The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice

by Laurel Corona

  The two of them cast worried looks in the direction of the bridge. “I told the priora it was a bad idea, taking them out this time of year,” Geltruda said, “and now look...”

  “Shall we go back? We can ask the cooks to give the girls something to eat at the Pietà.”

  “In what? The gondola won’t be here until afternoon to pick us up.”

  The chaperones watched, holding back the girls as people continued to rush over the bridge onto the Campo dei Carmini.

  “We’ll stay in the convent and wait for the gondola,” Maddalena heard Geltruda say. “It’s not possible to go back to the Pietà on foot. We don’t know the way except by water. I don’t see what other choice we have.”

  She made a hurried sign of the cross before turning to the group. “Walk quickly and stay together,” she said, motioning with her hand for them to follow.

  The crowd paid no attention to the girls. Chiaretta watched them cross in front of the church and disappear down a side street. “Where are you going so fast?” she called out, but no one stopped to answer.

  Next to her, a man stripped to the waist passed by, surrounded by teenage boys chanting his name. One of the boys was carrying a breastplate of laminated cardboard decorated with colorful designs. “Nicolotti! Nicolotti!” he chanted.

  “Hey, watch what you’re doing!” someone yelled, as two children, each carrying a long loaf of bread, pushed their way through. When they reached the edge of the Campo dei Carmini, they began to run, waving the loaves like victory banners. Behind them Chiaretta could hear a man’s voice calling out, “Stop them! Thieves!”

  Watching the commotion, Chiaretta had not noticed she was falling behind the group. Geltruda grabbed her hard by the shoulder and shoved her forward. “Little fool!” she said. “Show some sense. Get inside!”

  Even in the dim light of the chapel where the figlie were gathered in the pews, the worry on the faces of the chaperones was clear. “Let us pray to the Blessed Mother of God for our safe deliverance from peril,” one of the nuns who had greeted them said. Chiaretta and Maddalena crossed themselves and bowed their heads.

  The nun repeated the Hail Mary before she addressed the girls. “Sometimes the world can be very frightening,” she said, gesturing with her head toward the door and the commotion outside. “But aren’t you fortunate to have someone who loves you and protects you? Just think, to the Blessed Virgin you are her children as much as her Son is! What greater honor could there be than that?” She knit her brow and rubbed her forehead, as if she were trying to dredge up more to say.

  Maddalena turned her head and felt it bump against the carvings on the stall where she was seated. Looking up in the dim candlelight, she saw strange creatures carved into the dark wood, so close they seemed ready to whisper in her ear. A bare-chested mermaid stared at her with blank eyes, and a lizardlike beast looked as if it had just jumped off the armrest and begun twisting its way up the back of the stall. Maddalena sat without moving, as if paying closer attention to the nun, who had by now moved on to the subject of sin, could put the monsters in retreat. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Mother Superior, who had arrived moments before, huddled in conversation with the chaperones.

  The Mother Superior came to stand in front of the figlie. Her face was a study in calm except for two fleeting creases between her brows that she seemed to be trying to will away. “Girls,” she said. “There was an unfortunate disturbance outside, and I am sorry you had to witness it.”

  She took a breath as if she intended to say more, then closed her mouth and looked down. “That is all,” she said. “We will adjourn to the refectory, where dinner has been laid out for you.” Then she turned and swept out of the chapel.

  Young novices were laying out platters of roasted meat and vegetables and bowls of polenta when the figlie came into the room. The Mother Superior led the group in a prayer of thanksgiving for the meal, but just as she sat down another nun entered the refectory, walking so quickly her habit tangled around her knees. She bent over the Mother Superior and said something that caused the older woman to get up, motioning to Geltruda and the other chaperone to come with her. Within a few minutes they both had returned.

  “The gondolier is here,” Geltruda said to the figlie, “and he has made it clear it is best to leave without delay. You will need to leave your meal behind, but you may take a piece of bread with you.”

  Across from Maddalena and Chiaretta, a girl reached over to grab a large piece of meat with her hands, but something about the grim faces of the chaperones made Maddalena’s stomach harden, and she pushed away from the table.

  Chiaretta, watching the girl chewing on the meat, reached toward the platter herself, but Maddalena grabbed her arm. “Get some bread and come!”

  In the courtyard, Maddalena could see the gondolier pacing and taking an occasional look through a peephole in an outer door. “Listen,” Chiaretta said, her grip tightening on Maddalena’s hand. The high walls and covered walkways of the courtyard could not entirely buffer the cheers and boos, hisses and shouts, oaths and hoarse catcalls coming from outside.

  The chaperones hurried the girls over to the gondolier. Oblivious to whether the girls could overhear, he began speaking to the chaperones.

  “They were fighting at the Ponte dei Pugni, but the police came to break it up, and they decided to come over here. They’re fighting where I was supposed to pick you up.”

  “The gondola is outside?” the chaperone asked with such alarm in her voice that one of the girls near Maddalena began to whimper.

  “No. I left it back at San Sebastiano. I think if we go out this way we can get there.” He looked through the peephole. “The crowd isn’t that big yet, and there’s no one outside over here. But we need to go now!” Without waiting for the chaperones to reply, he threw open the outer door and told the figlie to come with him.

  Maddalena and Chiaretta were in the back of the crowd of girls who rushed along the side streets toward San Sebastiano. Chiaretta tripped over a loose stone and fell hard to the pavement, bruising her knees and twisting her ankle. Maddalena grabbed her by the arm and held her up as she took small and painful steps.

  Geltruda took Chiaretta’s other arm. “Hurry up,” she said. “The others are so far ahead I can barely see them.”

  Just then a pack of several dozen men came running at full speed along the canal. Geltruda lost her balance and held tight to the girls to keep them all from being forced into the water. Before they could recover their footing, another wave of people came rushing by, this time a mix of men and women of all ages shoving and calling one another names.

  Chiaretta shrieked as she felt hands around her waist, lifting her down onto a small, flat-bottomed boat. Another set of hands grabbed Maddalena, and within moments Geltruda and the two girls were seated in the peota, alongside a man and a woman and their two children, a boy and a girl roughly the girls’ ages.

  Geltruda sucked in huge gulps of air as she called to the sky for the protection of the saints. The man swore a string of oaths as he maneuvered down the canal, which was by now clogged with boats. Chiaretta and Maddalena hid their faces in each other’s neck, peering out from time to time at the scene around them.

  “Are you all right?” the woman asked the girls.

  They nodded without speaking.

  “Are you Nicolotti or Castellani?” the boy asked.

  Maddalena stared. “Nicolotti or Castellani?” he repeated.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Which side are you on?” the girl asked, annoyed at Maddalena’s ignorance.

  “I’m not on any side.”

  “Oh, leave them alone,” the father said. “They don’t belong here.”

  “We just couldn’t leave you there,” the woman said to Geltruda. “We’ll put you off someplace safe, when we can.”

  Geltruda nodded. She clung to a rosary she had taken from her pocket, her lips moving as she stared at the bottom of the boat.r />
  On the pavement, fights were breaking out, and people watching from upper windows of the buildings along the canal began hurling garbage and broken pottery down on the crowds below. Maddalena saw someone crawl across the roof of one building and pry loose a roof tile. He hurled it into the canal, missing a boat in front of them by no more than a few inches.

  “Why are they doing this?” Chiaretta screamed.

  “What, this?” the woman said. “You haven’t heard of the pugni? The wars of the fists?”

  “No,” Chiaretta sobbed. “And I hate it! Make them stop!”

  The children laughed. “Stop? It’s just starting!”

  Their mother reached across and cuffed them. “Little ruffians!”

  “But I want a real brawl!” the boy said, shouting “Frotta! Frotta!” at the top of his lungs.

  “Me too!” said the girl. She stuck out her tongue at Maddalena and giggled.

  The man had been nudging the boat farther down the canal, trying to get a better view. To their right, two young men jumped off the fondamento and began crawling over the boats to get to the other side of the canal.

  “Nicolotti! Nicolotti!” the family cried out, grinning and waving their fists in the air as the two jumped into their boat just long enough to cross it. One of their knees knocked down the girl, and though her face crumpled, she recovered without crying and stood up yelling alongside her brother.

  Within minutes the bridge next to the convent was filled with men pushing toward the capstone at the top, the Nicolotti faction on one side and the Castellani on the other. Blows from fists knocked some of them back toward the fondamento as sticks pounded down on the shoulders of others. Near the top of the bridge, men grabbed each other and wrestled until one or both tumbled into the canal. One man floated motionless where he fell, blood creeping in ribbons through the water from a gash in his head. He was pulled into a boat, where several people bent over him.

  “Is he dead?” the woman called out from Maddalena and Chiaretta’s boat.

  “Knocked out,” they replied, “but breathing.” The two children groaned with disappointment.

  Then, just as suddenly, it ended. One group pushed their way across the capstone, and the best efforts of the other could not force them back. Wild cheers burst from the far side of the bank, while the losers clustered, shaking their heads. The crowd began to disperse, and soon the canal had emptied enough for Chiaretta and Maddalena’s boat to begin to move.

  When the danger had passed, Geltruda came to life, crossing herself again and again.

  “You ones in red,” the man asked her. “You’re from the Pietà, right?” When Geltruda nodded, the man broke into a grin. “Ah! Your singers are the best in Venice!” He broke into a melody the coro had sung the previous week.

  Chiaretta and Maddalena stared in surprise. “You go to our church?” Chiaretta asked.

  “Whenever I can.” He continued the song, but Mary had been replaced in his version by a beautiful maiden with lips like rubies, and the language was no longer Latin but the Venetian dialect. His wife joined in to harmonize, and soon from the bank of the canal another voice joined in the song, and then another from a window.

  They rowed down the Rio di Santa Margherita, singing one song after another, joined by gondoliers and people on the bank. Chiaretta sang along in Latin whenever she could remember it, ignoring Geltruda’s scowls.

  Maddalena watched as around them in the canal bobbed lost caps, pieces of cardboard armor, and a lone shoe. Garbage flung from windows collected along the bank, outlined in an oily shimmer that caught the light and looked like rainbows. The ducks returned, and Chiaretta trailed her hand in the water, calling to them to come closer.

  As they approached the Grand Canal and turned in the direction of the Pietà, the setting sun turned the fronts of the mansions into radiant squares of ocher, russet, and rose. Gondoliers’ voices mixed with the cries of gulls making their last flights of the day, a choir of the hopeful and contented, calling out to the world to forget everything except the sublime.

  By the time the boatman had rowed them back to the Pietà, the rest of the figlie had been given something to eat and sent to their wards to recover. Geltruda and the two girls were met at the outer door by an ashen-faced woman who made the sign of the cross when she saw them.

  “We heard that six people were killed,” she said as a sob of relief broke from deep within her. She crossed herself again. “Ave, Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum,” she began to recite under her breath as she led them in the direction of the priora’s study.

  The priora rushed toward them, her rosary beads dropping to the floor. “What happened?” she asked Geltruda.

  Neither Maddalena nor Chiaretta remembered Geltruda being as brave as she was in the story she told. Perhaps, they both thought, they just hadn’t noticed how forcefully she had defended them.

  “And you,” the priora said, looking at Maddalena, “were you afraid?”

  Images swirled in Maddalena’s mind. The horses on the ceiling of the church thundered above her, while on all sides people pushed and shoved with their twisted faces, and blood ran in the canal. She shuddered, and when the priora put her arm around her, she began to cry.

  Chiaretta had been looking around the room, taking in the large rug with its patterns of crimson, blue, and gold; and the green velvet curtains at the window, pulled back with golden cords that had thick tassels on the ends. A fire burned in the fireplace, casting a glow that lit up the rich leather of the chairs in front of it.

  “And you?” the priora asked her for the second time. “Were you scared too?”

  Chiaretta was puzzled by the question. “I was scared sometimes,” she answered. “But not always.”

  The priora smiled. “God was watching over you.”

  She had meant something else. I was outside, Chiaretta thought. I saw ducks, and people painted on ceilings, and I rode across the Grand Canal, not in a felce but out in the open. And I got to sing with the people in the boat. Most of the time I wasn’t scared, I was happy. She took in a breath as if she wanted to explain, but when she saw the grim faces of Geltruda and the priora, she decided they wouldn’t understand. “Yes,” she said. “God and the Blessed Virgin too.”

  PART TWO: A BOW FOR MADDALENA ROSSA

  1703–1709

  FOUR

  A childhood spent biting her lower lip had pushed Silvia the Rat’s front teeth forward so they now rested comfortably only outside her mouth. That, together with her round, monochromatic brown eyes and indistinct brown hair, gave Maddalena’s violin teacher a rodentlike appearance that long before had led to her unflattering nickname.

  Silvia scurried around the violin practice room, simpering as she did little tasks to court the approval of Luciana, the maestra dal violino. When Luciana made loud, off hand remarks about the other students, Silvia would smirk until the other figlie turned away in disgust.

  Luciana’s favor had nothing to do with Silvia’s talent, which even a new initiate like Maddalena could see was mediocre. Still, in the cloistered world of the Pietà, being able to get along was essential, although to Luciana this was synonymous with getting along with her.

  Anna Maria practiced with Maddalena for several months before asking Luciana to listen to her play. Even Luciana had to admit that Maddalena was already better than some of the other recent iniziate, but she was annoyed that Anna Maria had usurped her prerogative by beginning Maddalena’s training on her own. Whereas with any other figlia Luciana showed her irritation by a barrage of criticism that didn’t stop until the girl was in tears, Anna Maria seemed insulated from such treatment.

  “I heard her say I was getting too famous for my own good,” Anna Maria whispered to Maddalena one morning. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  The only regular chastisement Anna Maria got from Luciana was for her pride. “Do you think the Virgin Mother would be pleased with such a boastful girl?” Luciana had once demanded, to which Anna Maria had repl
ied, “No, but I think she might be pleased to hear me play.”

  Luciana’s face had reddened at what seemed to be the boldest of insolence, and Maddalena had trembled for her friend. But when Luciana saw Anna Maria’s solemn and matter-of-fact expression, she had in the end only grumbled and given her the mild punishment of sitting in the corner and playing the scales in each key, note by distinct note, for an hour. After all, everyone in the room, including Luciana, suspected that what Anna Maria had said was true.

  Instead Luciana took out her irritation on Anna Maria’s protégée, by ignoring Maddalena altogether and assigning her to Silvia. Silvia taught Maddalena exactly the way she herself was taught, but when the best of the violinists played, Maddalena saw how body, instrument, and music fused into something intimate and complete that lessons could not account for. By now, when she drew the bow across the strings, the tone was so sweet and rich that she sometimes forgot to breathe. Long after her lessons, she remembered how her fingers had flown and fluttered on the strings, part of something mysterious and sacred.

  Her pleasure at becoming an iniziata in the coro shortly after she turned eleven had been muted over the past year, however, by having Silvia as a teacher. But even so, she yearned for every opportunity to pull her violin from its satin-lined case, slide rosin across the bow, and enter a world where nothing existed except its sound.

  That world was once again being violated. “No, no, no! It’s like this!” Silvia grabbed Maddalena’s wrist and rotated it sharply outward.

  Glaring at Silvia, Maddalena put the bow to the strings and played the series of arpeggios again. Her eyes closed as she slid into a languid melody, and forgetting Silvia altogether, her back began to sway to the contours of the music and her scowl melted.

  Silvia clapped her hands twice. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Shut your eyes like that and start moving around.”