“You have your life, take it and leave here,” he had thought then it was worse than death. “Kill me,” he had wanted to answer, but he had not even the will then to do that.
But on the mountain, this very day, he had not wanted to die. There was the conservatorio, and there was music that, even in the moments of his worst pain, he could hear, purely and magnificently, in his head.
The smallest ripple of feeling came over his face. He was staring at the sea where children moved in and out of the waves like a great flock of swallows.
So what would he do?
He knew. He had known when he had come down from the mountain. Two tasks lay before him.
The first was the revenge against Carlo. And that would take time.
Because Carlo must marry. Carlo must have children first, healthy strong children growing up well towards the day when they might marry and have children of their own.
But then he would get Carlo. Whether he himself survived the revenge did not matter. In all likelihood he wouldn’t survive it. Venice would get him, or Carlo’s bravos would get him, but not before he himself had gotten to Carlo and whispered into Carlo’s ear, “This is between us now.”
What he would do then he wasn’t certain. When he thought of those men in Flovigo, of the knife, of the cunning of all of it, and the finality of all of it, death for his father who had lived and loved so much already in his thirty-five years seemed infinitely too simple and too good.
He knew only that some day he would have Carlo in his power, as those men in Flovigo had had him in their power, and when that moment came, Carlo would wish for death just as Tonio had wished for it when the bravo had said in his ear, “You have your life.”
Then Carlo’s bodyguards could take him, Venice could take him, Carlo’s sons, it did not matter. Carlo would have paid.
Now the second task.
He would sing.
That he would do for himself because he wanted to, whether it was all a eunuch could do or no. Whether it was what his brother and those henchmen of his had destined him to do did not matter. He would do it because he loved it and wanted it, and his voice was the one thing in this world which he had once loved that was still his.
Oh, the magnificent irony of it. Now, his voice would never leave him, never change.
Yes, he would do it for himself and he would give it everything that he had and he would let it take him wherever he might go on this earth with it.
And who knew just how splendid that might be? The celestial brilliance of the church choirs, even the grand spectacle of the theater, he dared not really think of it now, but it just might give him the only time that he would ever spend with God’s angels.
The sun was high in the sky. The pupils of the conservatorio had long ago settled in for the hot, fitful sleep of the siesta.
Yet the Largo hummed with life below him. Fishermen were coming in with their catch. And against a far wall a little stage had been erected before the milling crowd on which a tawdry Punchinello was gesturing coarsely.
Tonio watched that lone figure for a short while, its rough voice now and then carrying over the din of the square, and then he rose and entered the small room to gather up his few possessions.
There was one more aspect of it all that he had taken down with him from Vesuvius.
It was perhaps the one thing of which he was most certain, and he had known it in a wordless and clear way when he had first awakened in the sunlight and seen that graceful corpse teetering over him.
He had thought in those moments of Andrea’s words: “Make up your mind, Tonio, that you are a man…behave as if it were absolutely true and all else will then fall into place.”
He strapped on his sword, lifted his cape onto his shoulders, and glanced once more into the mirror at the young form and face that were his reflected there.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Make up your mind that you are a man, and that is what you will be, and damn him who says otherwise.”
That was the way to overcome it. That was the only way, and