Hidden Voices (6 page)

“Where have you been? What are you doing here?” asks Anetta as she gallops through the front parlor, and, on finding me there, stops abruptly. She is always on her way to or from somewhere and always in a great hurry.

“Slow down,” I say, pulling her with me onto a settee.

“We shouldn’t even be in here at this time of day,” she says, stumbling to stand up again. “You have missed solfeggio twice already this week and this third time I have been sent to fetch you. We may have been given a little more time to practice for the next concert, but it is already only a week away, and they will expect us to be that much better prepared.”

“They? Who is this ‘they’?”

“Father Vivaldi and Signore Gasparini. Prioress. And the others. Our teachers. The people who come to hear us.”

“There is plenty of time. There is always plenty of time.”

“It is difficult music, Rosalba. Even you will find places to trip you. If you ever look at it. If you ever come to a rehearsal and pick up the score. Do you even know which instrument you will be playing?”

“No. But I’m sure you will tell me.”

“Not this time, Rosalba.” She bites her chapped lips, which look as if they’ve been bitten many times before. She seems truly distressed. “For your own good.”

“I will be there this afternoon. I promise.”

“No. Not this afternoon. Now. I’m the one who takes the attendance,” she wails. “I’m the one who must check off your absence.”

She seems so distressed that I can’t help feeling a little discomfited. I knew several days had gone by, but not an entire week.

“It’s all right, Anetta. You must do it in the correct way, I know. I don’t blame you.” I jump up and try to tussle her hair but can’t reach the top of her head. Instead, I give her a soft pat on the cheek and am surprised to find it wet. “Surely, you’re not crying. You’re not crying over this?”

Tears are actually starting to flow from her wide-apart eyes and to splash onto either side of her knotted kerchief.

“I don’t want to see you punished,” she whimpers, “or removed from the
privilegiate del coro.
We have grown up here together. We have always played in the same ensembles. You belong among the
privilegiate
with me.” She makes a fist of each hand and all but stamps her foot. “But you have to follow the rules.”

She then begins to study the pattern in the carpet, for what else can be so interesting upon the floor? As if she does not really want to be heard, her hands go up to cover her mouth while she speaks. Her voice becomes a whisper.

“You were not there yesterday to sign the pay sheets for the
maestri,
so I, heaven help me, signed for you, making my letters as wiggly as I could to match yours.”

“I suppose I should thank you, but it is a silly assignment. Which one of us should dare to keep a professor from his rightful earnings, no matter how inept we may feel him to be.”

“You are changing the subject,” says Anetta, “something you do so well.”

She takes my arm and pulls me into the passageway. “You must come with me now. Right now.”

“Yes, yes, Maestra della Viola d’Amore,” I say to tease her. I let my arms go slack and allow myself to be led. “Right away, Maestra. Right away.”

T
HERE ARE SNAKES
twined all through my throat with scales that slice as they slide up and down. I am tugging a snake out through my mouth, enduring intense pain just to be free of it, when my fingers will not move and I must release it back into the pit of my neck. I scream in an agony of frustration and open my eyes. Anetta is holding both my hands and keeping me pinned to my bed.

“Why did you make me let go?” I sob, desolate from the defeat of my great effort and the terrible soreness that seems to be causing my air passages to close.

“Shush. It’s only a nightmare,” she says as I thrash and wrench out of her grasp.

The others, awake now and up on their haunches in their beds, peer at me as if I’ve gone mad and say, “It’s all right.” “Stop screaming.” “You’ll wake up the entire floor.”

My chemise is wet with perspiration, my hair damp and hot against my face. I can barely swallow. The dream is still so real; the snakes a writhing tangle pressing upon my chest from within. I barely feel Anetta’s hand on my forehead, but I hear her.

“She’s feverish,” she proclaims to the others.

Even in my pain and panic, it galls me to have Anetta take charge like this. I try to sit up but am made dizzy by the effort.

“It’s another bid for attention, if you ask me,” says Silvia. “Isn’t it enough to always drown out the other sopranos. Does she also need to accost us nightly in our sleep with her bodily infirmities?”

Silvia’s bed is behind mine, and I’m grateful at least that I can’t see her little wizened face and her eyes, bare of spectacles, that always look like blank thumbprints.

“She cannot help feeling sick,” says Rosalba. “Anetta, please walk with her down to the infirmary so the rest of us can go back to sleep. All of us have Latin exams in the morning.”

“More reason for her to feign illness,” says Silvia.

“Luisa would never have need of such a dodge. She is proficient in many languages.” Though I cannot speak up for myself, I am not pleased to hear Anetta do it for me, embellishing my accomplishments.

“Come,” Anetta tells me, pulling me to my feet. “The night nurse will have a comforting potion for you.”

When I stand, the dizziness overtakes me so completely that I must lean upon Anetta so as not to fall over. She leads me along the unlit hall and down the stairway as if she is some nocturnal animal most alive in darkness. I myself can barely see to put one foot ahead of the other. I have no choice but to trust her; she prods and drags me along until we are at the door of the infirmary and I am tucked into a lumpy bed by the night nurse before I have a chance to complain that it’s much too close to the drafty window. After I am covered with a sheet, my sopping chemise is lifted over my head and a wet flannel poultice, smelling of camphor and mustard seed, is slapped upon my bare chest and wrapped roughly in place with strips of flannel.

“Attend this candle, Anetta, while I look at her throat,” says the nurse. She presses on my tongue with a cold spoon handle, and I start to gag.

“It’s all right, little duchess,” she says at last. “This is the third throat this week I’ve seen with such a grand lot of pustules and raw red flesh. And such a furry white tongue. You won’t be leaving here in the morning or anytime soon.”

I have heard myself referred to as “little duchess” before. It is truer than they know.

“But there’s a concert on Sunday,” says Anetta.

“And every Sunday,” says the nurse.

“Do you know who I am?” I finally manage to squeak out.

“Who you are or who you think you are?”

Anetta defends me: “Don’t you realize that Luisa is the most accomplished soprano in this or any other
ospedale
? The coming concert will be nothing without her.”

“I know that she is a spoiled little singer who won’t be able to sing for a while. That’s what I know. Here,” the nurse says to me, forcing a spoonful of liquid between my lips. It tastes like something fermented and is so bitter that I cough and try to spit it out, but the nurse’s hand clamps my jaw shut.

I fall back against the pillow, too weak to do battle with her.

When Anetta begins her treacly litany of consolation, this strong nurse takes both of her shoulders and turns her around.

“Get back to your own chamber, Anetta. There is nothing you can help with here.”

There is only one other girl in the school infirmary tonight, a small little thing to judge by the size of the bump she makes in the bed. Since the moment we entered the room, her raspy snores have accompanied all our words. Perhaps she was given the same draught that the nurse has given me, for I am beginning to feel a peculiar calmness, my throat seems swabbed, and my thoughts tumble over each other into darkness long, I’m sure, before the candles are extinguished.

When I open my eyes, it is morning, the little girl is fastening her dark blue sacque and pulling on her hose, and I recognize the
iniziata
who came to my defense in the parlor. She seems entirely well.

“Where are you going?” I ask in a high, bruised voice I don’t recognize as my own. There is no sign of the ill-tempered nurse.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” she says. “But I am better now. I think it must be time to breakfast.”

“Hunger is a very good sign,” I tell her, not harboring even a little of it myself. I still feel hot and weak, and my throat is as swollen as ever. It is an effort to speak.

“Would you like me to get something for you from the kitchen, Maestra?”

“No thank you,” I croak. “But, tell me, is that allowed?”

“Oh, yes, Maestra. I spend a great many nights here, you see, because of my breathing problems, my
strettezza di petto.
They say I sometimes sound just like Father Vivaldi when he is at his worst.”

“And what are you called?”

“Catina. You wouldn’t have heard of me,” she says, as if she has forgotten our encounter. “I’m not often in class or ensemble. I’m not very strong.”

Catina is fair with pale skin and corn-silk hair that falls down her back like a shawl. Her eyes are the deep green color of the lagoon just before a storm. She has a reticent smile but does not otherwise seem to be cautious of strangers.

“I have a very sore throat,” I say, even though she has not asked. I don’t know if I say it to garner her sympathy or simply to explain my presence here.

“Yes. That is a common complaint this week. It will not last long, I think.” I can’t help smiling. She sounds so much like one of the pompous physicians or like the night nurse herself.

“I am glad to hear it,” I rasp. “Do you think it will leave me by Sunday?”

“The day of the next concert?”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, everyone knows. Listening to the senior performers is part of our education.”

Of course. It had been part of mine as well. But now that I’m in the
coro privilegiato
myself, it feels as if I have always performed at this level.

“And I know who you are. The soprano, Luisa
Benedetto, the one who sings just like a saint.” Her eyes grow impossibly wide. “And yes, I am sure you’ll be able to sing on Sunday next, perhaps even by Saturday afternoon.”

She is so certain, it picks up my spirits, and when she leaves, I savor the quiet — the hollow tick of the clock and the faint faraway songs of the gondoliers. I think about how Mother may really come to hear me this time, how she is sure to. About how very proud she will be.

I
T HAS BEEN DECIDED.
Luisa will not sing at the concert this Sunday. She has lately been moved to a room far away from even the infirmary. The rumor is that her fever has risen, a bright pink flush has spread over her trunk, and her throat is as red as a strawberry. Maria’s throat, too, has seized up just at a time when there are plans for her to be introduced to a suitable gentleman. They say she is more aggrieved about this than about the pain she endures. She is the oldest one yet to be stricken.

It has also been reported that a few of the youngest
commun
girls are affected as well. The nurses are in a frenzy of trying to isolate the infected ones as soon as they contract this peculiar throat malady that turns them scarlet. Rosalba and Silvia have been sent to the apothecary in the Piazza San Marco for certain herbs and medicinals to reduce swollen throat membranes. (Rosalba because she can be trusted to complete the transaction; Silvia, I believe, to keep her weak eyes upon Rosalba.) It is unusual for any of us to be sent on such a mission outside the school and Ospedale. But because of so many falling ill at once, no nurse or teacher can be spared for this errand. My help has been requested in the nursery to care for the little ones, who know nothing of the current crisis and whose demands are constant. May Jesus and His Dear Mother keep them from harm. I pray frequently to Saint Blaze over their small throats and can’t help wondering if Luisa’s throat was blessed on his name day, as it should have been. Why wasn’t she more careful of her wonderful instrument? The touch of arrogance that others detect in her is undeniably present. But I have always felt she has a right to it. She must be cautioned, however, not to take her talent for granted. I do wish that I could be allowed to comfort her, to wipe her brow and cool her fever. I am so strong that there would be nothing for me to fear, but Prioress has decreed otherwise.