It was early evening. The October carnival gave its faint distant din to the sounds of the night. There was a ball in the great Palazzo Trimani only yards away, and Tonio, alone in the long supper room, his hand on the heavy drape, watched the boats as they came and went, came and went below him.
His mother stood on the dock beneath the window, Lena and Alessandro behind her. Her long black veil was down to her hem, the gauze of it blown back to make a sculpture of her face as she waited for the gondola.
And was he in this house?
The Grand Salon was a sea of pitch darkness.
But as he was savoring the silence and stillness of this moment, he heard the first sounds. Someone moving in the dark, and there came that musky, Eastern perfume, the creak of the door, a heel ever so gently touching the stone floor behind him.
Caught on the open sea, he thought, and the canal shimmered in his vision. The sky was ablaze above the distant Piazza San Marco.
The hair on the back of his neck rose just a little, and he felt the faint pressure of the man near him.
"In the old days," Carlo whispered, "all women wore those veils, and they had about them a greater beauty. It was a mystery they carried with them in the streets, something of the East they carried with them...."
Tonio looked up slowly to see him so very close they might have touched one another. The black of Carlo's coat revealed a slash of glimmering white lace that seemed a dim mirage rather than fabric, and his wig, with its perfect curls above the ears and a rise from the forehead so natural it seemed real hair, gave off a slight shimmer.
He drew near the panes and looked down, that resemblance jarring Tonio now as it did every time he perceived it. In the meager candlelight, Carlo's skin appeared flawless. And the only sign of age in him was those dry lines at the corners of his eyes which wrinkled so easily when there came his long smiles.
And such a smile softened his face now, evincing that irrepressible warmth as if no enmity could ever exist between them.
"Night after night, you avoid me, Tonio," he said. "Let us dine together now. The table is set. The food is ready."
Tonio turned to the water again; his mother was gone; the night for all its plodding little boats seemed empty.
"My thoughts are with my father, Signore," he said.
"Ah, yes, your father." But Carlo didn't turn away. And there was in the shadows the movements of those silent Turkish ones taking up the small flames and touching them to branching candelabra everywhere, on the table itself, on the chests beneath that haunting picture.
"Sit down, little brother."
I want to love you, Tonio thought, no matter what you did. I thought somehow it could be healed.
And bowing his head, Tonio seated himself as so often in the past at the head of the table. It was not even a moment before he realized what he had done, and his eyes rose immediately to confront his brother.
His heart quickened its pace. He studied this smile, this affable radiance. The snow-white wig made Carlo's skin seem all the more dark and the beauty of the high-placed eyebrows was all the more marked as he sat gazing at Tonio with neither rancor nor censure.
"We are at odds with each other," Carlo said. And now his smile melted slowly to a calmer, less deliberate expression. "No matter how we pretend we are not, we are at odds, and almost a month has passed and we cannot even break bread together."
Tonio nodded, the tears standing in his eyes. "And it is uncanny," Carlo went on, "this resemblance between us."
Tonio wondered if a man could feel love when the other gave the silent expression of it. Could Carlo see it in his eyes? And for the first time, he realized, sitting here, very still and unable to speak even the simplest words, that he wanted so to rely upon his brother. Rely upon you, trust in you, seek your help, and yet that is beyond possibility. At odds. He wanted to leave this room now, and he feared his brother's reckless and strange eloquence.
"Handsome little brother," Carlo whispered. "French clothes," he observed, his large dark eyes flickering almost innocently. "And such fine bones, from your mother, I think, and her voice, too, that lovely lovely soprano."
Tonio's eyes shifted deliberately away. This was excruciating. But if we do not talk now, the agony will only grow greater.
"When she was a girl," Carlo said, "and she sang in the chapel, she moved us to tears, did she ever tell you that? Ah, the tributes she received, the gondoliers loved her."
Slowly Tonio looked back to him.
"She was a very siren," Carlo said. "Has no one ever told you?"
"No," Tonio answered uneasily. And he felt his brother observe how he shifted in his chair, and how he looked away again hastily.
"And beautiful she was, too, more beautiful even than she is now...." Carlo dropped his voice to a whisper.
"Signore, best not to speak so of her!" Tonio had said it before he meant to.
"Why, what will happen"--Carlo's voice remained calm--"if I speak so of her?"
Tonio looked at him. His smile was changing, lengthening coldly. There are few things under God more terrible in a human expression than such a smile, Tonio was thinking.
But behind it lay that misery, that agitation, that rage which had found its greatest eloquence in the roar behind closed doors. So the smile wasn't really cold. It was merely desperate and fragile.
Tonio whispered suddenly, "This is not my doing!"
"Yield to me then!" Carlo answered.
So it had come to this.
This moment he had dreaded day in and day out. He would have risen to go, but his brother's hand had come down on his own, and it seemed he was almost pinioned to the table. He felt the sweat break out under his clothes, and the room seemed abysmally cold to him suddenly. He was staring at the candle flames, perhaps letting them burn his eyes, and he knew there was nothing he could have done to prevent this.
"Have you no hunger to hear my side of it?" Carlo whispered. "Children are curious. Have you no natural curiosity?" His face was swelling with anger, and yet that smile held and the voice died away on the last syllables as if fearful of its own volume.
"Signore, your quarrel is not with me. Do not appeal to me."
"Oh, little brother, you astonish me. You are never cowed, are you? I think there is iron in you as there was in him, and the sharp edges of impatience that there are in her. But you will listen to me."
"Signore, you are mistaken. I will not listen to you! You must make your case to those who are appointed to govern us both, our estate, our decisions."
And feeling an overpowering revulsion for his brother, Tonio drew his hand away from Carlo's.
But the face was magnetizing him. It was as if it were more youthful than it should have been, and filled with impetuosity and misery. It was challenging Tonio, it was imploring Tonio, and there was nothing of that "iron" in it, to use his own words, that Tonio had indeed known in his father.
"What do you want of me, Signore?" Tonio said. He had drawn himself up and now he took a slow breath. "Lay it down for me, Signore, what am I to do?"
"Yield to me, I have told you!" Carlo's voice again rose. "Do you see what he has done to me! Robbed me, that is what he has done, and now he seeks to rob me again and I tell you, it will not happen!"
"And how will it not happen!" Tonio demanded. He could feel himself trembling but there was now that exhilaration that overcomes all shrinking. "Am I to invent impediments, lie! Go against my father's will because you have asked me to do it! Signore, there may not be iron in me, I do not know, but there is the blood of the Treschi, and you have so misjudged me I am at a loss as to how I might make your error plain to you."
"Ah, you are not a child at all, are you?"
"Yes, I am, and that is why I am suffering this now," Tonio answered. "But you, Signore, are a man, and must know surely I am not the judge to whom you should make your appeal. I did not hand down the sentence."
"Ah, sentence, yes, sentence!" Carlo's voice was unsteady. "How well yo
u choose your words, how proud your father would have been of you, young, and clever, and yes, full of courage...."
"Courage!" Tonio said more softly. "Signore, you push me to rash words. I don't want to quarrel with you! Let me go, this is hell for me, brother against brother!"
"Yes, brother against brother," Carlo answered, "and what of the rest of this house? What of your mother? Where does she stand in all this?" he whispered, drawing so close that Tonio recoiled, still unable to turn his eyes away. "Tell me!" Carlo demanded. "How is it with your mother!"
Tonio was too amazed to answer.
He was pressed to the back of the chair, staring at his double. That vague feeling of revulsion returned to him. "Your words are too strange for me, Signore."
"Are they? Use your wit, it's sharp enough, you lead your tutors by the nose. Tell me, is she content to live out her life alone in her son's house, a grieving widow?"
"What else can she do?" Tonio whispered.
The smile came back, almost sweet and yet so fragile. There is no true malice in this man, Tonio told himself desperately. There is no malice, not even now. There is monstrous dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction so terrible that it has not yet thought of defeat or bitterness.
"She is...what?" Carlo asked. "Twice your age? And what has her life been to her so far but a penal sentence? She was a girl when she came into this house, was she not? But you need not answer me, for I remember her."
"Don't speak of my mother."
"You tell me not to speak of your mother?" Carlo bent forward. "Is she not flesh and blood the same as you or I? And fifteen years entombed in this house with my father? Tell me something, Marc Antonio, do you find yourself fair when you look into the glass? Do you find in me the same handsomeness you find in yourself? In lesser or greater measure?"
"You speak abominations!" Tonio whispered. "You say one more word to me of her...!"
"Oh, you threaten me, do you? Your swords are toys to me, my boy, and you as yet haven't the slightest shadow of a beard on that handsome face, and your voice is as sweet as hers, or so I'm told. Don't threaten me. I shall say all the words I want of her. And how many words with her would it take to make her rue these years, I wonder!"
"She's your father's wife, for the love of God," Tonio said between his teeth. "You do your violence to me, if you will, I am not afraid of you. But her, you leave alone, do you understand, or child that I am I shall call to my aid those men who will stand by me!"
Oh, this was hell, hell, as surely as the priest or the painter had ever depicted it.
"Violence?" Carlo gave a soft laugh, seemingly sincere, and his face went smooth, his eyes widening slightly. "Who has need of violence? She is a woman still, little brother. And lonely, lonely for a man's touch if she can even remember it. He gave her a eunuch for a lover when she was all but out of her mind. Well, I am no eunuch. I am a man, Marc Antonio."
Tonio had risen. But Carlo was beside him.
"You are the devil in hell as he said you were!" Tonio whispered.
"Oh, did he say that of me!" Carlo cried out. He caught Tonio by the small of his arm and held him. But his face was constricted with suffering. It was hurt he was feeling as he confronted Tonio. "He said I was the devil, did he? And did he tell you what he did to me! Did he tell you what he took from me! Fifteen years in exile. How much can a man bear? Would I were the devil, I would have had the devil's strength in that inferno."
"I am sorry for you!" Tonio freed himself with a violent pull of his arm. "I am sorry for you." They were facing each other, the table behind them. The servants were gone from the room, and the candles gave off their blazing light everywhere. "I swear it before God, I am sorry for you," Tonio said, "but I cannot do anything, and she is as powerless as I am."
"Powerless? Is she? How long can you endure in a house turned against you?"
"She is my mother, she will never turn against me."
"Don't be so sure of that, Marc Antonio. Ask yourself this first, what was her crime for her fifteen years of exile?" He advanced as Tonio moved away from him.
"My crime was that I was born under a different star, of a different humor. He loathed me from the day I was born, and no one could show him the slightest virtue in me. That was my sin. But what was hers that he should deign to make her his child-bride and wall her up alive in this house with an infant her only companion?"
"Get away from me," Tonio said. He could see the dark well of the Grand Salon opening beyond the doorway. And yet he couldn't break loose though Carlo was not touching him.
"I'll tell you what her sin was," Carlo said. "Are you ready to hear it? And then we will see if you can tell me I must not speak of her to you! It was that she loved me, that was her sin, and when I came for her at the Pieta, she went with me!"
"You're lying!"
"No, Marc Antonio..."
"Every word you say is a lie...."
"No, Marc Antonio, nothing I say is a lie. And you know it. You've guessed it. And if you have not, go to that eunuch of yours for the truth, go to your beloved cousin, Catrina. Go to the streets where everyone remembers it. I took her out of that convent in bold daylight because I wanted her and she wanted me, and he, he would not so much as look at her."
"I don't believe you!"
Tonio raised his hand as if he would strike Carlo, but he could no longer even clearly see him. He saw only a blurred shape before him, drawing ever closer, passing in front of the wreaths of candles, now dark, now expressionless.
"I begged him to let me marry her! On my knees I begged. Do you know what he said? Mainland nobility, he sneered, dowerless girl, orphan. He would choose my wife, and a burnt-out shrew he chose for her wealth, for her position, for his hatred of me! 'Father,' I begged. 'Come to the Pieta, see her.' I knelt on this very floor, imploring him.
"And when the worst was done, and he'd sent me away, he took her himself for his bride! Mainland nobility, dowerless, orphan, he married her! He bought her into the Golden Book with his wealth. And for me, he could have done that! For me, but he refused. And banishing me, took her to himself, I tell you! Weep, yes, weep, little brother. Weep for her and for me! For our rash love and rash misadventures, and for how we have both of us paid for it!"
"Stop this, I won't hear it!" Tonio clamped his hands to his ears. His eyes were shut. "If you do not stop, so help me God..." He reached out for the door frame, and finding it, lay his head there, unable to speak another word, unable to stop his helpless crying.
"Come tonight to her door," Carlo said softly behind him. "Listen at the keyhole if you will. She belonged to me then. She will belong to me now. If you do not believe it, ask her!"
He had no mask, no tabarro. He pushed his way through the wet and screaming crowd, the rain sometimes cutting his face as it came in fierce gusts, until he was inside the cafe, and the hot sticky air was all around him. "Bettina!" he whispered. It seemed for the moment she was uncertain, and then pushing her way through shoulders and wet capes, and horrific bauta faces, and clowns and monsters, she came forward, her little black hood standing in a peak over her head, her hands out to clutch him quickly. "This way, Excellency," she said, leading him out into the calle towards the nearby landing.
As soon as the gondola had left the dock, she was in his arms on the floor of the felze, pulling at his vest and his shirt, pushing up her skirts as her legs wrapped around him.
There was the sound of the rain teeming on the water around them; now and then it struck the hollow wooden bridge overhead, now and then it ran streaming fast, with a purpose, through invisible gutters. The boat rocked dangerously, it seemed, under his awkward weight; the felze smelt of dust, of warm flesh, of the smoky perfume between her naked legs where the hair was hot and wet. It made him grit his teeth as he nuzzled his head into it. He felt the silk skin of her thighs against his cheeks, and then her eager little hands tugging at him. That irrepressible giggle in his ears, her breasts so big they seemed to spill into his hands. She tore open his br
eeches; it seemed she flowed out of her blouse and skirt, white and sweet, her fingers stroking him, hardening him and guiding him.
He was afraid she'd laugh when she saw he was a boy and it was dry, but she only urged him again to cover her. He tumbled into her, inside of her again, that explosion in his brain wiping out all time, all loss, all horror.
Even a moment's thought would destroy him.
So his hands sought the hot flesh behind her knees, the wet warmth under her breasts, her rounded calves, and her mouth, her open craving mouth full of boldness and sucking breath and those tiny impetuous giggles. A multitude of tiny crevices, creases, secrets. The water lapped at the sides of the boat, music came and went, thin sounds, heavy sounds. He lay under her at times, feeling her delicious weight, then laid her back down, his hand lifting her by the hot fold of her sex, his tongue on her smooth little belly.
And when he lay finally spent even the sea-green smell of the water was bound up in it, the dank smell of the moss-covered foundations plunging down and down into the canal and the soft earth beneath it that was Venice. It was all bound up with the sweetness and the salt, and her precious laughter, and the slanting silver rain coming through the tiny windows, falling on his face as he clung to her.
Would that it could last forever, would that it could blot out all thought and all pain and all tragedy, would that he could take her again and again, and the world would not come back, and he was not in that house, in those rooms, and listening to that voice; he snuggled down in the dark, covering the back of his head with his hands so she wouldn't hear his crying.
Voices tugged at him.
It seemed they were floating in those tiny, crowded waterways with small windows above, where the laundry sagged from the lines by day, and the garbage lay piled against the quais, and if you looked up, you could see the rats racing along the walls, squat, agile, as if they were actually flying. Cats whined and bawled in the dark. He heard the slosh and the gurgle of the water. And he felt weightless and deliciously quiet, even as she still teased him.
"Love you, love you, love you, love you..."
But those voices again. He lifted his head. The tenor, he would have known it anywhere, and yes, the basso, and the flute and the violin. He rose on his elbow, feeling the boat heave and shift. They were his singers!