not have the talent, you would not make the impression you so obviously make.”
Tonio protested. He didn’t want to give up the view of the mountain; he didn’t want to give up that snug attic place that was his own.
But when he realized all of these apartments on the first floor were linked by connecting doors, and that his lay exactly beside Guido’s bedroom, he accepted. And he went out to furnish the room as he chose.
The Maestro was appalled to see the treasures coming through the front door: a chandelier of Murano glass, silver candlesticks, enameled chests, a coffered bed fitted with green velvet curtains, carpets from the Orient, and finally a splendid harpsichord with a double keyboard and a long triangular case. It was painted with galloping satyrs and nymphs, under a mellow glaze, in ocher, gold, and olive green.
This was a present for Guido, actually, though giving it to him outright might have been indiscreet.
And at night when the draperies were pulled against the cloister windows, and the halls echoed with dim and dissonant sounds, no one knew who slept in which bed, who came and went in which chamber, and the love of Guido and Tonio went on undiscovered as before.
Guido was meantime hard at work on creating a Pasticcio for Easter, which the Maestro di Cappella had gladly entrusted to him as the result of his recent Christmas success. This Pasticcio was a complete opera in which most of the acts were revisions of earlier and famous works. Scarlatti’s music would be used for the first with part of a libretto by Zeno, something suitable by Vivaldi worked into the second, and so on. But Guido had an opportunity to write the closing act himself.
There would be parts in it for Tonio, and for Paolo, whose high sweet soprano was astonishing everyone, and for another promising student named Gaetano, who had just been sent to Guido in recognition of the Christmas work.
Guido was ecstatic. And Tonio soon realized that though he could have bought out all Guido’s time for private lessons here, Guido wanted recognition from the Maestro for his students and his compositions; Guido was working towards the fulfillment of certain dreams of his own.
And on the day the Maestro accepted the Pasticcio, Guido was so happy he actually threw up all the pages of the score into the air.
Tonio got down on his knees to pick them up and then made Guido promise to take him and Paolo to the nearby island of Capri for a couple of days.
Paolo was brimming with excitement when told he was to go. Snub-nosed, round-faced, with a mop of unruly brown hair, he was loving and easy to love; and late at night in the inn, Tonio kept him up talking, saddened to discover the boy remembered no parents, only a succession of orphanages, and the old choirmaster who had promised the operation wouldn’t be painful, when in fact it was.
But as Lent came on, Tonio realized what Guido’s victory meant. Tonio must now appear on the stage not in the chorus, but alone.
Why should it be any worse than the chapel? Why should it be any worse than the processions which moved right through the common people to the church?
Yet it chilled him. He could see the audience assembling, and it was almost a sensual pain that came over him when he contemplated stepping before the lights: that old feeling of nakedness, of vulnerability, of…what? Belonging to others? Being something to please others, rather than one who is to be pleased himself?
Yet he wanted it so badly. He wanted the paint and the tinsel and the excitement; and he remembered how, when Domenico had been singing, he had thought: Some day I will do it and better than that.
Yet when he finally opened Guido’s score, he discovered he was to play a woman. He was stunned.
He was alone at the time.
He had taken the score to the empty little theater with permission to practice it there, hearing his voice fill the place.
Little sunlight leaked into the hall; the empty boxes were hollow and dark, and the stage itself barren even of its curtains, so that furnishings and props were exposed.
Sitting at the keyboard and staring at the score before him, he had the instant flashing feeling that he had been betrayed.
Yet he could almost see Guido’s astonished face when confronted with it. Guido hadn’t “done” this to him deliberately. Guido was merely giving him the opportunities