rain dried to a rough and uneasy surface, the swarm of those on foot pressing right past the snorts and tosses of the impatient horses.
Tonio, with one white-gloved hand on the bottom edge of the window, kept his eyes strictly on the open coffeehouses, and then suddenly he gave a rap at the top of the carriage and felt it turn awkwardly with a creak towards the rude curb.
The toothless old valet had jumped down to open the door. He held the sword as Tonio had directed him and followed his mistress now through the crowds that made way for her with guarded but admiring looks as she pushed through the open doors.
To the right, but close to the center of the room, so he might watch the endless parade on the street, sat Guido with his elbow on the table, his wine cup before him untouched. He was half-lidded and weary, his heavy face looking oddly young, as if exhaustion weakened his guard, and his disappointment and worry let him assume his more natural boyish scowl.
He did not even notice when a bench was brought up beside him; he did not see this lady sit down.
Then he sat back, startled, seeing the violet silk, perhaps, before anything else. Tonio, as still as a doll in the midst of the wide skirts, sat staring serenely at the street.
The air was warm and caressing, and he let his thin fichu slip away from his breasts. From everywhere, it seemed, came those covert glances. He had unsettled the place; even the serving boy did not know whether to approach, or to bow, or somehow to manage both, as he hovered awkwardly, his tray in hand. Tonio could feel Guido’s eyes on him, and then slowly he bowed his head and turned, so when he looked at Guido he was looking up.
Guido’s face looked so remarkably different to him, the expression of his eyes, the set of his mouth. And then suddenly the most luxurious private feeling came over him. Guido didn’t know who he was! He lifted his fan as the old woman had showed him how to do it, and opened it fully as if revealing some splendid secret as he covered his mouth with it, looking down and then again looking up.
7
HE WAS SO RAPT in his thoughts that he did not hear anything much that Guido was saying, that lovely bubbling speech of Guido’s when he was at last content. Tonio allowed it to pass over him, and now and then he would give a little gracious nod.
The heavy afternoon heat had not prevented them from hiring an open carriage for a tour of the city, the exquisite lady and her enamored companion, chided now and then for the bold-faced advance he had made before he knew he was not being unfaithful, and they had wandered arm in arm through a half-dozen churches, the lady opening her parasol now and then with a languid sigh over the heat. They had dined early in the Via Condotti, then making an obligatory trip from one end of the Corso to the other, they had come home.
But not before returning to Signora Bianchi, the seamstress, and engaging her for backstage through the entire run of Guido’s opera, which he now knew would be Achille en Sciro, based on the fairly new libretto by Pietro Metastasio, who was so very popular now, the poet whom all along Guido had wanted to use.
“It’s perfect for you,” he was saying. “Achille’s mother wants to keep him out of the Trojan war; she sends him to the island of Scyros, disguised as Pirra, a young girl. You’ll go through part of the opera as Pirra; then tricked into revealing your true identity, you become Achille in golden armour. So you see, you’re a man playing a woman even on the stage!”
“Yes, that’s splendid,” Tonio murmured. He smiled. But he was not even in the room, and only now and then in the present at all, to marvel maybe at how he had relished his disguise at moments when men admired him, how he had felt some dim vengeful spirit surfacing that was full of mockery and meanness, and something reckless and innocently boyish at the same time. He had the little rose in his hands which the seamstress had given him, the water having kept it very well. And lounging back in his more comfortable shirt and breeches, his foot on the chair in front of