The Orphan's Song Page 5

  When she finished the last deep note, she paused, eyes still closed. She looked so peaceful, like a visiting angel. Then she opened her eyes and burst out laughing.

  Mino started laughing, too, the deep, abandoned laugh only these collaborations on the roof brought forth, when they channeled something holy and strong. And then she hugged him and he stilled.

  “Oh, Mino.”

  He never dared break an embrace with Letta, unsure when one would come again.

  She pulled back and sighed in blissful pride.

  “I got the apprenticeship at the squero,” he said casually, rubbing a bit of resin up his bow. He’d been aching to tell her all week, waiting for this meeting on the roof.

  “Mino!” Her eyes lit with excitement—then flickered with sadness, which she tried to hide, looking away. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Come with me when I go,” he said, putting his violin down, taking her hands.

  She laughed, just as he thought she would, and he was too nervous to insist on his earnestness. If they could be together he’d do anything, give up this post, leave the republic, go anywhere. For her.

  “Fairy tales,” she said.

  “Letta,” he said, but she flinched away.

  “Good night, Mino. Congratulations.”

  * * *

  ONE MONTH LATER, just over a year since their first accidental meeting on the roof, Mino paced the stairwell to the second floor of the boys’ dormitory in the west wing. It was cold for early October. A penetrating dampness gripped the shadowy corners and old stone walls of the Incurables. Raindrops fell through a gap in the roof onto the mossy stone near his feet, setting an anxious tempo for his troubled mind.

  He gripped his half token, his thumb rubbing the painted woman’s chipped hair. His nails were chewed to the quick, his stockings slipping from the ribbons tied at his knees. He scarcely noticed. He was deep in a fantasy conversation.

  “It isn’t much . . .” he tried beneath his breath, flipping his blond hair from his eyes. Be honest.

  “It’s nothing really . . .”

  Madonna, he hated how flimsy he sounded.

  “You deserve more.”

  Closer.

  “And one day, we’ll have it.”

  Mino had felt the first seed of this plan the day he met Letta. By now, they had a thousand private jokes. They had shared a dozen dreams of the horizon. He’d begun to understand what she meant when she said she wanted more. Mino wanted more now, too. But where Letta’s desire was infinite to the point of being unknowable, Mino wanted one thing. He wanted it with all his heart. So absolute was Mino’s love for Letta, he felt it defined him.

  Over the past year, he’d watched her blossom from a thin, angular girl of sixteen, with pretty black eyes and a wild mane of dark hair, into a self-possessed young woman. Her eyes, still large and spellbinding, were no longer the first thing you noticed about her. There was an inner light within Letta that she let show more and more. It lit her pale skin, her small lips, her soft words, and impulsive mannerisms. It illuminated Mino and made him feel as if he shone, too.

  “Someday”—he practiced in the stairwell—“we’ll reach the horizon.”

  There. That’s what he would say. Rehearsing the words in his mind, he hurried from the stairwell. He was late for his appointment with Father Marché, who wished to discuss some final details of Mino’s apprenticeship before he left for the squero. Mino would spend the afternoon at the gondola maker’s before returning to the Incurables in time for vespers.

  Tonight he would leave his parting gift for Letta on the roof, the scroll of good paper tied with a ribbon, on which he had written the score and lyrics of the first song they’d performed together. Drawing those notes, spelling out the words he knew so well, he had imagined her reading them after he left. He hoped she would sense through the old lyrics a new promise that this was not the end. Soon he would ask her to join him outside the ospedale’s walls, but first he had to prepare a life he could be proud of, one that could offer her the freedom she deserved.

  In the morning he would walk out of the Incurables with only the clothes on his back and one spare set. He had already sneeked his violin out; it sat in his new apartment. His other possessions of value all fit in his pocket or beneath his cloak: his half token from his mother, the two bauta purchased the week before, and the gold wedding band he hoped to give Letta. The first time he returned to the Incurables after visiting his new apartment, he had seen the gold band winking from the side of the street and it had felt like fate, a confirmation of his plan.

  With his first payment from the squero he had gone straight to the shop on the Fondamenta Priuli. The cost for the bauta was only a few soldi, but it had felt like a fortune. He had never spent money before, never had a soldo to spend. And yet, he would have paid anything for the masks to see Letta’s face when he made this simple dream come true for her.

  As soon as he could afford it, he would buy them both black tricornes to secure their masks, and then the black wool capes known as tabarri. Then they would truly be ready to experience carnevale like Venetians.

  All week Mino had slept upon his treasures, laying his face against the masks’ curved forms through the down of his pillow, fitting himself into them like a lover, his hand clutched around the ring. One day soon, he would bring them out.

  * * *

  AT LAST IT was Sunday, the start of carnevale, one week since he had left the Incurables. This morning the music school girls would take their annual outing to hear the coro perform at another sestieri’s church, and Mino would seize the chance to find Letta and make his love plain.

  He woke early, wandered from his apartment nearly all the way back to the Incurables. He wanted to trace the steps she’d take on her way to him.

  He skirted the busy Zattere, turning north and veering in the direction of the city’s center, San Marco. He walked in the eternal twilight of the alleys carved between the leaning, high-walled buildings. The calli were narrow. The city hugged him, only a sliver of sky visible over the buildings as he passed merchants offering stewed pears, knife sharpening, and cat castration.

  When Mino used to take this route to the squero, he left himself double the time he needed to get there. The women on their stoops always held him up with some urgent request: one needed a long arm to help hang her washing, another a strong hand to lop off the tough stem of her winter squash, a third might want his opinion on the price of watermelon. Mino enjoyed obliging these women as much as he enjoyed the dim light of the alleys; the lack of sky above; the secret, hidden feeling of his city. Today he wore his mask and hummed to himself as he wound along the narrow calli, threading north and west, over wooden bridges, under low stone passageways, thrilled by the thought of finding new paths to get lost along with Letta. He heard their music all around him.

  When he veered left at the café on the corner of rio Terà, the calle stopped short and opened wide onto the magnificent broad day of Campo Santa Margherita. The huge square was paved in white stone, surrounded by shops and apartments. It was one of the largest squares in Venice, could hold a thousand people during parades. A dozen entrances rendered it bright with constantly changing crowds, all masked, all rushing together in a great pastel tide. The air smelled like roasting fowl and cinnamon-spiced nuts.

  It reminded Mino of a moment near the end of his favorite of Porpora’s motets, when the full coro came together in a single note of glory. Music as big as the heavens. That moment, that music, was what it felt like to arrive on the Campo Santa Margherita.

  This was where he would wait for her.

  It was only midmorning, but already, carnevale was a force on the streets. The costumed masquerades would last six months. During Mino’s youth, cloistered in the Incurables, these months had seemed endless. Now half a year seemed hardly long enough to celebrate his independence. He knew that once c
arnevale ended there were many other feasts to fill the year. In May, he would finally get to go to San Marco to watch the doge throw a ring into the Adriatic on Ascension Day, the symbolic anniversary of Venice’s marriage to the sea. And come September, the annual Historical Regatta would be the highlight of his work at the boatyard. But no festival compared to carnevale. Full of risk and pleasure, it was the right moment to begin the rest of his life with Letta.

  His white mask covered his face, and when he looked to the left, to the right, his restricted vision felt somehow wider. He had capped the mask with a new black tricorne. He held the second mask in his hand, the ring in his coat pocket.

  An eternity passed before he saw them, the sea of girls dressed in matching blue cloaks, a spectacle of youth, bare faces in a city of masks. The silver-haired prioress walked in front, arms folded before her, her eyes cast modestly low. She led her charges toward the Basilica dei Frari, where they would watch the coro perform before the feast.

  Walking in line, the music school girls were chanting, their beautiful low voices attracting gazes. Here was Reine, who’d limped for a year after her toe was broken before she finally gave it up. He didn’t see Letta. Her dark hair would be under her white cotton bonnet, just like the other girls’. He imagined her at the rear of the pack, annoyed at being let outside only to be marched into another church.

  She loved Venice’s nighttime glow—the candles flickering through curtained apartment windows, the lanterns bobbing from gondolas on the canals. She had memorized the differences between the horizons to the north, south, east, and west. She dreamed of walking on those lines—but she couldn’t bear walking in one. She found the chaperoned outings outside the Incurables unbearably rigid, at odds with the city. She always returned from them in a foul mood. But maybe not today.

  Now they were close upon him, and Mino pressed his back against the stone of a building, nervous.

  And then, there she was, her face was as bright and clear to Mino as the first notes of an aria. Violetta’s dark eyes were enchanting beneath her ebony hair, now just long enough to gather in a short braid. Half of it fell out and brushed her cheeks, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  She was neither tall nor short, neither noticeably thin nor heavy—and yet, she was so different from other girls, even in her matching clothes, even with her gaze on the cobblestones. She walked among them but was not of them. Her spine was straighter, her shoulders looser. For several steps, her eyes were closed, and he realized she was writing music in her mind. He counted her steps. She was dancing, her slippered feet gliding in time to a song only she could hear.

  She passed without seeing him, turned the corner of rio Terà, and for an instant this felt like a horrible omen. But he had a plan, a vision for how today should go.

  He moved between pairs of lovers, caught up to the sea of Incurables girls just as they entered the open campo. Pigeons scattered. Café tables of masked patrons lingered over crystal goblets of acqaioli. Church bells rang from the medieval stone tower of Santa Margherita at the far north corner. For a moment, the prioress let them pause and marvel at the singularly Venetian spectacle of costumed men, women, and children at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning.

  Mino heard the gasps of the youngest girls. He felt their wonder coming off them like a glare. He wasted no time. For a few more moments, no one would notice him. He found Letta at the back of the crowd.

  He took her hand, squeezed. She looked over her shoulder at him as if she knew his touch before the sight of him.

  “It’s me,” he said and gave her hand a tug. He’d meant to be smiling and mischievous as he slipped the second mask into her hand. But beneath his mask his face was strained in terror.

  “Let’s go,” he managed to croak, and God love her, she didn’t even look back.

  As soon as they’d hurried around a corner, he drew her into an alcove under a tiny marble Madonna.

  “What are we doing?” she asked, laughing.

  “You’ll see.” He held the second mask up and she grinned.

  “How did you find me at the moment I most needed to be free?”

  “Because I know you.” He pressed the bauta to her face. He reached his hands around the back of her head and tied the knot. He felt her breath and silken hair on his arm as he tied the bow. He stood back to look at her. The sight of her—disguised to everyone but him—moved Mino almost to tears. “It’s perfect.”

  She touched the waxed linen surface above her cheek, ran her fingers over the raised nose and the eyeholes.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Turn your cloak inside out,” he said. “It will be less noticeable.” He helped her so that its brilliant blue was on the inside, and the more mundane navy wool was exposed. She was radiant. He wanted to kiss her but knew he must wait. From here it was a three-minute walk to his apartment. He had rented it in anticipation of this moment. He yearned to get there, to show her, to close the door behind her and feel, at last, at home.

  But he knew how she was feeling, to have only just broken free. Her first time outside on her own. She’d need to run, to breathe, to wonder. So instead of pointing her in the direction of calle de le Pazienza, Mino said, “Which way should we go?”

  This delighted her. He could see her smile arrive in the slight tilt of the mask. She took his hand and started running. The wind on Mino’s skin, the strength in the knot of their fingers, and the pounding of his heart produced a joy he’d never known. They were doing it. They were free, together. They never had to go back.

  “Duck!” Letta shouted, laughing as they barely dodged a smoking bucket of grilled fish being lowered from a window by a rope. A hawker caught the bucket just before it hit them, baring his fileting knife at them in annoyance.

  When they passed a magazzen, the humblest of taverns that smelled of cheap, sweet liquor, Letta turned to him, pressed close. “Should we take a drink?”

  He wasn’t used to her sounding nervous when she laughed.

  “Not there,” Mino said. He had a bottle of better wine in his apartment. He had a toast in mind. “Let’s keep going,” he said, and she nodded. Her feet flew.

  They ran until they reached the elegant stone bridge at Ca’ Foscari. There both of them stopped. They were out of breath, but there was something else that held them back. For Mino it was a sense that to cross a bridge together meant something, and they would arrive on the other side different.

  There were five wide stone steps leading up the bridge, five more leading down the other side. In the center, on the short, flat stretch of stone, a dozen other masked Venetians lingered to take in the view.

  Violetta pulled him up the steps, and at the bridge’s center, she leaned against the parapet. Wind whipped her hair. She squeezed his hand, and he tried to see the view through her eyes. She was looking north, where this minor canal ended in the Grand Canal, the central artery that pulsed through Venice, separating Dorsoduro from the city’s other neighborhoods. If the minor canals were violin solos, the Grand Canal was a full orchestra—a dozen times broader, faster, holding hundreds of passing ships in her arms. It was lined on either side by the finest palazzi, offering the most prized view in the city.

  They could hop from the bridge into a gondola now. They could reach the Grand Canal in minutes. Was this what she was thinking? How much farther they could go?

  With her face obscured behind her bauta, Mino was more aware of her slender wrists, her graceful neck, the way she stood with her toes pointed out. He could not wait to raise her bauta in the sanctuary of his apartment, where they wouldn’t have to worry about being seen.

  “Marvelous,” she whispered, shaking her head. She wiped tears from her eyes, then grew worried about damaging the mask, dabbing her fingers underneath.

  “Don’t worry.” He took out a handkerchief, tucked it under her mask.

 
“About what?” she said.

  “Anything.”

  All around them Mino saw couples like them, holding hands and basking in the day, in the sun on the canal, the songs of gondoliers, and the anonymity of their masks.

  He wanted to do it now. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her with all the love in his heart. He wanted to tell her what he planned for them. It took everything he had to resist doing it now, here, forever.

  That might scare her. He could not act impulsively, that was Letta’s territory. He had made his plans with her in mind—every little oddity accounted for. He would do it as he planned.

  “This is worth tenfold whatever punishment the prioress concocts,” Letta said. “Where did you get the masks? They look practically new.”

  “There’s more,” he said.

  She tilted her head at him in a way she never had before. That alone was worth it.

  He took her hand and they ran back down the bridge, back through the narrow calli. Mino led the way, avoiding Campo Santa Margherita. By now the girls were gathered inside. The coro was singing in the nave, behind the brass grille. If Mino had not escaped with Violetta, she would have been packed in a pew, miserably aware of life vibrating outside.

  But she was with him. They stopped before number twenty-six and Mino took out his key.

  He said nothing about what the place was, and he felt her curiosity as he opened the door and nodded for her to go in. He led her up the staircase to the fourth floor.

  The apartment had been arranged for him by Sior Baldona, the foreman at the squero and the head of its guild. The first time Mino had seen it, it had seemed impossibly luxurious, even though the ceilings were low and it was a quarter of the size of the dormitory where he slept at the Incurables. This was all his. It could be theirs. It had a small hearth with a stove on which to fit a cast-iron kettle. It had three rooms—a bedroom, a small study, and a main central room—and each had its own window. One looked west over a small canal, one looked down on the calle and the corner café. The bedroom window faced only a close neighboring building, but was Mino’s favorite because of the fragrant potted jasmine he could breathe in when he slid up the pane. He could picture Letta there.