The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice

by Laurel Corona

  The mood turned solemn for a second, before the figlie looked away from her. “I like the fireworks on the lagoon!” one of them cried out.

  “All right,” said Maddalena. With a downturn of her mouth, she played their music as a lugubrious funeral march. A few of them giggled. Then she stood up straighter. “Fireworks!” she said, playing the music again, clean and bright. “Now it’s your turn.”

  The figlie picked up their violins. The notes were crisp and the pace was lively, and when they were finished the figlie exchanged happy, secretive glances before she called them to order again.

  Maddalena nodded to Gerita. “Stand up and show us how you feel when someone throws flowers at you. Use your violin.”

  Without prompting, Gerita began to play, bending her waist from side to side and shifting her hips as she gave a flirtatious smile to her friends in the coro. She bowed and sat down while the others applauded.

  Maddalena picked a few more and asked them to demonstrate, and then she called on Benedetta. “You’re warm in bed, and you’re drifting off to sleep.” Picking up her own violin, she played the languid opening of the slow movement. “You play your part, and I’ll play mine.”

  Benedetta shut her eyes and began. The air in the room stilled. The phrases flowed from her viola as easily as breathing, as intimate as a rising lump in the throat. My bed is giving back the heat it has stolen from me. My legs and arms are unfurling like a flower when the sun shines. Maddalena knew what was in Benedetta’s music.

  By now Maddalena had stopped playing and was hugging her violin close to her body as she watched Benedetta finish. The little girl’s sigh was the only sound in the room as she opened her eyes to see the rest of the coro staring at her, still completely absorbed in the story she was telling.

  The time for rehearsal was over, but no one wanted to leave. “The music will be here tomorrow,” Maddalena said, as she told them to put away their instruments. “All it needs is you.”

  * * *

  When Claudio called the arrangement with Luca and Andrea perfect, Chiaretta wondered how she would handle the blow. By the time another year had passed, Antonia was pregnant for a second time and too nauseated to go out, but the three of them had commemorated the occasion of their first meeting by watching the gondola race on Saint Mark’s Day. This year, Chiaretta leaned back and laughed all afternoon, trailing her hand in the water, looking down from time to time at the three rosebuds in her bodice.

  She had progressed in three Carnevale seasons from fear to enthusiasm to even a measure of abandon. “Forget all that nonsense they told you at the Pietà about how God wants you to be good all the time,” Antonia told her. “I mean, wouldn’t you rather have people lining up to beg for forgiveness than sit all alone in heaven because nobody had done anything wrong?”

  Chiaretta still knelt at the prie-dieu when she woke up, but by that point she had lost track of the daily office, substituting her own morning prayer consisting of an entreaty to the Virgin to give her a sign if she was displeasing her that day. Evening prayer was often little more than crossing herself as she crawled into bed, and asking for forgiveness if the mother of God had sent a signal she missed.

  “I don’t feel any less religious,” she told Maddalena a few days after Easter. “Now that I actually have to worry about sinning, I pay a lot more attention to it.”

  Maddalena smiled. “There’s not much chance to sin here. And I’m not sure why God should be impressed with how much we pray here, because they make us do it.” She thought for a moment. “If I were God, I’d only count what a person chooses to do.”

  Chiaretta looked a little relieved. “Well, I confess every week. That’s a choice. And I go to mass every Sunday.” She thought for a moment. “Except in the summer, when I’m in the country.” She furrowed her brow. “Maybe I don’t go so often after all. But I do go every day during Lent.”

  She made this last point in the bright voice Maddalena treasured from their childhood. She motioned with her finger for Chiaretta to move her face closer to the grille, and when she did, Maddalena reached through and stroked her on the cheek. “You haven’t changed at all. And I can’t think of any reason God wouldn’t love you just as much as we all do.” She looked across the parlatorio toward the door. “Including them.”

  No one was there, but Chiaretta knew who she meant. For nearly a year, Luca and Andrea had been bringing her to visit Maddalena each week before the three of them went to dinner at one of the restaurants nearby. That day, because the weather was better than it had been in several weeks, the two men had gone for a stroll on the quay to give her some time alone with her sister.

  “Especially the tall one,” Maddalena went on. “Your back is always turned so you can’t see the way he looks at you, but I can.”

  “Andrea? It’s Luca who adores me. But Andrea—well, he seems to find me amusing, that’s all. He’s very quiet.”

  “He’s also very handsome.”

  Chiaretta blushed.

  “You like him,” Maddalena said.

  “More than Luca actually. Luca’s a lot of fun, and awfully sweet, but sometimes he’s a bit boorish.” Chiaretta looked down at her hands and began adjusting her gloves. “I like Andrea—in a different way.”

  Maddalena gave her a quizzical smile. “I know a little about having feelings for a man it’s wrong even to hope to have.”

  Chiaretta looked up. “Vivaldi?” Now Chiaretta was the one waiting for an answer, but before Maddalena could reply, the door to the parlatorio opened, and Luca and Andrea came in.

  “Brrr!” Luca said. “It’s cold out there for April.” He came over to the grille. “May I steal this gentle lady from you, just for a week?”

  Maddalena smiled. “Only if I have your word you’ll bring her back safely.”

  “Safely,” Luca said, clicking his heels like a soldier. “And on time.”

  He helped Chiaretta to her feet while Andrea held out her cloak. “Are you ready for dinner?” Andrea asked in a voice so quiet it turned a routine question into something private and tender.

  “Umm.” Chiaretta nodded, looking back at Maddalena to avoid his gaze. The change in her expression was too slight for anyone but a sister to notice. Her brows had come together and her eyes narrowed in the way they did when she stood on the balcony of the Pietà waiting to sing new music for the first time—determined, self-confident, and a little afraid.

  * * *

  By ascension day in May, Antonia was feeling well enough to go out to watch the Bucintoro in a burchiello Luca rented for the day. The wide, flat-bottomed boat provided enough room for three musicians to come along to play for them as they bobbed in the lagoon, and for a servant to fill their glasses and serve their lunch. The four of them took seats under a bright red canopy and pulled off their masks. Chiaretta’s face was damp with sweat, and she handed a napkin to Antonia, moving her face toward her as a signal to daub it dry without disturbing her makeup.

  “May I?” Andrea asked. Chiaretta’s heart jumped.

  “Certainly!” Antonia answered for her, handing Andrea the napkin with a sly look.

  Andrea patted a corner of the napkin over Chiaretta’s forehead and cheeks, and when he reached her mouth he traced its outline. She cast her eyes down, uncomfortable with his touch, and then looked up to see Andrea’s eyes locking with hers. He examined her face inch by inch, and whether this took a few seconds or a few minutes, Chiaretta could not have said. Then he took the napkin and daubed her throat, moving his hand down until he had swept across the tops of her breasts at the edge of her bodice.

  For Chiaretta, the boat was a swirl of faces. Antonia’s was grinning triumphantly, Luca’s was rigid with an attempt not to scowl, and Andrea’s was solemn as ever, but opened up somehow, as if a door had been left ajar through which secrets and intimacies might escape, or enter.

  After the passage of the Bucintoro, the servant began to lay out lunch as the burchiello moved to a quieter part of the lagoon, nea
r the island of Giudecca. Food had been brought for everyone, and when the musicians had their fill, they went back to their seats to play again.

  “I feel like singing,” Antonia said, calling out to the musicians. “Do you know this one? Quando fra l’altre donne ad ora ad ora. ”

  “Ah, Petrarch,” one of the musicians said, picking up the melody on the violin. “When Love shows herself in a beautiful face among other women from time to time,” Antonia sang, and Luca joined in, his voice rising and falling with the effects of the wine and the lolling water. “The less beautiful each face is than yours, the more my love for you grows.”

  Antonia and Luca had moved their faces close together, exchanging the soulful looks of lovers before breaking away in laughter. Antonia turned in Chiaretta’s direction. “Why don’t you sing something for us?” she asked.

  “Me? I can’t. You know that!”

  “Oh, nobody cares about that anymore!”

  “Nobody on this boat at least!” Luca answered, looking at the musicians. “Do you know who this is?” he asked, gesturing to Chiaretta.

  “Certainly,” the leader said. “Chiaretta della Pietà. Who could forget?”

  “And would you denounce her if she were to honor you with a song?”

  The musician looked at the other two and made a slitting gesture across his throat. They grinned and returned the gesture.

  “So what will it be?” Luca asked. “Nothing religious I hope.”

  “I don’t know,” Chiaretta said. “I need to ask Claudio first.”

  “Oh, please!” Antonia wheedled. “He’s always in Vienna or Rome or somewhere. That could take months!”

  “Antonia, I can’t,” Chiaretta pleaded.

  “Leave her alone.” Andrea’s voice was firm. “She said she can’t.”

  Antonia and Luca groaned, knowing it meant the subject was closed.

  “I’ll sing,” Andrea said.

  Antonia’s jaw dropped. “You never sing!”

  “I like to sing, I just don’t like to perform. Today, in honor of the occasion—” He turned to Chiaretta. “Do you know Veronica Franco?”

  “No. I don’t think I’ve met her.” She turned to Antonia. “Have I?”

  “It’s not likely,” Andrea said. “She’s been dead for over a hundred years. She was a beautiful courtesan here in Venice—and a poet so intelligent she probably drove our great-grandfathers wild.

  Would you like to hear something she wrote?”

  “Please.”

  Andrea began to sing, nodding to the musicians to join in. “Desire gives pain to the heart,” he sang, “from which springs both hope and worry.” His voice was soft and rich as a bow gliding across the strings of a cello. “Out of suspicion I make mistakes that grow into lasting ills. And from my stubborn delusions come a thousand deceits, which later I must accept as damage I’ve done.”

  They all applauded when he finished, and Chiaretta said, almost in a whisper, “That was beautiful.”

  “A little dark,” Andrea said. “I don’t know why that one came into my head.”

  “It does sound quite fatalistic,” Chiaretta replied.

  “I suppose, but I think it’s more a warning,” Andrea said.

  “Not to get caught!” Antonia reached over and took a gulp of wine from Luca’s glass.

  “No, not that,” Andrea said. “When we love someone, we have to be careful of the harm our crazy thoughts can set in motion. That’s what I think she meant.” A gust of wind rippled over the water, and Andrea looked up to the horizon. “Storm coming,” he said to Luca. “It will be raining in an hour. We should get these ladies back home.”

  Over a private supper in their quarters a few days after Claudio’s return, Chiaretta brought up Antonia’s request to hear her sing.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “So what happened?” he asked. “Did you do it?”

  “No!” Chiaretta answered, shocked at the suggestion. “I said I couldn’t. Andrea defended me, and it was over.”

  “Bravo for Andrea!” He raised his glass in a toast. “And doubly so for my sensible and loyal wife.”

  Chiaretta could see he was thinking, and she waited for him.

  “Venice is changing,” Claudio finally said. “Things aren’t as strict as they used to be. I’m not going to say a denouncement isn’t serious, but it’s nothing a person can’t get out of these days. More of an inconvenience than anything else, probably an expensive one, but no one’s going to be picking up my dead body at the prison over a song.”

  “What about the bond? There was something about a bond with the Pietà, wasn’t there?”

  He reached across the table and touched her hand. “The Pietà wouldn’t even suggest I forfeit the bond. They aren’t going to antagonize the Morosini family over something like that. Look at my father. He makes more money for them every month with his parties than that pitiful bond would pay.” Claudio thought for a moment. “In fact, I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

  “What?”

  “Your singing again. How do you like the idea of the Pietà sending over your sister to put on a recital with you, just for a few friends? If they say yes, the question of whether you can sing for other people is decided, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Claudio, I haven’t sung in years.”

  His face glowed in the candlelight. “Except for me. And the world hasn’t heard your voice in far too long.” Though the lines of age on his face and the hints of gray in his hair were unmistakable, he was at the moment, Chiaretta thought, the most beautiful man who had ever lived.

  And so it was resolved. Just before the patricians of Venice began departing to their country villas for the summer, several dozen guests gathered on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Morosini for an intimate evening, with entertainment by the former Chiaretta della Pietà and her sister.

  Andrea had agreed, once again to Antonia’s shock, to accompany the sisters on the harpsichord. The week before, when Maddalena visited the Palazzo Morosini to rehearse, she told both of them about her plan to bring Benedetta and Cornelia to their first private party. Maestra Prudenzia had questioned the wisdom of sending Benedetta rather than someone more attractive, but Maddalena had been adamant that when the selection of performers was up to her, the invitations would go to the hardest workers and the best musicians. And besides, Maddalena thought to herself, no figlia di coro was easier to love than tiny Benedetta, with her sweet, scarred face. If Maddalena were a rich Venetian nobleman, Benedetta would be the one to loosen her purse strings.

  Maddalena had not spent much time face-to-face with Andrea before, and she could see why Chiaretta liked him. He was the kind of person who smiled when something was funny, and didn’t when it wasn’t. He watched Chiaretta in a way that was neither gawking or intrusive, but out of concern that she be warm enough in a drafty room, that she get enough to eat, that she stop to rest when she was tired. The effect on Chiaretta was unmistakable. She glowed whenever he was around.

  “I’ll have to be careful what we serve.” Chiaretta laughed, telling them the story of the oysters. “I love them now, but they are rather frightening to look at.”

  “Probably fish with big staring eyes wouldn’t work either,” Andrea said. “They’ve always seemed a bit accusatory to me.”

  “And no little animals either,” Maddalena added. “At some party we went to, they served thrushes with the heads still on, and one of the figlie vomited right there at the table. The others started crying about the poor little dead birds, and they made quite a hash of the concert afterward, I’m afraid.”

  No such incident occurred at the Morosinis’ party. Benedetta and Cornelia sat wide-eyed at the table, taking second and third portions of the foods they liked and exchanging furtive glances about the amount of wine in their glasses. “No seconds on that,” Maddalena whispered from her seat next to them. “Don’t forget, you have to perform.”

  After dinner, Maddalena played a trio sonata with the two figlie and then as
ked Chiaretta to join her. At the first notes, the audience stirred, as if they thought they should know but couldn’t quite place the melody. Then Chiaretta began to sing.

  “Salve Regina, mater.” Her voice rang out across the portego. “Vita, dulcedo, et spes,” she sang. “Our life, sweetness, and hope, greetings to you, Queen, mother of mercy.” Benedetta and Cornelia, who were playing a simple continuo, could not take their eyes off her as they listened to a voice they had only heard stories about.

  When they finished, Claudio stood up. “You have just heard the music that made me fall in love with my wife.” The men applauded and the women sighed.

  “Knowing that, Chiaretta has prepared another surprise for you.” Andrea got up and sat at the harpsichord. He and Maddalena played the opening notes, and Chiaretta broke into her favorite aria from her last performance. “Seeing the beauty of your face,” she sang, “anger fades and love begins to shine.”

  When she finished, Claudio went over to the window. “Come and look.” He gestured to the guests. Having heard the music, a dozen boatmen were hovering on the canal under the window. Chiaretta shrank back, but Claudio nudged her to stay in front of the window. “It’s all right, now,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  As the crowd went back to their seats, Andrea spoke up. “There are more surprises tonight,” he said, looking at Chiaretta, “and this one is for you.” He sat down at the harpsichord, and Antonia and Claudio stood next to him.

  “Andrea tells me you have a special liking for Veronica Franco,” Claudio said, “and it seemed to us as if this poem could have been written for no one but you.”

  Andrea began to play. “Occhi lucenti et belli,” they sang in harmony. “Beautiful shining eyes, how could be conveyed in one moment so much that is new? Such tender feelings—sweet, biting, and wild—they enter this scorched heart, which wants to give you whatever you wish.” As they sang, both Claudio and Andrea were fixed on Chiaretta. “One who would live and die for you wishes only that your dear and beautiful eyes will forever be serene, happy, and clear.”