by Anne Rice
He sent the two little boys off with a perfunctory greeting, and then his eyes settled on the elegant and remote figure of the Venetian who was wandering among the orange trees that crowded the cloister, their blossoms already turned to tiny building fruit.
"You must tell me at once what is going on here," said the Maestro under his breath. But when he looked at Guido again, he gave way immediately to another warm embrace, holding his old pupil for a moment as if he were listening to some distant sound.
Guido was at once steamy. "Surely you got my letter from Bologna."
"Yes, and daily I am visited by men from the Venetian Embassy. They have all but accused me of gelding this princeling under this roof, and threaten to obtain the right to search us."
"Well, then, send for them," Guido growled. But he was afraid.
"Why have you gone to such lengths for this boy?" the Maestro asked patiently.
"When you hear his voice, you will know," Guido answered.
The Maestro smiled. "Well, I see you are your old self, nothing has changed there."
And after a moment's hesitation, he consented that, for the time being at least, Tonio might be given a private attic room.
Tonio proceeded up the stairs slowly. He could not stop himself from glancing back at the crowded practice rooms whose doors stood open revealing some hundred or more boys all at work upon various instruments. Cellos, double basses, flutes, and trumpets gave off their roar amid the general din, while here and there at least a dozen children pounded upon harpsichords.
And in the halls themselves the boys sat at their lessons at various benches, one even practicing his violin in a corner of the stairway, another having made the landing his desk where he bowed his head as Tonio and Guido passed, hardly missing a stroke of the pen on his staff as he harmonized a composition.
The stairs themselves were worn concave from so many feet over so many centuries, and there was about everything a barren, scrubbed look which Guido had never before noticed.
He could not guess what Tonio was thinking, and he did not know that in all his life, this boy had never even for one day been subject to the rules or discipline of any institution.
Tonio knew nothing of children either. And he was staring at them as though they were quite an unusual phenomenon.
He paused, stranded, at the door of the long dormitory in which Guido had spent his nights as a boy, and turned willingly enough to be led down an attic corridor to the little slope-roofed room that would be his own chamber.
All within was neat and ready for some special occupant, a castrato who had in his last years of residency here distinguished himself. In fact, Guido himself had once slept in this chamber.
The shutters opening inward from the dormer window were painted with green leaves and soft overblown roses, while a similar border of flowers ran along the tops of the walls.
And bright enameled decorations covered the desk and chair, the dark red cabinet with its gilded edges waiting for Tonio's possessions.
The boy glanced back and forth, and then suddenly he saw through the open window the distant bluish peak of the mountain again, and he moved almost mindlessly towards it.
For an eternity he stood gazing out at that plume of smoke that rose so straight to the faint disintegrating clouds and then finally he turned again to Guido. His eyes were filled with quiet wonder. And they moved again over the furnishings of this little place without the slightest censure or complaint. It was as if, for an instant, he liked all that he saw. As if the weight of his pain were something any human being could carry, day in day out, hour by hour, without some final alleviation. He turned again to the mountain.
"Would you like to climb Vesuvius?" Guido asked.
Tonio turned with such a bright face that Guido was startled. It was the boy again enhanced by the softest natural radiance.
"We'll go up some day if you like," Guido said.
And for the first time Tonio smiled at him.
But Guido was stricken to see the light go out of the boy's face when he explained to him that he must meet with the Venetian representatives.
"I don't wish to meet with them," Tonio whispered.
"This can't be helped," Guido answered.
As they assembled in the large ground floor office of Maestro Cavalla, Guido understood Tonio's reticence.
These two Venetians, unknown to the boy obviously, entered the room with all the pomp one associated with the last century. Or rather, in their great wigs and frock coats, they resembled galleons at full sail proceeding into a narrow harbor.
It was with undisguised contempt that they examined Tonio. Their questions were rapid, hostile.
There was a slight quiver to Tonio's eyes; he had gone dead white, and the hands clasped behind his back were working against each other. Yes, he replied, he had decided upon this course of action on his own, no, no one from this conservatorio had influenced him, yes, the operation had been performed, no, he would not submit to an examination, and no, he could not reveal the name of the physician. Again, no one of this conservatorio had had any knowledge of his plans....
And here Maestro Cavalla interrupted, furious, his Venetian dialect as rapid and sure as Tonio's, to state that this conservatorio was made of musicians, not surgeons. Boys were never operated on here! "We have nothing to do with it."
The Venetians sneered at this.
And Guido almost sneered at it himself, but he managed to conceal his feelings.
The interrogation was obviously over. And now an uneasy silence fell on all present and it seemed that the elder of these two Venetians was wrestling with some latent emotion.
Finally he cleared his throat, and in a low, almost rough voice, he asked:
"Marc Antonio, is there nothing more to this!"
Tonio was caught off guard. His lips whitened as he pressed them together, and then obviously unable to speak, he shook his head, his eyes moving off to one side where they widened slightly as if deliberately blurring their focus.
"Marc Antonio, you did this of your own will!" The man took another step forward.
"Signore," Tonio said in a voice that was hardly recognizable, "it is an irrevocable decision. Is it your purpose to make me regret it?"
The man flinched as if what he had to say to this were better unsaid. And then he lifted a small scroll in his right hand which had hung all this time at his side. And in a lackluster voice, he said quickly, bitterly:
"Marc Antonio, I fought with your father in the Levant. I stood on the deck of his ship at Piraeus. It gives me no pleasure to tell you what you must already know, that you have turned your back on your father, on your family, and on your homeland. You are henceforth and forever banished from Venice. As for the rest, your family commits you to this conservatorio, in which you must remain, or you will receive no further support from them."
The Maestro was beside himself. He was furious. He stared stupefied as the doors closed.
Then he seated himself at his desk, gathered up Tonio's papers into a black leather folio cover, and shoved them to the side angrily.
Guido gestured for a moment's patience.
Tonio had not moved, and when he did finally turn to face the Maestro, his face had a studied look of sheer emptiness. Only the red glimmer of his eyes betrayed him.
But Maestro Cavalla was too insulted, too outraged, too perfectly angry to sense anything around him.
He regarded the Venetians as utterly ridiculous and was muttering as much under his breath, with the sudden outburst that their lofty statements meant next to nothing. "Banishment! A child!" he stammered.
He emptied Tonio's purse on the desk, noted the contents, dropped the whole into the top drawer which he locked as a matter of course, and then drew himself up to address Tonio.
"You are now a pupil of this institution," he commenced, "and due to your advanced age I have consented that you shall for the time being have your own private quarters on the attic floor away from the rest of th
e castrati. But you shall at once put on the black tunic with the red sash that is worn by all castrati children. In this conservatorio we rise two hours before dawn, and classes are dismissed at eight o'clock in the evening. You will have an hour's recreation after the noon meal as well as two hours of siesta. As soon as your voice is tested and--"
"But I do not intend to use my voice," Tonio said quietly.
"What?" The Maestro stopped.
"I do not intend to study singing," Tonio said.
"What?"
"If you will look at those papers again you will see that I intend to study music, but nowhere does it say that I must study singing...." Tonio's face had hardened again, though his voice was quavering.
"Maestro, allow me to talk to this boy..." Guido started.
"Nor do I intend to wear any costume," Tonio continued, "that advertises that I am a...a castrato."
"What is the meaning of this!" The Maestro rose, his knuckles white as he pressed them to the desk.
"I shall study music...keyboard, string, composition, whatever you put me to study, but I will not study singing!" Tonio said. "I will not now, nor will I ever sing! And I will not be costumed like a capon."
"This is madness!" The Maestro turned on Guido. "Is there no one from that marshland in the north who is not out of his senses! Why in the name of God did you consent to have yourself castrated! Get the physician!" he said to Guido.
"Maestro, the boy's been cut, please allow me to reason with him."
"Reason with him!" The Maestro glared at Tonio. "You are under my care and my authority," he said, and reaching out for the neatly folded black uniform that lay on the desk beside him, he thrust it at Tonio. "And you will put on the official dress of a castrato."
"I will never. I will obey in all else, but I will not sing and I will never wear that costume."
"Maestro, dismiss him, please," Guido said.
As soon as Tonio had left, the Maestro slumped back in his chair.
"What is happening here?" he demanded. "I have two hundred students under this roof, I do not intend to--"
"Maestro, let the boy enroll in the general program, and allow me please to reason with him."
The Maestro said nothing for a while. Then when his temper had cooled, he asked, "You have heard this boy sing?"
"Yes," Guido answered. "More than once."
"And what sort of voice is it?"
Guido was considering. "When you are alone, and you are reading a new score, and you shut your eyes for a moment to hear it sung perfectly...it is that voice which you hear in your head."
The Maestro absorbed this. Then he nodded. "All right, reason with him. And if that fails, I shall not be ordered around by a Venetian patrician."
4
THIS WAS A NIGHTMARE, yet it was impossible to wake up or get out. It went on and on, and every time he opened his eyes he was still there.
Two hours before dawn, the first bell sounded. He sat upright as if jerked by a chain, sweating, staring out into the black sky with its wealth of stars drifting slowly down into the sea, and for a moment--for a moment--there was that ineffable beauty like a hand laid on his head.
It was not possible that this was happening to him, that he was in this low-ceilinged room five hundred miles from Venice, that this had been done to him.
He rose, washed his face, staggering into the corridor, and with the other thirty castrati filing out of the dormitory descended the stone stairway.
Two hundred pupils moved like termites through these corridors, somewhere a little child was crying--little whimpering, despairing cries--and all found without a word their place at harpsichords, cellos, study tables.
The house came alive with shrill sounds, each fragment of melody caught up in the general dissonance. Doors slammed. He struggled to listen to the Maestro, his vision blurred, the man's words ripping fast through concepts he could barely grasp, the other students dipping their pens; he plunged into the exercise on the barest faith that it might yield itself to him as he scribbled.
And seated finally at the keyboard, he played until his back ached, the day's pressures and miseries alleviated for these few sweet hours when he was doing what he knew how to do, and had always known how to do, and just for this little while he was on a par with those boys his age who, if they had not been here since early childhood, had been admitted late only on account of their immense skill and talent.
"You do not even know how to hold a violin? You have never played a violin?" He struggled to draw the bow across the strings without that dissonant screech. His shoulders ached so badly, he hunched forward from time to time, no matter how sharp the tongues that ate at him, the switch coming down on the music stand before him.
If he could only for one minute fall into the music, feel it uplift him, but this is not part of the nightmare; in this nightmare music is noise, music is penance, music has become two hammers at the temples. He felt the sharp cut of the switch across the back of his hand and stared at the welt, the feeling reverberating throughout his body, the welt seeming to have a life of its own as it rose.
Then the breakfast table. Bowls of steaming hot food that nauseated him. All had turned to sand on his tongue as if the slightest pleasure must be denied him. He refused to sit with the other castrati; he asked politely, softly, for another place.
"You will sit there." He stepped back in the face of the advancing figure, the fist nudging his shoulder, the peremptory "You will sit there."
He felt his face burning, burning. It was impossible for flesh to contain this fire. All the eyes of this silent room dusting him gently--"the Venetian prince," he understood that much of their Neapolitan dialect--everyone knowing exactly what had been done to him, that he was one of them, these bowed heads, these mutilated bodies, these things that were not and would never be men.
"Put on the red sash!"
"I will not!"
This is not happening. None of it is happening. He wanted to rise suddenly and go out-of-doors, into the garden, but even that simple freedom of motion was forbidden here, silence locking each boy to the bench in his proper place, though beside him there came that contemptuous whisper, "Why don't you take the sash and wad it into your breeches, Signore, then no one will know!" He turned suddenly. Who had spoken those words? Those mocking and devious smiles gave way suddenly to blank faces.
Guido Maeffeo's door opened. He stepped inside. Blessed silence, if even for two hours he had to stare at that cold unfeeling face, those vicious eyes! The gelded master of the gelded. And worst of all, he knew, he knew exactly what had been done, that this is nightmare. He knows behind that insensible mask of anger.
"Why do you stare at me?"
Why do you think I stare at you, I stare at you because I am a monster and you are a monster and I want to see what it is I will become!
Why didn't he strike Tonio? What was he waiting for? What lay behind that fixed expression of cruelty, all about the man being so much a mixture of fascination and allure, why is it that I cannot stop looking at him, though I cannot endure looking at him? Once when he was a child, Tonio's mother had slapped him over and over again, stop crying, stop crying, what in God's name do you want of me, stop! Looking at Guido Maffeo, he thought, I understand this for the first time. I cannot endure your questioning of me, leave me alone!
In this room for now, please, God, leave me alone.
"Sit quietly then. Watch. And listen."
He brings this white-faced eunuch monster into the room. I do not even want to hear this, this is torture. And he commences with his instructions, he is no fool, this one, he is better perhaps than all the rest put together, but he will never, never teach me.
And at eight o'clock when the last bell sounded, going up the stairs so tired he could scarce lift one foot in front of the other, he fell down, down, down, into the nightmares within the nightmare. Please, just this one night, let me not dream. I am so tired. I cannot do battle in my own sleep, I will go mad.
&
nbsp; There is someone outside the door again. He rose on his elbow. Then snatched it open so that the boy, surprised, could not get away. And there are two of them. They press forward as if they would come into this room. "Get away from me," he snarled.
"We only want to see the Venetian prince who is too good to wear the red sash."
Laughter, laughter, laughter.
"I am warning you, back away."
"Oh, come now, you are not very friendly, it is not very gracious of you to let us stand at the door...."
"I am warning you...."
"Oooh? And how is that?"
Both of them were staring at the stiletto. The taller one, already monstrous with those thin dangling arms, laughed nervously. "Does the Maestro know you have that?"
He shoved hard against this one with his left hand suddenly, and the two of them, off balance, scuttle out of the room with that same eerie laughter. Even the sound of the speaking voice is not natural, it has a shrillness to it if you do not control it, pitch it down. So there is that too. He can envision a time, suddenly, when he will not even speak aloud.
He pulled at the heavy frame of the bed. At first it didn't move, but then, as if ripped free, it slid on the bare floor, so that he might shove it up against the door, and only then fall down again into sleep.
But the sky was red suddenly, he'd seen it from the corner of his eye, and imagination told him there had been a faint sound. It seemed he heard movement throughout the building, and then advancing to the window, he saw it was the mountain in the distance on fire.
There are always two nightmares:
The first.
You are running in that calle and you get away. When the hands go to draw you back, you throw yourself forward and hit the quais, but then you roll into the water and you are safe. You are swimming like a rat, silently, swiftly, through the water as they run helplessly on the bank. You are terrified. But you get away! You are throwing everything into trunks and packing cases, and rushing down the steps out of the palazzo, out of Venice, you have gotten away.
And then that awful realization, that slow dawning that cracks through the darkness of the dream, that you are asleep, this is not real, it is the other that is real, you are dreaming!
