1 - Interrupted Aria

by Beverle Graves Myers

  Astonished and full of questions, I turned to Father. He gave me a cynical smile and said, “Not quite the homecoming you were expecting, eh Tito?” As he turned abruptly, we were left with the sight of his straight back and carefully powdered wig heading out the door.

  Chapter 3

  Later, back in my old room at the top of the stairs, I couldn’t sleep for the thoughts flooding my mind. What ailed Grisella? Annetta had written of her willful temperament, but the scene we had witnessed was far more serious than a spoiled child’s trick. According to Annetta, these spells had been going on about six months and seemed to be worsening. At first, the family physician had suggested cold baths and rest. When these methods failed to effect an improvement, he prescribed an elixir with the caution that it be used sparingly. It was the only thing that calmed the child. I tossed and twisted in my bedclothes. Now that I was home, I saw that Berta’s advancing years had shifted the burden of caring for Grisella almost totally to Annetta. I resolved to help her as much as I could and, if possible, to find the cause of these mystifying fits.

  As the clock in the dining room sent its eleven o’clock chimes bonging through the floorboards, my thoughts turned reluctantly to the reunion with my father. Isidore Amato held the key to the prevailing mystery of my life, but I judged him unlikely to discuss the matter. I wanted my father to answer just one question: why had he allowed the surgery that had changed the course of my life?

  I had always been told the story of playing on a wooden bridge being built over the small canal near our square. The workmen chased me and my playmates away from the bridge many times, but the lure of scaffolding to climb and wood scraps to chuck into the water provided too much temptation for an eleven-year-old boy. When the adults of our household were otherwise occupied, I sneaked back after the workmen had gone for the day. Always curious and agile, I climbed to the top of a tall supporting beam, then fell heavily. I struck another beam with my legs splayed out wide and hit my head on the stone walkway by the canal. My father told me that I had been lucky: lucky that I hadn’t rolled into the canal and drowned.

  I remembered the bridge—Felice and I had passed beneath it on our way home—but not the fall. When I had gradually awakened the night of the accident, a terrible pain throbbed between my legs and my mouth was filled with a bad, bitter taste. Concussion, the doctors said. With such a bad bump on the head, I might never be able to remember. Annetta sat by my bedside, trying to bathe my head with a cool cloth, but I pushed her hand away. My head was not where the pain was. My father kept pacing in and out of the room, his lean form casting a fitful shadow in the yellow candlelight.

  “Just rest,” he had said. “The doctors did what they had to do to save your life, now you must rest.”

  Within days, I had been put in a carriage with two strange gentlemen and several other bewildered boys. We were told we were headed for Naples, where we would be taught to sing like the angels. Now, eight years later, I was back in my old bedchamber trying to make sense of it.

  The fall from the bridge was a good story, quite logical and full of plausible detail, but a story nonetheless. At San Remo, I had discovered that most of the boys had been told some such story. Animal bites were plentiful, as were carriage and wagon accidents. Some boys remembered, however. They told of being lowered into a warm tub of water and being made to drink a bitter liquid that made them drowsy. Some had their necks squeezed until they lost consciousness. Like me, all had awakened with a vast pain where their scrotal sacs had been.

  I realized that my father must have made a deal with the agents who scoured Italy and points beyond for talented boys with beautiful voices. San Remo had been only one of several schools in Naples that provided the endless stream of mutilated singers that the opera houses and churches demanded. A poor family like Felice’s might sell their boy and his manhood for a few ducats and be glad of one less mouth to feed, but why had I been delivered to the knife?

  My father couldn’t have needed the money. He had always made a good living as organist at the Mendicanti. This house belonged to him free and clear, inherited from his father, who had been a highly regarded organist before him. My father had given all his children musical instruction, and I could have followed right in his footsteps. My brother Alessandro was the only one of us who hadn’t taken to music. If I had been the one who was practically tone deaf, instead of Alessandro, would he be here now? Would he be the one who would never know what it felt like to be a whole man, the one whose only hope for any crumb of the world’s approval was to sing and strut on the stage proclaiming what a figure of distaste he was to one and all?

  I longed to ask my father these questions but knew that I did not yet have the courage to do so. He had not taken supper with us. After Grisella’s fit, he had called for his bauta, and Lupo had come running with the mask that confers equality on all the men of Venice. A bauta consists of a large, semi-opaque square of fabric that is draped over the head and a mask that covers the eyes and nose. A tricorne hat completes the disguise. In a bauta and long cloak a man is practically anonymous; he could be a commoner or a king. Not surprisingly, it was the favored costume of carnival revelers.

  The longer I stayed in bed, the more tortuous my thoughts grew and the more insistent my qualms about reporting at the opera house became. I finally rolled out of my twisted bedclothes and padded across the cold floor to the window overlooking the campo. I laced my hands together and stretched my arms over my head. The newly risen moon was just past full; its light was bright enough to illuminate the square’s single tree. Why not walk off my restless notions on the pavements of Venice?

  I grabbed the breeches I’d left hanging from the bedpost, dressed hurriedly, then retrieved my cloak and hat from the hallway, where a key to the street door also hung on a peg. The outside air was cool but not uncomfortable. The bright moon in the dome of softly twinkling stars made the campo seem miles removed from my cramped, dusty bedroom. My head suddenly cleared of troublesome thoughts and I felt a tingle of excitement. I was alone in my city, the city of Carnival, and had all night to explore her wonders.

  Keeping to the back calli, using bridges to cross the secondary canals, I moved quickly through the sleeping Cannaregio. Cramped family dwellings seemed to press against my shoulders. Here and there, cats skittered over tile roofs and forgotten laundry billowed from balcony rails like hovering phantoms. I was moving south, heading for the heart of Venice, the Piazza San Marco, where the carnival revelry would be at its peak. It wasn’t long before I noticed that the houses grew larger and were separated by strips of garden protected by grilled gates. An occasional gondola swept by on the canal to my right, but I had no wish to be carried along. I wanted to move my legs and feel my heart pumping.

  The grand houses gradually gave way to a string of shuttered shops, and a few dark figures passed me on the pavement. Rounding a corner, I came upon a brightly lit tavern with patrons spilling out of its open door. The smoky, yellow light surrounded a group of high-spirited Germans, all in costumes and masks. They staggered to the gondola mooring, a boatman offered his craft, and they immediately fell to arguing about the fare. Then, a young girl with the veil of an Arab princess drawn across the lower part of her face stepped out of the tavern and plucked at my cloak. She was peddling a tray of cheap, papier-mâché masks.

  “You must have a mask, Signore. Carnival is no fun in your own face.” Her slanting, dark eyes were bright and playful. I pictured the pretty mouth that must be smiling behind the veil.

  The girl was right. I didn’t want to be the only man on the piazza without a mask.

  She helped me choose a small one, just a feather-tipped band of silver that covered my eyes, and tied it around the back of my head with a ribbon. At first I was sorry to see the girl disappear into the milling crowd as soon as she took my coin, then realized there were many other sights to see.

  The traffic on the canal multiplied. A long gondola strung with colored lanterns
passed by, then another. The bodies of the jet black boats blended so completely with the night it seemed as if the laughing passengers were borne magically along in a ring of fairy lights. The back of my neck tingled with excitement, and my ears picked up the sounds of a brass band. Almost running, I followed the blaring strains until I reached the piazza.

  Bursting through the archway under the mammoth clock tower, I was instantly immersed in a swirling flood of masked merrymakers. A Harlequin in a conical hat and diamond patterned tunic was cavorting with his Columbine; they jostled me from behind and nearly pushed me down. A masked woman in gypsy dress and a tangled wig laughed and grabbed my arm. She smelled of stale sweat masked by flowery perfume. After whispering, “Careful, my pretty one,” she surprised me by sticking her tongue in my ear. Her cloak was thrown back over her shoulders so I could look down the bodice that barely covered her breasts and see the rouge she had applied to her nipples. I pushed her away. A quick tumble with a prostitute was not how I wanted to spend my first night back in Venice.

  Many assume that castrati lack sexuality or suppose that we are fit only to play the girl for those of our own sex who enjoy that kind of skirmish. The truth of it is more complex. Our sexual appetites are as varied as those of other men. At San Remo, there had been several soft, exceedingly corpulent maestros whom we couldn’t imagine having amorous thoughts toward anyone. However, we had also heard many stories of the famous singers who managed to keep their noble patrons, male or female according to their tastes, as satisfied in the bedroom as they did in the opera house. Only a few years before, a popular Neapolitan castrato had nearly succumbed to pneumonia after being forced to spend the night on a rain-drenched balcony. He had escaped through the window only seconds before his mistress’ husband burst through her bedroom door with a cocked pistol.

  I believe women feel safe with us. They have no fear of impregnation, and most of us have peaceful, equable temperaments. For myself, I had learned that I had to cultivate my desires very carefully if they were to become bold and insistent enough to complete the act of love. I couldn’t squander my potency in the typical schoolboy method of assuaging these appetites, or I might find myself unable to pursue a romantic encounter should the opportunity arise. Thus I found myself continuously simmering with the first bubbles of desire, but rarely coming to the full boil. I was always looking for the woman who could turn up that flame, but fears of being mocked over my mutilation or not being able to satisfy held me back.

  After warming my hands at a flaming brazier, I made a circuit of the huge piazza, trying to decide what to do first. Everywhere was the bauta in all its many forms. Some masks had wickedly curving, beaklike noses or grotesquely ridged eye sockets, but most were simple black or white molds of leather designed to keep the wearer’s identity a secret. The women favored a plain velvet oval of a mask called a moretta, which covered their faces from forehead to chin and had slits for the eyes and nose. The wearer held the mask in place by gripping a small knob on the back of the mask with her teeth. I was pushing through a gaudy throng that displayed all these masks and more when I spied a strongman performing marvelous feats to the roll of a snare drum.

  The muscular giant on the trestle stage wore a molting leopard skin, no doubt his humble homage to the legendary Hercules. I watched in awe as he tossed huge iron dumbbells around as if they were children’s toys. Then, with many grunts and groans, he leaned over the edge of the stage and suspended a ship’s anchor from a chain around his neck. His last miracle involved a number of his family members. He balanced two brothers on his wide shoulders, and a sister climbed up on those two. Before a child was passed up to the terrifying height of the woman’s shoulders, the rest of the family crossed themselves and fell to their knees. Many of the spectators followed suit. The drum beat out a furious rat-ta-tat and the crowd held its breath as the tiny child moved higher and higher. When it reached the pinnacle of the family pyramid and spread its arms in triumph, the cheering of the crowd was not diminished when we realized the figure was not a child but a youthfully dressed midget.

  In search of other pleasures, I followed the tempting fragrance of fresh-baked pastry into a nearby café. Every seat was taken, so I joined the maskers hugging the walls to watch a handsome couple dance an impromptu furlana. The man was unmasked and had removed his coat. Although he had reached his middle years, he was vigorously built. The fine silk fabric of his breeches stretched over a lean, taut belly, and his white stockings covered muscular calves. Those nearest him expressed delight at his footwork and clapped the beat of the tune to encourage him on and on in the spinning dance. His partner was a tiny minx-like woman in a dress of gold satin that floated up around her knees as she whirled. Her face was covered by a moretta.

  Thanks to my musical training, I possessed the wind of an athlete, but I wouldn’t have been able to complete as many repetitions of the frantic dance as these two. The man finally stumbled to a stop with a good-natured laugh and motioned to one of his servants, who brought his master a cool drink and a cloth to wipe his brow. Now I had a good view of his full face. He was not a handsome man, but he had strong, regular features and a manner that bespoke strength and assurance if not outright audacity. His own brown hair was pulled into a pigtail and topped with a simple, unpowdered wig. Not surprising. I couldn’t imagine a man with his obvious drive sitting still long enough to get a thorough powdering.

  The man’s bravos cleared a path to the door, but his dancing partner jumped playfully in his way. She removed the knob of the moretta from her mouth and flung her head back to be kissed. The gentleman obliged by cradling her chin in his strong hands and thrusting his tongue where the mask’s holder had so recently been. Then he swept her aside and, without a word, headed for the door. One of his men held the woman’s wrists as she tried to follow.

  My mouth was still watering for pastry, but I found myself pinned to the wall by a woman of obvious wealth who had slashed her gown of velvet and satin to pose as a beggar. She giggled with her male companion, who was disguised as a nun. “If La Belluna hears about her lover dancing with a ballerina from the Teatro San Moise, there will be hell to pay.”

  “Oh, he’ll just buy her a diamond trinket and it will be forgotten,” answered the sham nun. “Adelina Belluna knows the rules of the game.”

  “Well, if I were her I’d be getting everything out of Domenico Viviani that I possibly could. You never know when he’s going to be ready for a new romance.” The couple laughed as they darted toward a free table.

  I barely had time to register the thought that the man who danced the exuberant furlana was my new employer when another, more malevolent conversation reached my ears.

  “What outlandish thing do we have here? Is it a boy or a girl?” a deep voice asked in a lazy drawl.

  “Perhaps it’s a girl dressed in manly attire as a carnival disguise. There’s no fuzz on those cheeks,” an acid voice replied.

  I turned slowly, as if to search for a waiter or an empty table. In the sea of chattering masks, how could I tell who had uttered those words?

  “If it is female, the poor girl is to be pitied for possessing the flattest bosom in Venice.” Now I saw. The speaker stood only a few paces from me. A white leather mask hid the upper part of his face, but his elaborately coifed wig was bare of any other covering. A pear-shaped pearl dangled from one earlobe and proclaimed his privileged status.

  I started to edge through the crowd. I had not then faced the worst of society’s prejudice against my kind, but I had been raised in a school for boys, and I knew a bully when I saw one. The door was only a few steps away when another dandy in a gold-braided coat barred my way. His deep-voiced friend laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.

  “Not so fast, my lovely.” His wine-soaked breath washed over me. “We have a wager on your sex. Enlighten us. Are you a pretty boy or a girl with an unfortunate deformity?”

  I shook his hand off and said quickly, “Excuse me, Signore, but my
friends are waiting on the piazza.”

  “Ah, his voice. Hear it. He’s one of those singing canaries, a castrato,” said one of the pack of patrician youths who had closely surrounded me.

  My chief tormentor set his pearl earring swinging with an evil laugh. “This is going to be even more fun than I thought. I’ve always wanted to get a close look at a man who’s lost his stones. Bring him outside.”

  I twisted and squirmed as they laid hands on me from all sides. “Let me go. My friends are right by the door. They won’t let you do this.”

  Their leader stuck his masked face close to mine. Spittle gleamed on his fleshy lips. “We followed you in here…alone. You have no waiting friends. But don’t fret, we’re going to be your friends for the rest of the night.”

  Getting desperate now, I started to call for help, but a sharp blow to my stomach knocked the wind from my lungs. Complaining loudly about a comrade who couldn’t hold his wine, they dragged me out of the café and along an arcade leading to the nearest gondola mooring.

  Heart pounding, I staggered to regain my footing. I pulled against their encircling arms, causing at least one of the tipsy fops to overbalance and lose his grasp. A covered gondola bobbed in the water just ahead. It was now or never.

  The water in the Bay of Naples was a warm bath compared to the frigid canal. The maestros at San Remo had viewed swimming as a lung-developing exercise, and I had been one of the more agile fish in my class. Of course, my tormentors also knew how to swim. Every Venetian boy, rich or poor, is introduced to the lagoon by his father or older brothers. I was counting on the element of surprise to even the score.

  Two or three loosened their grasp and ran ahead to the gondola. The sturdiest of their number attempted to bundle me into the boat while their leader brought up the rear. Before my heels left the edge of the stone quay, I kicked backward with all my might and made a dive for the canal. The cold water took my breath away, but I came up flailing even as I gasped. I had managed to pull two of my attackers in with me. One was clawing at a mooring post, but its slick, mossy surface kept him from getting a firm hold. The rogues in the boat seemed more interested in staying dry and rescuing their friend than retrieving me.