that I thank you, Signore Treschi. But don’t meet me on those boards tomorrow night, or the next, or the next after that without everything God gave you. I’m ready for you now. You’ll need it to stand up to me.”
Tonio blushed deeply, his eyes moist. He was smiling, however, as if he couldn’t prevent it.
And then as if reading Tonio’s thoughts, Bettichino suddenly opened his arms. He held Tonio tight for an instant and then let him go.
Tonio was in a quiet delirium as he opened the door. But he stopped as behind him he heard Bettichino say to Guido:
“This isn’t really your first opera, is it, Maestro? Where are you going after this?”
16
HUNDREDS CROWDED the Cardinal Calvino’s reception, which lasted till dawn. The old Roman families, visiting nobles, even royalty, passed through his vast and brilliantly illuminated halls.
The Cardinal himself presented Tonio to many in attendance, and Tonio found it deliciously excruciating finally, the never-ending praise, the soft recounting of various moments, the gracious greetings and soft clasping of hands. He smiled at the disparaging remarks on Bettichino. Bettichino was beyond question the greater singer, no matter what anyone said.
But Tonio had made them all forget that for a little while.
Even the Cardinal himself had been moved by the performance, and drawing Tonio aside finally, struggled to describe his response.
“Angels, Marc Antonio,” he said with subdued amazement, “what are they, what is the sound of their voices? And how can one who is corporeal sing as you did tonight?”
“You are too generous, my lord,” Tonio answered.
“Am I wrong when I say it was ethereal? Do I misunderstand? At some point in the theater they came together, the world of the spirit and the world of the flesh, and from the fusion, your voice rose. I saw about me worldly men, laughing, drinking, enjoying themselves as I see men everywhere, and then they would hearken in perfect silence to your singing. So was it but the highest level of their sensual pleasure? Or was it rather a spiritual pleasure become, for the moment, earth-bound?”
Tonio marveled at the Cardinal’s seriousness. He was warmed by the Cardinal’s obvious admiration, and he felt he might gladly give up the crowds now, the drink, the sweet delirium of the evening just to be alone again with the Cardinal and talk of these things for a while.
But the Cardinal took him by the hand and led him back to the others. Liveried servants opened the double doors on the ballroom and they were to be lost from each other again.
“But you have taught me something, Marc Antonio,” the Cardinal confessed in a quick, furtive whisper. “And that is how to love what I do not understand. I tell you not to love what is beautiful and incomprehensible would be vanity, not virtue.” And then he gave Tonio a small ceremonial kiss.
Count Raffaele di Stefano had his compliments for the music also, confessing the opera had never much affected him in the past. He stayed ever close to Tonio, though he did not much talk to him, watching all those around Tonio with jealous eyes.
And the sight of Raffaele tantalized Tonio as the evening wore on. It brought back the bedchamber vividly and there were moments when Raffaele seemed a creature who should not be clothed as other men at all. The thick hair on the backs of his wrists appeared incongruous under layers of lace, and Tonio had to turn his eyes elsewhere or he would have left with Raffaele right then.
If there was one disappointment, it was that Christina Grimaldi had not come.
Everywhere he looked for her. He could not have missed her, and he could not understand why she was not there.
Of course she’d been at the theater, he’d seen her! And he understood that of course she wouldn’t come backstage. But why wasn’t she here at the Cardinal Calvino’s house?
The most abominable thoughts occurred to him. He felt himself slipping into nightmare thinking of her witnessing the spectacle of him dressed as a woman. But then he had bowed to her, and she had returned the bow from the Contessa’s box, her little hands working furiously with applause after his arias, her smile quite visible to him even over the gulf that separated them.
Why wasn’t she here now?
He couldn’t bring himself to ask Guido or the Contessa, who was ever at his side.
Many had come this evening merely because the Cardinal Calvino was giving a ball. And the Contessa had made