Hidden Voices (15 page)

When Luisa rises to leave the room, it occurs to me that if I wish to know where Rosalba is, I should follow her. I must do it without attracting attention, however, and must move rather more slowly than Luisa does, not entering the hallway until some minutes after she has disappeared into it herself. As it happens, just as I pass under the lintel of the doorway, she is at the end of one corridor and turning down another that is rarely entered. I trace Luisa’s steps as quietly as possible and am much surprised to find, at the end of the second corridor, both girls together in the smallest of the parlors. In making certain not to be observed, I cannot, in fact, hear all of what they say, and their talk, though agitated, is in low tones.

When I do finally infer from a few intelligible words that they’re talking about the running of the bulls, that thunderous event is already causing the very walls to shake and Luisa and Rosalba to embrace each other in fear or joy or both. I am much distressed to see this, for it is a surety that Luisa would never cling to me in such a way. Even their being cosseted together in this remote room makes me sick to the core of my being and causes me to wonder if Rosalba’s cautions to me about my behavior haven’t been for my own good, as she has always insisted, but for hers.

I am not used to this new sentiment, which I am horrified to think may be the capital sin of envy, and don’t know what to do with it or how I should proceed henceforth with either of the two people I have for so long considered my closest friends.

After vespers, Rosalba does appear at dinner and seems ravenous, wolfing the roasted fowl and root vegetables in an unseemly manner. She is not as talkative as usual, which is not surprising, as her mouth is always occupied. Her serving of
panna cotta
with dried berries lives only seconds upon her plate, after which she scurries into the kitchen to wheedle second helpings from Cook. If I did such a thing, I’d be considered gluttonous; Rosalba, on the other hand, is merely thought of as resourceful, something even the
maestri
and
maestre
eating with us look upon with amusement and good humor. I, too, have often excused her carefree attitude toward any of the rules, but wonder now how she survives her escapades. It seems as if Signora looks away on purpose and rarely chastises her for absences. Is it from habit, or from some disposition toward her, coaxed from all of us over the years by the jolly flippant temperament we’ve learned to coddle?

“I will not join you in the drawing room tonight or attend the small rehearsal Father has
just
announced,” she says at length.

When I don’t ask her what she does intend to do, she continues.

“I need some extra sleep, you see. Silvia’s snoring keeps me up most half the night.”

Silvia, who has been listening from across the table, snorts with indignation and rolls her eyes.

“It doesn’t bother me,” I say. “I am so tired when I finally do retire, that even cannon shot would not disturb me.”

“Yes. You do sleep peacefully. It is the gift of a good conscience.”

If she but knew of my new penchant to be envious and of my great lack of patience. I cannot help but try to warn her nonetheless, but I do it in a whisper.

“Rosalba,” I tell her. “You cannot shirk your duties as you do and not get found out eventually or have your tasks as
maestra
taken from you along with the small
stipend they afford.”

“I am careful,” she confides. “You worry more for me than for yourself. A very noble thing, to be sure, but quite unnecessary. What troubles me the most is that you blame yourself when I don’t listen.”

“Perhaps I should solicit the help of Luisa. Perhaps you would listen to her.”

“There seems to be some meaning in those words that I don’t understand.”

“I merely wonder if another voice would encounter your deaf ear so often.”

“I do hear you, Anetta. I do. But if I make mistakes, they are my own. You cannot, you must not, blame yourself. Ever.”

Those are the words I think of when entering the bedchamber myself at the proper time and finding Rosalba’s bed as tightly made as in the morning, with her crucifix upon the pillow in the prescribed way. There is a shadow across the coverlet from her watteau and apron hanging lifeless from a wall peg.

Looking for answers, I pull open the cover of Rosalba’s trunk and find a great empty space and then nothing but two woolen petticoats, some extra undergarments, and a paper advertisement for the next play at the Commedia dell’Arte.

T
HE STREET STILL SMELLS
of bull, and there are splatted bull turds all along the Riva. Lanterns for Carnival along the lagoon cast enough light to keep me from stepping in the great clots of manure. I keep to the shadows and pull my cloak about me and watch as, in the lantern glow, perfect strangers, it would seem, embrace one another, flirt and kiss and go off together. There is laughter close by and bursts of it carried on the air from a distance. Costumed figures dart between gondolas at the pier; songs float across the water from boats on their way to parties and palaces, magnificent places that I can only imagine.

Earlier today, when I saw the wig-maker’s assistant going by the Ospedale for the second time, I mustered my courage and tossed a note from the window. He looked up immediately to see from whence the little paper had drifted, and I, of course, stooped down where I couldn’t be seen.
Soon enough,
I thought at the time,
soon enough I will make myself known to him.
The note had said:
Meet me tonight at first dark across from the Calle della Pietà, near the gondola of one Guissepe.

I wanted to say more, to let him know what I would be wearing and to declare my love, but on the other hand, it seems to me that there is always some suggestion of mystery in any great romance. It took me most of the morning to decide what the note would include, and then, when he came by again, as I had dared to hope, it was necessary to compose it in great haste. “The Blue Dove,” I decided at the last, would be my nom de plume.

When the
gondolieri
begin to light their lamps, I have my feathered mask in place and have slipped my cloak down from my shoulders to reveal the velvet girdle and the golden snake that rests just at the place where my breasts begin to swell. I stand this way for many minutes, no doubt turning pigeon blue in the raw weather. To dispel the cold, I tap my feet up and down and rub my hands together. I search the Riva with my eyes from one bridge to the next. And just as I tell myself that he is not coming and turn to leave, hoping the Ospedale door has not yet been locked, I see him, dodging bull turds the way I did as he runs toward me. He wears no mask at all but is as well turned out as I have seen him on his missions to the dukes, with velvet breeches and a silken coat. I let my cloak drop down so he can see my small waist and rounded bosom and the lovely colors in my gypsy skirt purchased from a vendor only yesterday. Perhaps he thinks I am a gypsy. What does he think? Who does he imagine that I am? When he comes close, I know only that he is pleased at what he sees. He hands the note to me and bows a little.

“Signorina. Does this belong to you?”

“Of course, Signore,” I say.

In the dampness of the night, I know my heavy hair is curled and massed about my face, that my cheeks are quite a match for the red velvet of my girdle. But he appears enchanted, just the way I dreamed he would be oh, so many, many times.

His hands, when I’ve observed him, have always held a pedestal for wigs. Now they do not hesitate to draw me to him as he reaches down to kiss my neck and shoulders and as he presses me roughly against the rail. The first attentions are delicious, but the second is so indelicate it makes me feel quite breathless. I must wrest my own hands free to push him from me.

“Flirt,” he accuses me in an angry fashion, and uses some coarse words that I don’t fully understand but have heard used in the street.

“Signore,” I say, “you sweep me off my feet. I wish to savor your attentions slowly.”

“D’accordo,”
he says. “We’ll play this little game your way. But I must warn you, at Carnival I have no more patience than a hungry child.”

He then proceeds a bit more slowly with his caresses, causing such delightful and unexpected sensations that I begin to feel quite giddy. It’s not until he clasps my bottom with both hands to draw me to him, leans in and thrusts his tongue almost to my throat that I resist again, and with all my might, for surely these are not the gentle attentions of a true lover. Flavio did not comport himself in such a way upon the stage.

“Signore,” I say, wrenching from his grasp and backing away, “I do not understand your intentions.”

“Nor I, yours, it would appear.”

“I thought that we might talk. Might dance.”

He laughs, and I must admit it is a charming, lilting sound, and that his smile is whitely brilliant in the dim light. What have I done to ruin things?

“Might dance? You are a schoolgirl.”

“No, Signore, a true
maestra.
”

“A schoolgirl, nonetheless. I can’t be bothered with such things. I am apprenticed to a busy man. I do not have the time for this.”

His face is still as handsome as when first I saw him, his form and figure just as dashing. Can he not be, eventually, the gentle lover of my dreams?

“You are disappointed?” I ask.

“I am surprised.
You
sent for
me.
Remember?”

Why should my invitation put some rough claim upon me that is altogether unclear? Yet I have thought of no one else but him these many months. I do not want to believe that we have failed each other.

“I will be here tomorrow at this time,” I tell him. “Perhaps we can begin again to come to know each other.”

He laughs once more and gives me a sweet, charming cuff across the chin.

“Perhaps,” he says, and spreads his hands, palms up, as if confounded, and turns and makes his way back down the darkened Riva toward the Piazza San Marco.

I cross immediately to the Calle della Pietà, bumping into revelers as if I’m blind, and lean against the wall beside the Ospedale door to compose myself, for I am strangely shaken. Light from a gibbous moon glistens on the cobblestones all the way to the lagoon, and I think how this is such a perfect night for love. So perfect, and yet so disappointing. His disappointment, too, was clear. But I had not counted on such an impetuous nature, such unbridled passion. I’m certain that given another chance, he will not behave in those same bold ways that troubled me tonight. He must be, even now, composing himself and thinking of a way to make amends. And he will come again. I know he will.

I turn the knob upon the Ospedale door. It’s still unlocked, and inside is a silence as deep as those beautiful few seconds at the very end of a concerto when not a single bow or baton moves. It envelops me like a warm cloak a mother might provide. But then someone’s nose begins to whistle loud enough in sleep to be heard clearly all the way downstairs, and there’s the clatter of an upset pot followed by a shriek. The candles along the hallway have already been extinguished, and I must trail my fingers along the wall to find my way.

A
T FIRST LIGHT,
I look across at Rosalba’s bed and find her sleeping there, one hand beneath her head, the coverlet pulled to her chin. The other girls are stirring about the room, pulling their dresses down over their heads, arranging their caps, smoothing out the bedclothes. I close my eyes quickly so they’ll think I’m still asleep, something I will be excused for because of my recent illness. But Rosalba will be brought to task this time, I’m certain. There have been too many lapses in attendance of late, too many late arrivals.

As soon as the nosy dawdler, Silvia, heads down to breakfast, I leave my warm bed and shake Rosalba awake.

She mumbles something I can’t understand and turns upon her stomach, one hand hanging limply to the floor. With a great effort, I grasp that hand and the arm and shoulder attached to it and turn her over, causing her to open her eyes wide with a start.

“What . . . what in the world are you doing, Luisa?”