And it was Venice, in Catrina’s lovely house, or it was that long ago summer on the Brenta.
All of his life seemed a great circle suddenly, and here he was, dancing and dancing, turning and bowing in the lively time of the minuet, and all those he loved were around him.
Guido was there, and Marcello, the handsome young eunuch from Palermo who was his lover, and the Contessa, and Bettichino with his admirers.
And when Tonio had come into the room, it seemed all heads had turned; he could positively hear them whispering: Tonio, it’s Tonio.
The music floated in the air around him, and when the dancers broke apart, he had a glass of white wine in his hands very quickly and then it was empty.
It seemed Christina wanted him now for the quadrille, and gently, he kissed her hand and said that he would watch her.
He wasn’t sure quite when he sensed there would be trouble, or when he first saw Guido approaching him.
It seemed since he had come in he had sensed something very wrong in Guido, and he sought now, embracing Guido lightly, to cheer him and make him smile, even if he was resolutely unwilling.
But Guido’s face was full of trouble, and there was some urgency to his whispers that Tonio tell the Contessa himself why they weren’t going to Florence.
Not going to Florence?
When had they made that decision? It seemed a great darkness came down around the edges of things, and for a long moment it was impossible to pretend any longer that this was Naples or that it was Venice. It was Rome, and the opera was almost finished, and his mother was dead and carried over the sea to be laid in the earth, and Carlo was roaming the Piazza San Marco, waiting for him.
Guido’s face was dark and swollen, and he was saying something rapidly under his breath, yes, tell the Contessa, tell her, why we cannot go to Florence.
And it seemed, in that moment, Tonio felt in spite of himself a dark exhilaration. “We are not going, we are not going…” he whispered, and then Guido was pulling him down a dimly lit corridor. All these freshly painted walls, panels of mulberry brocade and the fleur-de-lis in gold, and a pair of doors opening.
Guido’s voice was all threats and terrible, terrible accusations.
“And what shall we do after that?” Guido demanded. “All right, if we don’t go to Florence, then surely in the fall we can go to Milan. They want us in Milan. They want us in Bologna.”
And he knew that if he did not stop himself something terrible and final would be spoken. It would come forth out of the darkness where it had waited.
The Contessa was there, and her round little face looked so old. She lifted her skirts with one hand and with the other she was patting Guido’s shoulder, almost lovingly.
“…never intend to go anywhere else, do you? Answer me, answer, you have no right to do this to me.” Guido’s heart was breaking.
Don’t bring it to a head, don’t make me say it. Because once I say it I can’t recall the words. It was exhilaration, ever mounting. He felt like one on the edge of a great downward slope. If he took the first steps, he would be unable to control the momentum.
“You’ve known, you’ve always known.” Was this Tonio saying this? “You were there, my friend, my truest, dearest friend, my only real brother in this world, you were there and you saw with your own eyes, not little boys scrubbed and groomed and marched into the conservatorio like so many capons to market. Guido…”
“Then turn your rage on me,” he was pleading, “for the part I played in it. I was your brother’s tool and you know it.”
The Contessa had put her arms around Guido and was trying vainly to quiet him. And far off, he was crying, I cannot live without you, Tonio, I cannot live without you….
But a coldness had settled over Tonio, and all of this was remote and sad and unchangeable. He struggled to say you had no part in it. You were but a chess piece moved from one square to another.
Guido cried there had been a café on San Marco and he had been there when the men came and told him that he must take Tonio to Naples.
“Don’t speak of all this,” the Contessa said.
“It was my fault, I could have stopped it, turn your vengeance