The Orphan's Song Read online

  She let herself admit that she wanted to be the one in his arms. She wanted her lips pressed to his again. She wanted to feel all that yearning coiled between them. She wanted him. For so long she had done what was necessary, her actions divorced from feelings because she didn’t want to hold Mino back. Now her body rushed to reunite with her feelings, and what she felt was . . .

  Love.

  She had loved him all along. And she had caused him so much pain.

  She wanted to weep, but it was time to sing.

  The communal gloria turned and opened into her aria, like a narrow calle turning onto a huge piazza. She blinked at the expanse of it before her, and in the spirit of her broken heart, she began.

  She did not sing as she and Porpora had discussed. She exuded hope neither for Christ’s nor carnevale’s return, neither wakefulness nor homecoming. She sang as if every cherished thing was gone and no one would recover what was loved.

  Tears streamed down her face as she moved from the B section back into the ritornello. She was heading toward the cadenza near the end, where the full orchestra would stop and she would sing the final notes a cappella. She lost herself, singing through the grille like her pain might melt it down.

  At the end, instead of growing louder as she had practiced, Violetta’s voice softened to piano. She felt every body in the building leaning in.

  The room was silent when she finished. She noticed small movements below, and realized parishioners were wiping away tears. She left hers on her cheeks, proof that this had really happened. She felt exhausted and alive.

  Everything was about to change.

  FOUR

  MINO WOKE UP nose to nose with a black-and-white-spotted dog. He jerked away, wincing at a burning pain in his cheek. It felt cold to the touch and wet, and he realized he had rolled into an icy puddle on the cobblestones in his sleep. That told him more than he wanted to know about his state when he’d lain down. He dried his face on his shoulder and rubbed stiffness from his neck. He drew his body closer under the alcove where he’d slept.

  Was it sunrise or sunset? It didn’t matter. He closed his eyes against the changing light. He hated waking up on the street.

  Another day, and life without Letta was still unbearable. When he’d first left the Incurables, over four months ago, Mino had been too despondent to do anything. He never went back to his apprenticeship. He had lost his apartment. All through the brutal winter, he ate where he could, slept where he could, drank as much as he could. Wherever he roamed, his heartache went with him.

  The dog returned, sniffed excessively, leaving dots of dampness on Mino’s cheek. He swiped a hand, intending to push the beast onward, but he felt the matted fur, the soft ears, the warm head, which tilted automatically into Mino’s palm.

  “What do you want?” he asked the dog, who leaned into Mino’s bad temper instead of scampering away. He felt the dog watching him with a focus that no one had fixed on Mino in months. No one saw him anymore. It was amazing how a man could disappear in plain sight.

  His head throbbed. He glanced at the bottle next to him—two swallows left of something brown and treacherous. It might make him feel better to finish it off, at least for a little while, but the thought made his stomach lurch and twist. He was hungry. He tried to think when he’d last eaten.

  The dog whimpered, pawed at something in front of him. Mino looked down, and there was a pair of black leather boots. They were sturdily soled, yet nothing like the work boots men wore in the squero. These were rich men’s boots, light as slippers near the top, but with a substantial sole, ornate stitching, and a cuff at the top as wide as Mino’s palm. They would reach halfway up his calves. The dog bent his head and nosed the boots closer to Mino. He gave a tiny yap, as if to say Take them.

  Mino glanced up and down the street, but no one was looking. It was sunset; he saw that now from the manner of the people on the street. These weren’t workers; they were masked aristocrats, laughing, tipsy, parties waiting around the corner. Now a boy of twelve came down the calle with a torch, lighting each rushlight, the plant piths soaked in grease and set in stone holders outside doorframes.

  Mino winced at the sight of his slippers, pitiful, full of holes. His stockings showed through the gaps in the thin leather, disintegrating gray wool in worse shape than his shoes. A toe poked out, filthy and white with cold. He had not taken off his shoes in weeks. The contrast of these brand-new boots made him ashamed.

  He tore his slippers from his feet. He rid himself of the horrid stockings, too. Gingerly he slid a foot into one of the new boots. The immediate warmth was like an embrace. He closed his eyes, pressed his foot in all the way. The boots were a bit too small, but he’d never take them off. They would stretch. They would be perfect.

  He put the other one on, ran his fingers over their surfaces, then tucked his feet beneath him and hid the boots away. He was warmer already.

  He met the dog’s brown eyes. “You steal boots for all the tramps and make it look this easy?”

  The dog circled twice and lay down at Mino’s side, resting his chin on Mino’s thigh. Mino had not had this much contact with another living thing in months.

  “Sprezzatura,” he said, thinking of the way Porpora used to ask the musicians at the Incurables to play—with a studied nonchalance that belied their efforts.

  At the sound of the word, the dog barked, his chin tossed toward the sky.

  “We’ll call you Sprezz,” Mino said, obliging as the dog rolled onto his back for a scratch. “I’m Mino.”

  Some nights, trying to fall asleep on the freezing calle, Mino thought of changing his name. It was not his given name, but his orphan name. He was gone from the orphanage now.

  But he didn’t remember the name his mother had called him. She felt further out of reach than ever. He laughed bitterly thinking how he had planned to use his connections through the squeri guild to search for her. Those were severed now, by his own recklessness.

  Even if he had some way of finding her, how could Mino meet his mother in this state? On the streets, with no prospects and no means—he was nothing. He didn’t deserve to find the woman he remembered. He wouldn’t know where to begin if he did.

  Sprezz was on his feet now, and Mino felt that the dog was compelling him to rise as well. It was late February and the sun was timid, barely warming the streets by day. Mino stood, reluctantly folding the tabarro cloak he used only as a blanket. The cloak had befallen him one night when he was sleeping outside the opera house, Teatro San Angelo. A pair of lovers had drawn into the alcove where he lay begging for dreams. He’d tried to make himself small, invisible, as the woman tossed the man’s cloak off in a series of heated kisses and moans. The garment landed at Mino’s feet. The lovers stayed warm with their endeavors for some time, and Mino had drawn the cloak over his body. When they finished, they didn’t remember the cloak. They scampered off and he heard them go their separate ways without promises.

  He had used the man’s cloak as a blanket ever since, sometimes thinking of the sounds its previous owner had elicited from that woman, but Mino had never worn the cloak during the day. He still wore the simple clothes he’d worn at the Incurables—a white peasant’s shirt, gray trousers. His tricorne had been stolen in his sleep long ago. Together with his previous pair of slippers, Mino’s clothes seemed to shout that the cloak did not belong to him. It would invite more trouble than it was worth to display it before he really needed it, in the middle of the cold night.

  But his new boots begged for a tabarro. Mino settled the cloak over his shoulders as it was meant to be worn. It draped down to his knees, covering the threadbare patches in his pants. It was so fine. You could hardly tell how filthy it was.

  Mino felt brighter than he had in some time. He had a few soldi in his pocket. The lamps were coming on in the taverns on the street. He would take the dog with him and go find them both some d
inner.

  They walked together past the white-pillared church of San Vidal, and around the Campo Santo Stefano, its cafés full of tourists. Mino would have turned left to patronize La Mascareta, where the polenta was cheap and the wine was red, but Sprezz turned right, barking over his shoulder. Follow me. Mino was beginning to like this dog despite himself.

  It did not take long for Mino to notice the change in how he was perceived on the street. People looked at him, and not in a bad way. He was someone worth greeting.

  “Good evening, sir,” a masked stranger told him, tipping his black hat.

  “Buonasera,” he replied. The boots had changed his walk. They made a marvelous clacking on the cobblestones, announcing his arrival from around the corner of a calle. He knew he looked hungry and in need of a bath, but any patrician worth his palazzo might look the same way as the sun set over Venice.

  Sprezz stopped before a tavern, stood on his hind legs, and pressed his nose against the window. A few nights a week Mino had enough soldi for a meal at a cheap tavern, days when he was able to score work hauling refuse by the bucket to the boat bound for Burano, where it would fertilize their fields. But on his rich days, Mino only ate cheap polenta, and he never ate at a place like this. The scents from this kitchen smelled so good he could cry. He had two coins clanging in his pocket and a plan to spend them in a cheaper tavern, where the owner’s wife might smile at him—a break from the glazed eyes he got the rest of the day.

  The cook rapped on the window. Mino assumed he was shooing Sprezz away, but then he came outside with a bowl of fish bones and a small plate of polenta. Mino hung back, watching the cook round the corner, set both bowls in the little alley next to the restaurant, and give Sprezz a scratch on the head.

  Once the cook was back inside, Sprezz barked at Mino, a summoning sound, and Mino stepped forward, amazed by the amount of tender meat clinging to the bones of the fish. He drew one to his mouth. The morsels were still warm, brightened with lemon juice and garlic. It was so good. He closed his eyes. He would stay there all night eating this.

  He cleaned the bones, and Sprezz waited patiently, eating only what Mino set aside. They shared the polenta, Mino spooning it up between two fingers, Sprezz taking delicate bites, licking the clumps from his whiskers. When they finished, Mino was more satisfied than he had been in months. He remembered the soldi in his pocket and thought of what he might do with them now.

  Down the calle, the sign for a stufe called to him. He used to love the weekly bath at the Incurables. He’d never been in a stufe before, but he’d overheard enough at taverns to know that most of the clientele at these bathhouses were courtesans, or the men who liked to watch them.

  Once he’d shared a bottle of malmsey with a painter with wild, frizzy hair. The man couldn’t afford to hire a body model, but he had two soldi for the stufe. He showed Mino his sketches of the women inside. Mino later saw his paintings in the window of a palazzo that looked out over the Rialto Bridge.

  It was the boots that had Mino wanting to clean up. He stopped at the door of the bathhouse, looked down at the dog, who sat, then lay at the doorstep. He would wait.

  “Good boy.” He scratched Sprezz on the chin and went inside.

  The room was dim and wet. A girl took his money and sent him to a corner to remove his clothes. Then an older woman appeared, plump and smiling. She handed him a robe and led him through a maze of candlelit hallways to a room with an octagonal stone bench in the center and steaming buckets everywhere. They were alone. She took his robe off and doused him with hot water. She held a sponge so big it required two hands as she worked over him. She was not gentle. He was not accustomed to this steady and intense touch. But she poured cool water over him, aromatic, scented with orange peels and cloves, and his skin tingled and felt brilliant and raw to the touch. He wanted someone else, someone besides this woman and her sponge, to touch him.

  As he dressed he found the mask in the deep pocket of his tabarro. He put it on. He finally felt worthy of the bauta. He hadn’t worn it since that day with Violetta. He knew the money spent at the stufe was worth it, that he could wear his clothes with dignity now, but he missed his coins sorely, just as he did whenever he spent them on food. He yearned for and dreaded the next shift he would do hauling turnips out of the vegetable boats at dawn, or loading mail into a corriere for two more soldi to throw away on nothing.

  Outside Sprezz was waiting. He matched Mino’s step as they walked toward Piazza San Marco.

  On certain days Mino longed to hear the lovely street music in the heart of the city. On certain days he could bear it. He entered San Marco, the central square of Venice, a vast rectangular piazza framed by colonnaded loggia stretching nearly as far as the eye could see. The ground and surrounding buildings were all of the same soft gray stone, drawing the eye toward the vast gold spires and white domes of the Byzantine basilica to the east. The cafés were always crowded in San Marco. There was always music, too.

  Today the evening sky was dramatic, dusky pink with voluminous purple clouds beyond the Grand Canal. It was cold but soon it would be spring. Mino and Sprezz stopped to watch a man playing violin and a woman singing along. Mino could tell they were a couple, though they never looked at each other. She had a sweet face and a pleasant voice, but Mino had heard angels sing all his life, so it was the violinist who caught his attention.

  The man was very good, but his violin was terrible, too cheap to be properly tuned. Even from a distance of ten piedi, Mino knew that it needed thicker ebony to reinforce the bridge.

  For the thousandth time, Mino wished he’d taken his violin when he left the apartment that day, but he’d fled Letta in a fit of blind horror, and the days that followed were a blur of drunken shame. By the time he remembered his instrument and went back to the apartment, the locks had been changed, and no one answered his knock. It was surely pawned by now.

  If he had it still, would he play it on the street like this man, for money? The idea was too painful to entertain. What he wanted was to fix this man’s violin, to fetch his pliers and his saw. He wanted fresh catgut to replace the tired strings. He wanted to teach that instrument to sing.

  “You look like you’re waiting for a tarantella partner,” someone said at Mino’s side. He turned to find two women in silk gowns. They wore smaller black masks that covered only the top halves of their faces. Their tricornes were perched at jaunty angles. They’d each perfected the flirtatious closed-lipped smirk for which Venetian women were famous.

  Mino didn’t know how to dance the tarantella, but for months the only words anyone had directed at him were commands to get out of the way or settle a bill. He couldn’t imagine dancing, but neither could he deny the woman with the dyed blond hair outright.

  “I dare not make your lover jealous, siora,” he said, glancing left and right dramatically. “Surely you have one here?”

  “How’s your stamina? You might outrun him.” She laughed as she touched his hair, and Mino stilled at the shocking caress. “Is this your natural color?”

  He bowed, recovering. “I’m afraid it is.”

  “Oh, grow it long,” she pleaded. “Make me a wig. I’ve never seen hair so fine—”

  “And soft,” her brunette companion added, petting Mino. “What do you do, Sior Oro?” Mr. Gold.

  He was so taken aback by their attention, he started to say what came first into his mind. “Gondol—”

  But he broke off. Once he would have been proud to speak of his apprenticeship, the apprenticeship he’d thrown away. Now that he’d been wandering Venice for nearly an entire carnevale season, and had listened to the talk on the streets, he knew that building gondolas was nothing in the noble world of money and masquerades.

  But the women heard what they wanted, exclaiming, “A gondolier!” They saw his tabarro, his boots and fine blond hair, and they assumed he must work with the wealthy.

&nbs
p; “For which family?” the blonde asked. Not just any gondolier, rowing the same route back and forth across the canal. They thought him a private employee of a noble family. Mino, who had been destitute for nearly half a year, who had never been anywhere near the rich except in passing on the calle. Mino, who came from nowhere.

  They tilted their chins at him, and he wondered how far he could take their mistake. Letta would have known how to spin it to her advantage.

  “Are you spying on someone?” he asked, teasing. Private gondoliers were believed to know everything about their employers’ intimate lives.

  “A lady must, if she has any wits,” the brunette said. Turning to her friend, she added, “He’ll never tell you anything.”

  Mino bowed and smiled, fully taking on the part. “It’s in the guild’s code. Men have been drowned for such a lack of discretion.”

  “All right, we won’t pry,” the blonde said, “but maybe you can give us some advice?” She put her hand on his chest. Mino held his breath. Her touch was the most intimate thing he’d felt in months.

  “She thinks her lover is straying,” the brunette said, leaning in between them.

  “What a fool.” Mino said the only appropriate thing.

  The blonde was pleased. She drew closer and lowered her voice as, behind them, the musicians packed up.

  “Every day,” the woman said, “it’s the same excuses. He has midnight for me, he wants me more than ever, but something is strange. At sundown, when it is time for an aperitif”—she glanced around the piazza at the masses drinking small glasses of liqueur by the fading light of day—“he’s unavailable. I know he’s not with his wife.” She pointed over her shoulder. “She’s right over there with her cicisbeo! No, there is somewhere he goes in Dorsoduro every day at sunset.”

  “Vespers,” Mino said softly. To keep the boys and girls separated at the Incurables, the girls went to morning mass, while the boys attended the shorter evening service. Mino felt as if he were there now, hearing Giustina sing “Salve Regina.”