voice well below her normal range.

The juggler looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. “What ho!” he said in tones that sounded as strained as Marietta’s.

I didn’t dare open my mouth, but dug at Marietta’s ribs with my elbow. “The Teatro Sant’ Angelo!” she said in a voice that started out as the girl she was and ended in a fake even deeper than the first one.

The juggler walked close up to us, looked us up and down, and then suddenly lifted Marietta’s mask, whereupon she covered her face with her hands. But then, with a laugh, the juggler lifted his mask as well.

“We
are
well met,” said the fair girl beneath it. She was as lovely as a painting, all creamy skin and rosy cheeks. “Here,” she whispered, “come away from the light!”

Once safely in the shadows, I lifted up my mask and we all three had a giggle together. “What ho!” Marietta said several times, in her best imitation of a
basso profondo
.

“But, seriously,” said Marietta, quieting her own laughter, “whoever you are and whatever your business may be, do you know the way to the Sant’ Angelo from here? We took a wrong turning…”

“I know it well—my family has a box there. And, as it happens, I am passing that way.”

“Will you guide us then?” I asked her.

“I will do so gladly, but only if you swear a solemn oath to tell no one you saw me.”

We stood in a tight circle. “We swear.
Giuriamo!
” Marietta and I both said at once.

“It must be a solemn oath,” said the girl, who was perhaps a year older than Marietta and even prettier, although I hadn’t thought such a thing possible.

“What can we swear by?” I asked her. Neither of us wore a cross, ornamentation of any kind being strictly forbidden at the Pietà.

The juggler opened her tunic and laid bare one of her round white breasts with its rosy nipple just catching the moonlight. “Do as I do!”

Marietta and I looked at each other. Then we each unbuttoned our tunics as well. The juggler put her hand on Marietta’s breast, Marietta put her hand on mine, and I put my hand on the juggler’s.

“Giuriamo!”
we all said at once. “Now say,” the juggler added, “‘if I tell anyone of this meeting tonight, may my breasts grow as withered and brown as prunes!’”

We exchanged another look, sighed, and repeated the juggler’s words. Then we all hastily put our clothing and masks to rights again.

“Follow me—we’re not far!” The juggler took off at a smart
pace in a different direction than we had gone before. Looking over her shoulder, she added, “I am to be married tonight!”

“Or so he has told you,” said Marietta—and it was an odd sight hearing these words pass between a juggler and a Jew in the nighttime.

I had heard more about the strange encounters of Carnival than I had ever seen: senators dressed as washerwomen, ladies dressed as sultans, lovers hidden together in the folds of a single silken robe.

The juggler stopped at Marietta’s words. “He would never lie to me!”

“Wouldn’t it be more prudent,” I hazarded, catching up so that I could speak the words quietly, “to marry with your family’s blessing?”

“My father would have me marry his old business partner! I would sooner drown than give my virginity to him!”

“And this other?” asked Marietta.

“We knew from the moment he first came into my father’s house that we were destined to love one another.”

“Men will say anything.”

The juggler waited for Marietta to catch up with her. “You are far too young to be so sour. Do you believe in nothing?”

“I believe in the oath I swore,” Marietta said without stopping. “And I believe that men—even good, godly men, even men with the eyes and lips of angels—will tell lies in the service of their loins.”

We all paused in the shadows under a bridge to catch our breath. Marietta lifted her mask again. “Marry your father’s friend and then keep this boy as your intimate companion—your cicisbeo. His name can be written into the marriage contract,
cara!
”

Even now it amazes me how much knowledge Marietta had of the world. How did the daughter of such a mother as Marietta’s come to know about this ultra-refined practice of the aristocracy, the cicisbeo—the wife’s official lover and best friend, sanctioned by her husband’s family? But Marietta’s fine ears were ever attuned to more than only music. If she had been a boy born into a noble family, she would surely have become a senator or a judge. “Spare your parents’ hearts,” she advised the bride-to-be with the sagacity of a lawyer, “and spare yourself a lifetime of suffering and privation!”

“I will never suffer as long as he loves me!”

As impressed as I was with Marietta’s worldliness, I envied this girl for being so much in love. The most I had ever done was sigh in secret over the beautiful body of San Sebastiano in the painting that hangs in the West transept, wondering what it would be like to kiss those places where the arrows puncture his perfect skin. Such thoughts always sent me running to the confessional.

I lifted my mask, lifted the juggler’s mask, and planted a kiss on those rosy lips. “Then may he love you forever!”

“Amen,” said Marietta, although I heard both pique and impatience in her voice. “Which way now?”

The juggler bride turned and pointed. “There’s another little bridge after this one. Cross it, then take the first turning to the left. It will open into the
campo
of the theater.”

“Grazie mille!”
I told her. “And may the Holy Virgin bless your love!”

“And may Santa Cecilia look down upon you both tonight, and keep you safe!”

“Addio!”
we all said at once, clasping hands. Then she continued on her way to meet her lover, while we set off to find the second bridge.

I wondered how it was that she had thought of invoking the patron saint of musicians. I was about to ask Marietta’s opinion on the matter when the narrow passageway opened out onto the square and we saw the throng of men and women there, surging up the stairs, talking and laughing, and buying refreshments from vendors who hovered about the place with their wares.

There was a shrunken Gypsy fortune-teller in conversation with a giant, who bent down low to hear his fate from her. Perched at the top of one of the booths was a monkey sucking on a lemon and screaming at the people below. A baker on stilts circulated with his tray piled high with delicious-looking cakes and buns and
biscotti
. A Turk was selling coffee, and a woman with a limp was selling flowers. A man with a net on a long pole slung over his shoulder proclaimed to anyone who would listen that he was equally good at castrating cats and brewing love potions.

I had seen crowds of people before, but usually in church and from the vantage point of the choir lofts, where we peek out through the grille upon our audience, well above them and safely apart. Here, though masked, we were right in among the press of bodies—nobles and merchants, courtesans and clerics, and common Veneziani who, as everyone knows, love music more than any other people in the world.

We were almost at the doors where people were handing over their tickets before being let through. “Now what?” I asked.

“Keep your mouth closed and stick close to me!” Marietta took my arm as we were pushed up to the ticket taker.

“Allora?
” said the fellow, holding out his hand and wriggling his fingers. “Hurry up, you Hebrews—if that is what you are. Have you not heard of the curfew for your kind?”

“Sir!” said Marietta, bowing low. I did the same. Her man’s voice was more convincing this time—or perhaps I had merely
grown used to it. “We have an urgent message for Maestro Vivaldi.”

“What business has the Red Priest with the Ghetto?”

Marietta leaned close to him and said, “Believe me, sir, when I tell you that the maestro is highly concerned with this business and will take the greatest interest in our errand!” She rubbed the fingers and thumb of one hand together in front of her face, then dropped it suddenly, perhaps fearing that the smallness of her hand would give away our disguise.

But she need not have worried. It was a theater, after all, a place of illusions.

People were pushing behind us and began to shout for us to go through or else depart. The ticket taker looked at the sacks we carried, little guessing that they contained nothing more than the clothes of two convent girls. “I see,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Has he lost all his money at the Ridotto, then? Ah, there’s no respect in the world anymore. Come in with your moneybags—and be quick about it!”

We waded into that sea of silk and rain-soaked woolens: the brightly colored breeches and cap scarves of the gondoliers, with their white shirts and billowing sleeves, and ladies wearing velvet skirts as wide as a doorway. Every face was hidden behind a mask. “How in the world did you know what to say?” I whispered.

“A lucky bit of improvisation.”

“Perhaps your mother chose our costumes wisely after all.”

“Ha! That was a lucky bit of improvisation as well. Although I would give the contents of my bank account for a silk dress, a petticoat, and some pretty shoes tonight! Look at all the grandees who are here!”

There were many finely dressed people, both Venetians in their black costumes and foreigners in their brightly col
ored capes and gowns, all bedecked with jewels and feathers. “Come—let us find a place in the pit while we can.”

We spotted two unoccupied stools and made for them. Marietta pulled me through a channel she parted with her elbows. I didn’t dare open my mouth to excuse our rudeness. But underneath the mask I blushed with shame.

Still, they were good seats, and close to the stage.

The audience was so different from what we had been used to at our concerts in the church, where scandalous things no doubt went on, but with at least some pretense at keeping them hidden. Here there was every sort of scandalous behavior in full view. Men sat in clumps together, gambling over games of dice and chess. Young noblemen escorted beautifully got-up ladies of the night, with their naked breasts on display. There were old women hawking oranges and sweets, and the pips and skins of these rained down upon us from the boxes above, along with gobs of phlegm coughed up by foreign diplomats unused to the dampness of our city, and men with pedigrees too fine or pockets too deep to be bothered with using a handkerchief to catch the remnants of their winter colds.

The spit rained down and extinguished the candles people were using to read the libretto. Both men and women in the audience seemed to be vying with each other to see who could make the most ludicrous noises. Someone was clucking like a hen while someone else, in another part of the theater, was snorting quite convincingly with the sounds of a pig.

Although his red hair was well hidden by a snow-white wig, we spotted the maestro as soon as we were settled on our stools. He was unmasked, and it was clear from his expression that he was suffering a solo performer’s usual agonies of self-doubt. He seemed to look right at us for a moment, wrinkled his nose in distaste, and looked away.

“Ha!” said Marietta at my side.

By then the crowd was stamping and shouting for the program to begin. A gob of spit landed on the back of my hand. Marietta hissed at me to be quiet when I cried out in disgust.

“Dio!”
she breathed as a great buxom diva floated out onto the stage and the audience burst into ecstatic applause. “Oh, will you look at her!”

Although dressed in the costume of an Oriental slave, the singer made no pretense of matching her manner to her clothes. Even though the opera had not yet begun, she alternately bowed and held her plump and heavily bejeweled arms out wide to receive the tributes of the audience. A volley of flowers attached to, presumably, love notes and laudatory poems rained down upon the stage. In the middle of all this, a dark-skinned woman, who didn’t seem to be part of the production, scurried forth from the wings to gather up the tributes in a basket and then scurried off to the other side, to the hoots and cheers of the men who sat with us in the pit.