“I know.” He took her hand in his and held it.
It felt strange to her, oddly appropriate, as if he were a friend. But of course that couldn’t be. She had not had a friend—not a true friend—since Vincenzo died. Not since Teresa had been forced to disappear more than fifty years before. She had dared to reemerge only when everyone who had known her was gone. She took a new name, and she started again.
His gaze was soft on hers, as if he understood what she was thinking. “La Società is offering you a choice.”
“Kill or be killed? A poor choice, I think.”
“No. Listen to me, Hélène Singher.” He squeezed her fingers and then released them to pick up his glass. “I am part of the choice.”
“Sex? You could find that anywhere!”
Now he laughed with real mirth. “No, no, not sex! The kind you can offer doesn’t interest me.”
“What, then?”
“I will supply you with what you need. With sangue.”
She nearly spilled brandy over her Eton suit. “That’s not possible!”
“Oh, but I assure you,” he said, “it is.”
“But how would you get it?”
His eyes narrowed a little, and the hard glint she remembered from the first night she had met him shone out of them. “As I said, there is an inexhaustible supply of fools.”
She narrowed her own eyes, trying to see behind his urbane façade. “You’re telling me,” she said slowly, “that I would no longer need to…resort to the tooth.”
“An interesting phrase. You can do that if you prefer. But when you do, it must be final.”
“How would you give me what I need?”
He put his dark hand inside his coat and pulled out a small, flat packet tied with tabs of linen. Holding it low, so that no one else could see, he unfolded it to reveal several gleaming needles, a roll of black silk, and four empty vials of dark glass.
Hélène eyed the apparati. “What is all of that?”
“You can guess, surely.”
“I need to think about this.”
“You must think before you grow thirsty again, bella. They won’t tolerate any more randomly chosen members of La Società.”
She put a tentative finger on one of the vials. The glass was thick and brownish, cold to the touch. She felt like a trapped animal, her back to a corner, with no escape from her tormentor. And yet—
She looked up at his finely cut features, his full lips, his delicate, rather narrow nose. His black eyes could be frightening or appealing. She shouldn’t trust him, but there was something in those eyes, and the touch of his hand, that tempted her. They spoke of comfort, beguiled her with the possibility of no longer being alone.
She opened her mouth to ask him more about La Società, but before she could speak, his nostrils flared suddenly. He threw his head up and froze, the way an animal does when it hears something. His eyes narrowed, and he said urgently, “Get up! We have to get out of here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t say anything.” He gathered the needles and vials into their cloth case and folded it. He tucked it into his inner coat pocket even as he stood, pulling her to her feet. “Hurry, please!”
She glanced around her at the crowd in the courtyard. The hour had grown late, well past midnight, but the crowd had hardly diminished. Whatever Ugo thought he had heard, evidently no one else had. They talked on, sipping their drinks, smoking.
Hélène lifted her long coat from the chair and slung it over her shoulders as she let him tug her past the palm tree and on toward the door. As she passed the woman in beaded satin, the lady gave a tipsy laugh and scattered droplets of champagne across her bosom.
As they reached the door, Hélène said, “Ugo, what is it?”
He cast her a glance that glittered like obsidian. “Something’s coming.” His grip on her hand hardened. “We’re going to find shelter.”
“Surely the hotel—”
“No. Bricks, and flimsy wood. Come. This way.”
He pulled her out through the lobby and into the street. They set off at a near run toward Market Street. He turned left, drawing her with him up the slope toward Golden Gate Park. As they drew near it, Hélène heard a distant rumble, as of thunder. She glanced up into the April sky. It was almost perfectly clear, with stars glimmering through faint wisps of high fog. Dawn already brightened the eastern horizon. The moving waters of the bay shimmered silver and green under its rosy light.
The park was deserted, and oddly silent. Hélène peered up into the trees, wondering what had become of the birds. Surely they should have been singing their morning greetings by now. Ugo led her to the highest point in the center of the park, where a grassy field stretched on either side of them, and there he stopped. He stood still, his head lifted, his eyes fixed on something she couldn’t see.
The rumble came again, and this time it didn’t fade, but grew louder. Hélène whirled involuntarily to look behind her, thinking a train was bearing down on them or that a wagon full of logs was crashing through the park. There was nothing there.
Just as she turned back to Ugo, to beg him to explain, the first temblor hit.
It felt as if the log she had imagined began to roll beneath her feet, and a heartbeat later it was ten logs, or fifty. The earth groaned as if its bones were breaking, and the ground shifted so that if Ugo had not held her wrists with an iron grip, she would have fallen. Church bells began to ring in the city below them as the temblor shook their towers. The city itself seemed to moan, a long, painful sound that lasted for a minute or more. When it stopped, there was a moment of respite, a sort of suspension when even the breeze was stilled. Then, ten breathless seconds later, another great temblor shook the city.
Ugo pulled Hélène to her knees, and he knelt beside her, one arm around her back, the other hand pressing her head down. Trees began to fall, randomly, their impact intensifying the shaking of the ground. Tearing noises ripped the cool morning air as building fronts began to collapse, spilling bricks and glass into the streets. A great roar began in the area of Chinatown and rumbled across San Francisco as the earth bucked and rolled.
Hélène clung to Ugo and gritted her teeth. It felt as if the world was coming apart around her.
Fire bells began to clang, a different, shriller sound than the church bells, and in the distance, thin screams pierced the deeper noise of the temblor. The shaking went on and on, making seconds into hours, minutes into days. Whole buildings began to crash to the ground, timbers splintering on impact. It seemed to Hélène as if the city gave one great, unison death cry.
A branch from a falling tree sailed above her head, so close that the newly budded twigs caught at her hair and her cloak. Ugo pulled her down even farther, until the two of them were huddled on the grass, the dew soaking their clothes and dampening their faces. There they stayed for long, long minutes.
At length, as if reluctantly, the undulation of the earth beneath them subsided. Still they knelt, waiting, wary of what would come next. When they stood at last, Hélène gazed at Ugo in wonder.
“I would have died without you,” she whispered.
“Ah,” he said. “It’s always nice to be appreciated.”
21
Al ballo, se vi piace, v’invita il mio signor.
My master would like you to come, if you care to, to the ball.
—Leporello, Act One, Scene Three, Don Giovanni
Ughetto caught sight of himself in the uneven glass window of a tiny trattoria just off the Piazza San Ignazio, and shuddered. His tunic, new and spotless such a short time ago, and the envy of the other boys of the scuola, was now dark with dirt and dried sweat. His hair had grown out of its fashionable cut and hung limp and oily around his shoulders. His stylish coat, folded in the height of Roman style, had caught on a scrolled-iron gate when he was escaping an enraged shop owner and was rent almost in two. He still wore it because it was all he had. And in the slack purse that hung from his waist,
there was nothing. The last of Brescha’s pennies had been spent the day before, and he was hungry.
The emptiness of his purse and his belly mocked the emptiness of his heart. It was, he thought, the third blow. The final blow. He had lost his home, then his friend Mauro. And now even his consolation was shattered. The loss of his music—a gift he had never expected, one thrust upon him—was the worst of his losses. He could not see how he was to survive it.
A middle-aged couple, dressed in evening clothes, came across the plaza to the trattoria. The woman’s hand was on her escort’s arm as she stepped daintily in her soft-soled slippers. As they approached, the man eyed Ughetto and moved in front of his companion as if to shield her from something distasteful. Ughetto, chagrined, stepped away from the window, back into the alley alongside the restaurant. As he did, a door opened and a short, thickset man in a grease-stained apron came out, lugging a tin tub. Ughetto’s nostrils twitched at the smell of decaying crab and oyster.
The man hissed something at him and waved a hand to shoo him away.
“Signore,” Ughetto said softly. “Ho fame.”
“Go find your food somewhere else,” the man snapped. “You’re bothering my customers.”
“I’m not!” Ughetto protested. “I’m only standing here, sir.” His voice rose and broke, a fractured melody he had become accustomed to in recent days.
The man’s face softened a little. “Well,” he said gruffly. “Stand someplace else.”
Ughetto saw the easing of the scowl, the flicker of sympathy in the padrone’s eyes. “Sir,” he began, with a little flicker of hope. “Do you have some work for me? I could—I could wash dishes or sweep floors, as I did in my mamma’s tavern.” Ughetto took a step closer to the man, hoping his youth and obvious need might move him somehow.
The padrone eyed his dirty clothes, his unwashed hair. At his apparent hesitation, Ughetto took another step. “I can shuck oysters,” he said. “Whatever you need.”
“You speak well, young man, but I can’t take you in like that. My wife wouldn’t like it. You need a bath.”
“I know. I have no place.”
A woman’s voice from the kitchen pierced the darkness of the alley. The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, really I am. I can’t help you.”
Ughetto drew breath to ask again, but then gave it up. Weariness settled over him. He settled for a shallow bow. “Thank you for considering it, sir.”
The man withdrew into his kitchen and closed the door on its warmth and brightness. Ughetto leaned against the cold brick wall behind him. He closed his eyes. He longed to go home to Trapani. He yearned for the hot sun, the fresh salty tang of the sea, the clatter and bustle of his mother’s tavern. But it was a long way to Sicily. He hadn’t the strength to walk there. And even if he had boat fare, he could starve to death before he reached his village.
When he felt a touch on his hand, he barely flinched. Lassitude made his eyelids heavy. He lifted them halfway and found a man’s fleshy face close to his. The man licked his narrow lips with a quick, darting tongue. His breath smelled of wine and garlic. When Ughetto didn’t move away, he touched him again, more confidently this time, running his hand up Ughetto’s arm and onto his shoulder. He held out his other hand so Ughetto could see the little pile of coins in his clean-scrubbed palm.
In a throaty whisper, the man said, “Va bene, ragazzo?”
Ughetto stared at the money, thinking about what it meant. A plate of pasta, perhaps. A room for the night. A bath.
He was no stranger to propositions, of course. At the scuola, some of the older boys made use of the younger ones. Becoming a castrato didn’t put an end to sexual impulses. Ughetto’s refusals had been a matter of reticence rather than repugnance.
But now—now, what did it matter? What did he care what this man thought, this fat little man with his bloodshot eyes, his blob of a nose, his eager palmful of money?
It would be nothing. He would use his hand, let the man spend himself against this very wall. He would flee into the darkness with his purse not quite so slack, and he would find a place to wash his hand—and himself. It would cost him no more than a few moments’ disgust.
He put out his palm, and the man poured the money into it. Ughetto forced a smile to his lips as he dropped the coins into his purse. He reached under the man’s coat and groped for the buttons on his trousers. His customer—for such he was, and there was no denying it—pressed hungrily against him. He put a hand on the back of Ughetto’s head and pulled it forward, trying to push his lips against Ughetto’s. Ughetto turned his face away, and the narrow, wet lips found only his earlobe. The man snuffled against his jaw, groaning with pleasure as Ughetto’s hand found its goal.
But when Ughetto began to rub him, the man drew back. “No!” he said hoarsely. “No, not for all that money!” He gripped Ughetto’s shoulders with both hands. “Turn around, boy. Take off your britches.”
Ughetto removed his hand. “No.”
“Yes! I paid you, now do as I tell you.” He shoved at Ughetto, pushing him against the wall, trying to turn him by force.
Ughetto pushed back against him, but weakly. Hunger and hopelessness had drained him. “No,” he said in his cracked voice. “Not that.”
“Yes! Or else give me back my money.”
Ughetto stared at him. He didn’t want to give up what he had already taken, and his hand was already fouled. The man shook him. “Turn around, you.” He pulled with one hand and pushed with the other, until Ughetto found his face grinding against the bricks of the wall, his cloak thrust to one side, his trousers pulled down to his thighs. The night air was cold against his buttocks, and he shuddered as the man seized him with his hot, rubbery fingers.
A moment later, there was pain. It was different from that first, slashing pain in the tub at Nonna’s villa. This pierced deep into his body, like the stroke of a sword, and he cried out. The man hissed at him, giving no quarter. The pain rose, filling Ughetto’s belly and chest, and he tried to squirm away. The man gripped him tighter, thrust carelessly into him, without regard for his anguish.
A growling filled Ughetto’s ears, and his fingers felt as if they burst into flame. That growling—had he heard that before? And the claws digging into the brick wall—were they his? He had seen them before. All at once, the agony of pain withdrew. He whirled.
The man behind him began to scream, a high, thin wail that grated on Ughetto’s hypersensitive ears. His spine bent and stretched, causing him a deeper pain, dull and insistent, utterly different from that he had felt a few moments before. He fell to all fours on the cobbled alley and felt the scrape of claws against rough stones. He drew a breath scented with rotting fish, urine, the feces of rats and pigeons. His nostrils flexed, sorting the smells, prioritizing. The fear of the man behind him was the sharpest scent of all, the savory smell of prey. His lips pulled back in a hungry snarl. The man’s scream grew wilder as he tried to back away, losing his footing on the cobblestones, falling hard on his backside. He fell against the rubbish bins, spilling oyster shells and crab carcasses. Ughetto gathered himself, ready to pounce.
As his muscles tightened—gloriously long muscles that hugged strong, flexible bones—he heard footsteps inside the trattoria, the running feet of men pounding through the kitchen toward the back door.
His mouth opened, long teeth laughing at the man lying prostrate and crying in the alley. Then he spun about to bound across the piazza in great fluid leaps.
He was gone before the door opened and men came pouring out.
The dome of the Basilica of St. Peter had been completed at last in 1626. Its great silhouette, seen from below, blotted out the night stars. It was said that Pope Gregory liked to stand at his window gazing out on this immense creation and listening to his choir sing beneath the fabulous murals of the Cappella Sistina. Their slender voices carried up to him on the night air, reassuring him of Christendom’s renewed power.
In the shadow of the dome, where elabor
ate gardens wound around the basilica and the apartments of His Holiness, Ughetto’s awareness returned. He found himself, as he had before, curled on his side beneath the branches of a tree, scratched and cold and bloody. This time it was not an orange tree, but a half-grown cedar newly set into the landscaping. And this time he knew, beyond any doubt, that it was not his own blood that flaked from his hands and stained his naked chest. He put his hands to his face and scrubbed away the dried blood that clung to his lips and chin. The taste of meat was in his mouth. He was no longer hungry.
There were only shreds of his clothing clinging to him, fragments of torn linen and ripped pieces of his cloak. The buttons at the neck were gone, burst from the fabric. The seams of the sleeves had also burst, and what was left of the garment flapped uselessly about his thin body.
As he blinked into full consciousness, he scrabbled on the ground around him, searching for his purse. When he found it, he fell upon it as if it could save him somehow, make sense of all that had happened. The few coins it held clinked as he struggled to his feet and emerged from the meager shelter of the cedar.
He tipped his head back to look up into the sky. Beyond the majestic curve of the dome, a few stars clung stubbornly to life. The spire of St. Peter’s soared above everything, and caught the first light of dawn before it could reach the city below.
Someone, or something, had died last night. Ughetto knew it in his bones. He was still capable of feeling regret for a life lost, but he felt a fierce gratitude—even pride—that it was not his life. His body hurt with a deep ache, a reminder of the humiliation and pain he had suffered in the alley behind the trattoria. But that hurt would heal. And, he swore, he would never suffer that particular pain again.
In the shadow of the Basilica of St. Peter, Ughetto resolved that whatever happened to him from now on would be of his own choosing. He was no longer a boy, subject to the whims and orders of his elders. He was a man. His life was his own.
He gripped his purse in his hand and started back down into the city to find clothes and a meal. He could return to Trapani, he supposed. There might be enough money in this purse for boat fare. He imagined himself showing up in his mother’s tavern, meeting his sisters again. He wondered if they would fall on his neck with glad cries or shrink away from him.
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