candles. And the sea outside. And he wanted to weep.
“Maestro, let me go tonight,” he said. “I can’t sing any more. I’m empty.”
“You’re warmed up. Your high notes are perfect,” Guido said softly. “And I want you to sing this for me.”
His voice had an uncommon gentleness to it. He struck a sulphur match and touched its odoriferous flame to his candle. The winter night had fallen down around them suddenly.
Tonio looked up, drowsy and numb, and saw the freshly copied music.
“It’s what you are to sing at Christmas,” Guido said. “I’ve written it myself, for your voice.” And then, very low, he added, “It’s the first time anything of mine will be performed here.”
Tonio probed the face, looking for the edge of anger. But in the soft uneven flicker of the candle, Guido was calmly waiting. And there seemed at that moment a violent contrast between this man and Domenico, and yet something united them both, some feeling that flowed from Tonio. Ah, Domenico is the sylph, he thought, and this is the satyr. And what am I? The great white Venetian spider.
His smile was bitter. And he wondered what Guido thought of it, as he saw his expression darken.
“I want to sing it,” Tonio whispered. “But it’s too soon. I’ll fail you if I try, I’ll fail myself, and all those who listen.”
Guido shook his head. There was the evanescent warmth of a smile, and then he said Tonio’s name softly.
“Why are you so afraid of it?” he asked.
“Can’t you leave me tonight? Can’t you let me go!” Tonio asked. He stood up suddenly. “I want to get out of this place, I want to be anywhere but here.” He started for the door and then he turned back. “Am I allowed to go out!” he demanded.
“You went out to an albergo not so very long ago,” Guido said, “without begging anyone’s permission.”
This caught Tonio off guard, and it took the wind out of him. He stared at Guido, in a moment of apprehension that was almost panic.
But Guido’s face remained empty of judgment or anger.
He appeared to be reflecting, and then he drew himself up as if he had made a decision.
He looked to Tonio with an uncommon patience, and when he spoke, his voice was slow and almost secretive.
“Tonio, you loved this boy,” he said. “Everyone knew it.”
Tonio was too surprised to answer.
“Do you think I’ve been blind to your struggle?” Guido asked. “But Tonio, you have known so much pain. Can this be such a loss to you? Surely you can turn to your work as you’ve done before, and you can forget him. This wound will heal, perhaps more quickly than you realize.”
“Loved him?” Tonio whispered. “Domenico?”
Guido’s brows came together in a frown that was almost innocent. “Who else?” he asked.
“Maestro, I never loved him! Maestro, I felt nothing for him. And oh, if there were only the smallest wound so that I might somehow atone for it!” He stopped, staring at this man, caught up in this unguarded moment.
“This is true?” Guido asked.
“Yes, it’s true,” said Tonio. “But the misfortune of it was that I alone knew it. And I had to show it to him. When he is off to Rome to the most important appointment he may ever have to keep in all his life, and God knows if ever I make that same journey how I will despise anyone who sends me off as I sent him! I wounded him, Maestro. I wounded him, and senselessly, and stupidly.”
He paused.
All this he was saying to Maestro Guido? He stared before him, astonished at his own weakness. He loathed himself for this, and for the loneliness that lay behind it.
But Guido’s face was unreadable as he sat waiting without a sound. And all the man’s small cruelties in the past came back to Tonio.
He knew that he should leave this place, enough had been said, and he could no longer trust himself.
But suddenly, without will or design he continued:
“God, if you were not the brutal and unfeeling man you are,” he found himself saying. “Why do you speak of all this to me! I struggle to believe that I am yet something that can be good inside, have worth, and yet I turned my life with Domenico into something that’s not fit to cast into the gutter. And over nights such as those, he shed tears and I’m the cause of it.”