Cry to Heaven (69 page)

And finally there were the portraits, enameled miniatures and one very lifelike painting of the exquisite dark-eyed little boy that Tonio had once been.

As Guido looked at these things, he realized they were all those relics of one’s life that are treasured by others, but rarely kept by one’s self.

And they had been cleared out, packaged up, and sent away to Rome in perfect evidence that no one now remained in the House of Treschi who loved this young man who had once lived there. It was as if Tonio and all those who had once shared his life were dead.

The Cardinal asked again gently if there was anything he might do. He had sent away his attendants and he stood alone, patient, infinitely charitable, waiting upon a musician who had let him linger as if he were a menial at the door.

Guido looked up at him. He murmured some respectful apology for this confusion. And he tried to divine how much this man might care to know of Tonio, and what if anything he did have the power to do.

He watched the Cardinal look at these random treasures.

“Tonio’s mother is dead,” Guido said softly. But behind those few simple words lay his realization that Marianna Treschi, whom Guido had never seen or known, might have been the very last thing staying Tonio from the inevitable journey to Venice.

T
HE ROMAN CARNIVAL
was under way and with it the last, most frenzied nights of the opera. From dawn till dark the narrow Via del Corso was packed with costumed merrymakers, either side of the thoroughfare built up with stands that were jammed with masked spectators. The lavishly decorated chariots of the great families crawled through the street, weighted down with fantastically costumed Indians, Sultans, gods and goddesses. The great Lamberti float had been done on the theme of Venus born from the foam with the little Contessa herself decked out in garlands of flowers as she stood in a great papier-mâché seashell. Behind came the carriages moving inch by inch, their masked occupants showering a confetti of sugared almonds all around while everywhere men dressed as women, women dressed as men, and all manner of costumed
anonymities paraded as princes, sailors, the grand characters of the commedia. The same old themes, the same madness…

Tonio, masked, his clothes hidden by a long black
tabarro
, pulled Christina beside him, her hair drawn back like a man’s, her small body handsomely clothed in an officer’s military costume. They ran this way and that, Tonio lifting his draped arm to shelter her now and then from a whirling war of confetti as they ducked and came up to witness the antics of some Pulcinella putting on a wild show, or escaped for a few moments to kiss, to catch their breath, to cling to each other in a church doorway.

But as the day shaded into late afternoon, the crowd was at last cleared for the final exhilarating climax of the race, fifteen horses being led first from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza Venezia and back again before being let loose in the former to rush headlong and free toward the latter. It was reckless and full of scintillating danger, the crush of hooves, the inevitable blunders into the throng, the animals finally crashing into the Piazza Venezia for the announcement of the winner.

Then as the sun finally set, masks were stripped away, the street emptied, and everyone moved to yet another spectacle—balls throughout the city or the grandest treat of all: the theater.

The opera audience was at its wildest. Though masks were gone, costumes still prevailed, especially the dark and liberating
tabarro
, and the women charmingly turned out in masculine military dress, enjoying the full freedom of breeches, while the opposing camps of Bettichino and Tonio vied in madness to outdo one another.

It seemed the boxes were so burdened they might have actually collapsed, and the theater rocked again and again with generous applause, the cries of Bravo, the stomping, the shouting.

Then all went home—Tonio and Christina in each other’s arms—to rise again at dawn for more of the same merriment.

Sometimes in the midst of the crush, Tonio would stand in one spot, his eyes closed, swaying on the balls of his feet and imagine himself in the Piazza San Marco. The close walls here vanished for the open sky and the golden mosaics shimmering like great unblinking eyes over the multitude. He could almost smell the sea.

His mother was with him, and there was Alessandro, and it
was that first glorious carnival when they had at last gotten free, and it seemed the world was nothing but wondrous and full of exquisite marvels. He heard her laughter, felt even the press of her hand in his, and it seemed all his memories of her were complete and untouched by the misery that had come afterwards. They had their life together, and that would remain forever.

He would have liked to believe she was close to him, that somehow she knew and understood all of it.

And if there was any sharp pain now in these days of bitter and secret grief, it was that he had never never been able to talk to her again, to sit with her, her hands clasped in his, to tell her how much he loved her, and how it had all been beyond his power to change.

She seemed as helpless in death as in life.

But when he opened his eyes, when it was Rome again—and the Roman girls ran about tickling those who didn’t mask with their wicker brooms, and the men garbed as advocates scolded the crowd, and those the wickedest of all, the young men got up as women baring their breasts and revealing their legs, went offering themselves to others—when he saw all this life around him, he knew what he had always known, there was never ever meant to be a leave-taking of her. Never in his maddest dreams of vengeance or justice had he envisioned even a passing word, an outstretched hand, a sigh of affection. Across a dim vista, he had seen her rather in a widow’s weeds, crying among her orphaned children, her husband, the only husband she’d ever really known, murdered, taken from her.

She had been delivered from this. This had been taken away from him. She was not in a widow’s black. She slept in the coffin. And it was Carlo who had wept for her. “He grieves as a madman,” Catrina had written. “He is beside himself and vows to spare nothing in the care of his children. And though he works harder and harder, swearing he will be mother and father to them, both, he is so stricken he wanders at any hour out of the Offices of State, to roam like a fool in the piazza.”

Christina was pressing his hand.

The crowd pushed him here and there, and he struggled for a moment to secure his footing. He saw his mother in the coffin again, and wondered how they had dressed her. Had they put on her those beautiful white pearls that Andrea had given
her? He saw the crimson funeral procession moving out over the undulating waves, red the color for death streaming from the black gondolas, and the sea heaving as the soft crying of the mourners was dissolved into the salted wind.

Christina’s face was full of love and sadness.

She stood on tiptoe, her arm around him. She was so splendidly real, so warm, as with her lips she sought, ever so gently, to bring him back to her.

They hurried through the Via Condotti. They pounded up the stairs to the studio above the Piazza di Spagna.

And taking deep gulps of wine from the same bottle, pulled the heavy curtains of the bed and made love feverishly and quickly.

As they lay still after, they could hear the distant roar of the crowd, or just below some singular laughter. It seemed to roll up the stone walls and vanish as it reached the open air.

“Tell me what it is,” she said. “Tell me what you are thinking.”

“That I am alive.” He sighed. “Simply that I am alive and so very, very happy.”

“Come,” she said rising suddenly. She tugged at him to bring him up from the warm bed, and threw his shirt about his shoulders. “We have an hour still before you must be at the theater. If we hurry we can see the race.”

“That’s not very much time.” He smiled, wanting to keep her here.

“And tonight,” she said as she kissed him once and twice and three times, “we’ll go to the Contessa’s and this time, you’ll dance with me. We’ve never danced, you and I, for all the balls we attended in Naples…together.”

When he didn’t move, she dressed him as if he were a child, her fingers deftly working his pearl buttons.

“Would you wear that violet dress?” he asked in her ear. “If you wear that violet gown, I’ll dance with you.”

He was drunk for the first time in a long time, and he knew that drunkenness was the enemy of sorrow. What had Catrina said, that Carlo roamed the piazza like a fool, his wine his only companion?

But the room was crowded and swirling with colors; and the music made a restless rhythm and he was dancing.

He was dancing as he hadn’t danced in years and years, and all of the old steps had come back to him magically. Every time he saw Christina’s rapt little face, he bent to steal a kiss, and it seemed that this was Naples and all those times he had longed for her.

And it was Venice, in Catrina’s lovely house, or it was that long ago summer on the Brenta.

All of his life seemed a great circle suddenly, and here he was, dancing and dancing, turning and bowing in the lively time of the minuet, and all those he loved were around him.

Guido was there, and Marcello, the handsome young eunuch from Palermo who was his lover, and the Contessa, and Bettichino with his admirers.

And when Tonio had come into the room, it seemed all heads had turned; he could positively hear them whispering: Tonio, it’s Tonio.

The music floated in the air around him, and when the dancers broke apart, he had a glass of white wine in his hands very quickly and then it was empty.

It seemed Christina wanted him now for the quadrille, and gently, he kissed her hand and said that he would watch her.

He wasn’t sure quite when he sensed there would be trouble, or when he first saw Guido approaching him.

It seemed since he had come in he had sensed something very wrong in Guido, and he sought now, embracing Guido lightly, to cheer him and make him smile, even if he was resolutely unwilling.

But Guido’s face was full of trouble, and there was some urgency to his whispers that Tonio tell the Contessa himself why they weren’t going to Florence.

Not going to Florence?

When had they made that decision? It seemed a great darkness came down around the edges of things, and for a long moment it was impossible to pretend any longer that this was Naples or that it was Venice. It was Rome, and the opera was almost finished, and his mother was dead and carried over the sea to be laid in the earth, and Carlo was roaming the Piazza San Marco, waiting for him.

Guido’s face was dark and swollen, and he was saying
something rapidly under his breath, yes, tell the Contessa, tell her, why we cannot go to Florence.

And it seemed, in that moment, Tonio felt in spite of himself a dark exhilaration. “We are not going, we are not going…” he whispered, and then Guido was pulling him down a dimly lit corridor. All these freshly painted walls, panels of mulberry brocade and the fleur-de-lis in gold, and a pair of doors opening.

Guido’s voice was all threats and terrible, terrible accusations.

“And what shall we do after that?” Guido demanded. “All right, if we don’t go to Florence, then surely in the fall we can go to Milan. They want us in Milan. They want us in Bologna.”

And he knew that if he did not stop himself something terrible and final would be spoken. It would come forth out of the darkness where it had waited.

The Contessa was there, and her round little face looked so old. She lifted her skirts with one hand and with the other she was patting Guido’s shoulder, almost lovingly.

“…never intend to go anywhere else, do you? Answer me, answer, you have no right to do this to me.” Guido’s heart was breaking.

Don’t bring it to a head, don’t make me say it. Because once I say it I can’t recall the words. It was exhilaration, ever mounting. He felt like one on the edge of a great downward slope. If he took the first steps, he would be unable to control the momentum.

“You’ve known, you’ve always known.” Was this Tonio saying this? “You were there, my friend, my truest, dearest friend, my only real brother in this world, you were there and you saw with your own eyes, not little boys scrubbed and groomed and marched into the conservatorio like so many capons to market. Guido…”

“Then turn your rage on me,” he was pleading, “for the part I played in it. I was your brother’s tool and you know it.”

The Contessa had put her arms around Guido and was trying vainly to quiet him. And far off, he was crying, I cannot live without you, Tonio, I cannot live without you….

But a coldness had settled over Tonio, and all of this was remote and sad and unchangeable. He struggled to say you had
no part in it. You were but a chess piece moved from one square to another.

Guido cried there had been a café on San Marco and he had been there when the men came and told him that he must take Tonio to Naples.

“Don’t speak of all this,” the Contessa said.

“It was my fault, I could have stopped it, turn your vengeance on me!” Guido pleaded.

And she, forcing him back, drew Tonio away, her little dark face so very old, and that voice dropping down down for the profession of terrible secrets. The old plea, send assassins, there was no need for him to dirty his hands, did he not know he had friends who could take care of all of it? But say the word and now she guided him to the edges of the room. The moon was out and the garden was alive and far across the garden, he could see the windows of the ballroom they had just left, and he wondered was Christina there? He saw her in his mind dancing with Alessandro.

“I am alive,” he whispered.

“Radiant child,” she said.

Guido was weeping.

“But he always knew the time would come when he would go on alone. I wouldn’t let him go,” he said to her, “if he were not ready. They will want him in Milan just as much without me. And you know it…”

And she was shaking her head. “But radiant child, you know what will happen if you go to Venice now! What can I say to dissuade you….”