to the upper boxes, quickly assuming their places to watch the parade of finery that would soon fill the tiers below them, as breathtaking surely as any spectacle of music and movement on the stage itself.
And Tonio, having just entered backstage, moved at once to the peephole beside the curtain, though he was dripping wet.
Signora Bianchi was hysterical and started at once to rub at his hair.
“Shhhh…” He bent forward, peering into the theater.
Liveried servants were moving from sconce to sconce of the first tier, bringing to life velvet draperies, mirrors, polished tables, and padded chairs, as if a hundred drawing rooms floated, disembodied, in the dark.
And below, in the parterre, hundreds of the abbati were already seated, a candle in the right hand, a score spread open in the other, their sharp argument and commentary already cutting back and forth.
A lone violinist had already taken his chair. And now came a trumpet player, his cheap little wig barely covering his dark head.
Someone in the highest gallery shouted suddenly; a missile soared through the gloom, and from the first floor came a violent curse and a figure leapt to its feet, fist flying, only to be pulled back. A fight had broken out above; there was thundering on the wooden stairs behind the walls.
“Turn around to me!” Signora Bianchi said hysterically. “Look at you, did you throw yourself into the river! Your voice will close up in an hour. I must get you warm.”
“I am warm,” Tonio whispered, kissing her little withered mouth. “Warmer than I have ever been.” And he led the way through the clutter to his dressing room, where old Nino was stirring the brazier and the air was already like the blast from an oven.
Tonio had awakened early that morning, and felt an immediate exhilaration when he began to sing. For hours he had gone up and down his most intricate passages, until he felt as elastic and powerful as he had ever been.
He kissed Guido on both cheeks before Guido left for the theater. He gave Paolo instructions to make himself one of the audience and watch everything.
And then when the sky was still clear, and a soft lavender over the twinkling windows that dotted the hills, he had wandered into the mired streets nearest the Tiber and, gathering a group of ragged children in front of him, commenced to sing.
The stars were just coming out. For the first time in three years, he heard his voice rising between close stone walls; and his eyes wet, he pushed his melody up and up until he was hitting notes he’d never attempted and hearing them soar, rounded, perfect, into the night that was closing over him above. From everywhere people had come. They crowded the windows, the doorways, they packed the little streets on either side. They offered him wine and food when he stopped. They brought out a stool for him, and then a fine embroidered chair. And again he sang for them; any song they named, he gave voice to it, and his ears were ringing with their screams, and clapping and Bravos, all those faces around him swollen with the heat of their adoration when at last the rain had come.
Now he kissed Signora Bianchi. He kissed Nino. He let them tear away his wet clothes and rub his head with towels. He let them scold. He let them curse.
“I tell you, it will be perfect,” he whispered to Signora Bianchi. “I tell you it will be perfect for Guido and for me.” And in his heart, he made a little vow that he would savor every minute of it, be it triumph or debacle, and all the rest of the darkness of his life must part here so that he could cross this all-important sea.
In a wordless moment, he envisioned all those who would be in the house. He looked at the exquisite dress before him, woman’s ruffles, woman’s ribbon, woman’s paint. Christina! He said that inaudibly so it was just a little explosion between his lips. It didn’t matter to him now the pain and the fears.
What mattered was that he was at last going onto the stage, and for now, this moment, that was where he wanted to be.
“Now, darling,” he said to Signora Bianchi, “do your magic. Make all your little promises come true. Make me so beautiful and so much the woman that I could fool my own father should I climb on his knee.”