The Lover's Path: An Illustrated Novella of Venice

by Kris Waldherr

  My hands trembled as I read:

  Cara Filamena,

  I know this will seem cruel—I beg your forgiveness—but when you received those doves at the villa, I knew what must be done. Think of your doves. Like two doves we have been all these years, sisters alike but sisters separated by years and experiences—experiences I would not wish for you.

  Angelo reminds me of a prince from a tale you and I know too well. Like that prince, he tried to ignore the duty his birth demanded of him: to marry according to his father’s will. You may remember that this prince also loved a woman who sang sweetly as a nightingale. He wooed her with letters and gifts. He vowed to love her forever, and begged her to run away with him.

  I suspect by now you recognize this story, but in case you do not, I will reveal how the story ends. If at first it seems harsh, know that it is the only ending that will free you....

  Now as you read this, I await your beloved in the dark. I will lie silently in his bed as he waits for the nightingale to sing. He will find me. Embrace me. And yes, in time he will know me for who I am, but he will no longer burn for you, for in the dark, one dove is much like another.

  I do not think I need to write more for you to understand, Filamena. I have known that deception many call love. I would protect you from it, even sacrifice myself if necessary.

  I know this will cause you pain. But it is the smart of a gnat rather then the wound of a knife. And I have known both.

  —Tullia.

  I rushed out of my room, my only thought to stop Tullia before it was too late. In her chambers, her trunks rested unopened. I ran to the hallway, where her bright red cloak still rested on its hook. However, my brown one was missing.

  Moisture glazed my vision as I climbed into the musician’s gallery to look down into the great hall, hoping for my sister to still be there. The hall was empty, though it was lit by candlelight as if in anticipation of company.

  She was gone.

  I sobbed as I sank to the floor of the gallery, unable to do more than wait for her return.

  It wasn’t until the sky had lightened into the azure preceding dawn that I heard a door open in the great hall below. I pulled myself up to peer down from my perch in the musician’s gallery.

  Tullia was alone. She was wearing my cloak, the brown hood covering her light hair, just as her red one had covered mine that evening of La Sensa when I’d first met Angelo. I watched in silence as she pushed the hood back, revealing her face. Her expression was unreadable. She walked about the room, dousing several candles on the large marble-topped table, where the feast had been displayed that evening months earlier. Now only her lute and some sheets of music lay scattered on the surface.

  Suddenly she uttered, “I know you’re up there.” Her voice grew louder. “Yes, you, Filamena. It’s too late. Your Angelo won’t be waiting for you.”

  I gave up any pretense of spying.

  “Liar!” I cried down to her, leaning over the railing edging the musician’s gallery. “Tell me you did not go to him!”

  Tullia draped herself in a chair, graceful even then. “I had hoped the summer away would cure you of your infatuation.”

  “You didn’t answer me,” I shouted, tears stinging my eyes. “You couldn’t be that cruel.”

  She sighed. “It’s enough for you to know I did what was best for you. This may be difficult for you now, but you will understand in time.” Her words were slow and considered, like honey poured into an expensive glass bowl.

  “Give me my letters! He’ll be there. I know he will!”

  She shook her head. “He won’t. He doesn’t love you. He told me as much. Believe me, he’s no different from any other man. I should know.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I sobbed. “Tell me you you’re lying. That you wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  Tullia’s voice rose. “Listen to me. Let me explain—”

  “Why should I? Are you going to tell me another fiaba, like the one in your letter?” I wanted to be as sharp as the knife she’d invoked in her letter, but my voice broke.

  “Which do you prefer? Fiaba or truth?” Tullia folded her arms. “By your silence, I assume you’d like another fiaba. Fine. Once upon a time there were two sisters as close as doves, one with a lute, the other who sang—”

  “A story full of lies!” I interrupted. “You should tell a story about a whore instead.”

  For a moment, Tullia said nothing, her figure below me as still as ice. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible.

  “Would you like the truth instead? It’s the same as the fiaba, but without the pretty language.”

  Something in my sister’s voice silenced me. I wanted to leave, yet I couldn’t. It was as if her words contained a poison stilling my limbs.

  Despite myself, I waited for her to speak.

  She began, her tone a flat shadow. “We did not always live here in this palazzo on the sea. Year ago, before you were born, I lived in another city—Florence—with my widowed mother. We were poor but honorable. When I was thirteen, my mother decided to ask her friend, a lady of great social rank, to sponsor me so I could be brought into society. It was my mother’s hope that, despite our lack of coin, my breeding would lead to a good marriage. Her friend arranged for me to receive music lessons, tutoring, gowns. Because of my beauty, I was quickly noticed and, simple girl that I was, I adored the attention. I soon even believed myself in love with my lute teacher. But my mother was so watchful, there was nothing I could do. She would not see all her ambitions for me squandered on a mere musician.”

  At this I thought I saw the ghost of a bitter smile cross my sister’s lips, but in the dimness of candlelight, I couldn’t be sure.

  Tullia continued. “My mother’s friend introduced me to her cousin, a nobleman with a charming manner but the reputation of a roué. Both were so sophisticated, so interested in me.... Flattered by their attentions, I confided in them. Together they helped me plan to run away with my lute teacher. ‘True love must never be denied,’ they whispered. But somehow my mother discovered my plan. She sent me away to the country with her friend—”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore.” I closed my eyes, filled with sudden foreboding. “Just give me my letters so I can leave.”

  "Wait. Listen,” Tullia insisted, her tone calm. “Without my mother to protect me, I was like a mouse among snakes. Despite everything that had happened, this friend encouraged me, as did the nobleman. ‘You can write your teacher a letter—we will send it to him for you,’ they promised. And they gave me advice on how to describe my love, how to phrase the letter—all the things my mother never taught me.

  “One evening, when I was lying in bed writing my nightly letter to my beloved, I heard a knock at my door. It was the nobleman. ‘I heard you needed assistance with your letter,’ he said. I eagerly agreed for I trusted him....”

  I opened my eyes. Tulia turned her face from my stare. “Filamena, I will not tell you the details, but imagine a girl of thirteen—innocent, unworldly. This was how I was when that man seduced me. When I told my mother’s friend, she claimed not to believe me—after all, he was nobility and I was no one. Nor would my mother, who disowned me. My beloved lute teacher refused to see me. Only Caterina remained loyal. Then some weeks later I discovered I was with child....”

  A candle flame sizzled, then died. The room was nearly dark, with only two candles left—one for her and one for me. I wanted to leave. Yet I remained, my gaze fixed on Tullia’s glittering hair in the shadows.

  “That child I carried was you, Filamena.”

  I watched Tullia’s lips shape these words, but I did not understand them. I looked at her face so much like mine, but I didn’t not recognize her. I grew dizzy. My hands grabbed the walls for support.

  “You’re not my mother. I’ve seen our mother, you gave me her portrait—”

  “Yes, you’ve seen your mother in that portrait,” she interrupted. “That portrait is of me, painted when I
was thirteen.”

  “You tell me this to confuse me. To control me, just as you always have—”

  “I seek only to protect you as I should have been protected.”

  I was silent for several moments, unable to think. When I finally spoke, my voice sounded distant to me. “Who is my father then?” Tullia’s hands lay clasped on her lap, as if awaiting judgment. “Sorrow shared is sorrow multiplied. All that matters is you have a mother who dearly loves you.”

  “And this is how you show your love to me?” I asked, my words breaking. “By seducing the man I love?”

  Tullia’s voice grew stronger, sharper. “As your mother, I wanted you to live as an independent woman—not as the lover of a man who can never marry you, not as the wife of one who would own your soul, nor as the illegitimate daughter of a courtesan, or even as a virtuosa shunned by society. You can’t create this life. No woman can. Only money can purchase it. If you had been patient, I would have given it to you, Filamena.”

  Szzzzzzz. One candle left.

  Tullia gazed toward me, as if waiting for a response. When none came, she stood up and reached into the pocket of my brown cloak to pull out a sheaf of papers tied with a green ribbon. She tossed them next to her lute on the table.

  She took the final candle and left the room.

  I did not hesitate. I went down into the darkness and took Angelo’s letters back. Yet it took some time for me to find my way back to my room; I felt as though the sea had turned to stone, the sky to fire.

  Dolce waited in my room next to the doves’ cage, a coil of hungry intent. I ignored the cat’s harsh yowl as I shoved her away with my foot, and opened the door to the cage. The doves were a pale blur of feathers as they flew out the window into the night. Then I took the small portrait Tullia had given me—the one she’d claimed was of our mother—and smashed it hard against the wall. Yet it wouldn’t shatter, as if its desire to exist was stronger than my need to destroy.

  In the hallway, my brown cloak awaited me next to Tullia’s red silk one in their usual places. As soon as I saw those two cloaks hanging there, I knew what I must do. Just as when I had first met Angelo, I gathered her red cloak from the hook. I wrapped it around me, tilting the hood deep over my face.

  I left the palazzo without looking back.

  I AM AWAKENED BY MY BELOVED’S HAND.

  Psyche’s beauty won her admiration of many men and women. It also won her the jealousy of Venus, the goddess of love. When it was time for Psyche to wed, Venus decreed that no mortal man would be her spouse; instead, Psyche would be abandoned on a cliff where a monster would take her life. However, Venus’s son Cupid loved Psyche beyond all others, mortal or divine. In defiance of his mother, he rescued Psyche from her cliffside perch, flying with her over the sea to a distant island. There, far from Venus’s vengeful reach, Cupid embraced Psyche as his secret bride.

  Imagine a nightingale who had never left her gilded cage, a girl who had never ventured into the world alone; a woman who had just lost all she believed to be true about those closest and dearest to her. As I ran into the night, dressed in that red cloak with only Angelo’s book and letters to guide me, I was this woman, my dear Patroness.

  Tullia’s cloak felt heavy and strange against my body. Stripped of the naïve ambition that had imbued its folds the first time I wore it, the cloak now only reminded me of its owner. I tried not to think of Tullia, of what she had just told me. I resolutely ignored her claim Angelo no longer loved me. I clung only to the hope that he would be waiting for me. I had no other choice.

  Using the map of Venice Angelo had sent in his last letter, I hurried through narrow labyrinthine streets, over bridges, and along canals fetid with late summer. Everything seemed intensely vivid even in the misty shadows of early morning. The sound of the sea mingled with my shallow breath. My shoes clipped a hollow rhythm. Once or twice I imagined footsteps behind me. Feverishly, I considered if they belonged to Tullia.

  I walked faster still, ignoring the tears flooding my vision.

  Just as Angelo’s letter had promised, the gondola bearing his family’s crest waited at the edge of the piazza beyond the bell tower. His servant, an older man draped in dark robes, did not hesitate at the sight of my sister’s infamous red cloak. I refused to consider the implications of what this might mean.

  I settled into the purple silk cushions inside the gondola. Overcome by exhaustion, I dozed off to rhythmic splashing as it sliced through the sea. I have no idea how long I slept before I was startled awake by a bird’s cry.

  I pulled myself up. Looming before me in the distance, I spotted the outlines of an island. It looked verdant, uninhabited. Otherworldly in the golden light of dawn. I blinked and stretched, feeling as though my life in Venice had been a discordant dream.

  Once we docked, Angelo’s servant helped me rise from the gondola. As I stepped onto the coarse dark sand, my feet tangled in the length of Tullia’s cloak. I stumbled and fell, my palms scraping against a sharp rock. I rinsed my hands in the sea, my blood a thin seam of diluted rust. I dried them on the red silk, where the stain would not show.

  Angelo would be there, I told myself. He had to be.

  The servant left me alone on the shore, departing in the gondola. As I looked about me, all I saw was wildness—a tangle of sea lavender, straw-colored beach grass, goldenrod, and yarrow, surrounded by rows of overgrown fig and apple trees heavy with fruit. Maddened by the sweetness, a colony of bees buzzed in concert about the coiling leaves, while black jackdaws and cream-colored gulls gazed down from upper boughs. Beyond this stood a neglected villa, surrounded by a grove of pine trees twisted from years of steady wind.

  I did not see Angelo.

  The door to the villa opened without protest at my touch. Inside, the entry hall was dark, the windows’ milk-colored glass streaked with mud. My step was hesitant. Fearful. I couldn’t bring myself to call for Angelo, as if my silence would assure his loyalty to me.

  One room led to another, each filled with furniture draped in white dust clothes, like unending drifts of snow. Yet all this I hardly noticed as I wove from room to room, searching for my beloved.

  Holding back tears, I climbed a wide marble staircase. Once upstairs, I treaded softly from one chamber to another. One room was empty save for three solid walls of mirrors. Confronted by numerous reflections in their tall cold depths, I did not recognize myself at first—my face looked strange and pale against the deep red silk of Tullia’s cloak, my eyes swollen and dark.

  Outside the mirrored room, a long hallway led to more empty chambers, each vacant of life. I opened a door onto a room filled with trunks. A library where books were piled in disarray, like precarious towers of words. A women’s room with a loom and cradle. Several bedchambers, inert with abandonment.

  At last, I came to what I took to be Angelo’s private room. Books of poetry and sheets of paper covered a table. The pages were lined with his familiar scrawl. Where was he?

  Desperate for the kiss of sun and air, I opened the shuttered windows. A nest of starlings, their nest set close to the window, warbled in surprise. The cool morning light flooded in, revealing fine bedclothes embroidered with flowers and thorns on a rumpled bed—linens worthy of the aspirations of the finest courtesan, the passion of the wealthiest nobleman.

  My chest constricted. He wasn’t there. Worst of all, I sensed her—that lingering stench of lilies....

  Soft footsteps sounded behind me. I turned, my stomach twisting with a terror I’d never felt before.

  “My nightingale,” Angelo said, his voice rough with exhaustion. “I’ve been waiting for you all night.”

  With a cry of relief, I embraced him. The hood fell back from my eyes, sunlight pouring on my face like a benediction. Tullia’s red cloak slid from my shoulders to the floor. And once again, I saw the lover’s path revealed, just as Angelo’s book had described it.

  In the weeks we were apart, I’d forgotten so many details of his form—the curl at his t
emple that wouldn’t be tamed, the dimple in the center of his stubborn chin, the dark intensity of his eyes. I ran my fingers over his face as if burning his features into my soul. Grabbing hold of my hands, he noticed the wounds on my palms, and kissed each in turn. His skin exuded the summery fragrance of oranges.

  I met his eyes. I heard the starlings grow silent, inhaled the scent of salt and ripe damp from outside. A cloud passed over the sun, suddenly painting the room in shadows; a moment later, it began to rain.

  He unbraided my hair. I closed my eyes. The only sound was the singe of rain, the hollow thud of fruit falling under its relentless force.

  Sometimes the language of desire is better served by absence, my dearest Patroness. All I will write is that there, in that abandoned villa far from anyone who might harm us, Angelo and I were finally joined upon the lover’s path. We gave way to so much more than I can find words for—passion, love, anger, grief, hope—all things which cannot be owned by description, cannot be relived by naming.

  Perhaps time has gilded the nature of my memories, but the images I now hold of him are of some bright pure creature—a fiery angel, if you will. I can still see his tawny hand grasping my pale one as he lay with me. My light hair entwined with his dark. I remember how serene he looked as he fell asleep beside me. How blissful and protected I felt, his arms encircling mine as I gazed out the window onto the endless sea.

  But I will write no more of this now. To dwell upon our coupling is to increase a longing too great to bear.

  By nightfall the rain had stopped. The following morning Angelo and I woke together for the first time. The world seemed so different to me, brilliant and crisp—everything familiar yet uncharted and brave.

  “This is a dream,” I whispered, staring into his drowsy eyes. “I will awaken soon.”