It was Venice in this room, Venice with its tangled alleyways, and those immense rooms that had once been all of Venice for so many years. And when all of this fell away in an instant, it left him naked, monstrous, humiliated.
Tonio forged the gentlest, slowest smile. And as Alessandro placed him silently in a chair, he watched that old languid grace with which Alessandro seated himself opposite, and reached for the decanter of red wine.
He filled the glass beside Tonio. And together they drank.
But they did not speak.
Little had changed in Alessandro. Even the delicate mass of lines that threatened the surface of his skin was precisely as it had been before, merely a veil through which one could see the timeless radiance perfectly.
He wore a dressing gown of gray wool, with his chestnut hair loose on his shoulders. And every movement of his delicate hands brought back with it a wealth of muted and agonizing impressions.
“I’m so grateful that you came,” Alessandro said. “Catrina made me swear that I would not approach you.”
Tonio nodded respect for that. God knows he’d told Catrina enough times that he would see no one from Venice.
“I had a purpose in coming to you,” Tonio answered, but it was as if it were someone else’s voice. He himself was locked silently inside and wondering: What is it you see when you look at me? Do you see these long arms, this height already stretching itself towards the grotesque? Do you see—? He could not continue.
Alessandro was giving him his most respectful attention.
“It wasn’t only love that brought me,” Tonio went on, “though love would have been enough. And that I must know how it is with you. I could have suffered the loss of all that, with never seeing you. I must admit it. Because I would have saved myself so much pain.”
Alessandro nodded. “What, then?” he asked compliantly. “Tell me. What can I tell you? What can I do?”
“You must never tell anyone that I asked you this, but are the bravos of my brother, Carlo, the same men who served him when I was last in Venice?”
Alessandro said nothing for a moment. Then he answered. “Those men disappeared after you left. The inquisitors of state searched everywhere for them. There are other men in his employ now, dangerous men….”
Tonio nodded. But he showed no expression.
It was, very simply, as he had hoped. They had fled for their lives. Italy had swallowed them. Someday, somewhere, perhaps, he would catch a glimpse of those faces, and he would take the opportunity when it arose. But they were not important to him. It was not inconceivable that Carlo had found a way to silence them forever.
And it was only Carlo who awaited him now.
“What else can I tell you?” asked Alessandro.
After a pause, Tonio said:
“My mother. Catrina wrote that she was ill.”
“She is ill, Tonio, very ill,” Alessandro said. “Two children in three years, and the loss most recently of yet another.”
Tonio sighed and shook his head.
“Your brother is as unrestrained and imprudent in this as in so much else. But it is her old illness, Tonio”—Alessandro’s voice dropped to a whisper—“as much as anything else. You know the nature of it.”
Tonio looked away, his head slightly bowed.
After a long pause he asked, “But did he not make her happy!” His tone was softly desperate.
“As happy as anyone could, for a while,” Alessandro said. He studied Tonio. It seemed he was weighing both sides of a question.
“She weeps for you, Tonio,” he said. “She has never stopped weeping. And when she learned you would perform in Rome, it became her obsession to see you. It is one of my solemn charges that I must bring her the score of the work and as detailed an account of all I saw as I can possibly remember.” He smiled faintly. “She loves you, Tonio,” he said. And then, his voice dropping so low it was all but inaudible, he said, “Hers is an impossible position.”
Tonio absorbed these words silently, without looking at Alessandro.
When he did speak, his voice was strained and unnatural.
“And my brother?” he asked. “Is he faithful to her?”
“It seems he must have as much of life as if he were four men,” Alessandro said.
Alessandro’s face hardened. “He has done marvelously well in public life, but for his insatiable desires few men admire him privately.”
“Does she know?”
“I do not think that she does,” Alessandro said. “He is very attentive to her. But of women