The Violinist of Venice (21 page)

*   *   *

Before long, Shrove Tuesday came and went, and the Lenten season was upon us. The city, deprived of parties, excesses, and pleasure for forty days and nights, sank into a gray, lifeless sort of melancholy. The weather seemed infected by the same listlessness, and turned damp, gloomy, and chill.

Relieved as I was that things had quieted down—at least for a time—I soon descended into my own personal dejection, for an entirely different reason. One night not long into Lent, I arrived at Vivaldi's house to find him in a frenzy of activity. A trunk filled with clothes sat open on the floor, and on the table was a worn leather folio with scores spilling out of it.

“What is going on?” I asked, my heart in my throat. For a moment, I thought with dreadful certainty he was leaving Venice for good. After all, what was truly keeping him here? What man would let himself be bound by a woman who was going to leave him as soon as her suitor asked for her hand in marriage?

“I received an invitation to play at several churches in Brescia during Lent, so I depart the day after tomorrow,” he explained as he shuffled through his music. “My father is to accompany me.”

I let out a shaky breath, relieved.

“Your father?” I asked cautiously. Neither of us had brought up our horrible fight since our reconciliation, but I wondered what had passed between him and his father afterward.

“Yes,” he said, distractedly, hunting about his desk for something. “He is to play as well.” He glanced up, caught sight of my expression, and straightened. “He is—we have nothing to fear from him,
cara,
” he said. “The day after he … discovered us, he returned, and I told him that it was over, because…” He trailed off uncomfortably and looked away. “At the time, I thought it was.” He smiled tightly. “That did not stop him from reading me quite the lecture, however. He is very pious.”

“I see.” I looked away, feeling as if Signor Vivaldi's disapproving gaze had fallen on me again. “And how long will you be gone?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I am not certain yet. Two weeks, perhaps? Maybe a bit more.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well. I shall miss you.”

Finally he stopped rummaging and turned to face me, giving me his full attention. “I shall miss you as well,
cara,
” he said. “I wish you were coming with me—for more than the obvious reasons,” he said, catching the playful smile that slid across my face. “It is at times like these that I wish women performers could be heard somewhere other than from behind the curtains and screens of the
ospedali.
” He gave me a smile so full of warmth and pride I felt as if I could accomplish anything, if only he would keep smiling at me like that. “Truly the bigots are punishing themselves, for they are depriving themselves of the pleasure of hearing you play.”

“Even you cannot change the world that much,
caro mio,
” I said. “No matter how badly you may want to.”

His eyes searched mine for a moment. “I want it for your sake more than anything else,” he said. “If there is one thing I still pray for, it is that there may be another way out for you.”

I did not know what to say to this. “Maybe I should go,” I said finally, glancing once more around at the general disarray of the room.
Is this how the ending begins?
I wondered, the heat of his smile just moments before having vanished as surely as winter chases away the summer sun. I sighed. “You clearly have much to do, and I—”

“No,” he cut me off. “Please stay. I wanted very much to see you before I left. And,” he added, brightening, “I have something new I would like you to play. If you are willing, that is.”

“And when have I not been
willing
?”

His smile widened at the suggestive double meaning of my words.
“Eccellente.”
He crossed the room to me and removed my cloak, his fingers brushing briefly over my collarbone, my breast, my hip. He draped the cloak over the back of a chair and plucked a few sheets of parchment from his desk, placing them on a music stand. I fetched my violin, tightened the bow, and applied rosin to the bow hairs. When he saw that I was ready, he gestured to the pages. “Go on, then. Play.”

*   *   *

Two days later he was gone.

“He will be back, madonna,” Giuseppe assured me, on a day when I could not seem to hide my misery.

I did not reply, nor could I explain to him that my sorrow was over more than Vivaldi's mere absence.
This is how my life will be. Someday soon we will be apart permanently, and I will live in these suffocating shadows forever.

I returned to the harpsichord, painstakingly hunched over my splotched and smeared staff paper, which I had been forced to begin drawing myself. Each time I began a new composition, I would think,
Perhaps this is the one that I finally show to Tonio.
Yet inevitably, the tightly woven tapestry that each composition began as, with each note precisely placed and agonized over, would begin to unravel, starting to seem trite and uninspired. I was a merciless critic of my work, even as I was forced to concede that I was consistently improving.

Everything I wrote while Vivaldi was gone was in a minor key—A minor, G minor, E minor, B minor—until even I grew weary of my own melancholy and forced myself to write something in A major. It sounded forced, unnatural; and so I learned to let the music come out in whichever key it chose.

In my darkest moments, I angrily wondered why I bothered at all. There were even fewer opportunities for female composers than there were for female musicians—indeed, I had never heard of a female composer before; not one whose music was performed in public, anyway. My music would never be played from behind the grille at the Pietà, or in an opera house, or in a church or anywhere else. Indeed, no one but I would likely ever know of it. Why, then, did I waste my time?

All women,
I realized, on one such dark day,
are shadow creatures. We all stand in the shadows of our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, our sons, our lovers. The sun shines only upon men. And a woman who would play or write music is in the deepest shadows of all, for her existence is usually not even acknowledged.

The violin was the voice I had been given; yet that voice was doomed to be silenced. And I came to realize that was what bothered me the most about my life, as a sheltered, supposedly privileged Venetian woman. Not marriage, not childbearing, not the inability to choose my own husband; all of these things could be borne, if only there was music. If only I might choose that much, at least, for myself.

 

28

DYING IN YOUR ARMS

At the beginning of March, Vivaldi sent word of his return to Venice through Giuseppe, and we arranged a date to meet. When the day came, I arrived at his house, ready to throw myself into his arms. Instead he simply looked up from where he was seated at his desk when I entered and smiled enormously upon seeing me. “There you are,
cara,
” he said, before turning back to his work. “I am almost done with this, I promise.”

Disappointed, I removed my thick fur cloak and went to stand beside him, peering over his shoulder. Unsurprisingly, a page covered with staves and notes leaping across them met my eyes. He signed his name at the top with a flourish and then, opposite his signature, he wrote
For Signorina Anna Maria.

Jealousy, hot and potent, seared through me. “Who is this Anna Maria?” I asked.

He started slightly. “Anna Maria?” he asked, sprinkling sand on the parchment to help the ink dry. “What of her?”

“Who is she?”

“One of my former students from the Pietà,” he said, rolling up the sheaves of parchment and tying a ribbon around them. He smiled up at me, his eyes looking into the past. “She is an incredibly talented violinist, even more so because she is so young. She is gifted at many other instruments as well. I have scarcely heard anything like it in my life—nor will I, I do not suppose.” He sighed. “She—”

“And you still send her music, even though you are no longer her teacher?” I asked.

He frowned. “Yes. I have ever since I was dismissed. I cannot let a talent like hers become dull due to a lack of challenging music. I send the most difficult of my compositions to her, so she does not waste her time on music unworthy of her.”

“I see,” I said.

Catching sight of my expression, he scowled. “Surely you do not think—”

“Of course not,” I said, not wanting him to believe that I would imagine such things.

“And so?” he demanded.

I bit my lip. “It is just … is she…” I sighed, realizing that now that I had begun, I must proceed, no matter how foolish it made me seem. “Is she more talented than I am?”

He stared at me in disbelief for a moment, then began to laugh as he realized the true reason for my distress. “I am sorry,
cara,
” he said. “I do not mean to laugh.” He placed his hands on my waist and drew me onto his lap. “It is not a fair comparison,” he said. “She has had much more formal training than you—her musical instruction has been uninterrupted since the age of seven or so. You, on the other hand, have a natural gift that is rarely seen. You do not require so much practice, perhaps, to play well.” He smiled. “Though I know that, if you had your way, you would do little else. But that is the best answer that I can give you, I am afraid.”

I nodded, accepting that.

“You must not trouble yourself about such things,
amore mia,
” he said softly into my ear. “Let us talk of other things.” He bent his head and kissed the side of my neck. “Such as how much I missed you.”

I smiled and closed my eyes. This was rather more the way I had imagined the afternoon progressing. “And I missed you,” I murmured, the feeling of his lips on my skin making it difficult to string words together. “You have no idea how much.”

“I wish you could have been there with me,” he went on, his hands now seeking the bare skin beneath my many layers of clothing, as I shifted so that I straddled him. “You would have loved it.”

“I love you.” I sighed as he began to undo the many hooks and laces of my clothes. I reached down and began to unlace his breeches.

“We are going to break this chair,” he murmured in my ear, his breathing growing heavy.

My fingers went still, just barely brushing against him. “Do you want me to stop?” I breathed.

“
Dio mio,
no,” he said, abandoning his quest to unlace my corset and simply pushing up the skirt of my shift, which was perfectly effective for our purposes.

*   *   *

We lay in bed together afterward—once we made it to the bed—talking idly as the pale March sun tried its best to shine feebly through the drawn curtains of the bedchamber. I wished we could fling open the drapes and let all the light in, bathe ourselves in what sunshine there was to be had. I could not wait for spring to come chase away the gray of winter.

“Did anything interesting happen while I was away?” he asked, after he had told me all about his trip.

“No,” I said. “My life has been as uneventful as ever.”

“No swarms of suitors coming to call?” he teased.

I looked up at him, surprised, but he was smiling. “Just the one,” I said, “now that Senator Baldovino has finally given up.”

“Baldovino?” Vivaldi's brow wrinkled. “I have heard the name,” he said. “But he is an old man, is he not? He must have been courting you for his son, no?”

“Not at all,” I said, grinning anew at the thought of my thwarted suitor. “He has no son; I do not believe he has ever been married, though he is at least fifty.” I told him the story of Senator Baldovino's brief and uninspired courtship of me.

Vivaldi chuckled. “The poor, besotted old fool. Surely he cannot have thought your father would take him seriously, with him old enough to be your grandfather?”

“Can you imagine?” I asked, laughing.

Vivaldi smiled. “No, I cannot imagine, and thankfully the good senator seems to have given up imagining as well.” He wrapped his arms around me, drawing me closer. “Though I can certainly understand why he is so smitten,” he murmured in my ear. “At the very least, he shows himself to be a man of exquisite taste.”

“Naturally.”

“Ah, well,” he said. “It will give you something to think of and be grateful for when you are married to Tommaso Foscari.”

My eyes flew up to meet his, shocked. “It is going to happen,
cara,
” he said softly, without bitterness. “I have accepted it.”

Rage and anguish and sorrow ripped me apart in an instant. I wanted to shove him away, to leap from the bed and scream at him, to demand what he meant by saying he had
accepted
it.

What about all those things you said, those things you promised me?
I wanted to shout at him.
You say that you need me, that you would save me from death itself, from the very underworld, from across the river Styx. Do you not see that I am dying here in your arms, Orfeo? Save me! Save me, and do not look back!

Instead, I began to cry.

“
Cara
—” He looked down at me in surprise. “
Cara,
please do not cry. Surely you know that—”

Yet once the tears finally found their way out, there was no stopping them, it seemed. Slowly, that word, “acceptance,” slithered its way through the cracks and crevices of my mind, lodging itself there, carving its brutal letters just behind my eyes.

He was not going to fight for me. He was going to let me go.

This was how it would end.

Eventually he stopped trying to comfort me, and just held me tightly as I cried.

 

29