Cry to Heaven

  The first ornament he learned was called the Tremolo. It was simply how to sing the same note but with several repeated beats. That is, to take an A, and sing it A A A A A, again with perfect control and perfect fluidity, the sounds melting one into the other yet the beats clear like recurrent explosions.

  When his mind was exhausted with that, when it issued from him with some degree of naturalness, he went on to the trill, which was a warbling of tone from one note to a higher note and back again over and over in one long breath rapidly, as ABABABABABABABA.

  After the long weeks with the Accentus and the long opulent notes of the Esclamazio, this was great fun actually. And the challenge of control, the challenge of power over the voice, was becoming absolutely enthralling.

  The hypnotic falling into the music came sooner each day and seemed to last longer. And sometimes an hour into the evening's lessons, Tonio got a second wind and was singing these exercises with an inspired grace and an inspired selflessness.

  He wasn't there. He had become his voice. The little room was wrapped in darkness. The candle flickered over the scratches on the page before him, and the sounds he heard were unearthly, suggesting a great flashing of abstract form in his mind that made him almost frightened.

  He would go on and on. He would push.

  It was very late.

  Sometimes the Maestro di Cappella came into the room and said that it was time to stop. Tonio would fall onto the bench, rolling the back of his head back and forth against the wall, and Guido might then let loose on the harpsichord. The rich, tinkling sounds flooded the room. And looking at him, Tonio felt his body and soul empty.

  Then Guido would say, "Get out of here." And Tonio, a little shocked and humiliated, would go upstairs to fall asleep immediately.

  It seemed Tonio was never given arias to enjoy anymore, and even his hours of composition were narrowed down so that he might spend the day in exercises.

  But if he should show the slightest strain in the voice itself, Guido would stop immediately. Sometimes Tonio merely rested while other pupils went through their lessons. He would become absorbed in their mistakes, their unchangeable or slowly yielding limitations.

  And sometimes watching these other sessions, it comforted Tonio that Guido seemed to despise these students as much as he despised Tonio. Sometimes it comforted him. Sometimes it made him feel worse, and when Guido struck his students, which was often, this incensed Tonio.

  One day after Guido had beaten little Paolo, the boy who'd come down with them from Florence, Tonio lost his temper, telling Guido flat out that he was boorish, loutish, a peasant done up in a frock coat, a dancing bear.

  Of all the little ones who often aroused his affection, or even his pity, it was Paolo whom Tonio could never quite forget. But that had nothing to do with the injustice of it. Paolo had pushed himself under Guido as far as he could. He was impish by nature, full of laughter and smiles, and it was that more than anything he'd actually done which had earned him the whipping and Tonio was now white with rage.

  But Guido merely laughed.

  He introduced Tonio to the final culmination of all earlier lessons, the singing of passages:

  This was the taking of a line of music and breaking it up into many smaller notes, while at the same time keeping intact the verbal sense of the passage and its underlying thematic purity. Guido used the word Sanctus as an example. For it the composer might write two notes, the second higher than the first. But Tonio must be able to divide the first sound, Sane, into seven or eight notes of varying length, moving up and down but eventually ascending smoothly to the second note or sound Tus, which must then have its seven or eight notes, but terminating with a pleasing finality on that same second note again.

  Practicing these ornaments and passages as Guido had written them out would be the beginning. But then Tonio must learn to pick up the bare bones of any composition and create his own embellishments tastefully and with perfect timing. He must know when to swell a note, how long to hold it, whether to break a passage into notes of unequal time or those of equal time, and how far he might go into ascending and descending intricacies. And he must at all times articulate the words of a cantata or aria so that in spite of all this exquisite ornamentation, the meaning of the words was clear to everyone.

  This was, fundamentally, all that Guido had to teach Tonio. The rest was variation, refinement.

  And normally it took five years for a pupil to master it, the pupil moving on much more slowly from Accentus to Esclamazio to ornaments. But Guido had fed it rapidly to Tonio for obvious reasons: that Tonio not become bored, and because Tonio was proving that he could absorb it.

  He could work on all aspects of his vocal technique at once; and so Guido began to write for him more and more complicated vocalises. He had of course many old books by teachers of the last century as well as the early 1700s. But like most teachers, he wrote his own, knowing what Tonio most needed.

  And Tonio, when he saw that this was the basis of his study and that what lay ahead was the perfecting of his voice through these exercises until it was as strong, as consistent, and as beautiful as a series of perfectly cast bells struck over and over again with exactly the same force, burst into tears with his arms folded under his head at the harpsichord.

  He was now so tired in brain and muscle that he felt he had never before understood either sleep or exhaustion. And he did not care if Guido Maffeo was glaring at him.

  He hated Guido! As much as Guido hated him, and so be it. And all this he had vowed to do for himself, for his own pleasure! He felt terrified suddenly. If he let go of this, what was left?

  He had a swimming feeling as if he were losing his balance, and he was aware suddenly of a substratum of dreams which in the mornings had always been forgotten. A little door threatened to swing open on nightmare and on nothing, and he cried on bitterly, wishing that Guido Maffeo would leave him. Leave him in disgust, go on. Get out of here!

  That was what the Maestro would say in a moment. "Get out of here."

  "My voice is coarse," he said finally. "It's uneven, it swells and cracks of its own accord in my throat. What I've learned so far is simply this: to hear how bad it is!"

  Guido was glowering at him. Then his face went curiously blank.

  "May I go to bed?" Tonio whispered.

  "Not just yet," Guido said. "Go up to your room and get dressed. I'm taking you out with me to the opera."

  "What?" Tonio raised his head. He could scarce believe what he'd heard. "We're going out, we're going to the opera!"

  "If you stop squalling like an infant, we are. Go get dressed immediately."

  3

  TONIO TOOK THE STEPS two at a time. He splashed cold water on his face and commenced dragging out his fine clothes which he had not worn since Venice. In a minute he was dressed in a dark blue brocade coat and his finest white lace, with paste buckle shoes. And strapping on his sword, he was suddenly on the lower floor to Guido's apartments.

  It was then he remembered that he despised Guido. And that he wasn't a child who'd never been to an opera. But he forgot that again immediately. In fact, he felt so happy he couldn't quite understand it. He was almost laughing.

  Then Guido appeared, and Tonio, who was unprepared for anything but his clerical black, was astonished. The Maestro wore a coat of rich chocolate velvet perfectly the same brown as his eyes and his smoothly combed hair, and beneath it a vest of gold silk. In the lights before the door of the conservatorio, the lace at his throat, though nothing as fancy as that of Tonio, was slightly luminescent, and his eyes were so large that they were distracting. Had he evinced the slightest pleasantness, the barest little smile, he would have been handsome beyond doubt. But he was surly and brooding as always.

  Tonio stiffened when he saw his nasty expression. And he followed him in silence to the first busy corner where they hailed a cabriolet to take them to the Teatro San Bartolommeo.

  It was an old building, brilliantly lit and ve
ry crowded, the gaming rooms smoky and noisy, the performance already under way before a restless and chattering audience. This was the theater in Naples for heroic opera--that is, serious opera--and for the aristocracy, which filled the first of its rectangular tiers.

  To Tonio it was a vision. It was as if he had never seen such simple splendors before, never grown up with chandeliers of Murano glass, never seen such a wealth of wax tapers.

  And Guido had definitely acquired a new dignity and polish in his eyes; the man appeared almost a gentleman. He bought both the libretto and the score and led Tonio not up to the noisy boxes, but down to the most expensive seats of the parterre before the footlights.

  The first act was only half over, so the most important arias were yet to come. And as soon as Guido was comfortably settled, he drew Tonio close beside him.

  This is the beast who has snarled at me for over a month, Tonio thought. He was somewhat mystified by it. And could not stop looking at Guido.

  There were two castrati, Guido explained, and a lovely little prima donna, but Guido said it was the old eunuch who would outsing everyone, and not because he had a decent voice, he didn't, but because he had the skill.

  As soon as the castrato began to sing Tonio was enthralled. The voice was silky, full of tenderness, and brought an enormous hand of applause. "That's not a great voice?" he whispered.

  "The high notes were all falsetto because his range isn't that great. But he has such control over the falsetto you didn't notice it. Listen next time, and you'll see what I mean. As for the tempo, it was written for him, and it's slow so that he can take everything on with great care. His middle range is all that's really left to him, and all the rest is pure skill."

  As the evening progressed, Tonio saw this was true. Meantime the little prima donna captivated everyone with her spontaneous and emotional singing, but she had grown up in the streets, Guido said, singing as Tonio sang, and though her high notes gave one chills, she couldn't handle lower notes at all. They got lost in the pounding of the harpsichord. You saw her lips moving and nothing coming out.

  The younger castrato was yet another surprise in that he was a fine contralto, which Tonio had seldom heard in a male. His voice was lustrous; it made you think of velvet, but when he went up high, he became rough.

  Both of these young people could have outsung the older man by virtue of their natural gifts, but neither of them really knew how to do it, and over and over again it was the old castrato who stepped to the footlights and silenced the audience.

  But Guido didn't content himself merely with the singing. He drew Tonio's attention to the score, how various arias had obviously been added for various voices, the little contests that went on between the younger castrato and the prima donna, how the old singer held himself very still when he sang because had he gestured with his unusually long and thin arms he would have looked a fool. The young castrato was handsome, the audience liked this, and he held himself like statues of antiquity in graceful poses. The little prima donna didn't know how to breathe, but she had great warmth.

  By the time the curtain came down, Tonio had had much too much white wine between the acts and was arguing furiously with Guido about whether or not the music was just a blatant imitation of Scarlatti or something legitimately new. Guido said there was originality there, Tonio must hear more Neapolitan composers, and suddenly they were being moved through the lobby by the press of the excited crowd.

  Men and women spoke to Guido; carriages were coming up one by one to the open doors.

  "Where are we going?" Tonio said. He was dizzy, and when the carriage lurched forward he almost lost his balance and realized a woman opposite was laughing at him. She had black hair and a milk-white throat and only the gossamer sleeves over her arms and little dimples on the backs of her hands.

  Tonio did not actually remember entering the house. He was moving through an endless chain of immense rooms all of them splashed with the vibrant colors these Neapolitans seemed to love, gilt and enamel furniture against the walls, the windows draped with tasseled brocade, the chandeliers encrusted with white wax and wreathed with soft light as hundreds of musicians assembled in various orchestras, stroking their shining violins, blowing their golden horns to fill the broad marble hallways with a rippling, almost violent music.

  Trays of white wine floated through the air. Tonio captured one glass in his hands and drank it down, then took another, the wigged servant in his blue satin coat as still as a statue, then off again.

  Suddenly he was lost. He had not seen Guido for the longest time, and he was being accosted it seemed by one woman after another who spoke to him in French or English or Italian. An elderly woman was gliding towards him, and then putting out her long arm as if it were a cane, crooked him in her hand and brought him forward until her dry lips touched his chest: "Radiant child," she said in Neapolitan dialect.

  He disentangled himself, lost his balance, and felt he had to escape from this. It seemed everywhere he looked he saw perfect skin, some little mound of breast over a strip of ribbon. A woman laughing so hard she could not breathe held her ruffled breasts in her hands as if they would fall out of the seams of her printed taffeta dress, and seeing him she made her lips vanish behind a white lace fan on which there was an arc of red roses.

  He was teetering over a billiard table. And then he realized that far away on the edge of that room stood a gaunt, consumptive man, so white of skin that he could all but see his bones beneath his flesh, staring at Tonio and smiling.

  For one moment he did not know who this was, only that he must know. And then he realized it was that vision of death, that living corpse who had stood over him on Mount Vesuvius. He moved towards this man. Ah, yes, it was that consumptive, only done up now in a frivolous coat of gold-threaded brocade which gave him the tawdry look of one of those marble statues in a church which is dressed in real cloth garments by the faithful.

  The man wore a powdered wig, and his eyes, deep-set and full of shadows, moved almost fondly over Tonio as he allowed Tonio to move closer and closer.

  Again a tray of drinks, the fragile glass in his hands. He was right up against the man and they were looking at one another.

  "Alive and well," said the man in a hollow, cracking voice. And instantly, as if in pain, he put his handkerchief to his lips, the rings on his fingers bound to white bones. He backed away, doubling slightly, and it seemed a whirl of skirts opened to envelop him.

  "I want to get out of here," Tonio whispered. "I must get out of here." And when another woman drew close, he found himself giving her such a vicious look that she backed off, affronted. He had turned, stumbling into an empty supper room with a large table set for some hundred persons it seemed, with sumptuous plate and fresh-cut flowers.

  And far down the wall, in one of the deep-set arched windows, stood a lone young woman watching him.

  For just one second he thought she was the little prima donna of the opera, and a wave of despair came over him. He heard the richness of her voice, its lusty peaks, and saw again those little breasts, heaving with her untrained breaths, and felt the despair agitated to panic.

  But this was not the prima donna. This was another young woman with the same fair hair and blue eyes, only she was tall and slight of build and her eyes were very dark, almost smoky. She wore only a plain dress of violet-colored silk, with none of those frills and ribbons he'd seen on the stage, and this dress molded her arms and her shoulders exquisitely. It appeared she'd been watching him for a long time as he stood there, and that before he had come in, she'd been crying.

  He knew he must leave this room. But gazing at her, he felt an anger mingling in him with some drunken passion. She was lithesome, this girl, her hair full of lovely little wisps that softened its calculated curls, giving her an aureole in the candlelight.

  And without meaning to, he was approaching her. It was not only that prettiness that drew him, however. There was something abandoned and uncaring about her. Crying,
crying, he thought, why is she crying? He stumbled. He was very drunk. Before him a candle teetered on the tablecloth and then fell over. It went out with a fragrant wick of smoke rising straight to the ceiling.

  And he found himself before her, marveling that those dark smoky-blue eyes seemed to hold no fear of him.

  No fear. No fear. And why in God's name should she be afraid of him! He felt his teeth clench. He had not meant to touch her. And yet he had reached out.

  And all of a sudden, without reason, fresh tears appeared in her eyes. She was crying helplessly.

  And it was she who laid her head against his shoulder.

  It was an anguishing moment. It was full of terror. Her soft yellow hair smelled like rain against his face, and in the gaping ruffle of her dress, he saw her bosom as it rested against him. He knew that if he did not get away from her, he would strike her, do her some appalling violence, and yet he was holding her so tight surely he was hurting her.

  He lifted her chin. He closed his mouth on hers, and then heard her cry out. She was struggling.

  It seemed he'd fallen backwards. She was far, far away from him, and the look on her face in those shadows was so innocent and so stricken that turning he all but ran out of this room until he found himself in the very middle of the ball, and its great confusion of dancers.

  "Maestro," he murmured, turning this way and that, and when suddenly Guido took his arm he insisted that he had to get out of here.

  An elderly woman was nodding to him. The man beside him was explaining to him that the Marchesa wanted to dance with him. "I cannot..." He was shaking his head....

  "Oh, yes, you can," Guido's low voice rumbled in his ear. He felt Guido's hand in the small of his back.

  "Damn you," he whispered. "I have to get out of here.... You must help me...get back to the conservatorio."

  But he was bowing to this ancient woman, kissing her hand. There was such a sweetness in her expression, the ruin of a lovely face, and a grace even to the withered arm outstretched to him.