Cry to Heaven (48 page)

But a great blaze illuminated the distant stairwell. And cocking his ear for voices, he heard them. And then he turned and made his way to the inevitable back stairs.

The night was just as warm as it had been earlier, and as he stepped out into the grass, he saw countless stars overhead, uneven, some so clear they were faintly yellow or even pink, others merely tiny points of white light. And the fleeting clouds made him rock for a moment on the balls of his feet with his head back, for the whole heavens or the whole earth seemed to move.

Light streamed out from the parlor windows and when he finally went up to the glass, he saw Maestro Cavalla was still there. Guido was talking to Signore Ruggerio, and Signore Ruggerio appeared to be describing something with his finger on a bare table, while the Contessa looked on.

He turned his back, and in spite of the most intense excitement, he knew he must not go in.

He walked fast through the garden, finding his way into the patches of rose trees, and slowing his pace he made his way to that outbuilding which was completely dark. The moon shone bright for an instant, and just before the clouds passed over it again, he saw the doors were still open and he moved quietly towards them with just the crunch of the grass under his foot. Was it wrong to go in when all lay open so fearlessly? He told himself that he would merely stand in the door.

And placing his hand timidly on the frame, he saw the pictures before him, drained of color, the faces luminous and indistinct. Slowly Saint Michael materialized, and then the whiteness of that canvas on which only part of the work had been done. His foot sounded very loud to him on the slate flooring, and then he settled slowly onto the bench before the picture and made out a gathering of figures, white, and intertwined under what seemed a black mass of trees.

It was maddening not to be able to see it, and yet he felt an intruder. He did not want to touch her brushes, her little pots of paint so tightly covered, nor even the cloth that lay folded to one side. But these objects fascinated him. He remembered her when she was still bent forward. And he heard her voice again, its lovely treble and its slight opacity, and he realized that there had been a slight accent to her words.

After a moment’s playing with conscience, he took one of the matches from her little table nearby and lighted the candle on his right.

The flame sputtered, grew larger, and slowly an even illumination filled the room. The great work against the wall quickly colored in, and the picture before him showed nymphs in a garden, lithesome and golden-haired, their gauzy dresses barely covering them as they danced with garlands of flowers in their tiny hands.

It was nothing as chaste and dour as her murals in the Contessa’s chapel; it was more lively and immensely more skilled. And why not, he mused? In three years, what had he learned of singing? Wasn’t it natural that she should have made her own progress, unknown to him, with the brush? Yet he could see now an attitude to the painted faces before him which indisputably connected them to the chapel Virgin he’d admired so many times. He found himself staring at the naked limbs of these nymphs, however, with a slight humming fascination that made him feel suddenly ashamed.

The paint was fresh; if he touched it, he would harm it, but he did not want to touch it. He merely wanted to look and to think that she had painted this.

Guido’s little story of the funeral in Sicily came back to him. So she was the little English cousin, the little widow who had been so frightened by those horrid catacombs they had to take her out. Now he could hear it in her voice in his memory,
that touch of an accent, and it gave her even greater fascination, though when he thought of her alone now without her husband, he wondered if it might even be worse for her than the marriage must have been.

A sadness came over him, a sadness slow but without measure. And he realized that all the times he’d ever seen her, in any place no matter how crowded, she had always seemed alone.

But her loveliness was all the more palpable, all the more a low beating torment, and finally he reached out to extinguish the candle flame. Deliberately he let it burn his fingers and then he rose reluctantly to go. What had she to do with him, after all? What did it matter she had such skill in her, such craft, such preoccupation that it made of her a lost sprite of a girl? Somewhere in his mind there was the notion that innocence alone could have done nothing so interesting as this work for he saw in it little simpering sweetness which he associated with innocence. Rather it was massive. And it was very fine.

But again, what was this to him, and why was he sweating? Why were his palms damp?

It occurred to him as he hovered in the doorway that he wished she would leave him alone, and in an instant he realized foolishly that it was he who perpetually stared at her, so much so she had nodded finally. Well, then, why the hell hadn’t she told someone how badly he behaved? He was furious with her.

And then looking up he saw her.

She was sitting in the rose garden, and her long robe was very white under the moon.

He sucked in his breath. But he was so badly shaken that he felt almost a fool. She’d been watching him! She’d seen the light in her little studio. And surely she could see him as clearly as he now saw her.

The blood was teeming in his face. And then to his gentle amazement she rose from the marble bench and came towards him, so slowly and so soundlessly that she appeared to drift rather than to move. In the grass he saw the gleam of her naked foot, and the breeze stirring the gauzy layers of her robe caused her form to be visible as if these loose garments were an eerie collection of light.

It seemed to him that for her sake he must make some nod and get gone from her as quickly as he could. But he didn’t stir. He only watched her and something about her deliberation began to terrify him.

She came closer and closer until he could see her face clearly, and her eyes were full of significance, and as she looked up to him, her forehead creased with a little frown; she was speaking to him without words. And there came that fragrance from her that was the actual smell of summer rain. He was not thinking anymore. He was not seeing her rounded cheeks, or the dark pout of her small mouth. Rather he was seeing the whole of her, the pulsing thing she was beneath that sheathing of sheer linen and all that neglected golden hair: the body inside it, with its inevitable heat and damp and this fragrance so like the rain beating in full force on flowers, on pathways, on dead leaves.

He wanted her so badly it was an agony, as if all of him were starving for her and sharpened for her and paralyzed at the same time. It was a nightmare in which one cannot scream; one cannot move. It horrified him. Had she no caution, no care? This great empty garden, and beyond it the slumbering house, and here she stood alone with him. Would she have done that with any other man? A terrible violence rose in him suddenly, and it seemed she was some hideous thing and not the most lovely and delicate creature he’d ever seen.

He wanted to hurt her, to catch her up and crush her, and show her the truth of it, make her see what he was! He was trembling; he could hear his own breath.

But her face was changing. It had darkened and wrinkled in a terrible little frown. She bowed her head, and shrinking back, she turned away from him as if falling from a great height.

He was stricken watching her, seeing her recoil. And then helplessly, he saw her move away, straightening when she had covered some distance, her yellow hair a great gleaming mass just before she vanished in the dark.

Once inside his room, he rested gently against the closed door. He pressed his forehead to the hard enameled wood.

Miserable with shame, he could not believe it had come to this! It had seemed over the years they had been partners in
some wondrous dance, and always there had been the terrifying promise of their coming together.

And it had come only to this!

That she had offered herself was beyond question, and bitter, humiliated, he knew now just what he was, and she knew it, too. And if there was any mercy left for him, Guido and the Contessa would come soon to tell him that he was going to Rome, where he would never see her again.

He had fallen asleep, fully dressed, the blanket over his shoulder, before Guido came. He awoke to see Guido and the Contessa standing over him and the Contessa said:

“Sit up, beautiful child, you must make me a promise.”

Guido didn’t even look at him. He moved about the room as if dreaming, his lips pressed together and then slack in a secret monologue.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Tonio said sleepily. He saw his blond-haired girl for an instant, and then she was gone.

He felt he could endure this waiting no longer.

“Tell me,” he said. “Now.”

“Ah, but first, beautiful child,” she was saying in that measured and polite way of hers, “promise me, promise me, that when you are very famous you will tell everyone that it was in my house in Naples that you first sang.”

“Famous?” He sat up, as the Contessa nestled beside him and pressed her lips to his cheek.

“My beautiful child,” she said, “I have just written to my cousin, the Cardinal Calvino in Rome; he will be expecting you, and you will live with him as long as you like.

“Guido wants to leave immediately. He wants to get to know the audiences; he wants to do the work there. And I will come, too, of course, on opening night to see you both. Oh, but beautiful child, it is all arranged now; you are to make your first appearance as principal singer in Guido’s opera in the Teatro Argentina in Rome on the first of the year.”

I
T WAS WELL OVER
a fortnight before the day of departure arrived.

Everything was packed. Tonio’s rooms were empty save for the magnificent harpsichord which he was leaving as a gift for the Maestro di Cappella, and the carriages, laden with trunks, were waiting in the stable yard.

Tonio stood alone at his window, looking out through the dusty cloister into the garden, for the last time.

He had dreaded the moment of parting with Paolo, and it had been as bad as he expected. Paolo had been mute, spiritless. There was no substance to the words he uttered. That Tonio and Guido were leaving him was more than he could bear, and though he was gone now, Tonio knew that he could not leave Paolo like this.

In fact, a little scheme was forming in Tonio’s mind, but he was afraid the scheme would not work. And he lapsed for a moment into a confusion of thoughts just as Maestro Cavalla came into the empty room.

“Well, this is the painful moment,” sighed the Maestro.

Tonio’s glance was full of affection, but he didn’t speak. He watched the Maestro run his fingers over the delicately painted case of the harpsichord. It gave Tonio deep pleasure to know the Maestro treasured this gift.

“Has it been easier for the little trick we played on you at the Contessa’s?” the Maestro asked. “I had hoped it would be.”

Tonio only smiled. Easier, yes, it had been easier.

But there was a little spasm in his face now that meant pain and he wondered if the Maestro could see it. He had an uneasy
feeling about the Maestro suddenly. The Maestro was deep in thought; something more than a farewell was pressing on his mind.

“What are you thinking?” the Maestro asked him. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing as complex as you might suppose,” Tonio answered softly. “I’m thinking what they all think when they leave you.” And when he saw the question still in the Maestro’s face, Tonio confessed, “I’m afraid I’m going to fail in Rome.”

His eyes shifted to the garden again, and he was conscious of having said something that was not entirely true. A greater confusion was pressing on him. It had to do with life and all that life had to offer him, and how much he wanted it, and how much he would have liked to forget.

Once three years ago he’d told himself he would sing for his own pleasure, and how simple that had sounded, how simple that had seemed.

Now he wanted to be the greatest singer in Italy. He wanted Guido to write the finest opera anyone had ever heard. And he was afraid, afraid for both of them, and he could not help but wonder had he always feared this moment, ever since he’d known what was left to him, and had that fear been so great he had had to construct some other, darker purpose for his life?

He thought dimly of his old resolves, his hatreds, those dark vows.

But life was a magnificent snare, and now all he could think about was life. He wanted desperately to be on the road to Rome.

Guido was so excited there was no feeling to his farewells. Night and day, he’d been scribbling scenes for his opera. He was always humming to himself, and at times when they were not working, the two of them would look at each other, with that mingled fear and exhilaration that was shared by no one else.

“You won’t fail,” the Maestro said gently. “I would not let you go if I thought you would.”

Tonio nodded. But his eyes remained fixed on the cloister and the archway filled with leaves. Others had left here with high hopes; they’d left with the Maestro’s blessing, only to return in defeat.

But do any of them feel failure as
we
feel it, Tonio mused, we who are mutilated and tormented so much for that moment of success? He felt a quiet communion with those other singers; he felt a deepening of the brotherhood he had always known with those who struggled here at his side.

And yet as he heard the Maestro draw closer, as he became vaguely aware that the Maestro was troubled and brooding, another perception was just breaking in Tonio’s mind.

What if it were a triumph? What if it were exactly as he imagined it? The audience on its feet, those inundations of applause. Just for a second, he imagined it over and done, an incontestable victory, and he saw a road unwinding out from that moment, a road that was life itself.

It was life he saw unwinding, and he felt such fear he was appalled.

“God,” he whispered, but the Maestro didn’t hear him. He didn’t hear himself. He gave a little shake of his head.