by Anne Rice
He touched the bare skin of his shoulders with his gloved fingers; he shut his eyes and felt the familiar bones of his own face.
And then he realized that Signora Bianchi had withdrawn from him as she sometimes did. It was as if she herself were startled by the final effect. And when he turned to her very slowly, he had the distinct impression she was frightened.
It seemed in some other distant world a roar had arisen from the crowd. Old Nino said they had lighted the great chandelier; the theater was overflowing. And there was yet so much time....
He looked down at Signora Bianchi. Her face showed no pleasure, and her little squinting eyes darted over him anxiously as she appeared to shrink away.
"What is it?" he whispered. "Why do you look at me that way?"
"Darling one..." Her voice became mechanical. "You are magnificent. You could fool even me...."
"No, no...why do you look at me that way?" he whispered again, certain no one living could have told it was not a woman's whisper.
She didn't answer.
And suddenly he advanced all of a piece like a doll gliding towards her and she backed up suddenly and let out a little cry.
He was glaring at her.
"Tonio, stop it!" she said, biting her lip.
"Then what is it?" he demanded again.
"All right, then, you are like a demon, a perfect woman who is larger, larger than life! You are delicate and beautiful all over; but you are too large! And you frighten me as if the angel of God were to come into this room, now, and fill it up with his wings, knocking the feathers out of them so that they were tumbling down through the air, even as you heard a scraping of his wings against the ceiling. And his head was bigger and his hands were bigger...well, that is what you are.... You are beautiful and perfect, yet you are a..."
"A monster, my dearest," he whispered. And on impulse he took her face in both hands and gave her another deep kiss.
She held her breath, her eyes closed, her mouth open, and then her heavy breasts heaved with a sigh.
"You belong out there...." she murmured. And then she opened her eyes. For a long time, she just looked at him and then her face crinkled with pleasure and pride and she threw her arms about his waist.
"Do you love me?" he asked.
"Ah!" She backed away. "What do you care about me! All of Rome is about to love you, all of Rome is about to fall at your feet! And you ask do I love you? Who am I?"
"Yes, yes, but I want you to love me, in this room, now."
"Oh, so soon it starts." She smiled. She lifted her hands to caress the white waves of hair, to slip a long jeweled pin in place. "The endless vanity"--she sighed--"with its endless greed."
"Is that what it is?" he asked softly. She stopped.
"You're afraid," she whispered.
"A little, Signora, a little." He smiled.
"But, darling..." she started.
But the door had flown open, and a breathless Paolo, his hair wet and rumpled, came into the room.
"Tonio, you should hear them, the trash! They're saying Ruggerio paid you more than Bettichino, and they're spoiling for a fight. And the place is full of Venetians, Tonio, they've come all the way just to hear you sing. There'll be a fight all right, but, Tonio, they're not going to give you a chance!"
14
THERE WAS NO MORE TIME. Twenty-five years of trudging steadily towards this moment, then it was down to a couple of years, then month after month and day after day. Now it was actually happening. Time had run out.
Guido could hear the orchestra tuning in the pit. Signora Bianchi had told him Tonio was ready, but he must not go in. And he and Tonio, having embraced each other that afternoon with the most intimate words, had agreed on that; neither would fire the other in these last moments with his own doubts.
Guido made one last routine inspection in the glass. His smooth white wig was perfect, the gold brocade frock coat, after a series of adjustments by the seamstress, did finally allow him the free use of his arms. He struggled to flatten the lace at his throat, to shake it loose at his wrists, and now he loosened his belt just a little, certain no one would notice, and gathered up the score.
But before stepping into the pit, he stood behind the curtain and looked into the hall.
The great chandelier had just disappeared into the ceiling, taking with it the light of day.
And it seemed the descending gloom loosed a wild roar. There was stamping in the gallery, and coarse shouts coming from both sides.
The abbati had taken over the front of the house as he'd expected, and the boxes were positively jammed. Extra chairs had been squeezed in everywhere, and directly above him to the right it was a dozen Venetians he saw, he was certain of it, and one among them looked particularly familiar, that giant eunuch from San Marco who had been Tonio's tutor and friend.
The Neapolitans were here, too, in full force, the Contessa Lamberti with Christina Grimaldi in the very front row of the box, their backs to the supper table where others were already at cards. Maestro Cavalla was there, who had already sent his greetings backstage.
The Cardinal Calvino was only one of many cardinals present, a score of young noblemen clustering about him, all of them nodding and talking over their wine.
Suddenly a man dashed up the aisle towards the orchestra and, cupping his hands, let out some long derisive yell. Guido tensed, furious that he couldn't comprehend it, and then from the rafters it seemed there descended a fluttering white snow of little sheets of paper, with figures rising everywhere to snatch them up.
People had commenced to hoot and stamp. It was time for Guido to step out.
He closed his eyes and rested his head against the edge of the wall. Then he felt someone shaking him and he gritted his teeth, ready to demand this last moment of peace.
"Look at this!" It was Ruggerio, who had one of those pieces of paper which had fluttered from above.
Guido grabbed it, twisting it to the light. It was a crude sonnet insisting Tonio was nothing but a gondolier in his native city and should go back to singing the barcarola on the canals.
"This is bad, this is bad," Ruggerio was murmuring. "I know this kind of house, they can shut me down! They won't listen to anything, it's all sport to them, they've got a Venetian patrician to jeer at, and Bettichino's a favorite of theirs, and they'll shut us down."
"Where's Bettichino!" demanded Guido. "He's responsible for this." He turned, his fist doubled.
"Maestro, there isn't time. And besides, they don't take orders from Bettichino. All they know is the theaters are open, and your boy's given them a perfect armory with all his airs. If he'd only taken a stage name, if he wasn't so damned much the aristocrat and more..."
"Oh, shut up!" Guido said. He shoved the impresario away from him. "Why the hell do you say all this to me now!" He was frantic. All the tales of injustice and debacle came back to him now, Loretti's misery when Domenico had triumphed and Loretti himself had failed, the old story of Pergolesi, embittered, never returning to Rome.
He felt a fool suddenly, and it was the most despairing feeling in the world. What had made him think this was a tribunal where anything noble or just would happen? He started for the stairs.
"Maestro, keep your head," said Ruggerio. "If they start throwing things, don't throw anything back."
Guido laughed aloud. He took one last contemptuous look at the impresario, and coming out onto the main floor, he walked towards the harpsichord as the musicians rose to greet him with a quick bow.
The house went quiet, even the shouts being hushed, it seemed, as his fingers plunged into the first triumphant theme, the strings rising jubilantly around him.
The music formed a solid volume, obliterating for the moment every fear, and he felt himself carried along in it rather than driving its rapid tempo.
The curtain had gone up. Applause had greeted the figure of Bettichino above. And one glance told him the man was the perfect image of a god, his blond hair gleaming under the ligh
ts, his fair skin brilliantly highlighted with white powder. Guido knew men were bowing to him from the boxes. He could see from the corner of his eye that Bettichino was returning the bows. Rubino had come on stage, and now, and now, glancing up, he saw Tonio.
Even over the music, he heard the gasps and murmurs of the house, like the gentle roar that had accompanied the earlier spectacle of the chandelier.
And indeed it was a spectacle. An exquisite woman standing at the footlights in scarlet satin and gold embroidered lace. Tonio's eyes, etched in black, were like two shimmering pieces of glass. An air of command emanated from him, though he appeared lifeless as a mannequin, the spotlight beautifully accentuating the bones of his face.
Guido glanced up again quickly, but he could gain no recognition from Tonio who appeared to be serenely surveying the house. Only now, as Bettichino completed his little promenade of the stage, did Tonio respond to the greetings being offered him. Glancing slowly from the right to the left, he made a grand feminine bow. As he rose, his slightest movements had an immensity to them. Surely he had drawn to himself all eyes.
But the opera bore inexorably down upon Guido. They were already half through the opening recitative. Bettichino's voice was full of polish and power.
And suddenly he launched into his first aria. Guido had to be ready for the slightest change; the strings were reduced to a strumming continuo along with the harpsichord.
The singer had stepped to the front. The blue of his long coat caused his eyes to flash almost as if they were detaching themselves from his face, and his voice rose in stultifying volume.
Now ending the second part, he commenced the repetition of the first, which was the standard form of every aria, and as he must, he commenced to vary it, slowly, with more and more fanfare, yet nothing of the true power that Guido knew he would show later. But soaring to the last note, he commenced a magnificent swell, the note growing louder and louder and louder, and all executed in one long breath until the audience in the midst of it was totally silent. Guido was silent. The strings were silent. The singer, motionless, was unwinding an endless stream of sound into the air without the slightest symptom of stress, and just as he tapered it off and all thought he must conclude or die, he swelled the note again bringing it up to an even louder peak and then suddenly stopped it.
Applause rang from all quarters. The abbati were shouting in sharp, almost begrudging voices, "Bravo, Bettichino!" while the same cry came from the gallery and from the rear of the pit as well as the boxes. The singer left the stage as each man would do after his aria. And plunging back into the music, Guido led those assembled before the lights through the ongoing story of the opera.
Guido could feel his face aflame. He did not dare look at the stage. He had commenced, his fingers sweating so badly he felt them sliding on the keys, the introduction to Tonio's first aria. And then unable to prevent himself, afraid that in this moment he would fail Tonio if he did not, he swallowed his fear long enough to look up at the still figure of the woman standing there.
Tonio did not see him. If he needed him he did not show it. Those exquisite black eyes were fixed on the first tier as if confronting every person in it. And with a great rush of energy, he started in, his voice as clean and pure and absolutely translucent as Guido had ever heard it.
But the noise had already begun everywhere, the stomping of feet, the hissing from the back, the catcalls from the ceiling.
"Go back to Venice, to the canals!" came the strident roar from the topmost gallery.
Some of the abbati had risen from their seats, fists clenched at those above, screaming out, "Silence, silence."
Tonio continued to sing, unmoved, his voice never straining to drown out the din, which would have been impossible. Guido was clenching his teeth, and without meaning to, banging the keyboard as if he could draw some greater volume out of it.
The sweat fell from his face right onto the backs of his hands. He could not hear Tonio now. He could not even hear his own instrument.
Tonio had finished the song, he had made his bow, and with the same placid countenance gone into the wings.
From the whole first tier came a riotous applause that added nothing but noise to the hissing and screaming of the others.
It seemed to Guido there could be no more perfect hell for him than the moments that followed. The next scene was assembling itself on stage, and it was for this, the closing of the first act, that he had written Tonio's most magnificent aria. Every melody he'd given him was expertly tuned to show off his voice, but this was the set piece, the song that must prevent the great ladies and gentlemen of Rome from rising indifferently from their boxes and moving on elsewhere.
Bettichino's strongest aria would come right before it, but Bettichino would be heard! Guido was frantic.
The hissing had commenced again as soon as Tonio had appeared on the stage, and out of the corner of his eyes Guido saw another torrent of those little white slips of paper, covered no doubt with some malicious verse, falling everywhere.
Bettichino had come to the fore. He had now the most tantalizing and original of Guido's accompanied recitatives. It was the only part of the opera where action and song met, for he was now singing about the story itself, yet singing not humdrum narrative, but singing with feeling.
It was here Guido's strings did their finest work, and he himself could hardly hear or think or know what he was playing. The hisses had died as Bettichino began, and then the singer went from this into the grandest of his arias.
He had taken his time before giving the signal, the applause for the recitative producing for the first time a violent reaction in the audience. Guido took a deep breath. So Tonio had his own champions, thank God, and they were fighting Bettichino's with the same catcalls and protests.
Guido saw the singer signal for him to start, and alone Guido led the way into this most tender of arias. There was no other piece of music to match it in the rest of the opera, save the song that Tonio sang directly after.
Bettichino slowed the tempo. Guido followed immediately. And then even Guido felt the mastery of Bettichino's smooth and poignant beginning, his voice weaving up so delicately and yet so strongly it was like an unbreakable wire slowly uncoiling itself.
He let his head fall back. Going into the repeat of the first part, he was trilling the first note perfectly in one straight line, never deviating from it up or down, but merely punching it gently again and again, and again, as if that wire that was his voice were pulsing over and over with staccato radiance. Then he glided into the tender phrases, enunciating them magnificently, and as he came to the end, it was the swell, but this time the Esclamazio Viva, the note started at full volume and now diminished ever so gradually and so sweetly that it produced the most profound sadness.
It seemed that descending note, that note vanishing almost to the echo of itself, was wrapped in total silence. And then he let it rise again becoming stronger and stronger until he stopped it at full volume, with a resolute shake of his head.
His followers went wild. But there was no need for them to stoke the blaze in the parterre. The abbati were heralding him with a deafening stomping of the feet and hoarse exclamations of Bravo!
Bettichino circled the stage and now he came to the fore for his encore.
No one, of course, expected it to be the same--it was mandatory that it be different, and Guido at the keyboard was ready for those subtle differences--but it is doubtful anyone expected the show of tremolos and trills and then again those swells that seemed to defy human explanation. It was swells finally that were carrying the hour.
Bettichino went into the song a third and last time, and retired from the stage an unchallenged victor.
All right. Guido couldn't be sorry for this. He couldn't be sorry for an audience on the edge of their seats, but if these beasts had any decency they would realize their singer had had his moment and nothing from Tonio could now ruin it. But when were rivalries that decent? It wasn't enoug
h their idol had just demonstrated himself invincible, they must now crush Tonio.
And again, that ravishing young woman, her face so smooth she seemed deep in thought, came to the footlights as if nothing could shake her.
From the gallery came the first cries as before, but then they were taken up from the parterre.
"Go back to the canals!" they were screaming. "You don't belong on the same stage with a singer!"
But the abbati, infuriated, were again hurling their own invectives: "Let the boy sing! Are you afraid he'll make a fool of your favorite!" It was war, and the first missiles descended from above, the soft rotten pears and apple cores. The police appeared in the aisles. There was a silence, only to be followed by more catcalls and yells.
Guido stopped, slamming his hands down on the keyboard.
He was about to rise from the bench when he suddenly saw Tonio turn and resolutely gesture for him to stop his protest. Then came a sharp little nod: continue.
Guido commenced playing, though he could hear and feel nothing of what he was doing. The strings came in for the moment blurring those cries, but now challenged they rose louder.
Tonio's voice was rising, too, and nothing had shaken him. He was singing those first few passages with the same conviction and beauty that Guido had dreamed of. And Guido was almost in tears.
Then suddenly the great hollow of the house reverberated with an unbelievable noise!
A dog had been loosed on the first floor, and howling and barking, it scampered frantically towards the orchestra.
It seemed the entire first tier was on its feet in a roar of outrage. The Cardinal Calvino was signaling furiously for order.
Guido had stopped.
The orchestra had stopped. The abbati were cursing the dog, and now the police streamed into the gallery as well as the pit, and there were scuffles and cries as a score of culprits were dragged out to be whipped before being returned to the theater.
Guido sat perfectly still at the bench staring forward. He knew in a matter of seconds the theater would be cleared, not by any authority, but by the example of the lords and ladies who would start filing out of the first tier to leave this rabble to exhaust itself. He was sickened and unable to reason.