by Anne Rice
And what was this?
He felt half crazed. And the peace of his dream of snow was beyond him.
He looked at Christina.
She lay deep asleep on her bed. He felt himself husband, brother, father to her. He wanted to carry her out of this place and far, far away from here, but to where? To some place where snow fell? Or back to that villa beyond the gates where they could live together forever? A terrible fatality came over him. What had he done in this? What had he truly wanted? He was not free to love anyone, not even to love life itself.
And he knew if he did not get away from her now he would be lost to her always. Yet feeling her unaccountable power he wanted to cry almost. Or to lie beside her again and just hold her.
Any cruelty she wished she could work on him soon, that was how desperately he loved her. And then he saw that in all his loves he'd never been afraid, not even of Guido had he ever been afraid. But he was afraid of her, afraid of her, and he did not know why, only that it was a measure of the power she had to wound him.
Yet she would never do this to him. He knew her. He knew her shadowy places. He sensed at the core of her some grand and simple goodness, for which he yearned with all his soul.
And moving swiftly to the bed, he slipped his arms under her and held her until slowly, very slowly, her eyes opened, and blindly she stared upward.
"Do you love me?" he whispered. "Do you love me?"
And as her eyes grew big and soft and full of sadness to see him like this, he felt himself open completely to her.
"Yes!" she whispered, and she said it as if she had just fully come to know it.
Days later, on an afternoon when half of Rome, it seemed, was gathered in her studio, the sun pouring through the naked windows, men and women chatting, sipping wine and English tea, reading the English papers, she bent over her easel, her cheek smudged with chalk, her hair held indifferently by a violet ribbon. And he from the sidelines gazed at her and realized he belonged to her. Such a fool you are, Tonio, he thought, you only add to your own pain. But it had not even really been a decision.
4
GUIDO KNEW that something was wrong, and he knew that Christina had nothing to do with it.
The Roman carnival was almost upon them, the opera had been running successfully for weeks, and yet Tonio would not discuss any future engagements. No matter how Guido pressed, Tonio begged to be let alone.
He claimed exhaustion, he claimed distraction; he claimed that he must go to Christina's. He claimed that with both of them being received at three that afternoon by an electoress, it was impossible to think of anything.
There were excuses without end. And now and then when Guido did trap Tonio in the very back of his dressing room at the theater, Tonio's face would stiffen, acquiring that coldness that had always struck a chord of muted terror in Guido, as he stammered angrily: "I can't think of that now, Guido. Isn't all of this enough!"
"Enough? It's only the beginning, Tonio," Guido would answer.
And at first, Guido did tell himself it was Christina.
After all, never had he seen Tonio as he was now, completely caught up in this love so that it claimed every moment away from the theater.
But when finally Guido went to Christina in the late afternoon, while Tonio was off to a reception he could not avoid, he was not surprised to hear her denials.
Of course she hadn't discouraged Tonio from accepting the Easter engagement at Florence. She hadn't even been told of it.
"Guido, I'm ready to follow him everywhere," she said simply. "I can paint anywhere as easily as here. I need my easel, my colors, my canvases. It's nothing to go anywhere on earth," and then she dropped her voice, "as long as he is with me."
She had only just let her last guests go home. The maids were clearing away the wineglasses and the teacups. And she, her sleeves pinned up, was working with her oils and pigments. There were glass containers of crimson, vermilion, ocher before her. Her fingertips were red.
"Why, Guido," she asked brushing back her hair, "why won't he speak of the future?" But it was as if she were afraid of Guido's answer. "Why does he insist upon such secrecy with us, with having everyone believe we are only friends? I've told him if I had my way, he should move into my lodgings! Guido, everyone who cares to know, knows he is my lover. But you know what he said? This wasn't very long ago, and it was late, and he'd had too much wine and he said there was no doubt in his mind that for all you'd done for him, you were better for having known him, that you would be all right. 'The wind will fill his sails after this,' he said. But he said I wouldn't be better off if he left me with my reputation ruined, and he couldn't do that for all the world. But why is he talking of leaving, Guido? Until that night, I feared it was you who wanted him to give me up."
Guido knew she was staring at him, imploring him, and though he increased the pressure with which he held her hand, he could not now satisfy her. He was gazing off over the rooftops beneath her high empty windows and feeling the chill of having discovered the old enemy, the old terror.
He said nothing to Christina except that he would talk to Tonio, and then brushing her cheek with his lips gently, he rose to go.
Forgetting his tricorne hat, he went down the hollow stairs and out into the crowded Piazza di Spagna, turning slowly towards the Tiber, his head down, his hands behind his back.
Rome caught him in its winding streets; it led him from one little irregular piazza to another. It led him past great statues and glittering fountains, while his mind seemed to shrink in the face of its perception, only to enlarge with the fullness of realization again.
Hours later it seemed he was wandering the beautiful varicolored floor of San Pietro's. He was drifting past the majestic tombs of the popes. Skeletons so perfectly made from hard stone, they seemed to have been discovered in it and released from it, grinned at him. The faithful of the world pushed him to and fro.
He knew what was happening to Tonio. He'd known it before he's gone to Christina, but he had had to be sure.
And the image came back to him, implanted in his less imaginative and literal mind by the more loquacious Maestro Cavalla: Tonio was being slowly torn apart.
It was the battle of those twins he was witnessing: the one who craved life, and the one who could not live without the hope of revenge.
And now that Christina tugged upon the bright twin, now that the opera surrounded him with such blessings and such promises, the dark twin, out of fear, strove to destroy the loving one, for fear if he did not he himself might cease to exist.
Guido didn't fully understand. It was not an easy image for his mind. What he did perceive was that the more life gave to Tonio, the more Tonio realized he could not enjoy any of it until he had settled the old score in Venice.
Guido stood alone in the midst of this endless crowd streaming through the largest church in the world. He knew he was helpless.
"I cannot..." he whispered, hearing his own words distinctly against the multitude of sounds about him. "I cannot live without you." The deep shafts of sunlight blurred his vision. No one took notice of him, that he was speaking as he stood there so still. "My love, my life, my voice," he whispered. "Without you, there is no wind to fill my sails. There is nothing."
And that foreboding he had known when coming to Rome--that fear of the loss of his young and faithful lover--was nothing to this ever deepening darkness.
It was carnival. The nights grew warmer. The audiences were positively mad. The Contessa had returned and gave balls nightly at her villa.
Guido gave up all plans for the spring season. Yet he did not tell the agents from Florence. If only he could force Tonio into one more engagement. Tonio would never go back on his word, and that would give him time. Time was all he could think of.
But early one afternoon, as Guido was scribbling out a new duet for Bettichino and Tonio to try if they were bored enough--and they were by now--one of the Cardinal's more important attendants came to tell him that Sig
nore Giacomo Lisani, from Venice, was here to see Tonio.
"Who is this?" Guido asked crossly. Tonio was off with Christina in the mayhem of the carnival.
As soon as Guido saw the blond-haired young man he remembered him. Years ago, he had come on Christmas Eve to visit Tonio in Naples.
He was Tonio's cousin, the son of the woman who wrote so often to Tonio. And he had with him a small trunk, more of a casket, that he wished to present to Tonio himself.
He was disappointed to hear that he couldn't see Tonio now. When Guido identified himself, he explained.
Over two weeks ago, in the Veneto, Tonio's mother had died after a long illness. "You see," he said, "I must tell him this myself."
As it turned out, Tonio couldn't be found, and Guido would not have him told just before the evening's performance.
So it was after midnight when this young Venetian who had returned to the Cardinal's house with the casket gave him the message as directly and painlessly as he could.
The look on Tonio's face was something Guido never wanted to see again in his life.
And after Tonio had kissed his cousin and taken the trunk alone with him to his room, and opened it, and stared down into it he told Guido simply that he wished to go out.
"Let me go with you, or let me take you to Christina's," Guido said. "Don't try to bear this grief without us."
For a long time, Tonio looked at him as if this puzzled him, this statement; and Guido felt the weight of all that separated him from Tonio and always would. That dark life, that secret life of Tonio, connected to those he'd known and loved in Venice, was a life to which he could admit no one here.
"Please," Guido said, his mouth dry and his hands trembling.
"Guido, if you love me," Tonio said, "let me alone now." Even in this there was that gentleness, that half smile, and a hand out to reassure Guido, who watched silently as Tonio withdrew.
The Cardinal soon came into the room.
Guido was alone looking at the objects which Tonio had left open for anyone to see.
And Guido, examining these things carefully, was filled with such a sense of desolation that he could not speak.
The trunk contained many things.
There was music, mostly the work of Vivaldi, in old volumes bearing Marianna Treschi's name in a girlish script. And there were books, French fairy tales, and stories of the Greek gods and heroes of the sort one might read to a child.
But those objects which most surely chilled Guido and caused him to feel the keenest misery were the clothing and effects of a small boy.
Here was a white christening gown, most likely Tonio's, and half a dozen little suits of clothing, all lovingly kept. There were tiny shoes, there were even little gloves.
And finally there were the portraits, enameled miniatures and one very lifelike painting of the exquisite dark-eyed little boy that Tonio had once been.
As Guido looked at these things, he realized they were all those relics of one's life that are treasured by others, but rarely kept by one's self.
And they had been cleared out, packaged up, and sent away to Rome in perfect evidence that no one now remained in the House of Treschi who loved this young man who had once lived there. It was as if Tonio and all those who had once shared his life were dead.
The Cardinal asked again gently if there was anything he might do. He had sent away his attendants and he stood alone, patient, infinitely charitable, waiting upon a musician who had let him linger as if he were a menial at the door.
Guido looked up at him. He murmured some respectful apology for this confusion. And he tried to divine how much this man might care to know of Tonio, and what if anything he did have the power to do.
He watched the Cardinal look at these random treasures.
"Tonio's mother is dead," Guido said softly. But behind those few simple words lay his realization that Marianna Treschi, whom Guido had never seen or known, might have been the very last thing staying Tonio from the inevitable journey to Venice.
5
THE ROMAN CARNIVAL was under way and with it the last, most frenzied nights of the opera. From dawn till dark the narrow Via del Corso was packed with costumed merrymakers, either side of the thoroughfare built up with stands that were jammed with masked spectators. The lavishly decorated chariots of the great families crawled through the street, weighted down with fantastically costumed Indians, Sultans, gods and goddesses. The great Lamberti float had been done on the theme of Venus born from the foam with the little Contessa herself decked out in garlands of flowers as she stood in a great papier-mache seashell. Behind came the carriages moving inch by inch, their masked occupants showering a confetti of sugared almonds all around while everywhere men dressed as women, women dressed as men, and all manner of costumed anonymities paraded as princes, sailors, the grand characters of the commedia. The same old themes, the same madness...
Tonio, masked, his clothes hidden by a long black tabarro, pulled Christina beside him, her hair drawn back like a man's, her small body handsomely clothed in an officer's military costume. They ran this way and that, Tonio lifting his draped arm to shelter her now and then from a whirling war of confetti as they ducked and came up to witness the antics of some Pulcinella putting on a wild show, or escaped for a few moments to kiss, to catch their breath, to cling to each other in a church doorway.
But as the day shaded into late afternoon, the crowd was at last cleared for the final exhilarating climax of the race, fifteen horses being led first from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza Venezia and back again before being let loose in the former to rush headlong and free toward the latter. It was reckless and full of scintillating danger, the crush of hooves, the inevitable blunders into the throng, the animals finally crashing into the Piazza Venezia for the announcement of the winner.
Then as the sun finally set, masks were stripped away, the street emptied, and everyone moved to yet another spectacle--balls throughout the city or the grandest treat of all: the theater.
The opera audience was at its wildest. Though masks were gone, costumes still prevailed, especially the dark and liberating tabarro, and the women charmingly turned out in masculine military dress, enjoying the full freedom of breeches, while the opposing camps of Bettichino and Tonio vied in madness to outdo one another.
It seemed the boxes were so burdened they might have actually collapsed, and the theater rocked again and again with generous applause, the cries of Bravo, the stomping, the shouting.
Then all went home--Tonio and Christina in each other's arms--to rise again at dawn for more of the same merriment.
Sometimes in the midst of the crush, Tonio would stand in one spot, his eyes closed, swaying on the balls of his feet and imagine himself in the Piazza San Marco. The close walls here vanished for the open sky and the golden mosaics shimmering like great unblinking eyes over the multitude. He could almost smell the sea.
His mother was with him, and there was Alessandro, and it was that first glorious carnival when they had at last gotten free, and it seemed the world was nothing but wondrous and full of exquisite marvels. He heard her laughter, felt even the press of her hand in his, and it seemed all his memories of her were complete and untouched by the misery that had come afterwards. They had their life together, and that would remain forever.
He would have liked to believe she was close to him, that somehow she knew and understood all of it.
And if there was any sharp pain now in these days of bitter and secret grief, it was that he had never never been able to talk to her again, to sit with her, her hands clasped in his, to tell her how much he loved her, and how it had all been beyond his power to change.
She seemed as helpless in death as in life.
But when he opened his eyes, when it was Rome again--and the Roman girls ran about tickling those who didn't mask with their wicker brooms, and the men garbed as advocates scolded the crowd, and those the wickedest of all, the young men got up as women baring their breasts a
nd revealing their legs, went offering themselves to others--when he saw all this life around him, he knew what he had always known, there was never ever meant to be a leave-taking of her. Never in his maddest dreams of vengeance or justice had he envisioned even a passing word, an outstretched hand, a sigh of affection. Across a dim vista, he had seen her rather in a widow's weeds, crying among her orphaned children, her husband, the only husband she'd ever really known, murdered, taken from her.
She had been delivered from this. This had been taken away from him. She was not in a widow's black. She slept in the coffin. And it was Carlo who had wept for her. "He grieves as a madman," Catrina had written. "He is beside himself and vows to spare nothing in the care of his children. And though he works harder and harder, swearing he will be mother and father to them, both, he is so stricken he wanders at any hour out of the Offices of State, to roam like a fool in the piazza."
Christina was pressing his hand.
The crowd pushed him here and there, and he struggled for a moment to secure his footing. He saw his mother in the coffin again, and wondered how they had dressed her. Had they put on her those beautiful white pearls that Andrea had given her? He saw the crimson funeral procession moving out over the undulating waves, red the color for death streaming from the black gondolas, and the sea heaving as the soft crying of the mourners was dissolved into the salted wind.
Christina's face was full of love and sadness.
She stood on tiptoe, her arm around him. She was so splendidly real, so warm, as with her lips she sought, ever so gently, to bring him back to her.
They hurried through the Via Condotti. They pounded up the stairs to the studio above the Piazza di Spagna.
And taking deep gulps of wine from the same bottle, pulled the heavy curtains of the bed and made love feverishly and quickly.
As they lay still after, they could hear the distant roar of the crowd, or just below some singular laughter. It seemed to roll up the stone walls and vanish as it reached the open air.
"Tell me what it is," she said. "Tell me what you are thinking."
"That I am alive." He sighed. "Simply that I am alive and so very, very happy."