by Anne Rice
As the warmer months came on again, with all their inevitable festivals and processions--and occasional excursions with Paolo into the countryside--it was clear that Guido was much in demand.
Advanced composition students were given to him; the beginners were taken away; and with Tonio as his star pupil, and Paolo surprising everyone, he was attracting more excellent singers than he could accept.
He was placed in almost complete control of the school theater, and though he drove everyone mercilessly, Tonio found him all the more alluring for it, and most impressive in the fine clothes that Tonio's purse supplied.
Yet Guido's face softened somewhat with authority; he was less angry all the time. And he had about him a more casual air of command which caused Tonio to feel a secret and debilitating pleasure at the mere brush of Guido's hand.
Maestro Cavalla cautioned Guido not to push Tonio. Yet it was through performance that Guido's real work with Tonio had begun.
Before the lights, he could better examine Tonio's weaknesses and strength. And though he drilled Tonio relentlessly with his exercises, and wrote for him a variety of arias, Guido could see it was with the aria cantabile--the aria of sadness and tender feeling--that Tonio excelled. Benedetto was good at tricks; he could do acrobatics with his high notes, only to plunge into the contralto range with disturbing ease. It had the audience gasping, but it didn't make them weep.
And that Tonio could do, without fail, every time he sang.
Meanwhile the Bourbon King Charles III, who had been ruling Naples for two years now, decided to build his Teatro San Carlos, and within a matter of months it was completed and the old San Bartolommeo was pulled down.
But though everyone marveled at the speed with which the house had been erected, on opening night it was the interior which drew the gasps of admiration and awe.
The San Bartolommeo had been an old rectangular house. This was a horseshoe with six tiers. But the marvel was not its impressive size so much as the way it was so lavishly lighted, each box being fixed with a mirror on the front and a candle on either side. When the candles were lighted, the minors amplified the tiny flames a thousandfold in all directions; it was an unbelievable spectacle dimmed only by the talent of the prima donna Anna Peruzzi, and her rival, the contralto Vittoria Tesi, who was renowned for her skill in male roles. The opera, Achille en Sciro, was from the recent libretto by Metastasio, with music by Domenico Sarri, whom the Neapolitans had loved for many years.
One of the greatest scene designers of the time, Pietro Righini, had been employed for the stage, and the whole was a magnificent production indeed.
Guido and Tonio had places in the front of the parterre, enormous seats with arm rests, which could be locked by the season subscriber when not in use. No one could take your place, then. It was there for you no matter how late you might come; and the rows were so broadly spaced, a man might walk to his seat without disturbing anyone else.
Of course everyone knew the monarch didn't care for opera; they laughed that he built such a spacious theater so he might place himself as far as possible from the stage.
But the eyes of Europe were more than ever turned to Naples. Her singers, her composers, her music had fully superseded those of Venice. And they had long ago eclipsed those of Rome.
Rome however was still the place for a castrato's debut, as far as Guido was concerned. Rome might not be producing singers and composers, but Rome was Rome. And Guido reminded Tonio of this all the time.
Tonio's progress amazed everyone. And though he had sung four arias in the fall opera at the conservatorio and spent his evenings out with Guido, he still took some meals with his fellow students, spent his afternoon recreation with them, and worked with them at all the menial tasks assigned to him backstage.
But some time after his second Christmas in Naples, Tonio had a clash with another fencing student which proved as dangerous as his struggle with Lorenzo the year before.
It happened on a day when Tonio's mind was heavy, and he moved through the world with an unusual sluggishness and indifference to all he heard and saw.
That morning one of Catrina Lisani's letters had informed him his mother had given birth to a healthy son. Five months ago, the baby had been delivered; he had been in this world almost half a year.
A debilitating languor came over Tonio, and he had found himself lost in an inaudible little prayer. May you be sound of limb and quick of wit, he was almost whispering. May you receive every blessing from God and from men. Were I at your christening, I would kiss your tender little forehead myself.
And an image drifted into his mind, of itself, it seemed, so that he saw his figure, tall and white, this spider of a creature he had become, moving through those dank and moldering rooms. He saw an endless arm outstretched to rock the infant's cradle. And he saw his mother weeping alone.
Why was she weeping? His thoughts collected themselves slowly and he realized she was weeping because he had slain her husband. Carlo was dead. And she was in mourning again and all those brilliantly imagined candles had gone out. Little bits of smoke rose from the wicks. And up and down those halls, the stench from the canal moved as if it were thick and palpable as the winter mist.
"Ah," he had spoken aloud finally, folding the stiff parchment sheet of paper, "what did you want? A little more time?"
Another step had been taken; another step. Catrina's letter said Marianna was once again, already, with child!
So when he arrived at the fencing salon, he had stupidly pushed ahead of a young Tuscan from Siena as he went through the door. Carelessness, that was all.
But as he prepared for his first bout, he could not help hearing a snarl behind him, and raising his eyes, he felt that odd sense of disorientation that had come over him in the Piazza San Marco when he had first heard of Carlo years before. He stood still; it seemed for a terrifying instant he was slipping into dream. And then he clung to the vision of the polished floor in front of him, the high windows, the long and barren room. The words penetrated: "A eunuch? I never knew capons were permitted to carry swords." Nothing unexpected, nothing very clever, and he saw capons, those emasculated birds, plucked and ready for eating, dangling from the butcher's hook. He saw the mirrors of the fencing salon all around him and reflected in them the young men in their dark breeches and white shirts standing about.
And he realized the room had fallen silent, and that he himself was turning slowly around.
The young Tuscan was staring at him. Yet the features made no impression; and it seemed he was hearing a multitude of whispers, echoes of whispers, rising from all those in this room, all those of this great ilk of young manhood with whom he had vied and struggled here and won. He was standing very still, with narrowed eyes, waiting for the whispers to shape themselves into words he could understand.
But he became vaguely sensible that the young Tuscan was unnerved. The others were uneasy, and then he positively felt the current of wariness circling the room. He could see the blank, almost sullen faces of these southern Italian men; he could smell their sweat.
And then he sensed the young Tuscan's fear. He saw it cresting in panic, and with it a desperate and self-destructive pride.
"I don't cross swords with capons!" the boy shouted almost shrilly, and even these shrewd southern Italians evinced their slight shock.
A strange thought came to Tonio then. He saw the stupidity of this boy. He saw that this boy would rather die than lose face in this small crowd. There was no doubt in Tonio's mind he could kill him. No one here knew the art of the sword as well as he. And even as he felt his own height, his own metallic anger, he felt the meaninglessness of this act. He didn't want to kill this young man. He didn't want for him to die. Yet a man should want to kill him; a man should understand that his insult was not to be borne.
It baffled him; it weighed on him. And the boy was giving him such a rich opportunity! He felt sorrow for the boy. Yet if he let this dilemma grow in him it would weaken him.
And he saw himself as from a great distance narrowing his eyes as he glared at the other and slowly lifted his sword.
The Tuscan drew his rapier; it gave a loud zing as it came loose and flew out at Tonio in the air. His mouth was twisted with fear and anger, and Tonio immediately parried, and tore open the boy's throat.
The boy dropped his blade, gasping, both hands flying to the wound.
And then all the room came to life quickly and silently, with a handful of young men rallying to Tonio to urge him to back off. He saw others surrounding the Tuscan; he saw the blood drenching the boy's shirt. The fencing master was insisting they set a time and place outdoors.
All the way back to the conservatorio Tonio was visited by flashes of those confused moments, of those young men surrounding him, of the informal and friendly touch of their hands.
Before midnight, a young Sicilian nobleman came to tell him that the boy had packed up and fled. There was a contemptuous sneer on the swarthy young man's face as he revealed this, without any other comment. And then hesitating in the stiffly decorated parlor of the conservatorio where he had been received, he asked Tonio to hunt with him some time soon. He and his friends went regularly into the mountains. They should welcome his company. Tonio thanked him for the invitation, without ever saying that he would accept.
And only a few days later Guido and Tonio went into the mountains south.
The weather was mild, and together they sought out one of those seaside towns that clung to the sheer cliffs above a water so purely blue and still it seemed the flawless mirror of heaven.
They dined on simple food in a little white piazza, and then summoned a band of rustic singers, shabby but spirited, who sang them barbarous and inventive melodies no trained musician would possibly attempt.
The night they spent in an inn, on a bed of straw, the window open to the sky.
And the next morning Tonio went out early, wandering alone into a great grassy place, sprinkled everywhere with the first spring wildflowers where once a Greek temple had stood.
Great wheels of fluted marble lay scattered in the green growth, but four columns stood yet against the sky, and as the clouds moved beyond, these columns appeared weightless and to be floating with some eerie motion of their own.
Tonio found the sacred floor. He walked its broken stones until he charted the whole, and then he lay down in the fresh grass that seemed everywhere to rise through crevices and cracks; and looking full into the blinding light, he wondered if he had ever known such serenity in all his life as he had known this past year.
It seemed the world was fragrant and full of unspoiled loveliness everywhere he looked. It held no hideous mystery for him. There was no draining tension day in and day out.
And he felt quieted with love, love for Guido, love for Paolo, love for all those who were his fast friends under the same roof, those boys who shared work and play and study and rehearsal and performance, those who were the only brothers he'd ever known.
And yet the darkness was there.
The darkness was always there. It waited only for Catrina's letter, for the insult of that rash and inept Tuscan boy. But it had been so easy for so long to shut it out!
It seemed a wonder to him that he had ever counted upon hatred, bitterness, to sustain him until the children of Carlo numbered so many that he could go back and settle the old score.
Was he so flawed that he had forgotten the wrong done him, the world denied him, that he could have fallen so easily into this strange life in Naples which now seemed more real to him than any life in Venice he'd ever known? Was it weakness that he had not wanted to kill the Tuscan? Or could it have been something wiser and finer that he felt in those moments?
He had the appalling fear suddenly that the world would never let him know.
Yet it seemed unreal to him that he had ever lived in Venice. That he had ever seen the mist steal over those motionless canals the color of lead, or the walls rise up on either side so close they threatened to swallow the very stars.
Silvery domes, rounded arches, mosaics shimmering even through the rain, what was this place?
Shutting his eyes he tried to recall his mother. He tried to hear her voice, to see her whirling in the dance on that dusty floor. Had there ever been a day when seeing her at the window, he had crept up crying behind her? She was singing some common street song. Was she thinking of Istanbul? His hand went out for her. She turned to strike him. He felt himself falling....
Had any of this happened at all?
He was standing suddenly in the grass. The green land was laid open all around. Far off, he saw Guido's dark form stranded amid a great drift of tiny flowers that streaked this vast and beautiful place like white traces of the clouds. And the figure seemed too motionless, the head cocked to one side as if Guido were listening to the sound of the distant birds or simply to the emptiness itself.
"Carlo," he whispered. "Carlo!" as if he could not leave this spot until he had made his father real. And then he closed his eyes on the gentle sun, on these endless fields, and in that distant city he knew so well, he found himself stalking, feline, deadly until in some shadowy and unexpected place he'd come upon him, and in his face he saw the horror, the shock.
But dear God, what would I give if I could live but one day, just one day, with this cup passed from me?
13
ANOTHER SEVEN MONTHS PASSED before Tonio was to hear from Marianna herself, telling of the birth of her second son.
He was so shaken when he saw the letter that he carried it with him all day, opening it only when he was alone on the edge of the sea.
It seemed with the roar of the waves in his ears he would not hear her voice, which had for him some menace like the Sirens' song.
Not an hour goes by that I do not think of you, that I do not feel pain for you, that I do not blame myself for your rash and terrible action. You are not lost to me, no matter how you protest, no matter how reckless and spiteful the course you took.
Your little brother, Marcello Antonio Treschi, was born a week ago in this house. But no child takes your place in my heart.
Only a few days separated Tonio from his first lead role in an opera entirely written by Guido for the conservatorio stage. And he knew if he could not forget this letter, he could not perform.
He drove himself almost foolishly as the production drew near, and his will stood by him. On that night he thought of nothing but music; he was Tonio Treschi of the conservatorio, and Guido's lover, afterwards, when only a frenzied lovemaking could silence the echo of the applause in his ears.
But in the days that followed this little triumph, he was obsessed with his mother, though little of his love for her, his sense of her beauty and her sometime tenderness, remained.
She was Carlo's wife now; she belonged to him, and how could she have ever believed him! Yet believed him she had, without doubt.
Beneath this almost blinding anger, Tonio knew the answer, of course. She had believed Carlo because she had to, she had believed him to go on living, she had believed him to escape her empty room and her empty bed. What would there have been for her in that house save Carlo?
And at times, when these thoughts revolved in his head almost incessantly, he could not escape the memory of her old unhappiness, her loneliness, those flashes of cruelty that could even now in recollection bring the chills to the surface of his skin.
Shut up in a convent she would have died, he was certain of it, and his brother, his powerful and cunning brother, his wronged and righteous and willful brother, would have taken another wife in her place.
No, she had faced an impossible choice, and to live with the man without his love would have been as unendurable as the convent cell. She must have the man's love as well as his protection and his name. What had name and protection ever done for her in the past, after all?
"And I shall send her back to her loneliness," he mused. "I shall send her back to her cloister...." And he saw her
once more in a widow's black veil.
It was real to him, more real than the pictures these letters conjured of babies christened, and of a life in that house such as he had never known.
She turned on him, she railed at him. With fists clenched, she cursed him. He heard her cries over the years and the miles, and over the dim vista of the imagined future, "I am helpless," and his anger moved inexorably past her so that she became a shadow unable to affect what lay before him any more than she had ever affected the past.
She was lost from him, truly lost from him, and yet his eyes misted over again and again to think of her, and he turned sharply, his heart racing, from the everyday spectacle of those dark-clad women in the churches everywhere, widows ancient and young lighting their candles, on their knees before the altars, walking in black clusters with their old servants, through the streets.
Invitations poured in now for him to sing at private suppers and concerts. He ventured out once to the house of the old Marchesa he'd met his first night at the Contessa Lamberti's house.
But as time passed, he sent only regrets no matter when he was asked.
Guido was furious naturally.
"You must be heard!" he insisted. "You must be seen and heard in the great houses. Tonio, the foreign visitors must see you, don't you understand?"
"Well, they can hear of me and come to see me here," Tonio said, quickly blaming it upon the rigors of his schedule. "You expect too much of me!" he said with conviction. "And besides the Maestro's always complaining about how the boys get into trouble when they go out, too much drinking..."
"Oh, stop it," Guido said contemptuously.
But the conservatorio became the only place where Tonio would perform.
More and more he kept to it when he was not in the fencing salon, and he never accepted the invitations of the other young men there to join them in drinking or the hunt.
Again and again he was startled to see his blond-haired friend. She was in the Franciscan church when he went with the other boys for the regular performance. He saw her in the Teatro San Carlos, perched like a queen in the Contessa's box. She faced the stage as English people did, and seemed forever engrossed in the music.
