LONDON

June 1821

NONNA FARFALLA.” My granddaughter taps me. “You fell asleep again.”

“Don’t you know the rest, child?” I murmur through half dreams, settling back in my bed in my son’s London flat. I am eighty-one years old and tired. I have birthed five children, who have given me eighteen grandchildren and, at last count, two tiny great-grandchildren, one named in my honor. I have sung on opera stages in London, Vienna, and Naples. Twenty years ago I buried my father next to Violetta’s London grave; they passed within six months of each other. I buried my own husband twelve years later. But somehow it has taken me this long to tell my story—all of it—to someone who would listen.

Violet, my granddaughter, twenty years old and just as plucky as her namesake. They have the same dark, beguiling eyes.

“I know they picked you up in the burchiello from the sausage shop,” Violet says, reciting the more commonly known portion of our family lore, “and that you sailed along the Brenta Canal to Padua. You took a coach north, then another ship across the Channel. You came to London and grew up singing.” She shakes her head. “But all this time, I never knew Letta and Mino were orphans.”

“We are all orphans at some point or another. I am one now that my parents are dead.” I take her hand in mine and meet her eyes. “In every generation, there’s a storyteller. Tell the real story of the Incurables to your children. And if they won’t listen, be patient. One day, you’ll have grandchildren, too.”

“I’m not a storyteller,” she says, “not like you.”

I draw her hand close before my face. My vision isn’t what it used to be, but I can still see color. Violet is a painter, studying at the Royal Academy of Arts. Her hands always bear memories of the canvas she brings to life.

I trace a dash of green along her thumb. “What is this? Grass?”

She smiles. “Willow frond.”

I find the blue nearby, on the joint of her forefinger. “A creek for the willow to weep in?”

“You’re good, Nonna.”

There’s white paint on her nail. I rub at it with my finger. “Cloudy day?”

She shakes her head. “Clear skies. That’s lace. The dress of a woman on a picnic.”

“You see?” I say. “You are a storyteller.”

“Mozart!” she says suddenly, sharply. “Get down.”

“It’s all right,” I tell her, patting the space beside me on the bed for the little spotted dog to sit. “Let him stay.”

The beast is the descendant of the original Sprezzatura, who traveled with us from Venice to London long ago. Each in his line has been pampered and spoiled by my family, their lineage as Venetian street mutts not forgotten but elevated into lore.

“So now,” I whisper to Violet, aware of her father, my middle son, passing in the hallway, “will you grant my request? I know your papa thinks it morbid, but I don’t care. You understand me—”

“Shh, Nonna,” Violet says, reaching beneath her chair at my bedside. My heart lifts when she raises the mask. It’s worn, yellow at the edges, the black ribbon frayed. She’s had it with her all along. She puts it in my hands.

I close my eyes, wrap my fingers around it.

“Thank you.” My voice surprises me, choked with emotion. I could not make it to the attic to retrieve the bauta on my own.

It is the one my father gave Violetta on that carnevale afternoon. No one in my family—no one except for Violet—could understand why I need it now at the end.

When Venice finally fell to the Austrians some twenty years ago, carnevale ceased to exist. I am told masks are forbidden there now, though it’s impossible to imagine. The once-ubiquitous baute are considered strange today. Restrictive. Even foreboding. My own children have come around to this unfortunate way of thinking.

I never had the chance to take them back to Venice. They never got to see it as I did. It was only one trip, but it changed me forever. My father, Violetta, and I spent two wondrous days there when I was twelve years old. We were always masked, whirling through a party that never seemed to end. They took the risk because they wanted me to know where we had come from. To this day that trip is my most precious memory. I used to make them wear the masks around our home in London as often as they would indulge me.

Now I press the bauta to my face and travel back to Venice. I lift my head off the pillow so Violet can tie the ribbon. This small effort exhausts me, and I know I’ve managed just in time.

Violetta left this bauta to me. It always seemed to charm her that I preferred the simple white mask to the painted one she wore as La Sirena. She was buried in that mask, my father in his original white bauta. I want to meet them wearing mine. I want them to know me through it.

I meet my granddaughter’s eyes again. When she smiles, it is enough. I close my eyes and hear the lullaby my father used to sing.