little supper of only some thirty-five persons, the table ablaze with light and animated faces, the flash of silver, and the harpsichord in a far corner of the room.
Guido gave Tonio only a simple aria that would reveal no more than a fourth of his talent and power, and with the music long committed to memory, he looked up from the keyboard to study this little audience as Tonio commenced to sing.
Tonio’s notes were high, pure, and tinged with sadness. They brought the appropriate pauses in conversation, here and there the unabashed turn of the head.
The Cardinal stared at his singer. His eyes, slanted down at the corners by those strange smooth lids, gave off a slight gleam.
Yet in between the many demands upon his attention, the man devoured everything on his plate. There was an undisguised sensuousness to the manner in which he ate. He cut his meat in large pieces; he drank his wine in deep gulps.
And yet he was so slight of build as though he burned all that he consumed, a vice transformed into necessity, even as he lifted the glistening grapes to his lips.
When he had finished the meal, he drove a long pearl-handled knife into the board, so that it stood straight up, and curling his fingers around it, there rested his chin.
His eyes were fixed on Tonio. He had the look of one musing, pleasant to those around him, but secretly absorbed.
Late at night, often, Guido sat alone at his desk too tired to write. Sometimes he was too tired to undress and go to bed.
He wished he could lie beside Tonio as a matter of course, but the time of night-long embraces was over, at least for this little while. And there came that fear again, against which he could find no defense in these alien rooms.
Yet there was an undeniable pleasure in seeking out his love, something sweet and mysterious in crossing the vast expanse of cold floor, opening doors, to approach that bed.
Now he set down the quill pen, and stared at the pages before him. Why was it all so flat, so without the slightest inspiration? Soon he must drive it towards its final shape. All evening he had been reading the librettos of Metastasio, who was now the rage, and luckily a native-born Roman, but he could not find the story yet, not until he had won that last victory which he had no chance of winning tonight.
But it was not in his mind now. He wanted Tonio.
He let his passion slowly mount.
He hummed to himself, ran his knuckles along his lip, letting bits and pieces of fantasy tantalize him.
Then he padded silently across the floor. Tonio lay deep asleep, his hair in loose strands over his eyes, his face as perfect and seemingly lifeless as Michelangelo’s melting white figures. But as Guido drew close, he felt the face warm to his kiss, his hand beneath the cover to draw the body up. The eyes fluttered open. Tonio moaned, blind for a little while, struggling, his flesh so hot he seemed a child consumed with a fever. His mouth opened to let Guido in.
They lay close in the dark afterwards, Guido fighting sleep as he could not allow himself to be found here.
“Are you mine completely still?” he whispered, half expecting nothing but the silence of the room.
“Always,” Tonio answered drowsily. It seemed not his own voice, but the voice of some sleeping being inside of him.
“Has there never been anyone else?”
“No one.”
Tonio shifted, pressing in, winding his arm around Guido so he could nuzzle into Guido’s chest and they were clamped together, Tonio’s smooth hot belly against Guido’s sex, Guido feeling that fine black hair that always amazed him with its texture.
“And don’t you sometimes wonder what it would be like?” he asked slowly. “A man? A woman?”
He closed his eyes and had almost drifted off when he heard the answer come low as before.
“Never.”
4
IT WAS VERY LATE when Guido came in.
The palazzo was absolutely quiet as if the Cardinal had retired early. Only a few lights burned in the lower rooms. The corridors stretched out in pale darkness, the white sculptures—those broken gods and goddesses—giving off an eerie illumination of their own.
Guido was exhausted as he climbed the steps.
He had spent the afternoon with the Contessa at her villa on the edge of Rome. She had come up to make arrangements for the opening of the house later in the year, and she would remain in