Authors: Anne Rice
What he would do then he wasn’t certain. When he thought of those men in Flovigo, of the knife, of the cunning of all of it, and the finality of all of it, death for his father who had lived and loved so much already in his thirty-five years seemed infinitely too simple and too good.
He knew only that some day he would have Carlo in his power, as those men in Flovigo had had him in their power, and when that moment came, Carlo would wish for death just as Tonio had wished for it when the bravo had said in his ear, “You have your life.”
Then Carlo’s bodyguards could take him, Venice could take him, Carlo’s sons, it did not matter. Carlo would have paid.
Now the second task.
He would sing.
That he would do for himself because he wanted to, whether it was all a eunuch
could
do or no. Whether it was what his brother and those henchmen of his had destined him to do did not matter. He would do it because he loved it and wanted it, and his voice was the one thing in this world which he had once loved that was still his.
Oh, the magnificent irony of it. Now, his voice would never leave him, never change.
Yes, he would do it for himself and he would give it everything that he had and he would let it take him wherever he might go on this earth with it.
And who knew just how splendid that might be? The celestial brilliance of the church choirs, even the grand spectacle of the theater, he dared not really think of it now, but it just might give him the only time that he would ever spend with God’s angels.
The sun was high in the sky. The pupils of the conservatorio had long ago settled in for the hot, fitful sleep of the siesta.
Yet the Largo hummed with life below him. Fishermen were coming in with their catch. And against a far wall a little stage had been erected before the milling crowd on which a tawdry Punchinello was gesturing coarsely.
Tonio watched that lone figure for a short while, its rough voice now and then carrying over the din of the square, and then he rose and entered the small room to gather up his few possessions.
There was one more aspect of it all that he had taken down with him from Vesuvius.
It was perhaps the one thing of which he was most certain, and he had known it in a wordless and clear way when he had first awakened in the sunlight and seen that graceful corpse teetering over him.
He had thought in those moments of Andrea’s words: “Make up your mind, Tonio, that you are a man…behave as if it were absolutely true and all else will then fall into place.”
He strapped on his sword, lifted his cape onto his shoulders, and glanced once more into the mirror at the young form and face that were his reflected there.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Make up your mind that you are a man, and that is what you
will
be, and damn him who says otherwise.”
That was the way to overcome it. That was the only way, and in this quiet moment before the mirror, he allowed himself to accept all the good that his “father” had once given him. Anger was gone. Hatred was gone. Blind rage had evaporated.
Yet a fear remained, which for all his clarity of mind he could not yet examine. He knew it was there. He felt its presence as surely as one feels the menace of a nearby flame; yet he could not turn to it and acknowledge it.
Perhaps silently, he committed it to the future; he said to himself, I will not think of it and in time, it will leave me alone. It was wound up however with powerful, throbbing memories of Catrina Lisani against the pillows of her bed, of little Bettina, his tavern girl, lifting her skirts in the dark of the gondola. And perhaps most hideously, it had something to do with his mother circling that dark bedchamber, whispering over and over, “Shut the doors, shut the doors, shut the doors.”
At one moment these thoughts coagulated so that he stopped in the very act of leaving this suite of rooms in the
albergo
. He
stood with his shoulders hunched as if he’d been struck an ugly blow. But then his mind emptied itself. These three women vanished.
And the conservatorio loomed above him, nestled in the hills of Naples, with something of the allure of a lover.
I
T WAS THE STILL
quiet of the siesta time when he reached the gates, and he mounted the steps without being seen, soon finding his little room almost as he had left it. He felt the most palpable calm in this place as he looked at his trunk and those few pieces of clothing that someone had so carefully removed from the cabinet and laid out to be taken away by him.
The black tunic was still there. And removing his frock coat, he slipped it on, and, gathering up the red sash from the floor, he put it around his waist and, quietly passing the slumbering dormitory, made his way downstairs again to the door of Guido’s study.
Guido was not resting.
He looked up from the harpsichord with the immediate flashing anger with which he greeted all interruptions. But he was dumbstruck when he saw Tonio standing there.
“Can the Maestro be persuaded to give me another chance?” Tonio asked.
He stood with his hands behind his back, waiting.
Guido did not answer. In fact, his face was so much the picture of menace that for one moment Tonio was made aware of the most violently conflicting feelings for this man. But one thought emerged: this man must be his teacher here. It was unthinkable that he study with anyone else, and when he thought
of Guido walking into the sea to destroy himself, he felt just for an instant the weight of an undeclared emotion that had battered him for twenty-eight days. He closed his heart to it. He waited.
Guido was beckoning to him. He was also shuffling wildly through his music.
Tonio saw a glass of water on a small stand beside the harpsichord and he drank all of it.
When he looked at the music, it was a cantata by Scarlatti, and though he did not know it, he knew Scarlatti.
Guido plunged into the introduction, his somewhat short fingers appearing veritably to bounce on the keys, and then Tonio hit the first note perfectly on pitch.
But his voice sounded huge, unnatural to him, completely out of control, and it was with a tremendous act of will that he forced himself on, up and down the passages which his teacher had written in, the embellishments and graces which he had added to the composer’s score.
Finally it seemed to him his voice was all right; it felt almost good; and when he finished, he experienced an odd sensation of drifting. It was as if a great deal of time had gone by.
He realized that Guido was looking past him. The Maestro di Cappella had come in through the open door and he and Guido were staring at one another.
“Sing this again for me,” said the Maestro, approaching.
Tonio gave a slight shrug. Yet he could not bring himself to look directly at this man. He lowered his eyes and, lifting his right hand slowly, felt the fabric of his black tunic as if he were making some casual adjustment of its simple collar. He could feel it encasing him, rendering him distinct in some way he’d never been, and he could remember in an inarticulate instant all of this man’s harsh condemnation of him.
It seemed another age, and what was said was unimportant.
He looked at the Maestro’s large hands, the hair on the backs of his fingers. He looked at the broad black leather belt encircling his cassock. And he envisioned beneath it, effortlessly, the man’s unmutilated anatomy. And then looking up slowly, he saw the shadow of the Maestro’s shaven beard darkening face and throat.
But the Maestro’s eyes, confronted at last, surprised him.
They were soft and wide with awe and anticipation. And
Guido was looking at Tonio with the same expression. They were both of them locked to him, waiting.
He let out his breath and started to sing. And this time he heard his own voice perfectly.
He let the notes rise, following them in his mind without the slightest effort to modulate them. The simpler, lustier parts of the song came. His voice took wing. And at some indefinable moment, the joy in all its purity was returned to him.
He could have wept then.
Had there been tears to shed, he would have wept, and it did not matter to him that he was not alone, that they would have seen.
His voice was his again.
The song was finished.
He looked out through the cloister at the light flickering in the leaves and felt a great delicious weariness overcoming him. The afternoon was warm. And in the far distance it seemed he heard the soft cacophony of children at play.
But a shadow rose before him. And turning almost reluctantly, he looked into Maestro Guido’s face.
Then Guido put his arms around him, and slowly, tentatively, Tonio gave himself over to that embrace.
Yet it seemed he was remembering some other moment, some other time when he had held someone in his arms, and there had been this same sweet, violent, and concealed emotion. But whatever it was—whenever it was—it was gone. He could not now recall it.
Maestro Cavalla stepped forward.
He said, “Your voice is magnificent.”
E
VEN AS
T
ONIO
unpacked his trunk that first afternoon at the conservatorio (and his family had indeed sent him
everything
that belonged to him), filling the red and gilt cabinet with a few favorite clothes and arranging his books on the shelves of his room, he was aware that the transformation he had undergone on Vesuvius had yet to be really tested.
This was one reason he wouldn’t give up this little room though the Maestro di Cappella had immediately told him he might have an unused apartment on the first floor should he want it. He wanted to see Vesuvius from his window. He wanted to lie in bed at night and see the fire of the mountain against the moonlit sky. He wanted to remember always that on that mountain he had learned what it meant to be completely alone.
Because as the future commenced to make known to him the true meaning of his new life, he needed his resolves to stand by him. There would be moments of acute pain. And he had some inkling, no matter how resigned he felt now, and no matter how appalling had been the pain of the last month, that the worst was yet to come.
And he was right about that.
The little moments of pain came immediately.
They came in the warm sunlight of the afternoon as he lifted from his trunks those brocade and velvet coats he’d once worn to suppers and balls in Venice, as he held up the fur-lined cloak he’d once wrapped around himself in the drafty pit of the
theater as he sat gazing up into the face of the singer Caffarelli.
It was pain, too, that he felt when that night at the evening meal, he took his place among the other castrati, ignoring the shock on their hostile faces.
But all this he bore with the most serene expression. He nodded to his fellow students. He flashed a disarming smile at those who had ridiculed him. He reached out to touch the hair of that little one, Paolo, who had ridden with him from Florence and often approached him in the days afterwards.
And it was with the same apparent calm that he gave up his purse to the Maestro di Cappella.
And again he smiled graciously when told to give up his sword and stiletto. But trembling inside, he refused with a little shake of the head as though he didn’t understand Italian. The pistols, of course, he would give them up. But his sword? No, he smiled. He could not do that.
“You’re not a university student here,” snapped the Maestro. “You do not carouse at will in the local taverns. And need I remind you that Lorenzo, the student you wounded, is still bedridden? I want no more quarrels. I want your sword and your stiletto.”
Again that gracious smile. Tonio was sorry for what had happened with Lorenzo. But Lorenzo had entered his room. He had been forced to protect himself. He could not give up his sword. And he didn’t volunteer the smaller and more useful stiletto either.
And no one could have perceived how astonished he was when the Maestro di Cappella gave in to him.
It wasn’t until he was safe in the privacy of his attic room that he started to laugh over this. He’d expected the injunction “Behave as if you were a man” to be his armor against humiliation. But he had not expected it to work upon others! He was just beginning to understand that what he had brought down from Vesuvius was a mode of behavior. No matter how he
felt
, he would behave as if he did not feel it, and everything would be better.
Of course, he deeply regretted the injury done Lorenzo. It was not that the boy hadn’t deserved it; it was that he might cause trouble later.
And Tonio was still thinking about this when, an hour after
dark, he heard the older castrati in the passage outside, those boys who were responsible for seeing there was order in the dormitory, those who had in the past accompanied Lorenzo into Tonio’s room to harass him.
Now he was ready for them. He invited them in, and offering a bottle of excellent wine which he’d brought from the
albergo
by the sea, he apologized for the lack of cups or goblets. He’d rectify that soon enough. Would they join him for a little drink? He gestured for them to be seated along the side of the bed, and he took the chair from the desk, offering them the bottle again. And then again, because he saw they had enjoyed it.
Actually, they couldn’t resist it.
And all was done by Tonio with such quiet assurance that they weren’t sure they
should
refuse it.
Tonio was studying them for the first time, and while he did so, he commenced talking. In a low voice he spoke just enough of the weather in Naples and of a few peculiarities of the place that the silence didn’t weigh on them.
Yet he was not giving an impression of being talkative because in truth he wasn’t really talkative.
And he was trying to size them up, to determine who, if any, among them owed any loyalty to Lorenzo, who was still in bed because the wound had become infected.
The tallest was Giovanni, from the north of Italy, about eighteen years of age and possessed of a tolerable voice which Tonio had heard in Guido’s study. This one would never perform in the opera; but he was good as a young maestro with the younger boys, and many a church choir would later want him. His limp black hair he wore severely shaped like a pigtail wig with only a string of black silk ribbon. His eyes were soft, uninteresting, perhaps cowardly.