by Anne Rice
"Be patient with me," he said angrily. He could see the hurt in Tonio's face. But Tonio gave only a little nod. It was always that way with him, that infernal Venetian graciousness. There was no rebuke in him now as he looked at Guido; with a faint smile he rose to go.
Silently shaken, Guido watched him cross the room. He pictured him on the stage, he saw the crowds at the dressing room door. Again, he saw the face of the Cardinal Calvino, that innocence, those remarkably vital eyes.
You have no idea of the adulation that awaits you, you cannot even guess. Of course they will have their compliments for the composer; if the opera is good, they might even put my name on the handbills, but then again, they might not. It is for you that Rome will crack open like an egg and give birth to itself all over again, and I want it for you, I want it for you.
So why do I feel the way I do?
Tonio was somewhere beyond the doorway. Guido could feel him near. He imagined himself striking Tonio suddenly; he saw that perfect face disfigured by red marks. He had risen from his desk before he realized what he was doing, and passing quickly into the bedchamber, he stopped when he saw Tonio at the window looking down into the yard.
"You know what these Roman audiences are," Guido said. "You know what I have before me. Be patient with me."
"I am," Tonio said.
"You must do everything that I ask of you! You must give me that!"
He felt sharp, eager for argument. Everything that angered him and irritated him in Tonio came to the fore. But he knew this was not the time. There was plenty of time....
"I will do anything that you ask," Tonio was saying politely in that rich, measured voice.
"Oh, yes, anything except perform in female dress when you know that is what you must do. In Rome of all places, and of course you will do anything but that which it is absolutely essential that you do!"
"Guido," Tonio interrupted him. For the first time he evinced anger and impatience. The transformation of that angelic face never failed to amaze Guido. "This, I can't do. There is no reason to argue it anymore."
Guido gave a low, scornful sound. He had what he wanted now, strife, and plenty of it, and angry words coming to his lips, and Tonio's face coloring, the eyes growing colder. But why was Guido doing this? Why on their very first day in Rome, when he did have time, a great deal of time to take Tonio to the theaters, to show him the castrati in female costume, to make him understand their great power and appeal?
Tonio turned abruptly and went to the open dressing room. He was removing the robe. He would dress now and go out, and these rooms would be empty. Guido would be alone.
A desperate feeling came over him.
"Come here!" he demanded coldly. He moved to the bed. "No, bolt the doors first," he said, "then come."
For a moment Tonio merely gazed at him.
He pressed his lips together ever so slightly and then with that small patient nod so characteristic of him, he did what he was told. He stood waiting by the high bed, his hand on the coverlet, looking serenely into Guido's eyes. Guido had opened his breeches, and he felt his passion collecting his other emotions and fusing them into one strength.
"Take off the robe," he said crossly. "And lie down. On your face, lie down."
Tonio's eyes were actually a little more beautiful than eyes should be. With the slightest betrayal of his disapproval of all this, Tonio did again what he was told.
Guido mounted him roughly; the nakedness under him, against his clothes, maddened him. He pressed Tonio's face into the bed with the heel of his hand, and took him with his crudest thrusts.
It seemed a long time he lay still beside Tonio before Tonio rose to go.
Without complaint, Tonio dressed, and when he had put on his jeweled rings and taken up his walking stick, he came quietly to the side of the bed. He bent to kiss Guido on the forehead and then on the lips.
"Why do you put up with me?" Guido whispered.
"Why shouldn't I put up with you?" Tonio whispered. "I love you, Guido," he said. "And we are both of us just a little afraid."
2
THAT STREET, the stars overhead, the ceiling of the room, his teeth biting down into flesh, and the knife, the actual slash of the knife, and that roaring sound which was his own scream...
Then he awoke, his hand to his mouth, realizing he had not really uttered a sound.
He was in the Cardinal Calvino's house; he was in Rome.
It was nothing really, that old dream, and the faces of those bravos whom he sometimes imagined he had seen in the streets. Of course he had never really seen them; that was a little fantasy of his, seeing one of them, catching him unawares: "You remember Marc Antonio Treschi, the boy you took to Flovigo?" and the stiletto driving between the ribs.
Just before leaving Naples, he had spent an afternoon with a bravo learning even more about how to use the little dagger. The man, paid well for his instruction, seemed to enjoy an apt pupil.
"But why attend to this yourself, Signore?" he had said under his breath as he eyed Tonio's clothes, the rings on his fingers. "I am out of work just now. My services are not as expensive as you might think."
"Just teach me." Tonio had smiled. Smiling always made him feel better at such moments. The bravo, something of a natural teacher, merely shrugged.
Remembering this dispelled the dream quickly. And before Tonio had placed his bare feet on the delicious coolness of the marble tiles, he knew again he was in the Cardinal's palazzo, and he was in the middle of Rome. The dream was like a bad taste in his mouth, or a faint headache. It would soon, altogether, be gone.
And the city was waiting for him. For the first time in all his life he was truly free. Years ago, he'd gone from the restraints of his tutors in Venice to the care of Guido and the discipline of the conservatorio, and he could not quite get used to the fact that all this was at an end.
But Guido had made it clear. As long as Paolo had his tutors and Tonio devoted the morning to practice, Tonio had not to answer to anyone anymore. Guido never said so. It was simply the way it was. Guido would disappear in the afternoon when others were still napping and might not come back till midnight. He would ask in the manner of one man speaking to another, "And where have you been?"
Tonio couldn't help smiling. Nothing of the dream lingered now. He was wide awake and it was very early, and if he hurried he could hear the Cardinal Calvino's early morning mass.
Each day, the Cardinal Calvino said mass in his private chapel to which members of his household were welcome to come. The altar was decked with white flowers, the candelabra spreading their tiny flames in great arcs beneath the giant image of the crucified Christ, His hands and feet streaming a copious and shimmering red blood.
The glare of the candles hurt Tonio's eyes when he entered the chapel, and no one appeared to notice as he took a small chair at the very back. And he did not know why he was watching the distant figure at the altar, who turned now with the golden chalice in his hands.
A cluster of young Romans knelt to receive communion, behind them the clerics, humble, more soberly dressed. But Tonio felt good here, and his head resting against the gilded pillar behind his chair, he closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the Cardinal had his hand raised in the last blessing, and his face appeared ageless in its smoothness, and sublimely innocent, as though he knew nothing of evil and never had. There was conviction to his every attitude and movement, and it seemed a little thought took shape in Tonio's mind, very like a pulse beating in his temple, and the thought was the Cardinal Calvino had reason more than most of us for being alive: he believed in God; he believed in himself; he believed what he was and what he did.
It was afternoon when, after several hours of practice with Guido and Paolo, Tonio entered the deserted fencing salon of the palazzo alone.
No one had used this room in years. And there was something familiar to Tonio about the polished floor shining through his footprints in the dust. Unsheathing his sword,
he advanced against an invisible opponent, humming to himself, as if this battle were accompanied by great music and were actually part of a splendid pageant on a great stage.
Even when he became weary, he continued to go through his exercises until he felt the first agreeable ache in his calves.
But after an hour of this, quite suddenly he stopped, convinced that someone had been watching him at the door.
He spun round, the rapier firmly clasped in his hand.
No one was there. The corridor beyond was empty, though there were sounds of life throughout the enormous house.
Yet he had the persistent feeling someone had come and gone. And putting on his frock coat quickly and sheathing his sword, he found himself wandering about the palazzo almost aimlessly, nodding and bowing to those he passed.
He neared the Cardinal's immense office, but seeing it was shut up, moved on along a mezzanine, examining the huge Flemish tapestries, and the heavy portraits of those men of the last century who had worn such enormous wigs. White hair appeared to bubble over their shoulders. The skin, exquisitely molded, veritably glistened with life.
Suddenly there was a great clamor below. The Cardinal was just coming in.
And Tonio watched as, surrounded by his pages and attendants, the Cardinal mounted the broad white marble stairs. He wore a wig, small, pigtailed, and perfectly proportioned to his lean face, and he was talking pleasantly with those who accompanied him, pausing once, his hand on the marble railing, to catch his breath with a murmured jest.
He had the air of a monarch even in this little pause. And for all the richness of his crimson watered silk and silver jewelry, and the dignity of his carriage, there was that natural gaiety to his face.
Tonio stepped forward without any real purpose; perhaps only to see the man as he continued up the steps.
And when the Cardinal stopped again, catching sight of Tonio and looking at him for a definite interval, Tonio found himself bowing and backing away.
He did not know why he had let himself be seen. He stood alone in a shadowy corridor, the sun blazing in a high window at the far end of it, feeling suddenly ashamed.
Yet he was savoring the Cardinal's faint smile and the manner in which the Cardinal had let his eyes linger on Tonio before giving him such an affectionate nod.
Tonio's heart became a tiny hammer. "Go out into the city," he whispered to himself.
3
IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Guido resolved not to mention the matter of a female role for Tonio again. But he was more than ever convinced it was a necessity as he went about his work.
He visited the Teatro Argentina, talked with Ruggerio about the other singers he had set out to hire, satisfied himself that the machinery was in working order for any scenes he might write, and made some final arrangements for his percentage of the sale of the printed score.
Meantime Tonio was buying little Paolo every article of clothing a boy could possibly wear, from gold-threaded waistcoats to capes for summer and winter--though it was summer--handkerchiefs by the dozens, shirts trimmed with Tonio's favorite Venetian lace, morocco slippers.
It was provoking, but Guido didn't have time to reprimand, and Tonio was an excellent teacher, guiding Paolo through his vocalises as well as his Latin.
Paolo's bushy brown hair was now tamed into a civilized shape; he was dressed all the time to go out, and they went off to visit the museums by torchlight in the evenings, Paolo terrified by the Laocoon for the very reasons it probably terrified everyone: that the man and his two sons, caught by the serpents, must all perish at the same time.
Tonio was also teaching Paolo a gentleman's manners.
Every morning the three of them breakfasted together before one of the high windows, its garnet-colored draperies fastened back, and Guido had to admit he rather liked listening to the two of them who made no demand on him to join in; he liked people talking around him as long as he did not have to speak.
Guido had enough talking to do in the evenings. He was received everywhere, thanks to the Contessa, who wrote to him regularly, and everywhere he asked questions about the local taste and, pretending ignorance, had people describe to him all the recent operas in simple detail.
Making his way through immense ballrooms, up and down the steps of cardinals' palaces and lodgings of foreign dilettanti, he sensed a massive society here, infinitely more sure of itself and more critical than he had known in any other place.
And why should it not be so? This was Rome, this was the magnet of Europe. All came here sooner or later to be elevated, humbled, absorbed, conceivably annihilated, or repulsed and driven away.
Whole communities of expatriates lived in this place. And though it had produced no recent outpouring of composers as Naples had done, or Venice in the past, this was where reputations were made or broken. Fine singers who had won laurels in the north and south might be destroyed in Rome, famous composers driven right out of the theater.
The south seemed soft to these people. If its beauty intoxicated them when they went there, it was not enough to keep them from returning to Rome. And they ridiculed the Venetians, saying it was all barcarola from there, that is, the kind of music one expects from the gondoliers on the water, and they felt no compassion for those whom in the past they had ruined.
Sometimes it angered Guido, this strident snobbery, especially since Naples supplied the world with her talent. And Vivaldi, the Venetian, was as fine as any composer in Europe. But he held his peace. He was here to learn.
And he was fascinated.
By day he haunted the coffeehouses, drank up the life of the thriving Via Veneto and the narrow Via Condotti, musing as he watched the young castrati come and go, some boldly done up in luxuriant female dress, others slinking about like beautiful cats in the beguiling severity of clerical black, their fresh complexions and lovely hair drawing eyes to them everywhere.
And wandering into the summer theaters where the comic opera or the plays were being performed, he studied these boys as they pranced on the stage, coming better to understand here in Rome than in any other place he'd ever been, how eunuchs had come into fashion and necessity.
Here the Church had never relented its ban on performing women, that prohibition which had once dominated the stages of all Europe. And these audiences simply never saw a female creature before the footlights, never witnessed that spectacle of womanly flesh magnified by the cheers and clapping of thousands packed in a dark hall.
Even the ballet had its male dancers frolicking in long skirts.
And Guido perceived that when the woman is taken out of an entire realm of life that must needs imitate the world itself, then some substitute for that woman is inevitable.
Something must rise to take the place of what is feminine. Something must rise to be feminine. And the castrati were not mere singers, players, anomalies; they had become woman herself.
And they knew it. How they swung their hips, how they mocked and taunted their hungry audiences.
Guido wondered could Tonio see it, or did it make Tonio suffer beyond endurance? Could he not recognize in this place the violent amplification of all his powers which a female role would mean?
It was a grand irony, really, Guido reflected, hearing these sopranos rise and fall. There was the skill he'd known all his life, but here it had become a divine obscenity, more fraught with the sensual than that which it so reincarnated.
"It will give my enemies something to talk about," the Cardinal had said in his unguarded moment. And he was right.
Guido sighed. He scratched a few notes on the pad he carried in his pocket. He noted the temperament, the habits, the unrestrained tastes of those he saw.
And he knew that on that stage at the Teatro Argentina on the first of the year, Tonio must appear as a woman. His voice could call the gods to attention; but in Rome, he and he alone must shine with that carnal power, and could suffer no other young singer to have that advantage if he did not have it; he must have it. Guido mu
st win.
And this was but one aspect of the war that lay ahead of him. Guido must triumph on all counts. He must come to understand this city, forgive it its mercilessness, or he would be too afraid to do what he must do. And making it his landscape day after day, he sought to compass it with his mind.
And he fell in love with it.
San Giovanni in Laterano, San Pietro in Vincoli, the Vatican Treasures, the moldering hulk of the antique Colosseum overgrown with weeds, the sprawling fragments of the ancient Forum, all this he pondered, letting the roaring carriages of the cardinals pass, caught up again and again in the spectacle of hooded friars in procession, cassocked priests, clerics come from all the world to hear the voice of the Holy Father echoing through the largest church on earth and out across continents and seas to the very edges of Christendom.
But what was it he felt in the air around him as he stood in the Piazza San Pietro, what was it that made this city so seemingly solid, so seemingly invincible?
It was as if he could feel a hum, a seething. It was as if this immense metropolis were itself the core of a volcanic mountain. It was that cauldron from which the fire and smoke belched forth, and all those living and striving here were bound up in that communal force.
Was it not fair then that all must come here finally to be tested? Let the audiences curse and shout and drive from the theaters and the city itself all those not fit for the pantheon. It was not their sport, finally, it was their right.
*
He went home.
He wrote until his eyes failed him and he could no longer hear the notes he scribbled. He had a sheaf of arias; he had them for all emotions, all voices.
But he did not have his story yet.
Finally the Cardinal sent for Tonio to sing.
A little supper of only some thirty-five persons, the table ablaze with light and animated faces, the flash of silver, and the harpsichord in a far corner of the room.
Guido gave Tonio only a simple aria that would reveal no more than a fourth of his talent and power, and with the music long committed to memory, he looked up from the keyboard to study this little audience as Tonio commenced to sing.
Tonio's notes were high, pure, and tinged with sadness. They brought the appropriate pauses in conversation, here and there the unabashed turn of the head.