I tried the door of Vivaldi’s house and unsurprisingly found it locked. Peering in through the part in the curtains, I could see him seated at his desk, candles blazing around him as he composed some new masterpiece. The sight of him made me want to weep with relief, but there was no time for that.
I pounded on the door. “Antonio!” I hissed loudly. “It is I! Open the door!”
Hearing me, he quickly unbolted the door, and I stepped inside. “Adriana!” he exclaimed. “Cara, you cannot know how happy I am to see you! There has been no word for days, and I was worried.”
“And I am happy to see you,” I interrupted. “But there is no time for such now.”
His brow creased. “What is it, Adriana? What is wrong?”
Now that I was finally here, finally near enough to touch him, finally where I had wanted to be for so many interminable weeks, I found I did not know how to ask him to uproot his life. “I … we are undone,” I stuttered at last. “My father has discovered that I have a lover, but I would not tell him your name.”
As I spoke, I moved into the light so he could see the last traces of the bruises on my face, now an ugly yellowish color; the remnants of my split lip. His eyes widened. “It was worse still,” I said. “He has kept me barricaded in my rooms for over a week now. Giuseppe was similarly imprisoned.”
“Domine Deus,” he whispered. “So this is why there has been no word. Oh, cara.” He reached out and cupped my face in his hands. “How could I not have known? Please forgive me somehow.”
I shook my head. “There is nothing to forgive. My father’s spite and hatefulness are no fault of yours.” I took his hands in mine. “But there is good news, too, mio amore,” I went on, “beautiful news.” I placed his hands on the swell of my belly beneath my cloak, looking up into his eyes. “I am carrying your child.”
He did not speak for a long time. I felt his fingers stretch slowly over the curve of my abdomen as his eyes widened further in shock and wonder.
Suddenly, he drew his hand back sharply as though he had been burned. “Mater Dei,” he breathed, “this cannot be. How? I thought you said…”
I shrugged. “I had begun to think it impossible as well, yet clearly I was wrong. But none of that is important.” I stepped close to him, again taking his hand. “This is our chance, Tonio.” When he did not respond, I went on, trying to quell the uneasiness I felt growing within me. “We can leave tonight, before anyone knows we have gone. We can be together; have what we always thought we could never have. We can raise our child together.” I paused to clear my dry throat. “Come with me, amore.”
Again he was silent. “I … I have just been reinstated at the Pietà,” he said finally.
I could not fathom what this had to do with anything I was saying. “You … what?”
Silence.
His head was bowed, so I could not search his eyes for the truth I was so desperately afraid I would find there. Yet when he did look up at me, I wished he had not. “I … I cannot, Adriana. I cannot. May God forgive me.” He paused, voice ragged. “May you forgive me as well, though I have no hope of either.”
My breath caught in my throat. I pressed a hand to my chest and stumbled away from him, trying to steady myself, to convince myself that I had not heard those words from his lips. When I finally looked back at him, I could only manage one flat syllable, a wish and a prayer and a question and a denial: “No.”
Hurriedly he crossed the room to me. “Adriana, please. I never intended for things to happen this way—”
“But it has happened this way!” I said, staring hard at him. “All of it has happened, and you cannot now undo it. The child—our child—cannot go away at your whim!”
“Adriana,” he said, lowering his voice. “Think of what you are asking me to do.”
“Think of what you are asking me to do!” I shot back. “You are abandoning me! You are flinging me to my father’s mercy, and an abhorrent marriage.”
“Marriage?” he asked, almost hesitantly. “To whom?”
“Not that it makes any difference to you,” I said, “but Tommaso Foscari asked for my hand several weeks ago. Now he and his family will surely call it off once my father tells them I am with child. If he has not told them already.” I laughed harshly. “He thinks he can still find someone who will have me, and with the king’s ransom of a dowry he will give me simply to be rid of me, no doubt he is right.”
“And … what will become of the child?” Vivaldi asked.
I turned on him anew. “I have not the slightest idea!” I cried. “Do you not see what you have done? What you are doing? Can you not see the devastation you will wreak in my life, our child’s life?”
“I am not the only one who has made choices!” he all but shouted. “I would do anything to set this right, anything, but—”
“You could set it right,” I said. “You could, but you will not.” I turned my back to him and pressed my trembling hands to my forehead. “This is not how it was supposed to happen,” I whispered. “You were supposed to agree to come away with me, and everything would have been perfect.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them something, anything, would have changed. “This is a dream, a nightmare,” I murmured. I opened my eyes. “Please tell me this is all a dream. Please.”
“I wish it was,” he said, looking away from me.
“Why?” I asked. “Why, Antonio, why?”
“I have already told you,” he said. “The governors of the Pietà have—”
“I know that,” I said. “What I do not know is why that is worth abandoning your child, and the woman you claimed to love.”
“Surely you see how many doors this opens for me, and for my music,” he said. “It is only because I am a priest that I can be given a position at such an institution, and there are many more opportunities available to me if—”
“If what?” I interrupted. “If you cease to love anyone save yourself?”
“That is not fair.”
“Fair or not, it certainly rings true.”
He fell silent then.
So that was how it was going to be. He was choosing his music over me.
And yet … was that not why I had fallen in love with him in the first place?
This thought was unpalatable to me just then, so I let it drown in my sea of sorrow and self-pity and fear. I drowned with it, sinking to my knees onto the weathered floorboards. “Tonio,” I whispered. “Please. Will you make me beg you?”
“Please, cara, no,” he said. He moved to help me to my feet, but I shoved him away.
“Can you still call me so?” I cried. “I believed more in you than in God, and now both have forsaken me!”
“I … I will make this right someday, Adriana,” he said. “I swear I will, no matter what it takes.”
I laughed as I got wearily to my feet. “What can you possibly do that will make this right?”
He opened his mouth, but I put up my hand to stop him. “Please. Save your breath. Maybe saying such things will help you sleep well at night, but they can do nothing for me.”
“What in God’s name makes you think that I shall ever sleep well again?” he burst out.
“And yet you shall never suffer half so much as I,” I replied. I looked around me, at the room in which I had known so much joy, the room in which I had come to life and fallen in love and played the most beautiful music I had ever heard.
I never thought it would end this way, I thought, taking in the permanent clutter of parchment, of ink and quills and instruments. I have always known that it must end, but I was meant to leave him; never did I dream that he would leave me. “I suppose it is time for me to go, then,” I said aloud as tears filled my eyes.
“You cannot walk home all by yourself,” he said.
“No!” I choked out. “Do not dare tell me what I can and cannot do. Do not dare think of following me home.” I moved to the door, knowing that if I remained in his presence one moment longer, I would come completely undone. “Good-bye, Antonio,” I whispered. Then, while I was still able to do so, I tore myself away and went out the door.
On my walk home, I became aware of a second set of footsteps, following me. I did not have to turn around to know that it was him, that he was seeing that I got safely home despite my protests. Orfeo following Euridice back to the underworld, in a strange inversion of the tale.
I let the tears fall.