by Rice, Anne
But nothing therein was as monstrous as the spectacle of my Master painting this, of his hand and brush whipping across the picture, realizing sky, clouds, broken pediment, angel wing, sunlight.
The boys clung to one another, certain of his madness or his sorcery. Which was it? Why did he so carelessly reveal himself to those whose minds had been at peace?
Why did he flaunt our secret, that he was no more a man than the winged creatures he painted! Why had he the Lord lost his patience in such a manner as this?
Suddenly in a rage, he threw a pot of paint at the far corner of the room. A splatter of dark green disfigured the wall. He cursed and cried in a language none of us knew.
He hurled the pots down, and the paint spilt in great shiny splashes from the wooden scaffold. He sent the brushes flying like arrows.
“Get out of here, go to your beds, I don’t want to see you, innocents. Go. Go.”
The apprentices ran from him. Riccardo reached out to gather to him the smaller boys. All hurried out the door.
High up on the scaffold, he sat down, his legs dangling, and merely looked at me as I stood beneath him, as if he didn’t know who I was.
“Come down, Master,” I said.
His hair was disheveled and matted here and there with paint. He showed no surprise that I was there, no start at the sound of my voice. He had known I was there. He knew all such things. He could hear words spoken in other rooms. He knew the thoughts of those around him. He was pumped full of magic, and when I drank from that magic, I reeled.
“Let me comb your hair out for you,” I said. I was insolent, I knew it.
His tunic was stained and filthy. He’d wiped his brush on it over and over again.
One of his sandals fell with a clatter to the marble. I picked it up.
“Master, come down. Whatever I said to worry you, I won’t say it again.”
He wouldn’t answer me.
Suddenly all my rage came up in me, my loneliness to have been separated from him for days on end, obeying his injunctions, and now to come home and find him staring at me wild and unconfiding. I would not tolerate his staring off, ignoring me as if I weren’t there. He must admit that I was the cause of his anger. He must speak.
I wanted suddenly to cry.
His face became anguished. I couldn’t watch this; I couldn’t think that he felt pain as I did, as the other boys did. I was in wild revolt.
“You frighten everyone selfishly, Lord and Master!” I declared.
Without regarding me, he vanished in a great flurry, and I heard his footsteps rushing through the empty rooms.
I knew he had moved with a speed men couldn’t master. I hurried after him, only to hear the bedroom doors slammed shut against me, to hear the lock slid closed before I reached out to grab the latch.
“Master, let me in,” I cried. “I went only because you told me to.” I turned around and around. It was quite impossible to break these doors. I pounded on them with my fists and kicked them. “Master, you sent me to the brothels. You sent me on damnable errands.”
After a long time, I sat down at the foot of the door, my back against it, and wept and wailed. I made a riotous amount of noise. He waited until I stopped.
“Go to sleep, Amadeo,” he said. “My rages have nothing to do with you.”
Impossible. A lie! I was infuriated and insulted, and hurt and cold! This whole house was damnably cold.
“Then let your peace and calm have to do with me, Sir!” I said. “Open the damned door.”
“Go to bed with the others,” he said quietly. “You belong with the others, Amadeo. They are your loved ones. They are your kind. Don’t seek the company of monsters.”
“Ah, is that what you are, Sir?” I asked contemptuously and crossly. “You that can paint like Bellini or Mantegna, who can read all words and speak all tongues, who has love without end and patience to match it, a monster! Is that it? A monster spreads the roof over our head and feeds us our daily supper from the kitchens of the gods! Oh, indeed, a monster.”
He didn’t answer.
I was further enraged. I went down to the lower floor. I took a great battle-ax from the wall. It was one of many weapons on display in the house which I’d scarcely ever noticed. Well, it was time for it, I thought. I’ve had enough of this coldness. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.
I went upstairs and heaved the battle-ax at the door. Of course it went through the brittle wood, shattering the painted panel, cracking through the old lacquer and the pretty yellow and red roses. I pulled it back and smashed it into the door again.
This time the lock was broken. I kicked the shattered frame with my foot and it fell back.
In utter amazement he sat in his large dark oak chair looking at me, his hands clutching the two lion’s head arms. Behind him loomed the massive bed with its rich red baldaquin trimmed in gold.
“How dare you!” he said.
He stood before me in an instant, took the ax and hurled it with ease so that it crashed into the stone wall opposite. Then he picked me up and threw me towards the bed. The entire bed shivered, baldaquin and draperies as well. No man could have made me span that distance. But he had done it. With arms and legs flying, I landed on the pillows.
“Despicable monster!” I said. I turned over, steadied myself and drew up on my left side, glaring at him, one knee crooked.
He stood with his back to me. He had been about to close the inner doors of the apartment, which had been open before and therefore were not broken. But he stopped. He turned. A playful expression came over him.
“Oh, what a vile temper we have for such an angelic countenance,” he said mildly.
“If I’m an angel,” I said, drawing back from the edge of the bed, “paint me with black wings. ”
“You dare knock down my door.” He folded his arms. “Need I tell you why I will not tolerate such from you, or from anyone?”
He stood gazing at me with raised eyebrows.
“You torture me,” I said.
“Oh, indeed, how and since when?”
I wanted to bawl. I wanted to say, “I love only you.”
Instead I said, “I detest you.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. He lowered his head, his fingers curled under his chin, as he stared at me.
Then he extended his hand and snapped his fingers.
I heard a rustling from the rooms beyond. I sat up petrified with amazement.
I saw the long switch of the teacher come slithering along the floor as if a wind had sent it hither, and then it twisted and turned and rose and dropped into his waiting hand.
Behind him, the inner doors slammed shut and the bolt slipped into place with a loud metallic clatter.
I drew back in the bed.
“It’s going to be a pleasure to whip you,” he said, smiling sweetly, his eyes almost innocent. “You may chalk it up as another human experience, rather like cavorting with your English lord.”
“Do it. I hate you,” I said. “I’m a man and you deny it.”
He looked superior and gentle but not amused.
He came towards me, and grabbed at my head, and threw me face down on the bed.
“Demon!” I said.
“Master,” he replied calmly.
I felt the nudge of his knee in the small of my back and then down came the switch across my thighs. Of course I wasn’t wearing anything but the thin stockings that fashion decreed, so I might as well have been naked.
I cried out in pain and then shut my mouth tight. When the next few blows came, walloping my legs, I swallowed all noise, furious to hear myself make a careless impossible groan.
Again and again, he brought the switch down, whipping my thighs and then my lower legs as well. Enraged, I struggled to get up, pushing vainly on the covers with the heels of my hands. I couldn’t move. I was pinioned by his knee, and he whacked away without the slightest deterrent.
Suddenly as rebellious as I’d ever been, I decided to
play games with this. I’d be damned if I’d lie there crying, and the tears were coming up in my eyes. I closed my eyes shut, gritted my teeth and decided that each blow was the divine color red and that I liked, and that the hot crashing pain I felt was red, and that the warmth swelling up in my leg after was golden and sweet.
“Oh, that’s lovely!” I said.
“You make a fool’s bargain, little boy!” he said.
He whipped me harder and faster. I couldn’t keep my pretty visions. It hurt, it bloody hurt.
“I’m not a boy!” I cried.
I felt a wetness on my leg. I knew I was bleeding.
“Master, you mean to disfigure me?”
“There’s nothing worse than for a fallen saint to be a horrid devil!”
More blows. I knew I was bleeding from more than one place. I would surely be bruised all over. I wouldn’t be able to walk.
“I don’t know what you mean! Stop!”
To my astonishment, he did. I curled my arm up under my face and I sobbed. I sobbed for a long moment, and my legs burned as if the switch were still hitting them. It seemed the blows were being laid on over and over, but they weren’t. I kept hoping, Let this pain die away to something warm again, something tingling and nice, the way it felt the first couple of times. That would be all right, but this is terrible. I hate it!
Suddenly I felt him cover me. I felt the sweet tickling of his hair on my legs. I felt his fingers as he grabbed the torn cloth of the stockings and ripped it, tearing it off both my legs very quickly, leaving them bare. He reached up under my tunic and tore loose the remnants of the hose.
The pain throbbed, grew worse, then a little better. The air was cool on my bruises. When his fingers touched them, I felt such terrible pleasure that all I could do was moan.
“You going to break down my door again?”
“Never,” I whispered.
“You going to defy me in any way in particular?”
“Never in any way ever.”
“Further words?”
“I love you.”
“I’m sure.”
“But I do,” I said sniffling.
The stroking of his fingers on my hurt flesh was insupportably delicious. I didn’t dare raise my head. I pressed my cheek against the scratchy embroidered coverlet, against the great picture of the lion stitched into it, and I sucked in my breath and let my tears flow. I felt calm all over; this pleasure robbed me of any control of my limbs.
I closed my eyes, and there came his lips on my leg. He kissed one of the bruises. I thought I would die. I would go to Heaven, that is, some other higher more delicious Heaven even than this Venetian Heaven. Beneath me, my groin was alive with thankful and desperate and isolated strength.
The burning blood flowed over the bruise. The slightly rough stroke of his tongue touched it, lapped at it, pressed it, and the inevitable tingling made a fire in my closed eyes, a blazing fire across a mythical horizon in the darkness of my blind mind.
To the next bruise he went, and there came the trickles of the blood and the lap of his tongue, and the hideous pain departed and there was nothing but a throbbing sweetness. And as he went to the next, I thought, I cannot bear this, I will simply die.
He moved fast, from bruise to bruise, depositing his magical kiss and the stroke of his tongue, and I quivered all over and moaned.
“Some punishment!” I suddenly said with a gasp.
It was a dreadful thing to say! Instantly, I regretted it, the sassiness of it.
But his hand had already come down with a fierce slap on my backside.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t mean it to sound so ungrateful. I mean, I’m sorry I said it!” But there was another slap as hot as the first.
“Master, have pity on me. I’m mixed up!” I cried.
His hand lay on me, on the warm surface that he had slapped, and I thought, Oh, now he’s going to beat me till I’m unconscious.
But his fingers only gently clasped the skin, which was not broken, only warm as the first welts from the switch had been.
I felt his lips again on the calf of my left leg, and the blood, and his tongue. The pleasure moved all through me, and helpless, I let the air escape my lips in a rosary of sighs.
“Master, Master, Master, I love you.”
“Yes, well, that’s not so unusual,” he whispered. He didn’t stop his kissing. He lapped at the blood. I writhed under the weight of his hand on my backside. “But the question is, Amadeo, why do I love you? Why? Why did I have to go into that stinking brothel and look upon you? I am strong by nature … whatever my nature …”
He greedily kissed a large bruise on my thigh. I could feel his sucking at it, and then the tongue lapping it, eating the blood, and then his blood coming down into it. The pleasure sent shock after shock through me. I saw nothing, though I thought that my eyes were now open. I struggled to make certain that my eyes were open, but nothing came visible, only a golden haze.
“I love you, I do love you,” he said. “And why? Quick-witted, yes, beautiful, yes, and inside you, the burnt-up relics of a saint!”
“Master, I don’t know what you’re saying to me. I was never a saint, never, I don’t claim to be a saint. I’m a wretched disrespectful and ungrateful being. Oh, I adore you. It’s so delicious to be helpless and at your mercy.”
“Stop mocking me.”
“But I don’t,” I said. “I want to speak, the truth, I want to be a fool for the truth, a fool for—. I want to be a fool for you.”
“No, I don’t guess you do mean to mock me. You mean it. You don’t realize the absurdity of it.”
He had finished his progress. My legs had lost any shape they possessed in my mist-filled mind. I could only he there, my whole body vibrating from his kisses. He laid his head on my hips, against the warm place that he had smacked with his hand, and I felt his fingers come up under me and touch the most private part of me.
My organ hardened in his fingers, hardened with the infusion of his searing blood, but all the more with the young male in me who had so often mingled pleasure with pain at his will.
Harder and harder I grew, and bucked and pumped beneath his head and shoulders as he lay on my backside, as he held tight to the organ, and then into his slippery fingers I gave forth in violent unsurpassed spasms a great gush.
I rose on my elbow and looked back at him. He was sitting up, staring at the pearly white semen that clung to his fingers.
“Good God, is that what you wanted?” I asked. “To see the viscous whiteness in your hand?”
He looked at me with anguish. Oh, such anguish.
“Doesn’t it mean,” I asked, “that the time has come?”
The misery in his eyes was too much for me to question him anymore.
Drowsy and blind, I felt him turn me over and rip off my tunic and jacket. I felt him lift me and then came the sting of his assault into my neck. A fierce pain gathered itself around my heart, slackening just when I feared it, and then I sank down beside him into the perfumed cleft of the bed; and against his chest, warm under covers that he pulled up over us, I slept.
It was still thick and heavy night when I opened my eyes. I had learnt with him to feel the coming of morning. And morning was not yet really near.
I looked around for him. I saw him at the foot of the bed. He was dressed in his finest red velvet. He wore a jacket with slashed sleeves and a heavy tunic with a high collar. This cloak of red velvet was trimmed in ermine.
His hair was thoroughly brushed and very slightly oiled so that it gave off its most civilized and artful shimmer, swept back from his clean straight hairline and turning in mannered curls on his shoulders. He looked sad.
“Master, what is it?”
“I have to go for a few nights. No, it’s not out of anger at you, Amadeo. It’s one of those journeys I have to make. I’m long overdue for it.”
“No, Master, not now, please. I’m sorry, I beg you, not now! What I—.�
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“Child. I go to see Those Who Must Be Kept. I have no choice in this.”
For a moment I said nothing. I tried to understand the denotation of the words he’d spoken. His voice had dropped, and he had said the words halfheartedly.
“What is that, Master?” I asked.
“Some night perhaps I’ll take you with me. I’ll ask permission …” His voice trailed off.
“For what, Master? When have you ever needed anyone’s permission for anything?”
I had meant this to be simple and candid, but I knew now it had an impertinent sound.
“It’s all right, Amadeo,” he said. “I ask permission now and then from my Elders, that’s all. Who else?” He looked weary. He sat beside me and leaned down next to me and kissed my lips.
“Elders, Sir? You mean Those Who Must Be Kept—these are creatures like you?”
“You be kind to Riccardo and the others. They worship you,” he said. “They wept for you the whole time you were away. They didn’t quite believe me when I told them you were coming home. Then Riccardo spied you with your English lord and was terrified I’d break you in little pieces, yet afraid the Englishman would kill you. He has quite the reputation, your English lord, slamming down his knife on the board in any tavern he chooses. Do you have to consort with common murderers? You have a nonpareil here when it comes to those who take life. When you went to Bianca, they didn’t dare to tell me, but made fancy pictures in their minds so I couldn’t read their thoughts. How docile they are with my powers.”
“They love you, my Lord,” I said. “Thank God that you forgive me for the places I went. I’ll do whatever you wish.”
“Good night then.” He rose to go.
“Master, how many nights?”
“Three at most,” he said over his shoulder. He made for the door, a tall gallant figure in his cloak.
“Master.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be very good, a saint,” I said. “But if I’m not will you whip me again, please?”
The moment I saw the anger in his face I regretted this. What made me say such things!
“Don’t tell me you didn’t mean it!” he said, reading my mind and hearing the words before I could get them out.
