crowd of hundreds of onlookers identified the “True Cross.”
Tonio was undressing just beyond the door.
Guido watched him peel off his limp white shirt and drop his breeches as old Nino, the valet sent by the Contessa, gathered these things and made them disappear.
Tonio stood still with his back to Guido as if he enjoyed the cooler air of this place washing over him. Then he put on a green silk robe. He tied it loosely at the waist, and as he turned, looking up slowly, there was about him something almost Oriental in its sensuousness, his hair fallen in his face, the soft fabric hanging from the angles of his tall and graceful body as if it were the proper dress in some foreign land.
“Why are you so somber?” he asked so softly Guido didn’t hear him at first. The meaning of the words had to travel through the shadows of the room.
“I am not somber,” Guido said. But he could see he wouldn’t get off so easily. Tonio sat down close enough that he could touch the back of Guido’s hand with his gathered fingers. And again Guido found himself watching Tonio, just as he had a moment ago, as if they were not talking to one another.
He’d been right in his predictions years before that Tonio would have all Domenico’s grace. But Tonio had perfected a manner which greatly enhanced that grace. The languid movements natural to him now restrained his long limbs; the muted voice had a richness to it that made an eerie prelude to the singer’s power when it was revealed.
His face, it seemed, had become slightly larger, all of the features even a little farther apart than those of an ordinary boy, and there was as ever that subtle mystery to the placement of the eyes. Looking at Tonio even now, Guido felt a subtle disorientation. The magic of the knife, he thought wearily. What it looses, not what it cuts away, is this surpassing seductiveness. He need not know that he has it, nor try to use it. It is there. And infused with the old Venetian manner, he is enough to drive another mad.
“Guido,” he was saying somewhere very far away, “Paolo will be good! I know he will be. I’ll give him his lessons myself.”
Guido hated him suddenly. He wished he would go away. He looked at him but he could not speak to him. He was remembering some moment years before when he had lain on the floor of a practice room, miserable after his first act of love. The maestro he so desired then had bent down and spoken something in his ear. What was it?
“I don’t mind Paolo,” he said now, annoyed at this misunderstanding. “Paolo is a fine singer,” he said simply. It excited him to think that Paolo would learn much more from his time in Rome than ever he would learn at the conservatorio. He had room in his heart for Paolo. He wished Tonio would leave him alone.
“I’m tired from the journey,” he said shortly. “I have so much work before me. I have no time to lose.”
Tonio bent close to him. He whispered something soft and slightly shocking in his ear. Guido was conscious that they were alone in these rooms. Tonio had sent the servants away.
“Be patient with me,” he said angrily. He could see the hurt in Tonio’s face. But Tonio gave only a little nod. It was always that way with him, that infernal Venetian graciousness. There was no rebuke in him now as he looked at Guido; with a faint smile he rose to go.
Silently shaken, Guido watched him cross the room. He pictured him on the stage, he saw the crowds at the dressing room door. Again, he saw the face of the Cardinal Calvino, that innocence, those remarkably vital eyes.
You have no idea of the adulation that awaits you, you cannot even guess. Of course they will have their compliments for the composer; if the opera is good, they might even put my name on the handbills, but then again, they might not. It is for you that Rome will crack open like an egg and give birth to itself all over again, and I want it for you, I want it for you.
So why do I feel the way I do?
Tonio was somewhere beyond the doorway. Guido could feel him near. He imagined himself striking Tonio suddenly; he saw that perfect face disfigured by red marks.