Hidden Voices (12 page)

The singers are in the middle of their scales. And though they are disturbed for a moment by my entrance, Maestra quickly regains order and they resume their exercises, mouthing the vowels while keeping their jaws slack and forming the notes with their tongues against their teeth. She motions to me to join in, and when I don’t, she looks over with concern but does not badger me, I’m happy to say. Opening my mouth to sing and drawing breath into my lungs even for such an exercise seems quite out of the question at present. Just arriving here, without having fainted at some point in my trip down the stairs and across to the school, is feat enough for one afternoon. I will tell Maestra this if she presses me. When she doesn’t, I am much relieved.

It is a great temptation, however, to try to join in when the score itself — another new cantata from Father Vivaldi — is being sung. I wonder whom it is intended for this week, whose voice it will put on display, and am certain it cannot be mine, as Father could not have known I would be returning and as it is fully within the range of most of the other sopranos. It is such a lovely lyrical piece, so full of light trills and pastoral refrains, that I find myself transported during the singing of it to a place where small birds fill the trees. Of all the things that I have sorely missed, it is the making of music, or the absorbing of it as it is played or sung by others, that I have missed the most. At times during the rehearsal, I feel the new melodies rise into my throat and earnestly desire to simply open my mouth and let out what is building there. My fear at attempting this is so enormous, however, that I listen ever more intently during the entire sectional — listen to Geltruda softly attempting the notes I would have been able to sing with ease, to Loretta trilling so unevenly, to Marietta warbling like a giant thrush with no thought to the careful modulation that her part requires. Since Father very rarely makes notations for dynamics in his texts, she can be excused. A more sensitive singer, however, even in the absence of indicated slurs, ornaments, and other markings, would be aware of his preferences and distinctive style.

Afterward, when Maestra asks when I will be well enough to be assigned a solo, I find myself telling her that I’m not quite sure.

“Certainly not for another few weeks,” I say.

She is so encouraged that I wonder if I have misspoken. I should have told her I am not strong as yet and may not be for quite a time. I should not have given her false hope.

After the sectional, the girls are very dear and welcome me as if I’ve been abroad and not just in another wing of the Ospedale for weeks. Up close, they seem too rosy and plump, too animated. Their continual chirping is overloud and discomfiting, their eyes too bright. When Lucretia links arms with me, I gently pull away. Is this truly the world I left behind?

Just as I am turning from the group emptying into the hallway, I spy Anetta coming toward me, and I freeze in my footsteps. To my great surprise, she also stops stock-still, an uncertain hint of a smile upon her lips. The smile grows when I return it as best I can. She gives a slight wave of one hand, enters another schoolroom, and shuts the door behind her. This new demeanor is more shocking to me than her usual smothering behavior. I can only think that Rosalba has done as she said she would and that Anetta has listened to her. I am not an ungrateful person, however, and, remembering Anetta’s great care and regard for me, I am a little ashamed that I behave toward her in this way.

Father Vivaldi and I pass in the Calle della Pietà, and he seems overjoyed to see me. Although he is never given to embracing or other touches of endearment, I can discern his delight from how his eyes glint and the lids briefly flutter, how his voice rises in a joyful greeting, and from his earnest words.

“Luisa! We have missed you indeed.” He holds up the beads that he always carries, his fingers continuing to move upon them. “You have been in my
Ave
s for weeks. How happy I am to see for myself that my prayers have been answered. And,” he adds, “you’ll find your little finch in great good health and voice as well. She puts my own sweet bird to shame.”

That he has been praying especially for me is a humbling thought, even as I realize I am not known for such a virtue. And that he did indeed procure a little bird for me, some living creature of my very own, is most touching and kind.

“I have been reining in my notes to accommodate the others,” he tells me then. “Next week I’ll begin a
seranata
that makes full use of your range.”

Not yet,
I long to tell him.
Not yet.

But he disappears into the school before I can utter a single word and just as Rosalba swings the door to the Ospedale wide and almost knocks me over in her great haste.

I
NEARLY TOPPLE
poor Luisa as I rush into the Calle on my way to tell the news of how the senior girls, the ones so newly turned Maestra, will not be going to the puppet show and have to suffer through those silly wooden fetes or listen to the drones who try to sell all manner of strange potions on the side. Indeed, our treat is something that I never dared to hope that I would see: the Commedia dell’Arte, true theater with men and women acting out their love upon the stage, I’m told, and even kidnappings and tragedies, while performing tricks and such.

I hold on to Luisa with both hands and jump up and down.

“Can you believe such good fortune?”

She stands as still as a high-backed chair and seems about as overjoyed.

“I’m happy for you,” she says at last. “And for the others. I’m sure it will be great fun for all of you.”

“And for you. Surely you will come with us?”

She hesitates, and I believe she is considering it, but then she says, “Not this year. I simply cannot tax myself by doing anything but what I must.”

“Even something so enjoyable? Something so transporting? Really, Luisa, it is a most unusual chance. Next year the fickle Board of Governors might well decide a puppet show is just the thing for all of us.”

“Truly. I cannot.”

“Don’t say that yet. The play isn’t until Wednesday afternoon. By then you may feel differently.”

“Oh, Rosalba. You’re always hoping for things to change. For people to be who you want them to be.”

“Not always,” I tell her. “For an instance, I have completely given up on Silvia.”

She laughs. I have made her laugh.

“As well you should. What is upsetting is the fact that she doesn’t even care.”

“Nor must we. Enough of her. I do implore you to attend the comedy. It will be such great fun. All you’ll have to do is sit and watch.”

“And walk for quite a way until we reach the theater.”

“It isn’t far. I passed it on my way to get your medicine, so many weeks ago now, and saw the posters by the door and could have wept for my desire to attend. Oh, Luisa, there are fine ladies and harlequins and even devils pictured. It is a whole entire world up there upon the wall.”

She is about to resist again when I think of something that will surely make her want to come.

“Perhaps your mother will be there?”

Just then a little troupe of acrobats goes tumbling by on the Riva in white leggings and tight jerkins that show each muscle of their sinewy bodies. We are so stunned to see them just appear like that, that we’re speechless until they’re out of sight and on their way.

I deliver news about the Commedia to the junior
maestre,
who are all chattering at once like a covey of baboons, and I am just about to go back across the Calle when I see him, the wig-maker’s assistant. He is carrying only one dressed wig today and walks languidly as if in no particular hurry, gazing at the boats in the lagoon and humming a pretty tune I’ve heard sung in the street before. It is the time of day when shadows fall upon the chapel side of the street all the way to the wheel, and I shrink into them and simply watch him as he strolls by. If I had only thought to bring my feathered mask, so I could flirt with him. But even if I had, the dresses that we all must wear would be an obvious clue to the Ospedale, and if he was amused by his first sight of me, I couldn’t bear it. So I stay hidden. This close, he is even more handsome than I had thought, taller, more finely turned out, as if he could put the wig he carries on himself and fool almost anyone into thinking that he’s a young duke. His breeches cling to rounded calves and thighs, and he wears a jaunty jacket of carmine-colored wool with ribbon trim.

How I long to call to him and say, “Here. Over here. Here in the shadows of Our Lady of the Ascension is your own true heart’s desire.”

I awake on Wednesday so distracted by my thoughts of the afternoon performance of the Commedia dell’Arte, that I cannot keep my mind on anything. Father Vivaldi himself has cautioned us not to attract attention, as the musicians from the Pietà have a remarkable reputation to uphold, and Prioress would not like any individual performer to be identified. In fact, we’re given
bautta
masks with veils beneath before we leave, and it must be quite comical to watch as we help each other put them on.

At two o’clock there are some fifteen of us gathered in the parlor for our trip, Luisa not among us. Since my last question to her did not make her want to join us, I’m considering if running back and hounding her would help, when her slight figure almost plummets down the stairs, her lovely hair set free to fly about. Thank heaven she has washed it and removed that cap! A long sigh of relief comes from Anetta and makes the others laugh but Luisa wince . . .

We are such birds of a feather as we start out with Maestra Loretta and Signora Mandano — masked blue martinets in step behind them like an infantry. Anetta, near the front, takes longer strides than either of the women and soon is in the lead, causing all the rest of us to scamper like so many mice.

“I hope she knows the way,” remarks the breathless Silvia. “I will not tramp like this through the Piazza San Marco.”

“There is a shortcut I have told her of,” I say. “Remember when we searched for the apothecary?”

“The memory of it is engraved upon my behind,” she answers scornfully. “Where it belongs. It’s not a day I want to think about ever again. Why, you nearly came to ruin, and I would have been blamed!”

“I did no such thing. And think of it. If I had, you would, right now, be rid of me. A prayer answered, I should think.”

“I never wish ill upon anyone,” is her retort.

Just as I’d told Luisa, it isn’t very long before we’re there. The large red doors of the theater are ajar, and noisy revelers are entering in droves. She scans the crowd, as I knew she would, resting her eyes upon one lady with a mask called a
moretta,
which makes the face appear to be a black, featureless hole, and is kept in place, I’m told, by a button held between the front teeth. The body of the lady is all covered, too, the sleeves voluminous and long, the hands within a muff. As Luisa can have no way of knowing if this scary-looking woman is her mother, except for the fact that there is only one man at her elbow and he is decrepit and quite stooped, she soon turns back to the group and comes with us to find our seats.

“They think that we are nuns,” she whispers as we sit in regimented rows upon hard benches.

“We should have stopped for the
frittelle,
” moans Maestra Loretta, “before there are none to be had.”

“We should have gone by way of the Piazza San Marco then,” says Signora Mandano. “That’s where all the bakers are today.”

The thought of the sweet delicious bread makes my mouth water so, I want to spit, but I restrain myself, as I would not if I weren’t in such company. But soon the thought of food is driven from my mind as the players begin to strut out on the stage — first the Lover, Flavio, a dapper, dreamy-looking fellow, and next the flamboyant Captain, who wears an ugly mask with an enormous nose and swaggers about in a scarlet doublet and brightly striped breeches. He is the bigger talker of the two and brags and dictates to the Lover, with his hand upon the scabbard of his wooden sword as if he plans to draw it out at any turn. The Lover is such a comely, courteous fellow that he has my sympathy right from the start, and that of others, too, who swear at the braggart Captain and throw eggs. It isn’t long before the Beautiful Lady makes her appearance and things calm down a bit, however.

“‘She’ is really a ‘he,’” whispers Silvia, so everyone but Beatrice can hear.

I’ve heard that this is true, but it is difficult to believe when looking at such a lovely face and trim bodice. And Flavio’s declarations of love are so delightfully sincere, so full of compliments, that she swoons a little as another “lady” plays the mandolin against a painted backdrop of a country house with olive trees and potted palms. It is all so beautiful I want to cry, but bridle such an inclination until it seems the lovers will be separated by the odious Harlequin, who leaps into the air and forces the Lady to dance with him, the oafish clown.

“Unhand her!” cries the crowd, and I am on my feet with all the rest begging for the lovers to escape, to run away.

Luisa pulls me down beside her and thrusts a handkerchief at me to dry my tears.