The Violinist of Venice (35 page)

“It was … glorious. Magnificent.” I looked away. “There are no words. You must know that, Tonio.”

I started at my old, affectionate name for him coming from my lips. He, too, looked surprised, but did not comment. “It seems that I have given you my message, then,” he said. “There are so very many things for which there are no words.”

“Yes.”

We stared at each other in silence. His eyes swept upward over me, drinking me in. “You look beautiful,” he said. “Beyond words.”

“Apparently sorrow agrees with me,” I said, with the fierce resolve of a soldier in battle who knows he is doomed, but will fight to the death anyway.

“Adriana.” He moved toward me, but I stepped back. Hurt flashed across his face at this, and I told myself that I did not care. “Do not think that you can possibly reproach me more than I have reproached myself this past year.”

“And yet you were not there when they took our daughter away, and so you do not know—” I stopped abruptly, the tightness in my throat making it impossible for me to go on.

“Yes, Giuseppe told me,” he said. “I am—”

“Please,” I cut him off. “Do not say that you are sorry. It is such an empty word that has the power to change nothing.”

I could see in his face that he wanted to press me, ask me more about the child—our child. However, when he said nothing further, I moved to walk past him and out the door. “I must go—I have a lot to do, and—”

He placed a gentle hand on my arm, causing me to flinch. “Please, Adriana,” he said. “I only wanted to—”

“To what?” I demanded, suddenly angry again.

“To see how you fare. Please, no,” he said, when I opened my mouth to retort angrily. “If I thought it would make you feel better—if I thought it would make any of this better—I would go drown myself in the Grand Canal right now.”

His words so shocked me that I could think of nothing to say in reply. He, however, took advantage of my silence and changed the subject. “And what is he like?” he asked, nodding in the general direction of the
piano nobile.
“Your husband?”

I laughed. “He is an old man.”

“Is he good to you?”

“He treats me well enough in that he leaves me mostly to my own devices,” I said.

He studied me with sympathy. “That sounds very lonely.”

“I am quite accustomed to being lonely, I am afraid,” I said. “And perhaps I am now paying for having stolen so much joy, once.”

We were both silent for a long moment, the uncomfortable silence of two people who know everything there is to know about each other, and who can speak of none of it.

It occurred to me that dinner was surely about to begin, and that my absence must have been remarked upon, and Vivaldi's as well. But something prompted me to make one last confession. “I cannot play anymore, Antonio, let alone write. The music … I have lost it.”

He smiled. “That is not true, Adriana. It cannot be. You have more music in you than anyone I have ever known. You wrote that spellbinding concerto everyone just heard, did you not?”

To my horror, tears stung my eyes. “I did, but…”

He moved to place his hand reassuringly on my shoulder, but then thought better of it. “You shall find the music again, eventually. Inevitably. I know you will.”

The tears were flowing freely now; I would have given anything to make them stop. “I cannot. Not without you.”

“Oh, Adriana,” he said. “I was never that important. You never needed me that much. Maybe you could not see it then, and cannot yet, but—”

“You do not know,” I whispered. “You do not—” I broke off. Oh, God, why had I let him follow me here? Why had I thought that I could bear it? “I am sorry. I should not be … that is, as I said, I have much to do.”

He nodded uncomfortably. “Yes, of course. Your guests.”

“Yes,” I replied. I took a deep breath. “
Addio,
Antonio.” This time when I walked past him, he let me go.

I could hardly return to my guests in this state, so I climbed back up the stairs and ducked into the small parlor outside of the main room of the
piano nobile.
I sank down onto a daybed, doing my best to stitch myself back together.

A few moments later, the door opened slightly and the elegantly coiffed head of Vittoria Cassenti appeared. “Why, Donna Baldovino,” she said, stepping fully into the room. “Everyone is quite at a loss as to where you vanished to.”

We were both silent as she took in my appearance. “Are you quite well, Adriana?” she asked, lowering her voice.

“Yes,” I answered quickly. “That is, no, I was feeling unwell, and so I stepped in here to collect myself…”

She crossed the room and sat beside me. “I understand,” she said, sliding an arm around my shoulders, and I found myself leaning into her strong yet slender frame.

“There are so many things in a woman's heart of which she can never speak,” she said gently, without accusation or curiosity.

And as I accepted her comfort, I wondered, fleetingly, how a girl who had grown up hidden away in a cloister could be so very wise.

 

52

CONSONANCE

I managed to get through dinner without further incident—a dinner at which many of the guests expressed their admiration for the mystery concerto.

“Whoever that composer is, he has quite a career ahead of him, should he choose to reveal himself,” Don Cassenti said.

I felt Vivaldi's eyes on me, and allowed myself a small, secret smile.

Thankfully, both Vittoria Cassenti and Giulietta Grimaldi were seated near me, and I was able to pass some of the meal in conversation with them—as much as my duties as hostess would permit, anyway.

I was not sorry when the evening came to an end, though it had not been without its happier moments: Vittoria promised to call upon me at my earliest convenience, and Giulietta Grimaldi and her husband extended an invitation to a party they were giving on the first night of Carnevale. I had not realized how my life had suffered all these years without female companions whose company I enjoyed and looked forward to.

So excited was I by the idea of having friends that I could scarcely wait to take Vittoria up on her offer. Only two days later, I sent her a note, saying that I hoped she might be able to pay me a visit that day. I received a speedy reply, telling me she would be along within the hour.

I received my guest in the same small parlor where she had happened upon me the evening of the party. The servants prepared some mulled wine for us to ward off the November chill. There were two steaming glasses waiting when she arrived.

“I thank you for your kind invitation,” Vittoria said, gratefully accepting the glass. “These empty winter days have made me rather melancholy. At the Pietà we were always so busy, or at prayer. Though I am very much looking forward to fully experiencing Carnevale for the first time.”

“They do not celebrate Carnevale at the Pietà, then?” I asked teasingly.

She laughed. “Hardly. We were never allowed outside the cloister except under close supervision, and they took even more care with us during Carnevale, for obvious reasons.”

Vivaldi's voice rang in my head:
I did not much care for their rules
 …
rules for performing, for practicing, for the types of music that could be performed
 …

“You were much bound by restrictions there, then?” I asked.

She laughed again. “That is putting it mildly,” she said. “There were rules for everything: speaking, praying, eating, rehearsing, even sleeping.” She shrugged. “But it was not that bad. After all…” A dreamy look came over her face. “There was music, always music. Glorious music, especially once Maestro Vivaldi began composing for us.” She sighed. “And even so … the rules, the confinement, they did chafe on one. All I could think of was the freedom of the outside world; I did not think long enough on what I would be giving up when I decided to leave and marry. I miss singing, performing; miss it more than I think I would miss one of my limbs if it were to be cut off.”

Her choice of phrase shocked me, not for its passion and severity but because I had once had the very same thought about the violin. “And your husband?” I asked, without thinking. “Do you not love him?” I blushed. “I do beg your pardon. I should not have asked you such a question. It was unspeakably rude of me.”

“No, no,” she assured me. “It is a fair question. In fact, you do me a great service by allowing me to unburden myself. My few friends are all still at the Pietà, so I have no one to whom I may speak freely.”

“You may speak freely with me,” I said.

“Francesco … he is not the dashing, fairy-tale prince I believed him to be when he first asked for my hand,” Vittoria said, after a moment of reflection. “But he never claimed to be anything other than what he is. I allowed myself to be caught up in the romance of it all: a man asking for my hand even when he had never seen my face, only heard me sing from behind a grille. It was so easy to imagine he was a knight out of an old tale of courtly love, come to rescue me. When I married him, I was madly in love with this vision I had of him, but not with him.” She shook her head and laughed sadly. “What a naïve fool I was.”

For a moment, it seemed that I was looking at a younger version of my mother. Had she, too, been disappointed by the harsh indifference of reality to a young girl's dreams? Even I, who had been no virgin in a cloister, who had known more of the world than either of them, had allowed myself to believe in a love so absolute it could destroy all other realities, or at least make them no longer matter.

“Not a fool,” I said at last. “Not at all. Very few of us end up living the life of which we may have dreamt.” I looked down at my hands. “No doubt you have gathered that my marriage to Giacomo is no grand love match, either.”

“I had guessed as much, yes,” Vittoria said. “You have too much spirit for an aging gentleman like him.”

I smiled at her delicate phrasing.

Impulsively, she reached out and squeezed my hand. “Do not worry,” she said, before releasing me. “You are not alone.”

“Thank you,” I said, smiling. “It has felt that way, all too often.”

A companionable silence stretched between us before Vittoria spoke again. “I must apologize. I have quite dominated our conversation with my past, which can hardly have been interesting.”

“On the contrary,” I said. “I have always been curious about life within the Pietà. My mother was a ward there before she married my father.”

“Ah, yes,” Vittoria said. “I believe your husband mentioned that. She was a singer as well, is that what he said?”

“Yes, a soprano. Her name was Lucrezia della Pietà, and she became Lucrezia d'Amato.”

“Lucrezia della Pietà!” she exclaimed “She was one of the best ever to sing there, or so the
maestre
used to say.”

“Yes. She would sing to me when I was a child, and I remember thinking an angel must have lent her that voice.”

“I can imagine,” Vittoria said. “Well, then, perhaps now you are better able to picture what her life would have been like as a girl—no doubt it is a world that seems very foreign to you.”

I laughed. “Some of what you have described is more familiar to me than you can perhaps guess.”

“Oh?”

I nodded. “There were many rules confining me as well. After my mother died, my father became very strict, protective…” I trailed off; how to describe something that I still did not understand myself? “I was not allowed to go out into society until I came of marriageable age, each invitation carefully scrutinized. And he stopped my violin lessons and forbade me to study music.”

Vittoria looked at me closely, then raised an eyebrow. “And now?”

“What do you mean?”

She gestured to the room around us. “You are mistress of your own house. Who would stop you if you wish to play again?”

I had no answer for her. Giacomo would not deny me such a simple thing if it would bring me joy. And, I realized with a shock, I
was
my own mistress now.

But the thought of playing the violin again caused an uncomfortable twisting in my stomach.

“I do not know,” I said finally. “I could, I suppose, but it has been so long…”

“Perhaps someday, then,” Vittoria said, in a tone that indicated she would leave the topic if I wished.

I forced a smile and took a sip of my wine, thankful our talk then turned to other things. Vittoria and her husband had also received an invitation to Giulietta Grimaldi's party, much to my excitement. “Francesco has promised to accompany me, even though it is not fashionable for a husband and wife to appear in each other's company.” She rolled her eyes. “He tells me he cannot wait to introduce me to my first Carnevale.”

“There
is
something about one's first Carnevale,” I said wistfully, remembering. Vittoria raised her eyebrows expectantly; blushing, I quickly returned to the topic at hand. “Yes, Giacomo will be accompanying me as well. He is not the most sociable man, as you no doubt know, but he would not fail to attend a party given by such a close friend.”

“I shall look forward to seeing you there, then,” Vittoria said, rising from her seat. “Now I pray that you will excuse me, as I must be on my way home. Francesco and I will be dining soon.”

I rose as well. “Of course. And thank you for calling on me. I have not…” I bit my lip, somewhat self-conscious. “I have not had many good friends in my life.”

She smiled. “Nor I. I shall be glad and honored to call you my friend, Adriana.”

“The honor will be all mine,” I said. And with that, Vittoria departed, leaving me happier than I had been in a long time.