The Instrumentalist

Dusk falls and the bells begin to toll in the Piazza San Marco. A young woman heads out into the streets cautiously. She is a sex worker and must keep her wits about her. This night will prove fateful: During it, she conceives a child. Nine months later, she gives birth to a small girl. She has nowhere to go and is terrified. She tries to drown herself and her child, but the baby fights against the water so fiercely that the young woman decides she cannot kill them both.

She briefly wanders the streets but is then taken in by a woman who, also a sex worker, knows what to do with unwanted children and can secure this young mother work in her old brothel. The young woman spends two weeks nursing her daughter and then wraps her in her scarf and places her into a special compartment in the wall of the Pietà. Within the bundle she places half of a playing card (she herself will keep the other half) and a small note that reads “know you were loved” (10). Her new friend and protector has explained to her that orphans handed over to the nuns at the Pietà are given good lives and even taught to play instruments.