Venetian Mask

by Rosalind Laker

  Marietta had glanced down into the hand mirror. Then quickly she put it aside. She had seen rising in her eyes a certain brilliance that she had come to recognize as an expression of all the forceful, mixed-up yearnings that assailed her at times, making her want to break out of the Pietà to discover what awaited her in the outside world. But she had to be patient. It was fortunate that she had music to fill all her waking hours. Her love of singing was all-consuming and would be her mainstay throughout her life. Maybe Elena was right and such passions did make a living flame of her.

  After breakfast the two friends went their separate ways until they should meet again for the audition at noon. Each had a singing class to teach between practice sessions of their own, Marietta on the harpsichord and Elena on the flute. A pyramidal system of teaching in music existed at the ospedale, with older girls passing on their musical knowledge to those a year younger. When they reached a certain standard the pupils passed into the classes of the maestri, male and female, who were highly accomplished and considered the best teachers to be found anywhere. Pupils with no apparent gift for music could, with diligent training and much hard work, become good instrumentalists. For those without the will or the inclination, there was always the domestic side of the Pietà.

  When Marietta entered the audition room at the end of the morning, she found Elena had arrived before her. She was peeping cautiously out of the window, but turned to beckon as Marietta approached.

  “Come and look,” she whispered merrily. “But don’t let them see you.”

  Marietta joined her to peer down through the outer ornamental grille. The Riva degli Schiavoni was a favorite promenade for Venetians and foreign visitors alike, the Pietà always an object of curiosity. The two well-dressed young men below had followed the pattern of many visitors by putting all manners aside in trying to see through one of the ground floor windows. In a city where sexual pleasures came easily, the virginal mystique of the closely guarded Pietà girls was often an irresistible incitement. Marietta, who was able to see only the tops of the young men’s tricorne hats, was as amused as Elena to hear their remarks. They were Italian, their accent not Venetian.

  “This wretched grille casts shadows. What can you see, Roberto?”

  “No girls unfortunately.”

  “It’s a salon. There’s furniture.”

  “And a door, Guido. Maybe if we wait a while some of the beauties will enter.”

  The two girls clapped hands over their mouths to control their laughter. The salon below was an anteroom to the governors’ boardroom and since there was no meeting it would be deserted at this time of day. But the young man addressed as Guido had sharp hearing and looked up quickly before the girls could draw back. He gave his companion a nudge with his elbow, a broad grin lighting up his exceptionally handsome face. His friend was no less personable and beamed his delight. “What good fortune! Two beautiful Pietà girls on our first day in Venice!”

  Laughing, Marietta and Elena fled to the other side of the music room as if the windows were not grilled and the two strangers might come leaping in from the parade below. It was one of the strictest rules of the Pietà that no communication from the windows ever take place. To their dismay the young men began shouting.

  “Come back! Don’t go! Tell us your names!”

  Marietta rushed back to the window, followed by Elena, and leaned out to call down through the grille. “We’re not supposed to talk to anyone! Please go away!”

  But the two Italians were too excited by this unexpected turn of good fortune to let the adventure come to nothing. “Your names! We want to know!”

  “Marietta and Elena! Now please go away!”

  Guido blew a kiss to Marietta and Roberto did the same to Elena, as though each were laying claim to his choice. “Get out of that nunnery and we’ll all have a wonderful time!” Guido called.

  “Take pity on us!” Roberto urged, laughing. “Two strangers in your city.”

  Passers-by had begun to stop and stare. Marietta slammed the window shut. Both she and Elena knew how dire would be the consequences if anyone in authority at the Pietà should receive a report of the incident. They both jumped in alarm as a handful of small stones rattled against the windowpanes. Then another handful followed, showing that the young men had no intention of going away.

  “It’s no good!” Elena’s hands were clenched in panic. “The Maestro di Coro will be here any minute. Speak to them again, Marietta. Say anything to make them go away.”

  Marietta opened the window again and both Guido and Roberto cheered. “Do leave us alone,” she implored. “We’ll be severely punished if you continue to make an uproar.”

  Elena at Marietta’s side endorsed the request. “Be kind and do as Marietta says!”

  Neither of them heard Sister Sylvia enter the room in her soft-soled shoes. She had heard the commotion outside and had come to investigate the source. Her shriek of outrage impaled the girls where they stood. “You wanton creatures!”

  The punishment that followed was the hardest that either had ever had to endure. The Maestro di Coro canceled their auditions and the two girls were separated, forbidden to communicate for three months. Should they break this restriction they would both be turned out of the Pietà, Marietta to be placed in a household as a domestic servant and Elena returned to her guardian. Their musical prospects would be at an end.

  Occasionally from a distance they exchanged commiserating glances, but neither dared even to pass a message through someone else. The authorities would not hesitate to carry out their threat. But it was apparent to both that they had not been suspended from singing lessons, and individually they took this to mean that nobody wanted their progress interrupted.

  Neither were they barred from educational outings with their gentlewomen teachers, the art and architecture of Venice having such close links with its music. Closely chaperoned, often by Sisters Sylvia and Giaccomina, the latter as round and plump and amiable as the former was thin and strict and sharp-tongued, the Pietà girls set out in groups, their faces covered by compulsory white veils. The girls all thoroughly enjoyed these expeditions, which took them into the streets and squares as well as onto the canals. Until the ban, Marietta and Elena had always walked side by side, but now they were in separate groups. Marietta missed her friend’s lively chatter and comments on the young men who eyed them.

  Whether they were viewing great art such as Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin in the Frari Church, or gazing at the golden mosaics in the Basilica, there were always plenty of well-dressed young men close by. Venice teemed with young male visitors on the Grand Tour, and fashion had never been more favorable to the male sex. Velvet or silk waisted coats swung out over well-fitting knee breeches, lace frothed at the neck and wrists, and topping all else were the high-sided tricorne hats, the highest of all favored by the Venetians and set firmly on white wigs or powdered hair tied back with a black bow.

  Men always stopped or turned their heads to watch the veiled Pietà girls go by. They would bow, pay compliments, or even try to make advances, much to the annoyance of the chaperones, who would then gather their charges closer under their protection. More than one love-note or poem had been passed quickly into a girl’s hand, and there was much giggling under the white veils.

  Thus hurried along, the girls caught only tantalizing glimpses of plays being enacted by strolling players on stages set up in the squares. They had no chance to linger and watch the tumblers, clad in gaudy pink and yellow costumes, forming human pyramids, or to applaud the jugglers or the dancing dogs or one of the many dancing troupes. But they could look their fill at ladies of fashion in their wide panniered gowns and plumed hats, who vied with one another as they promenaded in the arcades. Many would be escorted by their cavalieri servanti, young gentlemen who carried their jewel-collared lap-dogs and who attended and protected the ladies and—according to Elena, who professed to know from her great-aunt’s gossip—pleasured them in every way. The m
ost grandly established courtesans were indistinguishable from the patrician ladies, although Elena could pick them out, and there were hundreds of their less fortunate sisters who flaunted themselves in gowns so low-cut that the aureoles of their nipples were revealed.

  Marietta was always glad when the educational venue necessitated an early-morning ride in a gondola along the Grand Canal. Then she could sit enthralled by the sight of the beautiful palaces that rose up from their own reflections, elegant with balconies, colonnaded loggias, ornamental stonework, statuary, and an occasional mosaic mural that sparkled like gold-set jewels. By their ornate water porticoes the mooring posts were striped in the heraldic colors of the particular partician family who lived within. If there was also decay, evident in crumbling brickwork, sodden wood, and rotting doorways, it only symbolized the decadence that afflicted La Serenissima.

  The Palace of the Doges had a beauty all its own, a double tier of columns and arches delicate as lacework. The lovely, ever-changing light of Venice constantly played its marble into opal or ivory, amber or pearl or deepest rose, like an artist ever seeking a result more perfect than the last.

  Twisting and turning in her seat, Marietta would watch all that was happening in the shops and stalls on the parades flanking the Grand Canal. The hostelries had customers coming and going even at such an early hour, and some were still dressed in evening splendor, having called in for breakfast after a night of revelry before hailing a gondola to take them home. The shouts of the water-carriers mingled with those of vendors selling everything from fruit to exotic spices. Thrifty housewives darted about for the freshest fish and vegetables, some buying direct from boats lying alongside the parades. Rafts and barges came with supplies such as creels of seafood for the Rialto market and wine that was awaited at the Fondemento del Vin.

  And dominating everything was the music of Venice. The gondoliers sang and others took up the refrain. There always seemed to be somebody about with a lute or a violin, often in a gondola, and bands of musicians strolled the streets and performed in the squares. But it was at night, when the girls were settling in to sleep, that music came into its own. To Marietta it was like a siren call. As she lay in bed watching the flickering patterns on the ceiling caused by the reflected light from the water, it was as though she were gazing at fingers beckoning her out to all the city held in wait for her.

  AT THE END of their three months of punishment, Marietta and Elena were summoned by the governor from whom they received the strictest lecture. They were reminded once more that the Pietà prided itself on the impeccable reputation of all the girls in its charge. Never again must they commit such an indiscretion, for they would not get a second chance. On this note they were dismissed. They went docilely from the room, but as soon as they were out of earshot they embraced hilariously.

  “At last! It’s been so boring. What a tedious time! I had so much to tell you and yet I had to hold my tongue.”

  They talked at the same time, each with laughter not far from tears of relief that they could pick up the threads again. When they had calmed down Marietta spoke more soberly.

  “We must never let silence be imposed on us again.”

  “I agree. And I’ve thought of a way we could have communicated.”

  Marietta set hands on her waist and threw back her head in renewed merriment. “I know what you’re going to say. I thought of it too. A series of signals with a glove, a sheet of music, or even a false note. Just like the language of fans or of beauty patches on the face!”

  “That’s it!” Elena clapped in her delight that they should both have hit upon the same idea. “I’ve made a list.”

  “So have I!”

  “Then let’s compare notes.”

  It was not long before they had devised a series of signals to convey the time of a meeting, where it should be, and so forth. They practiced until they could communicate in class and during the hours of silence, as well as on other occasions. Gradually they brought their communicating to a fine art, so that even the tap of a finger against chin or cheek, on lace or paper, and on hand or sleeve was used to convey a letter of the alphabet. More than once they had to struggle against laughter when they shared a joke from opposite sides of the room.

  Their postponed auditions with the Maestro di Coro finally took place, and close to their sixteenth birthdays, Marietta and Elena both became full-fledged members of the Pietà’s renowned choir. With this honor came the privilege of a bedchamber each. Their days of sharing with others were over.

  “Only one more step up the ladder to lead solo singers, and then we’ll have an apartment each!” Marietta declared.

  They were well pleased with their new accommodations. The rooms were small but had fine furnishings and draped brocade curtains that concealed a bed in an alcove.

  Another cause for high spirits was their splendid new wardrobes made by the Pietà girls training to be dressmakers. For singing in church and at other ecclesiastical occasions there was a simple silk gown in Pietà red with a diaphanous white cowl that could be looped over the head. For concert appearances, fashion held sway in panniered evening gowns with low décolletage, either in white silk or black velvet. Marietta and Elena each received a spray of vermilion silk pomegranate blossoms, to be worn at concerts only when no fresh sprays could be found. The two girls tried wearing the silk sprays in many ways, although they would be required to wear them in their hair, at the right of the face and toward the back of the head.

  Their first public appearance was to be at a great service in the Basilica. Excitedly Marietta and Elena donned their scarlet gowns and matching cloaks and hoods. Then they proceeded two by two with the rest of the choir out of the Pietà and along the Riva degli Schiavoni to St. Mark’s Square. There they passed through the great doors into the heart of Venetian sacred music.

  From the gallery Marietta could just see the Doge seated far below in his robe made of gold cloth, as was his corno, the horned cap of his office. His senators, the elite and legislative body of the government, made a scarlet silken spread in their robes, a vivid contrast to the bat-like hue of the civic attire worn by the many hundreds of members of the Great Council who were also present.

  As the service commenced Marietta thought there could be no better place in all the world in which to sing. Such were the marvelous acoustics that the organ seemed to be expanding the golden mosaic walls with its music, and the voices of her fellow choristers might have been those of the angels to whom they were so often compared. As for the paeans of the silver trumpets, it was as if the Archangel Gabrieli himself had passed on his gift to the trumpeters.

  From then on Marietta and Elena entered a whole new world of music. They sang at many important festivals and in the Doge’s Palace. At concerts they were arranged in rows along specially constructed, velvet-draped galleries, as if, Elena said, they were slotted into the wide, tiered pockets of a giant’s coat. They performed in sumptuous public halls and glittering palace ballrooms, allowing the two friends an insight into the luxurious life of the rich nobility, who sat on gilded chairs to listen to them. Sometimes ten or twelve choristers, hidden and protected behind grilles set in the wall, would provide background singing at private ridottos where high-stakes play took place at the gaming tables. This in turn showed Marietta and Elena another side of life, where fortunes changed hands continually.

  Yet all these grand people, whether Venetian or foreign, considered it an honor to be invited to one of the exclusive Pietà receptions where the choristers and lead musicians were presented to the guests. Women were as curious as men to see the angels of song at close quarters. Adrianna, the prima donna of the Pietà, gave Marietta and Elena advice on how to conduct themselves at these receptions. In her mid-twenties, she was tall and deep-bosomed, with smooth blue-black hair and a flawless olive complexion, her demure face enhanced by handsome black eyes and a smiling mouth. The title she had gained as the Venus of the Pietà was an embarrassment to her, for she had none of
the fiery temperament and lust for fame usually associated with singers of her stature. Warm-hearted and maternal, she was always ready to rock a fretful baby to sleep in the nursery quarters or listen sympathetically to the troubles of others. It was she who had done much to ease the first few weeks at the Pietà for both Marietta and Elena by drawing them slowly into the daily routine.

  “Now remember all I’ve told you,” she said to them as they lined up with the other choristers in readiness for their first reception. No one knew better than she how to speak charmingly while avoiding the groping hand or turning aside the lascivious compliment. She had already found the man of her choice, but for reasons of her own she was keeping it a secret.

  Marietta and Elena soon became as expert as Adrianna at avoiding unwanted and unwelcome attentions. The pleasant and interesting people they met usually outnumbered the rest. But the most objectionable visitors of all were often those newly arrived in Venice, who had not yet attended a concert and knew the choir only by its fame and through hearing the girls singing unseen in church. Their discovery that, with a few exceptions, the girls were not as beautiful as their voices immediately destroyed cherished illusions. It was not unusual for someone to make a disparaging remark, with no thought for the unfortunate girl who might overhear it.

  It was on such occasions that Elena showed the deep warmth of her nature. She would comfort and encourage, often managing to get a girl’s tears dried in laughter.

  “Here am I,” she once remarked wryly to Marietta, “cheering everybody else up when I’m far from being betrothed myself. I shall probably end up with the baker’s apprentice. He is good-looking and likes me! If ever I happen to be downstairs on my own when he is making the first deliveries he wants to talk. He has started bringing me a cake to have with the cup of hot chocolate I always collect from the senior cook to take to the music room.”