Hidden Voices

by Pat Lowery Collins

  “You shouldn’t be in here at all,” she says, grabbing my arm and shoving me back through the door until I lose my balance and must hang upon her like a giant leech.

  “For heaven’s sake! Get off me, girl,” she says, shaking me from her.

  “But I must be told something,” I wail. “I am sick with worry.”

  “As you should be,” she says, softening enough to let me regain my balance at least. “Her fever is still climbing. This peculiar malady makes the older girls much sicker than the young ones.”

  “What of Maria?”

  “The young lady who was to be married?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  She pauses such a long time, it’s almost as if she wants to tell me something with the words that are unspoken. Finally, she looks directly in my eyes and says, “I have no news for you on that one. Please leave now. You shouldn’t ask about these things.”

  My heart thumps into my stomach. But it’s clear she will not divulge a bit of information about Maria, even as I feel certain I sense the truth.

  “You don’t understand. I must at least be told about Luisa. Luisa is my dearest friend. If you would let me, I could care for her. I’d help you with the others, too. I have proven myself very useful in the nursery.”

  “The best that you can do for her is stay away. Go toot upon your horn or whatever it is you are good at. You are not needed here.”

  In a sudden frenzy, she pushes me with all the strength in her bulbous shoulders and two rough hands and slams the door behind me.

  I’m much too wide awake and worried to return to sleep, but there is nowhere else to go but to my bed, the blankets now as cold as wash upon a line in winter. The other girls sleep deeply, so tired out from last night’s rehearsal that they have not heard me leave or return. Luisa’s chamber pot is empty, her bed undisturbed. Just before dawn, I climb beneath her flannel coverlet, which contains her skin’s sweet peppery scent. I tuck it securely around me, pull it up over my face, breathe deeply, and am able at last to doze.

  EVERYTHING IS SNAPPING INTO VIEW after what seemed like days of fuzzy dreams and floating voices. How long have my eyes been wide open this way? There are many more beds than when I arrived, and nurses are squeezing between them to tend to moaning and feverish patients.

  “You’re awake at last, I see,” says a large nurse, whom I’ve heard called Sofia, on her way to another patient with a compress of some kind. When she uncovers the girl’s chest, it is bright pink. I look down at my own to see the same color spreading over my trunk and onto my arms like a cascade of tiny strawberries. Another nurse puts a hand to my forehead and smiles, exposing a number of missing and broken teeth.

  “Your fever’s down, praise God, bambina,” she says, the words whistling softly over me. “You have much buona fortuna.”

  “What day is it?” I ask. My words sputter out the rough track of my throat, which is still unbelievably sore.

  “Why, it’s Friday at last. The end of another terrible week!” She clasps one hand with another. “Of course you wouldn’t know about it. You’ve slept it away.”

  “The concert,” I say, but can’t finish the thought.

  “No need to be thinking of that. While you’ve been here, more than one concert has gone on as planned with the girls who are well. Except for you and one other, it’s only the youngest ones who’ve taken sick.”

  “Has my mother been told? Does she know where I am?”

  She looks at me strangely, winks at another nurse, then touches my forehead again.

  “The delirium should be long past. What’s this talk of a mother?”

  “My mother. Sabina Dolores Cincotta,” I tell her as loudly and deliberately as my voice will allow. “She must be told I am sick.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying. This is an orphanage. All the patients are orphans.”

  How can I convince her? I am so weak that I burst into tears.

  “Signora Mandano knows my beautiful mother. She must find her and tell her,” I repeat. “My mother needs to know I have been ill.”

  “There, there, Signorina. Don’t excite yourself. Didn’t we all have a mother once?”

  “My father is a duke. His name is in the Golden Book.”

  “But of course. Every duke worth his salt leaves a bastard or two at our door.”

  “You must send a message. She lives near the Rialto Bridge on Calle del Carbon. It isn’t very far.”

  “Yes, my darling,” she says, pulling the blanket up to my chin. From the brusque way she does it, I can tell she has no plans at all to do as I ask and thinks that the fever has taken hold again. Though I’m too exhausted to even lift my head, when another nurse passes between the beds by the window, I call out to her.

  “Please, Signora. Will someone please make sure my mother is told I have this malattia?”

  Her smile is as vacant as that of Sofia. “Of course, bambina. Immediatamente.”

  If only I could scream or lift my body somehow from this narrow bed. If I could just jump up and run or fly. If I could even sing, it might make them listen and be convinced that I’m not afflicted in the head.

  Instead I sink back onto my cot and slip into sleep once again, waking only when I’m propped on a nurse’s arm and a spoon is thrust between my teeth or when there is some commotion in the room. Once, late at night, I wakened for a time to stare blind-eyed at the greenish shadows and shapes, which, as I watched, became a child being wrapped in linen, head to toe, and taken from the room on a litter. The silent, solemn movements made me certain that she would not be returning to this life, and I lay awake for a long time afterward, terribly saddened yet very aware of my own body’s juices and rhythms building again, struggling to assert themselves.

  Days, I believe, pass in sleeping and waking. Finally it seems I am waking for much longer periods, eager to drink the potions and other beverages offered to me, even taking small bites of the millet porridge I would ordinarily shun. There are fewer beds in the room, and some are empty. No patient is groaning or seems to be in a crisis. My skin itches, and long strips of it are peeling from my hands and feet.

  “Don’t worry,” says Sofia. “That is the last stage of this strange canker rash. It means you are surely on the mend.”

  I would like to tell her that it feels as if I am breaking into little pieces instead, but I know she will not understand.

  The door opens suddenly, and a nurse I don’t remember seeing before fills the opening. She cradles a small figure whose hair drapes from her limp head like a damp yellow kerchief. The child’s eyes are closed, but she wheezes and gasps in her fevered sleep. As she passes my bed, I look at the troubled features and am startled to find that I know this patient, that it is Catina, the confident little girl who did her best many days ago to

  console me in the infirmary. How wrong she had been then about this throat disorder. How very sad that such a frail child is now its victim, for many stronger than she have succumbed to its fearful hold. That I have escaped death is perhaps a miracle. When I am no longer so terribly weak, I must study why I have been spared and what it can mean.

  I HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD, showing up for almost every rehearsal and trying hard not to anger Maestro Gasparini or Father Vivaldi by not being prepared. It has been most difficult without Luisa and Maria. I myself have had to sing the contralto solo on more than one occasion, and now that Father is planning a grand biblical performance of his first oratorio, Moyses Deus Pharaonis, I simply don’t know how he will fill all the difficult roles.

  Today we were told that Maria has left us, and not for a husband. She has, in truth, left this world entirely in the throes of the terrible illness that has claimed some of the younger girls. I did not know her well, so it is not a great personal loss, but there is always deep sadness on hearing that someone has died whose life had not really begun.

  Apparently Luisa is improving, praise God, but they say it will be a long recuperation. There is even talk of
sending her to the country in the spring to the same Tuscan farm where other students have gone to recuperate after illnesses not nearly as severe.

  Anetta is pining to see her and writes long letters of consolation, never receiving any in return. Poor Anetta seems thinner and gaunt, as if she has been ill herself. I think only the sight of Luisa, restored to health, will make her well again.

  There is such a pall over everything, one would hardly suspect that Carnival begins in only three days and we celebrate Christmas in two. It is rumored that the Board of Governors will want the Ospedale to ignore Carnival this year. Would such a decision apply to all of us? I wonder. I have been preparing for this grand pre-Lenten celebration since last year, when I first spied the wig-maker’s assistant. In fact, I’ve been working secretly on a magnificent mask made out of all the dusky blue pigeon feathers I’ve been able to find in the street and the square. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to capture the beautiful iridescence that can be seen when massed on the bird. No matter. The mask will still be like no other. And I am so very ready to meet my own dearest love. Another year’s wait would seem endless.

  Just before supper, I have sequestered myself in the little storage room outside the kitchen to work on my mask and am surprised when Anetta comes by with the porridge bowls from the nursery. She stops when she sees me, clearly upset at discovering what I am up to.

  “For the love of Our Dearest Lord, Rosalba. You didn’t kill that bird, did you? Father Vivaldi will have an attack!”

  She is so serious, I cannot help laughing.

  “What bird, Anetta? Do you see a plucked and limp little body somewhere?”

  “But all those feathers?”

  “Are from many wild pigeons. I have been picking up these feathers from the street for almost a year. Don’t you think it a clever idea?”

  “If you want to adorn yourself with all the filth to be found in the square.”

  “You give me no credit for my cleverness. I have washed each one with a soap made of lard and lye according to Cook’s recipe, and have dried them all in the sunlight.”

  “I suppose . . . if it entertains you. But it does seem quite frivolous at such a time as this when even the bells from the campanile in the Piazza San Marco sound like a dirge. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I have noticed that we cannot continue to exist in this saddened condition, that we must begin to see goodness in the world again, to celebrate joyfulness. Doesn’t Father Vivaldi tell us this himself with his music?”

  “And doesn’t the Bible tell us that there is a time to mourn?”

  “And a time to set it aside. Truly, Anetta, though we have lost Maria and a few of the little girls, our own Luisa has been spared, and you must begin to hope again.”

  She looks confused and stricken, as if offered a sweet that is in the process of being snatched away.

  “You expect me to hope, when I haven’t laid eyes on Luisa for weeks?”

  “You’ve been told she is well again. Is that not enough?”

  “I will only believe it is true when I see for myself, when I know that her lovely lean body has not been wasted or her sublime voice lost.”

  “Of course, she will not be quite herself for a while. You must expect that. We must all expect it. For a while.”

  “For a little while or a long while? That is the answer no one will give me.”

  “And cannot,” I tell her. Then, changing to the only subject that might still capture her attention, I ask, “And what of Concerta? Is she happy and well?”

  Anetta responds as I thought she would, a smile creeping into her words.

  “And growing so fast she needs new linen shirts, larger flannel petticoats, and muslin slips. Even her caps and undercaps are becoming tight. When I have the time, I shall make her new ones with embroidery and knotted fringe.”

  “That will be lovely,” I assure her. “She is surely the best cared for infant in the nursery.”

  “Oh, I do not neglect the others.”

  She has misunderstood me.

  “Of course you don’t. I only meant —”

  “That is not to say that I wouldn’t if I could. She has become so like my own, my very own child. Sometimes . . .” she begins, but then stops herself and says, “I am being very silly. You would not want to know.”

  “Sometimes what, Anetta?”

  “Well . . . sometimes . . . I think of myself, Luisa, and Concerta living all together. In the country somewhere. In a little house. Living together in a little house.”

  “It is a fine dream.”

  “Yes. But I know it is only a dream.”

  “It is good to have one. A dream.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. But she doesn’t ask what it is, and I don’t offer it.

  My dream is of Carnival and my handsome wig-maker’s assistant. My dream must happen, and soon. I will make it happen.

  THE OSPEDALE ALWAYS CELEBRATES the Feast of Natale very simply. This year each girl received a packet of sweets and a new everyday pleated cap, for which we are grateful. And Father has written a small festive violin solo that he plays himself during our noon meal, which includes dishes that are far grander than usual. Cook carries out the steaming platters to a sideboard decorated with pine boughs. There is a goose stuffed with truffles, a roasted wild boar filled and basted with all manner of herbs, pasta with a hearty sauce, the usual granturco, or polenta, made from corn, and a very special side dish, sardines in a saor made of onions, vinegar, spices, pine nuts, and raisins. There are even cakes spread with apple jam and bowls of the sweet biscuits called baicoli. We are each given a quarter of a fruit called a melarancia. It is orange in color, tastes both sweet and tart at once, and causes all the little girls to wrinkle their noses with pleasure. We are told that it is a great delicacy and will not appear on our plates soon again.

  I mention the food first, because it will not be easy for me to describe my greatest gift, the return of Luisa to our table if only for the noon festivities. When I see her being led into the room, walking very carefully beside the burly nurse who evicted me from the hospital more than once, leaning into her, actually, as if one small misstep would cause her to lose her footing altogether, I become both dejected and then full of a sudden energy I haven’t experienced in a very long time. Immediately, I jump from my chair and run to her side, against the protests of Prioress, who clucks her tongue when I clasp Luisa to me as gently as I can. The bad-tempered nurse tries to pull us apart, but I do not budge until Luisa herself withdraws from me, breathless, it seems, with her effort at simply standing up. I then fetch her a chair near the head of the longest refectory table. It is but one of a few newly vacant places and not near my place at table, but just to have her in the room is delight enough. Dressed only in a chemise and dressing gown, she is extremely pale and thin, with violet crescents above her cheekbones. I turn often to see if she is eating what has been put upon her plate, that is, until Rosalba pokes me and tells me to stop.

  “She will eat when she is ready,” says Rosalba. “It is feat enough that she has made it to Christmas dinner. Do not anger her with your constant attention.”

  I am not allowed to take Luisa back to her sickroom, as I request when she rises to leave the meal in a short space of time, quickly tired, it seems, from raising a few forkfuls of food to her lips. Watching her leave the refectory with the odious nurse is very difficult for me, since it is doubtful that Luisa will be joining us again soon.

  “You must think only of her being restored to health,” says Rosalba when I sigh overmuch at Luisa’s leaving our company so soon.

  “It would seem you might have enjoyed the quiet nights and extra space in our bedchamber,” says Silvia. “I for one have luxuriated in such a sea change. No hysterics over normal bodily functions. No bouts of whimpering for her mother.”

  “Neither was ever a burden to me,” I tell her, “nothing on a par with your thrashing and whistles and snorts in the night.”


  Silvia becomes red-faced and Rosalba smirks.

  “I do nothing of the kind, and you know it,” says Silvia. “I keep even my wind to myself so as not to annoy.”

  “The noise,” says Rosalba, “but not the odor.”

  “As if you could separate mine from all of the rest.”

  “It would not be a task I would care to undertake,” says Rosalba.

  I delight in the way she rises rather grandly and goes off to return her plate to the kitchen, while Silvia scrunches up her tiny features until her mouth and eyes are but slits.

  “The only way she can have the last word with me,” she says, “is for her to leave like that. She will not be so high and mighty when she discovers what I have found out about this year’s Carnival.”

  I cannot resist asking. “What is it? What do you know?”

  “The moment I tell you, you’ll run right away to tell her.”

  “There are other ways — more reliable ways — to find out,” I say, still dying for her to divulge what she knows.

  “No one knows but me. I overheard Prioress scheming with Signora Mandano and Maestro Gasparini how to keep the lot of us indoors until Shrove Tuesday.”

  “There. You see? You’ve told me yourself.”

  She presses her lips together, sticking the upper lip over the bottom one until she resembles a jackanapes.

  “That’s not the whole of it,” she says at last. “When we’re all told, you will be astonished.”

  “Or you. For being misinformed again. Your gossip can never be trusted. And, think of it, how often are we allowed out of this place during Carnival or at any other time?”

  “Judging from her actions of late, Rosalba has been counting on the loosening of some rules, I am certain. She’ll be livid to discover that we’re all being held by a tightly woven net with no possible holes. Beginning tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “The first day of Carnival.”

  Saint Stephen’s Day dawns gray and dismal, a heavy dark sky hanging low over the lagoon, the islands obscured by fog. Already, however, there are decorated peote, smaller gondolas, and other small craft plying the canals, songs and shouts leaping so high into the air we can hear them through slightly open windows. And there are already revelers dancing along the cobblestone streets and suitors throwing perfumed eggs at women in stark white bautta masks, which cover their forehead and eyes and nose and accentuate the elaborate layers of black clothing beneath. As intended, there is no way to tell the lower classes from the upper. Except with the wheelbarrow parade, where the pushers of barrows wear no masks at all and are clearly all manner of farmers come to town.