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

  A door creaked open on the other end of the room, and Maddalena moved into a shadow in the corner to avoid being seen. Perhaps if it were Luciana, she could tell her what had happened and implore her to get the bow back. Instead she heard a man’s voice. “Domine, ad adjuvandum!” he muttered. “Only thirty zecchini for paper? And five for rosin for the bows? What do they know about any of it? Deus in adjutorium! ”

  She heard the sound of a heavy shoe kicking a chair, sending it across the stone floor. Maddalena held her breath, not sure whether she should reveal her presence or hope he left before he knew she had overheard. She recognized the high nasal tone, and even though he was a priest, he was still a man, and they should not be in a room together alone.

  The muttering continued as she heard him opening a violin case, and then the sound of a bow passing over strings. He stopped to tune for a second, then began playing. His bow streaked over the strings, like a sea hawk rising and falling in the air currents over the lagoon. His pace mounted until he was assailing the violin with the frenzy of a trapped and wounded animal. The notes lifted like the flight of the seeds of thistles floating in the summer air before his bow bit the strings hard, like a dog snapping at a stranger. Sometimes he was at war with the strings, and other times he kissed them with his bow in the way she sometimes thought she remembered her mother kissing her, delicately, barely touching her skin, then burying her face in her small body, pecking her belly and shoulders until she screamed with laughter.

  The sun had risen enough for the room to brighten. As the first beams began to glow through the window, Maddalena could see his back turned to her, his red hair catching the light. Then she heard him moan and saw him clutch his chest with his bow hand. He bent over, making an odd, croaking noise as if he were being strangled. He staggered to a chair and put the violin and bow down, hanging on to the back of the chair and gasping for breath.

  She ran across the room and helped him sit down. His eyes were glazed. “I’ll go for help,” she said.

  “No.” He waved her off. “I’ll be all right in a few minutes.”

  Her heart raced as she watched Vivaldi struggle, but soon his pain began to ease, and he was sitting up, pale and sweating, but recovered.

  “I know you,” he said when he was breathing more normally again. “You’re the girl with the violin. Maddalena. Maddalena Rossa.” He tugged on his hair. “What are you doing here?”

  “I—I came to practice, sir.”

  “To practice?” A smile played at the corners of his eyes. “Doesn’t the maestra work you hard enough?”

  Maddalena looked down, trying to think of what she could say.

  “Well then,” he said, filling the silence. “Let me hear how you have progressed.”

  “I—I can’t, sir.” She had meant to say nothing more, but before she knew it she had spilled out the whole story of Susana and the bow.

  “This will not do.” Vivaldi’s brow furrowed as he listened.

  “Here,” he said. “Play on mine.”

  “Oh no, sir,” Maddalena said. “I couldn’t. It’s too valuable. And I really shouldn’t be here.”

  “Nonsense.” He winked. “I’m a priest.” He handed her the violin. “Play.”

  He was staring at her when she finished. “You hear it in your heart first,” he said. “That’s important. Most people just play with their hands. Or worse, sometimes only with their heads.” He paused. “Why are you crying?”

  Maddalena realized for the first time that her cheeks were wet.

  “I’m crying because your violin is so wonderful,” she said, and though his instrument was warm and resonant far beyond her own, that was not the only reason. “I rarely get to play anymore. They don’t need more violinists as much as they need someone for the recorder.”

  “It’s a nice instrument too,” he said, with no real enthusiasm.

  “They have you playing that instead?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you like it?”

  Maddalena knew that the answer should be yes, but she couldn’t get the word out.

  His face began to flush, and Maddalena thought for a moment he might be having another attack. “It’s just a business for them,” he muttered, looking out the window. “No ear. No soul.” Then he turned back to her, changing the subject. “Best for both of us if we leave now without having to explain.”

  Maddalena nodded, handing back his violin. “Are you well enough, sir?”

  “Oh that? It happens from time to time. Keeps me from having to say mass.” He winked again, and Maddalena covered her mouth to hide her smile.

  Chiaretta came back from torcello just before bed time, but the stern looks of the matron signaled that the stories of today would have to wait until tomorrow. Chiaretta got out of her dress and sat down on the bed next to her sister. Maddalena kissed her on the forehead. Her hair smelled of dust, and her skin tasted salty with dried perspiration and sea air. She touched Chiaretta’s shoulder and motioned with her eyes for her to turn around so Maddalena could untie her hair.

  All Chiaretta wanted to do the next day was draw flowers and dragonflies to show her sister what she had seen. “I walked farther than I ever have in my life,” she said as they sat in the courtyard, sketchbooks in hand. “I must have seen a thousand birds.”

  She looked up at her sister. “Why is it that you never see little birds? They’re always scrawny little babies in the nest, but every one you see flying around is always grown.”

  “I don’t know.” Maddalena had been half-listening while trying to recall how Vivaldi’s violin had sounded and remembering his wink. “Were Antonia’s brothers and sister there?”

  “Her brother Claudio,” Chiaretta said. “Her sister’s in a convent already. There’s enough for one dowry, and the parents chose Antonia to be the one who marries. They think she’s the smartest and the healthiest, that’s why.”

  “What did her sister think?”

  “I don’t know. Antonia didn’t say. Her parents decided for her.”

  Maddalena felt a chill at her core as Chiaretta shrugged off the destiny of another person. What will happen to us? she wondered. Do nuns play the violin?

  “Are you cold?” Chiaretta asked.

  “No.”

  “I thought I saw you tremble. Anyway, most families can’t afford to marry off all their sons either, so they stay in their own apartments in their parents’ homes. That’s what Claudio does. Antonia has another brother who’s already married and lives far away from here in a city with a funny name I can’t remember.”

  “Well, if no one gets married, how are there ever any children?”

  “I don’t know!” Chiaretta, annoyed with her sister’s questions, had raised her voice, and Maddalena quickly put her fingers over her lips. A bell sounded, and her gesture became unnecessary as the Pietà fell silent once again.

  Rain fell almost without ceasing the week after the picnic, flooding the courtyard and driving the girls inside. The pages of Chiaretta’s sketchbook began to fill up with drawings of tents and tables laden with fruit and wine, meats and candies, and fields with grazing sheep and chestnut trees, as she struggled not to forget even the slightest detail. “I didn’t know what some of the foods were,” she wrote under one drawing. Under others she had written, “I walked on a path in this fild,” and “I walked along this cannal and saw kinfishers.”

  Chiaretta had secreted in the cassone a small object wrapped in a napkin that she brought back from Torcello. The next day she brought it out. “Antonia said I should save this for you as a surprise on a gloomy day,” she said to Maddalena. “It’s called a blood orange.” Chiaretta pulled out the round, puckered fruit and held it to her nose, breathing in the fragrance, before handing it to her sister. “Smell!”

  Maddalena rolled the strange reddish orange ball around in her hand, feeling the fruit’s hardened skin with her fingertips before holding it to her nose. When the warden’s back was turned, at Chiaretta’s insistence
Maddalena bit hard into the fruit to tear off a small piece of rind.

  Inside, the fruit glistened with the hues of sunset, of harvest, of the halos around the heads of stained-glass saints. Trickles of juice ran onto her fingers, thin and red. She put each finger in turn into her mouth, savoring the sweetness.

  Luciana’s brow was knit and her mouth turned down as she waited for Maddalena to arrive for her recorder lesson. “There is a package for you from Don Vivaldi,” she said. She handed her a long, thin cylinder wrapped in plain paper. “I took the liberty of looking inside already. How was it that he was under the impression you needed a violin bow?”

  Maddalena felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “I—I came in last Saturday to practice and I couldn’t find it.”

  “You should have come to me. But still, Maddalena, it hardly explains why he knew about it.”

  Maddalena stood looking at the floor. She could never describe how she came to be having a private conversation with the violin teacher without sounding as if every rule of propriety had been violated. But she would have to say something.

  “It was the day the coro went to Torcello.”

  Luciana waved her off. “I know. Don Vivaldi explained when he brought this that he had fallen ill, and you heard his cries for help as you passed by in the corridor.”

  He changed the story, she thought, amazed. “He asked me to play, and I couldn’t, because I had no bow. He let me play his violin for a few minutes. That’s all.”

  “So you did not take the opportunity to complain about your treatment?”

  “No, Maestra. I know I am very fortunate to be here, and I am well treated,” she said. “I am sorry if I have caused any embarrassment.”

  Luciana reddened. “Embarrassment? That’s hardly the point. Really, how can the Pietà function if girls are going over the heads of their teachers?”

  “Maestra, I said nothing to him.”

  Luciana kept her eyes riveted on Maddalena, as if deciding whether to believe her. Maddalena did not flinch, and eventually Luciana looked away. “Well,” she said, “I didn’t think you would be so foolish.”

  “Maestra, it’s the truth. He was so sick, I thought he was going to die, and then he asked me to play when he felt better...” Maddalena’s face clouded. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

  Luciana harrumphed. “Don Vivaldi has a reputation as a shirker. Your beloved Red Priest celebrated mass a few times after he was ordained, then claimed he couldn’t do it anymore because he had so much trouble breathing.” She sniffed. “If you ask me, it was an excuse to spend all his time playing music. He seems to be well enough for that!”

  Keeps me from having to say mass, he had said. And winked. But still, the attack was real. Maddalena couldn’t imagine how anyone would want to get out of one thing by suffering something else that awful.

  “Are you listening to me?” Luciana was scowling.

  “I’m sorry, Maestra. He was clutching his heart and gasping, and I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry if I did something wrong.”

  Luciana ignored her. “Apparently—according to him at least—I have made an error in putting your violin training aside.”

  Maddalena’s heart jumped. If I could just play again, I would work so hard all the saints in heaven would fight for me.

  “He wishes to give you lessons himself,” Luciana said. “You will start tomorrow, once a week for an hour. I am to supervise your daily practice and discuss any progress with him.”

  The maestra dismissed her with a wave of her hand and began sorting through sheets of music. She looked up again. “Close your mouth. It is most unattractive to gape like that.”

  Maddalena pursed her lips. She held out the long, thin package. “Where shall I keep this?”

  “What, do you think it’s yours to sleep with? Put it in the case and keep it with the others.” Luciana looked up and saw Maddalena’s hesitation. “No one will take it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She snorted. “Not when it’s been bought specifically for you by the man himself.”

  Maddalena went to the music cabinet and pulled out the familiar case of the violin she used. She unwound the paper in which the bow was wrapped and ran her fingers along the shiny wood, crooking her thumb underneath to stroke the loosened hairs. She lifted the bow to her lips and kissed it, looking around to make sure she had not been observed. She tiptoed from the room, and when she had reached the corridor she broke into a grin and took a single skipping step before recomposing herself as she turned in the direction of the lace room.

  SEVEN

  The poster announcing the concert was tattered and blurry from the sleet that had covered Venice for two days. It had been taken down and tossed aside in the sala di coro until the weather cleared and a replacement could be put up.

  “Did you see the tavoletta?” one of the figlie asked, handing it to Chiaretta.

  Chiaretta stared at it, reading down through the names of the soloists until she reached the last one.

  “Chiaretta—Soprano.” Chiaretta’s heart pounded as she ran her fingers over the two words, caressing the wrinkles out of the paper.

  “Congratulations. It’s your first, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Chiaretta hadn’t heard the question.

  “Your first tavoletta. Never mind. I can see it must be.”

  Chiaretta had handled a few small solo parts already, but none important enough to deserve mention on a tavoletta. Just the week before, when Maddalena filled in for an ailing recorder player, she had heard Chiaretta’s voice floating out over the church as she sang the Sanctus during Sunday mass. Though she had heard her sister’s voice many times before and knew she could not be objective about whether it was more beautiful than the others, from the way her skin prickled Maddalena knew that she had experienced something magical.

  More than just Chiaretta’s voice had undergone a transformation. She had grown inches, her hair hung in long waves, and the almost unnoticed first changes of puberty had focused her in her singing. As a result, she had been promoted several years ahead of schedule to the second stage of training, becoming at age twelve an attiva with the coro. Even her spelling had gotten better, as she attacked her lessons with the fervor of someone anxious to improve herself as much, and as quickly, as possible.

  Warming up her voice, she stretched her palate upward until the bones of her skull vibrated and mucus shook loose from her sinuses. It ran out her nose, and whole mouthfuls clogged the back of her throat and had to be spit into her handkerchief. She forced air up from her diaphragm with such ferocity she would sometimes gag and have to wrestle down the urge to vomit. Other times belches or gas as loud as thunderclaps would escape without warning in the middle of a lesson.

  Her voice no longer jumped out of her throat but emanated from deep within her. She was still a year or two away from her full size, which would always remain rather small, but her solos could already fill the chapel. No longer was she recognizable from the floor by her ivory dress, which had been replaced by the adult uniform of the coro, but by her tone, as clear and supple as the song of a meadowlark, as gentle and clean as mist on the cheek after a rainstorm.

  Though it happened too gradually to notice, at some point Chiaretta stopped being Maddalena’s little sister and became simply her sister. Their experiences were similar enough to make the three years’ difference in their ages unimportant. Their personalities, however, were another matter. Sometimes Maddalena thought that if strangers were to observe their threesome, they would think Chiaretta and Anna Maria were the two who were related, so alike were they in their enthusiasm for chatter. There never was much time for Maddalena’s thoughts, most of which were in any case too private to share.

  In the practice room with Don Vivaldi, Maddalena was a different person. She played with a fearlessness she couldn’t summon otherwise, and when she talked, words tumbled from her lips.

  “Do it again,” he would say in the heat of their lessons. “Again! Play i
t like you mean it!” At other times he would throw out a word. “Rain,” he would say, or “hawk,” or “embers,” or “dawn,” and she would try to make the image come alive as she played.

  Sending his bow skittering across the highest strings, he once asked, “What does that remind you of ?”

  “Birds singing in a tree.”

  He nodded. “And this?” He played a darker, excited scramble of notes.

  “Something has scared the birds and they’re flying away.”

  Over time, she began playing musical images of her own for him. “Snow falling on my face,” she would say, or “Alone in the dark.”

  Back in the village she used to run until she doubled over, panting and dizzy, then stand up straight and watch the horizon right itself. Finishing a piece with Vivaldi was like that. In those moments, the silence was perfect, so different from the enforced quiet of the Pietà, which announced what was forbidden rather than suggesting what might be possible.

  “We are kindred souls, Maddalena Rossa,” he told her one afternoon, using the name that he alone called her. “We both see that music is poetry.” Maddalena felt her cheeks growing warm.

  “But...” He leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes as he pondered. When he opened them again, his expression was puzzled.

  He picked up his violin. “I can’t say what I want to in words.”

  Standing up, he began to play a jig, tapping his foot and bouncing his head in time. Then still playing, he took off across the room, dancing in little patterns, bending his knees and shifting his hips, twisting his waist, rotating his shoulders, with a wild grin.