him cursing, “You don’t sing what I’ve written, you pay no attention to what I’ve written.”
“Then write what I sing!” snarled the Neapolitan. And once Caffarelli drew his sword and actually chased the composer towards the doors.
“Stop him, stop him or I’ll kill him!” shouted the composer, running backwards up the aisle. But everyone could see he was terrified.
Caffarelli howled with contemptuous laughter.
He was a vision of outrage as he pushed the tip of his rapier into the composer’s buttons, nothing but his beardless face marking him the eunuch.
But all knew, even the young man, that Caffarelli made the opera what it was.
Caffarelli pursued women all over Venice. He drifted in and out of the Palazzo Lisani at all hours to chat with the patricians who hastened to pour him wine or fetch him a chair, and Tonio, ever near, worshiped him. He smiled to see the flush in his mother’s cheeks as she too followed Caffarelli with her eyes.
But then she was having such a marvelous time, he loved to watch her, too. No longer keeping to the corners, her eyes sharp with suspicion, she was now even dancing with Alessandro.
And Tonio, taking his own position in the majestic chain of brilliantly dressed men and women that spanned the Grand Salon of the Casa Lisani, went through the precise steps of the minuets, thrilled by the vision of ruffled breasts, exquisite arms, cheeks that looked as soft as kittens’ fur. Glasses of champagne on silver trays sailed through the air.
French wine, French perfume, French fashion.
Of course everyone adored Alessandro. He seemed simplicity itself in his fine clothes, and yet so grand and so full of grace that Tonio felt an immense love for him.
Late at night they talked together alone.
“I fear you’ll find our house dreary after a while,” Tonio had said once.
“Excellency!” Alessandro laughed. “I did not grow up in a magnificent palazzo.” His eyes had swept the lofty ceilings of his new room, the heavy green curtains of the bed, the carved desk, and the new harpsichord. “Perhaps if I’m here a hundred years, I will begin to find it dreary.”
“I want you here forever, Alessandro,” Tonio had said.
And in a quiet moment he had some inarticulate and wondrous sense of how this man, beneath all the hammered gold of San Marco, had spent his life striving for perfection. No wonder he possessed such unobtrusive seriousness, such soft sureness of self; he reflected the wealth and breeding and beauty that had always surrounded him.
Why shouldn’t he move through Catrina’s salon with an easy elegance?
But what did they really think of him, Tonio wondered. What did they think of Caffarelli? And why was it so tantalizing for Tonio to conceive of Caffarelli in bed with any of the women who hung about him? It seemed he need only beckon in order to be followed.
But it was fast occurring to Tonio, What would I do with any of them, because there were quite enough who gave inviting looks to him over their lace fans. And in the pit of the theater he’d smelled the sweet aroma of a thousand Bettinas.
Time, Tonio, time, he said to himself. He would have died before he would have failed his father. All before him flashed and glimmered in the magic light of new responsibility and new knowledge. And at night, he knelt down before the Madonna in his room and prayed: “Please, please, don’t let it all come to an end. Let it go on forever.”
But the summer was almost here. The heat was already stifling. The carnival would soon collapse like a house of cards, and then would begin the villeggiatura, with all the great families retiring to their villas on the Brenta River. No one wanted to be near the stench of the canals, the never-ending swarm of gnats.
And we’ll be here alone again, oh, noooo, please!
But when he could count the final days on one hand, Alessandro came to his room one morning with the servants who brought the chocolate and the coffee, and sat down by Tonio’s bed.
“Your father is very pleased with you,” he said. “All report to him you conduct yourself like the paragon of a gentleman.”
Tonio smiled. He wanted to see his father. But twice Signore Lemmo had told him it was quite out of the question. It seemed an uncommon number of people came and went from his apartments. And Tonio knew some of these men were attorneys, others old friends. He did not like