Cry to Heaven

  Sadness, that was it. He pulled on his boots, slipped on his heavy cape, and went in search of the singer.

  What he found astonished him, but not entirely.

  Following the little band of serenaders into a tavern he soon saw that this was a boy who was almost a man, a tall, lithe, angelic child with a man's bearing. He was rich: he wore the finest Venetian lace at his throat, and on his fingers were garnets set in heavily worked silver. And those around him, full of affection and doting, called him "Excellency."

  I am alive, Tonio thought. I am in a room. People were moving, talking. And if he was alive, he could stay alive. And he'd been right, Carlo could not do this to him, not Carlo. With an enormous effort he managed to open his eyes. The darkness came rolling back over him, but he opened them again and saw the shadows slipping up the walls and across the low ceiling as these people talked.

  That voice he knew, it was the bravo, Giovanni, who was forever at Carlo's door, and he was saying something in a low, threatening voice.

  Why hadn't they killed him already? What was going on? He did not dare move until he was ready to make his move, and through the slits of his eyes he could see this gaunt, dirty man holding some sort of valise in his hands who was saying:

  "I will not do it! The boy's too old."

  "He is not too old." The bravo, Giovanni, was losing patience. "Do as you're told, and do it well."

  What were they talking about? Do what? The bravo named Alonso was at his left side. There was a door behind the hollow-cheeked one who said now:

  "I will have no part of this," and commenced backing towards that door. "I'm not a butcher, I'm a surgeon...."

  But Giovanni had taken him roughly and shoved him forward until his eyes fixed on Tonio. "Noooo..."

  Tonio rose up, just as Alonso's hands came down to hold him, his momentum heaving him forward so that he knocked the gaunt man out of his path. The whole room blazed before him as he struggled, kicking out with both feet as he was lifted off the floor. He saw the valise fly open, he saw the knives dropping out of it, he heard that man mumbling some frantic prayer. Then he had a man's face in his hand and he was gouging it while his right fist pounded into the man's middle, knocking him back. Things broke around him, there was the splitting of wood, and suddenly he swung round free, falling because he hadn't expected it. The rain was coming down on him, he'd gotten away, he was running!

  Moist earth gave under his feet, rocks cut through his boots, and it seemed just for an instant he might win, the night would swallow him, conceal him. But even then he heard them pounding down on him.

  He was caught up again, he was growling, screaming. They were carrying him back into that room, a man's weight crushing him down on the pallet.

  He sank his teeth into muscle and hair, and convulsed with all his strength, as he felt his legs forced apart, hearing the cloth rip even before the cold air touched his nakedness.

  "NOOOO!" he was roaring between clenched teeth, and then the roar broke loose of all words, inhuman, immense, blinding him, deafening him.

  And with the first cut of the knife he knew the battle was lost and he knew just what they were doing to him.

  *

  Guido saw that the sky over the little town of Flovigo was now growing a pale yellow. He lay as if dead, watching the rain catch just enough of this light to become a visible veil over the field that tilted away from his window.

  There was a knock at the door. He was not prepared for the excitement with which he rose to answer it.

  There stood that man who had spoken to him in the coffeehouse in Venice. He shouldered his way into the room and, without saying a word, opened a leather packet that contained several documents.

  Turning from right to left, he made a short exasperated sound to see there was no candle lit and, drawing near the wet window, examined each of the papers with the scrutiny of someone who can neither read nor write. Then he gave them to Guido along with another packet.

  Guido recognized the packet immediately. It contained all his letters of introduction from Naples and he had not even known it was missing. He was furious.

  But he turned his attention to the documents. All in Latin and signed by Marc Antonio Treschi, they declared his intention to submit to castration for the preservation of his voice, absolving anyone and everyone for complicity in his decision. The physician was unnamed for his own protection.

  And in the last, addressed to his family, of which the paper in Guido's hands was only a copy, was spelled out clearly the boy's intention to enroll at the Conservatorio San Angelo in Naples under the Maestro Guido Maffeo.

  Guido stared at this in stupefaction.

  "But I have not instigated this!" Guido said.

  The bravo only smiled. "There's a carriage waiting to take you south of here, and money enough for a change of horse and driver whenever you wish, to Naples," he said. "And this is the boy's purse. He's rich, as I told you. But he won't see another zecchino until he is enrolled at your conservatorio."

  "The family must know I had nothing to do with this!" Guido stammered. "The Venetian government must know I had nothing to do with it."

  The bravo uttered a short laugh. "Who is going to believe that, Maestro?"

  Guido turned his back on the man suddenly. He glared at the documents.

  The bravo drew up beside him like the bad angel.

  "Maestro," he said, "if I were you, I would not wait until this boy awakens. The opium given him was very strong. I would take him now and get away from here. I would get as far from the border of the Venetian State as fast as possible. And, Maestro, take care of the boy. He is the only one who can exonerate you."

  Guido stepped into the small house where Tonio slept. He saw the blood streaking Tonio's face, the mouth and throat livid with bruises. Then he saw that Tonio's hands and feet had been bound with the coarsest hemp rope. His face appeared lifeless.

  Taking a step backwards, Guido let out a long low moan. His eyes rolled up in his head, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. The moaning went on as if he were powerless to stop it. Then it caught in his throat as if in a wave of nausea. He stared at the blood-stained mattress. He stared at the knives that lay in the straw and the dirt of the floor like so much debris, and shuddering all over, he felt the moans rising out of him again.

  When at last he was quiet, he was alone in this room with Tonio, the bravo had gone, and the door stood open to a town so still that it might have been uninhabited.

  He drew near the bed. The boy so resembled a corpse that for a long moment Guido could not bring himself to place his hand before Tonio's open mouth to feel his faint breathing.

  But the boy was alive. The skin was moist and feverish.

  Then Guido laid back the torn cloth and looked at the mutilation.

  The scrotal sac had been gashed, its contents cut out, the wound crudely cauterized. But it was a small wound, the operation had been done in its safest manner, and there was no swelling. In time the sac would wither to nothing.

  But as his fingers drew back from this, Guido's body convulsed with yet another and obvious discovery.

  He stared at the boy's organ as it lay in repose and saw that it had gained its first inches of manhood.

  A sharp terror seized him, even in the midst of the blatant horror of this room, the blood-smeared bruised boy, the leering bravo who hovered beyond the open doorway.

  Guido did not understand the human body. He did not understand the mysteries that had defeated him when his own voice was lost on the very threshold of greatness. He knew only that mingled with this monstrous violence, there was perhaps another appalling injustice.

  And slowly, he touched the sleeping boy's white face, probing for the slightest roughness of a man's beard.

  But he found none.

  Nor was there hair on the chest. And shutting his eyes, Guido invoked with faultless memory the sound of that high clear voice he had heard so magnificently amplified under the domes of San Marco.
>
  It was clean, it was perfect.

  And yet here lay the first evidence of manhood.

  Behind him, the bravo stirred in the door. He filled it with his massive shoulders so the light died and nothing could be seen of the features of his face, as his voice came again low, full of menace.

  "Take him to Naples, Maestro," he said. "Teach him to sing. Tell him if he doesn't stay there, he'll starve, as he will get nothing from his family. And teach him furthermore to give thanks that he left with his life, which he will surely lose should he ever return to the Veneto."

  6

  AT THE SAME HOUR in Venice, Carlo Treschi was being roused from his bed by a frantic Catrina Lisani, who had in her hands a long and elaborate letter from Tonio in which he confessed his intention to submit himself to the knife for the sake of his voice, and enroll himself in the Neapolitan Conservatorio San Angelo.

  Messengers were at once dispatched to the Offices of State, and by noon every government spy in Venice was searching for Tonio Treschi.

  Ernestino and his band of singers were arrested.

  Angelo, Beppo, and Alessandro were summoned for questioning.

  By sunset, news was out in all the quarters of Venice of the "sacrifice" made by the vagabond patrician for his voice, it was the talk of the town, and one physician after another was hauled before the Supreme Tribunal for questioning.

  Meantime, no less than seven different patrician men and women confessed to having wined and dined the young maestro from San Angelo in Naples who had asked repeatedly about the patrician street singer.

  And Beppo, in a flood of tears, finally confessed to having brought the man together with Tonio at San Marco. Beppo was at once imprisoned.

  Carlo, with heartfelt tears and a raw eloquence, blamed himself for this appalling turn of events because he had not curbed his brother's unwise and extreme addiction to music. He had not understood the danger in it. He had even heard of this meeting between Tonio and the maestro from Naples and foolishly discounted it.

  He appeared inconsolable as he murmured these accusations against himself before his interrogators, his face swollen from weeping, his hands trembling.

  And all of this was very genuine, because at this point he was beginning to wonder if all this was going to work and he was absolutely terrified.

  Meanwhile, Marianna Treschi attempted to throw herself from a window of the palazzo into the canal, and had to be restrained by the servants.

  And little Bettina, the tavern girl, wept as she described how neither food nor drink, nor sleep, nor the pleasure of women, could keep Tonio from singing.

  By midnight, neither the maestro from Naples nor Tonio had been found, and police were in all the small towns around Venice, dragging from bed any physician who might have ever been connected with the castration of singers.

  Ernestino had been freed, now to tell everyone how concerned Tonio had been over the imminent loss of his voice, and the coffeehouses and taverns were alive with talk of nothing else, including the boy's talent, his beauty, his recklessness.

  In the early hours of the morning when Senator Lisani finally came into his house, his wife, Catrina, was hysterical.

  "Has everyone in this city gone mad to believe this!" she screamed. "Why haven't you arrested Carlo and charged him with the murder of his brother! Why is Carlo still living!"

  "Signora..." Her husband sank wearily into his chair. "This is the eighteenth century and we are not the Borgias. There is no evidence here of murder, nor any crime, for that matter."

  Catrina began to scream uncontrollably. She finally managed to articulate that if Tonio wasn't found alive and well by noon tomorrow, Carlo was a dead man. She would see to that herself immediately.

  "Signora," her husband said again, "it is true that in all likelihood the boy is dead or gelded. But if you take it upon your head to relieve Carlo Treschi of his life for this, then you take upon yourself a responsibility for all eternity which no one among my fellow statesmen will share with you: the responsibility for the extinction of the House of Treschi."

  PART III

  1

  THEY REACHED FERRARA before nightfall, and Tonio had not regained consciousness. Jolted by the carriage as it sped over the fertile plain, he opened his eyes from time to time but they appeared to see nothing.

  Guido carried him at once to a bed in a small inn on the outskirts of the city. He bound his hands. And felt of his forehead.

  A stand of shivering green poplars screened the small, deep-cut windows of this place. And the rain commenced to fall before sunset.

  Guido got a bottle of wine. He set one candle on the stand by Tonio's head, and seating himself across from the foot of the bed, he waited.

  Some time during the early evening, he dozed.

  And when he opened his eyes, he did not know why he had awakened. For a moment, he thought he was in Venice. Then everything that had happened came back to him.

  He squinted in the gloom at the tiny aureole of the candle. And then he let out a gasp.

  Tonio Treschi was seated against the wall, his back to the corner, his eyes two glittering slits in the darkness. How long he had been awake, Guido couldn't guess.

  But he felt that he was in the presence of danger. He said in Italian, Drink some wine. But the boy did not answer him. Guido saw then that the boy's hands were untied, and that the cloth sash he had used to tie them lay on the floor.

  The boy's eyes never moved from Guido for an instant. They were shot with red, narrow, a deep purple bruise distorting the expression into utter malevolence.

  Guido drank a swallow from the pint cup at his side. Then he drew the documents out of his valise and laid them on the rough white blanket before Tonio.

  The eyes moved slowly down to gaze at the Latin lettering, but the boy did not read the documents, he merely looked at them.

  Then he looked up at Guido.

  And he moved so fast in rising off the bed that he had thrown Guido back against the wall before Guido even realized what had happened. His hands were on Guido's throat, and it took all of Guido's strength to throw him backwards. He gave him a forceful blow to the head. And the boy, obviously groggy and unable to defend himself, collapsed, resting on his hands, his body trembling, his face flushed as he shut his eyes.

  He did not resist when Guido slammed him back against the wall. His lips opened so slowly that it was as if he were again losing consciousness.

  Guido gripped his shoulders with both hands. He was looking into the eyes of the devil; or into the eyes of madness.

  "Listen to me," he said under his breath. "I had nothing to do with what was done to you. The physician who cut you is most likely dead. Those who killed him would have killed me had I not agreed to take you out of the Veneto. They would have killed you also. They as much as said so."

  The boy's mouth was working as though he were chewing the inside of it, gathering the saliva into it.

  "I don't know who these men were. Do you know?" Guido asked.

  The boy shot such a spray of spit into his face that Guido let him go and stood with his hands over his eyes for an instant.

  When he looked at his hands he saw they were stained with blood.

  Guido stepped backwards. He settled into the flat wooden chair in which he'd been sitting before, and felt the back of his head rest against the plaster.

  The boy's eyes did not change, but his body which appeared almost luminous in the dark had commenced a violent trembling. Finally it was a shuddering.

  When Guido rose to put the blanket up around him, Tonio drew back hissing something in the Venetian dialect which sounded like Do not touch me.

  Guido shrank back again and it seemed for one solid hour he sat still watching this boy who never once altered his expression. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. And then finally the boy's weakness and sickness overcame him, and he slid down against the mattress.

  He could not resist when Guido brought the cover up over him. Nor did it
seem he could protest when Guido lifted his head and told him to drink the wine given him.

  When he lay back down, his eyes were like two pieces of glass, and they moved only a little now and then over the ceiling as Guido talked to him.

  Guido took his time. It was silent in the inn, and the stars appeared only now and then, brilliant and tiny beyond the shifting shadows of the poplars. And in a low, measured voice, Guido described the man who had approached him in Venice, the men who had taken him all but forcibly to Flovigo. Then he described the papers that bore Tonio's signature.

  Without comment, he explained carefully how he himself had been implicated in the matter, and how these men had played upon this to force him to take Tonio out of the Venetian State. And lastly he described to Tonio the carriage which was his, and the purse, and that if Tonio so wished, Guido would take him to the Conservatorio San Angelo.

  This was Tonio's choice, he explained. But then he paused, and finally in a half murmur confided the bravo's admission that Tonio would receive no further support if he did not go to the conservatorio and stay there.

  "Nevertheless you are free to go with me or do as you wish," Guido said. The purse was heavy.

  At this the boy turned his head and shut his eyes, and the gesture seemed such an eloquent plea for silence that Guido said nothing after that.

  He stood against the wall, his arms folded, until he heard the boy's breath become even.

  All madness had drained from the face; it lay softened and white against the pillow. The mouth was again a boy's mouth, perfectly molded and yet supple. But it was the faint light playing on the exquisite bones of the face that revealed its greatest beauty.

  The light touched the line of the jaw, the high cheekbones, the smooth plane of the forehead.

  Guido drew closer. And for a long time he looked at the boy's lean limbs, released in sleep, and the one hand that lay half closed on top of the cover.

  The forehead was warm now. The boy did not even stir when he touched it.

  And slipping out the door, Guido went down into the open field beneath the window.

  The moon was covered with clouds. The town itself showed no lights to the sky from this vantage point.