She took the frock coat from him and laid it almost lovingly aside, her hand stroking the fabric as though hinting of its value to one who would buy it. But she had saved her most adoring gesture for the clothes she would help him put on.
"The breeches, too, Signore. It is important." She gestured, sensing his resistance. "You must think of me as your mamma in these matters. You see, to carry yourself as a woman, you must feel like a woman underneath it all."
"Not a centaur, Signora?" he asked under his breath. "Ready at any moment to trample my ruffles underfoot and wreak havoc on the tender virgins of the front row?" He was trembling.
She laughed. "You have a clever tongue, Signore," she said, taking his stockings and his slippers. He took a long slow breath, his eyes half closing.
And then he stood still, feeling his nakedness as if the air were cool when it was not. And when she drew near, she touched him as if he were as fine as the fabric, drawing the hooped petticoat with its wide paniers around him, and tying the ribbons in the back. He let it rock to and fro as she dropped the underskirts over it. Then came the voluminous violet silk, full of tiny pink flowers. Perfect, perfect. And then the full lace blouse, which she deftly buttoned down the front.
Now she slowed in her gestures; she seemed to sense this padded bodice, this armor, was a crucial step. It would fit over his shoulders, its darker violet sleeves coming down just to that spill of ruffle. And then she held it up, letting him pass his arms through it, and closing it first at the waist.
"Ah, but you are the answer to my prayers," she said as she fastened the hook. For the first time he felt the whalebone stays sewn into it, he felt it confine him, and yet it was cool and smooth against his skin, and as she brought it tighter and tighter up to his chest, he felt the oddest sensation, almost of pleasure, as if this thing were supporting him, as if he were being propped by it as well as shaped by it.
Her little hands hovered for a moment on the bare skin of his throat, the smooth flesh descending to the low ruffle that went straight across his chest. And then she said, "Allow me, Signore," in the most confidential whisper, and slipping these rough warm hands inside the fabric she had just tightened, she shaped the flesh there, lifting it, it seemed, until looking down he saw there the slightest flair, and the tight cleft of a woman's breast.
A bitter water came up in his mouth. He did not look in the mirror. He was standing so still he might have been entranced, his eyes staring dully to one side, as she moved the full violet skirts all around, and smoothed the bodice, before bidding him to sit down. He stared at his hands.
"Your face needs no paint, Signore," she said. "Ah, but there are women who would murder you for these eyelashes, and this hair, ah, this hair." Yet she brushed it back, flattened it, and then he felt her lower the weight of the wig onto his head. It was not so very large, all of it snowy white and studded with tiny pearls, gathered at the nape of the neck from which soft curls hung down that he could feel against his naked back. She was clasping his neck just beneath the hair, and now she turned him so that his face nearly touched her own ample breasts.
"Just a little paint, Signore, black magic"--she grimaced--"to the eyes."
"I can do that," he whispered, trying to take her brush.
"Signore, you punish me, I want to do it," she said and then laughed herself, a hoarse sexless laugh from old age. "No, don't look in the mirror," she said with her hands up as if he would try to run away. She bent down and touched his eyes with a sureness he couldn't have matched himself. He felt the tiny weight of the paint on his lashes, he felt it smooth and harden his brows. "Gilding the lily," she clucked, shaking her head, and then suddenly, as if she could not stop herself, she kissed him on both cheeks.
He bent his head to one side, thinking, When I get out of here the servant is going to have to carry my sword, and he is such an imbecile. It was as if the Cardinal preferred perfect idiots around him. Perhaps I am a perfect idiot, he was thinking. And then he bent forward and shaded his eyes with one hand. She had opened the blinds; that warm sun melted into the room; he felt the lightening all around him as surely as he saw it, and then she said:
"Darling child," her hands clasping his shoulders.
That phrase, he thought again disgustedly.
"Rise, and look into the mirror. Is it not exactly as I promised you?" she whispered. "You are perfection. Men will fall at your feet."
He stood gazing in silence.
He did not know who this creature was. Lovely? Oh, she was lovely, and innocent, so sheerly innocent, her large dark eyes gazing at him as if to accuse him of some sullying thought. Her bodice narrowed so perfectly to the waist, flaring up with its row after row of cream-colored ruffles and bows to that smooth white skin that was the illusion of a breast. Domenico would have been beside himself with jealousy, and the white hair, how it rendered this face fragile and delicate, remaking its features into those of this guileless young girl.
The white hair rose from its smooth seam at the forehead and the curls fell down on the gleaming silk of the long full sleeves.
She turned him around with both hands, standing on tiptoe as if to see some fine detail, and then dipping her index finger into the rouge pot she ran it along his lips.
"Ah!" It was more an explosion of breath as she backed away. "Now give me your leg," she said, lifting the skirts with a rustle as she sat down. He placed his foot in her lap. She had gathered the stocking into a circle and smoothed it up, up, until she bound it with a garter at the knee.
"Yes, everything inside and out must be perfection," she said as if reminding herself. She held the white leather slippers as if they were glass.
And now, finally finished, she stood back as though out of breath. "Signore..." She narrowed her eyes. "I swear to God Himself, that you could deceive even me." And she continued to look at him as if she did not want him to move.
"You remember what I told you," she said as he approached the hook where she had placed his coat. "You move slowly, you do not really move like a woman, for if you moved so fast and so much as a woman, the illusion would be broken, the illusion is a complete lie. You move more slowly than a human creature, and you keep your arms close to your body."
He nodded. He had already thought it out, constructed it on a grand scale, having for days watched every woman that he could find so long and with such concentration he'd risked indiscretion.
"What is it you want?" She went to take his hands away from his old clothes. But he had drawn out the stiletto, and when she saw that, she stopped.
He was smiling at her as he slipped its icy blade right down the center of his breast.
She turned abruptly, and lifting a little pink rose from a vase, she held it up to the light so that he could see its hairy stem enclosed in a glass tube. This she inserted in that same place, beside the handle of the stiletto, so that only the little bloom showed.
And then she took his fingers, fondling them, as she slipped on the paste rings, and then she placed them on this small, fragrant, and plump little rose.
"Feel that softness," she whispered. "That is what you must appear to be." And again her rough lips brushed his cheeks. She touched his lips as he smiled. "I am in love with you." Her low voice rumbled from her chest, those neat small teeth revealing themselves in her own dry smile.
The carriage was moving slowly through the Via Veneto, halted every few seconds by the procession before it, the ruts from last night's rain dried to a rough and uneasy surface, the swarm of those on foot pressing right past the snorts and tosses of the impatient horses.
Tonio, with one white-gloved hand on the bottom edge of the window, kept his eyes strictly on the open coffeehouses, and then suddenly he gave a rap at the top of the carriage and felt it turn awkwardly with a creak towards the rude curb.
The toothless old valet had jumped down to open the door. He held the sword as Tonio had directed him and followed his mistress now through the crowds that made way for her with guarded but a
dmiring looks as she pushed through the open doors.
To the right, but close to the center of the room, so he might watch the endless parade on the street, sat Guido with his elbow on the table, his wine cup before him untouched. He was half-lidded and weary, his heavy face looking oddly young, as if exhaustion weakened his guard, and his disappointment and worry let him assume his more natural boyish scowl.
He did not even notice when a bench was brought up beside him; he did not see this lady sit down.
Then he sat back, startled, seeing the violet silk, perhaps, before anything else. Tonio, as still as a doll in the midst of the wide skirts, sat staring serenely at the street.
The air was warm and caressing, and he let his thin fichu slip away from his breasts. From everywhere, it seemed, came those covert glances. He had unsettled the place; even the serving boy did not know whether to approach, or to bow, or somehow to manage both, as he hovered awkwardly, his tray in hand. Tonio could feel Guido's eyes on him, and then slowly he bowed his head and turned, so when he looked at Guido he was looking up.
Guido's face looked so remarkably different to him, the expression of his eyes, the set of his mouth. And then suddenly the most luxurious private feeling came over him. Guido didn't know who he was! He lifted his fan as the old woman had showed him how to do it, and opened it fully as if revealing some splendid secret as he covered his mouth with it, looking down and then again looking up.
7
HE WAS SO RAPT in his thoughts that he did not hear anything much that Guido was saying, that lovely bubbling speech of Guido's when he was at last content. Tonio allowed it to pass over him, and now and then he would give a little gracious nod.
The heavy afternoon heat had not prevented them from hiring an open carriage for a tour of the city, the exquisite lady and her enamored companion, chided now and then for the bold-faced advance he had made before he knew he was not being unfaithful, and they had wandered arm in arm through a half-dozen churches, the lady opening her parasol now and then with a languid sigh over the heat. They had dined early in the Via Condotti, then making an obligatory trip from one end of the Corso to the other, they had come home.
But not before returning to Signora Bianchi, the seamstress, and engaging her for backstage through the entire run of Guido's opera, which he now knew would be Achille en Sciro, based on the fairly new libretto by Pietro Metastasio, who was so very popular now, the poet whom all along Guido had wanted to use.
"It's perfect for you," he was saying. "Achille's mother wants to keep him out of the Trojan war; she sends him to the island of Scyros, disguised as Pirra, a young girl. You'll go through part of the opera as Pirra; then tricked into revealing your true identity, you become Achille in golden armour. So you see, you're a man playing a woman even on the stage!"
"Yes, that's splendid," Tonio murmured. He smiled. But he was not even in the room, and only now and then in the present at all, to marvel maybe at how he had relished his disguise at moments when men admired him, how he had felt some dim vengeful spirit surfacing that was full of mockery and meanness, and something reckless and innocently boyish at the same time. He had the little rose in his hands which the seamstress had given him, the water having kept it very well. And lounging back in his more comfortable shirt and breeches, his foot on the chair in front of him, he was roughly stroking its little petals, daring it to open.
"Well, you see you are tempted by others all the time to reveal who you are--"
"Guido, Sarri's version of it opened the San Carlos. We saw it together," Tonio said softly.
"Yes, but you didn't pay that much attention to the libretto, did you? And besides I'm changing it considerably. And you must blot that out of your mind. I know what the Romans want. I've seen it all. They want absolute originality with only the most cautious invention. They want a feeling of solidity and richness, and of everything being consummately performed."
It was defiance, that's what it was, Tonio was thinking, being sealed into those garments, knowing what others couldn't possibly know, watching them play the fool as they had shot him their discreet glances, sometimes their open invitations. What was the turning point, he wondered? When had he become the perpetrator of some vile impersonation rather than the victim of it? When had the old feeling of vulnerability melted into the sense of power? He could not say.
It was well after dinner that Guido roused himself from his armchair at the window to receive a letter that had been delivered to the gates.
Paolo had been sent to bed; Tonio had been drowsing, a glass of wine in his hand.
"What is it?" he asked as Guido sat down heavily, his expression unreadable before he crumpled the note and threw it away.
"Ruggerio has hired the other two castrati who'll appear with you," Guido said. He rose and with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his satin robe seemed in the act of mapping out his thoughts. He looked at Tonio. "It could be...worse."
"Well, who are they?" Tonio asked.
"One is Rubino, an old singer, very elegant and perhaps too antique in his style. But the Romans have liked him in the past. There's absolutely nothing to fear from Rubino; but we must pray he isn't losing his voice." He hesitated, so absorbed it was as if he'd forgotten Tonio was there.
"And the other?" Tonio coaxed.
"Bettichino," Guido said.
"Bettichino!" Tonio whispered. Everyone knew of him. "Bettichino...on the same stage."
"Remember!" Guido said sharply. "I told you it could be worse." But he seemed to lose his conviction immediately. He walked a few paces, made a sharp turn. "He is cold," he said. "He is imperious, he conducts himself as if he were royalty when he came up from nothing, like the rest of us...well...like some of us." He threw a humorous glance at Tonio. "And he invariably has the orchestra tune itself from his voice. He's been known to give instructions to those singers he thought needed it...."
"But he is a fine singer, a great singer," Tonio said. "This is marvelous for the opera and you know it...." Guido was staring at him as if he did not quite know what to say. Then he murmured, "He has a very great following in Rome."
"Have you no faith in me?" Tonio smiled.
"All my faith is in you," Guido murmured. "But there will be two camps, his camp and your camp."
"And so I must astonish everyone," Tonio said with a playful lift of the head. "No'
Guido straightened his shoulders. And staring forward he went directly through the room and to his desk.
Tonio unwound himself slowly from the chair. Stepping quietly, he let himself into the cluttered little chamber which was his dressing room and settled there before a table of pots and jars, staring at the violet dress.
The cabinets bulged on either side of him with frock coats and capes; a dozen swords glimmered in the open armoire; and the window which might have been golden a moment ago was now a pale blue.
The dress lay as he'd left it, over an armchair, its underskirts mussed, its placket of cream-colored ruffles open all of a piece, as if it had been slashed along one side to reveal a yawning blackness within the rigid shape of the bodice.
He leaned on his elbow, his hand moving out just to touch the surface of the silk, and it seemed he was experiencing the feel of light itself because the dress gleamed in the dark.
He could imagine it covering him again, he could feel that unfamiliar nakedness above the ruffles and the heavy sway of those skirts. At the core of each new humiliation there was this sense of illimitable power, this exhilarating strength. What had Guido said to him, that he was free and that men and women only dreamed of such freedom? And in the Cardinal's arms he had known this was divinely the truth.
Nevertheless it puzzled him. Each layer of him that was peeled away left him trembling for just a little while. And now as he stared at this empty dress, as it became perfectly the color of the shadows, he wondered, Will I emerge from this first night with the same strength? He could see a tier crowded with Venetians, he could hear the old, soft dialect
all about him like whispers and kisses, and those faces full of expectation and half-concealed horror to see this gelded patrician got up like the queen of France in paste and paint and that voice winding upwards. Ah!
He stopped.
And Bettichino. Yes, Bettichino. What about that? Forget about dresses and ribbons and Venetian carriages coming south and all the rest of it.
Think about Bettichino for a moment, and what this meant.
He had feared bad singers and all the mundane horrors they might bring: pasteboard swords glued in the scabbard when you tried to draw them, your wine lightly poisoned so you got sick as soon as you went on. Paid cohorts hissing before you even opened your mouth.
But Bettichino? Cold, proud, a lofty prince of the stage who brought with him reputation and a perfect voice? It was the ennobling challenge, not the degrading contest.
And it was just that sort of blinding light which might eclipse him totally, leave him struggling on the fringes to regain an audience which with Bettichino had already drunk its fill!
He shuddered. He had been so deep in his thoughts his body was coiling up on him, and he had hold of this dress, as if trying to cling to the last bit of violet color that the light could still reveal. He lifted it so that he might feel its cold smoothness with his face.
"When have you ever doubted your own voice?" he whispered. "What is the matter with you now?"
The light was gone. The window pulsed with the deep, luminous blue of the night. And rising with an angry air, he went out of his rooms and down the corridor, filling his thoughts with nothing but the echo of his heels on the stone.
Darkness, darkness, he was whispering almost affectionately. You make me feel invisible. You make me feel that therefore I'm not a man nor a woman nor a eunuch and that I am simply alive.
But when he reached the door of the Cardinal's study, he did not hesitate, but knocked at once.
The man was at his desk, and for just one moment this room with its high walls of books and faint candles was so reminiscent of another place that he wondered at the love and the desire he felt when he saw the quick radiance of passion in the Cardinal's face.