Mozart’s Blood (19 page)

Hélène clung to Ugo and gritted her teeth. It felt as if the world was coming apart around her.

Fire bells began to clang, a different, shriller sound than the church bells, and in the distance, thin screams pierced the deeper noise of the temblor. The shaking went on and on, making seconds into hours, minutes into days. Whole buildings began to crash to the ground, timbers splintering on impact. It seemed to Hélène as if the city gave one great, unison death cry.

A branch from a falling tree sailed above her head, so close that the newly budded twigs caught at her hair and her cloak. Ugo pulled her down even farther, until the two of them were huddled on the grass, the dew soaking their clothes and dampening their faces. There they stayed for long, long minutes.

At length, as if reluctantly, the undulation of the earth beneath them subsided. Still they knelt, waiting, wary of what would come next. When they stood at last, Hélène gazed at Ugo in wonder.

“I would have died without you,” she whispered.

“Ah,” he said. “It's always nice to be appreciated.”

Ughetto caught sight of himself in the uneven glass window of a tiny
trattoria
just off the Piazza San Ignazio, and shuddered. His tunic, new and spotless such a short time ago, and the envy of the other boys of the
scuola,
was now dark with dirt and dried sweat. His hair had grown out of its fashionable cut and hung limp and oily around his shoulders. His stylish coat, folded in the height of Roman style, had caught on a scrolled-iron gate when he was escaping an enraged shop owner and was rent almost in two. He still wore it because it was all he had. And in the slack purse that hung from his waist, there was nothing. The last of Brescha's pennies had been spent the day before, and he was hungry.

The emptiness of his purse and his belly mocked the emptiness of his heart. It was, he thought, the third blow. The final blow. He had lost his home, then his friend Mauro. And now even his consolation was shattered. The loss of his music—a gift he had never expected, one thrust upon him—was the worst of his losses. He could not see how he was to survive it.

A middle-aged couple, dressed in evening clothes, came across the plaza to the
trattoria.
The woman's hand was on her escort's arm as she stepped daintily in her soft-soled slippers. As they approached, the man eyed Ughetto and moved in front of his companion as if to shield her from something distasteful. Ughetto, chagrined, stepped away from the window, back into the alley alongside the restaurant. As he did, a door opened and a short, thickset man in a grease-stained apron came out, lugging a tin tub. Ughetto's nostrils twitched at the smell of decaying crab and oyster.

The man hissed something at him and waved a hand to shoo him away.

“Signore,” Ughetto said softly.
“Ho fame.”

“Go find your food somewhere else,” the man snapped. “You're bothering my customers.”

“I'm not!” Ughetto protested. “I'm only standing here, sir.” His voice rose and broke, a fractured melody he had become accustomed to in recent days.

The man's face softened a little. “Well,” he said gruffly. “Stand someplace else.”

Ughetto saw the easing of the scowl, the flicker of sympathy in the
padrone
's eyes. “Sir,” he began, with a little flicker of hope. “Do you have some work for me? I could—I could wash dishes or sweep floors, as I did in my
mamma
's tavern.” Ughetto took a step closer to the man, hoping his youth and obvious need might move him somehow.

The
padrone
eyed his dirty clothes, his unwashed hair. At his apparent hesitation, Ughetto took another step. “I can shuck oysters,” he said. “Whatever you need.”

“You speak well, young man, but I can't take you in like that. My wife wouldn't like it. You need a bath.”

“I know. I have no place.”

A woman's voice from the kitchen pierced the darkness of the alley. The man shook his head. “I'm sorry, really I am. I can't help you.”

Ughetto drew breath to ask again, but then gave it up. Weariness settled over him. He settled for a shallow bow. “Thank you for considering it, sir.”

The man withdrew into his kitchen and closed the door on its warmth and brightness. Ughetto leaned against the cold brick wall behind him. He closed his eyes. He longed to go home to Trapani. He yearned for the hot sun, the fresh salty tang of the sea, the clatter and bustle of his mother's tavern. But it was a long way to Sicily. He hadn't the strength to walk there. And even if he had boat fare, he could starve to death before he reached his village.

When he felt a touch on his hand, he barely flinched. Lassitude made his eyelids heavy. He lifted them halfway and found a man's fleshy face close to his. The man licked his narrow lips with a quick, darting tongue. His breath smelled of wine and garlic. When Ughetto didn't move away, he touched him again, more confidently this time, running his hand up Ughetto's arm and onto his shoulder. He held out his other hand so Ughetto could see the little pile of coins in his clean-scrubbed palm.

In a throaty whisper, the man said,
“Va bene, ragazzo?”

Ughetto stared at the money, thinking about what it meant. A plate of
pasta,
perhaps. A room for the night. A bath.

He was no stranger to propositions, of course. At the
scuola,
some of the older boys made use of the younger ones. Becoming a
castrato
didn't put an end to sexual impulses. Ughetto's refusals had been a matter of reticence rather than repugnance.

But now—now, what did it matter? What did he care what this man thought, this fat little man with his bloodshot eyes, his blob of a nose, his eager palmful of money?

It would be nothing. He would use his hand, let the man spend himself against this very wall. He would flee into the darkness with his purse not quite so slack, and he would find a place to wash his hand—and himself. It would cost him no more than a few moments' disgust.

He put out his palm, and the man poured the money into it. Ughetto forced a smile to his lips as he dropped the coins into his purse. He reached under the man's coat and groped for the buttons on his trousers. His customer—for such he was, and there was no denying it—pressed hungrily against him. He put a hand on the back of Ughetto's head and pulled it forward, trying to push his lips against Ughetto's. Ughetto turned his face away, and the narrow, wet lips found only his earlobe. The man snuffled against his jaw, groaning with pleasure as Ughetto's hand found its goal.

But when Ughetto began to rub him, the man drew back. “No!” he said hoarsely. “No, not for all that money!” He gripped Ughetto's shoulders with both hands. “Turn around, boy. Take off your britches.”

Ughetto removed his hand. “No.”

“Yes! I paid you, now do as I tell you.” He shoved at Ughetto, pushing him against the wall, trying to turn him by force.

Ughetto pushed back against him, but weakly. Hunger and hopelessness had drained him. “No,” he said in his cracked voice. “Not that.”

“Yes! Or else give me back my money.”

Ughetto stared at him. He didn't want to give up what he had already taken, and his hand was already fouled. The man shook him. “Turn around, you.” He pulled with one hand and pushed with the other, until Ughetto found his face grinding against the bricks of the wall, his cloak thrust to one side, his trousers pulled down to his thighs. The night air was cold against his buttocks, and he shuddered as the man seized him with his hot, rubbery fingers.

A moment later, there was pain. It was different from that first, slashing pain in the tub at Nonna's villa. This pierced deep into his body, like the stroke of a sword, and he cried out. The man hissed at him, giving no quarter. The pain rose, filling Ughetto's belly and chest, and he tried to squirm away. The man gripped him tighter, thrust carelessly into him, without regard for his anguish.

A growling filled Ughetto's ears, and his fingers felt as if they burst into flame. That growling—had he heard that before? And the claws digging into the brick wall—were they his? He had seen them before. All at once, the agony of pain withdrew. He whirled.

The man behind him began to scream, a high, thin wail that grated on Ughetto's hypersensitive ears. His spine bent and stretched, causing him a deeper pain, dull and insistent, utterly different from that he had felt a few moments before. He fell to all fours on the cobbled alley and felt the scrape of claws against rough stones. He drew a breath scented with rotting fish, urine, the feces of rats and pigeons. His nostrils flexed, sorting the smells, prioritizing. The fear of the man behind him was the sharpest scent of all, the savory smell of prey. His lips pulled back in a hungry snarl. The man's scream grew wilder as he tried to back away, losing his footing on the cobblestones, falling hard on his backside. He fell against the rubbish bins, spilling oyster shells and crab carcasses. Ughetto gathered himself, ready to pounce.

As his muscles tightened—gloriously long muscles that hugged strong, flexible bones—he heard footsteps inside the
trattoria,
the running feet of men pounding through the kitchen toward the back door.

His mouth opened, long teeth laughing at the man lying prostrate and crying in the alley. Then he spun about to bound across the
piazza
in great fluid leaps.

He was gone before the door opened and men came pouring out.

 

The dome of the Basilica of St. Peter had been completed at last in 1626. Its great silhouette, seen from below, blotted out the night stars. It was said that Pope Gregory liked to stand at his window gazing out on this immense creation and listening to his choir sing beneath the fabulous murals of the Cappella Sistina. Their slender voices carried up to him on the night air, reassuring him of Christendom's renewed power.

In the shadow of the dome, where elaborate gardens wound around the basilica and the apartments of His Holiness, Ughetto's awareness returned. He found himself, as he had before, curled on his side beneath the branches of a tree, scratched and cold and bloody. This time it was not an orange tree, but a half-grown cedar newly set into the landscaping. And this time he knew, beyond any doubt, that it was not his own blood that flaked from his hands and stained his naked chest. He put his hands to his face and scrubbed away the dried blood that clung to his lips and chin. The taste of meat was in his mouth. He was no longer hungry.

There were only shreds of his clothing clinging to him, fragments of torn linen and ripped pieces of his cloak. The buttons at the neck were gone, burst from the fabric. The seams of the sleeves had also burst, and what was left of the garment flapped uselessly about his thin body.

As he blinked into full consciousness, he scrabbled on the ground around him, searching for his purse. When he found it, he fell upon it as if it could save him somehow, make sense of all that had happened. The few coins it held clinked as he struggled to his feet and emerged from the meager shelter of the cedar.

He tipped his head back to look up into the sky. Beyond the majestic curve of the dome, a few stars clung stubbornly to life. The spire of St. Peter's soared above everything, and caught the first light of dawn before it could reach the city below.

Someone, or something, had died last night. Ughetto knew it in his bones. He was still capable of feeling regret for a life lost, but he felt a fierce gratitude—even pride—that it was not
his
life. His body hurt with a deep ache, a reminder of the humiliation and pain he had suffered in the alley behind the
trattoria.
But that hurt would heal. And, he swore, he would never suffer that particular pain again.

In the shadow of the Basilica of St. Peter, Ughetto resolved that whatever happened to him from now on would be of his own choosing. He was no longer a boy, subject to the whims and orders of his elders. He was a man. His life was his own.

He gripped his purse in his hand and started back down into the city to find clothes and a meal. He could return to Trapani, he supposed. There might be enough money in this purse for boat fare. He imagined himself showing up in his mother's tavern, meeting his sisters again. He wondered if they would fall on his neck with glad cries or shrink away from him.

But he wouldn't go back to Trapani, not now. Despite everything, he could not expose his sisters and his
mamma
to the peril some other poor soul had experienced last night. He couldn't go home until he understood what it was he had become.

 

The trade of prostitution was a handy one for Ughetto. Those who felt cheated out of full service had little recourse. There was no authority they could complain to. Transactions took place in isolation and darkness. Ughetto gave reasonable service, refusing only that one ultimate humiliation. Then, money obtained, he scampered away down cramped lanes or cluttered alleys where his customers, older and heavier and usually intoxicated, could not follow.

Ughetto became adept at managing his clients. He lounged prettily near the Fountain of Four Rivers in Piazza Navona or leaned against the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Piazza Colonna. He wore modest clothes, inexpensive but clean. He acquired a good razor and a mug and brush, and kept his chin smooth as a boy's. He let his hair grow long, curling girlishly around his clean jawline. He found a back room where the
padrone
asked few questions and where Ughetto could sleep away most of the daylight hours. At night he worked, and when he earned enough money to cover his room and his meals, he spent any extra on concerts. When there was nothing left over for such indulgences, he sat in churches to listen to
castrati
sing.

One of his patrons invited him to a private concert in the
salotto
of a wealthy Roman who lived near the Palazzo del Quirinale. His patron, Cesare Ricci, was a successful wine merchant from Umbria. He was content with Ughetto's sort of service. He wanted nothing more than a body to hold, someone to caress him, to give him release without him having to make much effort.

He found Ughetto first at the Piazza dei Fiori. Their first encounter was as brief as Ughetto's other arrangements, but the second time Cesare sought him out, he treated him to a meal afterward.

Ughetto wondered at this, that Cesare would be willing to be seen with him in public, that he cared about what Ughetto liked to eat, what wine he preferred. None of his other customers showed the slightest interest in his personal tastes, sexual or otherwise. Ughetto, surprised and touched, repaid Cesare's generosity by listening to him talk, sometimes for hours. Soon he knew all about Cesare's wife and his four daughters, about his
villa
on the shores of Lake Trasimeno, about his vineyards and his vintners. Ughetto had little experience of kindness, but Cesare Ricci, with his plump body and smiling dark eyes, seemed to Ughetto the very embodiment of that virtue.