Hidden Voices

by Pat Lowery Collins

  It has also been reported that a few of the youngest commun girls are affected as well. The nurses are in a frenzy of trying to isolate the infected ones as soon as they contract this peculiar throat malady that turns them scarlet. Rosalba and Silvia have been sent to the apothecary in the Piazza San Marco for certain herbs and medicinals to reduce swollen throat membranes. (Rosalba because she can be trusted to complete the transaction; Silvia, I believe, to keep her weak eyes upon Rosalba.) It is unusual for any of us to be sent on such a mission outside the school and Ospedale. But because of so many falling ill at once, no nurse or teacher can be spared for this errand. My help has been requested in the nursery to care for the little ones, who know nothing of the current crisis and whose demands are constant. May Jesus and His Dear Mother keep them from harm. I pray frequently to Saint Blaze over their small throats and can’t help wondering if Luisa’s throat was blessed on his name day, as it should have been. Why wasn’t she more careful of her wonderful instrument? The touch of arrogance that others detect in her is undeniably present. But I have always felt she has a right to it. She must be cautioned, however, not to take her talent for granted. I do wish that I could be allowed to comfort her, to wipe her brow and cool her fever. I am so strong that there would be nothing for me to fear, but Prioress has decreed otherwise.

  Concerta is sleeping so soundly that I don’t dare pick her up to enhearten myself. Her dark birth hair has already been replaced by golden fuzz, and her dark eyes, when she is awake, have many tiny blue specks that have begun to merge. Signora Mandano says we will not know their true color until she has attained six months or so. I hope they are as blue as Our Lady’s mantle. To my way of thinking, there are too many dark eyes among us.

  “I must tell you,” says Signora, “that we had thought to send Concerta to a wet nurse in the countryside. But with this sudden throat malady afflicting so many, the doctor has decided any move of the children would be unwise.”

  “She will remain here, then,” I say so joyfully, the lady steps back as if I had tried to embrace her. It is such welcome news, I become almost giddy.

  Someone has given the toddlers some cardboard soldiers painted in bright colors, and the little boys are singing pretty tunes and making the soldiers dance. I think the girls would sooner have dolls, but there are but two of these, beautifully dressed and kept on a shelf. Their glass eyes stare straight into space as if the dolls are bored to their petticoats.

  I wind up the mechanical monkey, and it stutters across the floor right into the children’s game, causing giggles and squeals of delight. Again and again I wind up the toy, and the frantic tykes run around the room as if pursued by a dragon.

  “What are you doing!” says Signora Mandano when she comes upon us. “The children are much too excited. Just look at all that high color in their cheeks.”

  She flutters around them like a distraught hen and cautions me to settle everyone down again immediately, as if that can be easily done. To make things even worse, one of the infants begins to cry. Since I don’t want to be banished from the nursery on any account, I quickly make a very serious face and hide the monkey under some pillows. Francesco and Carlotta begin to cry, as I was sure they would, but I wipe their faces, blow their noses, and promise raisins with their afternoon snack.

  “It is time for their nap,” says Signora — more sternly than necessary, I think. “And it must be time for your afternoon classes as well.”

  “But who will help you? Who will bathe Concerta when she wakes up?”

  “The wet nurse will do it. She’s due here at any time and might as well make herself useful for once. Field cows. That is all those women are.”

  I think how, though they are somewhat indolent, it wouldn’t be such a bad occupation, really, always dressed in a loose chemise de couche and putting a babe to the breast throughout the day. For the most part, they seem such contented, comforting women. Without them our orphans would surely starve.

  I hate to leave before Concerta opens her eyes. I do want sometimes to be the first thing she sees, so she’ll feel that she has always known me. But today I don’t argue. I am already late for a history lesson I was hoping to miss with the very good excuse that I was badly needed in the nursery.

  All the way down the side stairs, I can hear the sweet chatter and cries of the babies, but they cease as soon as I close the heavy door onto the narrow Calle della Pietà. I am pulling on the handle of the equally heavy door into the chapel and school when I happen to glance toward the lagoon where a woman with a black zendaletta over her head is flirting outrageously with one of the gondoliers, swishing an edge of black lace back and forth across her eyes with the same rhythm as she swishes her hips.

  At the exact moment my vision stops at the sight of a skirt, blue as the watteaus we wear every day, Silvia bursts into the street from around the corner, her pinched face purple as a Lenten vestment.

  “What is she thinking?” she mumbles to herself. Then, seeing me, her voice becomes strident. “Has she gone mad?”

  “Who?” I ask, guessing the answer but not certain I want to know.

  “Rosalba, of course. Who else pastes her gaze to every doublet and pair of breeches that passes along the Riva degli Schiavoni?”

  “Rosalba!” I exclaim. When I look more closely I don’t want to believe my eyes but am unable to pull them away. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am sure. Who else would ask me to play her lady’s maid? ‘A little fun,’ she said, ‘a little entertainment.’ Entertainment for her, perhaps. If she continues to move her hips in that way, she will wriggle herself into the lagoon.”

  “You must tell her to stop,” I say.

  “I have. She is suddenly as deaf as the mast of a ship. Why don’t you cross to the boat dock and tell her yourself?”

  “You were sent to make sure she returned . . . undefiled.” I’m not sure what I’m saying when using a word we’ve been warned with before. But I know that Rosalba must come back at once or risk being sent someplace else. I don’t know where. It has happened before, but not to anyone that I have known. Or liked so much. Or trusted to be on my side and to tell me the truth of things.

  THEY THINK I DON’T SEE them there, wringing their hands and trying to get my attention by whistles and coughs. They are bobbing their heads up and down like two pigeons over their brood.

  “Yes, I have noticed you before, Signore. On my many trips to the Piazza San Marco.” I hold the edges of the zendaletta over my face so he will not recognize the silly girl who has been posing for him by the doorway to the street. “Your singing is always the . . . loudest and most . . . entertaining.” I don’t dare tell the truth — that his notes are quite flat a good deal of the time.

  “Ah, Signorina,” he cajoles, peering closely at me. I made sure that my rosy bosom is well exposed above the sheer fichu of my bodice, and am pleased to see that it catches his eye and keeps it for quite a time. How deliciously close he seems, one hand on the oar but the other one poised to encircle my waist, I am sure — if it wasn’t for all of the hisses and fuss from those two at the corner of the Ospedale.

  “Rosalba,” Anetta shouts at last. I turn very slowly and stare at her as if she is deranged, which I feel she must be to create such a scene.

  “Do you know those two?” asks Giuseppe, who offered his name at the start, though I didn’t tell mine. “And are you Rosalba? Is that what they call you?”

  “Those girls are mistaken,” I say. “They have me confused with somebody else.”

  “Rosalba,” he says. “What a beautiful name.”

  “I suppose that it is, Signore, but it isn’t my own.”

  He laughs. “So you tell me. And are you perhaps from the Pietà?”

  “What a ridiculous conclusion,” I say with abandon, still attempting to appear gay and reckless. And I would have succeeded, I’m certain, if Anetta hadn’t suddenly stridden across to the dock and barrelled between us.

  “Arrivederci, Signo
re,” she calls to Giuseppe, waving one hand at him and pulling me away with the other.

  Embarrassed in the extreme, I hide behind my veil, turn very quickly, and scurry after her like a disobedient child, hoping he will at least not know this face the next time we meet. Silvia is waiting to pull me through the door, and they both chatter away in the entry and rail at me as if I have committed some high crime.

  “You spoiled everything!” I shriek. “His gondola was empty. He would have allowed me inside.”

  “Exactly,” says Silvia. “Right before you lifted your skirts and allowed him the same.”

  “Ohh,” I wail in an agony of frustration. “How can you believe such a thing! That was simply my best hope of finding a place for my plan to unfold.”

  “And for whatever else to unfold that you did not plan. It would have come to no good,” says Silvia.

  “As if you can even imagine the good it would come to.”

  “Enough of this,” says Anetta. “Signora Mandano is in a state wondering what has become of the two of you. Where are the medicines?”

  “Here,” says Silvia, producing a fat parcel from under her cloak. “I snatched them away from Rosalba the minute I saw her sashay to the water’s edge. So much for her responsible nature. Ha! I can tell by the look in her eyes that she never missed them until now.”

  “I knew you had them, you simpering fool,” I tell her. “Of course I knew that you did.”

  Sweet Anetta is aghast. “Don’t you realize, Rosalba, that he who calls his brother . . . or sister . . . a fool shall be ‘liable to the fires of Gehenna’?”

  “A very good place for such a busybody,” I say, and rush up the stairs to our chamber just as Signora Mandano comes fluttering down the hallway in some sort of tizzy.

  There is no one about in the sleeping quarters so late in the day, and I can open my clothes trunk and look through my things unobserved. At the foot of each cot is a large chest with plenty of space to hide my new zendaletta and shiny little patch box. (Silvia threw such a fit when I stopped at the milliner’s to purchase them. The shop is so near the apothecary that I can’t see why she objected.) I fold the zendaletta and place it beneath the lovely red velvet girdle I was able to purchase one day from a street merchant who sells used clothing. I simply called from the doorway, and he came running over. It is only a little ripped in one place. I take out the tiny gold serpent and chain I found in the alley, wrap it in my kerchief, and put all my clean undergarments and my quilted wool petticoat on top of my treasures. If anyone snoops, and there isn’t much time around here for that, it is unlikely they’ll dig all the way to the bottom. Though we are given our clothing, the dresses that are so alike, each one of us has managed to collect a few special things that we rarely wear, but bring out from time to time to simply look at and put back in place.

  After what happened this afternoon, I will have to be on my best behavior for the rest of the week. When I turn up in my place at rehearsal, Father does not scold me quite as much as I had expected, but he does say, “Rosalba,” rather gravely, I think. Then he continues: “You have mentioned before your desire to play professionally after your time here with us. I think you’re surely capable enough to do that.”

  “Oh, thank you, Father,” I say. How congenial of him!

  But unfortunately he isn’t finished.

  “Capable enough, to be sure, but not disciplined enough. You do know what I’m telling you?”

  “I . . . think so, Father. But it will be different when I am out there”— I gesture at no place in particular —“on my own.”

  “Yes, it will be different. No one to urge you along, to provide your clothing and food. No kindly violin-maker to tell you when you need improvement or to help with a difficult passage.” He smiles to himself. “To polish your instrument when you have left it bumping around in my shop like a raw piece of wood.”

  “And you won’t be able to play in Venice. It isn’t allowed for the students who leave here,” says Anna Maria, as if I had asked her advice.

  “That cannot be true!” I exclaim.

  “Oh, yes, it is true,” says Father. “And if, heaven bless you, you decide to take the veil, it will have to be in a true convent in some other part of Italy.”

  “Who decided this and why?”

  “The Board of Governors. And only heaven knows why,” says Father.

  I am so overcome that I stand up and shake my finger at him before I can stop myself. As he is a priest, it is probably some kind of sacrilege. But he doesn’t seem angry at all when I do it or even when I say, “Are we to be prisoners here for the rest of our lives?”

  “Your prison,” he says, “is a great deal more spacious than my little home, which I share with five brothers still, and our father and mother.”

  “But you come and go as you please.”

  He strokes his beardless chin. “Hmm. As I please. And so may you when the time comes. But the Ospedale will not want you to compete with the talented musicians that you leave behind.”

  “Or haunt our halls in a habit and wimple,” says Silvia. “Just what kind of veil were you thinking of for Rosalba, Father?”

  “It could happen,” says Anetta. “One never knows.”

  “Oh, one does,” says Silvia.

  And for once she is right.

  There is a new little iniziata today, very thin and frail with fine yellow hair. She begins to pass out the corrected scores, but not before Father puts out an arm to stop her for a moment and tell us her name.

  “This child is Catina,” he says. “We have much in common.”

  She laughs weakly and looks at him shyly from under long lashes. Does she play the violin, too? Many of us play the violin.

  “We have a common foe,” he says, “from which we must protect each other, eh, Catina?”

  What can he possibly mean?

  The other little iniziate are red-eyed and stumbling about this morning. They trip over each other and hand out violin scores to the viola section and oboe scores to the cellos. Their yawns cause a mild epidemic of slack, gaping jaws.

  “If I had not tucked you in myself,” says Father Vivaldi, “I would be certain you had missed a good night’s sleep.”

  “It was Catina,” says Angelina. “She kept us up with spooky stories.” She whispers the rest of her tattle behind one hand as the others squeal with laughter. “Margaretta and Antonia wet their drawers. Elena got such a case of hiccups that Catina had to give her honey, which I think she stole from the kitchen, and then made her hold her breath until she almost exploded.”

  “You promised not to tell,” wails Margaretta.

  “Where did you get the honey?” I ask Catina.

  “From Cook for when I have a coughing fit.”

  She turns to Father. “The stories were indeed very scary, Signore.” She puffs up proudly. “My best tales yet, I do assure you.”

  “Well, there will be no such tales tonight,” he cautions her with gentle brusqueness. “You need your rest as much or more than anyone, and I need helpers who are wide awake.

  “Indeed,” he says again, while looking deep into her oval eyes, transparent as glass, as if to find an answer for them both. “We must protect each other, you and I.”

  IT HAS BEEN DAYS since Luisa was sent to the infirmary, and her absence from my life causes that same bereft feeling as when something valuable has been lost and no one will help you look for it. There is but little news about those taken sick, and certain of the younger girls, afflicted before Luisa, have not yet returned.

  The older girls among the privilegiate del coro, except for Luisa and Maria, have remained well and are relieved to have a chance at solo parts that would in normal times not have come to them. They must, of course, know how poorly they perform if one allows comparisons. I think the audiences, too, must be quite disappointed, although when I have put forth such sentiments, Rosalba and Anna Maria have roundly disagreed with me.

  “Your judgment has been colore
d by your great affection for Luisa,” said Rosalba when I complained after the last concert about the unevenness of vocal tone.

  “Truly,” added Silvia, “it is a relief to be spared Luisa’s ragged diction and deliberate phrasing.”

  “As if you’d know the remedy for either one,” I countered, and with great restraint did not repeat what is very well known — that Silvia has at least one ear made of tin.

  One night when sleep will not come and I am desperate for news of Luisa, I slip quietly from our chamber and creep up a flight of stairs and into the corridor leading to the hospital door, passing no one on the way. It is very late, but there will surely be a night nurse in attendance, perhaps one who is more forthcoming with information than those I have encountered during the day.

  Candles burn within sconces on either side of the double doors, casting their light all the way to the stairs. Afraid to learn what is inside, I stand in front of the doors for a very long time, even reluctant to touch the knob or knock. When I do knock softly, there is no response, so I rap a little harder. At no response again, I rap harder still. The door suddenly springs open, and I lurch with ready knuckles into the same surly nurse who sent me away during the day. The stench of puke, fevered bodies, and strange medicinals makes me stagger.

  “Not you again,” she says, holding me from her. “Such a big oaf of a girl,” she declares. “What business can you possibly have here in the dead of night?” She slaps a hand against my head. “Not sick yourself, are you?”

  “I’ve come to find out about Luisa Benedetto. How is she faring? When will she be released? Will she be well in time for Carnival?”