The performance had yet other qualities to it which Guido, angry and exhausted, refused to define further.
He stared at the boy who was almost as tall as himself. And realized it was just as he’d supposed the instant he’d heard the voice from the choir loft: this was the vagabond nobleman who roamed the streets at night, the dark-eyed, white-skinned boy with a face chiseled out of the purest marble. He was narrow, elegant, suggesting a dark Botticelli. And as he bowed to his teachers—as if they weren’t, in fact, his inferiors—he showed nothing of that natural insolence which Guido associated with all aristocrats.
But there was no accounting for the Venetian patrician class. They were unlike anything Guido had ever known in their habitual courtesy to all men around them. Perhaps the fact that everyone went on foot in this city had something to do with it. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t care. He was furious.
But he did note that the boy’s face was remote for all its politeness. He was leaving this assemblage with humble but indifferent apologies.
The door let in a blinding flash of sunshine as he left the church and the flustered group behind him.
“You must accept my apologies, Signore,” said Alessandro. “Beppo did not mean to waste your time.”
“Oh, no. No, no, no…nonono!” Beppo muttered with all the variety in tone of a regular sentence.
“And this arrogant young boy, who is he?” demanded Guido. “This patrician’s son with the larynx of a god who does not even care whether or not his voice has made a favorable impression.”
This was too much for Beppo, and Alessandro took the initiative of dismissing him. It was against Alessandro’s nature to be rude, but he was now short of patience. And the fact was that he harbored a deep, secret, and iron-hard hatred of those who went out from the conservatorios of Naples to search for castrati children. His own childhood training in that distant southern city had been so cruel and relentless that it had obliterated all memory of the years that preceded it. Alessandro had been twenty years old before he met one of his brothers in the Piazza San Marco, and even then he did not know the man who said, “See, the little crucifix you wore as a child. Our mother sends it to you.” He remembered the crucifix but not the mother.
“If you will forgive me, Maestro,” he said now, bending down to look into the fiercesome dark face (he had taken the taper from Beppo), “the boy has not the slightest doubt that his voice pleases everyone who hears it, though he would never be so ill-mannered as to say so. And please understand he came here today out of kindness to his teacher.”
But this boor was not only crude, he was uninsultable. He was not even listening to Alessandro. He was rubbing at his temples, rather, with both hands as if he suffered from a headache. His eyes had the malice of an animal but they were too large to suggest an animal.
And it was not until this very moment, while standing this close, candle in hand, that Alessandro suddenly realized he was gazing down upon an unusually stocky castrato. He studied the smooth face. No, it had never grown a beard. This was yet another eunuch.
He almost let out a little laugh. He had thought him a whole man with a knife tucked under his belt, and a strange mingling of feelings took place in him. He softened slightly towards Guido, not because he felt sorry for him, but because he was a member of a great fraternity more likely to appreciate the pristine beauty of Tonio’s voice than any other.
“If you will allow me, Signore, I might recommend several other boys. There is a eunuch at San Giorgio….”
“I’ve heard him,” whispered Guido, more to himself than to Alessandro. “Is there the slightest chance that this boy…I mean, what precisely does his talent mean to him?” But before he glanced at Alessandro he knew that this was perfectly ridiculous.
Alessandro didn’t even dignify the question with an answer.
A little silence fell between them. Guido had turned his back and taken a few steps on the uneven stone floor. The flame of the taper shivered in Alessandro’s hand. And in this faulty light it seemed he could hear more distinctly the sigh that escaped from the singing teacher.
Alessandro saw the slump of his shoulders. And he felt