in this quiet moment before the mirror, he allowed himself to accept all the good that his “father” had once given him. Anger was gone. Hatred was gone. Blind rage had evaporated.
Yet a fear remained, which for all his clarity of mind he could not yet examine. He knew it was there. He felt its presence as surely as one feels the menace of a nearby flame; yet he could not turn to it and acknowledge it.
Perhaps silently, he committed it to the future; he said to himself, I will not think of it and in time, it will leave me alone. It was wound up however with powerful, throbbing memories of Catrina Lisani against the pillows of her bed, of little Bettina, his tavern girl, lifting her skirts in the dark of the gondola. And perhaps most hideously, it had something to do with his mother circling that dark bedchamber, whispering over and over, “Shut the doors, shut the doors, shut the doors.”
At one moment these thoughts coagulated so that he stopped in the very act of leaving this suite of rooms in the albergo. He stood with his shoulders hunched as if he’d been struck an ugly blow. But then his mind emptied itself. These three women vanished.
And the conservatorio loomed above him, nestled in the hills of Naples, with something of the allure of a lover.
8
IT WAS THE STILL quiet of the siesta time when he reached the gates, and he mounted the steps without being seen, soon finding his little room almost as he had left it. He felt the most palpable calm in this place as he looked at his trunk and those few pieces of clothing that someone had so carefully removed from the cabinet and laid out to be taken away by him.
The black tunic was still there. And removing his frock coat, he slipped it on, and, gathering up the red sash from the floor, he put it around his waist and, quietly passing the slumbering dormitory, made his way downstairs again to the door of Guido’s study.
Guido was not resting.
He looked up from the harpsichord with the immediate flashing anger with which he greeted all interruptions. But he was dumbstruck when he saw Tonio standing there.
“Can the Maestro be persuaded to give me another chance?” Tonio asked.
He stood with his hands behind his back, waiting.
Guido did not answer. In fact, his face was so much the picture of menace that for one moment Tonio was made aware of the most violently conflicting feelings for this man. But one thought emerged: this man must be his teacher here. It was unthinkable that he study with anyone else, and when he thought of Guido walking into the sea to destroy himself, he felt just for an instant the weight of an undeclared emotion that had battered him for twenty-eight days. He closed his heart to it. He waited.
Guido was beckoning to him. He was also shuffling wildly through his music.
Tonio saw a glass of water on a small stand beside the harpsichord and he drank all of it.
When he looked at the music, it was a cantata by Scarlatti, and though he did not know it, he knew Scarlatti.
Guido plunged into the introduction, his somewhat short fingers appearing veritably to bounce on the keys, and then Tonio hit the first note perfectly on pitch.
But his voice sounded huge, unnatural to him, completely out of control, and it was with a tremendous act of will that he forced himself on, up and down the passages which his teacher had written in, the embellishments and graces which he had added to the composer’s score.
Finally it seemed to him his voice was all right; it felt almost good; and when he finished, he experienced an odd sensation of drifting. It was as if a great deal of time had gone by.
He realized that Guido was looking past him. The Maestro di Cappella had come in through the open door and he and Guido were staring at one another.
“Sing this again for me,” said the Maestro, approaching.
Tonio gave a slight shrug. Yet he could not bring himself to look directly at this man. He lowered his eyes and, lifting his right hand slowly, felt the fabric of his black tunic as if he were making some casual adjustment of its simple collar. He could feel it encasing him, rendering him distinct in some way he’d never been, and he could remember in an inarticulate instant all of