“Tonio, whatever it was, put it out of your mind,” came Guido’s voice, soft, unobtrusive, behind him. “Put them all out of your mind. They reach across the miles yet to cut you. Don’t let them.”
“Are you my brother?” Tonio whispered. “Tell me this….” He took Guido’s hand. “Are you my brother?”
And Guido, hearing these simple words spoken with uncommon feeling, could only nod in confusion. “Yes.”
Tonio rose and drew Guido close to him, his hand on Guido’s lips as if to make him silent, just as she had reached for Carlo’s lips in the supper room that last night. But Guido was speaking yet.
“Forget them, forget them now.”
“Yes, for an hour,” Tonio answered. “For a day, for a week, I should so like to do that,” he whispered.
And yet he saw her lying in that rank and darkened bedroom; he saw her deep in drunken sleep, her face the waxen mask of death, her moans inhuman. And now it’s filled with lights; it’s filled with people, those halls, those rooms, that vast salon, just as I had always dreamed, and she is in his arms, and he has saved her. Yes, there you have it laid bare. He has saved her! He cut you down to save her. And she is not doomed, and you are doomed, and you are in that dark room and you can’t get out, and she is no longer there!
“Oh, if I could just take the pain out of your head,” Guido said, ever so softly, his hands on Tonio’s temples. “If I could only reach in and take it out.”
“Ah, but you do, and you do it as no one else can,” Tonio answered.
And they are married.
Married. And little Francesca Lisani clutches the convent grille to look at me, my betrothed, my bride. Married. His mother, peering up at him from the dressing table, suddenly threw back the great mane of her black hair and laughed.
Does she dance, does she sing, does she wear pearls around her neck, and is the long supper room thronged with guests, and has she her cavalier servente now, and what does she believe happened to her son, what does she believe!
But then he kissed Guido’s open mouth slowly, with all the semblance of real feeling. And then pressing Guido’s hands together, he let them go as he backed away. Never, he thought, will you ever know what happened, and what must happen, and just how brief this time is that we have together, this little span we call life.
It was near daylight when he rose from bed and penned his response to Catrina:
In my father’s storerooms on the first floor of our house were several old, but still fine swords. Please ask my brother if I might have these weapons, and if he would send them to me here when it is convenient for him to do so. And if there is some sword which was our father’s which he is willing to send to me, I should be profoundly grateful for that weapon, as well.
He signed the letter and sealed it, and sat watching the morning light appear in the little courtyard, a slow and silent spectacle that never failed to fill him with an extraordinary peace. First the shadowy shapes of the trees distinguished themselves beneath the arches of the cloister; then the light broke out in patches everywhere so that he could see the tracery of limbs and leaves. The color was the last to come, and then it was morning, and the house was giving off its full vibrations like a giant instrument sending its sounds through the pipes of a vast church.
The pain was gone.
The confusion in him had subsided. And as he looked at the smooth mask of Guido’s face in sleep, he found himself humming softly the hymn he’d sung the night before, and thinking, Giacomo, you gave this little gift to me; I had not known how much I loved it, all of it, until you came.
10
DOMENICO WAS A SENSATION in Rome, though Loretti was hissed and attacked by the audience, particularly the abbati—the clerics who always took the front rows of the Roman house—accusing him of stealing from his idol, the composer Marchesca, so that all during the performance they hissed “Bravo Marchesca! Boooo Loretti,” keeping quiet only when Domenico sang.
It was enough to unnerve anyone and Loretti was back in Naples, swearing never to set foot in the Eternal City again.