Ughetto let his long black lashes drop modestly to his cheeks. “Of course it matters, Maestro. I am your student. I take your reputation with me wherever I go. Should a student of the great Brescha sing in the chorus?”
Brescha snorted and turned again to look down the hill at the dome of St. Peter’s, linking his hands behind him. “You’re a scamp, Ughetto,” he said. “But as it happens, you are correct. It’s a Miserere, written for nine voices, one group of five and one of four. You will sing the high part in the smaller group, because you have the notes. The piece isn’t finished yet, but it’s to be ready for All Souls in the autumn. You’ll have enough time to learn it. I will coach you in every note.”
“Of course, Maestro,” Ughetto said. His heart fluttered with pride and pleasure. He walked up to stand beside his teacher and follow his gaze down toward the city. “Every note.”
Ughetto was slower to grow into his height than any of his classmates. The boys near his age were already tall, sprouting the spidery limbs that were typical for castrati. They stumbled as they walked through the salotto, tripping over furniture that had stood in the same place for years. It was as if they had not yet learned what to do with their overlarge feet, how to manage their arms. They compared heights and measured their chests to see whose was the deepest, the longest. They towered over Ughetto, whose arms and legs and feet remained stubbornly proportioned to his height. They called him topolino, little mouse, and nano, dwarf. They cooed baby talk at him and ruffled his hair when he passed.
He had begun to grow embarrassing hair under his arms, and between his legs. He hid his body beneath the long-tailed shirts they all wore, and dressed in private, where no one could see him.
He was ashamed of his thin, bare chest. When a few black whiskers appeared on his chin, he plucked them with his fingernails. The men of Trapani sported proud black beards, brushing them till they gleamed, trimming them weekly to keep them thick and full. But none of the other boys at the scuola had facial hair. Every day Ughetto checked the mirror anxiously to be certain no more whiskers had appeared. He didn’t need anything else to draw his schoolmates’ attention to him.
Their teasing turned to abuse when Brescha made it known to everyone that his prize pupil had been engaged to sing with the Capella Sistina. Envy sharpened their jibes and put muscle in the blows they aimed at him when the masters weren’t looking. It didn’t help that Anselmo, the direttore, hired a dressmaker to fit him for a new gown and breeches. When one of the other masters objected to the cost, Anselmo said scornfully, “A student of our scuola does not make his debut in rags!”
Anselmo, also a castrato, had had a short and not very successful career singing choral parts in Venezia and Firenze. As he often proclaimed, with rigid pride, he had found his true calling in running the scuola.
“Ughetto needs to do something about that mop of curls, too,” he snapped. “He looks like a poodle.” He arranged for a parrucchiere to come up from the city to style Ughetto’s hair. The other students stared at Ughetto as he sat in the courtyard under the scissors and combs and oils of this worthy. They snickered at him afterward, flipping their own unwashed locks to mock him.
Had Mauro still been there, Ughetto could have downplayed the fuss and laughed at it. But he had no one to buffer his sudden rise to prominence. He slept alone, as he had always done, though other boys shared beds, snuggling together like overgrown puppies, sometimes grunting with passion in the darkness. He had no money, so when the others went down to the market to shop for trinkets or sweets, he stayed at the scuola, practicing, studying, reading from its collection of books. He let them believe he was too conceited to join in their recreation. He concentrated on learning the roulades and the glissandi that would be required of the Miserere, and tried hard not to care that his colleagues hoped he would fail.
Each week a few more manuscript sheets would arrive at the scuola, and Brescha would seize them to study himself. When he was satisfied he knew them thoroughly, he would call Ughetto to come and begin work. And though Ughetto’s skill on the keyboard was growing, Brescha insisted on teaching him every line by rote, asserting that there could be no mistakes. “You will be singing under the composer’s own direction, Ughetto. This can lead to a great career, following in my footsteps at St. Peter’s, or perhaps at San Marco, or Santa Maria dei Fiori!”
“What about my name, Maestro?” Ughetto asked after one long voice lesson. He and Brescha were both exhausted. The summer was fading, and the breeze in the waning afternoon was cool and refreshing. They sat in the courtyard under the olive tree, and Brescha allowed Ughetto to share in his snack of watered wine, olives in brine, and slices of pecorino romano on fresh bread.
“Your name?” Brescha said absently.
“Yes,” Ughetto said. He ran his hand through his hair, cut in the fashion so that it just brushed his shoulders. “Ughetto is a little boy’s name. Shouldn’t we change it?”
Brescha considered this, pulling at his lower lip. “You were christened Ugo, I suppose.”
“I don’t know my baptismal name. My sisters and my mother always called me Ughetto.”
Brescha put down his cup and regarded Ughetto. “You had sisters? You never mentioned them.”
Ughetto nodded. “Six sisters,” he said. “All older.”
Brescha raised his eyebrows, and it seemed to Ugo that he paled a little. “Six! And you’re the seventh child?”
“Yes.” Ughetto was surprised to see Brescha cross himself. “What is it?”
But the old castrato only pressed his lips together, shaking his head. Ughetto opened his mouth to ask him again, but Brescha threw up his thick hand. “Never mind, never mind. You’re right about the name. You need a name worthy of your voice, something dramatic. Memorable, but simple.”
“Ugo is simple.”
“Too simple, too ordinary. It should be something beautiful, like—like Floria, because you’re a young flower of a singer. Or Angelino, Brescha’s little angel!”
Ughetto was about to protest the excess of this suggestion, but a burst of hoots erupted from the other side of the olive tree, forestalling him. Brescha cursed and shook his fist at the lanky forms in the shadows, who raced away amid shrieks of laughter.
Ughetto’s cheeks flamed, and he slumped in his chair in an agony of embarrassment.
Brescha had risen, as if to go after the other boys, but then he sighed and sat down heavily, arranging his great belly over his thighs. He shrugged and picked up his cup again, patting Ughetto’s shoulder with his free hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re jealous of your early success. It was the same for me in my day.” He sipped delicately at the wine. “They hated me because I never had to audition. Everyone came to me, you see, begging me to sing in their churches.” He reached for the olive dish and pulled it closer. “We’ll come up with a name you like. I know how it is to have to live with a name for a long time. I knew my career would be a long one, and so I chose my name with care. We’ll do exactly the same for you.”
The amber warmth of September melted into the cool, gilded days of October. The hazelnut leaves turned and fell, and the beekeepers collected their harvest and pressed it into clay bottles. The breezes carried the sweet tang of honey into the courtyard of the scuola.
By the time the last of the manuscript pages arrived from Signore Allegri, Ughetto had sung the part so many times that it ran incessantly round and round in his head, even in his sleep. When he woke, the text was on his lips. When he laid his head on his pillow, the notes danced before his eyes. One day he protested to Brescha that he couldn’t sing it anymore, that he was sick to death of every page of it.
“Aha!” the maestro cried, slapping his thick hand against his chest. “Then now—now you are ready!”
Ughetto protested, “I’ve been ready!” His voice rose in complaint, and at the top of the rise, it broke, the pitch collapsing. It dropped an entire octave, ending in a toneless scrape, like the croak of a frog.
&n
bsp; Ughetto and Brescha stared at each other. For a long moment, neither spoke. Then Brescha, jowls trembling, said, “What was that?”
Ughetto shook his head. “I don’t know.” His voice rasped in his throat with unsteady vibrations. He didn’t recognize either the feeling or the sound. He was afraid to speak again. He put a hand to his neck, as if he could fix it that way, and stared round-eyed at his teacher.
“What have you been doing today?” Brescha demanded.
Ughetto only shook his head. He didn’t dare open his lips.
“Were you running? Screaming in the cold?”
“No,” Ughetto whispered.
“Don’t whisper. Speak!”
Ughetto stared at his teacher in horror as an idea began to take form in his mind, a terrible idea. He shook his head, wordlessly. Cold fear began in his loins and spread upward through his belly and his chest.
But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.
He remembered the flakes of opium dissolving in dark Roman wine. He remembered the strong arms of Luigi lifting him, lowering him into the warm water. He recalled the splintered bench in the tub, and the hands on his ankles, opening his legs. He would never forget the flash of pain from the knife.
And he remembered the screeches of Nonna and her son, the surgeon’s wide, frightened eyes before he scuttled away like a cockroach before a broom.
Ughetto felt an urge to touch himself beneath his trousers, to explore what the surgeon’s knife had left to him.
He remembered blood. But whose blood had it been?
Brescha came close, bending his great height above him. “Ughetto,” he said. Anxiety made his voice scrape, too, but it stayed in its high register. “Speak to me, dear boy. Let me hear your voice.”
The endearment made Ughetto’s lips tremble. With difficulty, squeezing his hands tight together, he said, “Maestro. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
And he heard, with horrified ears, the froglike sound of his voice. Its pitch wavered as it searched for a register to settle in.
Brescha clutched his robe with one hand, as if he could steady himself that way. With the other he rubbed his brow, and then his eyes. He looked away, as if he couldn’t bring himself to look into his protégé’s eyes as he spoke the awful news.
“Ughetto,” he said. His voice throbbed with sadness. “Your voice is changing.”
They met, several hours later, in the direttore’s private office. It was a lovely room, with an enormous Venetian vase in one corner and a broad writing desk of polished pine in the other. A clavier stood against one wall, its inlaid wood cover closed.
Ughetto stood before the desk, his head hanging. Anselmo sat behind it and glowered up at him, his face suffused with fury. Brescha stood behind Ughetto. The old castrato’s eyes were red, his lips swollen from having wept for a solid hour.
Ughetto had shed no tears. Shock had made him cold, then fevered, then icy cold again. He stood very still, facing Anselmo across the desk but avoiding his eyes.
“How could you not have known?” Anselmo shrilled.
A distant part of Ughetto noticed that when the castrati were upset, their voices went up. Not down. He didn’t dare answer the direttore, because he knew already that his voice would go lower. He already understood that his voice, his only real asset, was seeking a new register, probing the depths for where it would settle.
He stared at the terra-cotta tile beneath his feet. The clean wool and linen of his new gown and breeches mocked him, reminders of the glory that had just this day slipped from his grasp. He wondered if it had left anything in its place.
Brescha cleared his throat and said in a shaking voice, “Ughetto has always been shy. He bathes alone. And who would—” He choked on a sob. “Who would have suspected?”
Ughetto lifted his head and turned to look at Brescha. He was amazed, even now, at how wounded the old singer was, how grieved. Brescha wasn’t angry. Brescha behaved as if his heart was broken. There had been no word of anger until they faced Anselmo.
Anselmo frowned at Brescha, whose lip began to tremble. “I blame you,” Anselmo said sourly. “You should have examined him.”
Fresh tears coursed down Brescha’s heavy cheeks, and he quavered, “You’re the direttore! Why didn’t you examine him?”
Anselmo was thinner than Brescha, but just as tall and ungainly in his proportions. He stood now, and Ughetto felt smaller than ever. His head reached no higher than Anselmo’s chest. “Who brought Ughetto to us?”
Brescha said, “Those people from Napoli, Luigi someone and his crone of a mother. Ughetto comes from…Where is it, Ughetto?”
Ughetto cleared his throat and tried to steady his voice, but it was no use. He scratched out, “Trapani,” and fell silent again.
“Sicilia,” Anselmo said darkly, as if that explained everything. He toyed with a paper knife on his desk, making it catch the sunlight. “If we’d known…perhaps it would not have been too late. Ughetto, you should have told us.”
Brescha stepped forward, and for the first time since he had known him, Ughetto felt his long, fleshy arm surround his shoulders. Brescha cleared his throat, and his reedy voice was steadier when he said, “Anselmo. This is not Ughetto’s fault. He didn’t know. No one knew. And now we must take care of him.”
“Take care of him! Can he get our money back?”
“He was eight years old when he came here,” Brescha said. “Exactly my own age when I started my training. What do we know, when we’re that age, Anselmo? Can you remember?” His voice trembled again. “Did you know what your body would look like?”
The direttore scowled and looked away. “We are disgraced,” he said bitterly. “Thanks to your ambition, Brescha!”
Ughetto could not stand in silence anymore. He said, in that new voice he didn’t recognize, “Don’t blame Maestro Brescha, signore, I beg you. He is hurt enough.”
Brescha’s arm tightened around his shoulders, and Ughetto felt his ungainly body shake with suppressed sobs.
Anselmo stood up abruptly, dropping the paper knife. “Out,” he said, fixing Ughetto with his angry gaze. “Today. We will tell the Cappella Sistina you ran away.”
“No!” Brescha exclaimed.
“Yes,” was the answer. “It’s the only way to save our reputation.”
Ughetto stared at him. “But where will I go?”
Anselmo spread his hands. “How should I know? Go back to your family!”
“I have no money,” Ughetto said. His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears, the voice of a stranger. “How do I get there?”
Brescha turned him toward the door. “I will give you money, Ughetto. The money you would have earned from the Cappella.”
“You will not!” Anselmo snapped.
Brescha paused and looked over his shoulder. His jowls trembled now with anger. “Anselmo, tell me. Did you choose the knife? No. Did I? No. And no more did Ughetto.” He looked down at Ughetto, his eyes glistening. “He has been my greatest pupil. If I am to lose him, I will at least give him a chance in life.”
12
Io so, crudele, come tu diverti!
I know, cruel one, how you amuse yourself!
—Donna Elvira, Act One, Scene Two, Don Giovanni
Teresa stood in the road while her friend’s aunt read her letter of introduction. The house was a narrow, dark building with stone walls and no garden at all. The door opened directly into the road, with no step or stoop to separate it. The aunt, named Gilda, was a stout, mustachioed woman with black hair and a glint in her dark eyes that did not bode well for Teresa’s petition.
“Signora,” Teresa pled. “Only a few weeks, until I—until I find work.”
Gilda raised one thick eyebrow and looked Teresa up and down. Teresa fidgeted. In the last three days she had felt more like a capon at market, assessed for how much meat she might provide, than a seventeen-year-old girl away from home for the first time.
“Not married,” Gilda said in a flat tone.
Teresa dropped her eyes in what she hoped was a modest manner. “Not yet, signora.”
“You can pay?”
Teresa fumbled in her little string bag and brought out the tiny cotton pouch where she had stowed her meager savings. She opened it, and showed the interior to Gilda. “This is what I have, signora,” she said. “It’s not much.”
“Hardly anything,” Gilda grumbled. She looked over her shoulder. “But I can use it. My husband isn’t working just now.”
Hopeful, Teresa bent to pick up her valise, but when she straightened, Gilda had put out a forestalling hand. “Aspetta, aspetta,” she said.
Teresa put down the valise again. Gilda glanced over her shoulder one more time, then stepped out into the road, pulling the door closed behind her. “I have a room you can have, for a while,” she said in a low tone. Her face was grim. “But you stay away from my husband.”
As gravely as she could, Teresa said, “Of course, signora.”
Gilda said, “I mean it. One improper glance, and you’re out. Capisci?”
Teresa sighed, suddenly overwhelmed by the weight of impending years. Would she, one day, look like Gilda? Would she have a growth on her upper lip, a thickened waist, a sour expression?
“Capisco, signora,” she answered tiredly. “I will promise whatever you like. I only need a place to lay my head, a place to wash, perhaps a bit of food if you can spare it. As soon as I can afford a rooming house, I’ll go.”
Gilda nodded. “How many lire are there in that little purse?”
Teresa had no need to count them. She knew precisely how many were left after her coach trip, after her meager meal of soup and bread, and her only other meal on the road, oranges and cheese. She told Gilda the number.
Gilda nodded again, and held out her hand. Reluctantly, not knowing what else to do, Teresa turned over the pouch and let the lire fall into the older woman’s palm.
“Bene,” Gilda said, and unexpectedly, she smiled. Her teeth were surprisingly good, and for a moment Teresa saw the resemblance to her niece in Limone. “Come in, ragazza,” she said, as pleasantly as if Teresa were an expected guest. “Come in and let me show you your room.”
Mozart’s Blood Page 11