Cry to Heaven (57 page)

By the flickering light they would pause at various statues which for years, the Cardinal confessed, he had not enjoyed at all. “I used to so love this little nymph,” he would say of a Roman work. “It was found in the garden of my villa when the men were digging out the earth for the fountains. And here, this tapestry was sent to me from Spain years ago.”

Nino’s torch gave off a dull roar, its heavy scent permeating the darkness around them, and Tonio, studying the Cardinal’s gray eyes, his delicate but worn hand on the bronze of an ancient figure, felt the most curious peace.

He followed the Cardinal into the open gardens, full of the gentle plash of the fountains, the green smell of freshly cut grass.

And then to the library they would go, entering together a sanctum whose leatherbound volumes reached beyond the uneven light.

“Read to me, Marc Antonio,” the Cardinal said, finding his favorite poets, Dante and Tasso. And he sat with his hands folded on the polished table, his lips moving silently as Tonio read the phrases softly, slowly, in a low voice.

A languor overcame Tonio. Years ago, in another lifetime, he had known hours such as these, when lulled by the sheer beauty of language, he had lost himself in a universe of exquisitely rendered images and ideas. He felt an unspoken closeness to the Cardinal suddenly; this was a realm that Tonio and Guido had never shared.

Yet Tonio was tentative in revealing himself. He was clever enough to know the Cardinal might have illusions that his lover was nothing but an urchin brought up by musicians and might want it to be so. There was anguish in the Cardinal’s
eyes often enough. And even more often there was sadness. He was in the grip of an “unholy” passion for Tonio. He was a man now divided against himself.

And Tonio could sense that in some way all of these pleasures—poetry, art, music, and their feverish coupling—were bound up with the Cardinal’s notion of those enemies of the soul: the world and the flesh.

Yet the Cardinal prodded him:

“Tell me about the opera, Marc Antonio. Tell me, what is good in it? Tell me why men go.”

How innocent he seemed at such a moment. Tonio could only smile. No one had to tell Tonio of the church’s long battle with the stage and its players, with any and all music that was not sacred, the horror of women performers which had engendered the castrati. All this he had always known.

“What is the value of it?” the Cardinal whispered with narrow eyes. Ah, Tonio thought, he thinks he has imprisoned here some emissary of the devil who will, somehow, guilelessly, tell him the truth. Tonio struggled not to appear defiant:

“My lord,” he said slowly, “I have no answer to your question. I only know the joy that singing has always given me. I only know that music is so beautiful and so powerful that at moments it is like the sea itself, or the sweep of the heavens. God created it surely. God loosed it like the wind into the world.”

The Cardinal was quietly astonished by the answer. He sat back in his chair.

“You speak of God as though you love Him, Marc Antonio,” he said wearily.

His anguish was close to him.

Love God, Tonio thought. Yes, I suppose that I did love Him; all my life whenever I was put in mind of Him I loved Him, in church, at mass, at night when I knelt by my bed with my rosary in my hands. But in Flovigo, three years ago? On that night I do not think I loved Him, nor did I believe in Him.

But Tonio made no answer. He saw the misery engulfing the Cardinal. He knew the night had ended.

And he knew, too, that the Cardinal could not endure this struggle for long. Sin was for the Cardinal its own punishment. And a sorrow came over Tonio when he realized these embraces were only for a short while.

Sooner or later would come the moment when the Cardinal forswore Tonio, and pray it would be done with grace, for if it were done with unkindness…But then Tonio could not conceive of that.

They left each other now in the midst of the dark and sleeping house.

Yet Tonio, impelled by an emotion he had never acknowledged before, stole back to catch the slight yielding figure of the Cardinal in his arms for one last lingering kiss.

And he was troubled by this afterwards, when he considered it, when he put his hand to his own lips. How could he feel affection for one who regarded him as an obscenity, one who saw a castrato as that thing upon which he might lavish all the passion he could not give to women, that thing for backstairs?

It did not matter finally.

In his heart, Tonio knew it did not matter at all.

Daily, he watched in silent awe as the Cardinal went to the altar of the Lord, to work the miracle of the transubstantiation for the faithful, while compounding sacrilege in his own soul. He watched the Cardinal on his way to the Quirinal. He watched him as he went to tend the sick and the poor.

It went to his soul that the man never faltered, no matter how great his secret passion. The man showed to all the love of Christ, the love of his brothers, as if, having conquered pride, he knew all this was eternal and infinitely greater than his own weakness, his own vice.

And soon there was not a single moment when seeing the Cardinal—either resplendent in his crimson robes or stranded in the riches of his rooms—that Tonio did not think only, Yes, for this time we have together, I love him, truly love him, and for as long as he desires me, I want to give him pleasure in every way.

If only it had been enough.

The fact was, incited by disconnected visions of the man who’d taken unavowed possession of him, Tonio belonged to whole men he did not know everywhere, strangers who passed him by day in the Cardinal’s corridors, even ruffians who shot their hot single-minded glances at him in the very streets.

The fencing salons, where in the past he’d sought a soothing
exhaustion, had become his torture chambers, peopled with the most tantalizing bodies, those healthy, whole, and sometimes feral young noblemen he had always kept at arm’s length.

Now it was chests gleaming under open shirts, arms tense and beautifully muscular, the bulge of the scrotum between the legs. Even the scent of their sweat tormented him.

Pausing, he wiped his brow and shut his eyes. Only to see a moment later the young Florentine Count Raffaele di Stefano, his most enduring opponent, staring at him with an undisguised greed and fascination, his glance now guiltily turned aside.

Had it ever been simple fear of these men that goaded him? Had there always been this unacknowledged desire?

He straightened, ready for the Count’s blade; in a frenzy of movement he bore down on him, driving him backwards, seeing the Count grit his teeth. His round black eyes had lashes so thick at the root the eyes seemed lined with black paint. There were no visible bones behind those smallish, rounded features; and the hair, so black it might have been dipped in ink.

The fencing master forced them apart. The Count had received a scratch and the fine linen shirt was torn from the shoulder. No, he didn’t wish to stop.

And when they came together again there was no enraged pride in the Count, merely his lips working in concentration as he struggled to get beyond Tonio’s immense reach.

It was finished.

The Count stood panting; the dark hair of his chest rose even to the base of his throat where the razor had sheared it away. And yet that mask of flesh over his nose and face was so smooth Tonio could feel it beneath his fingers. That shaven beard was so coarse it would actually cut.

He turned his back on the Count. He walked to the center of the polished floor and stood with his sword at his side. He could feel the eyes of others measuring him. He could feel the Count approach. The man gave off an animalian scent, delicious and hot, as he touched Tonio’s shoulder. “Come dine with me, I am alone in Rome,” he said almost abruptly. “You are the only swordsman who can get the better of me. I want you to come with me, be my guest.”

Tonio turned to look at him slowly. The invitation was unmistakable.
The Count’s eyes were narrowed. A tiny black mole gleamed on the side of his nostril, another on the line of his jaw. Tonio hesitated, languidly lowering his eyes. And when his refusal came it was a murmur, a stammering, as if he were in a hurry with only the time to be polite.

Almost angrily, he splashed his face with cold water, wiping roughly with the towel before he turned to the valet to receive his coat.

When he stepped into the street, the Count, who had been dallying at the wine seller’s opposite, raised his cup in a slow salute.

The richly dressed young men in his company nodded to Tonio. And Tonio, fleeing, lost himself in the milling crowd.

But that night, in a dreary ill-ventilated villa, Tonio allowed himself to be caught in a darkened alcove by hands and lips he hardly knew.

Somewhere far off, Guido played for a small assemblage, and Tonio led his pursuer farther and farther from the danger of discovery, until he could no longer keep those strong fingers at bay.

He felt the man’s tongue force his mouth open, he felt the hardness against his legs. Finally he freed it from its breeches so it might make a cavern out of the crush of his thighs. He was Ganymede in those moments, carried upward with all the sweet humiliation of surrender in the shape of the young boy already fashioned for conquests of his own.

And in the nights to follow, all his conquerors were older men, men in their prime, or even streaked with gray, quick to savor young flesh, though at times he startled them as he dropped down to his knees to take into his own mouth all the force it could contain.

When it was finished, he knelt there still, his head bowed as if he were a first communicant at the altar rail, as if he were feeling the presence of the Living Christ.

Of course he shunned these partners afterwards, if partners they could be called. And he was never alone with them in any place that belonged to them. Rather he carved for himself secret meeting places out of shut-up parlors and unused chambers very near to the sounds of the dancers, the crowds. His stiletto was always in readiness, his sword at his side.

It astonished him that men and women everywhere were ready to entice him, that those stories had commenced of naïve foreign gentlemen falling in love with him, absolutely convinced he was a young woman in disguise.

He would bathe before he went to the Cardinal. He would dress carefully in immaculate or new clothes. And then, convinced that none of these encounters had ever even existed, he lost himself in the Cardinal’s arms.

Yet the memory of those furtive embraces heated all that transpired.

One afternoon finally, he directed his carriage into the worst streets of Rome.

He saw children playing in doorways, people cooking in the open shops, arches hung with cheeses and meats. A fat glossy sow stopped his carriage, her piglets squealing after her. Laundry on sagging lines shut out the sky.

He sat back against the leather cushions, the windows open despite the splashes now and then, and a general stench the air from the nearby Tiber could not stir.

Finally he saw what he wanted. A young man fixed in a doorway, his shirt open to his heavy leather belt revealing a line of curling black hair. It rose up from his waist and moved out to encircle the tiny pink nipples of his chest as if forming the arms of a cross. His face, even shaven, was as rough as new-sawn lumber, and when his eyes met Tonio’s, the small distance between them was suddenly closed by a current that caused Tonio’s breath to halt in his throat.

He let the painted door swing back. The carriage stood listing in this tiny, all but impassable place, and Tonio in gold brocade stared forward, one hand palm up and inviting as it rested on his knee.

The young man’s eyes puckered ever so slightly. He shifted in such a way it seemed his hips were thrust forward, and the bulge beneath his tight breeches grew larger as if deliberately to make itself known.

Then he moved forward into the carriage and Tonio brought down the blinds to seal them off with only the thinnest seams of light.

The horse plodded forward. The little compartment rocked slowly on its giant springs. Tonio stared at the black curling hair against the man’s olive skin. And then suddenly he laid his white hand on it, opening his fingers broadly, and felt the hardness of the man’s chest.

He could just see the glimmer of the eyes, the light etching the man’s jaw. And very cautiously, he touched this, too, feeling the rough stubble left by the razor, and the skin beneath it so tight it moved all of a piece.

He drew back and let his head fall to one side. Turning away, he let his left shoulder shut the man out, or draw him in. And as he bent forward, his hands on the seat under him, he felt the man’s weight against his back. He went down, stretching out on the leather until his face touched it and his eyes closed as if in sleep.

The man’s left arm came under him, gathering him up tightly as if the better to hold him for the assault. And feeling that tightness, that rough muscle against his chest, pinning him against the man above him, sent the shocks through him as much as the iron itself driving in.

For one moment the pain was almost too great. And yet the pleasure blazed with it, until they were one harrowing flame. Then he realized his captor had not let him go. He felt his anger rising as his right hand eased towards his stiletto. But with a gentle nudge, he was let to know this young Roman was only stoking the fire for the second assault.

It was over. The young man had drawn himself up coldly when offered money. He had let himself out into the street. But just as the carriage moved forward, he had caught the edge of the window in both hands, and whispered the name of the saint that was the name of the street where he lived. Tonio had smiled at him, nodding. There had been the rarest smile given back.

And then there were only those somber walls again rising on either side, full of ocher and dark green, dissolving into the first veil of rain.

Tonio’s eyes misted over. He stared listlessly as the carriage neared the Vatican. And then as if emerging from a thin nightmare which was never dispelled by the waking mind, the sign
of a small shop came into view, its letters spelling out for all the world: