The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice Page 15

  “It doesn’t have to be, if we keep our heads. You remember hearing about that soprano Zanetta a few years back? The one who was caught with a man on one of these trips?”

  Maddalena nodded. The scandal had happened before their time, and she had heard only that Zanetta insisted she simply wanted to see inside a gazebo visible from the main house but was afraid to go alone. The man swore on his honor he hadn’t touched her, but still, they had been out of sight in a place she had no permission to be. Shortly after her return to the Pietà, with hair scarcely an inch long, she was sent to a convent.

  Maddalena grabbed her sister’s hand as if to keep herself safe from the implications of Zanetta’s story. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”

  “No, but I just make sure not to talk to any man for more than a few minutes, except in a group. If I flirt, I flirt with everyone.” Chiaretta squeezed Maddalena’s hand. “I’m getting up to blow out the candle so we can sleep.”

  Maddalena had already laid her head down on the pillow. “You have to be very careful,” Chiaretta said, tucking the cover in around her sister in the darkened room. “It’s so easy to be gossiped about. If he comes back tomorrow, I wouldn’t speak to him alone.”

  He didn’t, but in the course of listening to the conversations around her the following evening, Maddalena learned that Marco Valiero had a wife who the year before had produced an heir. She was expecting again at the end of the summer and was confined to the villa awaiting the birth. It had been all in an evening’s fun.

  It isn’t fun for me, she thought as she lay awake after the concert, picturing the ease with which her sister handled the attention. I’d rather be at the Pietà.

  Alvise Foscari came to the dock to say good-bye to the girls the following morning, making them promise to return. The sky was dark, and just as they pulled away it began to rain. Though Maddalena watched through the windows of the boat all the way back to Fusina, the magic she had felt on the outward trip was lost in the downpour and the sour aftertaste of her interaction with Marco Valiero. They arrived by gondola at the Pietà dock in the afternoon and went to the ward to take a nap before supper.

  As soon as Maddalena and Chiaretta dropped onto their beds, Anna Maria came in, without a hint of a smile, to greet them. “Did you hear the news?” she whispered.

  Vivaldi. Had something happened to Vivaldi?

  “Maestra Luciana died in her sleep last night,” she said.

  Chiaretta let out an excited cry, then covered her mouth. For a brief moment she chastised herself for her glee but then gave in to it. Her sister had always viewed Luciana with resignation, but to Chiaretta, Luciana was a viper. “God is clearing a path for you,” she whispered, but Maddalena was not so sure.

  Luciana’s death had no real impact on Maddalena’s life.

  She still practiced every day and gave Elizabeta her lesson once a week. Then, as the first leaves began to turn yellow, Elizabeta’s lessons were canceled. She had fallen ill. At the beginning of September, Maddalena received a note from the priora telling her Elizabeta would not be returning. Her illness had left her weakened in a way that made her parents think it would be better for her not to take on the strains of childbirth that would be part of becoming a wife. They had decided to place her in one of the most luxurious Venetian convents and marry off their third daughter instead. The violin would not be a skill Elizabeta would need after all, the priora explained, and her time was better spent recovering her strength at home.

  “You can get another pupil,” Chiaretta said, in a rare misunderstanding of her sister’s gloom.

  “I can get a pupil,” Maddalena replied, picturing the gentle child she had grown to love. “But how do I get another Elizabeta?”

  Maddalena never knew how Elizabeta felt about getting married. Being a wife was not easy, even for the rich. She had seen as much from the number of times she had been part of a mass sung for a woman dead in childbirth before she was much older than Maddalena herself. In some ways convent life seemed like a better fate. Still, she had difficulty imagining Elizabeta, or anyone else, being willing to enter what was little more than a prison for the rest of her life. Maddalena felt a pang in her heart every time she pictured Elizabeta leaving home, eyes downcast and saying nothing but perhaps harboring thoughts of such desperation and betrayal that she would hope to be struck dead before the convent doors slammed behind her.

  In her free time, Maddalena made a lace bookmark, designing it herself with a pattern of birds in flight around the edges, and a P in the center she copied from the scar on her heel. She sent it to Elizabeta with a note to remember her and the Pietà. Then she picked up her lace cushion again and made another just like it for Silvia. “From your friend Maddalena,” she wrote. “I hope you are well.”

  The first cold snap of fall hit Venice a few weeks later, and the city began preparing for another annual round of Carnevale. The nights grew longer, and Maddalena felt with growing dread the approach of another winter. She took out her warm cloak and kept it drawn around her long in advance of her sister pulling out her own. Chiaretta watched with mounting anxiety as Maddalena grew quiet again and her steps slowed.

  Then at the end of September, when Chiaretta came into the choir room, she sensed a buzz in the air. “What’s happening?” she asked, but before she could get an answer, the door at the other end of the room opened. The body of the maestra partially blocked the figure in the doorway behind her, but there was no mistaking who it was. No one else had such red hair.

  “Most of you know Don Vivaldi already,” the maestra said. “For those of you who don’t, he is our former and now”—she nodded in the direction of the priest—“our present Maestro dei Concerti.”

  But Chiaretta heard none of this. Though she would be punished with a diet of bread and water for a week for leaving rehearsal without permission, she had already bolted from the room to find her sister.

  * * *

  Vivaldi’s departure from the pietà without a word to her still stung Maddalena when she thought about it, but such thoughts had become rare over time. She long knew it had nothing to do with her. The Congregazione were not displeased with him, but just as he expected, they thought his salary was an unnecessary extravagance. Recently, whispers about a stinging rebuke to the coro had reached the priora’s ear. At a concert during Carnevale, one of the maestre overheard a member of the Council of Ten saying that the coro of the Pietà was now the least accomplished of those of the four ospedali. Worse, the others with him agreed. Since Gasparini had already been granted another leave, the Congregazione moved quickly. Vivaldi’s services, it appeared, were needed after all.

  Maddalena’s memories were stored away like a pile of letters around which a ribbon had been tied to keep them from coming loose. Vivaldi had plucked her away from what looked like a bleak fate and set her on the road to becoming an attiva in the coro. For that she was grateful, although she owed more to Chiaretta for everything that had happened since. In fact, she wasn’t sure she should attribute anything to Vivaldi except her skill at an instrument she rarely got to play. Retirees continued to exert a great deal of influence over promotions and placements in the coro, and even after the concert for the King of Denmark, Luciana never gave her a chance. Though she had given violin lessons to Elizabeta and practiced on her own, Maddalena still played the recorder at concerts.

  And now Luciana was dead and he was back. Maddalena wished she could attribute her excitement only to the possibility of playing the violin in the coro again. She wished she didn’t care for him, but as much as she wanted to control her imagination about what his return might mean, she couldn’t. She allowed herself to remember their lessons, his winks, his touch, his endearments, and she pushed aside the hurts, wanting nothing more than to have him back in her life.

  Disappointment settled in when she was not among the violinists he called for a private audition. Since he would be composing a great deal of new music for the coro and wanted to tailor it to the m
usicians and singers he had, his first step was to hear each attiva for himself. He had worked his way through the string section to the woodwinds before Maddalena received word of her turn to play for him.

  “He called for you first among the recorders,” Chiaretta wrote, and though she meant to cheer her sister up, it sounded hollow even to her.

  “He didn’t notice I wasn’t on the violin list,” Maddalena wrote.

  “I wish I didn’t have to see him at all.”

  “He’s here and he’s in charge now,” Chiaretta wrote. “Are you going to take a violin?”

  “Why? It’s been decided, hasn’t it?”

  Chiaretta circled the word decided and drew a line to the margin. “Did you decide? You have to say what you want, and sometimes you have to fight. If you really want it. Maybe you don’t.”

  Maddalena retrieved a small knife in a leather case from the cassone, and taking time to absorb Chiaretta’s remark, she sharpened the pencil.

  “I thought I could tell him what happened if he asked,” she wrote.

  “It’s not good to wait for people to notice. They usually don’t.”

  Chiaretta leaned forward. “Take the violin!” she whispered.

  When Maddalena entered the sala, she saw the eyes of Prudenzia, the new maestra, dart to the instrument case she carried, and Maddalena’s face burned with the sense that she had somehow betrayed the maestra. Vivaldi’s face seemed to color a little when he saw it, but Maddalena wasn’t sure because she felt so self-conscious, she looked away.

  Vivaldi greeted her with the aloofness of an impartial host. He listened to her play the recorder, and when she finished, his brow was furrowed. “You are quite good,” he said. “Very technically proficient. But I’m confused. Your name was not on the list of violinists, but I see the case you brought.”

  Maddalena felt prickles of sweat under her arms. Then, remembering Chiaretta’s words, she plunged in. “I am told there are enough figlie dal violino, and I am needed on the recorder.” She struggled to lift her eyes to look at him. “But I love the violin.”

  Vivaldi held his gaze on her for a few seconds, cocking his head slightly, as if he were trying to find in her eyes the rest of what she wanted to say. He turned to the maestra. “I would like to hear Maddalena play the violin.”

  Maddalena opened the case, her hands trembling so much she had difficulty tightening the bow. She began one of Elizabeta’s favorite pieces, climbing upward until the notes were so high they drifted away before fluttering back down again.

  She stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was in such a hurry to play I’m afraid my instrument isn’t well tuned. I can begin again if you’d like after I—”

  Vivaldi’s eyes were bright, and a smile played at one corner of his mouth. “No, that won’t be necessary. I thought the recorder...that perhaps you had settled into it, and I didn’t want to presume.”

  He turned to Prudenzia. “I hope you will not be too bothered by losing her, but I believe her services are more needed among the violins.” He gave Maddalena a perfunctory nod. “That will be all.” Looking back at the maestra, he asked, “Is there anyone else to hear today?”

  As long as I am here, you will always be protected.

  Maddalena stopped in an alcove on the way back to the rehearsal room. “Thank you,” she whispered to the statue of the Virgin. I should have listened to Chiaretta, she thought. God was clearing my path after all. “Thank you,” she whispered again, touching Mary’s cool stone robe with her fingertips. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  ELEVEN

  The sheet music began with a violin seesawing between a few notes. A second violin picked up the same melody, leading into a pulsing repetition, which then lengthened and slowed until the music resembled the rocking of a boat on a still night.

  Maddalena sat in the practice room at the beginning of her lesson with Vivaldi, turning the pages and imagining the sounds.

  “Laudate pueri Dominum,” she said, tracing the words written over the music. “This looks beautiful.”

  “My first motet for soprano and violin written specifically for the Pietà,” Vivaldi said. “It’s a surprise for your sister.” He paused. “And you.”

  “This is for a first violin.”

  He smiled in amusement at her confusion. “Don’t you get it?” he asked. “You’ve been promoted. You have to be a first violinist. No one else can play my music the way I want it to sound.”

  “But it’s going to look—”

  He cut her off. “Like favoritism? Let it. Prudenzia agrees with me about you, and as long as the maestra dal violino goes along, who could argue? Especially now that Luciana’s not around to frighten the poor woman out of doing her job.” He grinned. “I’m not just a violin teacher, like before. I’m really in charge now. And that means things are going to change for you.”

  A few weeks later, Maddalena sat in the chapel balcony and drew her violin to her chin. Excitement built in the orchestra as the bass viol player threw herself into the notes, making the grille of the balcony reverberate. The strings pulsed loud and then soft, over and over again, building up to Chiaretta’s entrance.

  Her voice rang out, full and rich as drops of nectar oozing from ripe fruit. “Children, praise the name of the Lord,” she sang in Latin, changing keys and ornamenting her voice to keep the music dazzling and new. After a run of high notes, she pounded the words before plunging to the low end of her range and merging into the staccato reprise of the instruments.

  This was no dry biblical text in Vivaldi’s hands. He stormed, tiptoed, skipped, and blasted through the words of the psalm. “Sit nomen Domini,” Chiaretta sang, with the sweetness of a mother helping a sleepy child finish bedtime prayers. “Suscitans, suscitans!” she called out breathlessly, as if God’s arrival was as imminent as a bolt of lightning in a dead black summer sky, before her voice took off in a flight of notes that danced with joy.

  The end of the motet began with slow, melancholic notes on the low strings of Maddalena’s violin, accompanied by a cello and a delicate pizzicato on the other strings. “Gloria Patri, et Filio... ” Chiaretta began. When they reached the next words of the doxology, “et Spiritui Sancto,” she hung on to the last note, allowing Maddalena to pick up the beginning of the melody before her voice fell off. Then, when Maddalena reached the same point, she held her last note while Chiaretta picked the melody up again in the same fashion, making transfer after seamless transfer between voice and violin, over, under, around, like fabric woven by an invisible hand. Chiaretta’s voice climbed higher, and Maddalena went with her like an echo. Then they were together again, finishing in unison, their music rising and falling like the sound of God breathing.

  After the acclaim of the Laudate Pueri, Vivaldi pushed himself with such ferocity that he often had to stop rehearsals to collapse in a chair and struggle for his next breath. Aromatics were kept in each of the rooms where the maestro worked, and nurses from the hospital were dispatched with steaming towels and salves if the attacks were prolonged. Not much else could be done, and though any of the coro could have held a sachet to his face, the unspoken understanding was that Maddalena would do it if she were there.

  Less than a year after she and Chiaretta had performed the Laudate Pueri, she was promoted to sotto maestra dal violino, sharing those duties with Anna Maria. Though a few eyebrows were arched at Maddalena’s quick rise, the issue faded when Vivaldi favored everyone in turn, writing nothing more for Maddalena for several months and producing new works for recorders, mandolins, lutes, violas, and cellos, as well as the full range of voices.

  With the appointment as sotto maestra, Maddalena left the lace room forever. Even with the additional time she gained by not making lace every day, Vivaldi’s delay in starting another piece for her came as a relief, because her new workload was crushing. She was now responsible for overseeing the lessons of the iniziate and instructing two advanced pupils herself. In addition, all the sotto maestre were exp
ected to ensure music was copied properly and on time, maintain the instruments, attend auditions, rehearse the coro, and conduct in the absence of the maestre.

  And then, just as the first leaves began to curl and turn brown at their edges, and the trees wore a full coat of summer dust, music for a Salve Regina arrived for the copyists. Maddalena was the first to see it. In the left corner above the title Vivaldi had written two names.

  “Maddalena Rossa—violino,” it said, and “Chiaretta—Soprano.”

  Maddalena ran her fingers across each of the pages as if touching something sacred. At the beginning of the third movement, she stopped. Above the first bar Vivaldi had written a single word.

  “Dance.”

  The boldness of his salve regina announced itself a few weeks later as the first notes floated over the chapel. The orchestra was silent throughout the first movement. Maddalena played a soft and flowing melody before Chiaretta entered, repeating it in a higher octave. They shared the music back and forth, as if they were drinking from one goblet, lingering at the end with the reluctance of someone who knows that the time for such sweetness is almost over and the glass will not be filled again.

  After a short orchestral opening, Chiaretta launched into the second section. “Ad te, ad te clamamus, exsules filii Hevae,” she sang, “to you we shout, we children of Eve in exile.” Only half in jest, she had accused Vivaldi in rehearsals of torturing her by making her sing for all of the exiled children simultaneously. Vivaldi was pleased. “You understand perfectly. You are the clamor,” he said. “You have to do it with your voice.”

  The tripping syllables, the tight melismas, the drawn-out vocalizations dissolving into cascades of sound were exhausting, and Chiaretta signaled to Maddalena to let her take a few breaths to recover when she finished.

  Then she nodded, and it was time to dance.

  Maddalena had rehearsed the coro for the Salve Regina, and on their first day she told the figlie to put their instruments away. Handing them the sheet music, she had them hum their parts. Their voices were thin with self-consciousness, and the tempo slowed down until the last of them gave up and fell silent.