as his songs grew slower, and full of some sweet and caressing sadness. He remembered once rocking with his arms folded on his chest; Ernestino was leading him in some lullaby, and the night was without form or end, the moon now and then released from the heavy clouds to show the rain in a silent, silvery torrent.
Sadness, it was such an arresting emotion. You could almost convince yourself of the rhyme and reason of heartbreak.
It was daylight.
Garbage littered the piazza; bawling voices ran out under the arcades; little clusters of maskers danced about arm in arm, a whole population of black-draped persons with faces the color of skulls, and the great church itself shimmered and wavered in the morning rain as if it were painted on a silk scrim hung from the heavens.
Bettina’s face was puffy from sleep, she was pinning up her hair and rushing to wait on him.
She put hot bread and butter down, and strong Turkish coffee. She put the napkin in his lap, and when he wouldn’t lift his head, she held it for him.
He ran his finger down the pale flesh of her throat and asked:
“Do you love me?”
2
IT WAS A WEEK before he even trusted himself to approach his mother’s door, only to be told she’d gone to church. Then she was asleep.
And next time he knocked, gone to the Palazzo Lisani.
She was anywhere but there when he came to see her.
By the fifth morning, he was laughing out loud as he left her door.
Then lapsing into a paralytic silence in which he could not and would not pursue her.
But no matter how his head ached from lack of sleep, he washed, swallowed food, found his way finally to the library.
Catrina Lisani came to tell him that Carlo, with a substantial fortune acquired in the Levant, had cured all debts against the estate, which had been considerable, and now he meant to restore the old Treschi villa on the Brenta.
Tonio was so tired from his nightlong serenades, he could scarce pay attention to her.
“He is behaving himself, don’t you think?” she asked. “He is doing his duty. Your father could not have wished for better.”
Meantime Carlo had three bravos with him wherever he went. Husky, taciturn bodyguards who hung about the house, attempting to melt into the shadows. They followed him every morning when in his patrician robes he went to make his bows to those senators and councillors on the Broglio.
He was ingratiating himself with everyone, and that he meant to reenter civil life was now obvious.
Tonio took to coming to the piazzetta every morning after the night’s roaming. And there he would watch his brother from afar; he could only imagine the content of those quick conversations. Clasped hands, bows, some subdued laughter. Marcello Lisani appeared; together they moved up and down, up and down, losing themselves in the crowd against a backdrop of the masts of the ships, and the dull gleam of the water.
And convinced Carlo would be away for a long time, Tonio would finally slip into the house and walk the endless stretch of ancient floor to his mother’s apartments. No answer to his knock. The old excuses.
It didn’t take Catrina long to find out what Tonio had been up to. He lived for the moment when darkness fell down around the house, dropped out of the winter sky so abruptly. He was out then. He stood in the calle waiting for Ernestino and the band to come for him.
Catrina was distraught. “So you are the singer everyone is talking about. But you can’t carry on like this, Tonio, you must listen to me. You let his malice eat at you….”
Ah, but why didn’t you tell me, he thought, but he did not so much as whisper it. His tutors scolded, he looked away. Alessandro’s face bore the mark of fear, unmistakably.
It was almost evening. He could stand it no longer. The house was dreary and only reluctantly invaded by the gentle spring twilight. Leaning against her door, he felt weakened at first. And then consumed with rage, he forced the double doors until the bolt splintered the wood and he found himself staring into her empty apartments.
For a second, it was impossible for him to discern anything in the shadows, even the most familiar objects. And then gradually he saw his mother sitting quite still at the dressing table.
Here and there a bit of light gleamed along her silver brushes and combs. And then there was