The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice Read online

  She told the two girls to undress and sit down, and when Maddalena complied, another woman lifted up her hair in one handful and, without warning, cut it off at the neck with two savage clips of her shears.

  Chiaretta shrieked as if her sister’s throat had been cut. She ran toward the door, and when she could not pull it open, she pressed her back against it, taking in great sobbing gulps of air. The first woman left the tub and crouched down in front of Chiaretta.

  “Come, cara, it doesn’t hurt.” Her voice was soft and her hand gentle as she guided Chiaretta’s chin in Maddalena’s direction. “See?”

  Maddalena held the rough ends of her hair in one hand, staring in shock while her foot toyed with the auburn strands on the floor.

  Chiaretta kept her back pressed against the door, but the lady kneeling in front of her seemed nice, and Maddalena, though a little dazed, did not appear to be hurt. Eventually Chiaretta allowed herself to be coaxed to the chair.

  After her haircut, each of them was handed a smaller version of the red dress the women wore. When the dresses had been tugged and smoothed into place, small white aprons were tied around the girls’ waists. After a few minutes in front of the fire, tousling what remained of their hair, Maddalena and Chiaretta covered their heads with lace-trimmed hoods that draped over their shoulders. The women placed a white cap on each of their heads, and the transformation of the two girls into wards of the Pietà was complete.

  A few anemic fingers of gray winter sunlight filtered through the grimy windows of the children’s ward. The coal in the fireplaces at each end of the room had been damped down until evening, and the lamps were unlit as the girls made their way between the rows of neat cots.

  “Where are the children?” Chiaretta asked.

  “They’re at work.” Anzoleta, one of the ward matrons, signaled toward two of the cots. “These will be yours,” she said.

  Maddalena sat down, feeling the hard frame through the thin mattress. She looked at Chiaretta, who had sat down on the other bed, rubbing the coarse wool blanket as if trying to make friends.

  A bell rang from somewhere inside the walls of the Pietà. “It’s time for Sext,” Anzoleta said. She knelt and crossed herself. “Aperi, Domine, os meum,” she began, but before Chiaretta and Maddalena had time to get to their knees, she stood up again, continuing a string of Latin words.

  “You’ll learn the daily office soon enough,” she stopped long enough to say. “For now, pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary until I’ve finished, and then we’ll go to dinner.” Chiaretta and Maddalena hurried to make the sign of the cross as she went back to her prayers.

  The refectory was filled with the sound of rustling robes and the scrape of the benches pulled across the stone floor to make room to sit down. From the kitchen, girls carried tureens to each table, while those closest to where they left them got up and began to ladle a thick soup of rice and peas into bowls. Others carried baskets of bread, placing a torn piece at each place. Prayers were said, and the meal began.

  Maddalena and Chiaretta finished their meal in seconds, picking the last flakes of bread crust off the table with wet fingers. As the remaining soup was doled out, an older woman in a velvet dress left the head table and went to a lectern. She crossed herself before opening a book.

  “Cease to be anxious for yourselves, for He bears your anxiety, and will bear it always,” she read. Maddalena looked around and noticed that some of the older women at other tables had stopped eating and were listening with their eyes downcast, while others, mostly the young, were fishing the last bits of rice and peas from their bowls and looking to see if any more bread remained in the baskets.

  Within a minute or two she felt Chiaretta’s body jerk, and Maddalena flung out her arm to keep her sister from pitching forward into her soup bowl. Chiaretta’s eyes were red with exhaustion, and she was on the verge of tears. Maddalena put her arm around her, and Chiaretta rested her head on her shoulder.

  Within a few seconds Maddalena heard knuckles rapping on the table. “No!” the woman at the head of the table mouthed, and Maddalena shook Chiaretta awake.

  The woman at the lectern closed the book. Everyone rose at this signal, offering in unison a prayer of thanksgiving before falling silent again as they filed out of the refectory and up the stairs to the wards.

  By the time Maddalena and Chiaretta reached the dormitory, dozens of girls in red dresses were taking off their aprons and head coverings and unlacing their shoes. Chiaretta sat on her bed, watching as one by one the girls knelt and crossed themselves, said a short prayer, then lay down on their beds. I guess I’m supposed to pray too, she thought. But I already did today.

  Never in her life had she seen so much praying. Except perhaps, she thought, when a boy in the village had fallen on his head and didn’t wake up for two days, or when someone died having a baby, or when her foster father was caught in a sudden flood and didn’t come home for so long they thought he had drowned. At those times the women of the village crossed themselves so often it seemed they would wear the tips right off their fingers.

  Why are they always praying here? she wondered. Do they think something awful is going to happen? She rolled over to ask Maddalena but saw that her sister had fallen asleep.

  Afternoon shadows were casting dark triangles in the corners of the dormitory when the girls put their shoes and hoods back on and marched through the halls to their assigned rooms for two hours of work or lessons. Chiaretta was led off to a classroom and Maddalena to a room where several dozen women and girls sat on stools making lace.

  Within an hour, Maddalena was practicing a simple row of knots and twists that the lace mistress, Zenobia, had taught her. The grimy threads were spotted in places with blood from needle pricks, and Maddalena’s eyes had begun to sting in the dim light. Is it always going to be like this? she wondered. How can they stay inside all day? Don’t they ever get to see the sky?

  Finally, Maddalena’s and Chiaretta’s first day was over. They greeted each other only with their eyes as they came back to their beds, too intimidated and exhausted to offer even a touch of the hand for reassurance. Laying their outer clothing on a wooden cassone at the foot of Maddalena’s bed, they stood by their cots among the pale and narrow-shouldered girls who were bowing their heads and commending their souls to God before they slept.

  TWO

  In the hands of Zenobia and a few others, lace-making was like alchemy to Maddalena. They could turn simple thread into scenes where angels or mythical beasts stood among Greek columns and vases, linked by elaborate scrolls, fans, and arabesques. And then, with no more than a passing glance, they unpinned a finished work, placed it in a basket, and started another.

  For the first few months Maddalena was at the Pietà, one after another of her gray and bloodied scraps was thrown into the fire, worth only the tiny pop of light it gave before disappearing, but eventually she produced her first piece of work that ended up as white as the thread it had started with. A simple border meant to be sewn to the bottom of a girl’s petticoat, it was whisked away in the basket with the other finished work at the end of the day.

  “What happens to it now?” she asked Zenobia.

  “What do you mean? Tomorrow you’ll start something else. Now that you’ve earned a little money, they’ll start an account for you with the bank.” She shrugged as if something so obvious and inconsequential was not worth more of an answer.

  “I just wondered who will get my lace.”

  “It was only a little piece. Maybe some tourist will buy it.”

  Maddalena felt her mind slowing, like cream turning to butter in a churn, as she struggled to understand. “I don’t know what a bank is,” she said, “or a tourist either.”

  “A visitor. Someone who comes to our city to listen to the coro.”

  Lying on her cot that night, Maddalena realized she had been too distracted to ask Zenobia about the other thing she had said. Why am I being paid? she wondered. And if we’re paid, w
here is the money? She knew that a few of the others came down to the lace room before the work bell to talk among themselves when no one was there to tell them to be quiet. Maddalena fell asleep having made a plan to go early herself the next day to get her answer.

  “You have to have a job, don’t you?” a lace maker named Francesca said. “Better here than changing bandages in the hospital or washing dishes.” The other figlie murmured their agreement.

  “And if we have to sit here for hours we might as well make as much money as we can, so the fancier the lace the better,” another figlia named Alegreza added.

  “But why does that matter when there’s nothing to buy?”

  “Of course there is,” Francesca said. “Maybe not now, except for little things like a rosary with pretty beads, or maybe a better pair of shoes. Or even a prayer book with pictures and a pretty cover. You’ve seen Zenobia’s, haven’t you?”

  “But what you make is so beautiful. Don’t you care?”

  “Not anymore, not really,” Francesca said. “Or maybe just for a second. And besides, they’ll make you do penance if you act too prideful about it.”

  “But you’ll have to do a lot more than that little border you did to have enough money to buy anything,” a figlia named Veronica added. “It’s when you can do the placket of a nightgown for a bride, or the bodice of a dress... ” The others murmured in agreement. “That’s when the money starts adding up.”

  “And later it’s part of your dowry,” Alegreza said, “and if you don’t get married, you can buy a nicer cell in a convent with your savings.”

  Alegreza’s tone was so matter-of-fact it seemed to Maddalena that she saw both of these as excellent and practical goals to work toward, but Maddalena did not see how thinking about becoming a nun or a wife could make anyone’s fingers fly any faster or better.

  “Well,” Francesca said. “I’m not planning on any of that. I want to stay here and be priora someday.” She mimicked the way the priora squinted as she read after meals in the refectory, and the others joined her in laughter. “Then I could boss everyone around. I’d wear whatever I wanted and live in my own place.”

  “She lives here, doesn’t she?” Maddalena asked.

  “Silly girl! Not on the ward. And the others who sit at her table don’t live there either. If you’re still here when you’re forty, you retire, and then you get your own room. If you ever go into the priora’s study, you can see how nice it is. And her clothes aren’t coarse at all, like ours.”

  “So they can buy what they want when they’re old?”

  “Well, not everything, I suppose.”

  “They couldn’t buy a pet monkey from the organ grinder on the Riva,” Alegreza said. “With his hairy little... thing.” The figlie all giggled behind their hands, and Maddalena felt the heat rising in her face, as if a joke was being told at her expense.

  “Oh, come now,” Alegreza said. “We weren’t laughing at you.”

  “After a while they can spend their money on anything they want,” Veronica added. “At least what’s left after you’ve paid room and board for all these years.”

  Several of the figlie sighed and got up to look in a cabinet for their lace cushions. Seeing Maddalena’s blank face, Francesca went on. “The Congregazione take most of what all the figlie earn and keep it as payment for the cost of feeding you and giving you a bed, but they leave you with a little for yourself.”

  “What about people who don’t make money?”

  Francesca looked puzzled, as if she had never considered this. “I don’t know. I guess they don’t pay.”

  “They say we’re learning about money because we might need to know.” Alegreza had come back with her cushion and sat down. “Zenobia told me it’s part of being a good wife. This is almost as good as being in the coro, if you want to get married.”

  “But not if you want to make money,” Veronica said. “The figlie di coro get paid every time they perform.” She rolled her eyes and then stood up and put her hand over her heart. Taking a dramatic breath, in a voice not loud enough to be heard in the hall, she began to sing harshly and off-key. Then, bowing to the applause, she adjusted her skirt and sat down to begin her work.

  “As well they should,” Francesca added in a tone icy with sarcasm. “The figlie di coro are better than the rest of us, you know. Even God knows that. Especially God knows that.”

  Maddalena’s discomfort with the conversation had come on as suddenly as a headache, but it trailed off after Zenobia’s arrival and had been forgotten by the end of the afternoon. Hearing her own soft breathing as she bent over her work, Maddalena lost track of the cold penetrating through the windows and up through the threadbare carpet on the stone floor. Then Zenobia began to hum, and as the other figlie joined in her soft song, something deep inside Maddalena responded.

  Whatever else was happening at the Pietà—or in the city outside, or even in the village that now lay so far away—did not matter at all. The tiny beginning of a new work that would grow in her hands, and Zenobia’s voice so warm it cut through the draft of the dying fire—this was the center of everything. The other girls could joke if they wished, but from then on, she would come to the lace room when Zenobia did, and not a minute before.

  * * *

  By the time Maddalena was eleven and Chiaretta was eight, their lives had a pattern as secure and predictable as each knot in one of Maddalena’s lace collars. They rose at or before dawn, prayed as they dressed and walked to chapel, heard Lauds, studied or worked for several hours in the morning, stopped to pray at Prime, Terce, and Sext, before their midday meal. In the afternoon they rested until None, then worked or studied until Vespers. Supper was around sunset, followed by Compline and bed.

  As much as the activities, the sounds gave each day its shape. Bells pealed, and the smaller girls giggled and sang as they played games with hoops and balls in the courtyard during the daily recreation time. Idle chatter was what the long hours of enforced quiet were meant to keep at bay, and duty and piety were the main reasons for breaking the silence. Maddalena had come to love the soft tones of the women who read from St. Augustine, or Catherine of Siena, or Francis of Assisi in the refectory, and the singsong of the girls reciting their lessons in the schoolroom. All these sounds, more than the rehearsed perfection of the coro, soothed the needle pricks, the hollow stomach, and the chattering teeth of winter dawns.

  For Chiaretta, no sounds mattered but those made by the coro. Trying to get attention by singing with great enthusiasm in the chapel hadn’t gained her anything except nods of approval for her religious fervor, which were canceled out by the scowls and scolding she got for fidgeting during the rest of the service. Chiaretta’s dreams danced in the breath between her parted lips as she listened to the choir each Sunday afternoon and feast day from the recess of the chapel reserved for the figlie di commun. Every day she tiptoed past the closed door leading up to the choir loft as if she were being careful not to break something. Don’t touch, it seemed to say. Don’t dare.

  And then, one day, the door was open. The recreation period was beginning, and the figlie di coro were spilling down the stairs and into the corridor as Chiaretta was passing. She stepped out of their way and waited for a chance just to look up the stairs.

  And then, she heard it, a rich alto voice like a pomegranate burst on the ground of an orchard, redolent of blood and jewels. “Filiae maestae Jerusalem,” the voice sang, calling on the mournful daughters of Jerusalem to behold their crucified Lord.

  Hypnotized by the sound, Chiaretta made first one, then another step upward. Without even being able to say how it happened, she found herself standing at the entrance to the choir loft. The room was the color of dark amber from the reflected hues of the paintings in the chapel. Grainy ribbons of silver light traveled the distance from the small clerestory windows to the keyboard of a small organ. Looking past several music stands on which sheet music lay open, Chiaretta saw the wrought-iron balcony grille through whi
ch she often stared up from the chapel below. Against it she saw the silhouette of a woman holding her arms around herself and swaying as she sang.

  Chiaretta moved closer and stumbled over a small pile of books that had been left on the floor. The woman stopped singing and wheeled around.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I—I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry. I heard you from downstairs and—”

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” the woman said, and though Chiaretta could not see her well, she could discern from her tone that she was more surprised than angry.

  “What’s your name?” the woman asked.

  “Maria Chiaretta,” she stammered. “But no one calls me that. Just Chiaretta.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Chiaretta nodded. Michielina was one of the maestre, and though she was in her late thirties and had been singing for nearly two decades, she was still one of the most renowned soloists of the Pietà. Whenever she passed by her in the refectory, Chiaretta kept her eyes on the ground, to avoid looking into the eyes of someone with a hidden place big enough to contain that voice.

  Michielina moved toward Chiaretta with the limp of one born with a deformed hip. “Come into the light so I can see if I recognize you,” she said. In the lamplight, Michielina examined what of Chiaretta’s face was visible under her cap and hood. “I’ve seen you in the refectory,” she said, smiling. “A very pretty girl with blue eyes and a good appetite.”

  Michielina’s face looked flattened, like a clay head stepped upon before it had completely dried. Still, her eyes were kind, and her smile wide enough to reveal a missing tooth on one side. “Do you sing?” she asked.

  “No—I mean yes. I mean”—Chiaretta took in a breath—“I don’t know. Not like you.”

  Michielina limped back toward the railing. “Would you like to hear what it sounds like to sing from here?”