Cry to Heaven (34 page)

Their coupling was always rough. It had the outward form of rape, and sometimes the language of rape, and sometimes a mock struggle beforehand. Tonio would rip away the lace shirt, the breeches. He would run his hands over Domenico’s skin that had the resilience and perfection of a baby’s. Then he would slap Domenico if he chose, or force him up to be raped on his knees as if he were praying.

And finally after much persistence, Domenico lured him into the most delicious play beforehand. Going down between
Tonio’s legs, he suckled him, devoured him, emitting his little moans as if this act—it was inconceivable to Tonio—were enough to satisfy him.

But the rape was always the end of it, Domenico’s organ roughly clasped in Tonio’s hand as if Tonio meant to punish him both ways as he thrust into him without the slightest care or gentleness.

It puzzled Tonio that Domenico did not need more, demand more. But Domenico was always satisfied afterwards.

And there were wild moments during the day, mostly in the quiet siesta hours, when Domenico would beckon him into some empty practice room, and this struggle would be enacted with the added spice of risk and secrecy. Tonio could not get enough of Domenico naked or clothed; he was not sure which was the greater pleasure. And then there was that memory often pervading everything, of Domenico as a woman. Once or twice, incited by the perfection of Domenico’s face, those fine features, and that wealth of perfumed hair, Tonio really slapped him.

But what puzzled Tonio about Domenico’s acquiescence in bed was that Domenico was cold and uncompromising to everyone. He was beyond vanity as Tonio had once surmised, and he was also beyond routine nasty behavior. But he was not friendly to others, and sometimes in a rather clever way he was mildly abusive, especially to other eunuchs.

Yet there he was night after night inviting Tonio’s hot cruelty.

Tonio was more than slightly ashamed of it. Why did he fall over and over into this gentle assault, why did he feel both pride and shame that others must know of it?

When he heard quite casually from the eunuch Piero that Domenico’s last “very good friend” had been one of the regular boys, a violinist named Francesco, he was surprised how much this little bit of news amused him and satisfied him. So he was performing the “office” as well as that hairy, whole, and rough-looking violinist from Milan, was he?

Yet he was ashamed. And when he thought of Guido knowing of all this, he was so ashamed that he could find no explanation for it.

It would have helped had he and Domenico ever conversed,
or shared some other pleasures. But they hardly ever spoke to each other!

Domenico was out of the conservatorio more than he was in it, singing in the chorus at the San Bartolommeo, and more often than not when he and Tonio did see each other in a fully lighted room it was during some ball or supper after the opera.

Because Tonio had commenced going to these again whenever Guido invited him.

Guido was obviously pleased with this. He had remarked quietly once that he thought all of this would be a pleasure for a boy of Tonio’s age. Tonio had smiled. How could he tell Guido of the life he had lived in Venice? He found himself saying simply that these southern aristocrats did not impress him very much. “They care so much about titles,” he murmured, “and they seem so…well, self-satisfied and idle.”

He was immediately sorry. This smacked of rudeness and snobbery. Guido would become furious. But Guido didn’t. Guido appeared to reflect on this as if it did not occur to him to be offended.

And one night after a particularly lavish supper at the house of the Contessa Lamberti, where there had been servants everywhere—a man behind each and every seated guest, others along the painted walls, to fill a glass, touch a candle to a Turkish cigarette—Tonio had an unusual glimpse of Guido among women he obviously knew, conversing with them somewhat naturally.

Guido was dressed in red and gold, his brown eyes and hair remarkably well set off, and he was completely at ease as if absorbed in some particular question. At some point he smiled; then he laughed; and in that moment he looked as young as he was, and gentle, and full of some capacity for feeling that Tonio had never guessed before.

Tonio could not take his eyes off him. Even Domenico, who had commenced to sing at the harpsichord, didn’t distract him. He watched Guido’s response to the boy’s voice; and he had been watching Guido for the longest time when suddenly Guido’s eyes found him in the crowd, and Guido’s face toughened and grew cold, and then slightly angry.

Tonio flinched before he could look away. He fixed his eyes
on Domenico; and when Domenico had finished, when the room resounded with applause, he threw to Tonio one of his most gracious looks, full of the knowledge of Tonio’s possession of him.

Ah, disgraceful, Tonio thought.

He hated himself and everyone around him. Why think of all this, he murmured to himself. He wandered off alone to some dark room where the stones seemed damp, perhaps because it was always shut up, and he walked there in the moonlight from the high arched windows, thinking, Why does he despise me and why do I care? Damn him.

An ugly shame overwhelmed him. That he was lovers with another boy? Ah, this was appalling. And yet he knew why he did it. He knew that every time he did it with Domenico he proved to himself that he could do it, and therefore he could do it with a woman if he wanted to.

He was surprised to hear the click of the door behind him. So some servant had found him out even here; it’s a wonder every dark corner was not full of them.

But when he turned he saw it was Guido.

Tonio felt a rush of hatred for him. He wanted to wound him. Wild and stupid thoughts came to him. He’d fake the loss of his voice, just to see what Guido would say; or get ill, just to see if Guido worried. This was idiocy! Some man you are, he murmured to himself quietly.

Of course all Guido saw was this young boy standing by waiting patiently for him to speak, Tonio knew that. Good.

“Are you tired of it all?” Guido asked gently.

“Why would you give a damn!” Tonio sneered.

Guido was astonished.

“Well, I don’t give a damn, particularly,” he said. “It’s only that I’m tired of it. I want to go down into the city, to some out-of-the-way tavern for a while.”

“It’s late, Maestro,” Tonio said.

“You can sleep tomorrow morning if you like,” Guido said, “or you can go back home on your own, too, if you like. Well, are you coming?”

Tonio didn’t answer.

Sit in a public tavern with another eunuch? He couldn’t conceive of it. Rough men, the jostling and coarse laughter, the women with their short skirts and easy smiles.

All the warm, crowded taverns of Venice came back to him, the café of Bettina’s father, and all those other places that he and Ernestino and the street singers had frequented in those last days.

He missed all of it; he had always missed it. Hearty wine, tobacco, some special pleasure in drinking in the company of men.

But above all, he wanted to be free to go, free to go there or anywhere, without this suffocating sense of vulnerability.

“It’s a place the boys often go,” Guido said. “They’re probably there now, all those who went to the opera tonight.”

This would mean the older castrati as well as the other musicians. Tonio immediately envisioned them.

But Guido was walking out of the room. He had become frosty. “Well, go back when you like,” he said over his shoulder. “I can trust you to behave yourself, I assume.”

“Wait,” Tonio said. “I’m coming with you.”

It was jammed and full of congenial noise when they arrived. And the conservatorio musicians were there, and so were a good many fiddlers from the opera house whom Tonio recognized immediately. A few actresses were there also, but by and large it was a crowd of men, broken here and there by the pretty tavern girls trying to meet all the raised hands and calls for wine that seemed to come from everywhere.

Tonio could see that Guido was perfectly at ease here and even knew the woman who waited on them. He ordered the best wine, and some cheese and fruit to eat with it, and settling back into the wooden alcove in which they were seated, he stretched out his legs towards the crowd under the dim lamps and gazed at it contentedly.

He seemed to like the taste of the wine from a tin cup. He might be alone, Tonio thought.

And I am in Venice in Bettina’s tavern and if I do not get up and go out to my brother’s bravos who are waiting for me, then all of this is a dream. He shook his head, gulped the wine, and wondered if to these rude men here he appeared a boy or a castrato.

The fact was, there were many eunuchs in the room, and no one took any notice of it, any more than had the crowd in the
bookshops in Venice when Alessandro came in to drink coffee and listen to the theater gossip.

But Tonio could feel the warmth in his face, and when a great gathering of men at one of the long rough tables began to sing, he was relieved to see all eyes turned on them.

Tonio drank all the wine in his cup and poured another from the bottle. He looked at the splintery wood in front of him, watching the droplets of dampness here and there bubbling up in the grease that gave it a sheen like a polish. He wondered wearily just how long it would take before he and that man who had come down from Vesuvius were one being.

The song was over. Several musicians had begun a duet with a mandolin, and these might have been regular street singers. It had a wild, savage sound to it, like something out of the hills, and again very unlike the melodies of the north. Perhaps it had more of the Spanish in it.

Tonio closed his eyes, letting the tenor’s voice sift through his thoughts, and when he opened his eyes again, his cup was empty. He was aware that Guido was watching him as he poured a third cup, but Guido said nothing.

When it was exactly that Lorenzo had come to the table he did not know. He only knew that for a long time he had been aware of a figure there, and then looking up he saw it was Lorenzo. The boy’s head blocked the light of the low-hanging lamps, and he could not make out his features.

“Go on, Lorenzo,” Guido said coldly.

Lorenzo’s body bent forward into an arc, and he roared something suddenly at Guido in the Neapolitan dialect.

Tonio was on his feet. Lorenzo had drawn out his stiletto. A silence had fallen over those nearest, and Guido in that silence was obviously ordering Lorenzo to leave the tavern. He was threatening him, that much Tonio understood.

But he understood too that it didn’t matter. The moment had come. Lorenzo’s face was the picture of hatred and cunning. But he was also very drunk, and he looked as dangerous as any ordinary man as he advanced slowly on Tonio.

Tonio took a step backwards. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He had to get his weapon out, but he knew if he reached for it what would happen. One of the tavern girls was pulling on Lorenzo’s sleeve and men had risen from that long table in the center of the room, closing in around them. Guido suddenly
gave Lorenzo a vicious shove and the crowd opened, but Lorenzo had his balance.

And Tonio had his weapon out, also.

“I don’t want a quarrel with you,” Tonio said in Italian.

The boy was spitting curses at him in the Neapolitan dialect.

“Speak so I can understand you,” said Tonio. But it was as if the wine had evaporated in his veins. He was coolheaded, speaking, but thinking something completely different. For one moment he knew true fear: he imagined that weapon going right into his flesh; but he knew in that same moment that he had no time for this fear, this fear could defeat him. He had taken a step backwards to broaden the distance, the better to see this boy who was much taller than he was, with a eunuch’s seemingly endless arm ready to thrust that deadly blade right into him.

When Guido went to shove him again, the boy whirled around and everyone knew his threat was real, he would just as soon stab Guido.

It seemed some other figure entangled itself with them in the shadows, a man who was drawing Guido out of it.

Again Guido attempted to grab at Lorenzo, and as Lorenzo spun to attack him, Tonio uttered a growl and came forward.

Lorenzo snapped back immediately.

And then it happened so fast, Tonio could never have explained it to anyone. The boy came at him, that great arm plunging straight forward, and Tonio buckled coming up under it, past it, feeling his blade jammed into Lorenzo. But the blade stopped, and then Tonio with all his might forced it, past cloth or flesh or bone or whatever impeded it feeling it sink so weightlessly that he was crushed up against Lorenzo.

Lorenzo’s left fingers closed on Tonio’s face; Tonio jerked the stiletto out. And then Lorenzo staggered backwards.

A gasp went up from the crowd. Lorenzo’s eyes were narrow with hatred, his stiletto held aloft, and then suddenly his eyes widened.

He fell forward, dead, onto the tavern floor at Tonio’s feet, and Tonio stared down at him.

It seemed the crowd all of a body took hold of Tonio, gently pushing him back out of the tavern. A woman was screaming, and Tonio did not know what was happening to him. Hands turned him, shoved him, led him through a door into a dark alleyway;
someone motioned quickly for him to get away, that way, go! And suddenly Guido was pushing him forward.

He couldn’t know it, but it was merely the instinctive action of the crowd to protect him. The police would be called; they had gotten the murderer away. They did not look to the police to settle anything.

Tonio was so sickened and horrified that Guido had to drag him into a cabriolet, and then pull him through the gates of the conservatorio. He continued to look back in the direction from which he’d come, even when he was forced into Guido’s darkened study.

He struggled to speak, but Guido motioned for silence.

“But I…I…” Tonio was gasping as if he couldn’t breathe.

Guido shook his head. He gave a slight lift to his chin and then his face fixed in a demonstrative expression of silence. But when he saw that Tonio didn’t understand, he whispered, “Say nothing!”