was now, completely caught up in this love so that it claimed every moment away from the theater.
But when finally Guido went to Christina in the late afternoon, while Tonio was off to a reception he could not avoid, he was not surprised to hear her denials.
Of course she hadn’t discouraged Tonio from accepting the Easter engagement at Florence. She hadn’t even been told of it.
“Guido, I’m ready to follow him everywhere,“ she said simply. “I can paint anywhere as easily as here. I need my easel, my colors, my canvases. It’s nothing to go anywhere on earth,” and then she dropped her voice, “as long as he is with me.”
She had only just let her last guests go home. The maids were clearing away the wineglasses and the teacups. And she, her sleeves pinned up, was working with her oils and pigments. There were glass containers of crimson, vermilion, ocher before her. Her fingertips were red.
“Why, Guido,” she asked brushing back her hair, “why won’t he speak of the future?” But it was as if she were afraid of Guido’s answer. “Why does he insist upon such secrecy with us, with having everyone believe we are only friends? I’ve told him if I had my way, he should move into my lodgings! Guido, everyone who cares to know, knows he is my lover. But you know what he said? This wasn’t very long ago, and it was late, and he’d had too much wine and he said there was no doubt in his mind that for all you’d done for him, you were better for having known him, that you would be all right. ‘The wind will fill his sails after this,’ he said. But he said I wouldn’t be better off if he left me with my reputation ruined, and he couldn’t do that for all the world. But why is he talking of leaving, Guido? Until that night, I feared it was you who wanted him to give me up.”
Guido knew she was staring at him, imploring him, and though he increased the pressure with which he held her hand, he could not now satisfy her. He was gazing off over the rooftops beneath her high empty windows and feeling the chill of having discovered the old enemy, the old terror.
He said nothing to Christina except that he would talk to Tonio, and then brushing her cheek with his lips gently, he rose to go.
Forgetting his tricorne hat, he went down the hollow stairs and out into the crowded Piazza di Spagna, turning slowly towards the Tiber, his head down, his hands behind his back.
Rome caught him in its winding streets; it led him from one little irregular piazza to another. It led him past great statues and glittering fountains, while his mind seemed to shrink in the face of its perception, only to enlarge with the fullness of realization again.
Hours later it seemed he was wandering the beautiful varicolored floor of San Pietro’s. He was drifting past the majestic tombs of the popes. Skeletons so perfectly made from hard stone, they seemed to have been discovered in it and released from it, grinned at him. The faithful of the world pushed him to and fro.
He knew what was happening to Tonio. He’d known it before he’s gone to Christina, but he had had to be sure.
And the image came back to him, implanted in his less imaginative and literal mind by the more loquacious Maestro Cavalla: Tonio was being slowly torn apart.
It was the battle of those twins he was witnessing: the one who craved life, and the one who could not live without the hope of revenge.
And now that Christina tugged upon the bright twin, now that the opera surrounded him with such blessings and such promises, the dark twin, out of fear, strove to destroy the loving one, for fear if he did not he himself might cease to exist.
Guido didn’t fully understand. It was not an easy image for his mind. What he did perceive was that the more life gave to Tonio, the more Tonio realized he could not enjoy any of it until he had settled the old score in Venice.
Guido stood alone in the midst of this endless crowd streaming through the largest church in the world. He knew he was helpless.
“I cannot…” he whispered, hearing his own words distinctly against the multitude of sounds about him. “I cannot live without you.” The deep shafts of sunlight blurred his vision.