barbaric. But Guido was never pleased with him, Guido was rarely polite, and the habitual rudeness seemed always to mask a deeper antipathy and displeasure. There were moments when Tonio felt this scorn from Guido as palpably as if Guido had spoken it aloud, and the past with its unspeakable humiliation threatened to press in on him.
And then, trembling with anger himself, Tonio offered to him the one thing he wanted: the voice, the voice, the voice. While surrendering to sleep afterwards, he combed the day’s experiences for the scantest memory of his teacher’s approval.
And without meaning to, Tonio fell into the terrible trap of trying to draw affection from Guido, some interest from Guido.
In the mornings, he would attempt conversation. Was it hotter today? What was going on in the theater of the conservatorio? Would it be years before Tonio could take part in the school performances? But surely Tonio would be allowed to see this one, wouldn’t he?
Guido snarled at all this, but rather impersonally. Then he would look up abruptly from his writing and say, “All right, today we are going to hold all of these notes for twice their length and I want the Esclamazio perfect.”
“Ah, perfection again, is it?” Tonio would whisper.
Guido would ignore this.
It was sometimes ten o’clock at night before Guido let him go, and Tonio heard the Esclamazio in his sleep. He awoke with these liquid notes in his ears.
Finally they moved into the first of the ornaments.
What Tonio had learned so far was the basis of control of the breath and tone, and absolute attention to what he was singing.
But the process of ornamenting a melody was more involved. It meant not only new sounds or combinations of sounds had to be learned, but he had to acquire some sense of when to add them to a melody on his own.
The first ornament he learned was called the Tremolo. It was simply how to sing the same note but with several repeated beats. That is, to take an A, and sing it A A A A A, again with perfect control and perfect fluidity, the sounds melting one into the other yet the beats clear like recurrent explosions.
When his mind was exhausted with that, when it issued from him with some degree of naturalness, he went on to the trill, which was a warbling of tone from one note to a higher note and back again over and over in one long breath rapidly, as ABABABABABABABA.
After the long weeks with the Accentus and the long opulent notes of the Esclamazio, this was great fun actually. And the challenge of control, the challenge of power over the voice, was becoming absolutely enthralling.
The hypnotic falling into the music came sooner each day and seemed to last longer. And sometimes an hour into the evening’s lessons, Tonio got a second wind and was singing these exercises with an inspired grace and an inspired selflessness.
He wasn’t there. He had become his voice. The little room was wrapped in darkness. The candle flickered over the scratches on the page before him, and the sounds he heard were unearthly, suggesting a great flashing of abstract form in his mind that made him almost frightened.
He would go on and on. He would push.
It was very late.
Sometimes the Maestro di Cappella came into the room and said that it was time to stop. Tonio would fall onto the bench, rolling the back of his head back and forth against the wall, and Guido might then let loose on the harpsichord. The rich, tinkling sounds flooded the room. And looking at him, Tonio felt his body and soul empty.
Then Guido would say, “Get out of here.” And Tonio, a little shocked and humiliated, would go upstairs to fall asleep immediately.
It seemed Tonio was never given arias to enjoy anymore, and even his hours of composition were narrowed down so that he might spend the day in exercises.
But if he should show the slightest strain in the voice itself, Guido would stop immediately. Sometimes Tonio merely rested while other pupils went through their lessons. He would become absorbed in their mistakes, their unchangeable or slowly yielding limitations.
And sometimes watching these other sessions, it comforted Tonio that Guido seemed to despise these students as much as he despised Tonio. Sometimes it comforted him. Sometimes it made him feel worse, and when Guido struck his students, which was often, this incensed Tonio.
One day after Guido had beaten little Paolo, the boy who’d come