Blood and Gold (32 page)

Of course he never spoke of this to the others. And they, the boys, who surely must have known that we spent hours together in the bedroom, never dared think of what happened between us. As for Vincenzo, he knew better than to acknowledge this strange relationship in any respect.

Meanwhile, Amadeo recovered nothing of his memory. He could not paint, he could not touch the brushes. It was as if the colors, when raw, burnt his eyes.

But his wit was as sharp as any among the other boys. He learnt Greek and Latin quickly, he was a wonder at dancing, he loved his lessons with the rapier. He absorbed readily the lectures of the brighter teachers. He was soon writing Latin in a clear and steady hand.

In the evening he read aloud his verses to me. He sang to me, softly accompanying himself on the lute.

I sat at my desk, leaning upon my elbow, listening to his low and measured voice.

His hair was always beautifully combed, his clothes elegant and immaculate, his fingers, like mine, covered in rings.

Didn’t everyone know he was the boy I kept? My minion, my lover, my secret treasure? Even in old Rome, amid a wilderness of vices, there would have been whispers, low laughter, some bit of mockery.

Here in Venice for Marius de Romanus, there was none. But Amadeo had his suspicions, not as to kisses that were fast becoming all too chaste for him, but as to the man of seeming marble, who never supped at his own table, nor took a drop of wine from a goblet, or ever appeared beneath his own roof during the light of day.

Along with these suspicions, I saw in Amadeo a growing confusion as memories tried to make themselves known to him and he would deny them, sometimes waking beside me as we dozed together, and tormenting me with kisses when I would rather dream.

One evening, in the early and beautiful months of winter when I came in to greet my eager students, Riccardo told me that he had taken Amadeo with him to visit the lovely and gracious Bianca Solderini, and she had made them welcome, delighted by Amadeo’s poetry and the manner in which he could pen tributes for her on the very spot.

I looked into the eyes of my Amadeo. He had been enchanted by her. How well I understood it. And how strange a mood descended upon me as the boys talked of her pleasant company and the fascinating English gentlemen now visiting her house.

Bianca had sent a small note to me.

“Marius, I miss you. Do come soon and bring your boys with you. Amadeo is as clever as Riccardo. I have your portraits everywhere. All are curious about the man who painted them, but I say nothing, for in truth I know nothing. Lovingly, Bianca.”

When I looked up from the note, I saw Amadeo watching me, probing me as it were with his silent eyes.

“Do you know her, Master?” he asked me soberly, surprising Riccardo, who said nothing.

“You know I do, Amadeo. She told you I had come to visit her. You saw my portraits on her walls.”

I sensed a sudden and violent jealousy in him. But nothing changed in his face.
Don’t go to her.
That’s what his soul said to me. And I knew he wished that Riccardo would leave now and we could have the shadowy bed, with its concealing velvet curtains, to ourselves.

There was something stubborn in him, something directed entirely towards our love. And how it tempted me, how it drew from me the most complete devotion.

“But I want you to remember,” I said to him suddenly in his Russian tongue.

It was a shock to him but he didn’t understand it.

“Amadeo,” I said in the Venetian dialect, “think back to the time before you came here. Think back, Amadeo. What was your world then?”

A flush came to his cheeks. He was miserable. It was as if I’d beaten him.

Riccardo reached out for him with a consoling hand. “Master,” he said, “it’s too hard for him.”

Amadeo seemed paralyzed. I rose from my chair at the desk and I put my arm around him where he sat and I kissed the top of his head.

“Come, forget everything. We’ll go to see Bianca. This is the time of night which she likes the best.”

Riccardo was amazed to be permitted out at this hour. As for Amadeo he was still dazed.

We found Bianca thickly surrounded by her chattering guests. There were Florentines among them, and Englishmen as I’d been told.

Bianca brightened as she saw me. She took me away from the others, towards her bedchamber where the elaborate swan bed was exquisitely adorned as if it were something on a stage.

“You’ve come at last,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you. You don’t know how I’ve missed you.” How warm were her words. “You are the only painter who exists in my world, Marius.” She wanted to kiss me but I couldn’t risk it. I bent to press my lips to her cheek quickly and then I held her back.

Ah, such radiant sweetness. Gazing into her oval eyes, I stepped into the paintings of Botticelli. I held in my hands, for reasons I could never know, the dark perfumed tresses of Zenobia, gathered up in memory from the floor of a house on the other side of the world.

“Bianca, my darling,” I said to her. “I’m ready to open my house if you will receive for me.” What a shock it was to hear these words come from my own lips. I had not known what I meant to say. Yet on I pressed with my dream. “I have neither wife nor daughter. Come, open my house to the world.”

The look of triumph in her face confirmed it. I would do it.

“I shall tell everyone,” she said immediately. “Yes, I’ll receive for you, I shall do it proudly, I shall do it gladly, but surely you’ll be there yourself.”

“May we open the doors in the evening?” I asked her. “It’s my custom to come in the evening. The light of candles suits me better than the light of day. You set the night for it, Bianca, and I shall have my servants make everything ready. The paintings are everywhere now. You do understand I offer nothing to anyone. I paint for my pleasure. And for my guests I’ll have food and drink as you say.”

How happy she looked. Off to one side I saw Amadeo gazing at her, loving her somewhat and loving the sight of us together though it gave him pain.

Riccardo was being drawn into conversation by men who were older than he and flattered him and loved his handsome face.

“Tell me what to lay out on my tables,” I said to Bianca. “Tell me what wines to serve. My servants shall be your servants. I shall do everything as you say.”

“It’s too lovely,” she answered. “All of Venice will be there, I promise you, you’ll discover the most wonderful company. People are so curious about you. Oh, how they whisper. You can’t imagine what a supreme delight this will be.”

It came about as she described.

Within the month I opened the palazzo to the whole city. But how different it was from those drunken nights in old Rome when people laid about on my couches and vomited in my gardens and I painted madly away on the walls.

Oh, yes, when I arrived, how proper were my finely clad Venetian guests. Of course I was asked a thousand questions. I let my eyes mist over. I heard the mortal voices around me as if they were kisses. I thought: You are among them; it is truly as if you were one of them. It is truly as if you are alive.

What did it matter their little criticisms of the paintings? I would strive to make my work the finest, yes, truly, but what counted was the vitality, the momentum!

And here amid my best work stood my lovely fair-haired Bianca, free for the moment from those who put her up to her wrongdoings, recognized by all as the Mistress of my house.

Amadeo watched this with silent grudging eyes. The memories inside him tormented him like a cancer, yet he could not see them and know them for what they were.

Not a month after, at sunset, I found him sick in the grand church on the nearby island of Torcello to which he had wandered, apparently on his own. I picked him up from the cold damp floor and took him home.

Of course I understood the reason. There he had found ikons of the very style he had once painted. There he had found old mosaics from centuries past, similar to those he had seen in Russian churches as a child. He had not remembered. He had merely come upon some old truth in his wanderings—the brittle, stark Byzantine paintings—and now the heat of the place had left him with a fever, and I could taste it on his lips and see it in his eyes.

He was no better at sunrise when, half mad, I left him in the care of Vincenzo, only to rise again at sunset and hurry back to the side of his bed.

It was his mind that stoked the fever. Bundling him like a child I took him into a Venetian church to see the wondrous paintings of robust and natural figures that had been done in these last few years.

But I could see now it was hopeless. His mind would never be opened, never truly changed. I brought him home, and laid him down on the pillows once more.

I sought to better understand what I could.

His had been a punitive world of austere devotion. Painting for him had been joyless. And indeed all of life itself in far-away Russia had been so rigorous that he could not give himself over to the pleasure that awaited him now at every turn.

Beset by the memories, yet not understanding them, he was moving slowly towards death.

I would not have it. I paced the floor, I turned to those who attended him. I walked about, whispering to myself in my anger. I would not have it. I would not let him die.

Sternly, I banished others from the bedchamber.

I bent over him, and biting into my tongue I filled my mouth with blood and then I loosed a thin stream of it into his mouth.

He quickened, and licked his lips after it, and then he breathed more easily and the flush came to his cheeks. I felt of his forehead. It was cooler. He opened his eyes and he looked at me, and he said as he did so often, “Master,” and then gently, without memories, without terrible dreams, he slept.

It was enough. I left the bed. I wrote in my thick diary, the quill scratching as I quickly inscribed the words:

“He is irresistible, but what am I to do? I claimed him once, declaring him my very own, and now I treat his misery with the blood I wish that I could give him. Yet in treating his misery, I hope to cure him not for me but for the wide world.”

I closed the book, in disgust with myself for the blood I’d given him. But it had healed him. I knew it. And were he ill, I would give him blood again.

Time was moving too swiftly.

Things were happening too fast. My earlier judgments were shaken, and the beauty of Amadeo increased with every passing night.

The teachers took the boys to Florence that they might see the paintings there. And all came home more truly inspired to study than before.

Yes, they had seen the work of Botticelli, and how splendid it was. Was the Master painting? Indeed, so, but his work had become almost entirely religious. It was due to the preaching of Savonarola, a stringent monk who condemned the Florentines for their worldliness. Savonarola had great power over the people of Florence. Botticelli believed in him, and was thought to be one of his followers.

This saddened me greatly. Indeed it damn near maddened me. But then I knew that whatever Botticelli painted it would be magnificent. And in Amadeo’s progress I was comforted, or rather pleasantly confused as before.

Amadeo was now the most brilliant of all my little academy. New teachers were required for him in philosophy and law. He was outgrowing his clothes at a marvelous rate, he had become quick and charming in conversation, and he was the beloved of all the younger boys.

Night after night we visited Bianca. I became accustomed to the company of refined strangers, the eternal stream of northern Europeans who came to Italy to discover its ancient and mysterious charms.

Only occasionally did I see Bianca hand the poisoned cup to one of her ill-fated guests. Only occasionally did I feel the beat of her dark heart, and see the shadow of desperate guilt in the very depth of her eyes. How she watched the unfortunate victim; how she saw him out of her company at last with a subtle smile.

As for Amadeo, our private sessions within my bedchamber became ever more intimate. And more than once, as we embraced, I gave the Blood Kiss to him, watching his body shiver, and seeing the power of it in his half-lidded eyes.

What was this madness? Was he for the world or for me?

How I lied to myself about it. I told myself the boy might still prove himself and thereby earn his freedom to leave me, safe and rich, for accomplishments beyond my house.

But I had given him so much of the Secret Blood that he pushed me with questions. What manner of creature was I? Why did I never come by day? Why did I take no food or drink?

He wrapped his warm arms around the mystery. He buried his face in the monster’s neck.

I sent him off to the best brothels to learn the pleasures of women, and the pleasures of boys. He hated me for it, and yet he enjoyed it, and he came home to me eager for the Blood Kiss and nothing else.

He taunted me when I painted alone, except for him, in my studio, working furiously, creating some landscape or gathering of ancient heroes. He slept beside me when I collapsed in my bed to sleep the last few hours before dawn.

Meantime, we opened the palazzo again and yet again. Bianca, ever the clever and poised one, had outgrown her early beauty, and preserving her delicate face and manner, had now the polish of a woman rather than the promise of a girl.

Often I found myself staring at her, wondering what would have happened if I had not turned my attention to him. Why after all had I done it? Could I not have wooed her and persuaded her; and then, thinking these thoughts, I realized, foolishly, that I might still choose to do so, and cast him off, with wealth and position, to mortality with all the rest of my boys.

No, she was saved.

Amadeo was the one I wanted. Amadeo was the one I was educating, training. Amadeo was the precious student of the Blood.

The nights passed swiftly, as if in a dream.

Several boys went off to university. One of the teachers died. Vincenzo took to walking with a limp, but I hired an assistant to fetch for him. Bianca rearranged several of the large paintings. The air was warm and the windows were open. On the roof garden we gathered for a great banquet. The boys sang.