Cry to Heaven (51 page)

He’d been right in his predictions years before that Tonio would have all Domenico’s grace. But Tonio had perfected a manner which greatly enhanced that grace. The languid movements natural to him now restrained his long limbs; the muted voice had a richness to it that made an eerie prelude to the singer’s power when it was revealed.

His face, it seemed, had become slightly larger, all of the features even a little farther apart than those of an ordinary boy, and there was as ever that subtle mystery to the placement of the eyes. Looking at Tonio even now, Guido felt a subtle disorientation. The magic of the knife, he thought wearily. What it looses, not what it cuts away, is this surpassing seductiveness. He need not know that he has it, nor try to use it. It is there. And infused with the old Venetian manner, he is enough to drive another mad.

“Guido,” he was saying somewhere very far away, “Paolo will be good! I know he will be. I’ll give him his lessons myself.”

Guido hated him suddenly. He wished he would go away. He looked at him but he could not speak to him. He was remembering some moment years before when he had lain on the floor of a practice room, miserable after his first act of love. The maestro he so desired then had bent down and spoken something in his ear. What was it?

“I don’t mind Paolo,” he said now, annoyed at this misunderstanding. “Paolo is a fine singer,” he said simply. It excited him to think that Paolo would learn much more from his time in Rome than ever he would learn at the conservatorio. He had room in his heart for Paolo. He wished Tonio would leave him alone.

“I’m tired from the journey,” he said shortly. “I have so much work before me. I have no time to lose.”

Tonio bent close to him. He whispered something soft and slightly shocking in his ear. Guido was conscious that they were alone in these rooms. Tonio had sent the servants away.

“Be patient with me,” he said angrily. He could see the hurt in Tonio’s face. But Tonio gave only a little nod. It was always that way with him, that infernal Venetian graciousness. There was no rebuke in him now as he looked at Guido; with a faint smile he rose to go.

Silently shaken, Guido watched him cross the room. He pictured
him on the stage, he saw the crowds at the dressing room door. Again, he saw the face of the Cardinal Calvino, that innocence, those remarkably vital eyes.

You have no idea of the adulation that awaits you, you cannot even guess. Of course they will have their compliments for the composer; if the opera is good, they might even put my name on the handbills, but then again, they might not. It is for you that Rome will crack open like an egg and give birth to itself all over again, and I want it for you, I want it for you.

So why do I feel the way I do?

Tonio was somewhere beyond the doorway. Guido could feel him near. He imagined himself striking Tonio suddenly; he saw that perfect face disfigured by red marks. He had risen from his desk before he realized what he was doing, and passing quickly into the bedchamber, he stopped when he saw Tonio at the window looking down into the yard.

“You know what these Roman audiences are,” Guido said. “You know what I have before me. Be patient with me.”

“I am,” Tonio said.

“You must do everything that I ask of you! You must give me that!”

He felt sharp, eager for argument. Everything that angered him and irritated him in Tonio came to the fore. But he knew this was not the time. There was plenty of time….

“I will do anything that you ask,” Tonio was saying politely in that rich, measured voice.

“Oh, yes, anything except perform in female dress when you know that is what you must do. In Rome of all places, and of course you will do anything but that which it is absolutely essential that you do!”

“Guido,” Tonio interrupted him. For the first time he evinced anger and impatience. The transformation of that angelic face never failed to amaze Guido. “This, I
can’t
do. There is no reason to argue it anymore.”

Guido gave a low, scornful sound. He had what he wanted now, strife, and plenty of it, and angry words coming to his lips, and Tonio’s face coloring, the eyes growing colder. But why was Guido doing this? Why on their very first day in Rome, when he did have time, a great deal of time to take Tonio to the theaters, to show him the castrati in female costume, to make him understand their great power and appeal?

Tonio turned abruptly and went to the open dressing room. He was removing the robe. He would dress now and go out, and these rooms would be empty. Guido would be alone.

A desperate feeling came over him.

“Come here!” he demanded coldly. He moved to the bed. “No, bolt the doors first,” he said, “then come.”

For a moment Tonio merely gazed at him.

He pressed his lips together ever so slightly and then with that small patient nod so characteristic of him, he did what he was told. He stood waiting by the high bed, his hand on the coverlet, looking serenely into Guido’s eyes. Guido had opened his breeches, and he felt his passion collecting his other emotions and fusing them into one strength.

“Take off the robe,” he said crossly. “And lie down. On your face, lie down.”

Tonio’s eyes were actually a little more beautiful than eyes should be. With the slightest betrayal of his disapproval of all this, Tonio did again what he was told.

Guido mounted him roughly; the nakedness under him, against his clothes, maddened him. He pressed Tonio’s face into the bed with the heel of his hand, and took him with his crudest thrusts.

It seemed a long time he lay still beside Tonio before Tonio rose to go.

Without complaint, Tonio dressed, and when he had put on his jeweled rings and taken up his walking stick, he came quietly to the side of the bed. He bent to kiss Guido on the forehead and then on the lips.

“Why do you put up with me?” Guido whispered.

“Why shouldn’t I put up with you?” Tonio whispered. “I love you, Guido,” he said. “And we are both of us just a little afraid.”

T
HAT STREET
, the stars overhead, the ceiling of the room, his teeth biting down into flesh, and the knife, the actual slash of the knife, and that roaring sound which was his own scream…

Then he awoke, his hand to his mouth, realizing he had not really uttered a sound.

He was in the Cardinal Calvino’s house; he was in Rome.

It was nothing really, that old dream, and the faces of those bravos whom he sometimes imagined he had seen in the streets. Of course he had never really seen them; that was a little fantasy of his, seeing one of them, catching him unawares: “You remember Marc Antonio Treschi, the boy you took to Flovigo?” and the stiletto driving between the ribs.

Just before leaving Naples, he had spent an afternoon with a bravo learning even more about how to use the little dagger. The man, paid well for his instruction, seemed to enjoy an apt pupil.

“But why attend to this yourself, Signore?” he had said under his breath as he eyed Tonio’s clothes, the rings on his fingers. “I am out of work just now. My services are not as expensive as you might think.”

“Just teach me.” Tonio had smiled. Smiling always made him feel better at such moments. The bravo, something of a natural teacher, merely shrugged.

Remembering this dispelled the dream quickly. And before Tonio had placed his bare feet on the delicious coolness of the marble tiles, he knew again he was in the Cardinal’s palazzo, and he was in the middle of Rome. The dream was like a bad
taste in his mouth, or a faint headache. It would soon, altogether, be gone.

And the city was waiting for him. For the first time in all his life he was truly free. Years ago, he’d gone from the restraints of his tutors in Venice to the care of Guido and the discipline of the conservatorio, and he could not quite get used to the fact that all this was at an end.

But Guido had made it clear. As long as Paolo had his tutors and Tonio devoted the morning to practice, Tonio had not to answer to anyone anymore. Guido never said so. It was simply the way it was. Guido would disappear in the afternoon when others were still napping and might not come back till midnight. He would ask in the manner of one man speaking to another, “And where have you been?”

Tonio couldn’t help smiling. Nothing of the dream lingered now. He was wide awake and it was very early, and if he hurried he could hear the Cardinal Calvino’s early morning mass.

Each day, the Cardinal Calvino said mass in his private chapel to which members of his household were welcome to come. The altar was decked with white flowers, the candelabra spreading their tiny flames in great arcs beneath the giant image of the crucified Christ, His hands and feet streaming a copious and shimmering red blood.

The glare of the candles hurt Tonio’s eyes when he entered the chapel, and no one appeared to notice as he took a small chair at the very back. And he did not know why he was watching the distant figure at the altar, who turned now with the golden chalice in his hands.

A cluster of young Romans knelt to receive communion, behind them the clerics, humble, more soberly dressed. But Tonio felt good here, and his head resting against the gilded pillar behind his chair, he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the Cardinal had his hand raised in the last blessing, and his face appeared ageless in its smoothness, and sublimely innocent, as though he knew nothing of evil and never had. There was conviction to his every attitude and movement, and it seemed a little thought took shape in Tonio’s mind, very like a pulse beating in his temple, and the thought was the Cardinal Calvino had reason more
than most of us for being alive: he believed in God; he believed in himself; he believed what he was and what he did.

It was afternoon when, after several hours of practice with Guido and Paolo, Tonio entered the deserted fencing salon of the palazzo alone.

No one had used this room in years. And there was something familiar to Tonio about the polished floor shining through his footprints in the dust. Unsheathing his sword, he advanced against an invisible opponent, humming to himself, as if this battle were accompanied by great music and were actually part of a splendid pageant on a great stage.

Even when he became weary, he continued to go through his exercises until he felt the first agreeable ache in his calves.

But after an hour of this, quite suddenly he stopped, convinced that someone had been watching him at the door.

He spun round, the rapier firmly clasped in his hand.

No one was there. The corridor beyond was empty, though there were sounds of life throughout the enormous house.

Yet he had the persistent feeling someone had come and gone. And putting on his frock coat quickly and sheathing his sword, he found himself wandering about the palazzo almost aimlessly, nodding and bowing to those he passed.

He neared the Cardinal’s immense office, but seeing it was shut up, moved on along a mezzanine, examining the huge Flemish tapestries, and the heavy portraits of those men of the last century who had worn such enormous wigs. White hair appeared to bubble over their shoulders. The skin, exquisitely molded, veritably glistened with life.

Suddenly there was a great clamor below. The Cardinal was just coming in.

And Tonio watched as, surrounded by his pages and attendants, the Cardinal mounted the broad white marble stairs. He wore a wig, small, pigtailed, and perfectly proportioned to his lean face, and he was talking pleasantly with those who accompanied him, pausing once, his hand on the marble railing, to catch his breath with a murmured jest.

He had the air of a monarch even in this little pause. And for all the richness of his crimson watered silk and silver jewelry, and the dignity of his carriage, there was that natural gaiety to his face.

Tonio stepped forward without any real purpose; perhaps only to see the man as he continued up the steps.

And when the Cardinal stopped again, catching sight of Tonio and looking at him for a definite interval, Tonio found himself bowing and backing away.

He did not know why he had let himself be seen. He stood alone in a shadowy corridor, the sun blazing in a high window at the far end of it, feeling suddenly ashamed.

Yet he was savoring the Cardinal’s faint smile and the manner in which the Cardinal had let his eyes linger on Tonio before giving him such an affectionate nod.

Tonio’s heart became a tiny hammer. “Go out into the city,” he whispered to himself.

I
N THE NEXT FEW WEEKS
, Guido resolved not to mention the matter of a female role for Tonio again. But he was more than ever convinced it was a necessity as he went about his work.

He visited the Teatro Argentina, talked with Ruggerio about the other singers he had set out to hire, satisfied himself that the machinery was in working order for any scenes he might write, and made some final arrangements for his percentage of the sale of the printed score.

Meantime Tonio was buying little Paolo every article of clothing a boy could possibly wear, from gold-threaded waistcoats to capes for summer and winter—though it was summer—handkerchiefs by the dozens, shirts trimmed with Tonio’s favorite Venetian lace, morocco slippers.

It was provoking, but Guido didn’t have time to reprimand,
and Tonio was an excellent teacher, guiding Paolo through his vocalises as well as his Latin.

Paolo’s bushy brown hair was now tamed into a civilized shape; he was dressed all the time to go out, and they went off to visit the museums by torchlight in the evenings, Paolo terrified by the Laocoon for the very reasons it probably terrified everyone: that the man and his two sons, caught by the serpents, must all perish at the same time.

Tonio was also teaching Paolo a gentleman’s manners.

Every morning the three of them breakfasted together before one of the high windows, its garnet-colored draperies fastened back, and Guido had to admit he rather liked listening to the two of them who made no demand on him to join in; he liked people talking around him as long as he did not have to speak.