Angelo was quite intimidated by Alessandro. And quite intimidated by Tonio, too, of late. Life was getting better and better.
But the man suddenly touched Tonio’s arm.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Tonio?” he asked.
“No, Signore, I have to confess, I don’t.” Tonio smiled. “Please forgive me.”
But an odd sensation passed over him. The man’s tone was polite but his eyes, faded and blue, and slightly tearing as if from illness, had a cold-look to them.
“Ah, but I’m curious to know,” said the man, “have you heard much of late from your brother Carlo?”
For a protracted moment, Tonio stared at this man. It seemed the noises of the piazza had fused into a dissonant hum, and that a throbbing in his ears had suddenly distorted everything. He wanted to say hastily, “You’ve made some mistake—” But he heard the halting of his breath, and he felt a physical weakening so unusual it made him feel slightly dizzy.
“Brother, Signore?” he asked. Carlo. The name had set up a positive echo in his head, and if the mind had a shape at that moment, the shape was that of an immense and endless corridor. Carlo, Carlo, Carlo, like a whisper echoed in the corridor. “Just like Carlo,” someone had said only moments ago, only it seemed to have happened years and years ago. “Signore, I have no brother.”
It seemed an age passed in which this man drew himself up, the watery blue eyes narrowing deliberately. And there was to his whole manner a conscious and dramatic outrage. But he was not surprised, though he wanted to seem so. No, he was bitterly satisfied.
And even more astonishing than all this was Alessandro telling Tonio they must come now, with urgency. “You’ll excuse us, Excellency,” he said, and his pressure on Tonio’s arm was just slightly unpleasant.
“You mean you know nothing of your brother?” said the man, and there was a scornful smile then, a lowering of the voice that again created an air of menace.
“You’ve made a mistake,” Tonio said, or so it seemed he was saying. He was having all the discomfort of a debilitating headache save the pain itself, and an instinctive loyalty was collecting in him. This man meant him harm. He knew it. “I’m the son of Andrea Treschi, Signore, and I have no brother. And if you would make yourself known…”
“Ah, but you do know me, Tonio. Think back. As for your brother, I was with him in Istanbul only recently. He is hungry for news of you; he asks are you well, have you grown tall. Your resemblance to him is nothing short of remarkable.”
“Excellency, you must excuse us,” Alessandro said almost rudely. It seemed he would stand between the man and Tonio if he could.
“I’m your cousin, Tonio,” said the man with that same conscious look of grim indignation. “Marcello Lisani. And it saddens me to have to tell Carlo you know nothing of him.”
He turned back to the shop, glancing over his shoulder to Alessandro. And then he said under his breath: “Damned insufferable eunuchs.”
Tonio winced. It was full of contempt, like saying “sluts” or “bitches.”
Alessandro merely lowered his eyes. He appeared to freeze, and then his mouth moved in a slight, patient smile. He touched Tonio’s shoulder, gesturing to a café under the arcade.
Within minutes they were seated on the rough benches right near the edge of the piazza, the sun cutting under the deep arch to make them warm, and Tonio was only vaguely sensible that this had been his dream, to sit and drink in a café where gentlemen and ruffians rubbed elbows.
At any other moment the exquisite little girl approaching them would have shaken him deliciously. She had that brown hair streaked with gold which he found inexpressibly beautiful, and eyes it seemed of the same dark and light mixture.
But he hardly noticed her. Angelo was saying the man was a lunatic. Angelo obviously had never heard of him.
And Alessandro was already making a polite conversation about the lovely weather. “You know the old joke,” he said to Tonio confidentially and lightly, just as if this man had not insulted him, “if the weather’s bad, and the Bucintoro sinks, the Doge might be thrown right in bed with his wife for once to consummate the marriage.”
“But who was the man and what was he talking about!” Angelo said under his breath. He mumbled something about patricians who didn’t wear their proper robes.
Tonio was staring straight forward. The lovely little girl drifted into