We dress in silence. It is as if we’ve made a pact of it, though nothing of the sort has passed between us.
Luisa breakfasts this day with the rest of us. As she sits down across from me, I notice that she isn’t looking really well as yet. Her narrow face seems bleached of color and of shadows. She doesn’t often smile. The place Rosalba usually claims as hers has been left empty. The girls all walk around it as if someone’s sitting there. We are halfway through our porridge when Silvia nudges me with an elbow as sharp as her tongue.
“They’re going to start asking questions. They’re going to find out that Rosalba’s gone,” she whispers.
“Rosalba’s clever. She’s sure to sneak back before they notice.”
“Not clever enough by half. I told her she’d be sorry.”
We all told her. It’s clear why she wouldn’t listen to Silvia, but why didn’t she listen to me?
Silvia presses on: “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“What is there to say?”
“Well, there’ll be plenty to say when Signora finds out. Just wait and see.”
“Silvia,” I tell her, making sure I stare directly into those little pinprick eyes, “if you should say a word, if you should tell anyone,” and my voice grows dark and low, surprising even me, “I think that I will murder you.”
She is as shocked as I am at what I’ve just said, and shrinks a little in her chair, and looks at me as if I already hold a dagger in my hand.
“You wouldn’t!” she squeaks.
“It’s hard to know for a certain,” I tell her truthfully. “Right now, I think it would be easy.”
The morning is uneventful, except for the mysterious appearance of stray roses strewn about the kitchen garden. Cook claims it is a sure sign of Our Lady’s favor — whether because of the good care given the orphans here or because of her skillful preparation of our victuals, she isn’t sure. I myself believe it is a miracle of sorts, as do a number of the other girls, even though we can’t imagine what it means. We have decided that, as with most miracles, the meaning will be made known to us in time. And they are such beautiful roses. Such a lovely shade of red. They dot the dismal yard with their deep color. For days the petals blow about.
Those of us preparing for the concert on Sunday work until noon on it. Father Vivaldi himself accompanies us on the continuo, and Maestro Gasparini conducts us. Neither man asks about Rosalba, nor do any of the other girls, accustomed as they have become to her recent absences. At first I cannot concentrate, but the intricate rhythms of the andante soon capture my complete attention, and it isn’t until we break before the next movement that I am conscious of this new source of worry that has quickly superseded all others. When I glance over at Luisa, she doesn’t look away, as has become her pattern, but transmits something of her own concern and her baffled ignorance of where to turn for answers to Rosalba’s absence. Each time a little iniziata rustles about the room during our rest, Luisa and I both turn to the door, half expecting Rosalba’s jaunty entrance, her broad smile and dancing eyes.
It isn’t until almost noon that Prioress appears and asks to have me step into the hall. As I rise to join her, I glance again at Luisa, and her look this time is full of warning and something very near panic. Alert to what my countenance may also be revealing, I try to keep my own expression bland, greeting Prioress with the usual “Good day.”
“I think you know what this is all about, Anetta,” she begins.
“No, madam.”
She studies my face, and I struggle to present her with a blank slate.
“Hmm. Well — I feel the fool giving you information that you and all the ones who share your chamber must be privy to already.” She pauses for a time. “But I will go along with your somewhat understandable collusion.”
How long, I wonder, does she intend to drag out her pronouncement? I make myself look eager for the news she bears, the while she searches my expectant stare.
“Rosalba is not here,” she states at last. “We think she left quite late in the night, and she has not returned.”
“Oh, my,” I say. “I did not know.”
“Of course you did. As did all the other girls who bed with her. But only one of you came forward. What a shame.”
“A shame?”
“It means that four of you will be severely punished. For you, as the one maestra who is left in your chamber, a docket in your wages; for all of you, some service to the commun girls, a diminishment of free time in the evening hours. Some extra mandatory prayers.”
It seems that she concocts these disparate penalties as she continues speaking. She even adds a few when there is no reaction from me, consumed as I am with wondering just what Rosalba’s fate may be and too afraid to ask.
But she goes on. “It’s not too late to help us with the knowledge you undoubtedly have. Not too late to reduce the penalties I’ve outlined. I would not want to take away your hours in the nursery.”
My reaction to this possibility is too quick and slips instantly beneath my guard. It’s clear I must convince her that I do not know a useful thing, or I’ll be separated from Concerta.
“Madam, it’s true we noticed, just this morning, that Rosalba wasn’t in her bed. But she prepared her toilette last night in the usual way and seemed asleep when I dropped off.”
“And she did not divulge her plan to anyone?”
“Not to me. Nor to the others, I am certain.”
“Or give you hints along the way of where she might intend to go?”
“Only that she wanted desperately to see much more of Carnival than we’re allowed this year.”
I hope to cover everything with this short explanation — the merlin’s assistant, the gondolier, the feathered mask and fancy dress. Prioress does not need to know the details or that this was not the first time Rosalba has escaped into the night. I can only hope that the tattler has not mentioned this. If it is Silvia, I just may do her in as I have promised. I do not see another way to vent this awful rage.
“I wish that I could know that what you’re telling me is true,” says Prioress. “You girls do lie so to protect one another.”
“I have bespoke the truth, madam,” I say.
“While still, no doubt, concealing all that we should really know.”
What they should really know. Could any secrets that I harbor be of help to Rosalba?
“I’ll have to ask the other girls who share your chamber,” she tells me.
“Madam,” I interrupt, “what will happen to Rosalba when she does return?”
“Oh, she will not return,” says Prioress. “However much I, myself, would wish it otherwise, the Board of Governors makes no distinctions. Though they must be informed of anything we know, Rosalba will not be allowed to come back here.”
WITH ROSALBA ABSENT, the Lenten season is a true time of penitence, somber weeks when the morning and nightly readings remind us of our great sins. Mine are clearly sins of omission, for I did not do all that I could have to restrain Rosalba from her foolish plan, the details of which, I assure myself time after time, I did not know. But how does one confess such a sin? I have refrained for weeks from receiving the Eucharist, knowing that the stain upon my soul cannot be expunged unless I do confess my offenses. Even at Easter, which we’re told should be a joyous time when we are, like Christ, restored to life, I cannot shake my guilt or lift this heaviest of hearts, which seems to plummet further with each day of Rosalba’s absence.
In the darkest, most empty hours of the night, I think about her — about where she can be, if she is cold or hungry, if she has a warm place to sleep, even the most terrible thought that her swollen, lifeless body may wash up on the shore somewhere or be tangled in wharf pilings. Anetta tosses at night as well, and, although neither of us voice them, I know she has the same fears for our friend. During the daylight hours, there is so much to occupy us that for blessed minutes I am free of worry. It is when lying on my cot that the troubling thought
s occur and will not leave until, exhausted, I sleep fitfully.
Come springtime and still no word of her, I wonder if Prioress does know something but has kept it secret. Why did she and others ask for my knowledge of Rosalba’s disappearance if there is no recourse? And why insert her name into our nightly prayers, as Signora has done right from the start of her disappearance? I console myself with the knowledge that the days and nights are growing warmer, that even the street urchins can now find places to curl their ragged lives inside. Surely someone from the Ospedale must be looking for her.
I was excused from singing all the somber Lenten music and Father Vivaldi’s glorious new Easter Mass, but since completing that, he has been working hard on Moyses Deus Pharaonis and is again eager to hear me sing the part he is writing for me. I can’t much longer claim exemption due to an illness of many months ago. Prioress has questioned me about the condition of my throat a number of times lately. Both physicians usually employed by the Ospedale and one — sent by my mother, I suspect — have examined me and said there does not seem to be anything really wrong. One noticed some slight inflammation, one a tiny polyp. Fear, however, is invisible.
I regularly attend solfeggio, as I am required to do, but when there, I only listen and do the written work. At the vocal rehearsals, Maestro Scarpari has stopped urging me to join in and rarely even glances over at me anymore. The other students ignore me also, as if I am a fixture in the room, a music stand, the potted fig tree. When one day I am called out of class by Prioress, it is just as if a useless paper drifted out into the hall. No eyes look up.
“We have been very disturbed about you,” she begins, “about how frail you still seem, about your pallor. It isn’t like you not to even want to sing.”
“Oh, I do want to,” I say. How I would love to sing again, to solo as I used to, to feel the power of the notes within my throat. My throat. It has betrayed me once before. I cannot trust my throat. But Prioress will never understand this.
“That is what you’ve said before. And the doctors. They have found nothing really wrong. Except, of course, this apparent weakness in your constitution, which has lasted much too long.”
I’m not sure what she wants of me, what she desires me to say. Do I apologize for such a lengthy recuperation?
“And so,” she continues, “the board has met, and we’ve decided that you need to have a rest in the country for a while. There is a little farm near Verona where we’ve sent our girls before who needed sunshine and some fattening up.”
“A farm?” I can’t imagine such a place. I’ve never been outside of Venice.
“We will be sending two of you this year — yourself and a younger girl named Catina. Because of chronic breathing difficulties, she is never really well. The canker rash has taken quite a toll on her.”
“I know the child of whom you speak. She will profit from the fresh air, I am sure.”
“And so shall you. The students we have sent into the country in the past have all come back renewed.”
“Perhaps my mother could have me to live with her awhile. I would be good company for her. I know that her apartment’s small, but I don’t need much room.”
“Out of the question,” says Prioress. “Your mother will not have you, I am told.”
“Has she been asked to take me back? Has she refused? Perhaps she didn’t understand about my illness. Perhaps she’ll change her mind.”
“Luisa, you must give up all these fantasies about your mother, about her coming for you.”
“When I am older. Less of a burden. She will. I know she will.”
“Well — right now we must do something to make you well. A farm will be the perfect wholesome place for you to take a small vacation.”
I don’t know what to think. A farm. I’ve never even seen a farm. Will there be any music there at all? Without at least a little of it, I will be bereft.
But Prioress has read my thoughts.
“Be sure to take your mandolin or a guitar, something to keep you occupied. There’s nothing of importance you will miss. Father Vivaldi wants you for his oratorio, but that won’t be for upward of another year or more. I’ve convinced him that you’ll be in better form for it if you are sent away to rest awhile.”
That at least is something to be thankful for. Such an excuse from Prioress will have more weight than if it came from me.
I have been sworn to secrecy until the actual time for me to leave, so others won’t feel slighted. My own feelings about the rest cure are quite mixed. Should I leave now, not knowing anything about Rosalba’s fate? Would staying here help her in any way? The only one I could share such questions with is Anetta, and to do this, I would have to break my promise to be silent.
I wait until the free time after dinner, when the din of scales and trills throughout the rooms is deafening. How Rosalba did abhor the noise! Anetta is surprised to have me take her hand and lead her to the back parlor. There is, in fact, a look of shock upon her face. Her head is twisted quizzically upon her sturdy neck. “I need to tell you something,” I begin when we are seated face-to-face. She has good reason for surprise. Only rarely has a conversation between us begun at my instigation. “But you cannot tell a soul.”
“Who would I tell?” she asks immediately. “My one confidant has disappeared.”
“And mine.”
There is such disappointment in her pale, defensive eyes.
“All the more reason we should rely upon each other,” she says. “At least we could have each other to tell things to.”
“Well, that can’t be for long,” I say. “It’s why I’ve asked you here.”
“I don’t understand,” she says in sudden agitation. “Are you more ill than I know?”
“It isn’t that. Or not exactly. The fact is, Prioress is sending me into the country. To recuperate. To regain my voice.”
She blanches visibly and raises folded hands up to her lips as if in prayer.
“For how long a time?”
“Until I’m well,” I say, and then try to make light of it. “Until I’m fattened up, she says.”
She smiles a little. “That could take forever!”
“Not in the fresh air, she says.”
I look down at her two hands now in her lap, at how the fingers are entwined and twist about. For some reason, I’m uncommonly nervous as well.
“The real reason that I’ve told you this is that if I go so far away . . . if I leave here . . . that will mean there will be no one left but you to wait for her return . . . no one close to her . . . waiting for Rosalba to come back. I mean . . . you will be waiting all alone.”
She laughs darkly. “There’s always Silvia.” Then she says, “You could stay here forever, and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“What . . . do you mean?”
“You cannot bargain with impossibility. The very day after the night she did not return, Prioress informed me that she couldn’t, that they wouldn’t ever let her back. I thought you knew.”
“Never let her back! But it’s Rosalba!”
“It doesn’t matter who it is. It could be the perfect Anna Maria or even the amazing Agrippina. If someone runs away, they can’t come back. There isn’t any question of it.”
“But what if she’s been hurt . . . or . . . or kidnapped? Haven’t they been looking for her?”
“Looking for her! Prioress says they wiped her name right off the Ospedale register the day she left. She claims that’s the ruling of the board. That it has always been the rule. If someone runs away, they can’t return.” Then she says bitterly, “To them, she might as well be dead.”
I am astounded at such cruelty. It seems so unlike all the kindness we have known here.
“As well she could be after all this time. Even if what Prioress says is true, isn’t there something we can do?”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried to think of a remedy every night and every day? And you. I know you don’t sleep well because of this, tha
t you are deeply troubled, too. I hear you thrashing in the night. And your weeping. It pains me more than you can know. But even if we could sneak away to look for Rosalba, we do not know the city or where to look, and we have no one to turn to for help outside these walls.”
I cannot think of one more thing to say. After a time of sitting together in a miserable silence, Anetta comes to my aid.
“You should go to the farm, Luisa. You cannot help Rosalba by remaining here. She’d want you to be returned to health.” And then she adds, “As do I. Yes, you must take this opportunity to have some time away from here.”
The last words seem to take all her energy, as if they say the very opposite of what she means.
LUISA HAS ALLOWED ME to help her ready herself for her journey, and I am both amazed and grateful. There are two new frocks made by the commun girls for her days in the country, two petticoats of dimity, a light chemise, a lighter tabarrino cloak of camlet, and a new pair of leather shoes, for though she is not filling out, her slender feet are still growing. At times, in fact, she appears to inhabit the body of a much younger child — spare and thin and a trifle potbellied.
Imagine! She will travel by gondola to Santa Lucia, where a wagon will take her to a farm and vineyard in the country. I am truly excited for her, but dread the empty time when the two people I care most for in the world will both be invisible to me.
“We can write letters,” she says, and the surprising thought does manage to cheer me a great deal. I will cherish possessing something in Luisa’s own hand.
“Would you . . . would you do that?” I ask in disbelief.
“Of course. How else will I know which girls have attracted suitors, the ones no longer on speaking terms, who is being given the best parts to sing. I will expect you to keep me well informed.”
Her sudden profession that she will look for an answer back from me to her missives is more than I could have hoped for.
Hidden Voices Page 12
