The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice

by Laurel Corona

  He acted as if he were protecting his job, but really he was protecting me. It was my honor he was defending.

  Her head was spinning. She had just seen someone caught and disgraced in his own home, someone whose deceit had given her ample reason to despise him, and all she could think about was that she might have misunderstood everything all these years—why he didn’t send a letter the first time he left, why he failed to acknowledge her presence so many times, why he didn’t visit when he came back to Venice. Anyone else would dismiss him as the most despicable of men after the tawdry scene she had witnessed, and instead—She had trouble even letting the word form in her head, the word she had driven out so many times before.

  I love him.

  I can’t have him, but I still love him.

  Fioruccia had stopped praying. “I hope you’ve come to your senses about that man,” she spat. “Shameless, he is! You know what people say, don’t you?” she demanded. “Well, don’t you?”

  Maddalena shook her head, but she barely heard. She was picturing Vivaldi, wondering what he really had been thinking all those times she had decided he wasn’t noticing, all those times she had concluded he didn’t care.

  “Honestly, how can anyone reach your age and still be so naïve?” Fioruccia went on. “Consorting with harlots! Hah! That man is a disgrace to the church. And why they let you get away with coming here, I don’t know.” Her voice dropped to a mutter about the whores of Babylon and the fall of Venice as she turned her shoulders toward the side of the felce as if to remove herself from Maddalena’s presence altogether.

  Blood slammed in great coursing pulses through Maddalena’s temples. “Please...” she begged.

  “Please, what?” Fioruccia hissed. “Don’t tell? Hah!” she cackled, and Maddalena felt her life falling away from her again.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was quite a crisis,” Claudio said to Chiaretta a day or two later, as they ate supper in their quarters after the children were asleep. “The chaperone has yet to get out of bed, although I suspect that’s more to enhance the quality of her gossip than anything else.”

  “What did Maddalena say?”

  “Not much. She said that Vivaldi frequently had such attacks and that she didn’t know who the women were, but one of them appeared to be his nurse and handled it all quite competently.”

  Claudio thought for a moment. “I’ve seen this ‘nurse,’ ” he said, taking a sip of wine. “Paolina Girò, Anna’s sister. They’re quite a pair. We called in the Maestro to talk to him, and he insisted the relationship was entirely professional. They leased a house of their own when they came to Venice, but we have reports that they go in and out of his house freely at all hours as if they actually live there. It could become quite a scandal.”

  “Maddalena in a scandal?”

  “No, not her. We’re seeing to that. But a priest with an opera singer and her sister—it’s all a bit too much for Venetian tastes, although I’m sure everyone is scrambling to be the first to be shocked by every last detail.”

  Chiaretta pushed her food back and forth on her plate, unable to swallow. Claudio didn’t notice. “Still, I’m afraid Vivaldi will have to go,” he went on. “Not that it will much matter. We’re barely getting a note out of him, with all the commissions he’s getting elsewhere. And maybe he’ll pay a little more attention to the Teatro Sant’Angelo if we fire him from the Pietà.”

  Chiaretta had not been listening. “I know tomorrow is a lesson day and they’re not supposed to have visitors at the Pietà,” she broke in. “But I must see my sister. I need to know if she’s all right. Can it be arranged?”

  Maddalena lay in bed unable to sleep, going over every detail of that afternoon with the horrified detachment of someone waiting for blood to rise in a wound. The woman he’d called Anna had breezed in as if she belonged there. And then the other one had come in and taken over the role that used to belong to Maddalena. She had done it much more skillfully, pulling out this drawer and that little package and ordering servants to go here or there. She had torn open his shirt, and Maddalena had seen for the first time the naked chest of a man. Not just any man, but one into whose heart the events of the day had caused her to see deeply and, in so doing, confront what was hidden in her own.

  It had all the crazy qualities of a dream. Fioruccia raced to the priora’s study almost before the gondola was tied up at the dock, not even waiting for Maddalena to disembark. Maddalena was sure that whatever horror Fioruccia claimed she had suffered was more than offset by her glee at having such a story to tell.

  What’s done is done, Maddalena told herself. I’ll know what to do when I see what happens next. And though as a rule she preferred thinking through problems to praying about them, she crossed herself as she lay in bed. Even if this pushes him forever out of my life, I don’t want to lose the music, she whispered. Just let me have that.

  * * *

  “What happened?” Chiaretta asked, alarmed at the lac k of sleep evident in Maddalena’s face as they sat across from each other in the parlatorio.

  “I don’t know,” Maddalena said. “Two women came in as if they lived there, and the next thing I knew, one of them was pulling out one trick after another to cure him, and the other one was acting like I was guilty of something.”

  “Claudio told me the Congregazione is canceling Vivaldi’s contract and forbidding him to associate with the Pietà ever again.”

  “No! They can’t do that!” Maddalena pushed back her chair and stood up. “No!”

  “Maddalena, do you hear yourself ? You have let that man mistreat you for years. And you’re defending him?” Chiaretta’s tone was so sharp her words seemed to shatter like glass between them.

  “It’s not like that,” Maddalena said. “You don’t know.”

  Chiaretta was too agitated to hear her. “You look horrible. No one believes you could possibly have done anything wrong, but look what he’s done.” She waved her hands in front of her as if dispersing a pestilence creeping into the space between them. “He should never have asked you to come to his house, knowing those women might come around! I’m surprised he hasn’t been denounced long ago. A priest and his talentless little opera singer, and her sister thrown in too?”

  “I’m not defending him. I know it looks bad. But, Chiaretta—” Maddalena gave her a pleading look. “The music!”

  Chiaretta shook her head slowly, glaring at her sister without saying anything more.

  “He was showing me something before she came in,” Maddalena said. “I think it might be the greatest piece of music ever written, if what he played for me...”

  Maddalena was not one to exaggerate. Though Chiaretta wasn’t finished with her scolding, she decided to listen.

  “I want to play that music more than anything I have ever wanted in my life.” She clasped her hands together. “Can you help?”

  Chiaretta hated what she was hearing, but she heard the passion in her sister’s voice. “You know it might be too late,” she said. “I wish there were a way to help you without helping him, but I imagine there isn’t.” She stood and patted down her dress. “I’ll talk to Claudio.”

  * * *

  A few day later Maddalena was called for a private meeting in the priora’s office. “The Congregazione has given a great deal of time to the matter of Maestro Vivaldi,” she told her, “and they asked me to tell you their decision. We wish to maintain control of the first performances of his new work, and he has told us he doesn’t feel he can go forward without knowing if you will be playing the first violin. For that reason we have decided to let you continue to work with him.”

  Maddalena let out the breath she had been holding with such evident relief that she had to struggle not to flinch at the penetrating stare that followed. “You are too attached to him,” the priora said after a minute of silence. “It isn’t seemly.”

  “Priora, put whatever restrictions you wish on my work with him. I don’t want to be embarrassed ei
ther. I just want to play that music.”

  The priora looked down at her desk before looking up at Maddalena again. “You know, my dear, any kind of passion, even passion for music, has the potential to affect your judgment, and the Maestro is clearly now not in a position to protect your reputation.” She leaned forward to look at Maddalena more intently. “You are immensely talented, but perhaps you should hold back more.”

  It isn’t about holding back, Maddalena thought. Music is about surrender.

  The priora moved in closer as if she were letting Maddalena in on a secret. “To open the fall season with such a work will give us an edge over the other ospedali that will last all year. The Congregazione is planning receptions for donors after the concerts, and your sister’s husband has volunteered to sponsor the first performance at his villa this summer. Needless to say, the donations from that will help the coro considerably.”

  She went on. “The Congregazione feels it is better to give the impression there is nothing to any rumors that might circulate, and the best way to do that is to maintain the association with Don Vivaldi, at least for now. But there will be strict rules.”

  The priora went through the list on her fingers. Despite his ailments, Vivaldi would come to Maddalena at the Pietà. Paolina Girò would supply a list of her tinctures, teas, inhalants, and poultices to the hospital administration of the Pietà, who would have them ready in case of a problem. In the event of an attack, Maddalena was to ring a bell for the nurse and leave the room when she arrived. She was not to administer any care herself so as to avoid physical contact. They were to work with a minimum of two chairs’ width between them at all times, in a part of the room that could be viewed by anyone passing in the hall. Even so, a chaperone would sit inside at all times.

  “It is only our faith in your virtue,” the priora said, “that makes this possible. I hope you know how much your contribution is appreciated,” she said, standing up to signal that the conversation was over.

  * * *

  By the middle of June, the Girò sisters and the events of that afternoon had vanished from Maddalena’s mind as she worked to near exhaustion to pull the performance of The Four Seasons together. She had required the figlie to memorize Vivaldi’s sonnets so they would know what they were trying to convey when they played, and sometimes, when her mind would not rest, she recited the poems to herself in the dark, envisioning the spring grass rippling in the breeze, the buzz of gnats and flies in the summer heat, the drunken harvesters and hunted beasts of fall, and the gales and chattering teeth of winter.

  Tonight sleep had again refused to come, despite her exhaustion. “We walk on the ice with slow steps,” she whispered, “watching intently for fear of slipping.” The words were swallowed up by a yawn. “To step hard is to fall, but we go across anyway, until the ice breaks and slides away under our feet.”

  Tomorrow she would have the coro go over the staccato eighth notes that mimicked walking on ice. It had to be just right to set up Vivaldi’s fantastic solo imitating the out-of-control sensation of slipping and falling on the ice, but the figlie had not yet gotten their imaginations involved enough to make it work.

  Though Maddalena still wasn’t satisfied, Vivaldi was pleased by how well the coro was doing. The musicians were better than he remembered, he told her, and she was the best leader of an orchestra he had ever worked with. She accepted the praise, but her heart no longer yearned for it. She had spent time thinking about what love meant at her age, and decided that it played out not in any great burst of passion but in a new and deep fondness for someone she now saw had been both a protector and a friend. And most of all, love made her want to see his music played exactly as he wished.

  The first performance, at Chiaretta’s villa, was a month away, and even the most divinely inspired music still came down to hours and hours of hard work, broken strings, and sore fingers. She rolled over and shut her eyes, and soon drifted off to sleep.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The doors at both ends of the portego of the Morosini family’s summer villa were thrown open to encourage whatever wisps of breeze might find their way into the room. The moisture from the lawns and the waterways had made the July day suffocating, and by the middle of the afternoon it was unpleasant to be either inside or out.

  Chiaretta went out on the front steps to peer up into the sky in hope that a quick thundershower might cool the air before the guests began to arrive. She was carrying a copy of the four sonnets that would accompany the music at that evening’s concert, and she looked down at the one for summer. “Under the heavy season of a stifling sun,” she read, wiping a damp strand of hair from her forehead, “Man and beast languish and the pines are scorched.” Vivaldi had gotten it exactly right.

  She watched as a rowboat tied up at the dock on the canal. Donata jumped out first and ran onto the grass. They were too far away to hear, but Chiaretta saw Besina call out to her, and Donata made a wide turn, her arms flung out like the wings of a bird, and headed back toward her nanny at a run. Meanwhile the manservant who had rowed the boat took Maffeo from Besina’s arms and put him down on the dock. Chiaretta saw her son, now barely four, look at his feet as he adjusted to the unmoving dock beneath them. Then he took off across the grass, catching up with his sister as she pranced the last few yards back to Besina.

  Chiaretta could see that the nanny was reprimanding Donata for running off. She knew her daughter’s every gesture and watched from a distance how she hung her head and moved one toe back and forth as she accepted the scolding. Then Besina said something and Donata took off again, this time encouraging Maffeo to run beside her. Besina followed, catching up as the children stopped to pick flowers from one of the beds along the walkway. A butterfly flew up from one of the bushes, and they all ran after it, close enough now for Chiaretta to hear their laughter.

  Donata stood facing the house as she extended her finger to give the butterfly a place to alight, and Chiaretta stepped behind one of the columns of the porch. If they saw her, they would run to her, and she wanted to watch them awhile longer. Besina was a blessing, young enough to be light in spirit but clear about what liberties could and could not be taken in raising patrician children. Claudio’s mother had not approved of Besina at all, pressuring Chiaretta to hire a sour old nursemaid someone else had recommended. She would know how to raise children properly, Giustina had said, a process that seemed to Chiaretta to be little more than a human version of breaking a horse. People had a role first and a personality second, Giustina believed, and it only caused problems to encourage the second at all. Everyone ends up with a personality anyway, Chiaretta thought. Unfortunately, it’s too often like yours.

  Donata was jumping up to try to put a flower in the dangling hand of one of the statues lining the path to the house. Maffeo lifted his arms for Besina to pick him up so he could do the same. Maffeo was too young to do anything now but chase butterflies, say please and thank you, and be quiet most of the time he was told to. But someday this little boy with the broad and happy face that so resembled his father’s would join the Grand Council, become a member of the Congregazione of the Pietà, bring guests to his box at the Teatro Sant’Angelo, and be in every respect the Venetian nobleman. In every respect, Chiaretta thought, including a life on the side and a gracious acceptance that his wife had one too. Picturing the little boy on the grass growing up to face the disappointments and the tainted pleasures of adulthood was hard and a bit painful, but like everyone else, he would have to do it.

  At seven, Donata was passing through her childhood at a pace that amazed her mother. In a few more years, she would have to decide her destiny. Claudio agreed with Chiaretta that, although Donata’s choices were limited, they were still her own, and if she wanted to marry, she had the right to be taken seriously about who her husband would be. What a lucky woman I am, Chiaretta thought. A strong, good husband and two beautiful children to love.

  And she did love them. Why so many Venetians considered it vulgar
to show too much affection, she didn’t know and didn’t care. She would have nursed her children herself if Giustina and even Claudio had not been so adamant that this was something a Morosini simply could not do. The compromise they reached was that neither child had been sent away to be wet-nursed. Hardly a day had passed since their births that she had not been able to spend time with them, and their proximity gave Claudio the chance to become deeply attached as well. He often marveled, somewhat wistfully, at how different their childhood was than his own had been. To this, Chiaretta always smiled inwardly but said nothing. No one with a mother and father could really understand what having neither was like, even if some parents’ ideas about child rearing did leave something to be desired.

  She watched as Maffeo reached the first step to the house, struggling to clear the height of the stairs. Donata lifted her dress to her thighs and was jumping up the steps, counting each one as she went.

  “Mama!” she said, catching a glimpse of Chiaretta’s dress from behind the pillar where she had been watching. “Why are you hiding?”

  Donata hid behind another pillar, looking out at her mother and giggling. Maffeo ran straight to his mother and grabbed her skirt, looking back at Donata as if he had won a race. Chiaretta bent down to put her arms around him, and he saw her wet face. “Are you sad, Mama?” he asked.

  “No, my love,” she said, wiping her cheeks and giving him a kiss. “Mama is very, very happy.”

  Dark clouds had been gathering, and the first thunder cracked like the sound of a bough falling from a tree. Both children pulled closer to Chiaretta, grabbing at her skirt. Besina hurried them inside, but Chiaretta stayed on the porch to watch the storm.

  A small barge was tying up at the dock. On its deck were two women in bright summer colors and large hats with netting that obscured their faces. As they looked up at the threatening sky, a man in a priest’s frock emerged from the cabin of the barge, his red hair showing under his tricornered hat. Just as he jumped ashore, the sky brightened with a bolt of lightning and rain began to pour down. The women disappeared into the cabin while he scurried through the rain.