he folded his arms on its carved frame and rested his chin there.
Domenico appeared. And though he was dressed in his simple black tunic and red sash, he seemed to have become the woman whose role he was playing. There was about every gesture a yielding and a grace that caused Tonio suddenly to feel tense, resentful.
Only the boy’s voice distracted him. It was high, pure, and utterly translucent, with none of the opacity of the falsetto. His true soprano range was obviously phenomenal, and the liquid manner in which he connected his rounded tones made Tonio ashamed of his own miserable performance with the Accentus.
“This is a voice to reckon with,” he sighed as soon as Domenico had finished and made his exit. But this was merely a rehearsal and the boy lingered at the edge of the stage, his body forming such a languid posture that he seemed to be resting comfortably against the air as if it were a tree, and over the length of the house, his eyes appeared to be fixed on Tonio.
Tonio was so absorbed by this, by the light angular figure of the boy and those hollow cheeks and deep-set black eyes, that he did not even notice a figure was approaching him.
Then suddenly he realized a shadow had fallen over him. He looked up just as the music died away, and a silence fell over the theater.
Lorenzo, the castrato he had stabbed a month ago for tormenting him, was standing beside him.
Tonio stiffened.
He rose slowly. His eyes moved warily over this boy who was taller than he was, and dark-skinned as well as dark-haired, a somewhat rough-looking individual. Like many of the castrati, however, he had a bloom to him, though the face was plain and without contrast.
His eyes were fixed on Tonio. The rehearsal had come to a complete halt.
And Tonio had no weapon.
Yet as Tonio gave the boy a slow nod of greeting, he let his right hand rise slightly as if for something at his waist. Then he lowered it again as if he would pass it up under his tunic to reach for a stiletto. The gesture was drawn out, calculated.
But the boy appeared not to notice. His body taut, fingers curled at his sides, he acknowledged Tonio’s nod with his own bow, his mouth breaking into a long ugly smile as he did so.
No one made a sound in the little theater.
And then Lorenzo, moving backwards carefully, turned and left Tonio there.
Tonio stood still, thinking. He had expected some attack from this boy. But this was worse. This boy meant to kill him.
That afternoon he left the conservatorio with Guido’s permission to bring a locksmith back to his room; and slipping his stiletto into his belt, he now took it with him everywhere. No one could see it under his tunic. And wherever he went, he was cautious. Climbing the stairs in the dark at night, he listened before advancing.
But he was not afraid. And then suddenly the absurdity of that caused him to flush. He was not afraid because Lorenzo was only a eunuch!
He shook his head, his brain teeming. Was that what Carlo had counted on? That Tonio was only a eunuch?
He wished he could get at his brain with his hands and squeeze the organ of thought itself, he was in such pain suddenly. He did not know what the years would do to him, or what they had done to this dark-skinned boy from the south of Italy whom he had stabbed so thoughtlessly when he felt like a cornered animal. But should he expect any less of this one than he expected of himself?
As time passed, he found himself hoping that this boy would attack him and wondering how it would go when it happened.
A slight murderous feeling came over him when he thought of it, bound up with the memory of his strength pitted against others, not the awful defeating blows that had brought him down in that room in Flovigo, but that moment when he had almost been free, and then drawing back from that pain, he thought coldly, sensibly, I will meet this when it comes to me.
But nothing happened in the following weeks except that this boy had changed his position at table so that Tonio might see him, and see that sinister smile which he never failed to offer with some gracious gesture.
And Tonio’s hours with Guido deepened into fixed patterns, brilliantly illuminated now and then by