“I want to talk to you, Tonio,” he was saying. From here they could see the open ballroom and the long line of those performing the minuet, though the music was thin here and distorted. At moments, when the conversation roared, it seemed these brilliantly clad men and women danced to nothing.
“It’s about Giovanni, Tonio. You know the Maestro wants him to stay on another year, he’s determined he should try for the stage, but Giovanni’s been offered a position in a Roman choir and he wants to take it. If it was the Pope’s chapel, the Maestro would say yes, but as it is, he’s turned up his nose at it…. What do you think, Tonio?”
“I don’t know,” Tonio said. But he did know. Giovanni had never been good enough for the stage, he’d known it the first time he’d heard him sing.
But the girl with the yellow hair had appeared in the frame of the distant archway. Was it that same violet dress she wore? The one she had worn almost a year ago? Her waist seemed so small he might have closed it easily in both his hands, and the swell of her breasts was so flawless and radiant, the flesh there as lovely as the flesh of her cheek. It seemed her eyebrows were not blond as they might have been, but dark, smoky, like the blue of her eyes, and it was what made her so very serious. He could see so clearly her expression, her slight frown, and the slight pout of her lower lip.
“But Tonio, Giovanni wants to go to Rome, that’s the worst part of this. Giovanni has never enjoyed the stage, he never will, and he’s always loved singing in church. He loved it when he was very little….”
Tonio smiled at this. “But Piero, what can I do?”
“You can tell us what you think, Tonio,” he said. “Do you think Giovanni could ever make a life for himself with the opera?”
“Ask Guido, that’s what you should do.”
“But Tonio, you don’t understand. Maestro Guido would never contradict the Maestro di Cappella, and Giovanni really wants to go to Rome. He’s nineteen, he’s been here long enough, this is the best offer he’s ever gotten.”
A little pause fell between them. The girl turned, she bowed, she took her partner’s hand and proceeded down the row of dancers, her skirts swaying.
Suddenly Piero laughed and touched Tonio in the ribs. “Oh, so it’s that one you’re after,” he whispered.
Tonio flushed. He had to rein in his immediate anger. “Certainly not, I don’t even know who she is. I was just admiring her.”
He appeared as casual as he could. Motioning to a passing waiter, he took a fresh glass of white wine, holding it to the light as if the sudden wash of liquid against the crystal fascinated him.
“Go flatter her, Tonio, and maybe she’ll paint your picture,” Piero said. “She’ll paint you naked if you let her.”
“What are you talking about!” Tonio said sharply.
“She paints naked men.” Piero laughed as if he were enjoying this teasing immensely. “Of course they’re angels and saints, but they haven’t much clothing on. Go look in the Contessa’s chapel, if you don’t believe me. She painted all the murals over the altar.”
“I don’t know, ask the Contessa. She’s connected to the Contessa. But why don’t you fix your attentions on a nice older lady? Girls like that mean trouble….”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” Tonio said sharply.
A painter. And she painted murals on the walls. The idea shocked him; it tantalized him, giving her a luxurious new substance, and suddenly her negligent air seemed all the more seductive. She seemed concentrated on something beyond her own loveliness, and the protection of it. But she was so pretty! Had Rosalba, the Venetian painter, been so pretty? If so, then why did she paint? But that was moronic. And what did he care if she was the greatest painter in all Italy! Yet it maddened him deliciously, the thought of her with a brush in her hand.
Piero’s face seemed suddenly so vulnerable, and Tonio was now looking at him as if he had only just seen him. He’d just begun to understand his words. This matter for Giovanni was crucial. It might determine the course of his life, and Piero was turning to him for a solution. It puzzled Tonio, but it was not the first time the others