"But we would all belong to each other. No matter what happened, we would have each other, as if we were a great family, a great clan. I've dreamed it a thousand times," she said. "And if life could give you to me after all those dreams of girlhood, then this too can come true.
"What was it you said to Paolo when you took him from Naples?" She paused, watching him intently. "Paolo told me the story himself: you said to him that anything can happen, when you least expect it. And his life is like a fairy tale of palaces and riches and endless song. Tonio, anything can happen, you said it yourself."
"Innocence," he said. He bent forward to kiss her. He stroked her face, marveling at that ineffably soft and almost invisible down that covered her cheeks and he touched her lip with the tip of his finger. She could never be more beautiful than she was now.
"No, not innocence," she protested. "Tonio, this is a choice."
"Listen to me, beautiful one," he said almost sharply, his voice a little harder than he wanted it to be. "You love me very much as I love you. But you've never really known the love of men; you don't know their strength, their necessity, their fire. You speak of northern cathedrals, stone and stained glass, of different kinds of beauty: well, I can tell you with men it's the same, a different kind of love. And in time you'll come to know that the wide world holds secrets for you in the ordinary acts that others take for granted, the ordinary strength of any man. And don't you see, when all is said and done, that is what was taken from both of us, that is what was taken from me?
"What do you think it means to me to know that I can never give you what any common laborer might give you, the spark of life inside of you, the child in which we two could be one? And no matter how you protest that you love me now, how can you say the day won't come when you will see me for precisely what I am!"
He could see he was frightening her. He had hold of her shoulders, so fragile and exquisite, and her lips were trembling, her eyes almost incandescent on the edge of tears.
"You don't know what you are," she said, "or you would not say this to me."
"I'm not talking about respectability anymore," he countered. "I can believe you now when you say you don't care for marriage, that it doesn't matter to you if they talk about you, and vilify you for loving a eunuch singer. You've convinced me you're strong enough to turn your back on that. But you don't know what it's like to hold a man in your arms, and do you think I could bear to see the look in your eyes when you were done with me, and ready for others...."
"Is it so wrong of me to find in you a gentleness uncommon in men!" she demanded. "Is it so strange I prefer your fire to another fire that might consume me? Can't you see what it would be, our life together! Why should I want what anyone can give me when I can have you! After you, what will it matter? What will have any value? You are Tonio Treschi, you have the gifts and greatness in you for which others strive all their lives and to no purpose. Oh, you anger me, you make me want to wound you suddenly because you will not believe in me! And you will not believe in what it would be like for us together! And you make this choice for both of us, and I can never forgive you for it. Do you understand! You gave yourself to me for such a little while! I can never forgive you for it!"
She was bent, her naked breasts beneath a veil of yellow hair, her hands covering her face, her sobs short and strangled and shaking her violently.
He wanted to touch her. He wanted to comfort her, beg her to stop. But he was too angry, and too miserable.
"You're merciless," he said suddenly. And when she looked at him, her face tear-stained and swollen, he went on, "You're merciless to the boy I was and the man I might have been. You're merciless because you don't see that every time I take you in my arms I know what might have been between us if..."
She placed her hands over his lips. He was staring at her in utter perplexity, and then he lifted her hand away.
"No." She shook her head. "We would never have known each other," she said. "And I swear to you on everything I hold sacred, your enemies are my enemies, and those who hurt you hurt me. But you are speaking not just of vengeance but of death. You mean to end your life for this! Guido knows it. I know it. And why! Because he must know, isn't it? He must know it's you who've come to kill him after all he's done to you. He must know it's you!"
"That's right" he said softly. "That's right. You put it better and more simply that I have ever been able to put it."
Long after he'd thought she was asleep, her tears spent, her limbs wound hot and moist with his, he laid her gently back on the pillow and went alone in her studio and sat by the window looking up at the sweep of tiny stars.
The rain clouds were gone on a swift wind, and yet the city glistened, cleansed and beautiful under the slice of moon, a hundred little lights flickering on balconies and in windows, in the cracks of broken shutters throughout all the narrow streets below him under shining roofs.
He wondered would she ever in the years to come understand? If he turned away now, he would be turned away forever, and how could he live with that weakness in himself, that awesome failure, that he had let Carlo so wrench and destroy his life and go on with a life of his own?
He saw his house in Venice. He saw a ghostly wife he'd never known, he saw a host of ghostly children. He saw the lights go out over the canal and the palazzo shimmer and fade as if melting slowly down into the water. Why was this done to me! He wanted to cry out, and then he felt her near him, at his side.
Her small head was against him and he saw her eyes, and it seemed somehow surely he had missed the point of all his life, he must have done some terrible evil or this simply could not have happened! Not to Tonio Treschi, who had been born for so many things.
Mad thoughts.
It was the horror of this world that a thousand evils were visited on those who were blameless and no one was ever punished, and side by side with the greatest promise was nothing but misery and want. Children mutilated to make a choir of seraphim, their song a cry to heaven that heaven did not hear.
And he, fallen into it, by some glorious accident that in the alleyways of Venice, he had on winter nights sung his heart out under stars such as these.
And yet suppose it was as she said. He stood looking down at her in the dark, the small curve of her head, her naked shoulders above the cover she held loosely around her, and as she lifted her eyes to him, he saw the white of her forehead and the dark configuration of her face.
Suppose it could really be. That somehow on the glittering margin of the world that was their own, they could live and love together, and all the rest that was given to the others be damned.
"I love you," he said. And you almost made me believe in it, too, he thought. His voice trailed off. How could he leave her? How could he leave Guido? How could he take leave of himself?
"But when will you go?" she asked. "If you've made up your mind to do it and nothing can stop you..."
He shook his head. He wished she wouldn't say any more. She was not resigned to it, no, not yet, and just for this moment, he couldn't bear to hear her even pretend that she was. The last night of the opera was tomorrow. They had at least that much.
7
IT WAS AFTER the last race; the horses had charged through the press, stomping into the crowds several times to drive spectators underfoot, the air full of shrieks, though nothing stopped their volatile progress towards the Piazza Venezia. The wounded and the dead were being dragged away. Tonio, at the top of the spectators' stand, held Christina close to him, gazing towards the piazza where great cloths were being thrown over the heads of the maddened animals.
Darkness was coming softly over the rooftops. And now commenced the great closing ceremony of these last few hours before the beginning of Lent: the moccoli. Candles everywhere.
They appeared in windows all along the narrow street; they appeared on the tops of carriages; they appeared on the ends of poles, and in the hands of women, children, men seated at the doors, until everywhere there was this so
ft flickering of thousands upon thousands of tapers. Tonio quickly took a light from the man beside him, touching it to Christina's candle, as there exploded at once the whispered cries, "Sia ammazzato chi non porta moccolo"--"Death to anyone who does not carry a candle."
At once a dark figure darted forward blowing out Christina's flame as she tried to shield it with her hand. "Sia ammazzato la signorina!" Tonio quickly gave her a light again, struggling to keep his own flame out of the reach of the same rascal, as with a great breath from his powerful lungs he blew out the man's flame with the same curse: "Sia ammazzato il signore."
The entire street below was a sea of dimly lit faces, each protecting its own flame while trying to extinguish another: Death to you, death to you, death to you....
Taking Christina's hand, Tonio led her down through the tiered seats, now and then blowing out a vulnerable light as those about him sought to retaliate; and slipping into the very thick of the crowd, he pulled Christina along under his arm, dreaming of some side street where he might breathe for the moment and again commence the little lovemaking with which they had tormented themselves all day long amid wine drinking and laughing and almost desperate gaiety.
Tonight the opera would be brief so that it could end at the stroke of twelve, the commencement of Ash Wednesday, and for now he cared for nothing else but the starry sky overhead and this great ocean of tender flames and whispers enveloping him. Death to you, death to you, death to you. His flame was gone, so was Christina's, who was gasping, but in this moment, elbowed and pushed, he tumbled her against him and opened her mouth with his, not caring that the candles had gone out. It seemed the crowd held them up, moved them along; it was like being in the sea with one's feet in the sand, leaning against the surf and letting it support you.
"Give me your flame." Christina quickly turned to a tall man beside her, and then gave the fire to Tonio.
Her little face was eerie, lit from below, and those soft wisps of her hair were ignited with gold, and she laid her head on his chest, her candle against his so his hands curled to protect both of them.
Finally it was time to go. The crowd was bleeding away, the children still blowing out the candles of their parents and taunting them with the curse, and the parents recriminating, and the madness ebbing into the side streets, and Tonio stood quietly, not wanting to move, not wanting to leave this last remnant of the carnival, even for the last moments of ecstasy in the theater.
All the windows were lit still; lanterns hung over the street, and the carriages drifting past were covered with lights.
"Tonio, we have a little time...." Christina whispered. It was so easy to hold her little hand against her will; she tugged on him; he did not move. She stood on tiptoe and put her hand on the back of his neck. "Tonio, you are dreaming...."
"Yes," he murmured, "of life everlasting..."
But he followed her towards the Via Condotti. She was almost dancing in front of him, tugging him as if his long arm were a leash.
A little child darted up to him hissing, "Sia ammazzato--" But jerking his arm up with a defiant smile, he rescued the flame.
What happened then came so quickly that he could not piece it together afterwards. He was suddenly aware of a figure rising up before him, the face grimacing: "Death to you!" as Christina let him go, and he fell backwards, off balance, as she screamed.
He had his stiletto out just as he felt the cold blade of another knife against his throat.
He shoved it upwards so it scratched the side of his own face, but he had thrust his own weapon forward, driving it twice and then three times into the figure who sought to force him to the wall.
Yet just as this weight sagged against him, he felt another man behind him, and the sudden tightening of the garrote around his neck.
In absolute terror he struggled, his left hand reaching for the face behind his head, his right arm driving that blade down and back into the man's bowels.
The air was full of stomping, shouting, Christina screaming, but he was strangling, the cord was cutting through his flesh, and then suddenly it was gone.
He turned and flew at his assailant only to realize a man had both his arms and was shouting at him, "Signore, Signore, we are at your service!"
He stared forward. It was a man he'd never seen before, and behind him stood Raffaele's bravos, those men who had been following him for weeks, and between them they held Christina not as if they meant to harm her but as if they were guarding her. At his feet lay the body of the man he'd stabbed.
His chest was heaving. He stood against the wall, a cornered animal, not trusting, not believing, trying to understand what he saw.
"We are in the service of the Cardinal Calvino," said the man to him.
And Raffaele's men had not attacked him. They were right there.
The crowd pressed in with its hundreds of little candles, until gradually it dawned on him what had happened: all of these men had come to his defense.
He stared at the dead man.
A group of little children rushed in only to draw back with a chorus of gasps, their fingers red and transparent about their guarded flames.
"You must come now, Signore, out of here!" said the bravo, and Raffaele's men were nodding. "There may be others who want to harm you," and as they led him away, another bravo had bent over the dead man and opened his coat.
8
HE SAT ON the very edge of the room. The Cardinal Calvino was in a white rage.
And having summoned Count Raffaele di Stefano, he thanked him profusely for the help of his men in protecting Tonio, and Christina, whom they had taken safely to the Contessa's house.
Raffaele was not too pleased that Tonio's attackers had come so close.
But who were these attackers? Both men turned again to Tonio, who had only shaken his head, to say that he knew what they knew: Both assailants had been common Venetian cutthroats. They carried Venetian passports, Venetian coin. The Cardinal's bravos had cut down one of them; Tonio had killed the other.
"Who in the Veneto would want to kill you?" demanded Raffaele, his small black eyes fixed on Tonio. He was maddened by the blank expression on Tonio's face.
Tonio again shook his head.
That he had managed to get to the theater, that he had managed to go on stage, seemed a marvel to him, and that he had managed to do well was the result of habit and skill which he had never fully valued until now.
But this room was more a penance to him than the lighted stage had been, where listening to his own voice at a great remove, he had been swimming in his own thoughts.
Exhilaration had been the feeling, the same exhilaration he had known when he had laid open his soul to Guido two days before, exhilaration that cooled him and hardened him and which the paint and costumery had magnificently concealed.
Now he forced himself to be quiet; to be still. Yet he could not keep himself from feeling the cut on his throat, wondering just how deep the cord would have to go before it extinguished the voice, if not the life.
And the knife had come against his throat as well. Knife, garrote at the throat.
He looked up and fixed his gaze on Guido, who stood watching these proceedings as if he were just as baffled and horrified as the rest.
It was the southern Italian countenance, the know-nothing countenance that reveals itself to no one but its own.
Four bravos would guard Marc Antonio from now on, said the Cardinal. Tactfully, considerately, anger still agitating him, he did not ask Raffaele why Raffaele's men had been there. The Cardinal's bravos had spoken to these men as if they knew them, as if their presence came as no surprise.
And what if none of them had been there? Tonio narrowed his eyes and looked away as Raffaele bent to kiss the Cardinal's ring.
Across the room, Guido appeared defeated behind his mask of innocence. It was as if he'd seen Tonio's body lying slain in the street.
Tonio felt the cut on his throat again. Raffaele was going out. The bravos would stand
guard in the very corridors of the house, even as Tonio had seen those bravos of Carlo making shadows of themselves in the passages of the Palazzo Treschi.
"Go, Guido," Tonio whispered.
Finally he and the Cardinal Calvino were alone.
"My lord," Tonio asked. "Would you grant me another kindness after so many? Could we go alone to your chapel? Would you hear my confession?"
9
THEY WALKED in silence down the hall. And opening the doors found the air warm inside, candles aglimmer before the marble saints, and the golden doors of the tabernacle giving off a faint light above the smooth whiteness of the linen-draped altar.
The Cardinal moved to the first row of carved chairs set before the communion rail and settled himself there, offering the seat next to him to Tonio. There was no need for the men to use the wooden confessional box itself. The Cardinal's bowed head and haggard profile told him he might begin when he wanted:
"My lord," he said, "what I tell you must be under the seal of the confessional and never repeated to anyone."
The Cardinal's brows knit. "Marc Antonio, why do you remind me of this?" he asked.
He raised his right hand and made an efficient little blessing.
"Because I don't ask absolution, my lord, I seek some justice perhaps, some righteousness before heaven. I don't know what I seek, but I must tell you the one who sent men to kill me is my own father, known to everyone as my brother."
The tale came out of him swiftly, cleanly, as if the years had washed the trivia away, leaving only the bones. And the Cardinal's face constricted with pain and concentration. His lowered lids were smoothly rounded over his eyes and he shook his head ever so slightly in eloquent silence.
"What was done to me would have moved others to vengeance long before now," Tonio whispered. "But I know now it was my happiness that caused me to eschew my purpose. I did not abhor my life; I loved it. My voice was not only God's gift to me, it was my joy, and all of those around me became my joy, though granted there was lust and there was passion. I can't deny it. But live I do, and sometimes I've felt I was like a glass of water struck by the sun, the light veritably exploded in it until it became a light itself.