Cry to Heaven (5 page)

“If I could be her cavalier servente…” He sighed. He looked in the mirror to see a tall young man with the face of a boy. “Why can’t I protect her?” he whispered.
“Why can’t I save her!”

B
UT WHAT DO YOU DO
with a woman who, more and more often, prefers her bottle of wine to the light of day?

Illness! Melancholia! Those were the words they used for it.
By the time Tonio was fourteen, Marianna never rose before late afternoon. Often she was “too tired” to sing, and he was glad to hear it, because the sight of her stumbling about the room was almost more than he could bear. She had sense enough most of the time to stay in bed, against a nest of white pillows, her face gaunt, her eyes bulbous and glittering, and listen to whatever concerts he wanted to make for her.

By twilight she was often quarrelsome and bizarre. Of course she didn’t want to go out to the Pietà. Why would she want to go there? “Do you know,” she said one evening, “that when I was there everybody knew me. I was the talk of Venice. The gondoliers said I was the best singer of all the four schools, the best they’d ever heard. ‘Marianna, Marianna,’ people knew that name in the drawing rooms of Paris and London; they knew me in Rome. One summer we went on a barge down the Brenta; we sang in all the villas; we danced afterwards if we wanted to; we had wine with all the guests….”

Tonio was shocked.

Lena washed and combed her as if she were a baby, pouring out the wine to calm her, and then took him aside.

“All the girls of the conservatorios are praised like that; it was nothing, don’t be so foolish,” she said. “And it’s the same today. You talk to Bruno; the gondoliers love the girls, whether they are fine ladies destined to marry patricians, or merely nameless little girls. It’s not the same at all as being on the stage, for the love of heaven, why do you look this way?”

“I should have gone on the stage!” Marianna said suddenly. She threw back the covers, her head wagging forward, her hair spilling in rivulets over her sallow skin.

“Hush now,” Lena said to her. “Tonio, go out for a while.”

“No, why should he go!” Marianna said. “Why are you always sending him away! Tonio, sing. I don’t care what you sing, sing things you make up. I should have run away with the opera, that’s what I should have done. And you would have lived out of trunks, playing with the scenery backstage. Ah, no, but look at you, His Excellency, Marc Antonio Treschi—”

“This is utter lunacy,” Lena said.

“Ah, but what you do not know, my dear,” Marianna cried, “is that lunatics are made by asylums!”

*  *  *

These were terrible times.

When Catrina Lisani came to call, Lena put her off with vague diagnoses, and on those rare but regular mornings when Andrea Treschi came to his wife’s bedroom, Lena stopped him with the same excuses.

For the first time, Tonio was severely tempted to sneak out of the palazzo.

The city was in a frenzy of preparation for the grandest of all Venetian holidays—the Feast of the Ascension, or the Senza—when the Doge would go out in the magnificently gilded barque of state called the
Bucintoro
to cast his ceremonial ring into the sea, signifying his marriage with it and the dominion of Venice over it. Venice and the sea, an ancient and sacred wedding. It sent pleasant chills over Tonio, though he would see no more of it than what he could glimpse from the rooftops. And when he thought now of the two weeks of carnival after it, seeing the maskers in the
calli
and on the quais—even little children with their masks, babes in arms with masks, all rushing to the piazza—he was sickened with expectation and resentment.

More diligently than ever he gathered little gifts to throw down to the street singers at night so they would stay under his window. He found a broken gold watch, wrapped it in a fine silk handkerchief, and tossed it out to them. They didn’t know who he was. Sometimes in song they asked.

And one night when he felt especially reckless, and the Senza was only two weeks away, he sang a reply: “I’m the one who loves you tonight more than anyone in Venice!”

His voice resounded off the stone walls; he was thrilled almost to laughing, and he went on, weaving into his song all the flowery poetry in praise of music that he knew until he realized he was being ridiculous. Yet it felt so marvelous. He didn’t even note the silence below. And when the applause came, the wild clapping and shouting up from the narrow sidewalk, he blushed in shyness and silent laughter.

Then he tore all the jeweled buttons off his coat to give to them.

But sometimes it was very late when the singers came. And sometimes they didn’t come at all. Maybe they were serenading ladies by commission, or singing to a pair of lovers on the
canal. He didn’t know. Sitting at the window, with his arms folded on the damp sill, he dreamed that he had found some cellar door no one knew and gone out with them. He dreamed he wasn’t rich, wasn’t a patrician. Rather he was some urchin boy free to sing and play the fiddle all night to the four corners of this dense stone fairyland that was his city rising tightly all about him.

Yet there was a mounting sense in Tonio that something must happen.

Life couldn’t get any worse for him, as he saw it.

And then one afternoon, foolishly, Beppo brought Alessandro, the chief singer from San Marco, to hear Tonio sing with his mother.

It seems some time before, Beppo had hovered on the edge of Marianna’s bedroom to ask when she might allow such a visit. Beppo was so proud of Tonio’s voice, and he adored Marianna as something of a seraph.

“Why, bring him anytime,” she’d said gaily. She was on her second bottle of Spanish sack, and wandering about in her dressing gown. “Bring him in. I should love to see him. I’ll dance for him if you like. Tonio can play the tambourine; we’ll have a regular carnival.”

Tonio was mortified. Lena put her mistress to bed. Of course Beppo should have understood. But Beppo was old. His little blue eyes flickered like uncertain lights, and several days after, there stood Alessandro in the main parlor, looking very splendid in his cream-colored velvet, and green taffeta vest, obviously delighted by this special invitation.

Marianna was sound asleep, the blinds drawn. Tonio would sooner waken the Medusa.

Running a comb through his hair and putting on his best coat, he went alone to welcome Alessandro to the house as though he were master of it.

“I’m at a loss, Signore,” he said. “My mother is ill. I’m ashamed to sing for you alone.” Yet even at this little unexpected company, he felt elated. The sun was streaming in on the carved mahogany and damask that made up the room. And there was a pleasantness to it all, despite the faded carpet and the soaring ceilings.

“Bring some coffee, please,” he said to Beppo. And then he opened the harpsichord.

“Forgive me, Excellency,” Alessandro said softly. “I never expected to trouble you.” His smile was gentle and dreamy. He looked far from ethereal without his choir robes; rather he was a giant of a gentleman, on the very edge of gawkiness though a gliding rhythm rescued his every gesture. “I hoped only to sit to the side somewhere while you and your mother were singing, not to disturb you,” he said. “Beppo has told me so much about your duets, and I remember your voice, Excellency. I’ve never forgotten it.”

Tonio laughed. He knew if this man left now, he would burst into tears, he was so lonely. “Sit down, please, Signore,” he said. He was relieved to see Lena appear with a steaming pot, and Beppo right behind her with a sheaf of music.

Tonio felt desperate. A lovely vision sprang full-blown into his head of entertaining Alessandro so purely he would come back over and over again. He took up Vivaldi’s latest operatic score,
Montezuma
. The arias were all new to him, but he couldn’t risk something old and tiresome, and within seconds he was in the middle of a sprightly and dramatic piece, his voice warming quickly.

He’d never sung in this place. There was more bare marble here than tapestry or drapery. A glorious amplification occurred, and when he finished suddenly the silence chilled him. He didn’t look at Alessandro. He felt a curious emotion welling up in him, an uneasy happiness.

And then turning on impulse he beckoned to Alessandro. He was almost amazed to see the eunuch rise and take his place by the harpsichord. And then as Tonio pounded quickly into the first duet, he heard that magnificent voice behind him lifting and carrying his own, that strident power.

There came another duet, and another after that, and when they could find no more they made duets of the arias. They sang everything in the score that they liked, some of what they didn’t like, and then went on to other music. Finally Alessandro was persuaded to share the little bench, and they had their coffee brought to them.

And the singing went on and on, until all formality had left them. They were merely two people; even their speaking voices were different. Alessandro pointed out little aspects of
this or that composition. He stopped now and then, insisting that he must hear Tonio alone, and then his compliments came in a warm rush as if he must make Tonio understand the greatness of his gift and that this was no idle flattery.

When both of them finally stopped it was because someone had just placed a candelabrum in front of them. The house was dark; it was late, and they had forgotten everything.

Tonio was quiet, and the shadowy look of things oppressed him. The room seemed to yawn about him, and the lights from the canal flickering in the glass made him want to light up the entire chamber with every candle he could lay hands on. The music was still throbbing in his head, and pain was throbbing with it, and when he saw the soft smile on Alessandro’s face, a musing, a look of awe, he felt an overwhelming affection for him.

He wanted to tell him about that long ago night when he’d first sung in San Marco, how he had loved it, how he had never forgotten it. But it was impossible to put into words that first childish wish to be a singer, impossible to say of course I cannot be that, impossible to tell him the humor in it, that he didn’t know Alessandro was…what? He stopped his thoughts, suddenly humiliated.

“Listen to me, you must stay to supper,” he said, rising. “Beppo, please tell Angelo I should like him to dine with us also. And tell Lena right away. We’ll sup in the main dining room.”

The table was quickly laid out with all the appropriate linen and silver. He asked for more candelabra, and seating himself at the head of the table as he always did when alone, Tonio was soon deep in conversation.

Alessandro laughed easily. His answers were long. He complimented the wine. And soon he was describing the Doge’s more recent banquet.

These were monstrous affairs, hundreds sitting down to table, and the people came in through the open doors from the piazzetta to watch everything.

“Well, one silver plate was missing”—Alessandro smiled, raising his heavy dark brown eyebrows—“and imagine, Excellency, all the heads of state waiting patiently for the silver to be counted yet again and again. I could hardly keep from laughing.”

But there was no real disrespect in the way he told the story, and he was quickly launching into another. He had a languid refinement to him; his long face in the candlelight looked slightly unearthly in its smoothness.

And Tonio couldn’t help realizing in the very midst of this that Angelo and Beppo were sitting quietly to his right, doing everything that he told them to do. A second bottle of wine, Tonio suggested, and immediately Angelo sent for it.

“And dessert, you must,” he said. “If we have nothing in the house, send someone out for chocolate, or ices.”

Beppo was gazing at him with admiration in fact, and Angelo seemed ever so slightly intimidated.

“But tell me what is it like when you are singing for a king, the king of France, the king of Poland….”

“It’s the same singing for anyone, Excellency,” Alessandro said. “You want it to be flawless. For your own ears, you cannot bear to make a mistake. That is why I never sing when I’m alone in my rooms; I don’t want to hear anything that is not…well, perfect.”

“But the opera, didn’t you ever want to sing on the stage?” Tonio pressed.

Alessandro put his fingers together to make a little steeple. He was obviously absorbed in his answer.

“It’s different before the footlights,” he said. “I wonder if I can explain it. Well, you’ve seen the singers at the—”

“No, not yet,” Tonio said and he felt a sudden flush. Alessandro would realize how young Tonio was, and how curious was this whole little occasion.

But Alessandro was merely going on, explaining that on the stage one impersonated another; one had to
act
, to be there in space, to be seen. It wasn’t the same at all in church; it was the voice soaring above everything.

Tonio took another sip of wine, and just as he was going to say that he wanted so much to see an opera, he realized that Angelo and Beppo had hastily risen. Alessandro suddenly looked down the length of the table. Then he too was on his feet. Tonio followed before he actually picked out of the thin bluish gloom the figure of his father.

Andrea had just come into the room, his heavy purple robes catching the light, while behind him there stood a host of others. Signore Lemmo, his secretary, was near, and those young
men who were always about to learn rhetoric and political grace from their revered elder.

Tonio’s fear was so immediate all thought left him.

What had he been thinking to invite a guest to supper? But Andrea was right before him. He bent to kiss his father’s hand with no notion of what was about to happen.

And then he saw his father was smiling.

Andrea took a chair beside Alessandro, as Tonio watched in absolute amazement. Some of the young men were invited to remain. Signore Lemmo told Giuseppe, the old valet, to light the sconces on the walls, and the blue satin paneling came to life suddenly and beautifully.

Andrea was talking, making some witticism. And supper was being brought in for him and the young men, and more wine was being poured into Tonio’s glass, and when his father glanced to him there was nothing in his eyes but a lively warmth, a gentleness, a boundless love that showed itself deliberately and generously.