The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice

by Laurel Corona

  “Yes, a beautiful letter, full of concern for you and your sister. The money she left made it possible for you to stay together. Otherwise, I imagine you would both be here and not even know you were sisters.”

  Chiaretta was too overcome to speak.

  The priora picked up an embroidered bag on her desk. “I’ve made a decision not to show you the letter at this time. Perhaps someday. But I have something else you may want to see.” She took out two cream-colored objects and placed them in Chiaretta’s hand.

  Chiaretta ran her fingers across the carved flower on each one. “I don’t understand.”

  “They were with the things your mother left. She broke a comb in three to have a way to prove she was really your mother if she came back for you. One piece for each of you.”

  Chiaretta traced the ragged edges of the ivory, trying to comprehend. My mother broke this with her own hands. Her mother had always been an abstraction before, but now she was a presence in the study. Chiaretta looked up as if to catch her ghost before it vanished, surprised to see that the room was still the same and only the priora was standing in front of her.

  “We prefer the figlie not to know such objects exist,” the priora said. “Under the circumstances, I could probably allow you to keep yours, but I don’t see how we can let Maddalena have her piece.”

  Chiaretta had not stopped crying since the priora told her about her mother, nor had she stopped caressing the two pieces of ivory since she first held them in her hand. I want my piece. I want to know this is tucked away somewhere. I want to know my mother is with me.

  The priora was still talking. “I considered not letting you see this, because of the problem with Maddalena, but I thought perhaps I could persuade you not to show her or tell her about it.”

  I can’t do that, Chiaretta thought. She put the ivory flowers back in the bag and handed it to the priora. “Thank you,” she said. “But I won’t agree to keep this a secret from Maddalena, so you should keep both pieces, if that’s all right with you.” Chiaretta did not take her eyes off her as an unnerving length of time passed.

  “All right,” the priora finally said, as a smile that started in the corners of her eyes spread over her whole face. “You’ve stood your ground well ever since you were young. I pity anyone outside the Pietà who tries to get you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  She handed the bag back to Chiaretta. “I’m sure you will keep these safe.”

  “And I can show them to my sister?”

  “Yes, but only if she agrees not to discuss it with anyone else. And I think it’s best if you keep her piece for her. Would you promise that?”

  Chiaretta nodded and tucked the bag away in the pocket of her apron. “I’d rather have this than my pearls,” she said, patting the lump it made.

  She turned to go, but the priora stopped her. “I have one more thing I want to say. My dear child, if you are wondering whether your parentage gives you anything to be ashamed of, it most certainly does not. The Pietà exists because Venice has a problem, for which you are not to blame. Those who, I assume, have hurt you are the ones whose sons and brothers continue to create new wards for us each year because they can’t find anyone they’re permitted, or can afford, to marry.” She paused and shut her eyes. “Sometimes I think the Mother of God must weep for us, for how our city has destroyed the bonds of parent and child through the pride of a few who care only about keeping their place at the top.”

  When the Christmas hiatus in Carnevale arrived, Chiaretta began seeing Claudio more often. On Christmas Eve they attended a service under the golden domes of the basilica of Saint Mark, and afterward they strolled through the Piazza San Marco.

  “I’ve never seen anyone who prays as hard as you do,” Claudio said as they left the church and stopped to admire the rows of candles in the windows around the square.

  “What do you expect? With all the silence at the Pietà, God and the Virgin are the easiest ones to talk to.” Chiaretta’s laugh quickly sobered. “Do you want to know what I was praying for?”

  “I would be honored.”

  “I want your mother to accept me.”

  “What makes you think she doesn’t?”

  She said I should marry a butcher. “I thought it was obvious.

  Antonia is waiting for me to say it’s all right for her to bring the problem up with you.”

  “Oh dear,” Claudio said. “I’d be surprised if I’m left with any ears at all after she’s finished burning through them.” He smiled until he saw Chiaretta’s crestfallen face. “It was just an attempt to be funny, my love. A rather poor one, I admit.”

  They started to walk across the piazza again, and Claudio went on. “Antonia is one of the most forthright people I know. Rather blunt sometimes, but I prefer honesty over subtlety anyway.” He stopped again and drew Chiaretta to him. “You’re shaking. Are you cold, or afraid of something?”

  “Both, a bit.”

  “I’ll take you back now, get you warm. And I’ll work on my mother. I promise.”

  * * *

  When Carnevale began again, Chiaretta accepted with relief the renewed seclusion at the Pietà, throwing herself into her singing and treasuring what she knew were her last months of living with her sister. And then Carnevale was over, and the last rounds of parties and outings intensified before the heat of summer set in, and the nobles once again escaped the city.

  In May, Chiaretta was permitted to go with Claudio and his father on the family gondola to participate in Ascension Day, known in Venice as the Sensa. The day the doge made his annual trip from his palace to the mouth of the lagoon was the grandest festival of the year, but until this year Chiaretta had always stood in the upper windows of the Pietà to watch with the rest of the coro the passing of the doge’s official gondola, the Bucintoro. This year she would be on one of the hundreds of boats crowding the lagoon to follow the Bucintoro to the edge of the ocean for the ceremonial tossing of a gold ring into the water to symbolize the marriage of the Venetian Republic to the sea.

  The Morosinis’ gondola had been polished until the lacquer glowed. Embroidered silk cushions were flung on the seats, and coverlets and tapestries decorated the felce. Claudio had bought her a parasol, which he held over her head as they settled in and pushed off from the dock of the Pietà. Chiaretta waved to Maddalena, Anna Maria, and the other figlie di coro when she saw them in the window. When they waved back, they caught the eye of a woman wearing a pink silk dress and a Carnevale mask, seated in a gondola next to a man who was kissing her on the neck. Seeing the girls, the woman blew kisses, and the man stood up and waved at them, just as the sound of cannon fire erupted near the Doge’s Palace.

  “Do you see it?” Claudio was pointing in the direction of the Broglio, a few hundred yards up the Grand Canal. He stood her up, holding Chiaretta by the waist so she could get a better look at the Bucintoro. The size of a floating palace, it stood several stories high, painted bright red and trimmed in gold. Massive red banners embroidered with the doge’s emblems hung from a golden bowsprit that jutted into the air. The figureheads, a pair of golden cherubs about twenty feet high and weighing several tons, peeked out from behind banners fluttering in the breeze.

  “I can hear the fanfare,” Bernardo said. “They’re bringing out the doge from his palace. They’ll be pulling up the anchor any moment.”

  Fireworks exploded, and loud shouts erupted from the nearby boats as forty-two massive oars manned by hidden oarsmen on the Bucintoro began stroking in unison. As it started down the canal, men in black capes and Carnevale masks, and women in dresses that shimmered in the sunlight, stood up to watch. Families cheered from flat-bottomed peote and burchielli that just the day before had been cleaned of fish heads, lettuce leaves, or the remnants of whatever else they bought and sold for a living, and were now draped with banners of bright cloth and garlands of flowers. Small barges carrying chamber orchestras bobbed in the wake left by the Bucintoro as it passed.

&
nbsp; The gondolas of foreign ambassadors and the papal nuncio were the only ones not required to be black. Golden apparitions as much as fifty feet long, they were festooned from bow to stern with tangled curlicues, scallops, and braiding. Their felces took the shape of Greek temples, adorned with carvings of gods and goddesses, dolphins, and legendary creatures of the sea. Curtains of silk damask, embroidered and fringed with gold, created shade and privacy for the passengers inside.

  A lifetime of participation in the Sensa had made Bernardo indifferent to the spectacle. “I don’t know about you two,” he said, “but I think it’s damned hot out here. I’m going inside.” He stumbled a little from the effects of the wine he had been drinking since they left the dock. “If I fall asleep, don’t wake me up for the ring. I’ve seen it.”

  “I’m sure the Pietà would not be impressed with their appointed chaperone,” Claudio said, “but I’m delighted.” He pulled her to him, moving his lips along her jaw toward her mouth. “May I?” he asked.

  “The gondolier,” she whispered.

  “Don’t worry about him. Their job is not to notice, but even more important, their job is not to tell.” He looked up at the gondolier, who was straining to keep them in open water away from other boats. “Tell her, Biasio. Tell her about your oath.”

  The gondolier laughed. “Don’t worry about me, signorina. If I see, may I not remember, and if I tell, may I die.”

  “It’s true,” Claudio said. “If they can’t be completely trusted, they won’t have a job. Anyone who reveals what he sees or hears is likely to end up floating in the canal with his throat slit by his fellow gondoliers.”

  Chiaretta shivered. “How awful.”

  “In a few years you’ll be saying ‘how wonderful.’ Still, for you, a little privacy.” He tilted the parasol so it hid them from the gondolier’s view. He moved his face closer to her, and she turned her head so that his lips grazed hers. He had kissed her several times before, and she felt what was becoming the sweet, familiar pang that traveled from her jaw to her ribs and made it hard to take a deep breath. His lips pressed against hers, and the ache became a pleasant stab. One hand reached behind her shoulders, and the other traveled down to her waist as he drew her to him.

  Such a loud clamor broke out that he pulled back and moved the parasol aside. “Look,” he said, standing her up. “The doge is throwing the ring in the water. It’s supposed to make the sea happy enough to bring us a year of peaceful weather.”

  “Peaceful weather. I hope so,” Chiaretta said, reaching up to brush his cheek. She turned to look at the gondolier, who grinned and put his hand over his eyes.

  THIRTEEN

  By midsummer the wealthy of venice had made their escape to the countryside, in the annual event known as the villegiatura. Though the tidal currents washed the Grand Canal of most of its polluted water, those left behind had to endure the stench of sulfur and rotting garbage that wafted up from the smaller waterways and squares of the interior. Being situated on the lagoon, the Pietà was free from the worst of it, but the figlie still sweltered in the heat, trying to take what refuge could be found in the shady overhangs of the courtyard, or in rooms penetrated by a breeze.

  Despite the torpor, Maddalena had never seen Vivaldi so agitated. The white silk shirts he stripped down to in the thick sea air were translucent with perspiration, showing the pale skin of his chest and back. He stamped in frustration at the time wasted with broken reeds and frayed strings at rehearsals and kept up a stream of Latin in a tone that sounded more like curses than like prayers.

  His worst outbursts came when he was out of view of the attive and had only the sotto maestre as witnesses. Unlike the others, Maddalena had seen Vivaldi’s temper before, especially when he was trying to balance a new opera season with his obligations at the Pietà. She had long ago reached the point where she knew the best response was to busy herself with whatever work could be done at the moment and wait for him to settle down.

  The sotto maestra of each group of instruments sat down alone with Vivaldi to run through each new piece of music before beginning rehearsals. When Maddalena’s turn came, she was usually so distracted by her various duties that she had no chance to ponder how different the tone of their meetings had been when she was younger. And so it came as a shock one morning when he laid his violin on his lap and told her he did not know what he would do without her. “When I played this in Padua,” he said of one piece, “the musicians were always a half beat behind, and I had to fight them to play it the way I wrote it.”

  His eyes softened. “It’s always better with you,” he said. “I count on it.” The tenderness in his voice caught Maddalena by surprise, and for a moment the wall of defenses she had erected against him—her professionalism, her responsibilities, her maturity—disappeared and she felt again like the young girl who had lived for his compliments and his intimacies. That was then and this is now, she told herself, trying to will away the uneasiness that was making her heart pound. I don’t want to care about him like that again.

  He pulled his violin from its case. “Do you see something different?” It took Maddalena a few seconds to notice that he had altered his instrument so the fingerboard came down nearly all the way to the bridge. “Can you see what that would do?” he asked, picking up his bow and playing the highest pitch on a regular violin, then jumping interval by interval until his fingers could go no farther.

  “And look at this.” He traced his fingers across the wood of his bow to show how the arch had been flattened out. “I’ve been experimenting at home,” he said. “Try to do this with yours.” He jumped back and forth from the lowest to the highest string.

  “I can’t,” she said. “You know the bow will bounce right off.”

  “But not with mine!” His face was flushed with excitement. “I am going to show Venice something so incredible they’ll wake up the next day wondering if it was a dream. Just wait, Maddalena Rossa, just wait.”

  The concerto was drawing to a close in the sweltering chapel when Vivaldi began the cadenza he had bragged to Maddalena about. It started routinely enough with a flight of quick notes, leading to a few bars of what sounded like a country jig. He played a short musical phrase, repeating it at increasingly higher pitches, going up and up and up, closer and closer to the bridge, turning his bow until the sounds were not those of a violin at all but of birds chirping in a tree. He reached over to the lowest string, adding a single syncopated hooting note before easing the violin back down, leading the rest of the orchestra into the exuberant closing bars.

  “Did you like it?” he asked her afterward.

  “I think I held my breath through the whole cadenza.”

  “Good,” he said, closing his violin case and giving it a triumphant pat.

  Maddalena was relieved he did not notice she hadn’t answered his question. The cadenza was less a thing of beauty than a challenge to the listener, more brilliant than pleasant. It rang in her ears for days.

  Vivaldi had been right. His cadenza was the talk of Venice. But though he came to the Pietà the following week with the light step and square shoulders of the triumphant, he soon was buried again in work.

  Chiaretta’s wedding was in a few months, and the opportunities to write music for her were growing short. For her last public performance, he was writing a role for her in a new oratorio. All five solo roles, male and female, in Juditha Triumphans had to be sung by the figlie di coro. The rest of the singers would form a chorus of Hebrew women if they had high-pitched voices, or the enemy soldiers of Babylon if their voices were deep. Every musician and singer in the coro, even many of the retirees and iniziate, would be included, so mighty Nebuchadnezzar’s army and the heroic resistance of Judith would not sound insubstantial. The halls of the Pietà echoed with the sounds of figlie not just playing the usual assortment of woodwinds and stringed instruments but pounding on drums and blowing on trumpets as well.

  Two months of concerts were scheduled to precede this gra
nd finale in November, and the stress on the leaders of the coro was greater than anything Maddalena had yet experienced. Vivaldi was close to collapse. A few days before the opening concert of the season, a nurse tiptoed into the sala and whispered to Maddalena to come with her. The maestro had left the rehearsal about an hour before and had been found, apparently not breathing, in the hallway. He was taken to the inf irmary, where the nurses revived him with aromatics, but since they had heard that Maddalena knew more about how to treat his attacks, they sent for her to help.

  Vivaldi’s color had already returned to normal and his breathing had improved by the time she got there. The nurses were tidying up, but just as she walked in they got a call to attend to a patient having a seizure. They bustled out of the room, leaving their clutter behind. Suddenly Maddalena and Vivaldi were alone.

  “There is no one who cares as much for me as you do,” he said, still a little breathless. “Look at how quickly you came.”

  Maddalena did not sit down next to him, though he motioned for her to do so. She went to the nurses’ counter, where she began folding the damp towels and separating the bottles and boxes of aromatics into neat groups. Since his return she had managed never to be alone with him without business to keep them occupied.

  He doesn’t need me. I should just excuse myself and go, she thought, but curiosity kept her waiting for what he might say next. “The nurses seem very capable,” she said. “I’d say they cared for you quite well.”

  “They’re nurses. They’d do the same for anyone.” He exhaled loudly enough for Maddalena to stop her work and turn around. He was watching her.

  “I live alone,” he said. “Except for a servant who fixes my supper and cleans up after me for wages.” He got up and busied himself adjusting his clothing, deliberately avoiding looking at her. “I often wonder what it would be like if I had not taken vows, if I could have someone who took care of me because she chose to.”