it was, he lay down and shut his eyes, and then he heard his mother say very distinctly, “I should have run away with the opera,” and he was asleep.
It was quiet when he awoke. Surely the party was over. And getting up quickly, he went to the head of the stairs. Guido would be furious with him. Guido might even have gone home alone.
Only a few guests remained now sprinkled about the immense rooms, and everywhere below the servants moved quietly gathering up napkins and glasses onto silver trays. The air smelled of tobacco, and a lone harpsichordist, an amateur, was playing a spirited little song.
Only three of the violinists were still there, and they were chatting with one another. And when Tonio saw Francesco among them, he hurried down the stairs.
“Did you see Guido?” he asked. “Has he gone home?”
Francesco was obviously very tired, having played two engagements this evening, and at first he didn’t seem to understand.
“He’s going to be furious with me, Francesco. I fell asleep. He’s probably been looking for me,” Tonio explained.
Then Francesco smiled. “He won’t be angry with you,” he whispered in an oddly confidential manner. And now he laid his violin carefully in its case and, snapping the cover shut, rose to go. But seeing the blank expression on Tonio’s face, he smiled again and glanced pointedly to the stairs and the floor above.
Tonio bent forward, as if straining to hear the unspoken. Francesco made the gesture with his eyes again. “He’s with the Contessa,” he whispered finally. “Just wait.”
For a long moment Tonio merely looked at Francesco. He watched Francesco gather up his music; he watched him make his farewells to the others. He saw him go out.
And then as Tonio stood alone on the edge of the vast empty room, the little exchange made its full impression upon him, and slowly, he approached the stairs.
He told himself there was no truth to this. It meant nothing. Perhaps he had misunderstood.
Of course, Francesco couldn’t know that he and Guido were lovers when no one knew.
Yet when he found himself in the mouth of the dark upstairs corridor, he was trembling in every limb.
He rested against the wall. His earlier dizziness came back to him, and suddenly he wanted to be out of this place, far, far away from it. Yet he stood perfectly still.
He did not have long to wait.
Down the hall, a door opened, and in the light that seeped out onto the flowered carpet, Guido and the Contessa appeared. Her plump little body was still done up in an elaborate ball gown, but her dark hair was flowing free. And Guido, turning tenderly to her, bent to kiss her as he took his leave.
Their bodies merged in the shadows. Then she was gone, and the light was gone with her. And Guido was coming to the head of the stairs.
Tonio was speechless as he watched this. He was speechless as he saw the indistinct shape of Guido approach.
But then he saw the look on Guido’s face as their eyes met, and there was no longer the slightest doubt.
12
HE WAS CRYING. He was crying exactly as if he were a small boy, and he didn’t care. He could not accept that this was happening. Guido had deceived him. Guido had deliberately wounded him. And if he had spoken angry words to Guido in the beginning, it was only panic, the desperate attempt to keep the pain of this full moment away from him.
And now here was Guido speaking to him in that cold, inflectionless voice, giving him nothing! What had he expected? Excuses, lies even? And Guido had said to him that he had warned Tonio. He would take women when and where he could. And it had nothing to do with the love between them.
“Oh, but you made a fool of me!” Tonio whispered. He could not think, however. He could not keep track of a sequence of accusations.
“How made a fool of you? Do you think I do not love you? Tonio, you are my life!”
But there were no excuses, there was no remorse. There was no concession to stop. There was nothing but that coldness and that low voice repeating the same words over and over.
“But was it only tonight, or were there other times? Oh, there were other times.”
Guido would not answer. He stood silent, his arms folded, his eyes fixed on Tonio as if he could not feel for an instant the misery he had