Cry to Heaven (53 page)

“You must give in.”

How could anyone love singing as Tonio loved it, how could anyone love performance as Tonio loved it, and not do everything that was required?

But he did not tell the Contessa these things.

He could not confide to her the worst part of it; his coldness to Tonio, and the recrimination of Tonio’s forbearance.

Instead, he listened to the Contessa, who had troubles of her own.

She had failed to persuade the widow of her Sicilian cousin, that pretty little English girl who painted so beautifully, to consider marrying again.

The girl wouldn’t go home to England; she wouldn’t look for another husband. She wanted to be a painter instead.

“I always liked her,” Guido murmured with only a little interest. He was thinking of Tonio. “And she is skilled at it. Why, she paints like a man.”

The Contessa could not understand it, a woman wishing to set up a studio of her own, a woman mounting the scaffolding in a church or a palazzo to hold a paintbrush in her hand.

“You won’t turn your back on her, will you?” Guido asked gently. The girl was so young.

“Heavens, no,” said the Contessa. “She isn’t my flesh and blood, after all. Besides, my cousin was seventy when he married her. I owe her something for that.”

And with a sigh, she observed the girl was rich enough to do anything she wanted on her own.

“Bring her with you to Rome for the opera,” Guido said sleepily. “Maybe she’ll find a suitable husband here.”

“It’s hopeless,” said the Contessa. “But she is coming. She wouldn’t miss Tonio’s first appearance for the world.”

Now as he made his way slowly down the corridor to his rooms, Guido saw light under his door. And he was half glad of it until he remembered the animosity between him and Tonio, and then he felt slightly anxious turning the knob.

Tonio was awake and fully dressed. He was sitting by himself in a corner, and he was drinking a glass of red wine. He didn’t rise when Guido came in, but he glanced up and his eyes caught the light.

“You needn’t have waited for me,” Guido said almost sharply. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

Tonio didn’t answer. He rose slowly and approached Guido, watching from a little distance as Guido removed his cape. Guido had not rung for the valet. He did not really like servants about him and he could easily undress himself.

“Guido,” Tonio said in a cautious whisper, “can we leave this house?”

“What do you mean, leave this house?”

Guido removed his shoes, and hung his jacket on a peg. “You might pour me some wine,” he said. “I’m very tired.”

“I mean leave this house,” Tonio repeated. “I mean live somewhere else. I have money enough.”

“What are you saying?” Guido demanded caustically. But he felt the slightest twinge of that terror that had been threatening him for days. “What’s the matter with you?” he said, narrowing his eyes.

Tonio shook his head. The wine made his lips glisten. His face was drawn.

“What’s happened? Answer me,” Guido said impatiently. “Why do you want to leave this house?”

“Please don’t be angry with me,” Tonio said slowly, with great emphasis on each word.

“If you don’t tell me what you’re talking about, I’m going to hit you. I haven’t done that in years. But I’ll do it now,” Guido said, “if you don’t come to the point.”

He could see the despair in Tonio’s face, and the recoiling, but he could not relent.

“All right, then I shall tell you plainly,” Tonio said in a low voice. “The Cardinal sent for me this evening. He said he could not sleep. He said he needed music to quiet him. There was a small harpsichord in his bedroom. He asked me to play, and to sing.”

He was watching Guido as he spoke. Guido could barely hear the words. He found himself picturing the scene, and he felt an uncomfortable warmth in his chest.

“And so?” he demanded angrily.

“It wasn’t music that he wanted,” Tonio said. This was terribly difficult for him, and then he added, “Though I doubt he realized it himself.”

“Then how did you realize it?” Guido snapped. “And don’t tell me you refused him!”

Tonio’s face was blank with shock.

Guido lifted his hand in a state of pure exasperation. He made a little circle, pacing, and then he threw up his hands.

Tonio stood accusing him silently.

“How did you leave him?” Guido asked. “Was he angry? What actually took place?”

Tonio obviously couldn’t bring himself to answer. He was staring at Guido as if Guido had struck him.

“Tonio, listen to me,” Guido said. He swallowed; he knew that he must not betray the panic he felt. “Go back to him, and for the love of God have patience with what he wants. We are in his house, Tonio, he is our patron here. He is the Contessa’s cousin, and he is a prince of the church….”

“A prince of the church, is he?” Tonio said. “Have patience with what he wants! And what am I, Guido? What am I?”

“You are a boy, that’s what you are, and a castrato,” Guido sputtered. “It doesn’t matter to you, it means nothing to you if you do it! But it means everything if you do not! Couldn’t you see this was coming? Are you so blind! Tonio, you are destroying me in this place. Your obstinacy, your pride, I have no chance against it. You must go back to the Cardinal now.”

“Destroying
you!
” Tonio said. “You tell me to go to him and do what he wishes, as if I were nothing but a whore from the streets—”

“But you are not a whore. If you were a whore you wouldn’t be in this house, you wouldn’t be fed and sheltered by the Cardinal. You are a castrato. For God’s sake, give him
what he wants. I would do it without hesitation if he wanted it of me.”

“You horrify me,” Tonio whispered. “You disgust me. There is no other word for it. They took you out of Calabria and dressed you in velvet and made you some thoughtless, soulless being with the semblance of a gentleman when in fact there is nothing you won’t do for your purposes; you have no honor, no creed, no decent sentiments in you. You would take my name from me, you would take my form from me, all this in the name of music and what
must
be done, and now you send me to the Cardinal’s bed in the name of the same necessity….”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Guido said. “I tell you to do all those things. Make me out a demon if you will, I tell you the configurations you place on all these things are lovely and meaningless. You are not bound by the rules of men. You are a castrato. You can do these things.”

“And you,” Tonio demanded in the same whisper, “what does it mean to you that I lie with him?” It was as if he dared not raise his voice. “Have you no feeling in this?”

Guido turned his back.

“You send me from your bed to his bed,” Tonio went on, “as if I were nothing but a gift for His Eminence, gratitude for His Eminence, respect.”

Guido merely shook his head.

“Have you no understanding of honor, Guido?” Tonio pleaded softly. “Did they cut it out of you in Calabria? They did not cut it out of me.”

“Honor, honor.” Guido turned wearily to face him. “If it has no heart, if it has no wisdom, what is honor? What does it matter? Where is the dishonor in giving this man what he asks of you when you will not be diminished in the slightest? You are a banquet from which he seeks once, perhaps twice, to take his fill while you are under his roof. How will you be changed by it? If you were a virgin girl you could plead that, but he would never have asked it of you. He is a holy man. And were you a man, how it might shame you to admit that it was your nature to do as he asks. You could claim an aversion whether you felt it or not! But you are neither of these, and you are
free
, Tonio, free. There are men and women who dream every night of their lives of such freedom! And it’s yours by your nature
and you cast it away. And he, he is a cardinal, for the love of God. Is what God gave you so very precious that you must save it for one better than he!”

“Stop this,” Tonio insisted.

“When I took you for the first time,” Guido said, “it was on the floor of my studio in Naples. You were alone and helpless and without father, mother, kindred, friends. Was there honor then?”

“There was love,” Tonio said. “And
passion!
”

“So love him then! He is a great man. People stand at the gates for hours just to see him pass. Go and love him for this little while, and there will be passion, too.”

Guido turned his back again almost immediately.

The silence was unendurable and without realizing it, he was holding his breath.

He felt swollen with anger, ugly with it, and it seemed all the misery that had been threatening him since they had set out on their long journey was now fully upon him and he had no defense.

But in the midst of this anxiety, this confusion, he understood.

And when he heard the door open and close, it was as if a blow had been dealt him between the shoulders.

Abruptly, willfully, he went to his desk.

He seated himself before an open score, and dipping his pen quickly, he lifted it to write.

For a long time, he stared at the marks on the parchment. He stared at the quill in his hand. Then he laid it down with a careful motion, as if he did not wish to disturb so much as the dust in the air.

His eyes moved over the objects of the room. And tightening his right arm around his waist, as if to fortify himself for some terrible assault, he rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes.

T
ONIO WAS OUTSIDE
the Cardinal’s door.

At the heart of this lay a painful conviction that he had brought it upon himself. He did not know why exactly, but he felt it was his own fault.

Even when old Nino had first come for him, saying His Eminence could not sleep, Tonio had felt an elusive excitement that the great man was calling for him.

There was something a little odd about the servant’s behavior, the manner in which he hastened to remove Tonio’s frock coat, offering him another of his more richly embroidered coats to put on. There had been a furtiveness to the old man’s gestures, as if he must walk on tiptoe to some purpose, as if he must hurry, as if neither of them were to be seen.

From his pocket he had drawn an old comb, uneven and broken, for Tonio’s hair.

Tonio had not realized at first he was in a bedchamber. He’d seen only the tapestries on the wall: antique figures moved through the Hunt with a score of those tiny animals woven into the flowers and the leaves. The candlelight showed oddly abstracted faces, men and women on horseback, gazing into time from the corner of an eye.

Next he had seen the harpsichord, a small, portable instrument, with its single manual of black keys. The Cardinal was beyond it, a collection of soft movements and sounds, clothed in a robe that was the same color as the darkness, hazy as it was from the few tapers that seemed embedded in the rich hangings of this room.

The Cardinal’s words had no beginning to them, no end. And there had been a pounding in Tonio, a sense of the forbidden, though he did not know why. The middle of a statement had penetrated to him, something about song, and the power of song, and it seemed he wanted Tonio to sing.

Tonio sat down. He touched the keys; the notes were short and exquisitely delicate and in tune. Then he commenced an aria, one of Guido’s sweetest and saddest, a meditation on love from a serenade which he had never publicly performed. This he liked more than the music he’d sung in Naples, more than the more tempestuous writing Guido had done for him of late. The words, from some unknown poet, used the yearning for the beloved as a yearning for the spiritual, and Tonio liked them very much.

Once as he was singing, he had looked up. He had seen the Cardinal’s face, its singularity, its almost carved perfection, infused with that immediately apparent feeling that made the man so visible and magnetic wherever he was. He was not speaking a word, yet his pleasure was obvious, and Tonio found himself trying to make this song as nearly perfect as he could. Some little memory was coming back to him, or if it was not memory he was experiencing a familiar feeling of well-being as he played alone in this room for this man.

He had paused at the end, thinking, What can I sing that will delight the Cardinal most? And when the Cardinal himself set a jeweled cup of Burgundy wine in front of him, it was then he realized they were completely alone.

“My lord, allow me.” He’d risen, seeing the Cardinal fill his own drink.

But when he had reached for the narrow-throated pitcher, the Cardinal had taken hold of him and brought him forward until they stood pressed against one another and he could feel the Cardinal’s heart.

All was confusion in him; he’d felt the man’s strength beneath his dark robe and the hoarseness of his breathing, and sensed that the Cardinal was in perfect torment as he let him go.

Tonio remembered backing away. He remembered that the Cardinal was then standing before the window looking out on distant lights. There was described there the nearby rise of a hill, little windows and rooftops thrown up against a paler sky.

Misery. Misery. And yet some terrible sense of triumph, some near intoxicating sense of the forbidden, as if it were a fragrance in the air. But when the Cardinal had turned back to him, the Cardinal was resolved. He laid his hands on Tonio’s neck, his thumbs touching the front of it gently, and in a half whisper he asked ever so gently would Tonio remove his clothes?

It was said with such courtesy, such simplicity, and the mere touch of the Cardinal seemed to carry with it some power to weaken Tonio, to make him feel he must comply.

But he had not complied. He had almost stumbled away. A multitude of thoughts came between him and the desire that was awakening inside him, more powerful even than the Cardinal’s soft command. He couldn’t look at the Cardinal. He begged, could he be allowed to go?

The Cardinal hesitated, and then he said so sincerely and so gently, “You must forgive me, Marc Antonio, and yes, yes, of course, you should go.”

What was left? That sense that somehow Tonio had willed it, that he had made it happen and inexplicably he had wronged this man.