Hidden Voices (22 page)

C
ATINA’S BREATHING PROBLEMS
have been getting worse, and word of her difficulties has been sent to the Ospedale. I take the opportunity to include a letter to Anetta with the wagon driver as well. When I put pen to paper, however, I find it impossible to describe the magic of this place. But I had promised her a letter and am eager for news from her, so I do the best I can.

It was pleasant having a little companion to wander with through the orchards and fields. Now when I go out alone, I think of that first day and how like a dream it felt, the masses of apple blossoms, the vineyards, the endless fields, everything suspended, glittering, and green. Here there is no water anywhere but in the well. It is as if I have slipped from the watery thoroughfares of Venice into a drier, more golden world. Everything smells of rich dark earth and is anchored to it. Any moisture must come from the sky, which it does at intervals regular enough to make the fruit grow plump and juicy and deliver ripe grapes that can be pressed into wine. Signora Ricci says that it is not always so, that this is a very good year when God’s blessings are abundant.

“Go,” she tells me on this exceedingly warm morning when the sun is more fiery furnace than soft comforter. “Catina can help me bake bread. She’ll have plenty to keep her amused.”

“Oh, may I?” begs Catina. “Cook never lets us help knead, even when she’s so worn out the sweat pours down her face and drips into the dough.”

“How revolting!” I say, wishing she had not disclosed this unpleasant fact. Bread will now be one more thing at the Pietà that I will exclude from my diet.

“God’s mercy, you never can tell it in the eating,” she continues.

“It was not the kneading I had in mind for you, Catina,” says Signora. “Perhaps you can add the salt and the water. It would not do to have you cough into the mixture.”

“Just another thing that I may only watch,” says Catina, slumping in her chair and sticking out her lower lip, which makes her seem very young indeed.

I do not wish to leave her so dejected, but there is little for me to do if I stay, and so I take the basket of food Signora hands me and smile at her when she winks at me, hoping Catina doesn’t see this interchange.

“They are harvesting the grapes on the north slope,” she tells me. “You may enjoy watching, but do not get in the way.”

The peculiar little barn with its single cow is in another direction entirely. There is something about it, however, that draws me back. Perhaps the cow is in the field. Perhaps I will not be so much a hindrance as I was before. I will approach quietly and leave if the boy is milking her again.

The dew has already dried upon the grasses, and there are none of the fine webs woven through the blades that glisten in early light. Far to the south, I can see workers clinging to another slope. From here they look like tiny dark bugs; I can’t distinguish head from hat.

Approaching the barn from the back, I see the cow already in the field and grazing. The boy, no doubt, is off doing chores somewhere. Without the caution I had planned earlier, I sneak a look into the small outbuilding and am confronted by a sight that I had not expected. The boy is sound asleep upon the straw, his wide-brimmed hat perched on a post, his rake lying just beyond his reach. He has the dark bouncing curls of a child, but the more angled features of a young man. He is most beautiful in repose, even though the black eyes I had noticed before are shut tight. His hands support his head; his bare feet stick up straight, displaying calluses and dirt and straw between the toes. A small black lamb is curled into one corner. It may have been here before, but I didn’t notice it in all the upset over the cow.

I have a sudden, unexplainable urge to wake the boy with a kiss upon his full, unsmiling lips and am glad no one can see the hot blush this thought produces. Instead, I back away very quietly and climb over the wall to the same spot beneath the apple trees where Catina and I had eaten our picnic. It is much different when there is no one to share the transporting sight of all those clusters of white blossoms abuzz with honeybees. The flowers give off a mystical light even in full sun. And I think how I will try to describe this in my next letter to Anetta and wonder if she will be able to imagine what I mean.

The cow is still grazing in the field inside a wooden fence with a wide gate. I go to the fence and lean upon it and stare at her, confounded that she is so completely unaware of me. I could be a bird, maybe even a vulture waiting to make a meal of her. And to think, she made all that fuss before over one harmless girl, and now she doesn’t care a wit. I am just noticing how short and brown the grass is wherever she has been, when I sense movement behind me and turn to find the boy coming this way from the barn. He is not smiling, but neither does he look as peevish as he did on our first meeting.

“Does Signora Ricci have nothing for you to do?” he asks, opening the gate.

It swings out, but he closes it behind himself and doesn’t invite me in.

“I am here to rest,” I tell him.

“You seem well enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“For ordinary chores.”

“And is that what you are doing as you waltz around your cow?”

I can tell he is offended by the way his eyes grow darker still and his mouth turns down. “I do nothing of the kind. I’ve come to groom her.”

He has a flat, oval brush fastened to one hand that he begins to pass over the sagging sides of the beast in much the way I’ve seen a carriage driver do when currying a horse right in the Riva.

“You take good care of her,” I say to appease him.

“The Riccis gave her to me. I will have a barnyard full of animals one day.”

“Will you have a bull?”

“Yes. Undoubtedly a bull if there are to be calves.”

“And sheep like that little black one in the barn?”

“You were spying on me.”

“I came to find you, but not to spy.”

“Yes, I will have sheep. And chickens.”

“I don’t see any chickens.”

“They’re over in the henhouse. Would you like to feed them?”

“Is it hard work?”

“You
are
a lazy girl!”

“That’s not true at all. I work very hard at the Ospedale. We all work hard. We practice our instruments for hours every day. And we have lessons in language and history and solfeggio. It is a different life from yours, but no less difficult.”

“In Venice.”

“Yes. Have you never been there?”

“I have never been outside this village. Everything I want or need is here.”

How blind he is.

“You cannot know that,” I say, “when you have no knowledge of any other place.”

“What did you know of the country until a few days ago?” he counters.

He is right, of course, but I am determined not to let him know this.

“It was not so strange to me. I had seen pictures.”

“Pictures. With so little logic, you will not win arguments with me.”

I am confounded by that remark, for it makes me realize that he is better schooled than I had supposed. He does, in fact, speak in a way that is different from that of other peasants I have encountered. It is very like the speech of my fellow students at the Ospedale.

“Do you attend some school, then?” I ask.

“My mother was raised in Florence, a city of great beauty with many works of art.”

“I have seen pictures of Firenze, too. I know about the works of art.”

“Do you want me to answer your question, or would you rather continue to tell me all that you know?”

What do I say to that? I am determined not to apologize.

After a period of silence between us, he goes on.

“She brought many books with her when she came here to live with my father. Everything I know I have learned from those books. And from her. She was my teacher and school.”

“What of your father?”

“He is a simple man. He has vineyards, and he works in them himself. My mother loved him very much.”

He is speaking about his mother as if in the past. I want to know the reason for this but am afraid to ask.

“I have a mother,” I say. “She is both learned and beautiful.”

“Orphans do not have mothers.”

“Most orphans don’t. I am different.”

“Well, if it is true, which I doubt, you are very fortunate. I, myself, am no longer so.”

I have been led to ask why. It cannot be avoided.

“She is dead,” he answers.

He does not say “has gone to her heavenly reward” or “is with the angels” or “has passed into a better place,” as most people do. He does not try to soften the awful word at all.

“How did she . . . die?” I ask.

“Something inside of her. Some terrible canker that grew within her breast.”

His eyes are not wet at all, but mine are. His seem beyond tears, beyond any hope of surcease for his pain.

“I am so sorry,” I say, and when he looks over at me, something in his piercing glance tells me that he, indeed, feels my compassion in the same way that I feel his great and unimaginable loss.

T
HE DUKE IN QUESTION
is coming to tea today, and I am to be seated near Prioress, where, I’m told, he may wish to converse with me. I am also told that I should keep my answers short and not say anything to offend. What things he might take offense at I can only guess. Perhaps such categories as odor of breath, length of beard, stains on waistcoat, quantity and quality of belches should be avoided. Silvia claims he is sure to be portly and pig-eyed. I expect nothing and will be disappointed by nothing. It is simply a tedious routine we older girls must endure from time to time. I had not known that my turn would come so soon, and it behooves me to remember that no one is forced into any arrangement. Sometimes, however, there is firm encouragement in one direction or another. It will profit me to keep my wits about me, something for which I would be better prepared if only Rosalba were here to counsel me. This day I pray my angel guardian will find a way to substitute Rosalba’s reason for my own.

Father Vivaldi is not at tea today, either, a fact that further disappoints me as he would have been placed near enough to be a source of lively conversation. Only Signora Mandano, Prioress, Maestro Scarpari, and the few girls already spoken for will be at table. Maestro Gasparini has been unwell for quite a long time. Some weeks he only makes an appearance at the concerts and leaves Father Vivaldi to handle all the rehearsals, a rather more pleasant arrangement as far as I’m concerned.

Cook has provided a honey cake and a
panna cotta
with peaches from the two trees in the yard. There are some filled
cannoli
and other sweetmeats, much more than at an ordinary tea, which makes me think that I am either highly regarded or that any bargain for my hand will be most difficult. I am so detached from the outcome that my only thought at present is how to manage to get my fair share of treats. It is most discomfiting, however, to be paraded in with Prioress, after the duke has been positioned at the table so that he can view me distinctly and undisturbed. His first remarks are so frank and rude, I almost giggle.

“I had not thought that she would be so large,” he says, his eyes traveling from toe to top and back until they rest upon my bosom. It is not clear if he refers to my entire form or to my breasts, which my fichu, even with its extra rushing, does not hide so very well.

I have been told to curtsy to him, which only makes the situation worse. It is an awkward curtsy to be sure, and gives him opportunity again to closely view my chest. When I, at length, sit down across from him, he turns to Prioress and does not look at me at all. While he is so engaged, I take the chance to look at him. He’s neither small nor large but somewhere in between. His nose is a trifle handsome, but his eyes have no distinction except that one is brown and one is blue. I’m pleased to see there is no beard at all and no paunch resting on the table edge. His ill-fitting wig conceals, no doubt, secrets of his head and hair that I’d rather not consider yet.

When Prioress turns to me, I must collect myself.

“Anetta can play many instruments, though it is on the viola d’amore that she excels, as you have heard.”