Hidden Voices (21 page)

I
HAVE TOLD THEM
over and over, but they still choose not to understand.

“I am not allowed to play an instrument in Venice. No one from the Ospedale may play in Venice once they have left. The rules are very clear.”

“Child,” says Lydia, “if you think that anyone from the Pietà will hunt you down, you are sadly mistaken. As far as they are concerned, you no longer exist. What music you make in the streets is of no concern at all to them.”

“How else do you intend to earn your keep?” asks Salvatore. “It is the only reason we have for allowing you to stay.”

“I think it will be all right if I sing,” I agree at last. Father Vivaldi made no mention of singing when he said I could not play my oboe in the city. It has been some time since my face healed, and no instrument has yet been procured for me. I will decide what to do about that when the time comes to buy one.

“And I’m certain you will do it well,” says Pasquale.

He is always so agreeable that I do not have to try to please him and, unfairly perhaps, find myself expending my energies in attempts to make Salvatore like me better. His face is as beautiful as a painting by Tiepolo, though I have yet to see him smile. Often his mother plays the coquette with this particular son and bristles when I do anything that might change his original impression of me. Pasquale notices my efforts and cautions me not to try so hard to endear myself to either mother or son.

“Salvatore is the favored one,” he says without malice. “I am tolerated. As you will be if you are of any use to them. It is not such a bad thing.”

“Why does this not cause you to be resentful?” I ask, for his constant cheerfulness and eagerness to please all of us confounds me.

“What is the point? Things will only change for ill if I become petulant. Life is too much of a gift to despoil it with petty wrangling.”

I have no retort to such unselfishness, but I am myself determined not to become the doormat that he willingly makes of himself.
Doormat
is perhaps not the best description of Pasquale, for both Lydia and Salvatore seem to have a great deal of respect for him even as they allow him to do most of the unpleasant tasks. When I mention something of the sort, he says, “People are imperfect. Why do battle with such an indisputable fact day after day?”

“You are a philosopher, then,” I tell him.

“What do you know of philosophers?”

“Not very much. But I think they are quite high-minded. As you seem to be.”

“Perhaps,” he says, and looks at me with those searching, clear eyes. “And an ordinary man. Very much a man.”

If he is courting my favor, I cannot tell. What is clear is that he intends to protect me in both large and small ways, and for that I am grateful. Nothing of my earlier disgrace has passed his lips, and as weeks pass, I am certain that nothing ever will.

“She cannot wear those clothes,” declares Salvatore as I run down the stairs to join the others with the intention of going along to the Piazza San Marco and trying a few of the songs they have taught me. My clothing has been washed and mended, but he looks at me as if I have just rolled in the mud.

“It is all I have,” I tell him. Lydia had spoken of sewing a new dress for me, but has never even begun it. We were not taught to sew in the Ospedale.

“It will have to do,” says Lydia. “If she looks like a tart . . . well . . . it may draw the crowd.”

To think I am being used in such a way is utterly demeaning.

“I will stay here then,” I say, and sit down hard on a stair, folding my arms across my waist like a barrier.

“You will do no such thing,” says Lydia. She grabs my arms and jerks me up again to a standing position.

“Here,” says Pasquale, handing me his mother’s short
bagnolette,
which she rarely wears on these warm nights. “There is an easy solution.” He places the little satin cape across my shoulders and ties it under my chin as if I am a child on my way to school.

“Thank you, Pasquale,” I say. I will wear it because of his kindness, even if I should swelter. It does seem a shame to hide my red velvet bodice, but the short cape hides my bosom as well, and I suppose that is really what bothers Salvatore.

“There,” says Lydia. “She could well be a nun.”

“Not with such a face,” says Salvatore. He does not mean to compliment me, but I am pleased, nonetheless, that he has noticed and does not plan to relegate me to a convent just yet.

“Indeed,” adds Pasquale, but this brother says it quite tenderly as if he appreciates fully not just the face but the person I am. It is not clear to me how I know this. It is instinctual and deep.

The square is, as usual, full to bursting with the oddments of Venice — well-dressed dukes dripping lace and gold embroidery, grimy little street urchins, a dwarf juggling three melons, a crippled woman sitting on the cobblestones in a stream of her own urine and stretching one crooked hand to the crowd. It has not taken as long to walk here as I had supposed, but since we have come from a direction opposite to the one taken from the Ospedale, we did not pass anything familiar to me.

Salvatore claims a spot for us at the foot of the Campanile, and after the others have taken out their instruments and played a few rollicking instrumental pieces, Pasquale motions for me to come forward. A small crowd has already gathered, and as I come to the front, it is a shock to suddenly realize that I can be seen. There is no grille to disguise me or to hide behind. The realization makes me fall silent at first, and causes Salvatore to make some excuse before replaying the introduction to my song. I am feeling lightheaded, and the queasiness that has been visiting me of late is revived.

“Scusi,”
I say in a weak little voice that can’t be my own.

Salvatore’s dark look does not encourage me. But I have come this far with these people. I must try to go on.

The words and notes to the song
“Alma del Core”
come softly from my lips at first, but then I notice the expectant and approving countenances of the small crowd, and little by little my voice becomes warmer and fuller until it has all the timbre of the
castrati
part I often sang at the Pietà. It suits this ardent music well.

With the second song,
“Amarilli, mia bella,”
I am fully in control again, lacing the music with my most heartfelt and sincere emotion and losing myself to the simple melody. At its end, I am truly disappointed not to have another song to sing, for these two are the only ones that I have mastered. And I am also pleased to observe many ducats being added to the ones already in the basket. Salvatore is bound to see my worth to the group.

“
Brava,
” Pasquale says to me as we are packing up to leave, but Salvatore hasn’t uttered a single word.

“You have a lusty voice,” says Lydia, as if this is a drawback. “You must rein it in the next time.”

“I agree heartily,” says Salvatore. “Your singing must not eclipse the playing of our instruments.”

“That makes no sense at all,” Pasquale defends me. “The people loved the way she sang. Our expanded coffers tell that story.”

His quick and resolute defense of me is welcome, and I’m happy to see once more that Pasquale doesn’t bow to these most insensible decrees of his family.

“Truly?” asks Lydia. “There is more in that basket tonight than is usual?”

“A good deal more.”

“It does not mean that she should not take heed of what we say and try to improve,” says Salvatore. “I for one am not convinced yet of her worth to us. It could be just a fluke.”

“A fluke,” Pasquale repeats, rolling his eyes in consternation. “We can call it that if you like. We can call it anything, and it will still be good to have the extra income.”

“Please,” I say at last. “I can do better. I will do better.”

“All right, then,” says Lydia. “The matter is closed. We’ll come back here again tomorrow night. We’ll try our luck a second time at this same place.”

It has been good to perform again, even these frivolous songs of love that every street musician knows, to smile at an audience and — imagine — to have them smile in return.

Walking back through the winding streets, some lit only by the moon, I feel a little bit of hope, some excitable quivering within my stomach. But by the time the half house is in view, I cannot hold back the nausea that has been rising in my chest. I grip the rail of a small connecting bridge and retch over the side until I can bring up nothing but bitter mucous.

Pasquale is the only one to stay behind with me. He wipes my face with his own sleeve, and we sit upon the stones awhile.

“There’s no hurry,” he says. “We’ll move on when you’re feeling better.”

“I don’t know what came over me.”

“Perhaps,” he says cautiously, “it is not an illness of any sort.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that it’s been many weeks now since you came to us.”

“Since you found me,” I correct him.

He becomes flustered and puts his head into his hands. After which he looks at me with eyes that have become accustomed to the dim light and contain some cast of awe or reverence that I don’t understand.

“It’s time enough, at any rate,” he says, and smiles as at some shared secret.

“What do you mean to say?”

“Only that it has been a few months’ time. Time enough to see some signs.”

“Signs of what?”

He takes my hand when he sees my confusion. He stares at his feet, suddenly shy.

“Signs of new life,” he says at last.

L
UISA HAS FINALLY SENT
a letter. Signora Mandano brought it to me after the noon meal. Everyone saw her do it, and I immediately slid it, unopened, into the pocket of my apron to take it into the kitchen garden, where I can read it privately. It is a very rare thing for one of us to receive a letter. I can’t even remember when it has happened before.

I am a little surprised to find her words are more formal than if we were speaking face-to-face, but her handwriting is as lacy and fine as her lyrical speaking voice that I hear in my dreams.

It is a lovely letter, but she did not sign it
Dearest friend,
as I would have done, as I hoped she would do. And she doesn’t name me among the things she misses most. No matter. She is well. It is a great pity that the country does not seem to be a place where Catina can find some surcease from her malady.

I must reply to Luisa at once, so she will know how much she is missed. I must apprise her also of the fact that our Rosalba has not yet returned. The worry of it keeps my eyes wide open well into the deepest hours of the night. (For a certain I will not write that if what Prioress has said is true, Rosalba would be turned away and none of us would even know.)