Hidden Voices (29 page)

All summer we performed while it was light, but lately the dark falls earlier. I welcome it, the way it drops just like a mantle in whose folds I like to hide.

And I really do not mind that I can’t play their tunes with them. I have grown weary of the ones they know and am too well aware of their mistakes. Pasquale tries to improvise at times but doesn’t do it very well.

Tonight they’ve chosen to perform in the little
campo
near the Ospedale, a way in back of it, in fact, where Father Vivaldi and his brothers live. I tell Lydia this, but she remarks,
“Non c’è problema,”
and flicks her chin as if to say,
Don’t bother me.

I pray that he will not see me in my present state, that he will notice I’m not playing with the group and pay no mind to them. Perhaps he’s staying late in his repair shop, which I can picture in my mind — the tools neatly arranged upon his worn wooden bench, a variety of instruments lined up in the order of their having been delivered to him — or is rehearsing for the concert on Sunday or composing something in that little private room beside the choir loft. It matters not. I only pray that I’m not observed by him. And so, as they set up while it is light, I lean against the wall along the alleyway and listen to them as they tune their instruments and start to play the tunes I’ve grown to hate. I’m appeased some when I see that they do not draw as large a crowd as when I sang with them. From time to time, I hear a few people in the crowd ask about the lovely girl. Pasquale always says, “She’ll be back soon”; Salvatore only grunts. Lydia flirts and asks if she will do.

My back aches so that, as the shadows start to form, I ferret out a place to sit beside the well, which does not catch the light from windows on the little square. My knees pulled up, I could well be a mound of mud in all this darkness, a large stone, a wagon cushion, a bag of refuse, something of no account. What I would really like to be is lithe again or so small as to be invisible.

It seems that I have dozed a little, for next I know, the crowd is thinning and Pasquale’s playing his last solo. Lydia is packing up her violin and shaking out her stiffened shoulders. I am standing to stretch as best I can, still in the dark, when there’s a hand upon my arm and another body very close to mine. I am too terrified to scream and barely hear the whispered voice that tells me not to be afraid. “It’s only me, Rosalba. Don’t you know me?”

I look as closely as I can with eyes that are accustomed to the dark and notice first a faint red crested pate, quite wigless, and then the kindly face of Father underneath. He seems to wear a nightshirt with his trousers as if he snuck out of his chamber in the dark. The pressure of his hand upon my arm increases, and with the other hand he holds a package out to me that’s wrapped and tied and long.

“Take this,” he says. “Conceal it underneath your cloak.”

When it is placed into my hands, I know exactly what it is.

“My oboe,” I exclaim so quietly I hope he hears me. “How I have missed it.”

“Not in Venice,” he reminds me. “You must never play it here.”

“I know that, Father.”

“I heard you on the piccolo one time. It will not make your fortune.”

I cannot help but laugh at his assessment, for it is so apt.

“And so I thought I’d bring you your true instrument.”

“You cannot know what you have done,” I tell him. “How can I thank you?”

“Be well, my dear,” he says, and then he turns and, in just moments, he is gone.

Walking back, I hold the oboe up against my body, with its length along the inside of one arm. The baby kicks against it once or twice as if she does not wish to share this space.

“You must be tired,” says Pasquale, slowing his pace to mine. “Perhaps next time you shouldn’t come with us.”

My back aches more than ever and my stomach hardens in an odd way every little while. Soon these episodes are painful, but I refuse to drop to my knees in the street.

“It isn’t far,” says Pasquale when he sees me stumble. “You’d better let me carry you.”

I look at just how slight he is and smile at the mere thought of him supporting all this girth. “You couldn’t do it,” I exclaim.

“Well, then, Salvatore. We’ll ask Salvatore.”

“I’d rather die,” I say, and mean it. But just the thought of being held in that man’s arms gives me the strength to shuffle on. By the time we cross some bridges and come up to the street on which we live, my feet can barely move apart, and a strange wail escapes my lips, causing Lydia to run back down the stairs she has already climbed. She arrives just as a sudden gush of fluid travels down my legs and forms a puddle at my feet. I bend as best I can to look, but cannot see the color of it. It smells of water from the ocean and of something primal as the flotsam of the sea.

I
SWORE THAT IF SIGNORA
made me leave Alessandro and the countryside, I would never sing again. But what else could I offer sweet Catina whose short life was so marred and whose soul was so very old? And how else can I live but as the person I was meant to be? When Father showed me the new
Agnus Dei,
I could tell without bringing forth one note that it was very beautiful. Singing it, I decided, would be my gift to her, but, as it happened, no less gift to myself, for once again the music of my mentor and my friend, within the chapel where I first performed it, invigorated all my sensibilities.

Afterward, Father Vivaldi spoke to me again about his oratorio, the one on which he has been working for so long, the one that has a major part for me. I had anticipated this, but I had not anticipated what would follow our discussion. With hindsight, I am very sure he planned it, but at first it seemed to be an odd and unexpected mix of circumstances.

It is when coming back from the sad duty of sending prayers aloft for dear Catina, already basking in her heavenly reward, that Prioress takes me aside. I am impatient to resume my studies as a means to mask my longings and to quiet my great need for Alessandro, and do not wish to be forestalled.

“Your mother,” she begins, “is here to see you.”

My hand goes to my throat. It has been over a year’s time since I have heard from her at all. By now I was quite sure she had abandoned me. Remembering the times I called for her in my delirium, and the long wait of all those days and nights without a word, I find it hard to believe she is really here within these walls.

But Prioress assures me. “She was in chapel, too. She heard you sing.”

“Why?” I ask immediately. “She did not know Catina.”

“But Father sent word to her that you might sing the
Agnus Dei.
He was sure she’d want to be there to hear your voice restored.”

If I had only known, if I’d been told, what would I have done differently? For a certain I would have spent more time on the score. I would have concentrated on those places that I knew I could improve upon.

“Why are you so flustered, Luisa?” Prioress asks. “Your mother had most complimentary things to say. She was quite overcome.”

I can’t imagine this. My mother overcome. Her strong composure was the shell that I could never penetrate. Knowing I soon may have the very approbation that I’ve prayed for in the past paralyzes both my thought and movement. I cannot speak.

“She’s in the parlor, the one that has the grille. She’s waiting for you.”

The parlor with the grille. It means that others may look out at us. Someone like Silvia could try to see how I comport myself.

“Can you not put her in the back parlor, which is more private?”

“I suppose I can,” says Prioress. “If that is what you want. But do come to her quickly. She came by gondola, I’m told, and wishes to return as soon as possible.”

I straighten out my apron, remove my cap, and pinch my cheeks to put more color in them. I try some phrases in a low voice to myself.
“How are you, Mother? What a pleasure to see you.”
But such proper expressions quickly turn to
Why didn’t you come when I needed you? Why come back at all? Why have you really come today?
I stop myself when tears begin to spill.

When enough time has passed that she must now be in the other room, I hold my breath and proceed slowly down the narrow hallway. It is a short distance, truly, too short for me to sort my turbulent feelings. The door is closed. I leave my hand upon the knob for such a long time, its coldness turns to warmth. When I finally twist it, Mother is standing by the window, looking out, as decorously dressed as I remember, this time in a traveling suit with open overskirt revealing a fine petticoat, the closed bodice pinned and laced at the front and sides. Her frontage when she comes to meet me is not quite as high as I recall, or else I have grown enough in height to make it seem so.

“Luisa,” she says, quite tenderly for one who for such a time so willingly absented herself. And then she gathers me into her arms the way she always has before, and I am clinging to her as I used to and feeling somewhat dizzy from her lovely scent. But this time I do not beg to go along with her or call her
Mother.
This time I don’t say a word.

“Your
Agnus Dei
was magnificent,” she says. “You performed it splendidly.”

“Thank you,” I respond.

“Your voice, it has continued to improve even through this long time that you could not sing at all.”

She knew of that! She knew and did not succor me in any way.

“And such a voice!” she continues. “Maestro Scarpari tells me yours is far and away the best voice he has ever trained. And Father Vivaldi extols its operatic qualities, so apparent in your solo. Our dreams are coming true.”

“Our dreams?”

“Has he not told you of his recent triumph? Of the magnificent opera
Ottone in Villa
and now this major oratorio he has planned? I’m told he’s written a large part in it especially for you.”

“You’re told by whom?”

“My friends on the Board of Governors,” she says with no hesitation. “But I have it now from the Red Priest himself, who has beseeched me to intervene in any way I can. That was, of course, before you sang his little
Agnus Dei
and proved that your voice has been restored.”

“I see.”

“I wonder if you do. It means the things we planned together, you and I, they’re coming true.”

“I was a child of four when sent here, if you recall.”

“Of course I recall.”

“And do you remember how I kicked and screamed and yelled my little lungs out, certain even after you had left that you’d hear me and return?”

She pats a roll of hair, tucks a stray lock, and looks away. She sighs.

“You’re fifteen now, Luisa. Surely you’re old enough to understand the reason for my actions then. What could a mother with no attachment and no patron do with such a child? What future could I have given you if left to my own devices? Do you not think it was hard for me to leave you here?”

“You orphaned me, Mother. You saw to it that I had a life the same as any child who’d ever been upon the wheel. The others laughed whenever I would claim to have a parent, something none of them had ever known. They’d taunt me further whenever I would say that you would come for me.”

“And so I have. I will. Though not until you’ve had a chance to study opera more in depth and to sing the oratorio that’s been planned. After such a grand production, the name of Luisa della Pietà will be upon the lips of everyone in Europe and beyond.”

Remembering the glory of the moment when I’d sung that day for Alessandro, I tell her that I do not care for adulation or renown. And I do not wish to change my name.

“You must,” she says. “You owe this to me. It is your destiny. And mine.”

Later, at the noon meal, when Anetta asks if I found my mother well, I think back to the times Anetta used to watch our short reunions, all the questions she would ask, the way she pined to have a mother, too.

Then she says, “I am so glad your voice is back, Luisa, because we all have missed it so.” And I see how very different, how sincere and true, her love for me is. In some ways she’s cared for me the way a real mother would. She does this for Concerta, too.

“My mother thinks I have a future in singing opera,” I say lightheartedly, so as not to seem to boast.

“To be doomed to squawk forever on a stage?” says Silvia. “Better to be given to a hunchbacked, beak-nosed duke.”

“Whom you yourself will surely snare,” says Anetta, “leaving her no alternative but to turn into a diva of renown.” But then she turns to me and says, “If that is what you truly want.”

What I truly want. I want Alessandro. I want the idyll of this summer past. I want to sing again just for the joy of it.