answered in the smallest, most private whisper.
“We have not!” Tonio came back. “It’s all games and foolishness, nothing but the most shameful…”
Domenico put his hands to his ears as if he wouldn’t listen.
“And stop crying, for the love of God, do you know what you’re acting like, an insufferable eunuch!”
Domenico winced. His face was very wet and white as he spoke. “How can you say that to me? How you must loathe yourself to talk this way to me! Oh, God, I wish you’d never come here, I wish I’d never seen you. Damn you into hell. I wish you were burning in hell….”
Tonio sucked in his breath. He shook his head. And as he watched helplessly Domenico went to the door as if to leave him.
But he turned back. His face was so perfectly made that even in this misery he had an irresistible beauty. Passion colored it and sharpened it, and he looked as innocent and wounded as the smallest child who has just begun to understand disappointment. “I…I can’t bear the thought of leaving you,” he confessed. “Tonio, I can’t…” And then he stopped as if he couldn’t continue. “All the time, I thought you cared for me. When you first came, you were so miserable, so alone. You seemed so to despise everyone. And at night, we could hear you when you thought everyone slept, and you were crying. We could hear it. And then when you came back and you put on the sash, you tried so hard to deceive us. But I knew you were miserable. We all knew it. Just to be with you…it was to feel pain. I could feel it! And I thought…I thought I was good for you. You didn’t cry anymore, and you were with me. I thought…I thought…that you cared for me!”
Tonio put his head in his hands. He let out a low moan and then behind him he heard the door close and Domenico’s steps on the stairway.
7
THE WEEK HAD BEEN UNENDURABLE. Since Domenico’s departure for Rome, restless nights had worn Tonio down, and this evening as he came back from the supper table he knew he could not work any longer now.
Guido would have to let him go early. Anger and threats could not keep him here.
Domenico had left at dawn after their evening at the albergo. Loretti had gone with him, and Maestro Cavalla would come after. There had been laughing in the corridors, the tramp of feet.
Domenico’s stage name would be Cellino, and someone had cried out, “Bravo, Cellino.”
Suddenly Tonio had left his spot at the windowsill and run all the way down the four flights of stairs without stopping. He pushed through the knot of boys at the door. The cold air shocked him for an instant, but he caught the carriage just as it was starting. The coachman held the whip.
And Domenico’s face appeared at the window, brightening so innocently that Tonio felt his throat tightening.
“You’ll be a wonder in Rome,” he said. “Everybody’s sure of it. You’ve got nothing to fear from anyone.”
And there was such a wistful, innocent smile then on Domenico’s face that Tonio felt the tears rise. He stood on the cobblestones staring after the lumbering carriage, and then the cold commenced to close on him.
* * *
Now he sat very still on the bench in Guido’s room and he knew he could not do any more tonight. He must sleep. Or he must lie in his little room and prepare for the missing of Domenico, for not having those warm limbs nestled close to him, that pliant and fragrant flesh ready to give him whatever he wanted, when in truth he didn’t care if he ever set eyes on Domenico again.
He swallowed and made a little wish with a silent smile that Guido would beat him when he refused to practice further. He wondered what he would have to do to make Guido beat him. He was now taller than Guido. He imagined himself growing and growing until his head touched the ceiling. The tallest eunuch in Christendom, he heard a voice announce, and incomparably the finest of those singers over seven feet by a great margin.
Wearily he looked up and he saw that Guido had finished his notations and that Guido had been studying him.
That eerie feeling came over him that Guido knew all about him and Domenico, even of that miserable scene in the albergo. He thought of those rooms again, all those fine wax