by Anne Rice
Tonio sat down. He touched the keys; the notes were short and exquisitely delicate and in tune. Then he commenced an aria, one of Guido's sweetest and saddest, a meditation on love from a serenade which he had never publicly performed. This he liked more than the music he'd sung in Naples, more than the more tempestuous writing Guido had done for him of late. The words, from some unknown poet, used the yearning for the beloved as a yearning for the spiritual, and Tonio liked them very much.
Once as he was singing, he had looked up. He had seen the Cardinal's face, its singularity, its almost carved perfection, infused with that immediately apparent feeling that made the man so visible and magnetic wherever he was. He was not speaking a word, yet his pleasure was obvious, and Tonio found himself trying to make this song as nearly perfect as he could. Some little memory was coming back to him, or if it was not memory he was experiencing a familiar feeling of well-being as he played alone in this room for this man.
He had paused at the end, thinking, What can I sing that will delight the Cardinal most? And when the Cardinal himself set a jeweled cup of Burgundy wine in front of him, it was then he realized they were completely alone.
"My lord, allow me." He'd risen, seeing the Cardinal fill his own drink.
But when he had reached for the narrow-throated pitcher, the Cardinal had taken hold of him and brought him forward until they stood pressed against one another and he could feel the Cardinal's heart.
All was confusion in him; he'd felt the man's strength beneath his dark robe and the hoarseness of his breathing, and sensed that the Cardinal was in perfect torment as he let him go.
Tonio remembered backing away. He remembered that the Cardinal was then standing before the window looking out on distant lights. There was described there the nearby rise of a hill, little windows and rooftops thrown up against a paler sky.
Misery. Misery. And yet some terrible sense of triumph, some near intoxicating sense of the forbidden, as if it were a fragrance in the air. But when the Cardinal had turned back to him, the Cardinal was resolved. He laid his hands on Tonio's neck, his thumbs touching the front of it gently, and in a half whisper he asked ever so gently would Tonio remove his clothes?
It was said with such courtesy, such simplicity, and the mere touch of the Cardinal seemed to carry with it some power to weaken Tonio, to make him feel he must comply.
But he had not complied. He had almost stumbled away. A multitude of thoughts came between him and the desire that was awakening inside him, more powerful even than the Cardinal's soft command. He couldn't look at the Cardinal. He begged, could he be allowed to go?
The Cardinal hesitated, and then he said so sincerely and so gently, "You must forgive me, Marc Antonio, and yes, yes, of course, you should go."
What was left? That sense that somehow Tonio had willed it, that he had made it happen and inexplicably he had wronged this man.
Yet as he stood outside the Cardinal's door, shaken and bruised from Guido's angry words, he thought, For you, Guido, I do this, for you. The things he feared he always conquered for Guido, the things that humiliated him he somehow, for Guido, learned to endure.
But this, this was something altogether different and Guido didn't fully understand that difference, Guido did not know what he was doing sending Tonio here!
Tonio knew, however, and he knew suddenly that he had desired the Cardinal from the first moment ever he saw him. He had wanted him as he had wanted no others before him, locked as he had been in the warmth and safety of Guido's love. But the Cardinal, whole and powerful, yes, this was the man. It was as if he had an appointment with him towards which he had been moving for a long time.
The door gave when he knocked. It had never been bolted. And the Cardinal said, "Come in."
*
The Cardinal was bent over his writing desk, the room unchanged save for the light of what appeared a small antique oil lamp. And there were illuminated letters in the book before him, tiny figures fitted into the capitals, the whole gleaming as he let his hand, quivering, turn the page.
"Ah, think of it," he said, smiling as he saw Tonio, "written language the possession of those who took such pains to preserve it. I am forever entranced with the forms in which knowledge is given to us, not by nature, but by our fellow man."
He was not in his loose black garments any longer. Rather he had put on his crimson robe. A silver crucifix lay on his breast, and his face had such a curious mixture of angularity and vital humor that Tonio merely stared at him for a long time.
"My dear Marc Antonio," he said, wondering, his lips again lengthening into a smile, "why have you come back? Surely you must realize you were right to go?"
"Was I, my lord?" Tonio asked. He was trembling. Ah, it was a curious thing to tremble while giving no outward sign of it, merely to feel all the signals of panic sealed within. He drew near the desk; he looked down on the Latin phrases, lost in a schematic confusion, a wilderness of tiny beings living and dying amid curlicues of vermilion, crimson, and gold.
The Cardinal's hand was open and outstretched.
Tonio moved towards it, allowing himself to be enfolded in the Cardinal's arm. And at the touch of those fingers, he felt an undeniable awakening, though he fought it just as he had before. Free, he thought bitterly. He would even now run back and hide in Guido's arms if he could. He had the sense of something being destroyed, something that had been guarded desperately for so long. Yet he did not move away. He was looking down into this man's rapt face; he was looking into his eyes, and wanting to touch those smooth eyelids, and the colorless lips.
But the Cardinal was in quiet anguish, and his own passion was dividing him, though he could not push Tonio away.
"For me, the sins of the flesh have been too few to instruct," he murmured, halfheartedly, as though he were reflecting. There was no pride in what he said. "You put me to shame and rightly so. So why do you come back?"
"My lord, can we go to hell for a few embraces? Is this the will of God?" Tonio asked.
"You're the devil with the face of an angel," the Cardinal said, recoiling slightly, but even now Tonio could hear his breath grow heavy and uneven, and he could see that an inner struggle had commenced.
"My lord, is that really so?" Tonio went down slowly on one knee so that he was looking the Cardinal in the eye. What an amazing texture was this face, a man's face, the lines of age confined to such definite places, yet so deeply etched, the roughness of the pointed chin. There was a softness about the eyes, yet nothing alleviated the clarity of that gaze. "My lord," Tonio whispered, "since they cut so much away from me, I have often thought the flesh was the mother of all."
A defenseless confusion came over the Cardinal, and Tonio fell silent, astonished to hear such a confession from his own lips. What was it about this man that he should say such things to him?
But the Cardinal's eyes were fixed on him as if he must understand. And how wrongly Tonio had assessed this. The man was innocent, truly innocent, and he wanted desperately to be led.
"I've sinned enough for both of us," said the Cardinal, but it was without conviction. "Now you must go and let me win my battle for God and with myself."
"But will you be the loser for that, my lord?"
"Ah, no," the Cardinal pleaded, but at the same time, he drew Tonio closer to himself, holding him firmly in his arm.
"My lord," Tonio pressed, "may God forgive me if I'm wrong, but is it not true that this sin has already been committed? That in our passion for each other, we are already damned? You have not sent for your confessor, and I have none, and if we should die at this moment, we would burn as surely as if we had already committed the act? Well, then, if this is so, my lord, let me give you the little bit of heaven we can yet have."
He brought his lips to the Cardinal's face. He felt the inevitable shock of new flesh. A body he did not know was turning to him, opening its arms to him, and as the Cardinal rose and they stood together and Tonio embraced him, he felt against h
im the hardness of a body he had never known.
His hunger was weakening him. He would have begged for it suddenly had there been the need.
And this man's fire caught hold of him.
It seemed he led the Cardinal to the bed. He brought the candles there and set them down, extinguishing all but one, and looking dreamily at its little flame as his shadow leapt up and over the wall, he felt the Cardinal's fingers loosening his clothes.
He was slow about things. He did not help. He was looking into the core of what he wanted, feeling his own waning shock. From a great distance he saw his garments tumbling to the floor, and he felt the Cardinal's eyes passing over him. He heard him speaking in a barely audible confession: "It is enough."
"My lord," Tonio said, laying a hand on this firmness, this solidity, "I burn. Let me give you pleasure, or I will go mad."
He sucked at the Cardinal's mouth, astonished at its malleable innocence, and then, further astonished, he gave himself over to the powerful clumsiness of the Cardinal's hands. The Cardinal lapped at the nipples of his chest, he plunged into the dark hair between his legs, pressing his open palm right against Tonio's scars, and feeling them, convulsed with passion, unable to be quiet. He moaned as Tonio moaned, those dead seams of flesh suddenly alive with a jarring vibration, and Tonio, arching his back, felt the Cardinal's mouth on his rigid sex.
"No, my lord, I beg you...." Tonio, his eyes half mast, his lips quivering as if he were in deep pain, drew back ever so gently and, sliding down to his knees at the side of the bed, whispered, "My lord, let me see it. Let me see it, please."
The Cardinal stroked Tonio's head uncertainly. He appeared dazed and mindless, and then he opened his hands almost in an attitude of discovery as Tonio removed his red robe.
It was a root, it had that strength. It was round and hard as something made of wood is hard, and suddenly, as Tonio caught his breath in his throat, he was holding the heavy silken scrotum in his hands. It was eerie, the lightness of it and the heaviness of it, the seeming fragility of what hung suspended within it, and bending down, he sought to take the whole of it in his mouth, tasting the loose hairy flesh, the saltiness of it, the deep fragrance and heat that came from this place. He drew up and took the organ itself.
It touched the back of his mouth as he went up and down on it, his teeth stroking it, and between his own legs there came the first violent explosion as his own sex sought the little friction it needed from where it did not know nor care.
But he could not stop his movements. The passion was rising in him almost from the moment it had crested, and he was devouring this brutal, unyielding thing as his hand held the soft heaviness of the scrotum, tight yet gentle at the same time. And again it reached its inevitable summit, and he rose up, rigid against the Cardinal, feeling nakedness against his own nakedness and not caring if the world heard his strangled cry. The Cardinal was writhing against him; he was mad for him, and yet so innocent as if he did not know what to do, as if he could not do anything except Tonio's bidding.
Tonio stretched out on the bed, reaching back for him as if he were a cloak to be drawn over himself as he spread his legs. He felt the Cardinal kissing his bare back, his hands massaging Tonio's buttocks, and then Tonio's hand reached for the weapon itself and showed it the place.
This was pain; this was being impaled, and yet it was irresistible, a splendid overpowering, the first thrust bringing a groan from him, and then he felt his entire body moving in the same rhythm and it seemed a throbbing circle of pleasure radiated through him from that orifice and that cruelty, and gritting his teeth, he was giving the most blasphemous assent.
When the Cardinal finished in one last excruciating series of shocks, it was with a wailing cry as if he too suffered and could contain it no longer, falling back away from Tonio, his hand out to hold onto him as if some force might tear Tonio away.
An hour later perhaps, Tonio awoke. For a moment he did not know where he was. Then he realized the Cardinal was standing by the bed and looking down at him, the Cardinal's back to the open window full of the slow progression of the stars.
The Cardinal was speaking, and now his hand lay on Tonio's shoulder, and seeing Tonio's eyes were open, he touched Tonio's cheek. "Could God damn me for this ecstasy?" he breathed. "What is the lesson in it?" It was again an astonishing innocence. And such a childlike animation to the eyes, the face as majestic as ever with its smooth, slightly slanting eyelids, the mouth turned down at the ends.
"I was damned for it a long, long time ago," Tonio whispered, and felt himself slide immediately back to sleep.
When next he awoke the sky was a deep rose color beyond the rooftops, the clouds streaking it through and through with gold. There were the faint distant cries of geese in the air, and somewhere the lowing of cows. And as a cock crowed, it seemed the warming air split this room asunder so that all its brocade and enamel tumbled into itself, as shabby as the contents of a draper's in a back room, layered with dust. Motes moved heavily in the first beams that hit the carpet, and each little gust of the warm breeze carried with it the scent of fresh-turned soil. It penetrated the fragrance of incense and wax which before had been intact.
Tonio roused himself at once. He wondered why the Cardinal hadn't sent him away. It seemed such a charitable courtesy. But the Cardinal lay asleep against his pillow, and even now reached out sluggishly for the warm cleft in the sheet that Tonio had left.
Tonio dressed silently, and made his way down the dim gray halls.
And entering Guido's bedchamber, he saw that Guido had fallen asleep at his desk. His face was buried in his arm. The candle had died in its own wax.
For a long time, Tonio stared, at the bowed head, at those thick dusty curls. And then he lifted Guido, who started and then moved slowly and clumsily towards his bed. Old Nino came quietly in and raised the cover over Guido after he had taken off his shoes.
Tonio stood staring at him, then he turned and went into his own rooms.
He shut his eyes and felt himself with his arms around the Cardinal, his face pressed to that lean and unyielding body, feeling the tumult in it, feeling that coarse though perfect skin. His mouth opened on its secrets again until he could stand this no longer and he commenced to pace the room.
A rhythm caught him up and took him in circles until finally he threw open the window and bent far out over the ledge of it so he could drink up the air. A perfectly round fountain sparkled below. And the pattern of the disruption of the water began to absorb him when he realized he could not hear the splash of it from here.
It would never be the same between him and Guido!
And surely Guido had known this; what had Guido done? He had lived in a locked room with his lover, and Guido had sent him out of it, Guido had opened the door. All that gentle complexity, that bruising tenderness had paled and left him with no savor; he could invoke nothing of it suddenly to quiet him and reassure him; it was old, it was remembered already as if some limitless time had passed. He had been too scorched by the Cardinal's fire.
He would have wept now. But he was too tired and empty and full of some early morning chill for all the warmth of the brightening sun.
Rome seemed not a place so much as an idea as he knelt at the window, his forehead pressed against the sill. "What is the lesson in it?" the Cardinal had asked.
Well, for him, he knew the lesson. That he was losing Guido. And hungering for the Cardinal, hungering for that crushing passion, he knew he would do anything so that Guido would not know. The genius of it was to find Guido in the losing of him, and hold him forever in a new embrace.
6
HE HAD BECOME DROWSY since he sat down in this room. There was a fragrance here, and a quality of light that reminded him of some close place, full of fabric and paste jewels, where he had once been, and he'd been alone there and feeling some delicious warmth from the sun on his bare shoulders and his back.
But he wouldn't allow himself to remember this. It was not import
ant. What was important was to complete what had been begun.
And this woman was waiting for him, obviously thinking that she must assist him, her maids like blackbirds clustered on the edges of the room, their small brown hands full of business, gathering bits of ribbon or thread here, straightening a wig on its wooden head. It amused him suddenly that she expected him to strip off his male attire here and hold out his limbs for her as if she were his nurse.
He was leaning on his elbow, distracted slightly by his image in the shaded glass. His face looked so curiously blank to him most of the time, no matter how grotesque were his thoughts. It was as if the soft feminine flesh that had grown over it (pinch it between two fingers, it was as resilient as a woman's) had robbed him of expression, made him eternally young.
But how am I to close this bodice, he was thinking, how am I to tie up these skirts? Take it all back to the Cardinal's palazzo and give it over to that toothless old man who, even if he has fathered a dozen children in some narrow hovel on a back street, knows nothing of women's dress?
It was hot in this room, the noises of Rome clattered and hummed beyond the shuttered windows, and light lay in bars over this immense silk skirt.
She seemed to have sensed his hesitation. She clapped her hands for attention and sent her women out.
"Signore..." She bore down on him, reaching for his cape. He felt its weight lifted from his shoulders. "I have dressed the most famous singers in the world," she said. "I do not merely make clothes! I am a maker of illusions. Allow me to show you, Signore. When you look in that glass again you will not believe your eyes. You are very beautiful, Signore, you are that one I dream of when I ply my needle."
Tonio gave a soft dry laugh.
He rose, unwinding his height before her, smiling down on her heavily wrinkled little brown face. Her eyes were like two small kernels in the flesh, kernels you've just taken out of your mouth so that they are still glistening and wet.