roar broke loose of all words, inhuman, immense, blinding him, deafening him.
And with the first cut of the knife he knew the battle was lost and he knew just what they were doing to him.
* * *
Guido saw that the sky over the little town of Flovigo was now growing a pale yellow. He lay as if dead, watching the rain catch just enough of this light to become a visible veil over the field that tilted away from his window.
There was a knock at the door. He was not prepared for the excitement with which he rose to answer it.
There stood that man who had spoken to him in the coffeehouse in Venice. He shouldered his way into the room and, without saying a word, opened a leather packet that contained several documents.
Turning from right to left, he made a short exasperated sound to see there was no candle lit and, drawing near the wet window, examined each of the papers with the scrutiny of someone who can neither read nor write. Then he gave them to Guido along with another packet.
Guido recognized the packet immediately. It contained all his letters of introduction from Naples and he had not even known it was missing. He was furious.
But he turned his attention to the documents. All in Latin and signed by Marc Antonio Treschi, they declared his intention to submit to castration for the preservation of his voice, absolving anyone and everyone for complicity in his decision. The physician was unnamed for his own protection.
And in the last, addressed to his family, of which the paper in Guido’s hands was only a copy, was spelled out clearly the boy’s intention to enroll at the Conservatorio San Angelo in Naples under the Maestro Guido Maffeo.
Guido stared at this in stupefaction.
“But I have not instigated this!” Guido said.
The bravo only smiled. “There’s a carriage waiting to take you south of here, and money enough for a change of horse and driver whenever you wish, to Naples,” he said. “And this is the boy’s purse. He’s rich, as I told you. But he won’t see another zecchino until he is enrolled at your conservatorio.”
“The family must know I had nothing to do with this!” Guido stammered. “The Venetian government must know I had nothing to do with it.”
The bravo uttered a short laugh. “Who is going to believe that, Maestro?”
Guido turned his back on the man suddenly. He glared at the documents.
The bravo drew up beside him like the bad angel.
“Maestro,” he said, “if I were you, I would not wait until this boy awakens. The opium given him was very strong. I would take him now and get away from here. I would get as far from the border of the Venetian State as fast as possible. And, Maestro, take care of the boy. He is the only one who can exonerate you.”
Guido stepped into the small house where Tonio slept. He saw the blood streaking Tonio’s face, the mouth and throat livid with bruises. Then he saw that Tonio’s hands and feet had been bound with the coarsest hemp rope. His face appeared lifeless.
Taking a step backwards, Guido let out a long low moan. His eyes rolled up in his head, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. The moaning went on as if he were powerless to stop it. Then it caught in his throat as if in a wave of nausea. He stared at the blood-stained mattress. He stared at the knives that lay in the straw and the dirt of the floor like so much debris, and shuddering all over, he felt the moans rising out of him again.
When at last he was quiet, he was alone in this room with Tonio, the bravo had gone, and the door stood open to a town so still that it might have been uninhabited.
He drew near the bed. The boy so resembled a corpse that for a long moment Guido could not bring himself to place his hand before Tonio’s open mouth to feel his faint breathing.
But the boy was alive. The skin was moist and feverish.
Then Guido laid back the torn cloth and looked at the mutilation.
The scrotal sac had been gashed, its contents cut out, the wound crudely cauterized. But it was a small wound, the operation had been done in its safest manner, and there was no swelling. In time the sac would wither to nothing.
But as his fingers drew back from this, Guido’s body convulsed