Vivaldi's Virgins (8 page)

Scarlatti bowed to the cardinal, to the king, and across the room to Handel, who sat at the harpsichord hidden behind the winsome white-and-gold mask of Harlequin. “I cede my place at this noble instrument to you, brother Scarlatti.” He jumped up from the bench, gesturing for Scarlatti to come take his place there.

Everyone looked for an anxious moment at the king and
la Querini.
“Very amusing, utterly delightful!” he said to her in a voice loud enough for all to hear.

At that, Scarlatti bounded across the room, shouting with mock rage, “Out of my way, you Saxon dog!”

I looked at Claudia to see if she would take offense at Scarlatti’s jibe. But she was gazing across the room with an expression I had never seen in her eyes before, like someone overcome with a memory of something incomparably sweet—although whether the look was directed at Handel or Scarlatti, I could not tell. I noticed that Giulietta, at my other side, looked similarly in danger of swooning. The maestro murmured, to no one in par
ticular, “He normally wouldn’t even
think
of playing in public!”

Scarlatti played fiendishly well, a capriccio in G major. There was a surge of cheers and applause when he’d finished. He strutted before the crowd, bowing and preening like a returning war hero. Claudia was shrieking so loudly I had to cover my ears.

Handel, his mask still beaming (although it was impossible to know what his real expression was), placed himself beside the cardinal, who inclined his head toward the Saxon to better hear his words. We all saw him nod then.

“
Signori, signore
—please, a little quiet. Scarlatti, you peacock, stop that!” Scarlatti had somehow got hold of a quill and was signing ladies’ fans. He threw the pen over his shoulder and bowed to the cardinal.

“Ah, that’s better,” said Ottoboni, turning to the crowd again. “
Signori, signore
. Our distinguished young musician from Saxony has asked the favor of a second round—at the organ!” And then the cardinal shouted, “Let an organ be brought into the room!”

The fair lords and ladies of Venezia roared their approval like the bawdiest lowborn youths of Cannereggio. I saw money change hands in a frenzy of betting while the instrument was carried in, with great difficulty, by a dozen servants wearing the purple and gold of the Foscarini.

Handel bowed his thanks, then gestured to Scarlatti, offering him the chance to play first.

Scarlatti played, if anything, even better than he had before. I could have sworn that he was playing extemporaneously—a toccata in the key of F major. Two ladies tore their bodices open, baring their breasts to him—this with priests in the room!

Handel, whose entire person seemed to be grinning now, took his place at the organ. The room, which had been abuzz with laughter and jibes, grew silent except for the sound of the music he played—an allegro in D minor. Faster and faster, with a
thunderous sound, so that several ladies—much to my distress, Giulietta among them—fell in a swoon. Someone cried out, “
Diavolo!
” and I saw the maestro make the sign of the cross.

When Handel finished, there was a moment of silence. And then the crowd began to roar again, shouting first one man’s name and then the other’s. “Scarlatti!” cried one group of supporters, while another shouted back, “Handel! Handel!”

Cardinal Ottoboni leapt up onto one of the tables laden with food and wine to address the crowd.
“Veneziani!”
he pleaded. “
Pace!
I have reached a decision.”

There was the sound of breaking glass and ripping cloth before the crowd calmed itself enough to hear him out. “We have at least two kings among us tonight.” At this, he gave a nod to King Frederick, who feigned ignorance again. “Handel is our king of the organ.” The crowd of
Italiani,
ever loyal to their own, bellowed in protest. “
Pace, pace—
I am not finished!” said the cardinal. “And Scarlatti is our king of the harpsichord!”

Vivaldi, seeming indifferent to the outcome, held himself apart from the tumult. But I have no doubt that he was jealous of the tributes these other, younger musicians were receiving—and fearful, I’m sure, of losing the favor he’d so newly won from the king.

There was the joyful pop of a hundred bottles of champagne, and little shrieks from the ladies as the corks flew everywhere. I lost track of Vivaldi then. I was trying to pull Giulietta upright when an elegantly dressed young man appeared by my side. “May I be of help, Signorina?” he said in an accent I recognized as German. In defiance of custom, he raised his mask to let me see his face.

Such a lively, intelligent face with warm brown eyes that danced in the candlelight. He smiled at me a smile so genuine—so full of simple regard—that it felt suddenly as if I’d never been
smiled at before that moment, or been seen before those eyes seemed to look right through my mask and into my soul.

Poor Giulietta! I nearly dropped her, so taken was I with the feeling of standing close to this young man. I felt parched all of a sudden. As if he could read my thoughts, he took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed one to me. I drank it down in one toss. “Will you dance with me, Signorina?” he said, holding out his hand. It was only then that I noticed the orchestra was playing again.

“A tiny moment,” I said to him, coming rather closer to his chest than I had intended. I pushed myself back and turned to face the other girls.

“Dance, you goose!” said Claudia, laughing.

“But I haven’t been introduced to him!” I whispered frantically.

Claudia, looking so very pretty and buxom in her dress that I instantly felt afraid he would prefer her over me, walked up to the young man and spoke to him in Italian—I suppose so that I would understand the content of their exchange.

“What’s your name,
ragazzo?
” she said as if she were speaking to someone selling vegetables.

He smiled good-naturedly. “Franz Horneck,” he said, clicking his heels and bowing in the Prussian style. “Here to further my studies in the violin and harpsichord and to procure musical scores for the Archbishop of Mainz.” His eyes glittered then. “And to disport myself in Venezia as much as may be possible!”

Claudia gave him a very proper nod. “Franz Horneck, may I present to you Signorina Anna Maria della…” She hesitated, realizing, I think, how dangerous it would be to identify me as a foundling of the Pietà. Giulietta, Bernardina, and I could all receive fearsome punishments were it found out that we’d left the premises without receiving written permission, and to attend
such a worldly entertainment as a ball! And Vivaldi—even then I think we realized that Vivaldi had put himself greatly at risk.

“Anna Maria della Foscarini!” Giulietta chimed in, having apparently recovered from her faint.

“Giulietta!” I cried in protest. But Master Horneck kissed my hand and in the next instant whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry, Signorina, your secret is safe with me.”

Claudia had meanwhile grabbed a glass of champagne for herself and was drinking it greedily. “Franz, Annina. Annina, Franz. Now you may dance!”

And we danced. It was even more wonderful than I had dreamed it would be. Despite the unaccustomed shoes and my lack of experience. Despite the glass of champagne or perhaps because of it, we danced as if we were leaves born aloft on a wind.

No, we danced as one being, one soul, one heart, so that for the first time in my life I did not feel alone.

We did not stop dancing, I think, except to stop briefly for more glasses of champagne. But even when we were not brought together by the pattern of the dance, it still felt as if we danced together.

I fear I drank too much. We all have our allotment of wine at the Pietà, but it is mixed with water until we come of age.

Franz guided me out to a balcony where we could cool ourselves in the night air. All around us there were others from the party in various states of dishevelment and intoxication, wrapped around each other like strands of seaweed. Claudia was there with Scarlatti, laughing and hiccupping as he nibbled at a bunch of grapes tucked into her décolletage. He had doffed his mask and was wearing an expression of intense concentration. He was the handsomest man I had ever seen.

I quickly looked away.

“Should we go inside again?” Franz asked me.

I was about to answer when the notes of the “Cum Sancto Spiritu” drifted up from the canal. I instantly recognized the sound as the voices of our own
figlie di coro
. Franz and I walked hand in hand to the edge of the railing, and there they were, ranged over the same gondola that had taken us to the palazzo. Each girl carried a candle. They wore the sprigs of holly in their hair.

It was such an odd sensation to watch and listen to them from the outside, as if I had died and my spirit were looking down upon the orphan musicians of the Pietà. The
serenata
was unspeakably lovely as it rose in the air. And the sensation of my hand held in Franz Horneck’s seemed to make a liquid of all the solid parts of me.

As the last notes of the music died away, the night was rent by a series of whistles and explosions, immediately followed by fountains of colored lights cascading and purling through the darkness. When, clapping my hands and jumping up and down, I turned to Franz, he caught me in his arms.

He took off his mask. And then—slowly, carefully—he took off mine, and we stood there face to face. He did not gasp in horror at the sight of me, or laugh or run away. He smiled as his eyes traveled over every part of my face. With one of his hands he caressed my hair—and then, seeming to ask permission first with his eyes (and seeing that I granted it), he brought his face close in to the nape of my neck, just above my shoulder, and inhaled deeply, as if he were savoring the fragrance of some rare flower.

His eyes lingered on me before he spoke again. “I have two things to give you tonight, Anna Maria. This is the first.”

And then he kissed me, mouth to mouth, so that our breaths were mingled. It was as if, in that moment, we had each opened a secret door and the other walked through into places where
even I had never ventured in myself before—whole continents, oceans, and islands of Anna Maria unmapped and uncharted.

We stood there, looking into each other’s eyes with a new knowledge of what lay beyond. Then Franz let me go for a moment, and I wanted to tell him to hold fast to me, as my knees felt in danger of buckling. But I said nothing, only swaying a little in the breeze that reached us, suddenly feeling the cold.

He found what he had been rummaging for in his pocket. “I don’t want you to think this is the only reason why I sought you out. I have heard you perform every Saturday and Sunday since my arrival in Venezia. I would give my birthright to be able to play the violin as you do.”

Then he placed something in my hands.

“What is it?” I asked him, peering down at the small object, metallic and cold. And then I saw that it was a locket on a gold chain. It was rather ugly, really, and of strange Levantine design, heavy and bejeweled. When I tried to open it, Franz turned it over to show me that it was fashioned with a tiny keyhole; it was locked.

I looked up at him. “Where is the key?” I almost forgot about the locket when I looked at his face again.

He shook his head. “I told him you would want to know.”

“Who?”

“The Jewish banker who serves Herr von Regnazig, resident consul for the Archbishop of Mainz—the one from whom I have been procuring musical scores.”

“But—I don’t understand! What do these foreigners have to do with me?” I looked at the locket again. “And what does this have to do with me?”

“I’m sorry, darling girl—I don’t know. He simply bade me give it to you—and I was thrilled by the chance of doing an errand that would bring me close to someone I so admire.”

H
ow many nights, over how many years, did I drift off to sleep borne aloft on the memory of Franz Horneck’s kisses?

Dawn was breaking as the maestro secreted us and all the singers back over the threshold of the orphanage, the
portinara
conspicuously absent from her post and the door unbarred. Off with our finery and into our beds—but none of us slept. We lay there retelling the evening’s adventures, and we had nothing but praise for Vivaldi in managing it all so well, as if it had been an opera and he the impresario. The choir girls told us how he had returned for them in the gondola and directed their midnight serenade below the Foscarini balcony—but it was hard on them to have been left on the outside in their orphans’ robes while we were at the ball.

I clasped the necklace tight in my fist all night long, puzzling over what it could mean. Rather than an answer to my questions, I’d been given yet another locked door.

My mind kept returning to the locket while the other girls and I told what we wanted to tell and kept the rest to ourselves to savor in private, like a sweet sucked gently to make it last as long as possible. I would hazard that Marietta first formed her plans that night, lying in the dark and listening to our tales of kings and pearls, dueling musicians, and kisses given and taken.

Had I made my decision even then? No—I was still a child, incapable of understanding that everything I loved and valued was as unstable as the shimmering surface of the canals, and as unpredictable as the winter rains.

ANNO DOMINI
1709

Dearest Mother,

I am writing from one of the third-floor cells where miscreants are confined. The Prioress has meted out a jail sentence of three days for me. Sister Laura tells me that I might get out sooner if I write to you at length and with honesty about all my trespasses.

I have no doubt done much that I should not have in my life, but I have been unjustly punished this time. And even if I could have refused to cooperate with the plans of my elders and betters, I swear I would have done just what I did all over again. I have no remorse.

The maestro colluded with the
portinara
and one of the nuns here to secret Giulietta, Bernardina, Claudia, and me out to a ball at the Palazzo Foscarini. Our presence there was requested by no less a personage than the King of Denmark and Norway. The
portinara
has been demoted. The nun has been sent back to her convent. And it remains to be seen what will happen to Vivaldi.

I’m in this cell by myself on rations of bread and water. I can’t be certain, but I’m fairly sure that Giulietta and Bernardina are in a similar pickle, somewhere on the premises. Claudia, I am praying, will not be sent back to her parents in Saxony. I don’t know how the Prioress has chosen to punish her, but probably in more comfortable circumstances than these.

Sister Laura brought me ink and paper today, as well as an
apple. I clutched at her sleeve as she was leaving, begging her to tell me if and how these letters reach you. I told her that I need to know—that I have something of utmost importance to ask you. When she removed my hand from her sleeve and made to move away, I stamped my foot. When she looked amused at my show of temper, I started to cry.

I told her that the time for games and fairytales was over—that I am not a child anymore.

She assured me then that she would not entrust me with this opportunity to write to you if I had been a child.

“But why can’t you trust me enough to tell me who I am?” I demanded to know. “It is my right.”

Sister Laura shook her head then, as if I had disappointed her. She told me, indeed as if speaking to a child, that none of the foundlings here has the right to know. Only if a parent comes to claim a
figlia
of the Pietà will the book of the
scaffetta
be opened and the girl’s identity revealed.

Why is that book closed to those who most desperately need to know its secrets?

Our lives are arranged so that every piece of every day and night is fit together into an intricate mosaic of music and study and prayer. But it is only a counterfeit of real life. We have no more reality in the world than the trompe l’oeil floor tiles of the church have depth or height. Our faces might as well not be faces, for all that anyone ever sees of them. We are but voices and sound, the pipes through which the Republic sings for God and begs for His mercy.

We have no more substance than the wind. And if one of us dies or leaves, another comes to take her place. There is an endless supply, it would seem, of unwanted girl babies in and around
la Serenissima.
One more or less makes no difference. Who we are, one by one, has no importance or meaning.

And yet, don’t my thoughts matter as much as those of any other person born of woman in this world? Do my aspirations and my feelings count for less than those of girls growing up, by accident and good fortune, within a family? If I love, is it right and just that my love remain forever unheard and forever unanswered?

We orphans and foundlings of the Pietà have only each other to turn to for comfort and meaning—friendship must stand in for the families that abandoned us to our fate here. And yet we are told time and again,
“Amicitia huius mundi inimica est Dei”—The friendship of this world is inimical to God.
We are denied the ties of blood that are rightfully ours, but we are discouraged from having ties of any other kind.

We are told to turn to God. And perhaps it’s blasphemy to say so, but God has never once shown me that He is listening or even knows that I’m alive. Is it my faith in God that Sister Laura is testing when she tells me to write to you? For you have never shown me either that you are listening or even know that I’m alive.

The ceiling of the church is painted to seem a sky above our heads and a passageway to God. But it is more like the lid on a sarcophagus than a doorway to Heaven, and we are each trapped inside this holy coffin. Whether or not we grow old, we all die young here.

Will I stay then and become like Sister Giovanna, with all the life and sweetness of her dreams as dry and shrunken as a pomegranate left over from last year?

No—I have no remorse. If for only one evening, I felt the heat of life in me. And if only for a few hours, I was seen. I was known. And I was loved.

In despair,
Anna Maria dal Violin,
Student of Maestro Vivaldi

I
never did have a taste for remorse, despite the high favor in which it is held. It seems to me, by and large, to be a state of mind that causes more ill than good. It is said to be the doorway to Heaven—but that door is closed to me. And so what use do I have for a feeling that will only open the door to sadness and pain?

I felt elation, even from my jail cell—and, of course, far greater elation when I was released after three days. The usual order of things was disrupted by the excitement and punishments that resulted from our unsanctioned outing. And everyone was abuzz about whether the measures the Prioress had taken were sufficient to allay further sanctions from the governors.

Some of the more enterprising girls among us organized a little lottery. Bets were placed as to whether Vivaldi would keep his position, despite this latest and most dramatic act of defiance against the rules.

All the outside teachers are at risk every year, even now. Whether they are retained depends not only on their good service, but also on whether they are providing a service that can’t be rendered by a resident of the Pietà.

Vivaldi was originally sought out because the governors wanted to strengthen the skills of the string players. Later, when he began composing for us, his position seemed assured: then, as now, he wrote an astonishing amount of music.

The governors know full well that the people of Venezia come to our concerts to be moved by the music they hear. High up in our choir lofts, our faces are hidden and the sounds we make seem to come from the heavens, leaving our audience in a state of mystic rapture. All of this adds up to larger audiences and larger donations to feed, clothe, and educate the
figlie
of the
coro
and the much larger group of foundling boys and girls of the
comun.
Thus there is an insatiable appetite for new and ever
more beautiful music—which Vivaldi, for all his faults, has never failed to provide.

We couldn’t imagine how they could even think about slaying this golden goose who came cheap at a hundred ducats a year.

All the string players and many of the singers were betting on the maestro. After all, King Frederick had been delighted with us. There was even talk of a large donation he intended to bestow upon the Pietà.

Of course, the dismissal of Sister Celestina and the demotion of the
portinara
were serious things. But rule-breaking and its consequences are ever a part of institutions such as this one, as woven into the fabric of daily life as prayers and bells and meals.

The organizers of the lottery—three singers and a trumpet player—used a small part of the pool to engage a spy from the
comun
, the buxom, rosy-cheeked girl who served refreshments to the governors during their meetings. This girl was to signal us the results of the ballot concerning the maestro: If he prevailed, she would stand in the center window in the group of three arched windows overlooking the courtyard. If he was voted out, she would stand in the side window closest to the
rio
.

I was among those in the courtyard awaiting Paolina’s signal. Several teachers walking by—including Sister Laura—urged us to come in out of the cold. I protested that we were enjoying the sight of the clouds overhead (which we were, in truth, after our imprisonment, despite the frigid air).

I asked Bernardina if she was also given the opportunity to write letters during the time when she was confined. But she only looked at me—always a particularly striking experience, as she put all the expression of two eyes into her one—as if I’d gone a little queer.

“To whom would I write?” she asked me.

I shrugged and stole a glance at the windows again. We both stopped as Paolina’s plump form seemed to hover at the side window. And then she moved—with deliberation and even a little backward glance into the courtyard—to the middle of the center window. Without another word to each other, Bernardina and I raced inside to spread the news.

The board voted that day—albeit by a slim margin of seven to six—to retain the services of Don Vivaldi as
maestro de’ concerti
. I really didn’t care much about the coins I’d wagered. But it was a huge relief to me to know that the maestro would stay with us. I think it was not until that twenty-fourth day of February, anno Domini 1709—pacing in suspense in the cold courtyard—that I realized how much his presence meant to me.

The winnings had not yet been distributed—we were waiting for the hour when we gathered for mealtime in the refectory and could pass coins under the table—when an out-of-breath Paolina pulled me aside in the passageway between the choir lofts and the practice rooms. “There was a second ballot!” she panted. “Signor Balerin demanded a recount. It was six for and seven against this time. Vivaldi is out!”

That night there were as many rumors fluttering from room to room and among the residents of the Pietà as there are pigeons in the Piazza. Some whispered that the Red Priest was seen at Ca’ Foscarini kissing a
figlia
of the Pietà. This was, of course, utter confabulation. Yes, there were kisses at the palazzo that night—and there was that kiss he happened to give Claudia on the ice that day—but Vivaldi was entirely too taken up with making a good impression on King Frederick and his retinue to have allowed himself to engage in such folderol. He was far too immersed in his own ambitions than to risk his musical career on a girl.

Some said that the Grand Inquisitor himself was behind
the recount. Others said it was ultimately because of Vivaldi’s refusal to say Mass, using the transparently thin excuse of ill health (which never kept him from far more strenuous activities, including frequent trips to Mantua and other cities, where he performed as a soloist, sought out further opportunities for patronage, and erred in ways that would forever change the course of his life). Still others—the most cynical and simpleminded among us—said it was all a natural consequence of his red hair.

I suppose Vivaldi had managed by then to earn a widespread reputation as a scofflaw. But it seemed terribly unfair to me that his six years of faithful service—years in which the
coro
had definitely maintained and perhaps even exceeded its prior fame—would not buy him the board’s undying gratitude. Simply from an economic point of view, it made utter sense to keep him: the more the Pietà was able to earn through donations, the less money of their own the governors would have to contribute to keep the institution financially afloat.

Of course, I understood next to nothing of such matters then, beyond my own earnings. We were each paid a small salary, almost all of which went to the purchase of our food and candles and clothes. Whatever we could save we were allowed to invest at a particularly favorable rate of interest—a rate that rose (along with our salaries) as we ourselves rose in the ranks of the
coro
.

The governors thought—wisely, as I now realize—that a working knowledge of money was important for us, even though we were and might ever be cloistered from the rest of the world. And, in fact, those of us who chose to stay on here have far more to do with commerce than we ever would if we had chosen to marry. Among the women of Venezia, only the courtesans are as well-versed in matters of business as its cloistered virgins.

The Pietà is like a little country in its economy. We own and
manage properties. We run the factories here—the lace-making, sail-making, and silk-washing businesses that have provided our population with work as well as income.

But I never thought about such things when I was young, being far too taken up with music and the longings of my own heart to care or even notice the inner workings of the
ospedale
.

Several of us wrote letters to the governors, begging them to reinstate our teacher without delay, praising his skills and attesting to the personal progress we’d made under his tutelage. But the governors were far less compelled by us than the audiences that filled the church every Saturday and Sunday to hear us perform.

Our letters not only failed to sway the governors, but they didn’t even give Vivaldi the chance to bid us farewell. We watched as his personal effects were carried out of the sacristy and loaded onto a gondola. It was as if he had died.

A pall settled over all of us, but especially the string players. Vivaldi was the closest that any of us ever had to a father. It was like being made an orphan a second time.

The pain I felt only strengthened my resolve to find my mother and learn my father’s identity, no matter what I had to do, no matter what rules of the cloister I had to break. I would put flowers on a dead parent’s grave. I would throw myself upon the mercy of a parent who was alive. I was possessed with the thought that I was not a daughter of the choir, as we were so coyly named, but the flesh-and-blood progeny of two flesh-and-blood parents.