The Violinist of Venice

by Alyssa Palombo

  I smiled demurely at this and looked away, realizing uneasily that he appeared to be quite smitten with me.

  Yet it is one thing to be smitten, and quite another to propose marriage, I quickly reminded myself as we went out to the dock where his gondola was waiting. I should not alarm myself, not yet.

  “There are a great many parties and such this evening that we might attend,” Tommaso told me once we were settled into the gondola, “but I think it best that I deliver you straight home tonight.” He smiled wryly. “I would not want your father to find fault with me, and therefore deprive me of your company in the future.”

  It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. As long as your surname is Foscari, I have no doubt that you could get me with child, and my father would still not find fault with you. “Very well,” I said aloud.

  That night the city was full of revelers, as it often is; cheers, shouting, singing, laughing, and the occasional strain of violins or flutes could be heard coming from other boats and from the streets and buildings around us.

  As I listened to the opera of la Serenissima herself that echoed around us, I could feel Tommaso watching me, silently and unobtrusively, yet he seemed to know I did not wish to talk just then. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him lean back and listen along with me.

  20

  SCARLET

  After I had risen, dressed, and broken my fast the next morning, I sent for Giuseppe. “I am going to him tonight,” I said.

  Startled, he asked, “So soon? You were next to meet tomorrow night, si?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I cannot wait that long. I must see him tonight.” I tried to hide the wide grin that threatened as I remembered him playing the concerto, playing it for me, before the whole theater, as though declaring to them all that I was his.

  “And what if he is not home?”

  “Then he is not home, and we will return.”

  Giuseppe hesitated, as though to say something else, but he merely bowed and said, “As you wish, madonna.”

  * * *

  As we drew near Vivaldi’s house just after midnight, I could see the flickering light of candles and perhaps a fire behind the curtains. “He is home,” I said to Giuseppe, my voice low. “Return for me at four o’clock.” My blood heated at the thought of so much time with him.

  “As you wish, madonna,” Giuseppe said. He turned and made his way back up the street, leaving me with the feeling that that phrase signified he had something he wished to say but was not planning to say it. I found I did not much care for it.

  I pushed these thoughts aside, knocking once to alert Vivaldi to my presence, then let myself in. “Tonio, I—”

  I stopped dead, the door slamming behind me, when I saw—disaster of disasters—he was not alone. The man sitting in the second chair before the fire looked startled and confused, studying me quickly before turning a questioning gaze to Vivaldi.

  “I am so sorry,” I said, taking a step backward and bumping into the door. “I did not realize that … you had a guest.” I could feel my face burning, and my stomach roiled so that I was certain I would vomit.

  We were found out. We had been discovered, and it was my fault.

  “Adriana,” Vivaldi said, quickly rising from his chair. The panicked, stricken look on his face no doubt mirrored mine. “I was not expecting you this evening.”

  “Antonio,” the stranger said, rising from his chair. He was a bit taller than Vivaldi, and a great deal older as well. His hair was gray, and his face had the worn look of a man who had toiled many years for very little. “What goes on here?”

  Like the consummate performer that he was, Vivaldi immediately collected himself. “Signorina Adriana,” he said formally, “may I introduce my father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi.”

  Shock and shame seemed about to drown me, but I composed myself, wondering how in the name of God and all the saints we were going to explain ourselves—and if we should even go to the trouble. “A pleasure to meet you, signore,” I said, stepping into the light from the fire.

  “And this, Father, is Adriana,” Vivaldi continued. “She studies the violin with me.”

  My breath caught in my throat as I hoped, prayed. Not quite a lie. But hardly the complete truth.

  “The pleasure is all mine, signorina,” Signor Vivaldi said, though his courteous response was belied by his suspicious tone and the frown creasing his brow. “But a violin lesson, so late?” He looked from me to his son and back again. “Surely this is not a safe or seemly hour for a young woman to be out and about in Venice alone?”

  “I am a servant in one of the noble houses, signore,” I said, squirming uncomfortably. “It is only once my mistress releases me from my duties that I am able to come for a lesson, and Maestro Vivaldi has most graciously agreed to accommodate me. I show some small talent for the instrument, you see.”

  “A great deal of talent,” Vivaldi corrected, just as a teacher would do for a favorite student.

  I marveled at the ease with which the lies rolled off our tongues. “And I did not come alone. My brother is a manservant in the house where I am employed as well,” I went on, “and so he accompanies me and then returns to fetch me home.” I dipped my head slightly, deferentially. “I thank you for your concern, though, signore.”

  He nodded, still frowning. “Well, do not let me keep you from your lesson, then, signorina. I came to dine with my son and have stayed later than I meant to.”

  “No—no,” I said hurriedly. “I … I fear that I have mistaken the date of my lesson.” I looked at Vivaldi. “It is tomorrow, maestro, no? My apologies. I—”

  “Do not leave on my account,” Signor Vivaldi said shortly. “As I said, it is past time for me to take my leave.”

  I was unsure as to whether it would be more or less suspicious to protest further, so in the end I kept silent.

  “Yes, stay, signorina,” Vivaldi said finally. “Your brother has no doubt already departed and cannot be fetched back to see you safely home.”

  Signor Vivaldi shrugged on his cloak. “I think I will come by tomorrow, Antonio, if that is agreeable,” he said. “You quite forgot to show me that new concerto you spoke of.”

  The look he gave his son, however, was one with which I, possessed of a disapproving father myself, was all too familiar. “Yes … of course,” Vivaldi said. “Buona notte, padre.”

  He saw his father to the door and watched, body rigid, until the older man had moved out of sight. He slumped against the door frame in relief.

  I could barely summon my voice from the depths of horror and mortification to which it had sunk. “Tonio, I … I am so sorry. I did not know—”

  “No, of course you did not,” he said, spinning to face me, eyes blazing angrily. “Why do you think that we arrange nights to meet, Adriana? Do you think I see no one but you? Do you think no one comes here to seek me but you?”

  I felt that I could die of shame and regret; a part of me wished I would. “No, of course not. I only wanted to see you, after—”

  “I am not some plaything for your pleasure, to be at your beck and call whenever you grow bored with the view from your palazzo,” he cut me off, advancing on me. “I have a life that does not include you, and the two must stay separate!”

  “That is not fair, and you know it,” I said, my voice small.

  He ignored me. “This will be the undoing of everything! You know that, do you not? It is catastrophic!” His hands were balled into fists as though he wanted to strike something. He pushed past me and began pacing in front of the fire.

  “Perhaps he believed us,” I ventured.

  The look Vivaldi gave me was one of utter contempt. “He did not believe us. He knows. He knows the truth about us. About me.”

  “And so?” I asked. “He is your father. Surely he will not tell anyone. Surely he would not do that to you.”

  “It is not that,” he said, stopping and facing me. “Can you not see, you foolish girl? No one was to know of this
, least of all my father!”

  “You speak as though you are ashamed of me,” I said.

  “Of course I am ashamed!” he shouted, causing me to flinch. “How can I not be? I am a priest with a mistress! Of course I am ashamed of you, of all of this!”

  I could not have been more shocked had he slapped me across the face. Yet soon enough my own anger allowed me to recover my voice. “And yet you have been sinning quite joyfully these past few months, I notice,” I spat. “How dare you say such things to me, as though I am some common whore whom you pay to spend the night?”

  “We are both of us whores,” he shot back. “Is this what you wanted, Adriana? Is this what you were dreaming of in your silly romantic fantasies? An illicit, tawdry love affair with a musician before you go off and marry your rich Foscari, and please him with the tricks you learned in my bed?”

  I could have screamed aloud in fury. “Are you listening to your own filthy words? You quite literally told me to marry him, and now—”

  “And yet there you were in that box, dressed like a queen, your hand in his and the two of you staring at each other like you would never look away,” he said. “Just what manner of woman are you, Adriana? How am I to know?”

  Rage nearly blinded me, and my entire body shook.

  “Parlar non vuoi?” he demanded. “Why do you not speak?”

  “Because I have no desire to waste my breath on you ever again, you bastard!” I shrieked.

  “Keep your voice down, lest you want the whole city to hear you!”

  “Let them hear!” I cried. “Let them hear how you speak to the woman who gave herself to you out of love, only to have you shame her with that very fact!”

  “What do you—”

  “And do not attribute your own fantasies to me,” I raged. “You with the wealthy, forbidden virgin in your bed before you send her off to marriage, always knowing that you were the first. And what of you? How many have there been before me?”

  Now it was his turn to look shocked, horrified. I knew that I had crossed a line with my words, that what I had said was unforgivable, but I could not stop myself. All I wanted was to hurt him as much as he had hurt me.

  “Surely you cannot think—”

  “I know not what to think!” I exclaimed. “The man I love would never have spoken to me thus, and so I know not what to make of the man who stands before me now!”

  His mouth hung open as he stared dumbly at me.

  I had arrived so excited to put to rights the dissonance that had slithered between us last time. Yet now I saw this serpent of discord had already struck and left its poison behind, when neither of us noticed, and now all that was left was for the wounds to fester. “I am leaving,” I said. “No doubt it will not bother you if I never return.”

  With that, I turned and stalked out the door before he had a chance to respond.

  In spite of it all, though, I could not resist one glance back. Through a parting in the curtains, I could glimpse him standing completely still, his face buried in his hands, body rigid with tension. Then, in a sudden burst of rage, he reached out and swiped one of the empty wineglasses off the table, sending it shattering against the stone of the hearth.

  21

  CURTAIN

  The light of dawn was just beginning to leach away the darkness when a hiss in my ear awoke me. “Madonna. Madonna, wake up. Adriana!”

  My eyes snapped open and I sat up in my bed quickly, only to see Giuseppe standing over me, looking slightly embarrassed. “Dio, Giuseppe, did you think to frighten me to death?”

  “My apologies, madonna,” he said, “but I thought it best that we speak before the rest of the house is about.” His expression changed to that of a schoolmaster about to scold an errant pupil. “What could you have been thinking, cavorting around Venice alone at that hour?”

  “Please, Giuseppe,” I said, pushing the covers aside and getting out of bed. I took my robe from my wardrobe and pulled it on over my night shift, so that I did not feel quite so naked beneath his disapproving stare. “I could not stay, and I had not the foggiest idea where you might be.”

  “And is Madonna going to tell me why she had to depart her lover’s house so suddenly and so unexpectedly?” Giuseppe asked.

  I gave him a sharp, quelling look. “You must know, if you went to his house to seek me. Surely he told you. You will not make me recount it, I hope.”

  “I know only what Don Vivaldi told me, and he was not all that intelligible.”

  I started slightly. “What do you mean?”

  “He was drunk,” Giuseppe said. “By the time I arrived, he was so deep in his cups that it was clear he had been drinking for hours.”

  “I see.” I turned away from Giuseppe and made a pretense of studying the early morning sky from the window.

  “Very well. Since you are apparently too proud to ask, I will tell you what he said—or what I could gather, at any rate,” Giuseppe said. “You and he got into quite the argument, something about his father discovering you, and … it seemed one moment he was swearing he would never forgive you, and the next he was swearing before God that he could not go on until you had forgiven him.” He paused. “I would never have guessed it,” he said, more to himself than to me.

  Tears stung my eyes, and out of habit I forced them back as I kept my face turned resolutely to the window.

  “And so?” Giuseppe said, after a moment had passed. “Would you care to elaborate, madonna?”

  I sighed, composing myself, and turned to face him. “It is just as he said. When I arrived, his father was there.” I told Giuseppe of our lie, and how Signor Vivaldi had not seemed to believe us. “Then he left, and…” I bit my lip. “Antonio said horrible things to me, and I said horrible things to him. And I left.”

  Giuseppe studied me carefully. “And so it is over?”

  Over. The word seared, as though I had passed my hand through a candle flame. The blister that was left behind throbbed and swelled until it threatened to drive me out of my mind with pain.

  Over. The word I had not thought once, not through the entire night before, even though I knew it was the word to explain the sickening weight in my stomach. How could it not be over, after the things he had said?

  I heard Giuseppe sigh, tentatively speaking up. “Adriana, perhaps it is not so dire as all that. You did not see him afterward, and I—”

  “No,” I cut him off. “Do not say anything. There is nothing you can do.”

  He did not move for a moment, then I heard him leave the room, closing the door behind him.

  I stared toward the Grand Canal, where it snaked its way among the houses and bridges of Venice, leading to the lagoon and eventually to the sea. How I wished I could follow it; let it take me far from this city of so much music and so much pain.

  * * *

  Not long after Giuseppe left, I crawled back into bed and fell into a deep sleep. I was awakened again a bit before midday by Meneghina, who came in to dress me. “Shall I send for some food so that Madonna can break her fast?” she asked as she walked around the bed to the wardrobe.

  I could feel the events of the night before nibbling around the edges of my mind like rats with a crust of bread. I felt the urge to let them devour me, to remain in this bed for as long as it took for my memories to be eaten away entirely. But I pushed the thought away. “That sounds wonderful, Meneghina,” I said, sitting up.

  Meneghina cast me a curious look—I was not usually so effusive in the mornings, or ever, to be truthful—but did not comment as she began pulling out clean underthings and a warm day dress. The December air had finally turned cold, and with a vengeance. Soon it would be Christmas and, the day after the holiday, Carnevale would begin again.

  Some bread and cold ham was brought up so that I could break my fast, after which Meneghina helped me to dress and tied my hair back with silk ribbons. “Thank you, Meneghina,” I said, smiling warmly at her.

  “Will there be anything else, madonna?”
she asked, still looking puzzled.

  “Yes,” I said. “Send Giuseppe Rivalli to me when you leave, if you please. I have a mind to go out and take some air, and would have him accompany me.”

  She bobbed a curtsy and left to fetch him. I pulled one of my warmest cloaks from the wardrobe and went out into my sitting room to wait for Giuseppe to arrive.

  He did, within minutes. “You sent for me, madonna?” he asked formally. He lowered his voice slightly. “How are you this morning, Adriana?”

  “I am quite well, Giuseppe, never fear,” I said. “I wish to go out, and take the air.”

  He eyed me quizzically. “And shall we be taking the air at your … er … favorite spot?”

  “Somewhere new this time, I think,” I said, deliberately avoiding his eyes. “Perhaps to…” I cast my mind about, searching for a proper distraction. “Piazza San Marco, to take a turn about the square.”

  Giuseppe stared at me as though I had taken leave of my senses. “It is December, madonna. The piazza will be flooded—the acqua alta.”

  Mentally I cursed myself for a fool—perhaps I had taken leave of my senses. What Venetian could forget about the high tides that flooded the city on winter mornings? “To Santa Maria della Salute, then,” I said irritably. I had not been to the church in years, not since my mother died. She had loved to attend Mass there—when we did not attend at the Pietà—or would often take me there to pray even when Mass was not being held. Ironic that a woman who so loved to pray at a church named for Our Lady of Health would die of a fever.

  The poor man seemed quite thoroughly confused, but he nodded. “Very well, madonna. I shall call for the gondola.”

  He returned to fetch me a few minutes later, and as we made our way down to the dock I chattered mindlessly about a party Tommaso had mentioned taking me to during Carnevale, and how I hoped Father would let me attend. I cannot imagine that Giuseppe cared in the slightest—I scarcely thought it of any import myself. I only knew that I had, desperately, to fill the silence.