Cry to Heaven (49 page)

The Maestro touched him on the shoulder, and turning, he allowed himself to be separated from his secret self, and he looked into the Maestro’s face.

The Maestro
was
troubled.

“We must talk,” said the Maestro resolutely, “before you leave.”

“Talk?” Tonio felt an uncertainty. It was so difficult to say farewell. What more did the Maestro want? And then there was Paolo. Tonio knew he could not leave Paolo here.

“I told you once,” said the Maestro, “that I knew what had been done to you.”

“And I told you,” Tonio answered suddenly, “that you did not.” He felt an old anger rise, and he struggled to quiet it. He felt only love for this man now.

Yet the Maestro went on.

“I know why you have been patient all these years with those who sent you here….”

“You know nothing.” Tonio struggled to be courteous. “And why do you press me now when for so long you’ve been quiet?”

“I tell you I know, as well as others know. Do you think we are fools here, that stage intrigue is all we understand? I know. I have always known. And I know now your brother in the Republic of Venice has two healthy sons. And I know you have
never sent assassins against him; there has never been a particle of gossip in the Veneto of such an attempt to trouble his sleep.”

Tonio felt these words as if they were a series of physical blows. For three years he had never spoken of this to anyone; it was an agony to hear these words spoken aloud in this room.

He knew his anger was transforming him and he turned on the Maestro as coldly and harshly as he could: “Don’t talk of these things to me!” he insisted. “I will not speak of them to you.”

Yet the Maestro would not stop.

“Tonio, I know too this man is guarded day and night by a band of the roughest bravos he can hire. It’s the gossip they are never, even in his own house, beyond the sound of his voice….”

Tonio moved towards the door.

But the Maestro caught him and gently forced him to remain. For one second the strength of the man’s will was measured against Tonio’s, and then Tonio, shaken and furious, bowed his head.

“Why must we quarrel like this?” he asked softly. “Why can we not embrace and say farewell?”

“But we are not quarreling,” the Maestro said. “I tell you I know you mean to go after your brother on your own.” His tone had dropped in a whisper. And he was so close to Tonio that Tonio could feel the Maestro’s breath on his face. “But this man waits for you as a spider waits,” the Maestro said. “And the decree of banishment against you has made the entire city of Venice his web. He will destroy you if you move against him.”

“No more,” Tonio said. He was now so angry he could not trust his voice, but he could see the Maestro had little grasp of the effect of his own words.

“You know nothing of me,” Tonio said, “of what I came from, of why I am here. And I will not stand here and listen to you speak of these things as if they were common things! You will not talk of them in the same tone you take to chastise your students! You will not voice your distress as if this were merely the failure of an opera, the passing of a monarch in some distant land!”

“I don’t mean to speak of them lightly,” the Maestro insisted.
“For God’s sakes, will you hear me? Send other men to do this deed! Send men as ruthless as those who are guarding him. These bravos are trained assassins; send against them their own kind.”

Tonio struggled to free himself, but he was incapable of raising his hand against this man. Bravos, this man was telling
him
about bravos and what they were! Had he not awakened enough nights to find himself still in that town of Flovigo struggling against those hardened and brutal men? He could feel their hands on him, he could smell their breath; he could remember his powerlessness in those moments and the knife that cut him; he would never in all his life forget.

“Tonio, if I am wrong,” said the Maestro, “if you have sent assassins and if they have failed, then surely you must know you cannot accomplish this yourself.”

The Maestro’s grip was loosened, but Tonio was for the moment spent. He was looking away; and he had seldom felt more alone since those early days. He could not now remember all that had just been said; his confusion had obliterated much of it, save the feeling that the Maestro would go on and on, understanding so little while imagining himself to understand so much.

“If you were some common singer…” The Maestro sighed. “If yours were not the voice they all dream of, I would say then do what you must.”

He let go of Tonio. He let his hand drop to his side.

“Oh, I have been remiss,” he said, “in that I have not tried to understand you before now. You seemed so content, so happy here.”

“And was it so unnatural that I should be content!” Tonio demanded. “Was it so wrong that I should find happiness? But did you think they cut the spirit out of me with all the rest?

“You have ruled in this principality of geldings too long without ever being part of it. You have forgotten what life is like! Do you think all the world is made up of maimed creatures who wander forth bleeding to pursue their destiny! This is not life!”

“Your voice is your life! It’s been your life since you came here! Do you want me to deny my senses!” the Maestro implored.

“No.” Tonio shook his head. “That is art, that is the painted
stage, and the music, and the little world we have made for ourselves, but that is not life! If you would talk of my brother to me, of what was done to me, then you must talk of life. And I tell you what was done to me
must
be avenged. Any man out there in the street would understand it. Why is it so hard for you?”

The Maestro was chastened but he did not give in.

“You’re not speaking of life if you go to Venice to kill your brother,” he whispered. “You are speaking of death, and that death will not be his, it will be yours. Oh, would you were but one of the others. Would you were not what you are.”

“I am only a man.” Tonio sighed. “That is all I am. That is what I was born to be, and what I’ve become no matter what was done to prevent it. And I tell you, when all is said and done, a man does not stand for what was done to me.”

The Maestro turned away. He seemed for the moment unable to compose himself, and in that time, a cold quiet settled over the room. Tonio, exhausted, rested his weight against the wall, seeing again the arch of the cloister and those green leaves.

It seemed he was visited by a thousand random impressions, as if the mind could empty itself of thought and see visions, and those visions were made up of concrete objects, glistening with meaning: table silver, the candles on a chapel altar, wedding veils, and infants’ cradles, the soft rustle of silk when women embraced. The great fabric that was Venice was a backdrop for this vision, and there was in it mingled sounds, the cry of trumpets, the scent of sea breeze.

What did I want a moment ago, he was thinking. He tried to transport himself into that little whirlwind of excitement that existed eternally behind the curtain of a theatrical stage; he could smell the paint, the powder, hear the sharp, shrill violins beyond the curtain, hear the rumble of bare boards. What was I thinking? He heard his own voice in a succession of pure notes that seemed to have nothing to do with men and women or life and death. His lips didn’t move with his thoughts.

It seemed a long time before the Maestro turned back.

And Tonio’s eyes were glazed with tears.

“I didn’t want to leave you like this,” Tonio said softly, defeated. “You’re angry with me now and I love you. I have loved you since I came.”

“How little you know of me,” said the Maestro. “I have never been angry with you. And the love I feel for you has few rivals here.”

He approached Tonio, but he hesitated to embrace him and in that moment Tonio was conscious of the man’s physical presence, that strength and roughness that was nothing but the characteristic of ordinary men.

He was conscious too of his own appearance as if he could see his own unnatural skin and youth mirrored in the man’s gaze.

“I had words to say before we parted,” Tonio said. “I wanted so much to thank—”

“No need for such words. I’ll be in Rome to see you on the stage soon enough.”

“But there was something more,” Tonio said, his eyes lingering on the Maestro. “Something I wanted to ask of you, and I wish now that I had not waited so long. You might not grant my request, and to me it means the world.”

“The world?” the Maestro asked. “You tell me that even if it means your death you will kill your brother, and yet you speak of something that means the world?”

He turned to look at Tonio.

“Years ago I tried to tell you what the world was, not the world you came from, but the world you might conquer with your voice. I thought you had listened to me. But you are a great singer, yes, a great singer, and you would turn your back on the world.”

“In time, Maestro, in time,” Tonio said, his voice sharpened ever so slightly by anger again. “All men die in time,” he insisted. “I am different only in that I may name the place with certainty when I choose. I may go home to death and leave my life circumscribed behind me. In time. But for now I live and breathe as anyone else.”

“Then tell me what you want,” said the Maestro. “If it means the world to you, then it means time, and I would give you all the time in the world.”

“Maestro, I want Paolo. I want to take him with me to Rome.”

And when he saw the shock, the disapproval in the Maestro’s face, he added quickly:

“Maestro, I’ll care for him, you know that, and even if I
should send him back to you someday, he won’t be the worse for having been with me. And if there is one enemy of the rancor I feel against those who made me what I am, it is love for others. Love for Guido, and Paolo, and for you.”

Paolo was in the very back of the chapel when Tonio found him. He was sitting slumped in the chair, his little snub-nosed face stained with tears. His black eyes were fixed on the tabernacle and when he saw that Tonio had come again, that one farewell was not enough, he felt betrayed.

He turned away.

“Be still and listen to me,” Tonio said. He smoothed back the boy’s dark brown hair and rested his hand on Paolo’s neck. It felt fragile to him; the boy felt fragile. And then he was so overcome with love for Paolo that for a moment he did not speak. The warm air of the chapel was full of the scent of wax and incense, and it seemed the gilded altar drained all the sun it could from the dusty shafts of light that cut to the marble floor.

“Close your eyes and dream for a moment,” Tonio whispered. “Do you want to live in a fine palazzo? Do you want to ride in fine carriages and dine on silver plate? Do you want for there to be jewels on your fingers? Do you want to wear satins and silks? Do you want to live with me and with Guido? Do you want to come with us to Rome?”

The boy turned on him with an expression so savage his breath was taken away.

“That’s not possible!” Paolo said in a strangled voice as if it were an oath.

“But it is possible,” Tonio said. “Anything is possible. When you least expect it, it’s possible, to be sure.”

And as belief and trust came into Paolo’s face, as he moved to lock his arms around Tonio, Tonio drew him up.

“Come,” he said. “If you have anything in this place you want to take with you, get it now.”

It was noon when the carriages finally commenced to roll. Guido, Paolo, and Tonio were in the first, while behind came the servants and the great bulk of the trunks.

And as they drove down through the Via di Toledo towards the sea for one last glimpse of the city itself, Tonio could not
take his eyes off the bluish camelback of Vesuvius sending its faint plume of smoke into the sky.

The carriage swayed onto the Molo. The glaring sea seemed to fuse itself with the horizon. And as they turned north, the mountain was lost.

And hours later, it was Tonio and only Tonio who was crying as night fell over the endless and beautiful wheat fields of Campania, and the carriage struggled on towards the gates of Rome.

T
HE
C
ARDINAL
C
ALVINO
sent for them as soon as they arrived. Neither Tonio nor Guido had expected this immediate courtesy, and with Paolo hurrying after them, they followed the Cardinal’s black-robed secretary upstairs.

Nothing Guido had ever seen at Venice or Naples quite prepared him for this immense palazzo right in the center of Rome, no more than twenty minutes’ stroll from the Vatican in one direction, and perhaps the same distance from the Piazza di Spagna on the right. Its somber yellowish exterior enclosed corridors lined with antique sculptures, walls hung with Flemish tapestries, and courtyards virtually peopled with Greek and Roman fragments as well as colossal modern statues guarding gateways and fountains and ponds.

Noblemen were milling about in great numbers, clerics in cassocks came and went, while a long library revealed itself through one pair of double doors after another in which black-clad clerks bent over their quill pens.

But it was the Cardinal himself who proved the most interesting surprise. It was rumored he was deeply religious, having come up from the priesthood, which was not so common for a cardinal, and that he was a great favorite with the people, who were always hanging about outside to see his carriage pass.

The poor of Rome were his special concern; he was the patron of numerous orphanages and charitable institutions which he visited constantly; and sometimes, letting his crimson robes drag in the mud, his retinue waiting, he visited in hovels, drank
wine with workingmen and their wives; he kissed the children. He gave of his own wealth daily to those in need.

He was almost fifty now, and Guido anticipated great austerity in him, some pious contradiction to this highly polished splendor, the floors patterned so freely in varicolored marble they rivaled the floors of San Pietro itself.

But the Cardinal exuded good humor.

His eyes crinkled with immediate cheerfulness, a vitality that seemed the fusion of grace and love for everyone he saw.