The Violinist of Venice (28 page)

“I am not the only one who has made choices!” he all but shouted. “I would do anything to set this right, anything, but—”

“You could set it right,” I said. “You could, but you will not.” I turned my back to him and pressed my trembling hands to my forehead. “This is not how it was supposed to happen,” I whispered. “You were supposed to agree to come away with me, and everything would have been perfect.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them something, anything, would have changed. “This is a dream, a nightmare,” I murmured. I opened my eyes. “Please tell me this is all a dream. Please.”

“I wish it was,” he said, looking away from me.

“Why?” I asked. “Why, Antonio, why?”

“I have already told you,” he said. “The governors of the Pietà have—”

“I
know
that,” I said. “What I do not know is why that is worth abandoning your child, and the woman you claimed to love.”

“Surely you see how many doors this opens for me, and for my music,” he said. “It is only because I am a priest that I can be given a position at such an institution, and there are many more opportunities available to me if—”

“If what?” I interrupted. “If you cease to love anyone save yourself?”

“That is not fair.”

“Fair or not, it certainly rings true.”

He fell silent then.

So that was how it was going to be. He was choosing his music over me.

And yet … was that not why I had fallen in love with him in the first place?

This thought was unpalatable to me just then, so I let it drown in my sea of sorrow and self-pity and fear. I drowned with it, sinking to my knees onto the weathered floorboards. “Tonio,” I whispered. “Please. Will you make me beg you?”

“Please,
cara,
no,” he said. He moved to help me to my feet, but I shoved him away.

“Can you still call me so?” I cried. “I believed more in you than in God, and now both have forsaken me!”

“I … I will make this right someday, Adriana,” he said. “I swear I will, no matter what it takes.”

I laughed as I got wearily to my feet. “What can you possibly do that will make this right?”

He opened his mouth, but I put up my hand to stop him. “Please. Save your breath. Maybe saying such things will help you sleep well at night, but they can do nothing for me.”

“What in God's name makes you think that I shall ever sleep well again?” he burst out.

“And yet you shall never suffer half so much as I,” I replied. I looked around me, at the room in which I had known so much joy, the room in which I had come to life and fallen in love and played the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

I never thought it would end this way,
I thought, taking in the permanent clutter of parchment, of ink and quills and instruments.
I have always known that it must end, but I was meant to leave him; never did I dream that he would leave me.
“I suppose it is time for me to go, then,” I said aloud as tears filled my eyes.

“You cannot walk home all by yourself,” he said.

“No!”
I choked out. “Do not dare tell me what I can and cannot do. Do not dare think of following me home.” I moved to the door, knowing that if I remained in his presence one moment longer, I would come completely undone. “Good-bye, Antonio,” I whispered. Then, while I was still able to do so, I tore myself away and went out the door.

On my walk home, I became aware of a second set of footsteps, following me. I did not have to turn around to know that it was him, that he was seeing that I got safely home despite my protests. Orfeo following Euridice back to the underworld, in a strange inversion of the tale.

I let the tears fall.

 

40

GOOD-BYE

As I neared the palazzo, I noticed that light streamed from a great many windows; too many for such a late hour. Surely I could not have been discovered missing already?

It did not matter, I decided wearily. I had nothing left.

As I approached the servants' door, I whirled around to see the cause of my anguish still trailing behind me. “Why are you still here?” I spat. “You have made your choice, now leave me in peace!”

Even as I spoke, the door suddenly flew open, banging against the side of the house with a hideous cracking as my father stormed outside.

He stopped abruptly when he saw me, his surprise quickly hardening into rage. “Here she is!” he cried. “How good of you, signorina, to deign to join us and save me the trouble of rousing the whole of Venice to find you!”

I watched as his eyes moved from me to Vivaldi, still standing several paces behind me. Every bit of me ached with this final defeat.

“So this is him, is it?” he demanded.

“Let me pass, Father,” I said, deliberately ignoring his question and trying to push past him. His hand came down and clamped onto my shoulder so tightly that I had to grit my teeth to keep from crying out.

“You will go nowhere until I allow it,” he said coldly.

“How do you know I do not have a pair of shears, Father?” I asked.

He released me instantly, fear flashing across his face.

“Coward,” I spat.

But he ignored my taunt. Instead, he was staring hard at Vivaldi. “You,” he said suddenly. “I know you. You are that man they speak of … the violinist.
Il Prete Rosso
.”

Without warning, my father turned and struck me full across the face. I cried out as my knees buckled beneath me, and I dropped to the wet, dirty cobblestones. “You brazen slut!” he shouted. “How can you possibly have been so wanton as to seduce a priest?”

He raised his hand to strike me again, but Vivaldi stepped forward and caught his arm, shoving him backward against the wall of the palazzo, and held him there with one arm across his throat.

I heard the door bang open again and turned to see Giuseppe. He quickly helped me to my feet.

My father managed a disdainful laugh at Vivaldi. “You would strike me, padre? You, a priest, would deal in violence?”

“In your case, I would consider it,” Vivaldi growled. “But I can promise you one thing: you will have to kill me where I stand before I will allow you to harm Adriana again.” Abruptly he released him, glancing at me where I stood shakily, Giuseppe supporting me. “And I am not much of a priest, after all.”

Yet my father recovered his bearings quickly. “How dare you,” he said. He stalked over to me, shoving Giuseppe roughly aside, and seized me by the hair. “Not only have you defiled my daughter, but you dare to speak to me in such a manner?”

“Release her, Enrico!” Giuseppe said, moving toward him.

“As you wish,” he said. He flung me away from him with enough force to send me stumbling to the ground, but Vivaldi stepped forward and caught me tightly in his arms, cradling me against his chest.

What little pride I had left demanded that I pull away from him, but I could not force myself to move. This would be the last time he ever held me in his arms, and I could not bear to ruin it with spite and pride. I closed my eyes and rested my head against his chest, breathing in his familiar scent and reveling in this one last, deeply flawed moment of intimacy.

Dimly, I could hear Giuseppe. “Leave her be, Enrico,” he said. “Sell her in marriage if you will—I cannot stop you—but this abuse must stop. And I warn you, I do not make threats in vain.”

As Giuseppe went on, Vivaldi brought his lips to my ear, whispering, “I will make it right, somehow, someday,
mia carissima
Adriana. I swear that I will, even if it takes my very life.”

He moved to release me, but my arms tightened around him. “Do not leave me,” I whispered, making my final, futile plea.

He did not reply, only gently extracted himself from my arms. “Take care of her,” I heard him murmur to Giuseppe, “for I cannot.” Then his footsteps began to move away from me, fading into the night.

I remained rooted to the spot, trembling, my eyes closed so that I did not have to see him leave.

“Adriana,” my father's cold voice bit out. Slowly I opened my eyes to find that Vivaldi was gone, had vanished into the fog that had begun to rise off the canals, and that this awful, endless night had been all too real. “Get inside.
Now.
”

I swayed on the spot, remaining for a moment longer before obeying. As I turned to go inside, I became aware of moisture on my cheek. Touching my fingers to the damp spot, I realized that they were not my tears—they were his.

 

MOVEMENT FIVE

WITHOUT YOU

September 1711–September 1713

 

41

MY HEART IS BROKEN

As my father had commanded me, I went straight inside. I did not stop walking until I had reached my bedchamber and barricaded myself inside. He did not follow.

Giuseppe did, however. I had only just turned the lock in the sitting room door when he began to pound on it. “Adriana!” he called. “Open the door! Please, tell me what happened! Are you all right?”

“Leave me be, Giuseppe!” I screamed at the door, finally beginning to unravel, and at a speed I could no longer control.

“Please, Adriana!”

“No!” I shrieked. “Leave me! There is nothing you can do for me now!” My ragged voice caught in my throat as I fled into my bedchamber, closing that door as well to stifle Giuseppe's shouts. “It is over,” I choked out, though I knew he could not hear me. “It is over, it is really over. And you were right: we have lost.”

Consumed by grief, it was all I could do to pull my heavy, ungainly body up onto the bed, burying my face in the coverlet as sobs shook my aching body.

So this is what it feels like, this heartbreak about which the poets write and the singers sing. You taught me so many wonderful and beautiful and difficult things, Antonio. Perhaps it is only fitting you would teach me this as well.

But there was nothing lovely about this despair, no music or poetry in it. It was a night without stars, a sea without bottom, a hellfire without hope of salvation.

I had not thought that anything could be as consuming as the love I had for him, until I knew the anguish of losing him. And was there anything as tragic as the fact that sorrow should be a deeper ocean in which to drown than love?

I could only let the tears come and wonder when it would be over.

*   *   *

I must have fallen asleep, for at some point in the early dawn I woke suddenly, roused by a dream, a fading melody. I rose, lit a candle at my desk and sat, grabbing the first quill and parchment with staves on it that I could find. I began to write, scribbling down this swirling, tempestuous melody that was storming through my head, harsh like the waves of the sea and jagged as the rocks that lay hidden near the coast. On and on for pages it went, sliding into a slower movement, and then back into fury. The siren was raging now, raging at the sorrow and pain of her heartbreak, and her force could not be contained.

I do not know how long I wrote; only that when I finished I was breathing heavily, staring down at the angry ink marks that chased each other across the pages. Almost in a trance, I got up from the desk and went back to bed, where sleep claimed me again almost instantly.

 

42

SINS

It had to be near to midday when I heard pounding on the outer door of my rooms. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, wishing that whoever it was would go away.

“Adriana! Open this door right now!” my father called.

Still I did not move. Let him break the door down, if he would.

“Adriana! Open the damned door, or so help me God…” He trailed off.

As abruptly as it began, the pounding stopped. Moments later I heard the sitting room door swing open; he must have obtained the key. The door to my bedchamber slammed open, and he stormed through it in all his wrathful glory.

“Get up,” he barked. “A maid is coming in to dress you.”

I stared back up at him impassively. “Why?”

“Because I commanded it,” he retorted. His hands were clenched into fists, but they remained firmly at his sides. Yet another debt that I owed Giuseppe.

“Why?” I asked again. “I have no plans of leaving this room in the near future.”

“Oh, no?” he said. “That is too damned bad, as I have different plans at the moment.”

Just then, a girl a few years younger than me entered the room—another of the kitchen girls—and looked questioningly at my father. “Get on with it,” he said. “Dress her hair and put some powder on her.” He stalked to my wardrobe, pulling out a gray silk gown. “And put that on her,” he ordered, flinging it at the maid. “If you can get it over her stomach with that filthy bastard she is carrying.”

My face burned, but still I did not speak, nor did I resist as the girl washed my face, removed my dirty dress and undergarments, and dressed me in a clean shift and petticoat. After pulling a comb roughly through my tangled hair, she pinned up the top sections. Lastly she applied powder to my face, to cover my bruises. Once all that was complete, she laced me into the dress.

“Good enough,” my father said, and the girl curtsied to him and left, having never spoken a word. He threw my cloak at me. “Now let us go and get this over with.”

Not having the energy to fight another battle with him, I followed him quietly through the house and out to the gondola. “Move,” he said to the gondolier as soon as we were both aboard.

“In case you were wondering,” he began as soon as the gondola was moving, “I am taking you to Ca' Foscari.”

I gasped.

“They are expecting us, though I have not told them why we wish to see them,” he went on. “
You
are going to tell them. You are going to tell them about your condition—not that they will not be able to see it for themselves—and beg for their forgiveness and discretion.”