No one took notice of him, that he was speaking as he stood there so still. “My love, my life, my voice,” he whispered. “Without you, there is no wind to fill my sails. There is nothing.”
And that foreboding he had known when coming to Rome—that fear of the loss of his young and faithful lover—was nothing to this ever deepening darkness.
It was carnival. The nights grew warmer. The audiences were positively mad. The Contessa had returned and gave balls nightly at her villa.
Guido gave up all plans for the spring season. Yet he did not tell the agents from Florence. If only he could force Tonio into one more engagement. Tonio would never go back on his word, and that would give him time. Time was all he could think of.
But early one afternoon, as Guido was scribbling out a new duet for Bettichino and Tonio to try if they were bored enough—and they were by now—one of the Cardinal’s more important attendants came to tell him that Signore Giacomo Lisani, from Venice, was here to see Tonio.
“Who is this?” Guido asked crossly. Tonio was off with Christina in the mayhem of the carnival.
As soon as Guido saw the blond-haired young man he remembered him. Years ago, he had come on Christmas Eve to visit Tonio in Naples.
He was Tonio’s cousin, the son of the woman who wrote so often to Tonio. And he had with him a small trunk, more of a casket, that he wished to present to Tonio himself.
He was disappointed to hear that he couldn’t see Tonio now. When Guido identified himself, he explained.
Over two weeks ago, in the Veneto, Tonio’s mother had died after a long illness. “You see,” he said, “I must tell him this myself.”
As it turned out, Tonio couldn’t be found, and Guido would not have him told just before the evening’s performance.
So it was after midnight when this young Venetian who had returned to the Cardinal’s house with the casket gave him the message as directly and painlessly as he could.
The look on Tonio’s face was something Guido never wanted to see again in his life.
And after Tonio had kissed his cousin and taken the trunk alone with him to his room, and opened it, and stared down into it he told Guido simply that he wished to go out.
“Let me go with you, or let me take you to Christina’s,” Guido said. “Don’t try to bear this grief without us.”
For a long time, Tonio looked at him as if this puzzled him, this statement; and Guido felt the weight of all that separated him from Tonio and always would. That dark life, that secret life of Tonio, connected to those he’d known and loved in Venice, was a life to which he could admit no one here.
“Please,” Guido said, his mouth dry and his hands trembling.
“Guido, if you love me,” Tonio said, “let me alone now.” Even in this there was that gentleness, that half smile, and a hand out to reassure Guido, who watched silently as Tonio withdrew.
The Cardinal soon came into the room.
Guido was alone looking at the objects which Tonio had left open for anyone to see.
And Guido, examining these things carefully, was filled with such a sense of desolation that he could not speak.
The trunk contained many things.
There was music, mostly the work of Vivaldi, in old volumes bearing Marianna Treschi’s name in a girlish script. And there were books, French fairy tales, and stories of the Greek gods and heroes of the sort one might read to a child.
But those objects which most surely chilled Guido and caused him to feel the keenest misery were the clothing and effects of a small boy.
Here was a white christening gown, most likely Tonio’s, and half a dozen little suits of clothing, all lovingly kept. There were tiny shoes, there were even little gloves.
And finally there were the portraits, enameled miniatures and one very lifelike painting of the exquisite dark-eyed little boy that Tonio had once been.
As Guido looked at these things, he realized they were all those relics of one’s life that are treasured by others, but rarely kept by one’s self.
And they had been cleared out, packaged up, and sent away to Rome in perfect evidence that no one now remained in the House of Treschi who loved this young man who had once lived there. It was as if Tonio and all those who had once shared his life were dead.