by Anne Rice
8
BY THE END OF SUMMER, it was obvious to everyone that the powerful Cardinal Calvino had become the patron of Tonio Treschi, the Venetian castrato who insisted upon appearing under his own name.
"Tonio," said the Contessa, who was visiting Rome more and more often, "you'll hear it to the rafters, you wait and see."
Meanwhile the Cardinal kept the nightingale in the cage, not allowing him to sing outside the palazzo from which a handful of friends carried tales of his remarkable voice.
But Guido was following another path.
To the concerts he attended, he was always sure to take with him a sheaf of his music. And when the keyboard was offered him, sometimes out of mere politeness, he accepted at once.
Now he was a regular visitor to the homes of the dilettanti, and everyone was talking about his harpsichord compositions, declaring that nothing like them had been heard since the days of Scarlatti the elder, except that Guido was more melancholy and could make you weep. This was true even in the lighter music, sonatas that were so tripping and frothy and full of sunlight you felt you were inebriated with them as with champagne.
A visiting French marquis soon sent his invitation; another came from an English viscount, and Guido was frequently summoned to the homes of those Roman cardinals who held regular concerts, sometimes in their private theaters, for which he was now gently urged to compose.
But Guido was clever. He was not free to accept any specific commission. He was preparing his opera. But any time he might step forward and take out a brilliant concerto from his portfolio of scores.
Yes, this new opera ought to be something, people murmured, if one were to judge by his shorter compositions. And Tonio, his pupil, was so remarkable to look at, so perfect in every feature, even if he did always, without exception, politely refuse to sing.
This was public life.
At home, it was relentless work for Guido, who drove Tonio through more rigorous practice than he'd ever endured at the conservatorio, particularly with high rapid glissandos, which were Bettichino's stock in trade. After a strong two hours of morning exercises he now pushed Tonio towards notes and passages Tonio could execute only when the voice was thoroughly warm. Tonio didn't feel safe in these realms, but practice would give him the security, and though he might never use these high notes, he must be ready for Bettichino, Guido reminded him again and again.
"But the man's almost forty, can he sing this?" Tonio stared at a new set of exercises two octaves above middle C.
"If he can," Guido said, "then you must." And giving Tonio another aria, one which might not survive the day to appear in the finished opera, Guido said: "Now, you're not in this room with me. You're on the stage and there are thousands listening to you. You cannot make a mistake."
Tonio was secretly ecstatic over this new music. Never in his life at Naples had he dared utter critical judgments of Guido, but Tonio knew his own taste had been educated before he had ever left home.
It was not only Venetian music he'd known; he had heard a great deal of Neapolitan music performed in the north.
And he realized that Guido, now freed of the dreary regimen of the conservatorio and the constant demands of his old students, was astonishing even himself. He was refining his performance, as well as his compositions, and delighting in all the attention he received.
After the day's lessons were over, he and Tonio were completely free. And if Tonio did not want to accompany him to the various parties and concerts he attended, Guido did not press.
Tonio told himself he was happy to see all this. But he was not. Guido's independence confused him. Guido took to wearing finer clothes than he had in Naples, thanks to the Contessa's generosity, and he almost always wore a wig. The white frame for the face worked its civilizing and formalizing miracle, and those odd features--the immense and challenging eyes, the flat and brutal nose, and those lips spread so generously in a sensuous smile--made Guido a magnet even in a crowded room. And the sight of a woman on Guido's arm, her breasts often pressed right against his sleeve, made quiet fury erupt in Tonio which he could only turn on himself.
It was all changing.
There is nothing you can do about it, and you are as spoiled and vain as anyone ever accused you of being, Tonio thought, if you begrudge him this.
Yet he was glad to leave these social gatherings at times. He couldn't sing. The constant conversation wore him out. And with a bitterness, he reflected that Guido had "given" him to the Cardinal; he wanted still to be angry with Guido. Sometimes he wanted still to believe it was all Guido's fault.
But by the time he reached the gates of the Cardinal Calvino's house, he'd forgotten this.
He had but one thought in his mind and that was to be in the Cardinal's bed.
It commenced early on those evenings when the Cardinal did not have guests. Paolo was sound asleep, Tonio always saw to that. And then he slipped into the Cardinal's rooms without so much as a knock on the door or an exchange of words.
The Cardinal was in a fever of waiting, and his first act was always to remove Tonio's clothes. It was his wish that Tonio be like a child in his hands, and he fought buttons and lace and hooks, even when they maddened him, without Tonio's aid.
Once it had been told to him that Tonio was now and then going about in women's clothes, far from being shocked, he wanted to see them, and frequently had the violet dress with the cream ribbons brought in so that Tonio might be put into it by him, and then stripped of it, as he chose.
It seemed at times it was Tonio's skin he craved more than anything else. Pushing the fabric back, he would taste it with his tongue as well as his lips.
Tonio was as pliant in his arms as Domenico had ever been in his own. He would watch with the softest smile as the Cardinal tore away that wealth of cream ruffles merely to lay his hands on the flatness beneath it, then pinching the nipples hard until Tonio couldn't keep silent, only to kiss him then as though begging forgiveness and then push up those skirts to drive his horn between Tonio's legs. Each time that awesome length brought its pain, but he would close his mouth over Tonio's mouth as if to say, If you cry out, cry out into me.
There was soft delight in all that the Cardinal did, his hands running through Tonio's hair, his kisses on the eyelids, this feverish adoration which moved at its own pace.
But it was not this soft kneading and kissing that made Tonio's passion burn white hot. What excited Tonio was not what the Cardinal did to him, but the Cardinal himself. And it was when he had the man's hips locked in his arms, when he could cover that root with his mouth, when he felt the Cardinal's seed flood into him, buttermilk sour and sweet at the same time, that was when his body shuddered with an ecstasy that threatened to tear him apart.
That, and the inevitable rape the Cardinal always preferred, that iron driven hard between the legs.
And so Tonio bore the rest, enthralled that it was this man who did it to him, thinking, Yes, it is the Cardinal Calvino, it is this prince of the church, who attends the Holy Father, who sits in the Sacred College, it is this powerful one to whom I surrender, whom I take in my arms. His hands were all too eager to hold those heavy testicles, to breathe their warmth, to feel their loose hairy sheathing, to press them ever so lightly as if in menace only to feel the Cardinal's body become one awesome and cruel shaft.
Yet he came to understand that for the Cardinal even the gentle play was its own form of rape. As surely as he wanted to pound Tonio into the sheets beneath him, he wanted to see Tonio groan with pleasure, he wanted to invade Tonio with pleasure, he wanted to enslave him with it, as surely as with any pain.
And so the hours passed between them. Tonio, his eyes glassy and unseeing, lay against the Cardinal afterwards, almost like a wrestler taking one moment to steal from his opponent a limp embrace.
But there was more to it all even than this. Because almost with the first night there had begun some other exchange.
They would dress together after lovemakin
g. Perhaps they would dine. The Cardinal had various wines to offer, all of them excellent. Then summoning old Nino with his torch, they would begin their regular promenade through the Cardinal's halls.
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 slo
wly. 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 naive foreign gentlemen falling in love with him, absolutely convinced he was a young woman in disguise.
