Cry to Heaven (22 page)

When Guido rose to put the blanket up around him, Tonio drew back hissing something in the Venetian dialect which sounded like Do not touch me.

Guido shrank back again and it seemed for one solid hour he sat still watching this boy who never once altered his expression. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. And then finally the boy’s weakness and sickness overcame him, and he slid down against the mattress.

He could not resist when Guido brought the cover up over him. Nor did it seem he could protest when Guido lifted his head and told him to drink the wine given him.

When he lay back down, his eyes were like two pieces of glass, and they moved only a little now and then over the ceiling as Guido talked to him.

Guido took his time. It was silent in the inn, and the stars appeared only now and then, brilliant and tiny beyond the shifting shadows of the poplars. And in a low, measured voice, Guido described the man who had approached him in Venice, the men who had taken him all but forcibly to Flovigo. Then he described the papers that bore Tonio’s signature.

Without comment, he explained carefully how he himself had been implicated in the matter, and how these men had played upon this to force him to take Tonio out of the Venetian State. And lastly he described to Tonio the carriage which was his, and the purse, and that if Tonio so wished, Guido would take him to the Conservatorio San Angelo.

This was Tonio’s choice, he explained. But then he paused, and finally in a half murmur confided the bravo’s admission that Tonio would receive no further support if he did not go to the conservatorio and stay there.

“Nevertheless you are free to go with me or do as you wish,” Guido said. The purse was heavy.

At this the boy turned his head and shut his eyes, and the gesture seemed such an eloquent plea for silence that Guido said nothing after that.

He stood against the wall, his arms folded, until he heard the boy’s breath become even.

All madness had drained from the face; it lay softened and white against the pillow. The mouth was again a boy’s mouth, perfectly molded and yet supple. But it was the faint light playing
on the exquisite bones of the face that revealed its greatest beauty.

The light touched the line of the jaw, the high cheekbones, the smooth plane of the forehead.

Guido drew closer. And for a long time he looked at the boy’s lean limbs, released in sleep, and the one hand that lay half closed on top of the cover.

The forehead was warm now. The boy did not even stir when he touched it.

And slipping out the door, Guido went down into the open field beneath the window.

The moon was covered with clouds. The town itself showed no lights to the sky from this vantage point.

And walking through high damp grass, Guido soon found a dry spot where he sank down to lie on his back and pick out those few stars that were now and again visible.

A terrible despair was creeping over Guido.

It was coming like the cold of winter, and he knew it from the past by the shivering that always accompanied it, and the peculiar taste in his mouth that was like sickness.

Only he was not sick. He was whole, and empty, and all of his life was simply meaningless. It had never been more than a mesh of absurd accidents, and there was in it nothing noble and nothing good and nothing that gave comfort.

It mattered not one whit that men from the Venetian State might kill him. It seemed to have no more meaning than anything else that had ever happened to Guido. And without wanting it, he felt himself drawn back to that room in Naples where long ago he had tried to end his life by opening his veins as he drank himself into unconsciousness.

He could remember everything about that room. The painted walls, the border of flowers along the ceiling. And he could remember an obsession in his last moments with the sea, and how pleasantly he had imagined it.

His eyes grew moist. He felt the tears on the side of his face, and above the heavens seemed milky and full of an unwelcome white light that he would have covered over with blessed darkness.

He was hearing now, without even wanting it either, Tonio Treschi’s voice rising out of the tangled Venetian alleyways,
and he felt a mingling of two places: that room in Naples where he had been so unspeakably happy when he’d thought he would die, and Venice where he had listened to that sublime singing.

And he knew suddenly what underlay this wild, fathomless darkness of soul that threatened to engulf him.

“If this boy does not survive, if he does not somehow overcome the violence done to him, then I am destroyed with him.”

It was not very long after that he rose from the bed of grass and walked back to the inn. But he could not go up to the room as yet, and seating himself on a stone step, his head on his arms, he wept silently.

Years had passed since he had shed tears, or so it seemed. Surely years since he had let them flow so copiously.

And what stopped him finally was that he could hear his own crying.

He lifted his face in wonder.

The sky was lighter, the first strands of blue threading its endless field of cloud, and bowing his head, he wiped his tears on his sleeve before rising.

But when he turned and looked up the stone steps that clung so narrowly to the wall, he saw at the top the slender and somewhat fragile figure of Tonio.

The boy was looking down at him. And his soft black eyes never left Guido as Guido came up to him.

“You are that maestro whom I met, are you not?” Tonio asked softly. “The maestro for whom I sang in San Marco?”

Guido nodded. He was studying the white face, the moist lips, the eyes which still had the gloss of illness.

He could hardly endure the sight of this battered and broken innocence. He offered up a silent prayer that this boy would turn away from him.

“And was it for me,” Tonio asked, “that you were weeping?”

For a moment Guido didn’t speak. He felt his habitual flashing anger; it colored his face and twisted the edges of his mouth, and then suddenly it came to him as clearly as if it had been spoken into his ear that yes, it was the truth, it was for this boy he had been weeping.

But he swallowed and said nothing. He was staring at Tonio in sullen wonder.

And the boy’s face which a moment before had been blank and almost angelic assumed a bitter expression that was as brittle as it was frightening. Malice slowly sharpened it, giving a menacing glint to the eyes that caused Guido to look away slowly.

“Well, we must get out of this place,” the boy whispered, “we must get on with our journey. I have business which must be attended to.”

Guido watched him turn and go into the room. All of the documents were laid out on the table. And the boy gathered them up now and returned them to the Maestro.

“Who were the men who did this?” Guido demanded suddenly.

Tonio was putting on his cloak. He looked up as if already in deep thought.

“Fools,” he answered, “at the command of a coward.”

T
ONIO SPOKE SCARCELY
a single syllable until they reached that great bustling capital of the north, Bologna.

If he felt discomfort, he concealed it, and when Guido urged him to see a physician, as there was always danger of infection, he turned his head resolutely away.

It seemed his face was permanently transformed. It was elongated, the line of the mouth hardened. And the eyes retained that feverish glitter though they were wide and seemingly blind to the unfolding spring of the Italian countryside.

They seemed not to see the fountains, palaces, and teeming streets of this great city either.

But after insisting upon the extravagant purchase of a jewel-
encrusted sword, a stiletto, and two pearl-handled pistols, Tonio also bought himself a new suit of clothes and a cloak to go with it. Then he asked Guido politely (he had been polite in everything so far, though never actually obedient or compliant) to find for him a lawyer who had to do with the affairs of musicians.

This was no problem in Bologna. Her cafés swarmed with singers and musicians from all over Europe come here expressly to meet with the agents and impresarios who might find them positions in the coming season. And after a few inquiries they were soon in the offices of a competent lawyer.

Tonio commenced to dictate a letter to the Supreme Tribunal in Venice.

He had accomplished his sacrifice for the sake of his voice, he said, and it was imperative that no one at Venice be blamed for his course of action.

Exonerating his former teachers and all those who had encouraged, him in the love of music, he went on then to exonerate Guido Maffeo and all those connected with the Conservatorio San Angelo, who had not known of his action before it was taken.

But it was foremost in his mind that no blame for this attach to his brother Carlo.

“As this man is now sole surviving heir of our late father yet sound of body and able to marry, it is imperative that he must be absolved from all responsibility for my actions so that he may attend to his duties to future wife and children,” Tonio said.

And then he signed the letter. The lawyer, never batting an eyelash at its strange contents, witnessed it, and so did Guido.

A copy was then sent to a woman named Catrina Lisani, with the request that all Tonio’s possessions be forwarded to Naples immediately. And would a small dowry be paid at once to a Bettina Sanfredo, serving girl in her father’s café on San Marco, so she might be properly married?

After this, Tonio retired to the monastery at which they were lodged, and fell down on his bed exhausted.

Often during the night, after that, Guido would wake to find Tonio on the edge of the room, fully dressed and waiting for the morning. And sometimes before midnight, he stirred in his
sleep, even cried out, but then he would wake and his face would become as wooden and unreadable as ever.

It was impossible to know the extent of the pain which was sealed inside, though at times it seemed Guido could feel that pain emanating from the boy’s still frame as it rested listlessly in the corner of the jolting carriage. At times, Guido wanted to speak, but he could not, and that same despair touched him as it had that night in Ferrara. And yet it humiliated him that this boy had heard him weeping and asked him so openly if the tears had been on his account. And Guido completely forgot that he had never given Tonio any answer.

In Florence, when they at last met those two boys Guido had left there for the return to Naples, Tonio was visibly disturbed by their presence in the carriage. And he seemed unable to prevent himself from staring at them.

Yet in Siena, he bought both children new shoes and capes and ordered them sweets at table. They were shy, obedient boys, one nine years of age, the other ten, and neither dared speak nor move unless told to do so. Yet Paolo, the younger of the two, had a humorous turn, it was clear, and could not now and then resist a broad smile that always forced Tonio’s eyes abruptly away from him. Once when Guido dozed, he awoke to see this boy had nestled in beside Tonio. It was raining then. And lightning broke over the soft, deep green hills, and with each crackle of thunder the boy drew nearer so that at last, without looking at him, Tonio slipped his arm about him. A film descended over Tonio’s eyes, and as his fingers clasped this child’s leg to hold him firm, it seemed suddenly an uncontrollable emotion might well up in him. But then he shut his eyes, his head to one side as if his neck were broken. And the carriage jolted on under the warm spring rain towards the Eternal City.

But while Tonio seemed blind to all the somber splendor of Rome, he had by the time they reached the Porto del Populo turned his obsessive attention away from the two boys and fixed it upon Guido. His eyes, meantime, had lost nothing of their quiet malevolence. Yet mercilessly they fixed on Guido, his walk, his manner of sitting, even the scant dark hair on the backs of his hands. And in the rooms they shared at night,
Tonio watched boldly as Guido removed his clothes, staring at Guido’s long and seemingly powerful arms, his heavy chest, his large shoulders.

Guido bore all this in silence.

Yet it began to wear on him, and why precisely he was not certain. His body actually meant little to him. He had performed on the stage of the conservatorio since he was a small boy, costuming, painting, and otherwise draping and disguising himself so that his own peculiarities were rather routine to him. He knew, for example, his heavy frame made him look well in male roles and that his immense eyes if too lavishly painted appeared supernatural.

But nudity, scrutiny, and defects here and there meant nothing to him.

And yet this boy’s stare was so bold and so relentless that it commenced to irritate him. One evening when he could endure it no longer, he put down his spoon and looked back at Tonio.

Tonio’s stare was so hostile and so constant that for a moment Guido thought, This boy has been driven to madness. Then he realized that Tonio was so intent on looking
at
him that he did not even realize Guido was returning the look. It was as if Guido were inanimate. When Tonio’s eyes did shift, they did so in their own time, only to fix on Guido’s throat. Or was it the white linen tie there? Guido had no idea. Now Tonio was staring directly at his hands, and then again right into his eyes as if Guido were a painting.

And the disregard of Guido was so total, so blatant, that Guido felt his temper rising. Guido had, in fact, a terrible temper, the worst in the conservatorio, as any of his students could have testified. And now for the first time it was loosening itself against this boy, and it collected to itself a thousand small resentments.

After all, he had been doing the bidding of this child as if he were nothing more than Tonio’s lackey.

His inveterate hatred of any and all aristocracy began to surface, and he realized suddenly that he was confusing everything.

And that Tonio had laid down his napkin and risen from the table.

They were on this night, as they had been all along, provided
with the most lavish accommodations the town had to offer—in this case, a wealthy monastery which let large and exquisitely furnished chambers to gentlemen who could afford them.