by Anne Rice
"Come," she said rising suddenly. She tugged at him to bring him up from the warm bed, and threw his shirt about his shoulders. "We have an hour still before you must be at the theater. If we hurry we can see the race."
"That's not very much time." He smiled, wanting to keep her here.
"And tonight," she said as she kissed him once and twice and three times, "we'll go to the Contessa's and this time, you'll dance with me. We've never danced, you and I, for all the balls we attended in Naples...together."
When he didn't move, she dressed him as if he were a child, her fingers deftly working his pearl buttons.
"Would you wear that violet dress?" he asked in her ear. "If you wear that violet gown, I'll dance with you."
He was drunk for the first time in a long time, and he knew that drunkenness was the enemy of sorrow. What had Catrina said, that Carlo roamed the piazza like a fool, his wine his only companion?
But the room was crowded and swirling with colors; and the music made a restless rhythm and he was dancing.
He was dancing as he hadn't danced in years and years, and all of the old steps had come back to him magically. Every time he saw Christina's rapt little face, he bent to steal a kiss, and it seemed that this was Naples and all those times he had longed for her.
And it was Venice, in Catrina's lovely house, or it was that long ago summer on the Brenta.
All of his life seemed a great circle suddenly, and here he was, dancing and dancing, turning and bowing in the lively time of the minuet, and all those he loved were around him.
Guido was there, and Marcello, the handsome young eunuch from Palermo who was his lover, and the Contessa, and Bettichino with his admirers.
And when Tonio had come into the room, it seemed all heads had turned; he could positively hear them whispering: Tonio, it's Tonio.
The music floated in the air around him, and when the dancers broke apart, he had a glass of white wine in his hands very quickly and then it was empty.
It seemed Christina wanted him now for the quadrille, and gently, he kissed her hand and said that he would watch her.
He wasn't sure quite when he sensed there would be trouble, or when he first saw Guido approaching him.
It seemed since he had come in he had sensed something very wrong in Guido, and he sought now, embracing Guido lightly, to cheer him and make him smile, even if he was resolutely unwilling.
But Guido's face was full of trouble, and there was some urgency to his whispers that Tonio tell the Contessa himself why they weren't going to Florence.
Not going to Florence?
When had they made that decision? It seemed a great darkness came down around the edges of things, and for a long moment it was impossible to pretend any longer that this was Naples or that it was Venice. It was Rome, and the opera was almost finished, and his mother was dead and carried over the sea to be laid in the earth, and Carlo was roaming the Piazza San Marco, waiting for him.
Guido's face was dark and swollen, and he was saying something rapidly under his breath, yes, tell the Contessa, tell her, why we cannot go to Florence.
And it seemed, in that moment, Tonio felt in spite of himself a dark exhilaration. "We are not going, we are not going..." he whispered, and then Guido was pulling him down a dimly lit corridor. All these freshly painted walls, panels of mulberry brocade and the fleur-de-lis in gold, and a pair of doors opening.
Guido's voice was all threats and terrible, terrible accusations.
"And what shall we do after that?" Guido demanded. "All right, if we don't go to Florence, then surely in the fall we can go to Milan. They want us in Milan. They want us in Bologna."
And he knew that if he did not stop himself something terrible and final would be spoken. It would come forth out of the darkness where it had waited.
The Contessa was there, and her round little face looked so old. She lifted her skirts with one hand and with the other she was patting Guido's shoulder, almost lovingly.
"...never intend to go anywhere else, do you? Answer me, answer, you have no right to do this to me." Guido's heart was breaking.
Don't bring it to a head, don't make me say it. Because once I say it I can't recall the words. It was exhilaration, ever mounting. He felt like one on the edge of a great downward slope. If he took the first steps, he would be unable to control the momentum.
"You've known, you've always known." Was this Tonio saying this? "You were there, my friend, my truest, dearest friend, my only real brother in this world, you were there and you saw with your own eyes, not little boys scrubbed and groomed and marched into the conservatorio like so many capons to market. Guido..."
"Then turn your rage on me," he was pleading, "for the part I played in it. I was your brother's tool and you know it."
The Contessa had put her arms around Guido and was trying vainly to quiet him. And far off, he was crying, I cannot live without you, Tonio, I cannot live without you....
But a coldness had settled over Tonio, and all of this was remote and sad and unchangeable. He struggled to say you had no part in it. You were but a chess piece moved from one square to another.
Guido cried there had been a cafe on San Marco and he had been there when the men came and told him that he must take Tonio to Naples.
"Don't speak of all this," the Contessa said.
"It was my fault, I could have stopped it, turn your vengeance on me!" Guido pleaded.
And she, forcing him back, drew Tonio away, her little dark face so very old, and that voice dropping down down for the profession of terrible secrets. The old plea, send assassins, there was no need for him to dirty his hands, did he not know he had friends who could take care of all of it? But say the word and now she guided him to the edges of the room. The moon was out and the garden was alive and far across the garden, he could see the windows of the ballroom they had just left, and he wondered was Christina there? He saw her in his mind dancing with Alessandro.
"I am alive," he whispered.
"Radiant child," she said.
Guido was weeping.
"But he always knew the time would come when he would go on alone. I wouldn't let him go," he said to her, "if he were not ready. They will want him in Milan just as much without me. And you know it..."
And she was shaking her head. "But radiant child, you know what will happen if you go to Venice now! What can I say to dissuade you...."
So it was spoken. It was done. The thing that had waited and waited in the darkness was now free and there was no curbing it.
And again that exhilaration took hold of him. Go to Venice. Do it. Let it happen. No more waiting and waiting in hatred and bitterness, no more seeing all about you life blazing and beautiful yet against this darkness, this fathomless gloom.
But Guido had rushed at him, and the Contessa had thrown all her weight against Guido to hold him back. Guido's face was pure fury.
"Tell me how you can do this to me!" he was crying. "Tell me, tell me, how you can do this to me. If I was just a pawn in your brother's hands, then I took you out of that town, I took you when you were wounded and broken...."
The Contessa, trying so to quiet him, raised her voice.
"...tell me you wish I'd left you there to die, they would have killed you if I had left you there, and tell me you wish none of this, none of this, had come to pass!"
"No, stop it...." The Contessa flung out her hands.
And now that exhilaration in him was heating itself to anger. He turned on Guido, and heard his own voice, sharp, clear:
"You know why, better than anyone you know why! The man who did this to me is yet alive and unpunished for it. And am I a man, you tell me, am I a man if I can stand for this!"
He felt himself weak suddenly.
He had stumbled into the garden.
At the door of the ballroom, if the servant hadn't taken his arm, he would have fallen.
"To go home..." he said. And Christina, her face stained with tears, nodded her head.
It was morning.
It seemed all night they had fought, he and Guido. And these rooms, so cold now, were not their bedchambers any longer so much as some dreary battleground.
And somewhere, beyond these walls, Christina waited for him. Awake, dressed, she sat at the window perhaps, her hands under her chin, looking down in the Piazza di Spagna.
But Tonio sat still, alone, and far across the void of the room, he saw himself in the dusky mirror, a white-faced specter so seemingly without expression he seemed a demon with an angel's face. And all the world was different.
Paolo was crying.
Paolo had heard all of it. And Paolo had come to him only to be spurned by his silence.
And huddled somewhere off in the shadows, Paolo was crying inconsolably. And the sound, rising and falling, seemed to echo as if through corridors of an immense and ruined house where Tonio shuffled against the wall, his bare feet covered with dust, the tears stinging his face, as coming through the door, he saw his mother bent over the windowsill. Helplessness, terror caught in his throat as he pulled at her skirts, those cries echoing louder and louder. And just as she turned, he covered his eyes so he couldn't see her face. He felt himself falling. His head thumped the walls and the marble stairs, he could not stop himself. And his screams rose above him, and she, her dress billowing out as she came down, took those screams and carried them up in shrieks rising higher and higher.
He stood up. He was standing in the center of the room, staring into that shadowy mirror. Do you love me, he whispered, but without ever moving his lips, and he saw Christina's eyes open like the mechanical eyes of a doll, and Christina's mouth, glistening, formed the one word: "Yeeeeess..."
Paolo was near him. Paolo was a sudden heaviness against him causing him to right himself on his feet. From far far away he heard Paolo's crying. Paolo's hands pulled on him till he closed his own long white fingers over them, peeling them off and holding them tight as he stared forward into the mirror.
Why didn't you warn me, he spoke to his reflection, this giant in the black Venetian tabarro with such a white face, and this child clinging to him, head bent, his limbs affixed to the black cloth as though he could not be torn off of it. Why didn't you warn me that the time had run out. That it was nearly finished.
And then tugging Paolo with him, he moved clumsily towards the bed. He fell down into the pillows, Paolo nestled close to him, and it seemed Paolo's crying went on and on in his sleep.
6
HE WAS STILL TIRED when he reached the theater. He had taken Paolo to a little cafe where they had both of them eaten too much. He felt light-headed and the world was blazing around him. Colors bled into the rain that sent the maskers scurrying. Paolo wouldn't eat until he saw Tonio eat, and Tonio had given him much too much wine.
It seemed to him that he could not possibly sing. Yet he knew that nothing would keep him from it.
And as soon as he heard the crowd stomping and howling, and caught a glimpse of Bettichino already painted, his body a proud scaffolding of silk and armor, the habitual excitement came to his rescue along with the force of his will.
He took more care than usual with his dress, highlighting his face with white paint as subtly and skillfully as Bettichino always did, and when at last he stepped before the lights, he was his old self again, his voice struggling only a little at first, and then pouring out of him in full strength. He could feel the carnival merriment in the audience, he could hear it in their hoarse and loving shouts of Bravo. For one second he permitted himself the detachment of seeing this entire theater as it rose before him, this smoky wilderness of faces, and he knew this was the night for risks and tricks and all manner of flights of fancy.
Christina came backstage after the first act. It was the first time he had ever let her close to him when he was in female dress, and he put on a jeweled mask before he let her in, and was not surprised to see that his appearance enticed her.
She let out a little gasp, gazing at him. Or rather as she gazed at this woman in plum-colored velvet and white satin rosettes.
"Come here to me, my dear," he said in a mellow whisper just to frighten her. She herself was the little officer complete with epaulettes, her legs shapely in her tight breeches. And she looked more like a timid boychild as she approached him, almost fearfully, and lifted her hand to touch his face. He was smiling down at her, seeing the pair of them perfectly in the mirror, and as he lowered himself into the chair, his skirts spreading out all around him, he placed her on his lap. He saw the taut angular wrinkles of cloth between her legs and wanted to touch them.
He contented himself instead with the silk of her white neck.
She lifted the wine cup and let him taste it, then kissed him eagerly, and he turned her slowly so she could see the vision in the mirror: the tall woman, powdered white with a cat's mask of sequins and red lips, and the young boy with his exquisite face on her lap.
She turned and touched the beauty marks on his face. She pulled away the mask and seeing his painted eyes, let out another half-concealed gasp.
"You frighten me, Signore," he whispered in that same dark feminine fashion; and she, with a little throb in her throat, made as if to assault him.
Her little hand gathered up his skirt, it felt for the nakedness underneath, and finding the hard organ, grasped it cruelly, so that he whispered under his breath, "Careful, my darling, let's not ruin what's left."
She was shocked into laughter. Then pressing against him, she sighed and then lay still. He had never said such a thing to her before, never touched upon what he was with the slightest levity and he watched her now with indulgence as if she were a child.
"I love you," she whispered.
He closed his eyes. The mirror was gone, and so were the garments that covered both of them; or so it seemed to him. And he was thinking dreamily again of how much he'd liked as a child to be invisible in the dark. No one could wound him if he were invisible; and when he looked at her again, she wasn't seeing paint, or wig, or velvet or satin, but only him, and it was as if they were in that darkness together.
"What is it? What are you thinking when you look this way?" she whispered.
He shook his head. He smiled. He kissed her. And in the mirror saw that shimmering vision of the two of them, lost in disguises, but a perfect pair.
But as soon as he reached the studio with her that night, he knew that Guido had spoken to her.
She was ready to leave everything to be in Florence at Easter. All her portraits could be done before the end of Lent, and surely he could wait that long. They could travel to Florence together.
She walked lightly, quickly about the studio talking of how this could be finished, and how that one was almost done. She needed so little to travel; she'd bought a new leather carrying case for her pastels; she had a desire to do many sketches in the churches in Florence; she had never been to Florence, did he know that? She pulled the ribbon out of her hair at just the right moment and let it fall down.
He felt slender and somewhat weightless as he always did after the performance, his masculine clothes so seemingly slight compared to all that Grecian armour, those skirts. And she was still the boy, only now with all this lovely corn-silk hair as if she were a page or an angel in an old painting.
And he stared at her, not speaking, wishing Guido had not told her, and at the same time knowing Guido had somehow made it easier for him. But these last nights with her...these last nights...what had he wanted them to be?
He could feel nothing wanting now as he looked at her, and she was showing him no sadness, no fear.
He beckoned for her to follow him into the bedroom, and she was in his arms suddenly, letting herself be lifted and carried. "Ganymede," he whispered to her, feeling her voluptuousness through the breeches, and beneath the hard doubled-breasted front of her little coat.
It was as it had been in the cafe with Paolo; he felt sleepy and yet wildly alive, assaulted by colors everywhere that he l
ooked. He felt the texture of the sheets between his fingers, the moist and warm flesh at the backs of her knees. Her shoulders were bathed, it seemed, in a bluish light from the candles, and gathering her to him, he wondered how long he could sustain it? When would come the awful, wrenching pain?
When she was softened with love, she lit the candles again. She poured the wine for both of them and commenced to talk.
"Everywhere in the world I'll go with you," she said. "I'll paint the ladies of Dresden and London. I'll paint the Russians in Moscow; I'll paint kings and queens. Think of it, Tonio, all the churches, the museums, the castles of the German countries with their multitude of towers and turrets on the mountain peaks. Tonio, have you ever seen those northern cathedrals, so full of stained glass? Imagine it, a church of stone instead of marble with arches rising high and narrow, soaring as if to heaven, and all those tiny fragments of brilliant color made into angels and saints. Think of it, Tonio, St. Petersburg in winter, a new city fashioned after Venice and blanketed with lovely white snow...."
There was no desperation in her voice, but her eyes had a dreamy glitter, and without answering her, he pressed her hand as if to say, Go on.
Guido hadn't really taken these last few blissful hours from him; there was an eerie beauty to understanding everything so clearly.
"We'd go everywhere, the four of us," she was saying. "You, Guido, Paolo, and me. We'd buy the grandest traveling coach and we'd even take that wicked old Signora Bianchi. Maybe Guido would bring that handsome Marcello, too. And in every city we'd get some sumptuous lodging, taking our meals together and quarreling together and going to the theater together, and in the days I'd paint and in the nights you'd sing. And if we liked this place better than another, we'd stay and maybe now and then go off in the country to be alone, all of us, and away from everything, as we grew all the more to love and understand one another. Imagine it, Tonio."
"I should have run away with the opera," he murmured softly. She bent forward, her golden eyebrows knitted in concentration, and when she saw he wouldn't repeat it, she kissed his lips.
"We'd take the villa I showed you only a month ago, and that would be our real home. We'd come back when we were weary of foreign tongues, and how Italy would blaze around us! Oh, you can't imagine how it would be! Guido could write sonatas in the evenings, and Paolo would grow up to be a marvelous singer. He'd make his debut in Rome.