After reaching for my aunt for months through the iron grille of the convent visitors’ parlor, it is I who am now cloistered from the outside world, locked behind the great walls.
There is no moon. In the darkness, I can make out the outlines of the great infirmary hall, the arched ceiling that makes the muffled sounds of the room echo and reverberate. A few twinkles of starlight are visible through the high, barred window.
In the shadows I listen to the quiet, rhythmic suckling of my baby in my arms.
My son.
I can hardly fathom that he is real, but for six days, he has not left my embrace. My eyes follow the curve of his face, the light from the candle at my bedside splayed around his head like a gilded halo. I feel his small chest rising slowly up and down, and inhale his particular sugary scent. I marvel at his small, dark hands that clasp around my pale, freckled finger. His lids are nearly transparent, his hair a fine mesh of black tinged with red.
I am in love with him, a love as fierce as anything I have ever known. I can hardly imagine life before him.
From my bed, the rotten-cabbage aroma of the canal wafts up into the infirmary from a window along the water, but I do not mind for the slight breeze cuts through the stifling air. The sisters have wedged a cot for me at the far end of the infirmary and they have hung a sheath of linen to shield me from the others in the great space who might carry contagion. For six days, I have not dared to peek around the drape, but have heard the moans of the sick, the shrieks of another young woman in childbirth, and I imagine there are others too ill to make noise. A few times, I hear the dull intoning of a priest uttering last rites.
As for myself, I am sore but starting to feel stronger. In any other circumstance I might feel anxious to leave this hall of sundry maladies and unfortunate events, but resting here behind the curtain with my child in my arms, all I want to do is make it last.
At dawn I hear the echo of footsteps and a rustle of gowns through the convent. The sisters who have kept the plague vigil overnight have sung their matins prayers and are retiring to their cells to rest. In the hallways, another wave of sisters shuffles into the church to pray lauds as the sun rises. As light begins to bathe the infirmary hall in soft shades of pink and gold, their distant voices rise in unison. I close my eyes and allow myself to be transported. The melody travels through my body, and I open my mouth to let out the words, quietly but insistently. My son opens his wide eyes and peers at me, watching my mouth moving in unison with the nuns we hear in the distance. The chant, ephemeral yet eternal, seems to swirl around us, all silver and light, before fading and rising again. For a while, I let myself fly high above the convent walls, forgetting my circumstances and what my future might hold. I pull my son tightly to my chest, and let the music fill up all the empty spaces inside.
When the pink-faced novice brings me a tray of warm bread and fig jam at dawn, she smiles widely at my son then avoids my eyes, and I remember that they are trying to convince me to join them. It is in my best interest, Sister Agata the head convent nurse tells me, though I doubt if they will accept a great sinner like me.
Maria Magdalena. The boatman’s voice floats in my head, and I push it away.
It is also in the best interest of my child, they insist, for what else is the poor boy to do? He can hardly be expected to belong anywhere else. Who would take him? He could not grow up to expect to find gainful employment. Surely he will be relegated to the lowliest forms of work, they tell me.
“We can raise him here,” Sister Agata tells me. “We will send him to one of our wet nurses here in the convent nursery; later, when he is ready he may be sent to the Pietà for his education. In the meantime, you can finish your novitiate. For what else is there for you out there, cara?” she implores.
I hear the words but have no response. Not yet, for all I want to do is lie here and clasp my son to my body behind the drape.
The nun gazes into the baby’s round, brown eyes, and takes in his dark skin and freckled cheeks. She runs the back of her finger along his cheek and then meets my eyes. “A child like this will not have much of a chance, you must know that, cara. He is better off being raised in the cloister. Here, he will learn to read and write. Perhaps he will find his vocation behind the walls of one of our ecclesiastical institutions and will not need to face the ridicule he will surely face out there.” The nun gestures with her hand to the barred window, where a bright blue sky lies beyond.
Others have been less kind. “He looks like one of those little monkeys that you see on the street on a leash,” one of the nuns said, giggling and rustling his hair, “or one of those servant boys they dress up in lace from Burano.” I pulled him more tightly to me. “Poor little thing,” she said, and mercifully walked away before I could no longer hold my tongue.
Cristiano. I close my eyes. You have a son. In my mind I tell him how beautiful his child is, how desperate I am to hold him, how much I want things to go back to the way they were before.
The baby peers up at me with his quizzical eyes, and in spite of myself, I feel a few tears escape the corners of my eyes, along with a strange mixture of happiness, sadness, and relief. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and then cup my palm around his beautiful, round head and kiss him.
Then for a moment, I see my father’s face in his, a fleeting reflection. There is the baby’s father, that is certain, but there is something else there, some vestige of my own father. It makes me smile. The baby closes his eyes and presses his face to me.
Giuseppe. My father’s name. It will be his.
Hours later, when I open my eyes, my aunt’s face appears before me. She is seated on the edge of the bed, letting the baby grasp her thumb with his little fist. I stir and she smiles at me.
“I have brought you something to eat,” she says, gesturing to the table next to the bed. I turn my head and see a pair of small pastries with a copper goblet of milk.
“Grazie,” I say. “I am starving.”
“The sisters have made a place for you in the novice’s dormitory,” she says. “As soon as you are ready we can move you there.”
“I have not decided,” I say.
“Maria, what is there to decide?” I hear her trying to temper the exasperation in her voice. “What would you do, a woman on your own? How will you take care of yourself? Surely you cannot be thinking of returning to your father’s workshop,” she says. “That life will be nothing but hardship for you. Think of it. How will you make a living? And this precious child...” She rubs her palm over his dark hair. “Truly, how would the two of you manage?”
In spite of myself, I feel a tear escape the corner of my eye. As much as I want to take my son and run out the door into the alley, I know she is right.
My aunt presses. “You could hardly take care of yourself, and people will not accept him. Both of you are better off here with us. He will learn here. He will read and write. He will find a meaningful vocation.”
I stare at the pink sky beyond the high, barred window.
When I do not respond, my aunt says, “Your gastaldo has paid a visit.”
“Gastaldo?” I imagine his portly figure at the grate in the visitors’ parlor, his hat in his hand.
She nods. “He got word of what happened at the painter’s house.”
Of course he has. I press my palm over my face, not wanting to revisit the images of the sinking gondola, the convulsing of my stomach, the horrified look on Pascal Grissoni’s face, the crowd of neighbors in the boathouse, the hysteria of the painter’s wife. I am certain that the gastaldo has heard about every detail. A wave of shame washes over me.
“He sends his best regards to you.” My aunt takes a deep breath, as if steeling herself for the words to come. “He has suggested that your father’s house may be sold to cover your donation to the convent.” She pauses, searching my face. When I say nothing, she continues. “A suitable arrangement, it seems to me. He says that another gilder in the quarter has already expressed some interest in buying it.”
My aunt draws a piece of folded parchment from her pocket and places it on the table beside my bed. “And he brought you a letter,” she says quietly, then squeezes my hand and stands. “When you are ready. It is a lot to think about. I shall leave you in peace.”
I adjust the baby’s position in my arms without waking him. Then I slide my finger under the wax seal and pry it apart from the parchment.
Item. With reference to the contract agreed to between Pascal Grissoni, painter, and Giuseppe Bartolini, gilder, both guildsmen in good standing, previous to the untimely death by pestilence of the aforementioned Bartolini the gilder.
Item. Given the present knowledge of previously unknown circumstances of the state of the gilder’s daughter Maria, given that she has given birth to another man’s child out of the bonds of matrimony, this contract will no longer be considered valid, and from this point forward is recorded as null and void.
Recorded in San Marco
On the feast of Saint Anthony of Padua
By Giorgio Gamba, Notary