here!” Andrea whispered. “How did you get into this house without my permission?” He had drawn himself up with an immense and shattering anger.
“Father!” Tonio whispered. “It’s me…it’s Tonio.”
“Ah!” His father’s hand was raised. It hovered in the air.
And then there was a moment of infinite distress in which everything was realized.
Andrea was staring at his son in shame and embarrassment. A great anxiety caused his hands to quaver, the mouth to shudder. “Ah, Tonio,” he said. “My Tonio.”
For a long moment neither spoke. In the corridor, others whispered. Then they were silent.
“Father, come down to bed,” Tonio said. He felt, for the first time, the bones of the man beneath the fabric that covered him.
So light he felt; so without vitality or strength. It was as if he could have been completely overpowered.
“No, not now. I am all right,” Andrea answered. And he was a little rough as he removed Tonio’s hands and stepped again to the open window.
Far below, the gondolas moved like pods on the green water. A barge inched its way towards the lagoon. A tiny orchestra played brightly on deck, and the railing was twined with roses and lilies. Small figures flashed and turned as they ducked beneath a canopy of white silk, and rolling up the walls, it seemed, there came a thin laughter.
“I think sometimes that it has become an abomination against taste, to grow old and die in Venice!” Andrea said. “Yes, taste, taste, as if all of life were nothing but a matter of taste,” he raged, his voice dry in his throat, almost a rattle. “You great whore!” he breathed, staring out at those distant silver domes.
“Papa,” Tonio whispered.
The hand that touched him was like a claw. “My son, there isn’t time for you to grow up slowly. I told you that once before. Now mark my words. You must make up your mind you are a man now. You must behave as if this were absolutely the truth, all the chemistry of God notwithstanding. Then all else falls into place, do you understand me?”
The pale eyes fixed on Tonio, appeared to sharpen and then again to grow dim. “I would have given you an empire, foreign seas, the world. But now I can only give you this: once you have made the decision that you are a man, you will become one. Everything else will fall into place. Remember.”
Two hours passed before anyone could persuade Tonio to leave for the Brenta. Alessandro went back into his father’s rooms twice, emerging each time to say that Andrea’s order was absolute.
They were to leave for the Villa Lisani. Andrea was concerned that they were already late. He wanted them to go immediately.
Finally Signore Lemmo ordered everything placed in the gondolas, and took Tonio aside.
“He is in pain, Tonio,” he said. “He does not want you or your mother to see him as he is. Now listen to me. You must not let him know you are worried. I’ll send for you if there is any great change in him.”
Tonio was choking back the tears as they crossed the little dock.
“Dry your eyes,” Alessandro whispered, helping him into the boat. “He’s on the balcony above to bid us farewell.”
Tonio glanced up; he saw the spectral figure supported on either side. Andrea had put on his scarlet robe; his hair had been tamed and his smile frozen as if in white marble.
“I will never see him again,” Tonio whispered.
Thank God for the swiftness of the little boat, for the canal’s serpentine course. When he finally sat back in the felze, he was crying silently but uncontrollably.
He felt the continual pressure of Alessandro’s hand.
And when he did look up, he realized Marianna was gazing out of the window with the most wistful expression.
“The Brenta.” She was almost humming. “I haven’t seen the mainland since I was a little girl.”
19
IN THE KINGDOM of Naples and Sicily, Guido found no pupils worth the journey home. Now and then a promising boy was presented to him, but he had not the fortitude to tell his parents he would recommend “the operation.”
And of those boys already cut, he did not hear one worth encouraging.
But he pressed on into the Papal States, to Rome itself, and then farther north into Tuscany.
Spending his nights in noisy inns, his days in rented carriages, occasionally dining with the hangers-on of some noble family, he carried his few belongings in a shabby leather valise, his dagger clamped in his right hand under his