that Lorenzo had come to the table he did not know. He only knew that for a long time he had been aware of a figure there, and then looking up he saw it was Lorenzo. The boy’s head blocked the light of the low-hanging lamps, and he could not make out his features.
“Go on, Lorenzo,” Guido said coldly.
Lorenzo’s body bent forward into an arc, and he roared something suddenly at Guido in the Neapolitan dialect.
Tonio was on his feet. Lorenzo had drawn out his stiletto. A silence had fallen over those nearest, and Guido in that silence was obviously ordering Lorenzo to leave the tavern. He was threatening him, that much Tonio understood.
But he understood too that it didn’t matter. The moment had come. Lorenzo’s face was the picture of hatred and cunning. But he was also very drunk, and he looked as dangerous as any ordinary man as he advanced slowly on Tonio.
Tonio took a step backwards. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He had to get his weapon out, but he knew if he reached for it what would happen. One of the tavern girls was pulling on Lorenzo’s sleeve and men had risen from that long table in the center of the room, closing in around them. Guido suddenly gave Lorenzo a vicious shove and the crowd opened, but Lorenzo had his balance.
And Tonio had his weapon out, also.
“I don’t want a quarrel with you,” Tonio said in Italian.
The boy was spitting curses at him in the Neapolitan dialect.
“Speak so I can understand you,” said Tonio. But it was as if the wine had evaporated in his veins. He was coolheaded, speaking, but thinking something completely different. For one moment he knew true fear: he imagined that weapon going right into his flesh; but he knew in that same moment that he had no time for this fear, this fear could defeat him. He had taken a step backwards to broaden the distance, the better to see this boy who was much taller than he was, with a eunuch’s seemingly endless arm ready to thrust that deadly blade right into him.
When Guido went to shove him again, the boy whirled around and everyone knew his threat was real, he would just as soon stab Guido.
It seemed some other figure entangled itself with them in the shadows, a man who was drawing Guido out of it.
Again Guido attempted to grab at Lorenzo, and as Lorenzo spun to attack him, Tonio uttered a growl and came forward.
Lorenzo snapped back immediately.
And then it happened so fast, Tonio could never have explained it to anyone. The boy came at him, that great arm plunging straight forward, and Tonio buckled coming up under it, past it, feeling his blade jammed into Lorenzo. But the blade stopped, and then Tonio with all his might forced it, past cloth or flesh or bone or whatever impeded it feeling it sink so weightlessly that he was crushed up against Lorenzo.
Lorenzo’s left fingers closed on Tonio’s face; Tonio jerked the stiletto out. And then Lorenzo staggered backwards.
A gasp went up from the crowd. Lorenzo’s eyes were narrow with hatred, his stiletto held aloft, and then suddenly his eyes widened.
He fell forward, dead, onto the tavern floor at Tonio’s feet, and Tonio stared down at him.
It seemed the crowd all of a body took hold of Tonio, gently pushing him back out of the tavern. A woman was screaming, and Tonio did not know what was happening to him. Hands turned him, shoved him, led him through a door into a dark alleyway; someone motioned quickly for him to get away, that way, go! And suddenly Guido was pushing him forward.
He couldn’t know it, but it was merely the instinctive action of the crowd to protect him. The police would be called; they had gotten the murderer away. They did not look to the police to settle anything.
Tonio was so sickened and horrified that Guido had to drag him into a cabriolet, and then pull him through the gates of the conservatorio. He continued to look back in the direction from which he’d come, even when he was forced into Guido’s darkened study.
He struggled to speak, but Guido motioned for silence.
“But I…I…” Tonio was gasping as if he couldn’t breathe.
Guido shook his head. He gave a slight lift to his chin and then his face fixed in a demonstrative expression of silence. But when he saw that Tonio didn’t understand, he whispered, “Say nothing!”