by Anne Rice
"But who are you?" he whispered. He went from face to face; there were cousins here, ones he didn't know. "This proves nothing." Yet he could not help but see that this strange duplicate of himself stood right beside Andrea. Between Leonardo and Andrea, in fact, and Andrea's hand rested upon the shoulder of this double!
"No, it's not possible," he whispered. Yet it was precisely the evidence he'd sought, and he went on and on to the other pictures. Here was Chiara, Andrea's first wife, and there he was again, that little "Tonio," sitting at her feet with the other brothers.
But there were more certain proofs.
He realized it as he stood fixed there. There were pictures where the brothers with their father and mother stood alone; no cousins, no strangers.
And going quickly, and as silently as he could, he opened the doors of the supper room.
There was the large picture, the family gathering, directly behind the head of the table, that had always so tormented him. And even from where he stood he could see there was no Carlo in it, and a sinking feeling came over him. He didn't know whether it was relief or disappointment, for perhaps he had not grounds enough yet for either.
Yet something struck him about the picture. Leonardo and Giambattista were on one side of the standing figure of Andrea, and the seated figure of his dead wife, Chiara. Philippo was all by himself on the other.
"But that's natural enough," he whispered. "After all, there are only three brothers, what are they going to do but put two on one side...." But it was the spacing that was peculiar. Philippo did not stand directly beside his father. And the backdrop of darkness made a gulf there into which Andrea's red robe rather crudely spread out making his left side considerably broader than the other.
"But that's not possible. It's not likely," Tonio whispered. Yet as he moved closer and closer, the impression of imbalance became stronger.
Andrea's robes on the left were not even the same color! And that blackness between his arm and the arm of his son, Philippo, it did not appear solid.
Tentatively, almost unwillingly, Tonio lifted the light and rose on his toes so that he might stare right at the surface.
And coming through that blackness, peering through it, as if through a veil, was the unmistakable figure of that one, that one who looked exactly like him.
He almost cried aloud. The tremors in his legs caused him to rest back on his heels and even to steady himself against the wall with his left fingers. And then again he narrowed his eyes, and there it was, a figure bleeding through as so often happens in an oil painting when it has been covered over. For years, nothing shows. Then the figure begins to rise to the surface with an aspect that is almost ghostly.
And it was happening here. And there was the young man with that same agreeable face; and in this nether world in which he lived, the ghostly arm of his father was crooked to embrace him.
10
WHEN HE CAME HOME the next afternoon, his mother was asking for him.
"She awoke while you were out," Lena whispered to him by the door. "She was furious. She broke her perfume bottles, she threw things. At me, she threw things. She wanted you here with her, and you were out strolling in the piazza."
He listened to all this, almost incapable of following it or caring about it.
He had only just seen Alessandro in the piazza, and Alessandro had excused himself quickly, affectionately, rushing off before he could be asked again.
And Tonio did not know whether or not, even given the opportunity, he would have risked another question.
One thought only was obsessing him: This brother lives. He is in Istanbul, now, alive. And whatever he did to be sent out of this house was so terrible that his image as well as his name had been obliterated. And I am not the last of this line. He is there; he shares this with me. But why didn't he marry? What did he do that was so terrible the Treschi must wait upon an infant in a cradle?
"Go in, and talk to her. She is better today," Lena said. "Speak to her, try to get her to stay up, to bathe and to dress."
"Yes, yes," he murmured. "All right, in a little while."
"No, Tonio, go in to her now."
"Leave me alone, Lena," he said under his breath. But then he found himself staring at the open door, the room draped in shadow.
"Ah, good...but wait," Lena whispered suddenly.
"What is it now?" Tonio asked.
"Don't ask her about that other...that other you mentioned yesterday, do you hear me?"
It was as if she'd read his mind, and for one long instant he stared fixedly at her. He studied her simple face, so heavily lined and drained of color by old age, her eyes small and expressionless without the openness of Beppo's eyes. On the contrary, they were closed and hard like rounded pebbles.
An eerie feeling was stealing over him. It had been with him for two days, actually, only now it was gaining a powerful momentum. It had to do with fear, it had to do with mysteries, it had to do with some dark suspicion in childhood of things unspoken in this house, some slowly mounting apprehension of his mother's youth and his father's age and his mother's misery. He did not know what it all meant. He feared, positively feared, it was all connected. Yet maybe the horror of it was that it was not connected. That it was just life, this house, the way life was, and everyone felt alone and frightened from time to time of nameless things, and saw others beyond the windows caught up in an illusion of preoccupation and frenzy.
But life for each of us was this dark place.
He did not say all this to himself clearly. He felt it; and he felt in himself impatience and rage against his mother. She cannot help herself. She is breaking things, is she? She thrashes about in this glorified closet.
Well, he must help himself. He must find the answer. Some simple answer as to why all his life he had thought he was the only one, why he lived among ghosts while this defector lived and breathed in Istanbul.
"What is the matter with you?" Lena whispered. "Why do you look at me like that?"
"Go away now, I want to be with my mother."
"Well, set her straight, get her up," she pressed. "Tonio, if you do not do it, I don't know how long I can keep your father out of here. He was at the door again this morning. He is weary of my excuses. But oh, to let him see her like this!"
"And why not!" Tonio said with a sudden anger.
"You don't know what you say, you pitiful child," she said. And as he stepped into the bedroom, she shut the doors behind him.
*
Marianna was at the keyboard. She leaned on her elbow, the glass of wine and the bottle right beside her, and with one hand she played little tinkling notes rapidly.
The afternoon was closed out by the draperies and she had for light three candles.
They made a triple shadow of her on the floor and on the keys, three translucent layers of darkness moving in concert as she moved.
"Do you love me?" she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Then why did you go out? Why did you leave me?"
"I'll take you with me. From now on, every afternoon we'll go walking."
"Where, walking?" she murmured. She played the notes again. "You should have told me you were going out."
"You would never have heard me...."
"Don't say anything ugly to me!" she screamed.
He settled down on the padded bench beside her. Her body felt cold to him, and there was about her a stale odor so unnecessary and in such contradiction to her waxen beauty. Her hair had been brushed. It made him think of a great black cat clinging to her.
"You know that aria," she murmured, "the one from Griselda, will you sing that for me now?"
"You can sing it with me...."
"No, not now," she said. He knew she was right. The wine made her voice completely unmanageable.
He knew the song by heart and he started, but singing only in half voice, as if for her ears alone, and he felt her weight collapsing against him. She gave a little moan, the way she did in her sleep.
"Mamma," he said suddenly. He stopped playing. And turning, he gathered her up and looked at her dim profile. For an instant he was distracted by the tangle of triple-layered shadows they made on the floor beyond her. "Mamma, I must ask you to listen to a little story, and tell me what you know about it."
"If there are fairies in it, and ghosts, and witches," she said, "I might like it."
"Maybe there are. Mamma," he said.
And while she was still looking away, he described to her exactly Marcello Lisani and all he had said, and his search for the picture.
He described to her the portrait in the dining room, and the ghastly pentimento.
And very slowly, while he was talking, she turned to face him. He did not notice anything strange about her at once, only that she was really listening to him.
But gradually her face began to alter. It seemed her expression changed indefinably, and that the heavy mantle of lassitude and ebbing drunkenness lifted from her.
There was almost a distorted quality to it, her sharpening as she listened, her pointed fascination.
And gradually he grew frightened.
He stopped talking. And staring at her as if he couldn't believe his eyes, he felt she was changing into another person.
It was subtle, it had been slow, but it was complete, and for a long moment it silenced him.
He saw her all of a piece: her lace dressing gown, her bare feet, and her angular face with its slanted Byzantine eyes and her mouth, small, colorless, and quivering as was all the rest of her.
"Mamma?" he whispered.
Her hand burned his wrist as she touched him.
"There are pictures of him in this house?" she asked. There was a blankness to her face. It made her look young and utterly absorbed and curiously innocent. "Where are they?"
And she rose immediately as he did. She pulled on her yellow silk wrapper and waited right beside him as he took a candle from the sconce and then she followed him.
There was a mindless quality to her. And he was halfway to the supper room when he realized she was still barefoot and did not seem to know it.
"Where?" she asked. He opened the doors and pointed to the great family portrait.
She stared at it and then looked at him in confusion.
"I'll show you," he said quickly, reassuring her. "It's the clearest image of him when you look very close. Come." And he guided her to it.
There was no need for the candle. The late afternoon sunlight was flowing through the mullioned windows and the backs of the chairs were warm as he touched them.
He brought her up close and said, "Look, through the blackness."
And then he lifted her, surprised at how light she was, and how her body shook with an invisible tremor. Suspended in the air, she laid her hand flat on the picture, the fingers closing in on the shape that was hidden, and then at once she saw it. He could feel her shock, a slow absorbing of every detail as though the figure, rising as it had for so many years, were actually striving forward.
It seemed a moan came out of her, starting low, and then rising to be suddenly strangled. She had her mouth tight shut, and all at once she moved so violently, he let her drop quickly to the floor and she staggered backwards.
She moaned again, her eyes growing wider.
"Mamma?" He was suddenly afraid of her. And gradually, he realized her face had become that perfect mask of rage he'd seen so often in childhood.
He raised his hands almost before he meant to do it, and yet her first blow caught him square on the side of his face and the shock of pain instantly infuriated him.
"Stop it!" he cried out. She hit him again, and then came her left hand, as from behind her clenched teeth she let out one shrieking moan after another.
"Stop it, Mamma, stop it!" he cried, his hands crossed before his face, his fury growing stronger and stronger. "I won't stand for it now, stop it."
But again and again, the blows assaulted him and she was screaming now, and he never in his life so hated her.
He caught her wrist and, forcing her back, felt her left hand grabbing at his hair and pulling it cruelly. "Don't do this to me!" he shouted. "Don't do it!"
And he embraced her, sought to crush her against his chest and hold her helpless. She was sobbing; her nails had drawn blood. And he realized with a scalding shame that the doors to the Grand Salon were being opened.
Before she knew it, he saw his father was there and, with him, his secretary, Signore Lemmo. Signore Lemmo backed away, vanished.
And as she slapped at Tonio again, screamed at him, Andrea came towards her.
It was his robe she must have seen first, the great sweep of color, and she weakened all at once, falling backwards. Andrea took her in his arms; he opened himself to her and slowly enfolded her.
Tonio, his face burning, stood helpless watching it. Never before in his life had he seen his father touch his mother. And she coiled against her husband as if she would not blemish his robes, as if she wanted to hide herself in her own arms as she was crying hysterically.
"My children," Andrea whispered. His soft hazel eyes moved over her loose clothes, her bare feet, and then he looked at his son slowly, sadly.
"I want to die." She shuddered. "I want to die...." Her voice was coming deep out of her throat. His hand touched her hair delicately. Then the white fingers spread themselves out, closing on her small head and pressing it to him.
Tonio wiped at his tears with the back of his hand. He lifted his head and said softly:
"This is my doing, Father."
"Your Excellency, let me die," she whispered.
"Go out, my son," Andrea said gently. Yet he motioned for Tonio to come to him, and he clasped his hand firmly. The touch was cold and dry, but ineffably affectionate. "Go now, and leave me with your mother."
Tonio stood still. He was staring at her, her narrow back heaving with her sobs, her hair that sleek mass falling over his father's arm. He pleaded silently with his father.
"Go on, my son," said Andrea with infinite patience. As if to reassure Tonio, he took his hand again and crushed it softly with his powdery dry fingers before letting it go and motioning to the open doorway.
11
IT WAS THAT STAGE of life at which, had Guido been a normal boy, his voice would have "changed," dropping down from the boy's soprano to a tenor or basso. And this is always a dangerous time for eunuchs. No one knows why, but it seems the body is trying to work the magic for which it no longer has the power. And the voice is threatened by that vain effort, so that many singing teachers do not allow their castrati to sing during these months. The voice, it is hoped, will all the sooner recover.
And in general it does.
But sometimes it is lost.
And in the case of Guido, this tragedy happened.
Half a year passed before anyone could be certain. And these were months of inexpressible agony for Guido. Again and again, he could offer only hoarse and lame sounds. His maestros were grief-stricken. Gino and Alfredo could not look him in the eye. Even those who had envied him were dumb with horror.
But of course no one felt this loss as Guido did, not even Maestro Cavalla, who had trained him.
And one afternoon, gathering all the money he had from fetes and suppers where he'd sung, gold he hadn't had time to waste, Guido disappeared with the clothes on his back without a word to anyone.
*
No one guided him. He had no map. He asked a question now and then, as for ten days he walked the steep and dusty roads that led him deeper and deeper into Calabria.
Finally he came to the village of Caracena. And from there he went out at dawn, his coat matted with straw from the inn where he'd slept, and climbing the slope, found the house in which he'd been born on his father's land, exactly as he'd left it twelve years ago.
A woman stood by the fire, squat, heavy, the lines of her mouth sunken in her rounded face for want of teeth, her eyes milky. Her skin gleamed with the cooking fat. And for
a moment, he was uncertain. Then he knew her perfectly. "Guido!" she whispered.
Yet she was afraid to touch him. And bowing low, she wiped the place for him to sit.
His brothers came in. Hours passed. Dirty children huddled together in the corner. And finally his father appeared, standing over him, the same hulk, to offer a crude cup of wine with both hands. And his mother placed a great supper before him.
All stared at his fancy coat, his leather boots, the sword he wore at his side, with its silver scabbard.
And he sat staring at the fire as if he were not surrounded by them.
But now and then his eyes would move as if turned by a handle.
And he would look at this dark assemblage of burly men, their hands black with hair and dirt, their clothes of sheepskin and rawhide.
What am I doing here? Why did I come?
He rose to leave them.
"Guido!" his mother said again. Wiping her hands quickly, she came forward as if to touch his face. It was only the second time that anyone here had addressed him.
And something struck him in her voice. It was the same tone of the young maestro in the darkened practice room, echoing back to the man who had held his head at the castration.
He stared at her. And his hands commenced to move, searching all of his pockets. Out came the gifts he'd received for so many little concerts. A brooch, a gold watch, snuffboxes inlaid with pearl, and at last gold coins which he gave up to all of them. Their hands felt so dry, exactly like dried dirt on a rock. His mother was crying.
He was back in the inn at Caracena by nightfall.
As soon as he reached the bustling center of Naples, Guido sold his pistol for enough to rent a room over a tavern. And ordering a bottle of wine, he cut his veins with a knife, and sat drinking the wine as the blood flowed, until he lost consciousness.