Domenico threw down the knife in disgust. He bit into his lip, an exquisite child angry and confused. Then he looked at Tonio as if he could not believe what was taking place here.
“Come to Rome,” he repeated. “You must come! Tonio, it’s not as if you were some charity student. If you tell Maestro Maffeo you must go, he’ll let you go. You can come with the Contessa, why there are any—”
“Domenico, I can’t go to Rome! Why would I go to Rome—” But before the words were out of his mouth, bits and pieces of the conversation came back to him.
Domenico’s face was so stricken that Tonio couldn’t bear to look at it.
“You’re just anxious and you’ve got no reason to be,” Tonio said. “You’re going to be a sensation!”
“I’m not anxious,” Domenico whispered. He had turned away and was looking into the shadows. “Tonio, I thought you would want to be there….”
“I would if I could, but I can’t pick up and leave.”
It was unbearable to see him like this. He looked so miserable. Tonio ran his hand back through his hair. He was tired; his shoulders ached, and he wanted to sleep more than anything, and suddenly the prospect of remaining in this room a moment longer seemed impossible.
“Domenico, you won’t think about me when you get to Rome, you know you won’t,” he said. “You’ll forget me and everyone else here.”
Domenico would not look at him. He was staring off as if nothing Tonio had said penetrated.
“You’ll be famous,” Tonio said. “My God, what did the Maestro say? You could go on to Venice if you wanted to, or right to London. You know as well as I do…”
Domenico put his napkin down and rose from the chair. He came round and before Tonio could stop him he had dropped down on his knees beside him. He looked into Tonio’s eyes.
“Tonio,” he said, “I want you to come with me, not just to Rome, but everywhere after that. I won’t go to Venice if you don’t want to go there. We can go to Bologna and Milan and then to Vienna. We can go to Warsaw, Dresden, I don’t care where we go, but I want you to come with me. I wasn’t going to ask you until we were in Rome, until I saw that things go well, and if they don’t go well, well…I can’t think about that. But if they do, Tonio…”
“No. No, stop this,” Tonio said. “You don’t mean all this, and it’s out of the question. I can’t just drop my studies. You don’t know what you’re saying….”
“Not forever,” Domenico said, “just in the beginning, six months perhaps. Tonio, you have the means, it’s not as if you were poor, you’ve never been poor, and you—”
“It has nothing to do with that!” Tonio said, suddenly angry. “I have no desire to go with you! What ever made you think I would do it!”
Instantly he regretted it.
But it was too late, and it had been said with too perfect a candor.
Domenico had gone to the window. He stood with his back to the room, a somewhat delicate figure partially concealed by the shadows, and he appeared to be looking up as if to the sky. And Tonio felt, I must make this up to him.
But he did not know the extent to which he’d wounded Domenico until Domenico turned and again approached him.
Domenico’s face was knotted and small and stained with tears, and as he drew near, he bit his lip and his eyes glimmered and melted.
Tonio was quietly stunned.
“I never dreamed that you would want me to come,” Tonio said. But dismayed by the irritation in his voice, he stopped, defeated.
How had it come to this?
He had thought this boy so strong, so cold. It was as much a part of his charm as this exquisite mouth, these skilled hands, the pliant and graceful body that always received him.
And now ashamed and miserable, Tonio felt more alone with Domenico than he had ever felt. If only he could pretend to love him just for this moment.
But as if reading his thoughts, Domenico said:
“You care nothing for me.”
“I didn’t know you wanted me to,” Tonio said. “I swear I didn’t!” But on the edge of tears himself, he suddenly became angry. That cruelty welled in him that he’d so often let loose in bed. “Good God,” he said, “what have we ever been to each other!”