by Anne Rice
His voice was seducing her voice, not merely for its answers but for that moment when the two would come together in one song. Even his softest, most languid notes told her that, and her slow passages so full of dark color echoed the same vibrant desire.
At last they were together in the first duet with such a gentle exhilaration that he commenced that same little rocking with her, her little black eyes full of the radiance of laughter, her deep notes blending perfectly with his soaring protestations of love. A third sound seemed to emerge from the edge of the two voices, the brilliance of the instruments surging and dying again and again to let them fly free.
It was an agony when he had to back away from her, sing to her, and her voice answered him with the same exquisite pain.
Finally the strings were prancing again and a horn was leading him and this was his final summons to her, his last challenge to her to come with him, join him, be carried up with him. It seemed the Contessa leaned forward, that she rose on the balls of her feet, that every fiber of her moved with his dizzying rises, until with the fastest pace, they plunged into the final duet.
Her voice was wed to his voice. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes had the gleam of tears. Her little body heaved with the fullness of her voice, his own winding up and up out of his immense lungs and this languid slender frame that seemed the flesh left behind in stillness and grace as the voice went free.
It was over.
It was finished.
The room shimmered. Caffarelli leapt to his feet and with a grand gesture was the first to break into the rapid thunder of applause.
The little Contessa rose on tiptoe to kiss Tonio; she put her hands to his face and then she saw the look of unspeakable sadness in him, and she threw her arms about him and laid her head on his chest.
Everything happened so quickly. It seemed Caffarelli had clasped him by the shoulder and, nodding to everyone, gestured with his right hand to bring up the applause again and again. And all around him came the soft passionate compliments--he had sung so beautifully, and he had gotten the Contessa to sing with him, which was no small feat, and his voice was extraordinary, and why had they not heard of him before, all these years at the San Angelo, where was the Maestro! (He couldn't have written this libretto better himself!)
But why was it so hard for him to listen to this, why did he have the irrepressible urge to get away? Guido's pupil, yes, Guido's pupil, and what a divine composition, that Guido, where was he? It was all too perfect and yet he found this almost unendurable. Maybe, if only Guido were here!
"Where is he?" he whispered to the Contessa. Maestro Cavalla loomed over him for an instant, but before Tonio could read his expression he had disappeared, and then the Contessa was pressing for his attention:
"Tonio, I want you to meet Signore Ruggerio," she insisted as if it were possible to actually converse in the midst of all this.
He bowed to the man, he accepted his hand. He felt someone tug at him, and saw it was the old Marchesa who again pressed those dry lips to his cheek. He felt a rush of affection for her, her dimly lit eyes, and that creased white skin, and even the hand with which she held him, reptilian and surprisingly strong.
Someone else had loomed up suddenly. The Contessa was talking to the other, the Signore Ruggerio, and just then, unexpectedly, they were pressed together so that she wound her arm about Tonio's waist. Something had just come clear to him:
"Contessa," he whispered, "that young woman, the light-haired one." He realized that he had been expecting every moment to see her, and she simply was not here. A sinking feeling silenced him suddenly, even as he was making lame gestures to describe that wispy hair. "Blue eyes, but very dark blue," he must have murmured, "and such pretty hair."
"Why, my little cousin, you mean, my little widow, of course," said the Contessa, pulling forward yet another gentleman for him to meet. This was an Englishman from the embassy. "She is in mourning, dearest, for her husband, my Sicilian cousin, why I told you all about it, didn't I? And now she doesn't want to go back to England." She shook her head.
"A widow...!" Had he heard her right? He was bowing to someone else. And Signore Ruggerio was saying something of apparent importance to the Contessa and the Contessa was leaving him here!
A widow. Where was Guido? He couldn't see him anywhere. But then he saw Maestro Cavalla far far across the room, and Guido was with him and so was the Contessa and so was that little man, Ruggerio.
Someone else had hold of him, telling him earnestly he had a magnificent voice and that he should make his debut here at the San Carlos instead of going all the way to Rome. Why did everyone still have to go to Rome?
But a widow, he was thinking; was it possible to cast a more sensual light upon her? Was it possible to make her more enticing, more available, then have her married and widowed in one sentence, removing her forever from that unattainable choir of virgins to which he'd always told himself she surely belonged?
He was excusing himself now to everyone, trying vainly to get across this great expanse of marble floor, to get near to those distant figures, Guido and the Maestro.
And then he saw Paolo, looking the perfect little prince in his finery, rushing towards him through the crowd. He embraced Tonio quickly.
"What are you doing here?" Tonio asked, even as he acknowledged another greeting from the old Russian Count Sherzinski.
"The Maestro said I could come to hear you." Paolo clung to him; he was obviously so excited by the whole affair he could scarcely speak.
"What do you mean? He knew I was going to sing?"
"Everyone knew," said Paolo breathlessly. "Piero's here and so is Gaetano, and..."
"Ahhhh, Guido!" Tonio whispered.
But he was almost laughing.
Quickly he left the gathering this time, pulling Paolo with him just as Guido and the Maestro and the dark gentleman disappeared.
By the time he reached the corridor, they were gone into some parlor, and all the doors were shut. And he had to stop to catch his breath, and just to savor the excitement he felt.
He was so happy all he could do was shut his eyes and smile. "So everyone knew," he said.
"Yes," Paolo answered, "and you have never sung better, ever. Tonio, I'll never forget it as long as I live."
But then suddenly his little face crinkled and it seemed he was about to cry.
He pressed close to Tonio. At twelve he was a reed of a boy, and he could just push his head into Tonio's shoulder. The shimmer of pain that came out of him alarmed Tonio.
"Paolo, what is it?"
"I'm sorry, Tonio, it's only we came to Naples together. And now you're going to be leaving. And I'll be alone."
"But what are you saying? Leaving where? Just because..."
Yet as he was speaking he could hear raised voices coming from one of the rooms down the hall. He tugged Paolo gently, his hand firm on his shoulder to reassure him, and Paolo was obviously struggling still not to cry.
An argument was in progress.
"Five hundred ducats," Guido was saying.
"Let me handle this," said the Maestro.
Tonio pushed very gently on the door. Through the margin of light he could see it was that dark gentleman, Ruggerio, they were talking to, and the Contessa, seeing Tonio, came forward quickly:
"You go upstairs, radiant child," she said now as she came into the corridor, closing the doors behind her.
"But who is that man?" he whispered.
"I don't want to tell you until it's settled," she said. "Come with me."
15
THREE O'CLOCK. Yet half the company was still in the house.
"Darling child," the Contessa had said as she shut him in, "it was only by chance Signore Ruggerio was to be here. And we were all so sure if we told you, you wouldn't sing!"
And for hours Tonio had waited alone in this spacious upstairs chamber over the noisy street.
Five hundred ducats, he was thinking, that's a fortune. Surely it's some s
ort of theatrical negotiations, but what sort?
One moment he feared everything, and the next he was terrified of disappointment. Yet Caffarelli had applauded him! No, he was merely being gracious to the Contessa. Tonio could make up his mind to nothing. What did it all mean?
Carriages came and went. Guests paused on the doorstep below to laugh and to embrace. And in the uneven flare of the torches could be seen a dim configuration of the lazzaroni on the steps of the church opposite, men who in this mild delicious night had no need of shelter and could simply stretch out under the moon.
Tonio left the window and found himself pacing the floor.
The painted clock tinked on the mantel. There were maybe three hours before dawn. And he had not undressed yet; certainly Guido must come to him.
What if Guido were in bed with the Contessa? No, Guido couldn't do that to him, not tonight. And the Contessa had promised him she would come; "as soon as it is all settled," she had said.
"This could be nothing," he told himself now firmly for the seventeenth time. "This Ruggerio, why, maybe he runs some little theater in Amalfi or someplace, and they want to take you there for some sort of trial.... But for five hundred ducats?" He shook his head.
But no matter how tormented he was over all of this, he could not stop thinking of the yellow-haired girl. He'd not recovered from the shock of learning she was a widow, and he had only to pause in his thoughts at any moment to see her and to see that room full of paintings, to see that mourning dress of black taffeta and that radiant little face.
No violet ribbon, no violet bows. Only her little mouth was violet this time, and she is a widow. That was the only color to her, save for that hair, and all those colors on the canvases behind her, which surely must have been her own.
He was such a fool for stammering and staring as he had done. How many times had he wanted such a moment with her, and she was a widow! When he had it finally, what did he do?
And maybe, just maybe, from some private corner somewhere in the palazzo she had heard him sing.
He saw those pictures in a blaze suddenly. It seemed quite unreal to him that it was her work. Yet she had been painting in the very midst of it. The canvas before her had been enormous, and if he could only remember the exact figures in it, then he could compare it in his memory with the rest.
It was so remarkable that she might have done all that. Yet he understood now that she had been married to that elderly man whom he had always believed to be her father, and he saw the whole of her life in a new light. He could remember so vividly their first meeting, her tears, some sense of deep suffering into which he'd blundered, drunk and careless, and tantalized by her loveliness and her youth.
She'd been married to that old man and now she was free.
And she painted not only simple Virgins and little angels; she painted giants, forests, turbulent seas.
He stood listening in the middle of this darkened bedchamber, and the church bells were ringing, it seemed, soft solemn reverberations. The little painted clock had been fast.
He buttoned his vest suddenly, smoothed his coat, and went to the door. Maybe everyone had forgotten him, and Guido was actually with the Contessa. The house was so quiet.
But a great blaze illuminated the distant stairwell. And cocking his ear for voices, he heard them. And then he turned and made his way to the inevitable back stairs.
The night was just as warm as it had been earlier, and as he stepped out into the grass, he saw countless stars overhead, uneven, some so clear they were faintly yellow or even pink, others merely tiny points of white light. And the fleeting clouds made him rock for a moment on the balls of his feet with his head back, for the whole heavens or the whole earth seemed to move.
Light streamed out from the parlor windows and when he finally went up to the glass, he saw Maestro Cavalla was still there. Guido was talking to Signore Ruggerio, and Signore Ruggerio appeared to be describing something with his finger on a bare table, while the Contessa looked on.
He turned his back, and in spite of the most intense excitement, he knew he must not go in.
He walked fast through the garden, finding his way into the patches of rose trees, and slowing his pace he made his way to that outbuilding which was completely dark. The moon shone bright for an instant, and just before the clouds passed over it again, he saw the doors were still open and he moved quietly towards them with just the crunch of the grass under his foot. Was it wrong to go in when all lay open so fearlessly? He told himself that he would merely stand in the door.
And placing his hand timidly on the frame, he saw the pictures before him, drained of color, the faces luminous and indistinct. Slowly Saint Michael materialized, and then the whiteness of that canvas on which only part of the work had been done. His foot sounded very loud to him on the slate flooring, and then he settled slowly onto the bench before the picture and made out a gathering of figures, white, and intertwined under what seemed a black mass of trees.
It was maddening not to be able to see it, and yet he felt an intruder. He did not want to touch her brushes, her little pots of paint so tightly covered, nor even the cloth that lay folded to one side. But these objects fascinated him. He remembered her when she was still bent forward. And he heard her voice again, its lovely treble and its slight opacity, and he realized that there had been a slight accent to her words.
After a moment's playing with conscience, he took one of the matches from her little table nearby and lighted the candle on his right.
The flame sputtered, grew larger, and slowly an even illumination filled the room. The great work against the wall quickly colored in, and the picture before him showed nymphs in a garden, lithesome and golden-haired, their gauzy dresses barely covering them as they danced with garlands of flowers in their tiny hands.
It was nothing as chaste and dour as her murals in the Contessa's chapel; it was more lively and immensely more skilled. And why not, he mused? In three years, what had he learned of singing? Wasn't it natural that she should have made her own progress, unknown to him, with the brush? Yet he could see now an attitude to the painted faces before him which indisputably connected them to the chapel Virgin he'd admired so many times. He found himself staring at the naked limbs of these nymphs, however, with a slight humming fascination that made him feel suddenly ashamed.
The paint was fresh; if he touched it, he would harm it, but he did not want to touch it. He merely wanted to look and to think that she had painted this.
Guido's little story of the funeral in Sicily came back to him. So she was the little English cousin, the little widow who had been so frightened by those horrid catacombs they had to take her out. Now he could hear it in her voice in his memory, that touch of an accent, and it gave her even greater fascination, though when he thought of her alone now without her husband, he wondered if it might even be worse for her than the marriage must have been.
A sadness came over him, a sadness slow but without measure. And he realized that all the times he'd ever seen her, in any place no matter how crowded, she had always seemed alone.
But her loveliness was all the more palpable, all the more a low beating torment, and finally he reached out to extinguish the candle flame. Deliberately he let it burn his fingers and then he rose reluctantly to go. What had she to do with him, after all? What did it matter she had such skill in her, such craft, such preoccupation that it made of her a lost sprite of a girl? Somewhere in his mind there was the notion that innocence alone could have done nothing so interesting as this work for he saw in it little simpering sweetness which he associated with innocence. Rather it was massive. And it was very fine.
But again, what was this to him, and why was he sweating? Why were his palms damp?
It occurred to him as he hovered in the doorway that he wished she would leave him alone, and in an instant he realized foolishly that it was he who perpetually stared at her, so much so she had nodded finally. Well, then, why the hell hadn't she told s
omeone how badly he behaved? He was furious with her.
And then looking up he saw her.
She was sitting in the rose garden, and her long robe was very white under the moon.
He sucked in his breath. But he was so badly shaken that he felt almost a fool. She'd been watching him! She'd seen the light in her little studio. And surely she could see him as clearly as he now saw her.
The blood was teeming in his face. And then to his gentle amazement she rose from the marble bench and came towards him, so slowly and so soundlessly that she appeared to drift rather than to move. In the grass he saw the gleam of her naked foot, and the breeze stirring the gauzy layers of her robe caused her form to be visible as if these loose garments were an eerie collection of light.
It seemed to him that for her sake he must make some nod and get gone from her as quickly as he could. But he didn't stir. He only watched her and something about her deliberation began to terrify him.
She came closer and closer until he could see her face clearly, and her eyes were full of significance, and as she looked up to him, her forehead creased with a little frown; she was speaking to him without words. And there came that fragrance from her that was the actual smell of summer rain. He was not thinking anymore. He was not seeing her rounded cheeks, or the dark pout of her small mouth. Rather he was seeing the whole of her, the pulsing thing she was beneath that sheathing of sheer linen and all that neglected golden hair: the body inside it, with its inevitable heat and damp and this fragrance so like the rain beating in full force on flowers, on pathways, on dead leaves.
He wanted her so badly it was an agony, as if all of him were starving for her and sharpened for her and paralyzed at the same time. It was a nightmare in which one cannot scream; one cannot move. It horrified him. Had she no caution, no care? This great empty garden, and beyond it the slumbering house, and here she stood alone with him. Would she have done that with any other man? A terrible violence rose in him suddenly, and it seemed she was some hideous thing and not the most lovely and delicate creature he'd ever seen.
He wanted to hurt her, to catch her up and crush her, and show her the truth of it, make her see what he was! He was trembling; he could hear his own breath.