I laid my head back on the pillow, not sure whether I had imagined this kiss or it was real. If it did happen, I thought, which of my new companions had kissed me, and why?
1
At my first rehearsal in the Church of La Pietà, I tried to position myself in the second row, directly behind the blond girl who had smiled at me the previous evening, but with whom I had yet to exchange a word. Julietta had told me her name was Adriana dalla Viola. She said Adriana was one of her closest friends and offered to introduce me to her. There was something that drew me to Adriana, and it wasn’t just her beauty, for there were any number of beautiful girls in the orchestra, including Julietta herself, who dressed and slept not four feet from me. Even in the brief time I had been around her, I saw that Adriana possessed a poise and calm I had seldom seen in an adult, much less in someone my own age. At any rate, my hope of standing close to her and speaking to her during a break was thwarted, and I was put in my place—literally—by Marina dal Violino, who was standing beside Adriana.
“You are in the back row,” Marina said sharply, “the last and least among us with your strange instrument. You had better get there before the Master arrives. We never needed a clarinet before, and I doubt we need one now. You just take direction from Genevieve dal Flauto, the Prima Flautista, ask no questions, expect no favors, and hit the right notes.”
Genevieve had black hair, knotted back severely, small ears, and brown hawk eyes that followed me to my place. Her expression was rigid. Her skin had an icy sheen, her lips were thin and white. She and Marina were sixteen years old, only two years my senior, but at that point in my life they felt far older.
A hush descended when we heard the Master’s boots, followed by Luca’s, on the stone steps that led to the mezzanine from a chamber behind the altar. The Master entered imperiously, scanning the orchestra without allowing his eyes to linger on any one of us. He was wearing a white robe with a gold collar and the white gloves, easily seen in dim concert halls, that he always wore when conducting. His red hair caught the light of the candles. Under his arm Luca was carrying a leather folder containing a stack of sheet music, which he distributed to us.
We were lined up, three deep, behind the iron grille, draped in crêpe, overlooking a wide hall where chairs would be set out for our performance the following night. The grille was intended to shield our identities, and in the sardonic words of Signora Marta, “to preserve whatever innocence you may still possess.” After breakfast, setting up in a practice room, Julietta had filled me in on the intricacies of this issue while Carita frowned and averted her gaze, pretending to be deeply absorbed in polishing her cornet. Julietta was quite the coquette, and the rippling laughter with which she punctuated her conversation emerged naturally. A tradesman’s son from the outer Lagoon, I had never been around girls like her.
“No matter what they say, I don’t know that anyone gives much thought to virtue or innocence around here. Certainly not Marta or Luca. And when the Master puts his mind to such matters, it usually pertains to the chorus, especially the mezzosopranos,” she said archly, “and not any of us. In short, despite all the rules heaped upon us, the only real rule is: ‘Don’t get caught,’ ” she added, tuning her tiorba. “Meanwhile, you should know that when we reach the age of seventeen, we can be courted from the outside. We receive letters from gentlemen of the city requesting the company of a particular girl—with a chaperone, of course—based not on her appearance, which is supposedly unknown to them, but the quality of her playing. Even if it were true that our music seduces these men, would that make their intentions any purer?”
“Why are you filling her head with this rubbish?” Carita interjected. “She’s only been here one day.”
“She’ll soon learn a lot more than that for herself,” Julietta laughed. “We are given these letters by way of Marta, whose deafness, I should tell you, many of us doubt, having on rare occasions seen her react to sound. At any rate, we never know how many of these letters she actually receives, which ones she dispenses, which she withholds, and why.” She lowered her voice. “And of course we don’t know if, for a few coins, she doesn’t provide a particular gentleman with a physical description of, say, Carita dal Cornetto.”
“You can shut up now,” Carita snapped.
“But some of us suspect these gentlemen know a good deal more about us than how we play our instruments,” Julietta continued.
Carita grabbed her arm. “You had better watch what you say, Julietta, and who you say it to.”
Both Julietta and I were taken aback by Carita’s anger. Julietta was taller and stronger than Carita. She pulled her arm free and leaned in close to Carita. “Don’t ever lay your hands on me again.”
“One day you’ll be sorry,” Carita hissed, and stormed off.
As I spread out my sheet music on a stand, I could see that, despite her bravado, Julietta was shaken. It was obvious she had teased Carita before, but without drawing such a sharp response.
Though I knew it might be best to remain silent, I said to Julietta, “Why is she threatening you?”
“No matter. I’m not afraid of her, or the likes of her.” She turned away, and proceeded to polish her tiorba. Then, lowering her voice, and without a trace of her usual good spirits, she addressed my question without answering it: “You have only seen the surface of this place, Nicolà. It won’t take you long to see what else is going on. Be careful who you trust.”
All through our rehearsal at the church that afternoon, I kept one eye on the score and the other on the Master’s baton. I missed none of my cues as we worked through his newest composition, a Concerto in F major. It was exhilarating for me to play with an orchestra, to be a part of this great synchronized mechanism whose volume the Master could raise or lower, whose dynamics he controlled, and whose colorations he could darken or lighten, all with a flick of his wrist. Even with the guidance of my clarinet, it was difficult for me to adjust at first, to hear the other musicians while also hearing myself; but I was grateful, for what might take a musician with a conventional clarinet several weeks, I managed in a few hours. This fact was not lost on some of the girls, every one of them with highly trained ears, after all, who cast approving glances my way. From what I heard later, they wondered if I was not a former conservatory student rather than the street musician I claimed to be, especially since I played such an exotic instrument. Information traveled fast in that small community, and within a couple of days my history—that is, the made-up version I had presented to Luca and the Master—was general knowledge. Those who speculated, out of genuine admiration or envy, decided the story could only be true if I was a sort of prodigy, able to play any score put before me with unerring accuracy.
“Have you ever heard of such a musician playing in the streets?” Genevieve dal Flauto sniffed to Marina dal Violino by the privy, knowing I was inside (having remembered to sit while peeing, since my feet would be visible beneath the door). “And a girl, no less. I wonder where she really came from.” These two had taken such an immediate dislike to me that I asked Julietta if they were hostile to all newcomers.
“Not all. Genevieve is threatened by you because the Master put you among the flutes, rather than the oboes, and obviously believes he can adapt the flute parts to your clarinet. Marina is mean-spirited, but not always so obvious about it. Something about you has gotten under her skin. But I like you, Nicolà. And I trust you.” She embraced me, and I delighted in the warmth of her body against mine.
Despite that, and my pleasure in playing my clarinet at the rehearsal, I couldn’t get Julietta’s earlier words out of my head, and I wondered what it was she was warning me about at the Ospedale.
2
The following evening before dinner, Julietta and I were sitting on one of the stone benches in the Ospedale’s courtyard. She had told me she had a surprise for me. A sea breeze blowing in from the Lido stirred the poplars. The marigolds and zinnias in flowerbeds shone like gems, yellow and gold, in
the fading light. Deep shadows were lengthening on the cobblestones. Across the courtyard, through a low archway, I could see Bartolomeo Cattaglia, the cook, picking lettuce and radishes from the garden that supplied his kitchen. He was a broad-shouldered, ham-handed man with a grizzled beard and a curly mass of brown hair, graying around the ears. He had one eye and one good leg, the result of serving in the Republic’s Navy in the Genoese and Sardinian Wars. He lost his eye to an arrow and his left leg below the knee to a cannonball. He himself had been a cannoneer on the admiral’s flagship, but once he had to depend on a wooden leg, he found another way to serve by becoming a cook. That meant learning to transform the potatoes, onions, and salted fish that were the staples of seafaring galleys into tasty soups and stews. He was especially adept at preparing sarde in saor, the favored dish of Venetian sailors for centuries: layers of marinated sardines alternating with a paste of onions, raisins, and pine nuts. When he left the Navy finally, a highly decorated veteran, he took charge of the kitchens at the Ospedale on the recommendation of the admiralty office. He set the place up like a ship’s galley, pots and pans, highly polished, hooked to a broad beam, all utensils within reach, the butcher block scrubbed down daily with salt and sprinkled with olive oil, the oak floor swept clean, and the barrels in the storeroom neatly labeled. A number of cooks worked under him, feeding hundreds of girls, but Bartolomeo still tended to details like the vegetable garden himself, and he personally oversaw the meals served to the forty members of the privilegiate di coro. I was immediately drawn to him, I suppose, because, of all the men who worked at the Ospedale—Luca, Carmine, the thin high-strung porter, and of course the Master—Bartolomeo had far more in common with the men I had grown up around, my father and his fellow workers. Like my father, he came out of the laboring class, but had a much tougher background, having grown up in the back alleys of Santa Croce, notorious for its bare-knuckle boxers and knife fighters. It was no accident that the Navy conscripted most of its wartime sailors there. Ducal police sometimes rounded up a dozen men in a single tavern and sent them directly to the naval barracks on the Isola di San Pietro. Bartolomeo, however, was a volunteer, and proud of it.
In fact, my first interchange of sorts with him occurred that very evening as he limped back to the kitchen, his black cane clicking loudly and a basket of vegetables tucked under his other arm. He paused at the sight of Julietta and me.
“Good evening, Julietta,” he called out. “And you must be the new girl among the privilegiate.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “Nicolà dal Clarinetto.”
“Welcome. Here is something for you both, to save for dessert.” He reached into his pocket and produced two apricots, which he tossed to us in quick succession.
Julietta caught hers with both hands, but when mine sailed wide and high, I leaped up and dived for it, catching it with one hand and tumbling headfirst into the flowerbed. Julietta laughed with surprise when I jumped up, brandishing the apricot and brushing the dirt from my skirt, but Bartolomeo wasn’t laughing. He took two steps toward us, squinting at me in the twilight.
“You’re very athletic, Nicolà,” he said.
And not at all ladylike, I thought with alarm. “Yes, sir,” I said meekly.
“And how do you play the clarinet?” he said.
“She plays beautifully,” Julietta said.
He nodded thoughtfully, turning away. “I shall look forward to hearing her.”
How stupid of me to show off like that, I told myself; I should have let the apricot go, but I acted on blind instinct—as if I were still Nicolò Zen. The girls I’d known, like my sisters, were certainly capable of athletic play, of tussling, but a poised, well-mannered girl would resist diving into a flowerbed. Even if she wanted to, anyone who had worn a dress all her life would know instinctively that it was a bad idea. In short, I could disguise my voice all I wanted, but if I made mistakes like that, I would quickly be found out. It had taken very little to rouse the suspicions of a sharp-eyed man like Bartolomeo.
If Julietta suspected anything at all, she didn’t let on. Instead, she said, “At last, Nicolà. Here is my surprise.”
Still brushing my dress clean, I looked up as Adriana approached us from the dormitory entrance. My heart skipped a few beats, but I tried to conceal my excitement.
“My new friend here has been eager to meet you,” Julietta laughed.
Adriana smiled at me. “And why is that, Nicolà dal Clarinetto?”
She said my new name in a singsong, trilling the l’s and t’s. For a moment, I was tongue-tied. Then I replied, inanely, “Because I am interested in the viola.”
She pursed her lips. “And not in me? I hoped we would be friends—you and Julietta and I.”
“Yes, of course, I hope so, too,” I said.
“Good,” she said, sitting down beside me. “Then tell me about yourself. Or have you already told Julietta everything?”
“Hardly,” Julietta put in. “All I know is that she was playing in the streets for soldi when Luca invited her to audition.”
“And where did you live?” Adriana asked.
“Here and there,” I said. “Pensiones, boardinghouses—sometimes a bench in the Campo San Vio.”
“That sounds dangerous,” Adriana said. “And cold. But you look very healthy, despite all that.”
“Maybe because of it,” I lied, and it frightened me to hear what a fluent liar I had become.
“What do you mean?” Adriana said.
“I mean that maybe the experience made me stronger. You know, having to stay on my toes, persevering so I could eat.”
“And you weren’t afraid? I would have been.”
“Only a little,” I replied, thinking of my two dubious roommates of the previous week, Giorgio and Filippo.
“All of us here have our stories,” Adriana said, no longer smiling. “What is yours?”
I went on to tell the two of them how I had lost my family, including my three sisters and my supposed brother, Alessandro.
“That’s terrible,” Adriana said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Julietta said. “Then you were only performing in the street for a short time.”
“I think one night would be quite enough,” Adriana said.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I said, wanting to change the subject from myself. “I got lucky, after all. What about you, Julietta? How did you come to be here?”
“That is a long story. I’ll tell you sometime.”
At that moment, Carita appeared in the doorway to the dormitory.
“Uh-oh,” Julietta murmured.
“Signora Marta will not appreciate your absence from dinner,” Carita said.
“She sent you?” Julietta said.
“Of course. We’ve already finished our soup. She is not amused by your absence, so you had better hurry,” she added before disappearing.
We rushed to the dining hall, and indeed, Signora Marta was very unhappy.
“You don’t think you’re going to dine with everyone else, do you?” she shouted as we prepared to take our seats. “You will stand at your places until the others are finished, and then go to bed. You will eat nothing. Anyone who gives you food will answer to me.” She looked around the room. “Does everyone understand?”
Adriana was on the other side of the room, but Julietta, beside me as usual, whispered, “Don’t say anything. Just do as she says.”
Later, I undressed hurriedly and slipped on my nightclothes. Every time I had to dress or undress, bathe, or use the toilet, I realized more fully what I had gotten myself into. It was not just the matter of concealing my sex; the girls of the Ospedale had habits my sisters could only have dreamed of, for the simple reason that my sisters had never enjoyed the luxury of brushing their hair with a fine-bristled brush until it shone, or applying a lavender cream on their faces and hands to keep them soft, or whitening their teeth and freshening their breath with fennel water and crushed cloves. Sometimes as I learned
about hair, and facial balms, female clothing, and the like, I rued the fact I was not gaining knowledge of the clothing and accoutrements a boy of higher station would wear. For example, instead of learning how properly to polish a pair of boots, I was practicing tying my hair back with a ribbon without standing before a mirror. Though the chances of my becoming a gentleman who moved in society were very slim, the chances of my doing so as a young lady were nil. Why I felt I had the luxury of ruminating on such matters I don’t know. At that moment, I had no business fretting about the future when I could barely deal with my present circumstances.
Like Julietta, from whom I kept trying unsuccessfully to avert my eyes as she sat not six feet from me brushing her long hair, her breasts visible through the thin shift that had replaced her dress. She had fuller breasts than most of the other girls, some of whom—like me!—were flat-chested. She caught my glance, and smiled, offering me her brush, but I shook my head.
I was very hungry. But only when we had gotten into bed did I remember the apricot in the pocket of my dress, which was hanging on the wall at the foot of my bed. I waited for several minutes after Signora Marta had extinguished the candles before slipping out of bed and retrieving the apricot. But no sooner had I gotten under my blanket again than I heard a match struck as Carita lit a candle, blinding me as she thrust it toward me and shouted, “Nicolà is eating in bed.”
I had never hit a girl, but I had to restrain myself from jumping up and slapping her. I rationalized that I would be doing this as a girl, after all, but the moment passed, and with it any hope of escaping the wrath of Signora Marta, who appeared at my bedside, flushed and furious. After snatching away the apricot, she grabbed my shoulder.