Giovanni nodded and drank.
“You have an opportunity to take Enri and better a nation. We might make Venice or Rome better, but they are already quite nice.” Bartolo smiled a little, held his glass up and turned it in his hand, looking at the reflected lamps of the courtyard. “I’ve heard.” He drank. “Ah, look,” with a gesture towards Enri with the glass. “Someone has made him a winning offer.” Bartolo threw a bone to the ground, and a dog ran over immediately to carry it off.
“Is Enri paid for his attentions?”
“Paid? He is not a whore,” Bartolo said, twisting his face into a sour, angry expression. He waited, holding it.
“I’m sor—”
“Whores are honest,” Bartolo finished with a wide laugh, releasing his face. “He receives gifts, of clothes and jewelery. Money is lent. Does Enri make the association? I wonder.”
“It must all seem a blur to him,” Giovanni said. Enri and the woman by his side stepped to them.
“Bartolo, Giovanni, Joan.” The woman smiled and touched Enri’s forearm quickly. Giovanni rose to greet her, found himself trapped between the table, the wall, and Bartolo, who had not risen. He bowed.
“Giovanni,” Enri continued, “arrived this week from Bavaria, and is here as an ambassador.”
“Bavaria has ambassadors?” Joan asked. Giovanni ground his teeth and forced a polite smile. “That was a beautiful piece you sang. I’ve never heard its like.”
The color ran from Giovanni’s face again. “A fragment,” he said. “A lesser work.”
“You look wan,” Enri said. “I hope you feel better. I would stay, but we must go,” Enri said. “I have evening lessons and can’t disappoint.”
Joan giggled.
“I’m pleased to have met you, Joan.” Giovanni said.
“Thank you for singing,” she insisted, and pulled Enri away.
“Youth,” Bartolo said. “So many eager attendants.” He sighed enormously. “Please, don’t ask about my wife.”
“What about—”
“No!” Bartolo paused. “After more wine, perhaps. Are you married?”
“I . . . no. I settled into bachelorhood without realizing it, and soon will be a distinguished gentleman.”
“Ah,” Bartolo said. “I’m confused about which one of should pity the other.”
“Both, in our ways,” Giovanni said.
Enri finished making excuses around the courtyard and left. Bartolo and Giovanni finished their plates and joined the company in the better-lit center to swap performance horrors, director-bankrupting strategies, and to toast each other.
After midnight with the group breaking up, Giovanni walked from the warm, lit plaza onto the road, wincing as the heavy, cold night air slapped his warm features. He drew his coat in and picked his way to the thin grassy median past the beach’s tide line, where he found a spot mostly out of the wind and watched moonlit waves wash up. He breathed deeply and easily, exhaling along with the low hiss of the receding waves over worn rocks, growing entirely still, deep in thought.
The moon declined to touch the horizon, reflecting in a long white-yellow river so bright it seemed walkable, and Enri came stumbling by, bleeding from one eye, laughing, and tripped on Giovanni’s feet. His whole misproportioned frame turned, he saw Giovanni, his eyes widening and smiling mouth opening to greet Giovanni as he toppled face first into the sand.
Giovanni got to his knees and turned Enri onto his back. Fresh blood specked the fine detailing of Enri’s clothes, darkened sand outlining the cuts across his head. Giovanni ripped the shirt open and then the pants, scanning for gut wounds. “Are you hurt? Where?”
Enri laughed. “What a night,” he said. “Fucking, fleeing, fighting, and now being ravaged by a Bavarian on my own beach.”
Giovanni strapped the pants back up. “You’re not badly hurt. What is going on?”
“There are four or five men,” Enri said. He flopped one arm over his head. “This big.”
“How large is their anger?” Giovanni reached to his side and for a smoothly curved foot-long pistol, varnished hardwood, ivory, and silver ghostly in the flat gray moonlight.
“Are you a cavalry officer?”
“All of us in the court,” Giovanni said, absently. He opened a hatch at the bottom of the handle and slid a small long black box into it. It ended with a soft, firm clack, and Giovanni pulled the whole top of the gun back and let it reset. “I hardly know what to do with this thing.”
“Oh, if they find us like this,” Enri said, laughed, coughed, tried to spit more sand out. “I need to gargle soon.”
Giovanni risked a look over the grass, scanning the beach in the direction Enri had come, left to right, right to left, intently. Giovanni fixed on one person and then let his gaze drift until he’s spotted three large forms, spread out.
“I thought you were exaggerating,” Giovanni said. “Did you climb Olympus to find these three?”
“No.”
Giovanni closed his eyes and shook his head three times quickly. “Fuck. I’m a professor, not fuck fuck fuck.” He crouched back down. “Can you run? My room is only a little ways—”
“My leg,” Enri said. “My knee, my ankle.”
Giovanni kept low as he thought and listened, breathing softly.
“I’ll go limp off then,” Enri said. “For your amusement.”
“Enri, how common are pistols? Will they know to run?” Giovanni asked.
“What a stupid question. Look at me, I’m hurt,” Enri said.
Giovanni took a deep breath and knelt, left hand around the right holding the gun out, level down the beach. “Enri,” he whispered, not looking down. “Don’t move, don’t say anything.”
Giovanni moved his aim down and to the left and fired once, a crack and a spout of sand, the sound of the shot echoed off the stone building fronts to be lost in the surf. The three heads ahead of him swiveled, forms hunching down, and Giovanni stepped forward with his right foot, planting, left knee down, and fired again, waiting for them to spot the plume and stepping forward with the echo. Dogs woke to bark through the city, late to the first shot. The men broke on the third, arms churning. Giovanni waited for a ten count, dogs and the city stirring in his right ear and the enveloping calm of breaking waves to his left, then stood and walked back to Enri. Enri held both hands to his chest, rolling a little on his shoulder blades, laughing and coughing.
“Oh look at the duelist,” Enri said, and winced. “Put that away, you’ll get us all in trouble.” He giggled. “What is that infernal thing?” Enri asked.
“It’s a hammerless pistol. Made for the court by a man in Prague.”
“Was this gun maker paid in identical silver coins?” Enri said.
Giovanni kept his gaze down the beach. “You’re going to be lucky I don’t put a shot in you.”
“I regret nothing,” Enri said, closing his eyes and moaning.
“Come on, up, up,” Giovanni said, hoisting Enri up. One-legged, he hung off Giovanni awkwardly, arm over shoulder, Giovanni’s free arm across the shoulder and under the armpit. Enri smelled of sex, his flowery perfume and another, still sweeter one, and terrified, skunked sweat.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“How drunk are you?”
“Not more than usual. People toast me, it would be rude—”
“Be quiet just for a moment.”
Giovanni carried Enri to the door of the inn, where he braced Enri against the wall with a shoulder so that he could return the gun to its holster, and straighten his clothes. Giovanni wiped some of the blood off Enri’s face with a sleeve and then roused the keeper to let them in and help carry Enri up the stairs.
The man who took the other arm had no reaction on seeing Enri appear in the darkness beaten and bleeding, half-undressed, and set him down in Giovanni’s bed without comment and left, closing the door behind him.
Giovanni removed his coat and heavy vest and laid them across the small table. Without the
vest, the cloth straps that kept the gun tight along Giovanni’s left side looked like bindings.
“How are you?” Giovanni asked.
“I’m hurt and annoyed,” Enri said. “How dare they!”
“Yes yes,” Giovanni found a cloth sack in one of his trucks and unrolled it on the floor. Like his elaborate leather holster, it was black, perfectly stitched, with regular-sized pockets. “Where are you hurt?”
“My face, from them, my chest, from them, my knee from you, you idiot.” He managed a sour look.
Giovanni helped take off Enri’s layered top, and then his pants.
Enri naked looked not alien but sad. On the cramped bed, he was both the cleanest and most white object glowing in the moonlight pouring through the open window. Folded, his long limbs seemed less conspicuous, but his pale, hairless chest, blotched with bruises and welts already raised, glistened with sweat gathered along his visible ribs. Jagged tears of stretch marks striped almost the entire length of his legs and arms, and once seen, Giovanni could pick them out among the rings on Enri’s fingers, too.
“First, first . . . ” Giovanni paused. “Fists, or sticks, or?”
“Fists and sticks,” Enri said, wincing. “And, and, and.”
“Lay still,” Giovanni said. “Tell me when this hurts.” He began to prod down the ribcage, and Enri bit down on his squeal as his eyes watered on three and five on the right.
“Singing is going to hurt for a while,” Micheal said. “They’re cracked.”
“Singing always hurts,” Enri said. “This is terrible.”
Giovanni took the wet cloth. “I’m going to clean your cuts,” he said. He doused a white cloth in a clear fluid. “This will burn. It will burn a lot. But it will keep you from scarring.”
“My face will be fine? Oh thank God.”
Giovanni wiped dried blood and sand away from the cuts on Enri’s forehead and scalp. He took a thick blue cloth out, drove it against the table edge to double it over with a snap, and then wrapped it around Enri’s knee with the now-bloody rag. “This will keep the swelling down.”
Enri whimpered softly.
Giovanni surveyed his work, eyes skipping over Enri’s hairless groin.
“No, look,” Enri said, lazily.
Giovanni looked at the penis—tiny and almost fully withdrawn again—slack between Enri’s splayed legs, curved to lead the attention to the soft faded white patch of scars at the base.
“Yes,” Enri said. “Pay attention to me.” Enri ran a long finger along Giovanni’s cheekbone, and Giovanni reached out to touch the pale whiteness.
“I’m sorry,” Giovanni whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Enri said.
“I have never seen . . . ”
“I know.”
“I’m so sad now.”
“No.”
“I feel like, like I felt seeing my first hanging,” Giovanni said. “I can’t believe that we do these things.” He brushed the patch again, Enri shuddered, and Giovanni drew his hand up, along the length.
“Couldn’t you arrange for accidents?”
Giovanni shook his head. “Not like this. In Rome I saw children six, seven years old with the smallest hint of talent taken to a parlor.”
“What parent doesn’t hear music when their child sings? Music and profit. And then school, endless school.” Enri snorted a laugh. “And then the voice changes anyway.”
“How many dropped out?”
“You don’t know?”
Giovanni shook his head again, softer this time. In his hand, Enri’s short, sleek penis stirred, and Enri smiled at him.
“Good, good,” Enri said. “Now grasp it.”
“I know how this is done,” Giovanni said.
“Clearly,” Enri said, and laid back. “I’m happy to find I’m still attractive after that beating.”
“You are,” Giovanni said. “Were you interrupted this evening, with Joan? You do seem particularly . . . ”
“I don’t know,” Enri said, closing his eyes and leaning back. “It looked bad, and that was enough. Ah. Yes, a little more, no.”
Giovanni continued on.
“I don’t think their heart was in it. They know I’m no thief come in the night . . . ”
“They did follow you.”
“I think they just meant—no, wait.” Enri paused. “No, keep on. The chase back to the burrow is a long-honored tradition. Otherwise how do you know the lover is not in hiding outside, waiting for the sympathetic lady to let him in again to tend to his wounds and restart the process with new fire?”
“Like so?”
“More likely with the mouth, yes?”
“Like—” Giovanni moved down to gently apply lips. Enri twisted, biting his lip, and came, arching his back, hitting his head on the wall, and singing out a choked note. His head sagged forward and he let out a great breath.
“My gift to you,” Enri said. He panted, looked down at Giovanni with half-lidded eyes. “I’m so tired.”
“Sleep, then,” Giovanni said, and after some trial and debate found Enri could lie on his right side with Giovanni curled behind him, so long as Giovanni did not wrap an arm across Enri’s ribs.
Enri fell asleep immediately. Giovanni lay listening to his smooth, high-tone snoring until he woke to the morning. He let go of Enri and sat up, chewing on a hard piece of bread to keep his stomach from growling until he heard Enri roll onto his back, cry out in pain, and start upright. He looked down at his own red-and-purple chest and whistled.
“What are you eating?” he asked. “Can I have some? I’m hungry. Give me some.”
Giovanni handed him the rest of the bread. Enri began to gnaw at one end.
“I need to go see Bartolo,” Enri said. “If I can’t sing he’ll be furious.” He paused, chewed. “Or we could go fishing. I haven’t been fishing in a while. We could borrow a boat if the weather’s nice, head out, you . . . ”
Giovanni sat on the edge of the bed.
“I have a composition for you,” Giovanni said.
“At last, your feigned reluctance falls away.” He reached forward to run his hand through Giovanni’s hair. “It’s good we are both unclothed.”
“It is for you and only for you.”
“Naked people often tell me as much.”
“It has consumed me for years. I began to hear fragments in school. As I became a singer, at times it would overwhelm me. I would try to practice a piece and instead I would imagine a soaring aria I could not sing.”
“Ah, art, always the obstacle to commerce.”
“Yes! Yes, you see exactly! Pieces came more quickly after I could no longer perform, until I thought I would go mad. I went into hiding and wrote and rewrote for weeks, until I emerged with the whole work, intact.
“I auditioned singers. But as good as the singers I could find, the men in falsetto were reedy, trilling, false and wavering, none of your range, your power, the flexibility of your voice.”
“You sound envious.”
“I am. Your talent, your ability, and your, your voice. If I could have been guaranteed it would have been a success, if it wasn’t too late, I might well have done it to myself.”
“Guaranteed?”
Giovanni looked ashamed. “I know it’s not—” He stopped, set his hands together on the table carefully. “What’s ambition without sacrifice?”
“I don’t know,” Enri said, setting the bread down.
“If you had the choice between cutting off a finger and continuing your career, or retiring to lead a church choir, wouldn’t you do it?”
“You would. I don’t have that choice.” Enri looked out the window at the light morning sky. “I’m sorry. You were auditioning.”
“I looked to women. Their voices carried feeling and range, and still they were inadequate. I auditioned singer after singer, and my compositions became ugly and hurtful in their hands. I wondered if I’d written something terrible, unworkable, and impossible.
An opera that could never be sung.”
“As I auditioned singer after singer I found my compositions became ugly and hurtful in their hands. I wondered if I’d written something terrible, unworkable, and impossible. An opera that could never be sung.”
“But here you are.”
“Yes.
“I have it.”
“Of course you do.”
“I know the whole thing from the start, I could write it down for you, or, or I could sing some of it, to give you an idea, and you . . . ”
“Is it in Italian?”
Giovanni’s excited expression fell away. “Is that all?”
A smile. “I only wonder if I might have to learn Bavarian, like your composition last night, which made me believe. Go on.”
“Italian,” Giovanni said. “I could write it out—”
“When you were a singer,” Enri said, and stopped himself. “When you were a great singer, did hopeful approach you and say only your voice would suit their brilliant production?”
“Yes,” Giovanni said without inflection.
“Did you ever read them?”
Giovanni waited a long time before looking back to Enri. “At first.”
Neither of them spoke.
“To get me here, with you, required extraordinary things.”
“Bavaria is not so far.”
They laughed.
“I can’t go back without you,” Giovanni said.
“That’s not my fault,” Enri replied.
“It is,” Giovanni replied.
On the beach, Enri alternated between swatting at sand flies with furrowed brow and then when the wind cleared them, sitting with an expression of deep contentment, eyes closed, head up.
“You don’t need me. Create them yourself. You have royal backing. Find a father with talent, the kids have tragic accidents . . . ”
“No. I can’t do anything like it. It’s banned.”
Enri laughed and smiled. “It’s banned in Italy, and yet every year so many children have tragic accidents.”
Giovanni reached out to touch him briefly, as if checking.
“I have always wondered: what kind of an accident?”
“I’ve never offered one. I prefer the mystery. Some have elaborate tales of attacks by starving dogs while peeing.”
Electric Velocipede Issue 25 Page 8