I cannot bear this. I cannot stand still for this, these faces puffed with anger. I beg you not to whip him, if you will only leave this to me. But I’ve left it to you and he has stubbornly refused…
“Put it on.”
“I will not.”
The first lash, this is a pain you must defend yourself against, but you cannot defend yourself, and the second, this is more than anyone can endure, and the third, and the fourth, and fifth, do not think about it, think of anything else, anywhere else, anything else, anything else.
“Put it on.”
“I will not.”
“Tell me, since you are so learned, my fine little Venetian, what becomes of a eunuch who does not sing?”
They are all in a row at the front gate. They move in double ranks, hands behind their backs, the red sashes dividing the soft black fabric of the tunic perfectly in half, black ribbon at the nape of the neck, all with the right foot out as the gates open. Is it possible that I will pass through this gate with them, that I will walk in this procession with these, these eunuchs, these capons, these gelded monsters?
This is more miserable than being stripped naked, and yet I am moving, I am putting one foot in front of the other, and it seems the very world is made of human beings, walls of people pressing in to get a closer look, and their voices rising, mingling, for the first time they are so beautiful and so sure, these voices rising up, up, in the open air, the very advertisement of it, and everyone who looks at us knows, knows, red sash or no, they know exactly what I am.
This is unendurable, yet it is happening. It is like descriptions of those barbarous executions, you cannot imagine the thoughts or feelings of that one at the center of it, led forward into the crowd, his hands bound so that he cannot even shield his face. All that you are belongs to this world around you, and yet you stare forward as if this were not happening to you, you pick out the clouds overhead moving so swiftly on the sea breeze, you gaze up at the facade of the church.
Who are these southern Italians, who are they but the world, the entire world!
Leave this place, leave it.
“If you leave here”—that vicious Guido Maffeo, that dark one who knows all about it—“where will you go?”
“I will not.”
“Do you want to be expelled!”
And this time as the lashes come, try to think about the pain, instead of against it, because there is not one single aspect of life, past, present, or future, that does not tear your reason from you, to think on it. So think about the pain. This pain after all has it limits. You can chart its passage through your body. It has a beginning, middle, end. Imagine if it had a color. This first cut of the lash is what, red? Red, spreading into a brilliant yellow. And this one again, red, red, no yellow, and then white, white, white, white.
“I beg you, Maestro, leave him to me.”
“You will sing or you will be expelled from this school….”
“Where will you go…”
That’s it. Where will you go? Why have you incarcerated yourself in this palazzo of torture chambers, why do you not leave this place? Because you are a monster and this is a school for monsters, and if you leave here, then you will be completely, completely alone! Alone with this!
Don’t weep in front of these strangers. Swallow it down. Don’t weep in front of these strangers! Cry to heaven, cry to heaven, cry to heaven.
5
“WHAT IS IT you are attempting to accomplish? Do you even know yourself what it is you want to do!”
Guido strode back and forth, his face convulsed with anger. He locked the door of his practice room and put the key in his belt.
“Why did you stab this boy?”
“I did not stab him. He is merely gashed a little, he will live!”
“Yes, this time he will live!”
“He forced his way into my room. He was tormenting me!”
“And what of the next time? Do you know the Maestro has taken away your sword and your stiletto and those pistols you bought, but that won’t stop this, will it?”
“Not if I am tormented, not if I am surrounded by tormentors, no, it will not stop!”
“Don’t you understand? You cannot continue like this. You will be put out of