STUDYING WITH ULISSE ALDROVANDI HAS TWO ADVANTAGES. First, the naturalist Prospero has chosen to work with his daughter is a kind man who finds friends everywhere. Not much older than Father, Ulisse is slender bordering on emaciated, but his voice and laugh sound as if they come from someone three times his size. Vini wonders why he does not scare away the birds they find in the park. “There you are,” he greets each one heartily from below their perches in the cypress and the hemlock. “Give us some of your time, good Signora” (or “Signore” if the markings are bright). “You are too splendid to forget.”
The second and even more delightful aspect of being Ulisse’s pupil, is that Vini’s classroom is outdoors. Though she must wear the veil of an unmarried woman when they set out for their lessons, she always throws it back when they reach the park off Strada Maggiore. She prowls the woods and hikes along streams, bringing back pods and thistles, salamanders and moss. “An excellent specimen,” Ulisse tells her, turning each one over and over between his skinny fingers. “See here, where the spore will escape? And here, where the side that gets no sun has turned white?”
And then they set to work, the two of them. Ulisse saves the things he will take back to his study, drying leaves and seeds and butterfly wings in a special wooden press he has devised; Vini sketches with charcoal or ink. For luscious hours, they sprawl on grassy slopes or in the shade of manicured public gardens, working at what her mentor calls “field study,” though Vini thinks she has never had more fun in all her life. To be free of the street veil, to be under the sky without having to sneak or lie, to tramp for miles without anyone telling her where to go or what to do—surely, this is how men and angels must feel!
Once, after Vini has grown easy with her tutor, she begs to take Cesare with them. The dog is hysterical with happiness as he yips at their heels, flushes birds from hedges, and generally ruins their day. “I am so sorry, Signor Aldrovandi,” Vini hears herself saying again and again. “I should not have brought him.”
“On the contrary, Signorina Fontana,” Ulisse finally tells her, endearing himself to her forever. “This tiny beast may have upset our plans, but it is perfectly in tune with Nature’s.” He settles himself beside her, pulling out a pen and the small leatherbound book he keeps in his vest. “I had best take notes for my volume on predators.”
Vini, who cannot tell whether her teacher is joking, watches Cesare scramble after an errant goose, then retreat as the large bird tires of the game and comes after him, wings spread, honking loudly. When she turns back to Aldrovandi, she notices that he is smiling broadly and has not written a single word in his book.
But the days have gotten colder, the birds are fewer, and the seeds are drying and blowing away. There will not be many more open-air lessons until the spring. Instead, Vini knows, she and Aldrovandi will be forced to sit by the fire in Papa’s library, to pore over skeletons and dried leaves, the dusty remains of this precious autumn. Mad to keep the adventure going, eager to share it, Vini takes a carefully calculated risk after Prospero has set out on yet another trip to Florence.
“Signore,” she asks her tutor one morning in late November, “do you suppose another student of Father’s could accompany us today?” She busies herself, packing the knapsack Aldrovandi has given her, stacking the paper and bundling her pens and charcoal inside. “Signor Zappi has expressed to me his interest in the study of nature.” (In fact, what Paolo said was, “I dream of the two of us taking walks where no one can see me hold you, where you and I can be alone.”)
“Of course,” Aldrovandi replies, so innocent that Vini immediately feels a twinge of guilt, “let us take him along. He can help with the bags. And perhaps he would not mind staying with you while I do some climbing and wading?”
Paolo does not mind at all. The three of them set out with a sack of fruit and cheese and six of Silvana’s morning rolls. All afternoon they walk and sketch and, wrapped in woolen cloaks, soak up the fading warmth of the distant sun. When at last Ulisse hears a harsh call he insists is a rare species of dove, he begs their indulgence to follow it “just over the next hill.”
In his absence, Paolo stops sketching and watches Vini work instead. It is as if he would rather do this than make anything himself, as if this is what he does best of all. She feels his eyes on her and smiles up at him, holding her paper out. “Do you like it?” she asks, knowing the answer.
“I like it very much, Signorina,” he says. Then he leans to kiss her cheek. Vini looks after her tutor, whose rangy steps have taken him nearly out of sight, and does what she has yearned to do ever since spring: she touches the curls that frame her friend’s face, the ringlets just above his forehead and on the back of his neck. A rush like water fills her ears, and now he is kissing her on the mouth. She wonders whose body this is, turning into air and light, rising for joy.
I am white, she thinks as he kisses her again, then finds her throat and presses his lips there, too. I am a color you cannot mix.
“Little One,” Paolo says, or rather sighs, then pulls himself away to lie stretched full-length beside her on the faded grass. At first he brings her hand to his mouth, but then he holds it instead against his heart. “It hurts to love you so much.”
I am the color of the dress I wore at confirmation.
“One day,” he tells her, “you will be my wife. It must happen, or I will die.”
When Aldrovandi returns, Vini and Paolo are sitting, perhaps only a little too close, sketching and chewing on the last of the tiny, hard apples they have found in the bottom of Silvana’s sack. “Look! Look!” Vini’s tutor calls to them, excited and flushed. “Look what I have!” Panting, he folds his long body beside them, emptying three pearl gray feathers onto the grass.
The days shorten and grow colder still. Paolo goes to visit his family in Imola, Advent passes, and Mama is feeling better. By the Vigil of the Nativity, on Christmas Eve, she is well enough to attend church. Ulisse, who has been working with Vini indoors and who feels like one of their family now, tags along. And because some guests Papa brought back from Florence have lingered, they, too, come to services.
Church is only a short way from the house, so everyone walks, leaving the carriage and horses at home. Aunt Beatrice is the one who proposed they “take the air,” but Vini suspects it is only to show off her new cape and hat. Zia moves with a measured grace, a studied slowness that suggests she wants to make sure all of Bologna sees her new clothes.
The nave of Santissima Trinità is filled with flowers, white primroses and scarlet poppies. The sweet, heavy scent of their drooping heads blends with the incense, the beeswax tapers, and the perfume of the parishioners. Behind the bishop’s throne, a lightless window set with colored glass waits for tomorrow’s sun.
The Fontanas’ pew is not at the front of the church, but it is near enough. Near enough for Vini to stop, at least for a minute, wishing that Paolo were with them, to be distracted by the silks, the furs, the tassels, capes, and jewelry. Everyone has worn their best to High Mass; they settle like swifts, chattering and noisy, while the procession makes its way down the central aisle. But then, when the organ wakes like a sobbing giant, filling the huge hall, the talk and laughter die away.
As the bishop reaches the altar and the priest and the others take their places below him, the great organ stops. In the crumb of quiet that follows, Vini holds her breath. Then, as the chorus sings the opening of the Mass, she feels what must be God’s love, a sort of panic and splendor that fill her, that settle in her chest like wings, opening and closing as the music swells: Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy. Christe eleison. Christ, have mercy. Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.
Tomorrow is the birthday of Our Savior. A man-child who will grow to hold the world in his hands. A blessed babe who will make kings tremble, who will bring us all to our knees. He will be mightier than nations, higher than this cathedral. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei. Lord God, Lamb of God. The voices fill the church, flinging themselves against the vaulted ceiling. Filius Patris qui tollis peccata mundi . . . Son of the Father who takes away the sins of the world . . .
How can Vini feel holy and lust-filled at once? She is missing Paolo again, remembering the sound of his voice, the line of his legs stretched alongside hers on the grass. She searches the others’ faces, wonders what images fill their heads. Beside her, Antonia wears a tiny smile, a sweet shadow of joy. Vini knows why, but no one else does. Not yet.
Why can’t she be as happy as her mother? How can she celebrate one baby’s birth and not another’s? She studies Antonia, who has thrown off her fur cloak and is kneeling on one of the pillows they have brought with them. She appears no different, only a little thinner since the sickness. But inside her the seed is growing. Without light, in secret, Vini’s brother is forming himself. Lamb of God, grant us peace. As everyone around her bows their heads, Vini cannot close her eyes without seeing him. The babe who waits to be born, the babe who has given her mother a Madonna’s smile.
When she takes communion, she hardly dares look at the priest or the bishop. Even though they are just men like any others, she is afraid that in their robes they may be able to read her heart. Do they know how often she thinks of Paolo? Do they know how much she wishes he were beside her instead of with his own family? Do they know what she has just been thinking about the baby?
Father Anselmo and the bishop have been to her house, have sat and talked with Father, have drunk wine without blessing it first. But in their brocade chasubles, so heavy that two altar boys are needed to lift each of them when the great men move, they do not seem human. Holiness cloaks their gestures, their every step. Once, when Father Anselmo was giving daily Mass, Vini noticed a splash of mud on his stole. But this is Christmas Mass and there is no stain, no blemish, except on her own soul.
On the walk home, Prospero is nearly jovial, joking with his guests about the end of Advent, which he confides will change his menu very little. Other more pious churchgoers break a long holy fast this time of year, but not Papa.
“When I was young, I watched two of my dearest companions die with Spanish bullets in their chests,” he tells Ulisse and the rest. “Three years ago, an apprentice in my shop died of typhus.” He stops in the street, places a hand on one of his guests shoulders. “Fasting is fine for angels, my friends. But not for a man who knows each meal may be his last.”
Vini studies her father from under her veil. Dearest companions. She tries to imagine Papa young, as young as that student in the bottega who died when she was twelve. He had been a strong, sinewy fellow, but the fever finished him in six days. She pictures a young man like that, laughing, playing at mock jousts or scrambling after a ball. How did he feel, that younger, passionate Papa, when he went off to war with his friends and came back alone?
Walking on each side of her, Mama and Zia Beatrice are talking about what has occupied them all day—the latest project the women of the church, the Sorority of Santissima, have undertaken for the congregation. They are making confirmation veils for the children of the poor, frothy white squares to place on the heads of new daughters of Christ.
Prospero has already made it plain how he feels about this latest effort of the Sorority. “Put a group of women together,” he told his Florentines at the noon meal today, “and you are bound to hatch foolishness. Veils for the poor, eh?” He had picked his teeth, reached for more wine, and turned to Antonia. “Why not dance slippers for the lame, my dear? Or perhaps books for the blind?”
So now, while Papa is making light of fasting, Zia is loudly proclaiming far nobler aims. “Imagine,” she says, clasping Mama’s wrist, her veil thrown back, her eyes lit with zeal. “Imagine if we stitch a white rose in each corner. A rose and perhaps a lamb on the back.”
“Goodness, ’Trice,” Antonia says. “A lamb? Do you think we are all artists with a needle like you?”
“A cross, then.” Zia releases Mama’s arm and strides faster now, walking toward her vision. “Hundreds of little paupers coming to Christ in our gifts. Oh, Sister, won’t it be perfect? A perfect act of charity?”
As if lured by her words, three figures step forward from under a colonnade that runs along the piazza. They are beggars, the one in the middle blind, helped by the other two, who hold him under his arms. They are wrapped against the cold with blankets and dirty, torn cloaks. Shoeless, they have bound rags around their ankles and feet. The oldest—though, indeed, they are all old—bows to Zia. Father and the men, who have been following behind, nearly stumble into her when she stops short and pulls her fur cape tight around her face.
“Signora, Signora,” the old man says. “Misericordia.” He holds out his hand to Vini’s aunt first, then to Vini and her mother. “Mercy,” he repeats. “Good Christmas to you all. Have mercy.”
“Filthy!” Zia grabs Vini and pulls her away. “Don’t let them get near you, dear. They are covered with lice.”
Now the blind beggar in the middle holds out his hand to them, too. His skin is leathery and crossed with years and years of wrinkles. His eyes appear to have been sewn shut; looking back as her aunt pulls her ahead, Vini can see drops glistening in their corners.
“Misericordia,” the blind man echoes.
Prospero tries to pass by him, too, but the beggar grabs his cloak. “Mercy, Signore.”
Vini’s father stands rigid for an instant, then brushes the blind man’s hand away. “Lying on Christmas, Sir?” he says. “You see as well as I do, I warrant.”
Ulisse, towering above them, surprises everyone except Vini. “Greetings, Signori,” he tells the beggars, using the same tone with which he addresses birds and centipedes and bad dogs who chew his field notes. “Let us pass, and there will be coins for you all.”
Antonia falls back, touches her husband’s arm. “It is the eve of Our Lords birth,” she says, just loud enough for the visitors from Florence to hear. “There is no need to hide your generosity, my dear.”
Vini’s father looks at her darkly, then sighs and reaches into the purse on his belt. He and Ulisse throw coins onto the street and the three beggars rush to pick them up. “Ha!” Papa laughs, watching them scramble. “The blind one has found his first.” He shakes his head. “He must have eyes in his fingers, no?”
He takes Antonia’s arm now and hurries her ahead, the visitors flanking them. When they catch up with Vini and her aunt, the group divides again, the women in front, the men behind.
“You should not waste your husbands money on those street rats,” Zia whispers too loudly. “Your job is to tighten his purse strings, not open them.”
’“Trice,” Antonia says, falling into step beside her sister, “do not scold so, you will get frown lines.” She takes Zia’s arm again. “Now tell me once more about those pauper children in our veils. What a lovely picture they will make!” She glances quickly at Vini, and there is the merest trace of a smile on her face before she turns back. It is not, Vini is relieved to observe, a Madonna’s smile. It is sweet, but it is decidedly naughty.