Vienna Nocturne by Vivien Shotwell Read Free Book Online Page B

playing over her face and torso. “Did you miss me?”
    “I forgot all about you,” she answered, turning up her nose at him. Then she darted away, laughing, before he could catch her.
    Soon again they were performing their Salieri opera, but in this theater there was not the same machinery beneath the stage as had been at La Scala. At the end of the opera Anna and Benucci simply walked on from the side of the stage. They were never alone, and Anna’s yearning increased to a point almost of madness. She feared he might love another. Venice was filled with beautiful ladies, far more beautiful than she. If she could never be alone with him, and if he did not like letters, she did not see how there could be a chance for him to declare his true meaning.
    Yet even in her confusion she had never been so happy. Benucci understood her as no one else, because they worked so closely together. She strove for his admiration. Though he was almost as old as her mother, he treated her as his match. They were always laughing. She called him Signor Lazy-Fox. They were cheerful, good people, at the top of their form, and they looked pleasing together. She trusted him like the earth beneath her feet, the sun on her cheek. She traced his name in the air with her finger.
Francesco
.
    “Now, Lidia,” she said one night after the girl had been with her for a number of weeks. “You know I tell you everything, but I haven’t yet told you all.”
    It was late; they had put out the candles and could see each other only by the light coming through the shutters. Anna had sung tonight and was too thrilled to sleep. Every performance was with Benucci, and every night they burned for each other more. Was it any wonder they were the sensation of Venice? One could feel it in the air, she was certain; one could tell by the way she walked.
    The girls sat on the bed in their night shifts, their hair hanging over their shoulders, Lidia’s in a heavy braid and Anna’s in loose curls. Sometimes she put it in wrappers, but tonight she had no patience. They sat facing each other on the bed with their knees touching and their hands loosely playing and interlacing across their laps. The moon through the half-open shutters cast bars of bluish light on the folds of their shifts. They were both so tired that their heads nodded together like flowers in the rain and yet they did not lie down; they did not wish to sleep.
    Lidia had long, knobby fingers. They tended to Anna and were a comfort to her. Anna had not realized until Lidia’s coming how lonely she had been for a girl her own age, a girl who would care for her and be her friend. It was not possible to be friends like that with the other sopranos. Anna had never had a sister. If she was the gold leaf, Lidia was the wooden stuff that backed her.
    Anna’s shift had slid down over her shoulders; her dark curls slipped softly down as if to follow. Her face had been scrubbed clean of paint and powder and shone faintly with the fine oil Lidia had rubbed into it. She looked, in the dark, after this night’s performance when she had been painted so gaudy and bright, younger and more naked than she might ever have imagined herself. Her downcast eyes seemed to throw shadows on the tops of her cheeks; her lips were smiling for Benucci.
    She hooked her index fingers around Lidia’s and pulled back until her grip threatened to break. “You know I’m in love with Signor Benucci,” she whispered. “It burns my heart, Lidia. Whenever I think of him, whenever I hear his name—his voice! You’ve heard him. Does it not shiver deep inside you?”
    “He has the most beautiful bass I ever heard,” Lidia agreed. She let go of Anna’s fingers and relaxed her hands so that they dropped open just outside the ring of their legs.
    Anna fell to one side, pulling Lidia down beside her. “I can’t bear it. I’ll go mad.” She took the other girl’s hand and drew it under herchin. “You must help me,” she said, staring