And walking through high damp grass, Guido soon found a dry spot where he sank down to lie on his back and pick out those few stars that were now and again visible.
A terrible despair was creeping over Guido.
It was coming like the cold of winter, and he knew it from the past by the shivering that always accompanied it, and the peculiar taste in his mouth that was like sickness.
Only he was not sick. He was whole, and empty, and all of his life was simply meaningless. It had never been more than a mesh of absurd accidents, and there was in it nothing noble and nothing good and nothing that gave comfort.
It mattered not one whit that men from the Venetian State might kill him. It seemed to have no more meaning than anything else that had ever happened to Guido. And without wanting it, he felt himself drawn back to that room in Naples where long ago he had tried to end his life by opening his veins as he drank himself into unconsciousness.
He could remember everything about that room. The painted walls, the border of flowers along the ceiling. And he could remember an obsession in his last moments with the sea, and how pleasantly he had imagined it.
His eyes grew moist. He felt the tears on the side of his face, and above the heavens seemed milky and full of an unwelcome white light that he would have covered over with blessed darkness.
He was hearing now, without even wanting it either, Tonio Treschi's voice rising out of the tangled Venetian alleyways, and he felt a mingling of two places: that room in Naples where he had been so unspeakably happy when he'd thought he would die, and Venice where he had listened to that sublime singing.
And he knew suddenly what underlay this wild, fathomless darkness of soul that threatened to engulf him.
"If this boy does not survive, if he does not somehow overcome the violence done to him, then I am destroyed with him."
It was not very long after that he rose from the bed of grass and walked back to the inn. But he could not go up to the room as yet, and seating himself on a stone step, his head on his arms, he wept silently.
Years had passed since he had shed tears, or so it seemed. Surely years since he had let them flow so copiously.
And what stopped him finally was that he could hear his own crying.
He lifted his face in wonder.
The sky was lighter, the first strands of blue threading its endless field of cloud, and bowing his head, he wiped his tears on his sleeve before rising.
But when he turned and looked up the stone steps that clung so narrowly to the wall, he saw at the top the slender and somewhat fragile figure of Tonio.
The boy was looking down at him. And his soft black eyes never left Guido as Guido came up to him.
"You are that maestro whom I met, are you not?" Tonio asked softly. "The maestro for whom I sang in San Marco?"
Guido nodded. He was studying the white face, the moist lips, the eyes which still had the gloss of illness.
He could hardly endure the sight of this battered and broken innocence. He offered up a silent prayer that this boy would turn away from him.
"And was it for me," Tonio asked, "that you were weeping?"
For a moment Guido didn't speak. He felt his habitual flashing anger; it colored his face and twisted the edges of his mouth, and then suddenly it came to him as clearly as if it had been spoken into his ear that yes, it was the truth, it was for this boy he had been weeping.
But he swallowed and said nothing. He was staring at Tonio in sullen wonder.
And the boy's face which a moment before had been blank and almost angelic assumed a bitter expression that was as brittle as it was frightening. Malice slowly sharpened it, giving a menacing glint to the eyes that caused Guido to look away slowly.
"Well, we must get out of this place," the boy whispered, "we must get on with our journey. I have business which must be attended to."
Guido watched him turn and go into the room. All of the documents were laid out on the table. And the boy gathered them up now and returned them to the Maestro.
"Who were the men who did this?" Guido demanded suddenly.
Tonio was putting on his cloak. He looked up as if already in deep thought.
"Fools," he answered, "at the command of a coward."
2
TONIO SPOKE SCARCELY a single syllable until they reached that great bustling capital of the north, Bologna.
If he felt discomfort, he concealed it, and when Guido urged him to see a physician, as there was always danger of infection, he turned his head resolutely away.
It seemed his face was permanently transformed. It was elongated, the line of the mouth hardened. And the eyes retained that feverish glitter though they were wide and seemingly blind to the unfolding spring of the Italian countryside.
They seemed not to see the fountains, palaces, and teeming streets of this great city either.
But after insisting upon the extravagant purchase of a jewel-encrusted sword, a stiletto, and two pearl-handled pistols, Tonio also bought himself a new suit of clothes and a cloak to go with it. Then he asked Guido politely (he had been polite in everything so far, though never actually obedient or compliant) to find for him a lawyer who had to do with the affairs of musicians.
This was no problem in Bologna. Her cafes swarmed with singers and musicians from all over Europe come here expressly to meet with the agents and impresarios who might find them positions in the coming season. And after a few inquiries they were soon in the offices of a competent lawyer.
Tonio commenced to dictate a letter to the Supreme Tribunal in Venice.
He had accomplished his sacrifice for the sake of his voice, he said, and it was imperative that no one at Venice be blamed for his course of action.
Exonerating his former teachers and all those who had encouraged, him in the love of music, he went on then to exonerate Guido Maffeo and all those connected with the Conservatorio San Angelo, who had not known of his action before it was taken.
But it was foremost in his mind that no blame for this attach to his brother Carlo.
"As this man is now sole surviving heir of our late father yet sound of body and able to marry, it is imperative that he must be absolved from all responsibility for my actions so that he may attend to his duties to future wife and children," Tonio said.
And then he signed the letter. The lawyer, never batting an eyelash at its strange contents, witnessed it, and so did Guido.
A copy was then sent to a woman named Catrina Lisani, with the request that all Tonio's possessions be forwarded to Naples immediately. And would a small dowry be paid at once to a Bettina Sanfredo, serving girl in her father's cafe on San Marco, so she might be properly married?
After this, Tonio retired to the monastery at which they were lodged, and fell down on his bed exhausted.
Often during the night, after that, Guido would wake to find Tonio on the edge of the room, fully dressed and waiting for the morning. And sometimes before midnight, he stirred in his sleep, even cried out, but then he would wake and his face would become as wooden and unreadable as ever.
It was impossible to know the extent of the pain which was sealed inside, though at times it seemed Guido could feel that pain emanating from the boy's still frame as it rested listlessly in the corner of the jolting carriage. At times, Guido wanted to speak, but he could not, and that same despair touched him as it had that night in Ferrara. And yet it humiliated him that this boy had heard him weeping and asked him so openly if the tears had been on his account. And Guido completely forgot that he had never given Tonio any answer.
In Florence, when they at last met those two boys Guido had left there for the return to Naples, Tonio was visibly disturbed by their presence in the carriage. And he seemed unable to prevent himself from staring at them.
Yet in Siena, he bought both children new shoes and capes and ordered them sweets at table. They were shy, obedient boys, one nine years of age, the other ten, and neither dared speak nor move unless told to do so. Yet Paolo, the younger of
the two, had a humorous turn, it was clear, and could not now and then resist a broad smile that always forced Tonio's eyes abruptly away from him. Once when Guido dozed, he awoke to see this boy had nestled in beside Tonio. It was raining then. And lightning broke over the soft, deep green hills, and with each crackle of thunder the boy drew nearer so that at last, without looking at him, Tonio slipped his arm about him. A film descended over Tonio's eyes, and as his fingers clasped this child's leg to hold him firm, it seemed suddenly an uncontrollable emotion might well up in him. But then he shut his eyes, his head to one side as if his neck were broken. And the carriage jolted on under the warm spring rain towards the Eternal City.
But while Tonio seemed blind to all the somber splendor of Rome, he had by the time they reached the Porto del Populo turned his obsessive attention away from the two boys and fixed it upon Guido. His eyes, meantime, had lost nothing of their quiet malevolence. Yet mercilessly they fixed on Guido, his walk, his manner of sitting, even the scant dark hair on the backs of his hands. And in the rooms they shared at night, Tonio watched boldly as Guido removed his clothes, staring at Guido's long and seemingly powerful arms, his heavy chest, his large shoulders.
Guido bore all this in silence.
Yet it began to wear on him, and why precisely he was not certain. His body actually meant little to him. He had performed on the stage of the conservatorio since he was a small boy, costuming, painting, and otherwise draping and disguising himself so that his own peculiarities were rather routine to him. He knew, for example, his heavy frame made him look well in male roles and that his immense eyes if too lavishly painted appeared supernatural.
But nudity, scrutiny, and defects here and there meant nothing to him.
And yet this boy's stare was so bold and so relentless that it commenced to irritate him. One evening when he could endure it no longer, he put down his spoon and looked back at Tonio.
Tonio's stare was so hostile and so constant that for a moment Guido thought, This boy has been driven to madness. Then he realized that Tonio was so intent on looking at him that he did not even realize Guido was returning the look. It was as if Guido were inanimate. When Tonio's eyes did shift, they did so in their own time, only to fix on Guido's throat. Or was it the white linen tie there? Guido had no idea. Now Tonio was staring directly at his hands, and then again right into his eyes as if Guido were a painting.
And the disregard of Guido was so total, so blatant, that Guido felt his temper rising. Guido had, in fact, a terrible temper, the worst in the conservatorio, as any of his students could have testified. And now for the first time it was loosening itself against this boy, and it collected to itself a thousand small resentments.
After all, he had been doing the bidding of this child as if he were nothing more than Tonio's lackey.
His inveterate hatred of any and all aristocracy began to surface, and he realized suddenly that he was confusing everything.
And that Tonio had laid down his napkin and risen from the table.
They were on this night, as they had been all along, provided with the most lavish accommodations the town had to offer--in this case, a wealthy monastery which let large and exquisitely furnished chambers to gentlemen who could afford them.
And Tonio had left their private dining room where the boys still scraped their plates, and had gone out into a narrow, high-walled garden.
For a long time, Guido sat thinking. He was thinking still as he led the boys to bed, and saw them under the covers.
But stepping out into the night, he still did not understand his own anger. He only knew that he resented this boy, resented his disregarding gaze, his eternal silence. He attempted to remind himself of the boy's inevitable pain, his inevitable anguish. But he could not think of this. All along he had prevented himself from thinking of it, because it was simply too terrible to think about in the first place.
And every time his mind had forced him to ask what is happening to this boy now, what does he think, what does he feel, some stubborn little voice in Guido said, Ah, but you have always been a eunuch, you can never know, and all of this with the mock tone of superiority.
Whatever the reason, he felt rage when he stepped into the garden, and saw in the moonlight an immense reclining statue over a shell-shaped pool, and the slender, very straight figure of Tonio Treschi standing before it.
Rome is full of such statues, statues that are three or four times the size of a normal man. It seems they grow in every nook and cranny of the town, against walls, over gates, presiding over an infinite variety of fountains. And though one would think nothing of them in a church or great palazzo, they can sometimes be violently disturbing in a small place, when one comes on them suddenly.
Because at such a moment, one can be overcome with a sense of the grotesque. These statues are giants in these narrow circumstances, and yet they are so lifelike that it seems they might commence suddenly to breathe and then reach out with their immense hands to crush those around them.
The details of the statues impress themselves. One sees the white muscles moving under the marble, the veins on the backs of hands, the indentation on the toenail. But the whole is horrible to look at.
And Guido felt this jarring sensation when he stepped out of the cloister and into this narrow space behind Tonio.
A god reclined against the wall, its enormous bearded face hung forward. And through its fingers, open to the sky, water ran, trickling down to the moonlit surface of the pool beneath it.
Tonio Treschi was staring at its naked chest and at the broad hips that melted into a loose drapery exposing a powerfully muscled leg upon which the giant's full weight rested.
Guido looked away from this monstrous god; he saw the moonlight shattered in the surface of the rippling water. And then he saw out of the corner of his eye that the boy had turned to him. He felt those relentless and greedy eyes moving over him.
"Why do you stare at me!" he demanded suddenly, and before he could stop himself his hand had closed on the loose cloth at Tonio's shoulder.
He could feel the boy's astonishment. The moon revealed his crumpling expression, his mouth slack and then silently, stupidly working.
The hard, bright angles of his young face dissolved in helplessness, in total remorse. And it seemed he would stammer some negation if he could; he started, stopped, and left off, his head shaking.
And Guido too was helpless. He reached out again as if he would touch the boy, but his hand hung in the air, and he watched in awful fear as the boy seemed all over to weaken.
The boy had looked down. He had lifted his hands and he was staring into the open palms of one and then the other. He reached out as if trying to capture something in the open air, or merely to look at his own arms. Yes, he was looking at his own arms, and suddenly there was a rattle in his throat, a groan, half strangled.
Turning to Guido he drew his breath in gasps as if he were a dumb beast that could not speak, his eyes growing wider and wider and more desperate.
And suddenly Guido understood everything.
Yet the boy still gasped, still held up his hands, staring at them, slapping them suddenly to his chest, and that half-strangled groan became a guttural cry growing louder and louder.
Guido reached out, took him in his arms, and held his stiff form with all his strength until he felt it suddenly go limp and silent against him.
The boy who lay so still against his shoulder before being led off silently to bed had uttered one word in Guido's ear. It was "monster."
3
IT WAS THE FIRST DAY of May when they entered Naples, and even the long drive through the green wheat fields did not prepare them for the spectacle of the great sprawling city itself, drenched in sunlight and cascading downhill in a blaze of pastel walls and burgeoning roof gardens to hold the panorama of the clear blue bay in its embrace, the harbor crowded with white sails, Vesuvius sending up its plume of smoke into the cloudless sky above it.
As the carriage
rocked and struggled along, the tireless swarm that was the city's population surrounded it, as if brought to life by the warmth that hung fragrant in the air, carriages whipping to and fro, donkeys blocking the path, vendors crying out their wares, or coming right to the windows to offer ices, snow water, fresh melon.
The driver cracked the whip, the horses straining uphill, and with each turn of the crooked street another vista of land and sea opened magically before them.
This was Eden. Guido had suddenly not the slightest doubt of it, and he was unprepared for the sense of well-being that flooded him.
One could not look on this place with its profusion of leaf and flower, this jagged shore, and that ominous mountain, and not feel joy to the marrow of one's being.
He could see the excitement of the little boys, especially Paolo, the younger one, who leapt right into Tonio's lap, thrusting his shoulders out of the window. But Tonio had also completely forgotten himself. He was straining for a view of Vesuvius at every angle.
"But it's breathing smoke," he whispered.
"It's breathing smoke!" echoed Paolo.
"Yes," Guido answered. "It has been doing that off and on for a long time. And don't pay it so much attention. We never know when it will decide to really show off."
Tonio's lips moved as if saying some private prayer.
As the horses clopped into the stable yard, Tonio was the first to jump down, with Paolo in his arms. And letting the boy go, he followed him immediately into the courtyard. His eyes moved up the four walls that enclosed it, rising as they did over a four-cornered cloister of Roman arches, the whole covered almost entirely with an unruly fluttering green vine. It was alive with small white trumpet-shaped blossoms and the song of thousands of bees.
The din of instruments streamed out of the open doors. Tiny faces appeared at the glass. And the fountain, its worn cherubs stained by time as they clung to their open cornucopia, let loose a generous and muting spray that caught the sun.
Immediately, Maestro Cavalla came out of his office doors and embraced Guido.
A widower whose sons were long gone to foreign courts, the Maestro had a special love for Guido. And Guido had always known it, and he felt a sudden warm rush of feeling for the man now. The Maestro seemed older, was that inevitable? His hair had gone entirely white.