a boy, that’s what you are, and a castrato,” Guido sputtered. “It doesn’t matter to you, it means nothing to you if you do it! But it means everything if you do not! Couldn’t you see this was coming? Are you so blind! Tonio, you are destroying me in this place. Your obstinacy, your pride, I have no chance against it. You must go back to the Cardinal now.”
“Destroying you!” Tonio said. “You tell me to go to him and do what he wishes, as if I were nothing but a whore from the streets—”
“But you are not a whore. If you were a whore you wouldn’t be in this house, you wouldn’t be fed and sheltered by the Cardinal. You are a castrato. For God’s sake, give him what he wants. I would do it without hesitation if he wanted it of me.”
“You horrify me,” Tonio whispered. “You disgust me. There is no other word for it. They took you out of Calabria and dressed you in velvet and made you some thoughtless, soulless being with the semblance of a gentleman when in fact there is nothing you won’t do for your purposes; you have no honor, no creed, no decent sentiments in you. You would take my name from me, you would take my form from me, all this in the name of music and what must be done, and now you send me to the Cardinal’s bed in the name of the same necessity….”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Guido said. “I tell you to do all those things. Make me out a demon if you will, I tell you the configurations you place on all these things are lovely and meaningless. You are not bound by the rules of men. You are a castrato. You can do these things.”
“And you,” Tonio demanded in the same whisper, “what does it mean to you that I lie with him?” It was as if he dared not raise his voice. “Have you no feeling in this?”
Guido turned his back.
“You send me from your bed to his bed,” Tonio went on, “as if I were nothing but a gift for His Eminence, gratitude for His Eminence, respect.”
Guido merely shook his head.
“Have you no understanding of honor, Guido?” Tonio pleaded softly. “Did they cut it out of you in Calabria? They did not cut it out of me.”
“Honor, honor.” Guido turned wearily to face him. “If it has no heart, if it has no wisdom, what is honor? What does it matter? Where is the dishonor in giving this man what he asks of you when you will not be diminished in the slightest? You are a banquet from which he seeks once, perhaps twice, to take his fill while you are under his roof. How will you be changed by it? If you were a virgin girl you could plead that, but he would never have asked it of you. He is a holy man. And were you a man, how it might shame you to admit that it was your nature to do as he asks. You could claim an aversion whether you felt it or not! But you are neither of these, and you are free, Tonio, free. There are men and women who dream every night of their lives of such freedom! And it’s yours by your nature and you cast it away. And he, he is a cardinal, for the love of God. Is what God gave you so very precious that you must save it for one better than he!”
“Stop this,” Tonio insisted.
“When I took you for the first time,” Guido said, “it was on the floor of my studio in Naples. You were alone and helpless and without father, mother, kindred, friends. Was there honor then?”
“There was love,” Tonio said. “And passion!”
“So love him then! He is a great man. People stand at the gates for hours just to see him pass. Go and love him for this little while, and there will be passion, too.”
Guido turned his back again almost immediately.
The silence was unendurable and without realizing it, he was holding his breath.
He felt swollen with anger, ugly with it, and it seemed all the misery that had been threatening him since they had set out on their long journey was now fully upon him and he had no defense.
But in the midst of this anxiety, this confusion, he understood.
And when he heard the door open and close, it was as if a blow had been