himself merely with the singing. He drew Tonio’s attention to the score, how various arias had obviously been added for various voices, the little contests that went on between the younger castrato and the prima donna, how the old singer held himself very still when he sang because had he gestured with his unusually long and thin arms he would have looked a fool. The young castrato was handsome, the audience liked this, and he held himself like statues of antiquity in graceful poses. The little prima donna didn’t know how to breathe, but she had great warmth.
By the time the curtain came down, Tonio had had much too much white wine between the acts and was arguing furiously with Guido about whether or not the music was just a blatant imitation of Scarlatti or something legitimately new. Guido said there was originality there, Tonio must hear more Neapolitan composers, and suddenly they were being moved through the lobby by the press of the excited crowd.
Men and women spoke to Guido; carriages were coming up one by one to the open doors.
“Where are we going?” Tonio said. He was dizzy, and when the carriage lurched forward he almost lost his balance and realized a woman opposite was laughing at him. She had black hair and a milk-white throat and only the gossamer sleeves over her arms and little dimples on the backs of her hands.
Tonio did not actually remember entering the house. He was moving through an endless chain of immense rooms all of them splashed with the vibrant colors these Neapolitans seemed to love, gilt and enamel furniture against the walls, the windows draped with tasseled brocade, the chandeliers encrusted with white wax and wreathed with soft light as hundreds of musicians assembled in various orchestras, stroking their shining violins, blowing their golden horns to fill the broad marble hallways with a rippling, almost violent music.
Trays of white wine floated through the air. Tonio captured one glass in his hands and drank it down, then took another, the wigged servant in his blue satin coat as still as a statue, then off again.
Suddenly he was lost. He had not seen Guido for the longest time, and he was being accosted it seemed by one woman after another who spoke to him in French or English or Italian. An elderly woman was gliding towards him, and then putting out her long arm as if it were a cane, crooked him in her hand and brought him forward until her dry lips touched his chest: “Radiant child,” she said in Neapolitan dialect.
He disentangled himself, lost his balance, and felt he had to escape from this. It seemed everywhere he looked he saw perfect skin, some little mound of breast over a strip of ribbon. A woman laughing so hard she could not breathe held her ruffled breasts in her hands as if they would fall out of the seams of her printed taffeta dress, and seeing him she made her lips vanish behind a white lace fan on which there was an arc of red roses.
He was teetering over a billiard table. And then he realized that far away on the edge of that room stood a gaunt, consumptive man, so white of skin that he could all but see his bones beneath his flesh, staring at Tonio and smiling.
For one moment he did not know who this was, only that he must know. And then he realized it was that vision of death, that living corpse who had stood over him on Mount Vesuvius. He moved towards this man. Ah, yes, it was that consumptive, only done up now in a frivolous coat of gold-threaded brocade which gave him the tawdry look of one of those marble statues in a church which is dressed in real cloth garments by the faithful.
The man wore a powdered wig, and his eyes, deep-set and full of shadows, moved almost fondly over Tonio as he allowed Tonio to move closer and closer.
Again a tray of drinks, the fragile glass in his hands. He was right up against the man and they were looking at one another.
“Alive and well,” said the man in a hollow, cracking voice. And instantly, as if in pain, he put his handkerchief to his lips, the rings on his fingers bound to white bones. He backed away, doubling slightly, and it seemed a whirl of skirts opened to envelop him.
“I want to get out of here,” Tonio whispered. “I must