gently if there was anything he might do. He had sent away his attendants and he stood alone, patient, infinitely charitable, waiting upon a musician who had let him linger as if he were a menial at the door.
Guido looked up at him. He murmured some respectful apology for this confusion. And he tried to divine how much this man might care to know of Tonio, and what if anything he did have the power to do.
He watched the Cardinal look at these random treasures.
“Tonio’s mother is dead,” Guido said softly. But behind those few simple words lay his realization that Marianna Treschi, whom Guido had never seen or known, might have been the very last thing staying Tonio from the inevitable journey to Venice.
5
THE ROMAN CARNIVAL was under way and with it the last, most frenzied nights of the opera. From dawn till dark the narrow Via del Corso was packed with costumed merrymakers, either side of the thoroughfare built up with stands that were jammed with masked spectators. The lavishly decorated chariots of the great families crawled through the street, weighted down with fantastically costumed Indians, Sultans, gods and goddesses. The great Lamberti float had been done on the theme of Venus born from the foam with the little Contessa herself decked out in garlands of flowers as she stood in a great papier-mâché seashell. Behind came the carriages moving inch by inch, their masked occupants showering a confetti of sugared almonds all around while everywhere men dressed as women, women dressed as men, and all manner of costumed anonymities paraded as princes, sailors, the grand characters of the commedia. The same old themes, the same madness…
Tonio, masked, his clothes hidden by a long black tabarro, pulled Christina beside him, her hair drawn back like a man’s, her small body handsomely clothed in an officer’s military costume. They ran this way and that, Tonio lifting his draped arm to shelter her now and then from a whirling war of confetti as they ducked and came up to witness the antics of some Pulcinella putting on a wild show, or escaped for a few moments to kiss, to catch their breath, to cling to each other in a church doorway.
But as the day shaded into late afternoon, the crowd was at last cleared for the final exhilarating climax of the race, fifteen horses being led first from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza Venezia and back again before being let loose in the former to rush headlong and free toward the latter. It was reckless and full of scintillating danger, the crush of hooves, the inevitable blunders into the throng, the animals finally crashing into the Piazza Venezia for the announcement of the winner.
Then as the sun finally set, masks were stripped away, the street emptied, and everyone moved to yet another spectacle—balls throughout the city or the grandest treat of all: the theater.
The opera audience was at its wildest. Though masks were gone, costumes still prevailed, especially the dark and liberating tabarro, and the women charmingly turned out in masculine military dress, enjoying the full freedom of breeches, while the opposing camps of Bettichino and Tonio vied in madness to outdo one another.
It seemed the boxes were so burdened they might have actually collapsed, and the theater rocked again and again with generous applause, the cries of Bravo, the stomping, the shouting.
Then all went home—Tonio and Christina in each other’s arms—to rise again at dawn for more of the same merriment.
Sometimes in the midst of the crush, Tonio would stand in one spot, his eyes closed, swaying on the balls of his feet and imagine himself in the Piazza San Marco. The close walls here vanished for the open sky and the golden mosaics shimmering like great unblinking eyes over the multitude. He could almost smell the sea.
His mother was with him, and there was Alessandro, and it was that first glorious carnival when they had at last gotten free, and it seemed the world was nothing but wondrous and full of exquisite marvels. He heard her laughter, felt even the press of her hand in his, and it seemed all his memories of her were complete and untouched by the misery that had come afterwards. They had their life together, and that would remain forever.
He would have liked to believe she was close to him, that somehow she knew and understood all of it.
And if there was any sharp pain now in these days of bitter