Cry to Heaven (31 page)

Trays of white wine floated through the air. Tonio captured one glass in his hands and drank it down, then took another, the wigged servant in his blue satin coat as still as a statue, then off again.

Suddenly he was lost. He had not seen Guido for the longest time, and he was being accosted it seemed by one woman after another who spoke to him in French or English or Italian. An elderly woman was gliding towards him, and then putting out her long arm as if it were a cane, crooked him in her hand and brought him forward until her dry lips touched his chest: “Radiant child,” she said in Neapolitan dialect.

He disentangled himself, lost his balance, and felt he had to escape from this. It seemed everywhere he looked he saw perfect skin, some little mound of breast over a strip of ribbon. A woman laughing so hard she could not breathe held her ruffled breasts in her hands as if they would fall out of the seams of her printed taffeta dress, and seeing him she made her lips vanish behind a white lace fan on which there was an arc of red roses.

He was teetering over a billiard table. And then he realized that far away on the edge of that room stood a gaunt, consumptive man, so white of skin that he could all but see his bones beneath his flesh, staring at Tonio and smiling.

For one moment he did not know who this was, only that he must know. And then he realized it was that vision of death, that living corpse who had stood over him on Mount Vesuvius. He moved towards this man. Ah, yes, it was that consumptive, only done up now in a frivolous coat of gold-threaded brocade which gave him the tawdry look of one of
those marble statues in a church which is dressed in real cloth garments by the faithful.

The man wore a powdered wig, and his eyes, deep-set and full of shadows, moved almost fondly over Tonio as he allowed Tonio to move closer and closer.

Again a tray of drinks, the fragile glass in his hands. He was right up against the man and they were looking at one another.

“Alive and well,” said the man in a hollow, cracking voice. And instantly, as if in pain, he put his handkerchief to his lips, the rings on his fingers bound to white bones. He backed away, doubling slightly, and it seemed a whirl of skirts opened to envelop him.

“I want to get out of here,” Tonio whispered. “I must get out of here.” And when another woman drew close, he found himself giving her such a vicious look that she backed off, affronted. He had turned, stumbling into an empty supper room with a large table set for some hundred persons it seemed, with sumptuous plate and fresh-cut flowers.

And far down the wall, in one of the deep-set arched windows, stood a lone young woman watching him.

For just one second he thought she was the little prima donna of the opera, and a wave of despair came over him. He heard the richness of her voice, its lusty peaks, and saw again those little breasts, heaving with her untrained breaths, and felt the despair agitated to panic.

But this was not the prima donna. This was another young woman with the same fair hair and blue eyes, only she was tall and slight of build and her eyes were very dark, almost smoky. She wore only a plain dress of violet-colored silk, with none of those frills and ribbons he’d seen on the stage, and this dress molded her arms and her shoulders exquisitely. It appeared she’d been watching him for a long time as he stood there, and that before he had come in, she’d been crying.

He knew he must leave this room. But gazing at her, he felt an anger mingling in him with some drunken passion. She was lithesome, this girl, her hair full of lovely little wisps that softened its calculated curls, giving her an aureole in the candlelight.

And without meaning to, he was approaching her. It was not only that prettiness that drew him, however. There was something abandoned and uncaring about her. Crying, crying, he
thought, why is she crying? He stumbled. He was very drunk. Before him a candle teetered on the tablecloth and then fell over. It went out with a fragrant wick of smoke rising straight to the ceiling.

And he found himself before her, marveling that those dark smoky-blue eyes seemed to hold no fear of him.

No fear. No fear. And why in God’s name should she be afraid of him! He felt his teeth clench. He had not meant to touch her. And yet he had reached out.

And all of a sudden, without reason, fresh tears appeared in her eyes. She was crying helplessly.

And it was she who laid her head against his shoulder.

It was an anguishing moment. It was full of terror. Her soft yellow hair smelled like rain against his face, and in the gaping ruffle of her dress, he saw her bosom as it rested against him. He knew that if he did not get away from her, he would strike her, do her some appalling violence, and yet he was holding her so tight surely he was hurting her.

He lifted her chin. He closed his mouth on hers, and then heard her cry out. She was struggling.

It seemed he’d fallen backwards. She was far, far away from him, and the look on her face in those shadows was so innocent and so stricken that turning he all but ran out of this room until he found himself in the very middle of the ball, and its great confusion of dancers.

“Maestro,” he murmured, turning this way and that, and when suddenly Guido took his arm he insisted that he had to get out of here.

An elderly woman was nodding to him. The man beside him was explaining to him that the Marchesa wanted to dance with him. “I cannot…” He was shaking his head….

“Oh, yes, you can,” Guido’s low voice rumbled in his ear. He felt Guido’s hand in the small of his back.

“Damn you,” he whispered. “I have to get out of here…. You must help me…get back to the conservatorio.”

But he was bowing to this ancient woman, kissing her hand. There was such a sweetness in her expression, the ruin of a lovely face, and a grace even to the withered arm outstretched to him.

“No, Maestro—!” he whispered.

She turned lightly in her white slippers. He felt the room going
round and round. He must not see that fair-haired girl. He must not see her! He would go mad if she suddenly appeared, and yet somehow if he could only make it known to her…

But what?

That he wasn’t to blame, she wasn’t to blame.

They were facing each other, the Marchesa and he, the music was full into the quadrille and by some miracle he came forward, bowed to his partner, breaking to move down the long line of couples exactly as he’d done a thousand times before, but again and again he kept forgetting what he was doing!

Guido appeared, his brown eyes too big for his face.

And then he was leaning on Guido, saying something to someone, an apology, he must leave, he must get out of this place, he must be in his room, his own room, or they should go up now onto the mountain. Yes, go up on the mountain, this was the one thing he had been unable to admit to himself, it was unendurable.

“You are tired,” Guido said.

No, no, no, he shook his head. Impossible to tell anyone, but the thought that he could never again lie with a woman was unendurable. He would start roaring if he did not stop thinking of it. Where was she? He had never believed for a moment that Alessandro could really do it! He had thought his mother such a child, and Beppo, inconceivable. And Caffarelli, what had he really done when he got alone with them?

Guido was lifting him up into the carriage. “I want to go up on the mountain!” he said again furiously. “You leave me alone. I want to go, I know where I am going.”

The carriage was moving. He saw the stars above, felt the warm breeze on his face, and saw the leafy branches dipping down as though they meant to stroke him. If he thought of little Bettina now in the gondola, that soft nest of white limbs, that silky flesh inside her thighs, he would go mad. Banish him! He would never set foot there again, until…and when…

He fell against Guido. They were standing at the conservatorio gates, and he said, “I want to die.” Confide to you my pain, I’d rather die. And that voice spoke to him again, from inside himself, saying, Behave as if you are a man, and he was walking upstairs to bed as if he felt nothing.

I
T WAS SOON CLEAR
that whenever Tonio was too tired to work, Guido would have some reward for him. They would go out to the opera, or Tonio would be given some simple arias to enjoy. But Guido could not be foxed in this. He
knew
when his pupil could do no more, and one afternoon when Tonio was unusually discouraged Guido took him out of the practice room and down the hall to the conservatorio theater.

“Sit here; watch and listen,” he said, leaving Tonio in the back row of chairs where he might stretch his aching limbs unnoticed.

Tonio had been more than intrigued by the sounds issuing from this room.

And he was delighted to find it was as lavish a little theater as any he had ever seen in a Venetian palazzo. It had one tier of boxes all fitted with emerald-green curtains, and its proscenium arch was aglitter with gilded scrollwork and angels.

Some twenty-five musicians were at work in the pit, an awesome number it seemed, since the opera house had only that many for some performances, and all were working away on their private exercises oblivious to singers practicing their scales, and the student composer, Loretti, fuming that the production would never be ready for the first night two weeks from now.

Guido, pausing at the door, laughed shortly at this and told Tonio everything was going splendidly.

Tonio started, as if awakened from a dream, because from the milling cast on the boards he’d already picked out the figure
of Domenico, that exquisite sylph of a boy, whom he’d seen of late only at the supper table.

He had never once thought of this room, or of the coming production, without thinking of Domenico.

But the composer was calling everyone to attention.

The rest period was over, and within minutes a silence fell over the little theater and the musicians struck up the overture.

Tonio was astonished at the richness of the sound; these boys were better than professionals he’d heard in Venice, and when the first singers appeared on the stage, he realized that these students were probably ready to perform anywhere in Europe.

Naples was surely the musical capital of Italy as everyone had always said, though Venetians sneered at those words, and in a moment of gentle calm, listening to this lovely, lively music, Tonio thought, Naples is my city.

A relief coursed through him. The pain in his legs from so many hours of standing was almost delicious. And leaning forward to the rounded back of the green velvet chair in front of him, he folded his arms on its carved frame and rested his chin there.

Domenico appeared. And though he was dressed in his simple black tunic and red sash, he seemed to have become the woman whose role he was playing. There was about every gesture a yielding and a grace that caused Tonio suddenly to feel tense, resentful.

Only the boy’s voice distracted him. It was high, pure, and utterly translucent, with none of the opacity of the falsetto. His true soprano range was obviously phenomenal, and the liquid manner in which he connected his rounded tones made Tonio ashamed of his own miserable performance with the
Accentus
.

“This is a voice to reckon with,” he sighed as soon as Domenico had finished and made his exit. But this was merely a rehearsal and the boy lingered at the edge of the stage, his body forming such a languid posture that he seemed to be resting comfortably against the air as if it were a tree, and over the length of the house, his eyes appeared to be fixed on Tonio.

Tonio was so absorbed by this, by the light angular figure of the boy and those hollow cheeks and deep-set black eyes, that he did not even notice a figure was approaching him.

Then suddenly he realized a shadow had fallen over him. He
looked up just as the music died away, and a silence fell over the theater.

Lorenzo, the castrato he had stabbed a month ago for tormenting him, was standing beside him.

Tonio stiffened.

He rose slowly. His eyes moved warily over this boy who was taller than he was, and dark-skinned as well as dark-haired, a somewhat rough-looking individual. Like many of the castrati, however, he had a bloom to him, though the face was plain and without contrast.

His eyes were fixed on Tonio. The rehearsal had come to a complete halt.

And Tonio had no weapon.

Yet as Tonio gave the boy a slow nod of greeting, he let his right hand rise slightly as if for something at his waist. Then he lowered it again as if he would pass it up under his tunic to reach for a stiletto. The gesture was drawn out, calculated.

But the boy appeared not to notice. His body taut, fingers curled at his sides, he acknowledged Tonio’s nod with his own bow, his mouth breaking into a long ugly smile as he did so.

No one made a sound in the little theater.

And then Lorenzo, moving backwards carefully, turned and left Tonio there.

Tonio stood still, thinking. He had expected some attack from this boy. But this was worse. This boy meant to kill him.

That afternoon he left the conservatorio with Guido’s permission to bring a locksmith back to his room; and slipping his stiletto into his belt, he now took it with him everywhere. No one could see it under his tunic. And wherever he went, he was cautious. Climbing the stairs in the dark at night, he listened before advancing.

But he was not afraid. And then suddenly the absurdity of that caused him to flush. He was not afraid because Lorenzo was only a eunuch!

He shook his head, his brain teeming. Was that what Carlo had counted on? That Tonio was only a eunuch?

He wished he could get at his brain with his hands and squeeze the organ of thought itself, he was in such pain suddenly. He did not know what the years would do to him, or what they had done to this dark-skinned boy from the south of
Italy whom he had stabbed so thoughtlessly when he felt like a cornered animal. But should he expect any less of this one than he expected of himself?

As time passed, he found himself hoping that this boy would attack him and wondering how it would go when it happened.