It seemed an eternity he gazed at this luxurious doll before he realized with a start that there could be no women on this stage, this was Domenico!
The Maestro di Cappella was driving home his last instruction. Domenico's dark eyes slipped to one side and opened just a little wider when they saw Tonio, and those pink lips curled with complete sweetness.
But Tonio was too stunned to give any wordless answer. He was studying the shape of this creature, the small waist, the ruffles of pink lace that grew broader and broader as they mounted to the breast, and there the barest little cleavage of the ravishing flesh pressed by the border of pink ribbon. This is impossible, he was thinking.
Then clutching the voluminous white satin skirts in both hands, Domenico moved past the Maestro di Cappella and in front of everyone planted a kiss on Tonio's cheek so that he drew back as if burnt. Everywhere there was laughter.
"Enough of that!" the Maestro said.
Domenico had become a woman! And turning now with the most graceful and subtly flirtatious air, he whispered in a husky tender voice that he was merely assuming his role already, becoming the woman he must play on the stage, of course. Again, laughter.
But Tonio had receded into the shadows. The first backdrop of painted arches had been lowered into place. Against this classic garden most of the action would occur, never mind that it was set in the ancient Greek countryside and all these frock-coated, wigged creatures were rustics!
Giovanni, Piero, and other castrati who had major roles in the performance had assumed their places ready to go on, and their attendants were brushing the powder from their lapels furiously.
Someone said that this was Loretti's big chance, the Contessa had come, and if this went half as well as it should, next year he'd be composing for the San Bartolommeo.
Loretti meantime had come backstage to plead with Domenico to follow his beating of time, and Domenico had nodded graciously.
Now Loretti was back at the harpsichord. The house lights were down with only scattered attendants at the doorways holding single tapers. Someone fell in the backstage shadows, the curtain shivered on its ropes, and the orchestra commenced with all the violent brilliance of a great gathering of musicians in a royal theater.
It seemed the night was one of the longest Tonio had ever endured, with all manner of mishaps and over and over again the magic of perfection before the footlights, as the presence of an audience pulled this frantic little band of talented boys together. The arias rose and fell splendidly over the tinkling keyboard continuo, Domenico's voice soaring like the pipe of a god in a mythic forest. The spotlights bathed him in ethereal light, he made his exits with extraordinary grace, and time after time, threw his beaming smile at Tonio.
Tonio's head was aching when at last he stepped onto the stage, and swept up with the grandest excitement, felt to the marrow of his bones that he was now part of this magnificent illusion. He could hear his voice amplified by the voices around him, and seeing only the barest shimmer of the audience he felt its presence everywhere in the gloom, and the applause that followed this finale was a veritable thunder.
The elation could not have been more shared had they all locked hands before the curtain. Bows were taken again and again. Someone whispered that Domenico's fame was made. He had sung better than anyone currently on the stage in Naples, and as for Loretti, look at him!
Maestro Cavalla pushed behind the curtain embracing his singers one by one until he came to Domenico. He made as if to strike this exquisite girl who cowered with a soft husky ripple of laughter.
They were all invited to the Contessa's now, he said, to her house, now, now, all of them. The Maestro took Tonio by the shoulders and kissing him on both cheeks, took a bit of paint from his face, and said: "See, you have this in your blood now, you'll never recover from it."
Tonio smiled. The applause was still ringing in his ears.
But he knew that he must not, he could not, go with them to the house of the Contessa.
*
For a moment, it seemed he wouldn't get away. It surprised him that so many others wanted him to join them. Piero said, "You must come," and whispered that Lorenzo would not be with them.
But removing the blue ribbon from his sword, Tonio hurried off to leave by the stage door to the garden, when someone beckoned to him from a dressing room. There was only a little light. He felt in his coat for his stiletto. "Come in here!" came the whisper again.
And he advanced very slowly, pushing the door wide with his left fingers.
A candle burned on either side of a big standing mirror in this room, and all about it were elaborate dresses on hooks, wigs on their blind wooden heads, and heaps of paste buckle slippers. It was Domenico who had summoned him, and he quickly shut the door and drew the latch on it.
Tonio's fingers didn't leave the handle of his stiletto. But there was no one else in the room, he soon saw that.
"I have to leave now," he said, averting his eyes from that tiny fold of flesh that gave the perfect illusion of a woman's bosom.
Domenico appeared to lie against the door, and in the shadowy dark, his face was luminous and delicate. When he smiled the hollows of his cheeks deepened, the light played more beautifully on the bones, and when he spoke, it was that woman's voice again, husky and stroking.
"Don't be afraid of him," he whispered.
Tonio realized he had taken a step backwards. His heart was making a tumult inside of him.
"Afraid of whom?" he asked.
"Lorenzo, of course," said the roughened velvet voice. "I won't let him do anything to you."
"Don't come any closer!" Tonio said sharply. Again he took a step backwards.
But Domenico only smiled, his head falling a little to the left so that the white powdered curls spilled over his shoulder onto that flaring breast.
"You mean I am the one you're afraid of?"
Tonio looked away in confusion. "I have to leave here," he said.
Domenico let out a long beguiling breath. And then suddenly he put his arms around Tonio; he pressed the soft ruffles of his breast against Tonio. Tonio stumbled back and found himself against the mirror, the candles flickering on either side of him. He reached back for the glass, his hands down, to get his balance.
"You are afraid of me," Domenico whispered.
"I don't know what you want!" Tonio said.
"Ah, but I know what you want. Why are you afraid to take it?"
Tonio was going to shake his head but he stopped, staring into Domenico's eyes. It was inconceivable that anything of a man existed under this froth, this magic. And when he saw the lips moist and parting and drawing near to him, he shut his eyes, straining away. Surely he could knock this creature to the floor with one blow, and yet he was shrinking back as if he might be burned here!
But he felt the length of Domenico against him, the curve of his thigh under the satin skirt, and then Domenico's hand reaching for the front of his breeches.
He almost struck Domenico. But Domenico's face touched his, he felt the eyelashes against him at the same moment Domenico's hand found his sex and, stroking it, brought it to life.
Tonio was so shocked that he almost killed it.
Again he let his eyes close. And when Domenico kissed him, he felt his passion collecting, and then Domenico's hand opening the cloth, freeing his sex to go its full length as Domenico appeared to look down and utter some little oath under his breath, and then turning his face up again he kissed Tonio roughly, parting his lips, drawing the breath out of him, and giving it back as his hands shaped and hardened what they held so tightly.
Tonio couldn't stop himself from going up under the dress and when he felt the hard small organ there, he drew back as if he'd touched something hot, and again Domenico kissed him.
In a moment, they were both of them on their knees, and then Domenico lay under Tonio on the stone floor and was offering himself face up as if he were a woman.
It was tight, oh, so tight, and
so very like a woman, tighter even at its very mouth and rough, so that he gritted his teeth and gave an awful moan between them. He thrust harder and harder until at last he'd felt the pinnacle and then he lay there shuddering.
He was staring down at Domenico. He didn't remember drawing away, but he was sitting against the mirror, his knees to one side just looking at the little girl on the floor who now rose as languidly and gracefully as she did everything else until she was standing over him.
He was too dazed to speak. And it had all happened so quickly, the same as before, there was no difference! He felt a mindless urge to rise and take the figure in his arms again, to crush it with kisses, eat at it with kisses.
To rip that little ribbon away from the breast and see what was there!
But Domenico had already pulled loose the clasps of the dress and let it fall around him. At the sight of the gossamer chemise Tonio winced. And then it too fell to the floor and the great white wig was lifted and laid aside as Domenico shook out his moist black curls, tossing them free in a rather mannish, head-forward gesture.
Tonio was staring wide-eyed at him. His body so not a woman's body, no, not at all, and yet it was certainly not the body of a man either.
The chest was flat; only the size of the lungs gave it its full shape and the skin as everywhere else was beautiful. And the sex itself was a short but rather thick penis, hard now, and eager for what it could get, obviously.
But the most mystifying thing of all was that the dark hair around it had the shape of a woman's hair, not a man's, which grows wildly up onto the belly. Rather it was straight across the top as if it had been shaved with a razor, and therefore formed a dark inverted triangle exactly like the hair of a woman.
But all of the body engrossed him, the lovely skin and the slender graceful legs, the beautiful face with its remnants of paint and the full dark hair falling down like that of those large marble angels.
This creature came down now on his knees.
Tonio turned away.
"Do you think I want of you what you don't have to give?" Domenico whispered. "Take me again, and this time on the hard floor with nothing under me but your hand," he said, and he lay down on his face, drawing Tonio on top of him.
Tonio drew up, looking at the small tight buttocks under him. He was engulfed by the memory of that tight opening, its little rough mouth that was almost too tight and the warmth inside of it. And suddenly he collapsed on the naked figure, feeling its nakedness against his rough clothes, the bare flesh of the neck under his teeth, as Domenico drew his right hand down under the smooth belly and placed that thick, hard sex in it.
Tonio felt himself stiffen, gasp. He was inside of the boy again and he rode him with one vicious thrust after another. He felt his hand close on that sex, abusing it, working it as if he meant to break it off as the boy moaned against the cold floor, and when Tonio felt the climax again, Domenico shuddered beneath him.
Tonio fell to one side and lay on his back, exhausted.
When he opened his eyes, Domenico was fully dressed, with his scarlet cape over one shoulder.
"Come on, now, they're calling for us!" He smiled. "You must get the paint off your face, hurry."
Tonio scarcely heard him. It seemed he was a woman in the clothing of a man; and before he had been a man in the clothing of a woman. Rising on his arm, Tonio tried to speak but he could say nothing.
The tumult in his mind was not thought. And what he was feeling was not happiness. It was the most overpowering relief that he had ever known, and quietly he did anything that Domenico told him to do.
In the dark of the carriage, all the way to the house of the Contessa Lamberti on the road to Sorrento, he devoured Domenico with kisses. And when Domenico reached into Tonio's clothes, when he felt that scar behind his sex, Tonio stopped in the act of hitting him. He stopped because it was enough to crush him in both hands like something that wanted and needed to be crushed and to press him down again and take him again even as the carriage rocked steadily behind the thin beams of its lanterns.
It was very late that night that Tonio again saw the young fair-haired woman he'd encountered at the Contessa's house before, in the empty supper room. She was not sad now as she had been then. In fact, she was laughing as she danced, conversing with her partner. Her sharp little shoulders, so nicely rounded for all their straightness, gave her an almost jaunty grace as she moved, lifting her blue skirts all of a piece, and her yellow hair was full of neglected white flowers.
He looked away, however, when their eyes met. And wished that, tonight of all nights, she had not been here. Yet he could not prevent himself from glancing back to her.
The dance had stopped; a tall, white-wigged gentleman was whispering in her ear, and again her little face became radiant with laughter. He had not remembered she had such a lovely neck, or that her breasts had spilled so beautifully into her bodice, and when he saw that snug blue fabric shaping her little waist, he felt his teeth clench in spite of himself. He fancied he could hear her laugh through all these mingled voices. But then she looked shyly away, falling into a seemingly instant preoccupation. She looked as she had before, almost sad, and be wanted desperately to talk to her.
He at once imagined them alone again in some place he didn't know, as he told her he was neither coarse nor mean, and he had never meant to insult her. He was damned fortunate, he thought, that he did not have two men looking to do him harm, Lorenzo and this girl's father.
It seemed Domenico sought him out then, just as these thoughts were taking their worst hold, and seeing that beaming face so close to his, feeling himself in possession of this dazzling presence which others desired, he felt again the quick surge of his passion. He could have taken Domenico on the floor of this place. He wanted nothing more than some dark chamber and the danger of discovery.
But he saw that pretty girl again and again. He saw her sometimes sitting alone on the edge of a tapestried chair, her hands idle in her lap, her face abstracted and serious.
And there was about her that negligent air he'd sensed before. It was as if you could take her up, carry her off, and she would never have the presence of mind to protest it. He saw himself raking loose all that blond hair, wiping back the loose strands from her forehead. He imagined it tumbling down around the irresistible slope of her shoulders, and then he saw himself gathering up all those curls again, the better to kiss her neck. This was maddening.
But once after a long moment, she looked up at him directly. He was a great distance away, but it was as if she'd known all the while he was watching her. He could see the dark blue of her eyes, and instead of turning away, he stood transfixed, wishing to God he had never seen her.
5
IN THE WEEKS that followed it seemed to Tonio that surely Guido knew of his little "affair" with Domenico. Yet Guido gave no real sign of it.
He was as cold as ever, but the stunning velocity of Tonio's progress absorbed him so completely that there was less time for gratuitous meanness. Both of them were lost in their work for hours at a time, and Tonio's schedule had hardened into that of a senior student.
He sang for two hours, then two hours more before a mirror, watching his stance, his gestures, just as if he were on the stage, then after the noon meal devoted himself to librettos, practicing his enunciation. More singing for one hour. Then counterpoint, and improvisation. He must be able to pick up any melody and properly ornament it on his own. He worked furiously at the blackboard, Guido correcting his work before he was allowed to sing it.
Another hour of composition, then the day ended with singing. In between there were breaks during which he sang with the conservatorio choir, or worked in the theater on the next opera that would be performed at the end of the summer.
And then there were those afternoons when the boys went out to perform at various churches, and to walk in processions.
The first time Tonio willingly joined the double rank of castrati proceeding slowly through the st
reets it was as bad as he had expected. Some part of him, proud and perhaps always suffering bitterly inside, could not accept that he was being paraded before these gaping crowds as a costumed gelding.
But each time he conquered this misery, his will was strengthened. And when he pierced through his contempt for what he saw, he beheld all manner of new aspects of what was happening to him. He saw awe in the eyes of those who banked the streets; they looked to the older castrati with reverence, straining to hear those polished voices, even memorizing the features of individual faces.
The hymns on the summer air, the church itself full of light and perfume, all of this gave forth its sensual brilliance. And finally lulled with small thoughts, or wrapped in the perfecting of his own singing, Tonio felt some vague enjoyment of it all. In these gilded churches, full of lifelike marble saints and glimmering candles, he knew moments of serene happiness.
But the feeling persisted that Guido knew of his nightly hours with Domenico and that Guido did not approve of it.
Actually it was Tonio who did not approve of it. Night after night he came upstairs to find Domenico in his rooms, no matter what the hour. Domenico was always fresh, fragrant with some spiced cologne, his hair undone on his shoulders. He would rise from sleep on Tonio's bed, his body so warm that at times it seemed he must be in the grip of a fever. But the fever was simply desire. He offered his lips, he offered his naked limbs, he did not care what Tonio did to him.
Their coupling was always rough. It had the outward form of rape, and sometimes the language of rape, and sometimes a mock struggle beforehand. Tonio would rip away the lace shirt, the breeches. He would run his hands over Domenico's skin that had the resilience and perfection of a baby's. Then he would slap Domenico if he chose, or force him up to be raped on his knees as if he were praying.
And finally after much persistence, Domenico lured him into the most delicious play beforehand. Going down between Tonio's legs, he suckled him, devoured him, emitting his little moans as if this act--it was inconceivable to Tonio--were enough to satisfy him.