Cry to Heaven (2 page)

And though his curly brown hair and sensuous mouth lent a touch of the cherub to his face, a dark down on his upper lip made him appear manly.

In fact, his would have been a pleasing appearance had it not been for two factors: his nose, broken by a childhood fall, was flattened exactly as if a giant hand had squashed it. And his brown eyes, large and full of feeling, glinted with the wily brutality of the peasants who had been his forefathers.

Where these men had been taciturn and shrewd, Guido was studious and stoical. Where they had struggled with the elements of the earth, he gave himself violently to any sacrifice for his music.

But Guido was far from crude in manner or appearance. Rather, taking his teachers as models, he imbibed all he could of gracious deportment, as well as the poetry, Latin, the classical Italian taught to him.

So he grew into a young singer of considerable presence whose stark particularities lent him a disturbing seductiveness.

All his life some would say of him, “How ugly he is,” while others would say, “But he is beautiful!”

But of one thing he was quite unaware; he exuded menace. His people had been more brutal than the animals they tended; and he had the look of one who might do anything to you. It was the passion in his eyes, the squashed nose, the lush mouth—all of it put together.

And so without his realizing it, a protective shield enveloped him. People didn’t try to bully him.

Yet all who knew Guido liked him. The regular boys liked him as much as did his fellow eunuchs. The violinists loved him because he became fascinated with them individually and wrote music for them that was exquisite. And Guido came to be known as quiet, no-nonsense, the gentle bear cub, not one to be afraid of once you came to know him.

Reaching his fifteenth year, Guido woke one morning to be told that he must come downstairs to the office of the Maestro. He was not anxious. He was never in any trouble.

“Sit down,” said his favorite teacher, Maestro Cavalla. All the others were assembled around him. And never had they been so informal with him before, and something about this ring of faces was unpleasant to him. He knew at once what it was. It reminded him of that room in which he had been cut, and he shrugged it off as meaning nothing.

The Maestro behind the carved table dipped his pen, scratched large figures in ink, and handed the parchment to Guido.

December 1727. What could it mean? A slight tremor ran through Guido.

“That is the date,” said the Maestro, drawing himself up, “upon which you will appear in your first opera in Rome as
primo uomo
.”

So Guido had done it.

It would not be the church choir for him, not the backcountry parishes, nor even the great city cathedrals. No, not even the Sistine Choir. He had soared past all that, right into the dream which inspired them all, year after year, no matter how poor they were, no matter how rich, no matter from where they came: the opera.

“Rome,” he whispered as he stepped out, quite alone, into the corridor. Two students stood near, as if waiting for him. But he walked past them into the open courtyard as if he did not see them. “Rome,” he whispered again, and he let it roll off his tongue, that thick explosion of breath that men have said with awe and terror for two thousand years: Rome.

Yes, Rome and Florence, and Venice, and Bologna, on to Vienna, and Dresden and Prague, to all the front lines where the castrati conquered. London, Moscow, back again to Palermo. He almost laughed aloud.

But someone had touched his arm. It was unpleasant to him. He couldn’t shake loose the vision of the tiers of boxes, and audiences roaring.

And when his vision cleared he saw it was a tall eunuch, Gino, who had always been ahead of him, a blond and willowy northern Italian with slate eyes. And beside him stood Alfredo, the rich one, who had money always in his pockets.

They were telling him to come into town; they were telling him the Maestro had given him the day for celebrating.

And he realized why they were here. They were the conservatorio’s rising stars.

And he was now one of them.

W
HEN
T
ONIO
T
RESCHI
was five years old, his mother pushed him down the stairs. She hadn’t meant to do it. She had only meant to slap him. But he had slipped backwards on the marble tile, and fallen down and down, a panic engulfing him before he reached the bottom.

Yet he might have forgotten that. Her day-to-day love for him was full of unpredictable cruelty. She could be full of desperate warmth one minute, and savage to him the next. In fact, he lived torn between appalling need on the one hand, and on the other, pure terror.

But that night, to make it up to him, she took him to San Marco to see his father in procession.

The great church was the Ducal Chapel of the Doge and Tonio’s father was Grand Councillor.

It was like a dream to him afterwards; but it was no dream. And all his life he remembered it.

He had hidden from her hours after the fall. The great Palazzo Treschi swallowed him. The truth was, he knew the entire four storeys of the crumbling Renaissance house better than anyone else, and familiar with every chest and closet in which he could hide, he could always get away for as long as he wanted.

Darkness meant nothing to him. Being lost here or there didn’t bother him either. He had no fear of rats. Rather he watched their quick passage through the corridors with vague
interest. And he liked the shadows on the walls, the ripples of light from the Grand Canal flashing dimly on ceilings painted with ancient figures.

He knew more of these moldering rooms than of the world outside. They were the landscape of his childhood and all along his labyrinthine path lay landmarks of other retreats and pilgrimages.

But being without
her
, that was the pain for him. And anguished and shivering, he crept back to her finally as he always did when the servants had despaired of finding him.

She lay sobbing on her bed. And there he appeared, a man of five years, bent on revenge, his face red and streaked with dirt from his crying.

Of course he was never going to speak to her again as long as he lived. Never mind that he could not stand being without her.

Yet as soon as she opened her arms, he flew into her lap and lay against her breast as still as if he were dead, one arm around her neck, the other hand clutching her shoulder so tightly he was hurting her.

She was little more than a girl herself, but he didn’t know it. He felt her lips on his cheek, on his hair. He melted into her gentleness. And deep within the pain that for the moment was his mind, he thought, If I hold her, hold her, then she’ll stay as she is now, and that other creature won’t come out of her to hurt me.

Then she drew herself up, stroking the stiff unruly waves of her black hair, her brown eyes still red but brimming with sudden excitement. “Tonio!” she said impulsively, rocking like a child. “There’s still time, I’ll dress you myself.” She clapped her hands. “I’m taking you with me to San Marco.”

His nurses said no. But there was no stopping his mother. A gaiety pervaded the room, candles dipping and trembling as the servants followed them about, his mother’s fingers deftly buttoning his satin breeches, his brocade waistcoat. She took the comb to his softer curls with the old chant, they were black silk, and kissed him twice abruptly.

And all the way down the corridor, he heard her singing softly behind him as he skipped ahead, thrilled with the click of his fancy slippers on the marble.

She was radiant in her black velvet gown, a blush suffusing her olive skin, and in the light of the lantern as she sank back into the dark
felze
of the gondola, her face with its slanted eyes resembled perfectly those Madonnas in the old Byzantine paintings. She held him on her lap. The curtain closed. “Do you love me?” she asked. He teased her. She pressed her cheek against his, mingling her eyelashes with his own, until he gave way to uncontrolled laughter. “Do you love me!” she clasped his shoulder.

And when he said yes, he felt her melting embrace, and for a moment became motionless, as if paralyzed, against her.

Across the piazza he danced on the leash of her arm. Everyone was here! He made bow after bow, hands reaching to tousle his hair, to press him to perfumed skirts. The young secretary to his father, Signore Lemmo, tossed him high in the air seven times before his mother said stop it. And his beautiful cousin Catrina Lisani, with two of her sons in tow, threw back her veil and, picking him up, smothered him against her fragrant white bosom.

But as soon as they set foot into the immense church Tonio was silent.

Never had he witnessed such a spectacle. Candles everywhere wreathed the marble columns and in the gusts from the open doors, the torches roared in their sconces. The great domes blazed with angels and saints, and all around arches, walls, vaults pulsed with gold in millions upon millions of tiny twinkling facets.

Without a word, Tonio scrambled into his mother’s arms. He climbed her like a tree. She rocked backwards under his weight, laughing.

And then it seemed a shock passed through the crowd like the rustle of burning kindling. Trumpets blared. Tonio turned back and forth frantically, unable to find them.

“See!” his mother whispered, squeezing his hand. And above the heads of the crowd the Doge appeared in his great chair under a swaying canopy. The sharp heavy scent of incense filled the air. And the trumpets rose in pitch, shrill and brilliant and chilling.

Then came the Grand Council in their brilliant robes. “Your
father!” said Tonio’s mother with a spasm of girlish excitement.

The tall bone-thin figure of Andrea Treschi came into view, sleeves down to the floor, his white hair the shape of a lion’s mane, his deep-set pale eyes fixed like those of a statue before him.

“Papa!” Tonio’s whisper carried sharply. Heads turned, there was muffled laughter. And when the Councillor’s gaze wavered and fixed his son in the crowd, the ancient face was transformed, its smile almost rapturous, those eyes brilliantly enlivened.

Tonio’s mother was blushing.

But suddenly from out of the air it seemed a great singing burst forth, voices high and clear and declaring. Tonio felt a catch in his throat. For a second he could not move, his body perfectly rigid as he absorbed the shock of this singing, and then he squirmed, eyes upward, the candles for the moment blinding him. “Be still,” said his mother, who could hardly hold him. The singing grew richer, fuller.

It came in waves from either side of the immense nave, melody interwoven with melody. Tonio could almost see it. A great golden net thrown out as if on the lapping sea in shimmering sunlight. The very air teemed with sound. And finally he saw, right above, the singers.

They stood in two huge lofts to the left and right side of the church, mouths open, faces gleaming in reflected light; they appeared like the angels in the mosaics.

In a second, Tonio had dropped to the floor. He felt his mother’s hand slip as she went to catch him. He dashed through the press of skirts and cloaks, perfume and winter air, and saw the open door to the stairway.

It seemed the walls around him throbbed with the chords of the organ as he climbed, and suddenly he stood in the warmth of the choir loft itself, among these tall singers.

A little commotion ensued. He was at the very rail and looking up into the eyes of a giant of a man whose voice poured out of him as clean and golden as the clarion of the trumpet. The man sang the one great word, “Alleluia!” which had the peculiar sound of a call to someone, a summoning. And all the men behind him picked it up, singing it over and over again at intervals, overlapping one upon the other.

While across the church the other choir returned it in mounting volume.

Tonio opened his mouth. He started singing. He sang the one word right in time with the tall singer and he felt the man’s hand close warmly on his shoulder. The singer was nodding to him, he was saying with his large, almost sleepy brown eyes, Yes, sing, without saying it. Tonio felt the man’s lean flank beneath his robe, and then an arm wound down about his waist to lift him.

The whole congregation shimmered below, the Doge in his chair of golden cloth, the Senate in their purple robes, councillors in scarlet, all the patricians of Venice in their white wigs, but Tonio’s eyes were fixed on the singer’s face as he heard his own voice like a bell ringing out distinct from the singer’s clarion. Tonio’s body went away. He left it, carried out on the air with his voice and the singer’s voice as the sounds became indistinguishable. He saw the pleasure in the singer’s quivering eyes, that sleepiness lifted. But the powerful sound erupting from the man’s chest astonished him.

When it was over and he was placed in his mother’s arms again, she looked up to this giant as he made her a deep bow, and said:

“Thank you, Alessandro.”

“Alessandro, Alessandro,” Tonio whispered. And as he snuggled next to her in the gondola he said desperately, “Mamma, when I grow up will I sing like that? Will I sing like Alessandro?” It was impossible to explain it to her. “Mamma, I want to be one of those singers!”

“Good Lord, Tonio, no!” She burst out laughing. And with a foppish gesture of her wrist to his nurse, Lena, she looked to heaven.

The entire household was clattering and groaning up to the roof. And gazing towards the mouth of the Grand Canal, anticipating that infinite spell of darkness that was the lagoon, Tonio saw the sea ablaze: hundreds upon hundreds of lights bobbing on the water. It was as if all the flickering illumination of San Marco had been spilled out, and in a reverent whisper
his mother told him that the men of state were going to venerate the relics on San Giorgio.

All was still for a moment, except the whistling wind that had long ago torn the fragile lattices of the ruined roof garden. Dead trees lay here and there on their sides, anchored still by their overturned pots of root and earth, their leaves snapped by the wind, crackling.