by Anne Rice
In the snug clean alcove of the linen closet, Gino gave him the longest, the most lush embrace. It seemed all night they lay on a bed of folded sheets as pleasure came in dizzying surges that were over and over again allowed to wane, then resurrected to be protracted forever. Gino's skin was creamy and sweet; his mouth was strong and his fingers afraid of nothing. He played gently with Guido's ears, he hurt the nipples of his chest just a little, and kissed the hair between his legs, only working with the greatest patience towards the more brutal emblems of passion.
In the nights after, Gino shared his new companion with Alfredo and then Alonso; and sometimes in the dark, they lay tangled two or three together. The embrace of one above and another underneath was not uncommon, and as Alfredo's sharp jabs pushed Guido to the edge of pain, Alonso's hard, ravenous mouth drew him into ecstasy.
But the day came when Guido was lured out of these exquisitely modulated encounters for the more violent and unloving thrusts of the "regular" students. He was not afraid of whole men, never guessing how much his menacing looks had always kept them at a distance.
Yet he did not like these hairy and grunting young men very much either.
There was something brutal and simple about them that was finally uninteresting.
He wanted eunuchs, toothsome and delicious experts of the body.
Or he wanted women.
And as might happen, or might not, it was with women he found the greatest approximation of satisfaction. It was approximate only because he did not love. Otherwise it was engulfing. Little girls of the streets, poor, never clever, these were his favorites, girls delighted with the golden coin, and very fond of his boyish looks and thinking his clothes and his manner splendid. He stripped them quickly in lodgings let for the purpose over local taverns, and they never cared he was a eunuch, hoping for a little tenderness perhaps; and if not, he never saw them again for there were always others.
But as his fame increased, doors opened to Guido everywhere. After suppers at which he'd sung, lovely ladies spirited him upstairs to secret chambers.
He grew accustomed to the silk sheets, the gilded cherubs cavorting above oval mirrors and frothy canopies.
And by his seventeenth year, he had a lovely contessa, twice married and very rich, for a secret and sometime mistress. Often her carriage collected him at the stage door. Or after hours of practice he would throw open the windows of his attic room, to see it lumbering below beneath the heavy tree branches.
She was old to him then, past her prime, but hot and full of tantalizing urgency. In his arms, she blushed scarlet to the nipples of her breasts, her eyes half mast, and he felt himself transported.
These were rich times, blissful times. Guido was almost ready for Rome and his first lead role there. At eighteen, he stood five feet ten inches tall, with the lung power to fill a vast theater with the chilling purity of his unaccompanied voice.
And that was the year he lost his voice forever.
8
THE PIAZZA, it was a small victory, but for the next few days Tonio was ecstatic. The sky seemed a limitless blue, and all up and down the canal the striped awnings were aflutter in the warm breeze, and the window boxes crowded with fresh spring flowers. Even Angelo seemed to enjoy himself, though he looked frail in his thin black cassock, and slightly uncertain. He was quick to point out that all Europe was pouring in for the coming Senza. Everywhere they turned, they heard foreign voices.
The cafes, sprawling out of their small shabby rooms into the arcades, were aswarm with rich and poor alike, the serving girls moving to and fro in their short skirts and bright red vests, their arms deliciously naked. One glimpse and Tonio felt a hardening passion. They were unspeakably lovely to him with their ribbons and curls, their stockinged ankles well exposed, and if ladies dressed like that, he thought, it would mean the end of civilization.
Each day he pushed Angelo to stay a little longer, to roam a little farther.
Nothing, it seemed, could match the piazza itself for common spectacle; there were the storytellers under the arches of the church gathering their attentive little crowds, patricians in full robes, while ladies, free of the black vesti they always wore to feast day church, roamed about in lavish printed-silk fashions; even the beggars had their dim fascination.
But there was also the Merceria, and pulling Angelo with him under the clock tower with the golden lion of San Marco, Tonio was soon hurrying through this marble-paved street where all the trades of Venice mingled. Here were the lacemakers, the jewelers, the druggists, the milliners with their extravagant hats full of fruits and birds, the great French doll got up with the latest Paris creation.
But even the simple things delighted him, and he pushed on into the Panetteria full of bakeries, the fish markets of the Pescheria, and reaching the Rialto bridge, wandered among the greengrocers.
Of course Angelo wouldn't hear of stopping in a cafe or tavern; and Tonio found himself famished for cheap meats and bad wine, simply because it all looked so exotic.
He was trying, however, to be clever.
Everything would come in time. Angelo never seemed so much the dried husk of a young man as he did now that he was shorter than his impetuous charge and easily led, when he didn't have time to think, into some new devilment. Snatching a gazette from a hawker on the street, Tonio was able to read a considerable amount of gossip in it before Angelo realized what he was doing.
But it was the bookseller's that held the strongest lure for Tonio. He could see the gentlemen gathered inside, with their coffee and wine, hear the occasional eruptions of laughter. Here the theater was discussed, people were debating the merits of the composers of the coming operas. There were foreign papers for sale, political tracts, poetry.
Angelo tugged him along. Sometimes they wandered to the very middle of the square, and Tonio, turning round and round, felt himself delightfully adrift in the shifting crowds, now and then startled by the flapping of the rising pigeons.
If he thought of Marianna at home behind the closed draperies, he would start crying.
*
They'd been going out for four days of this, each more entertaining and exciting than the one before, when they glimpsed Alessandro, and a small event occurred that was to pitch Tonio into consternation.
He was delighted to see Alessandro, and when he realized Alessandro was heading right for the bookseller's, he saw his opportunity. Angelo couldn't even catch up with him, and in minutes he was inside the cluttered little shop itself in the thick of tobacco smoke and the aroma of coffee, lightly touching Alessandro's sleeve to get his attention.
"Why, Excellency." Alessandro embraced him quickly. "How fine to see you today," he said. "And where are you going?"
"Only following you, Signore," Tonio said, suddenly feeling very young and ridiculous. But Alessandro, with a fluid courtesy, immediately told him how much he'd enjoyed their recent supper. And it seemed the conversation went on spiritedly around them so Tonio felt comfortably anonymous. Someone was talking of the opera, and this Neapolitan singer, Caffarelli. "The greatest in the world," they said. "Do you agree with that?"
Then someone very distinctly said the name Treschi, and again, Treschi, but coupled with the first name Carlo.
"Aren't you going to introduce us?" came the man's voice again. "This is Marc Antonio Treschi, it must be."
"Just like Carlo," said someone else, and Alessandro, turning Tonio gently to the gathering of young men, gave a litany of their names as there came the nods, and then someone asked did Alessandro think Caffarelli was the greatest singer in Europe?
It seemed marvelous to Tonio, all of it. Yet Alessandro's attentions were wholly turned to him, and in a sudden burst of exuberance he invited Alessandro to a cup of wine with him.
"A great pleasure," Alessandro said at once. He'd scooped up two London papers, and paid for them quickly. "Caffarelli," he said over his shoulder. "Well, I'll know how great he is when I hear him."
"Is this the new o
pera? Is this Caffarelli coming here?" Tonio asked. He loved this place, and even the fact that everyone had wanted to know him.
But Alessandro was guiding him to the door; several people had risen with a nod.
And then the meeting took place, which was to change the very color of the sky, the aspect of the snow-white clouds, and make the day take on a dark resonance.
One of the young patricians followed them into the arcade, a tall, blond man, his hair streaked with white and his skin darkly burnt by the sun as if he had been in some tropical land and was much the worse for it. He did not wear his ceremonial robes, but only the loose and sloppy tabarro, and there was about him an almost menacing air, though Tonio could not imagine why as he glanced up to him.
"Would you choose the cafe?" Tonio was just saying to Alessandro. This had to be done just right. Angelo was quite intimidated by Alessandro. And quite intimidated by Tonio, too, of late. Life was getting better and better.
But the man suddenly touched Tonio's arm.
"You don't remember me, do you, Tonio?" he asked.
"No, Signore, I have to confess, I don't." Tonio smiled. "Please forgive me."
But an odd sensation passed over him. The man's tone was polite but his eyes, faded and blue, and slightly tearing as if from illness, had a cold-look to them.
"Ah, but I'm curious to know," said the man, "have you heard much of late from your brother Carlo?"
For a protracted moment, Tonio stared at this man. It seemed the noises of the piazza had fused into a dissonant hum, and that a throbbing in his ears had suddenly distorted everything. He wanted to say hastily, "You've made some mistake--" But he heard the halting of his breath, and he felt a physical weakening so unusual it made him feel slightly dizzy.
"Brother, Signore?" he asked. Carlo. The name had set up a positive echo in his head, and if the mind had a shape at that moment, the shape was that of an immense and endless corridor. Carlo, Carlo, Carlo, like a whisper echoed in the corridor. "Just like Carlo," someone had said only moments ago, only it seemed to have happened years and years ago. "Signore, I have no brother."
It seemed an age passed in which this man drew himself up, the watery blue eyes narrowing deliberately. And there was to his whole manner a conscious and dramatic outrage. But he was not surprised, though he wanted to seem so. No, he was bitterly satisfied.
And even more astonishing than all this was Alessandro telling Tonio they must come now, with urgency. "You'll excuse us, Excellency," he said, and his pressure on Tonio's arm was just slightly unpleasant.
"You mean you know nothing of your brother?" said the man, and there was a scornful smile then, a lowering of the voice that again created an air of menace.
"You've made a mistake," Tonio said, or so it seemed he was saying. He was having all the discomfort of a debilitating headache save the pain itself, and an instinctive loyalty was collecting in him. This man meant him harm. He knew it. "I'm the son of Andrea Treschi, Signore, and I have no brother. And if you would make yourself known..."
"Ah, but you do know me, Tonio. Think back. As for your brother, I was with him in Istanbul only recently. He is hungry for news of you; he asks are you well, have you grown tall. Your resemblance to him is nothing short of remarkable."
"Excellency, you must excuse us," Alessandro said almost rudely. It seemed he would stand between the man and Tonio if he could.
"I'm your cousin, Tonio," said the man with that same conscious look of grim indignation. "Marcello Lisani. And it saddens me to have to tell Carlo you know nothing of him."
He turned back to the shop, glancing over his shoulder to Alessandro. And then he said under his breath: "Damned insufferable eunuchs."
Tonio winced. It was full of contempt, like saying "sluts" or "bitches."
Alessandro merely lowered his eyes. He appeared to freeze, and then his mouth moved in a slight, patient smile. He touched Tonio's shoulder, gesturing to a cafe under the arcade.
Within minutes they were seated on the rough benches right near the edge of the piazza, the sun cutting under the deep arch to make them warm, and Tonio was only vaguely sensible that this had been his dream, to sit and drink in a cafe where gentlemen and ruffians rubbed elbows.
At any other moment the exquisite little girl approaching them would have shaken him deliciously. She had that brown hair streaked with gold which he found inexpressibly beautiful, and eyes it seemed of the same dark and light mixture.
But he hardly noticed her. Angelo was saying the man was a lunatic. Angelo obviously had never heard of him.
And Alessandro was already making a polite conversation about the lovely weather. "You know the old joke," he said to Tonio confidentially and lightly, just as if this man had not insulted him, "if the weather's bad, and the Bucintoro sinks, the Doge might be thrown right in bed with his wife for once to consummate the marriage."
"But who was the man and what was he talking about!" Angelo said under his breath. He mumbled something about patricians who didn't wear their proper robes.
Tonio was staring straight forward. The lovely little girl drifted into his view. She was coming right towards him with the wine on the tray, and she chewed a little wad of taffy right in rhythm with the swing of her hips, and smiled at the same time with a natural good humor. As she set down the cups, she bent over so far that under the soft ruffle of her low-cut blouse he saw both her pink nipples! A little riot of passion broke out in him. At any other moment, at any other time...but it was as if this were not even happening; her hips, the exquisite nakedness of her arms, and those pretty, pretty eyes. She was no older than he was, he reasoned, and there was about her something that suggested she might suddenly, for all her seductiveness, start giggling.
"And why would he concoct such foolishness!" Angelo was going on.
"Oh, we should leave it, don't you think?" said Alessandro softly. And he opened the English papers and asked Angelo whether the opera had ever held any attraction for him.
"Wickedness," Angelo murmured. "Tonio," he said, forgetting the proper address as he often did when they were alone, "you didn't know that man, did you?"
Tonio stared at the wine. He wanted to drink it, but it seemed quite impossible to move.
And for the first time, he looked up to Alessandro. His voice was small and cold when it came out:
"Do I have a brother in Istanbul?"
9
IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT. Tonio was standing in the vast damp hollow of the Grand Salon, and having closed the door by which he had entered, he could see nothing. Far off, a score of church bells tolled the hour. And he held in his hand a large sulphur match and a candle.
Yet he was waiting. For what? For the bells to stop? He wasn't certain.
The evening up until this moment had been an agony for him.
He couldn't even remember much of what had happened. Two things imprinted themselves on his mind, having nothing to do with each other:
The first, that the little girl in the cafe, brushing up against him as he rose to go, whispered on tiptoe: "Remember me, Excellency, my name is Bettina." Piercing laughter; pretty laughter. Girlish, embarrassed, and utterly honest. He wanted to pinch her and kiss her.
The second was that Alessandro hadn't answered his question. Alessandro had not said it wasn't true! Alessandro had merely looked away from him.
And as for the man whom Angelo discounted a dozen times as a dangerous young lunatic, he was Tonio's cousin. Tonio did remember. And for such a person to make a mistake like this was virtually impossible!
But what was it that disturbed him above all else? Was it the fact that in him there was some elusive and dim sense of recognition? Carlo. He'd heard that name before. Carlo! Someone saying those very words, "just like Carlo." But whose voice, and where did it come from, and how could he have grown to the age of fourteen years without ever knowing he had a brother! Why had no one told him this? Why didn't even his tutors know it?
But Alessandro knew.
&nbs
p; Alessandro knew and others knew. People in the bookseller's knew!
And maybe even Lena knew. That was what lay behind her sudden crossness when he had asked her.
He'd meant to be sly. He had come in merely to see to his mother, he said, and his mother looked like death itself to him. The tender flesh under her eyes was blue, and her face had a hideous pallor. And then Lena said for him to go, that she would try to get the mistress up for a while later. What had he said? How had he put it? He'd felt such a rush of humiliation, such a scalding misery. "One of us...ever heard...the name Carlo."
"There were a hundred Treschi before my time, now go on." That would have been simple enough if she hadn't come after him, "And don't you go bothering your mother about those others," she'd said, meaning the dead ones, of course. His mother never looked at their pictures. "And don't you go asking foolish questions of anyone else either!"
That was her worst mistake. She knew. Of course she did.
Now everyone was in bed. The house belonged to him and him alone, as it always did at this hour. And he felt invisible and light in this darkness. He didn't want to light the candle. He could hardly endure the echo of his slightest footfall.
And for a long moment he stood quite still trying to imagine what it would be like to call down upon himself his father's anger. Never had his father been angry with him. Never.
But he couldn't endure this a moment longer. Grimacing at the sound of the match, he stood breathless watching the candle flame grow, and a weak light suffuse all of this immense chamber. It was so far-flung it left a dim waste of shadows at the edges. But he could see the pictures.
And he went, at once, to examine them.
His brother, Leonardo, yes, and Giambattista in military dress, yes, and this one of Philippo with his young wife, Theresa. He knew all of these, and now he came to that face, the one for whom he'd been searching, and when he saw it again, the resemblance was terrifying.
"Just like Carlo..." The words were a veritable din in his ears, and he pushed the flame right up to the canvas, moving it back and forth until it lost its maddening reflection. There was his own thick black hair on this young man, his high broad forehead without the slightest slope, the same somewhat long mouth, the same high cheekbones. But what particularized it, what removed it from the general flow of resemblance among them all was the set of the eyes, for they were wide, wide apart as were Tonio's. Large and black, these eyes gave one looking into them the feeling of drifting. Of course Tonio had never known it, though others had known it looking at him. But he felt it now as he stared intently at this tiny replica of himself lost among a dozen similar black-clad men, staring gently back at him.