Where these men had been taciturn and shrewd, Guido was studious and stoical. Where they had struggled with the elements of the earth, he gave himself violently to any sacrifice for his music.
But Guido was far from crude in manner or appearance. Rather, taking his teachers as models, he imbibed all he could of gracious deportment, as well as the poetry, Latin, the classical Italian taught to him.
So he grew into a young singer of considerable presence whose stark particularities lent him a disturbing seductiveness.
All his life some would say of him, “How ugly he is,” while others would say, “But he is beautiful!”
But of one thing he was quite unaware; he exuded menace. His people had been more brutal than the animals they tended; and he had the look of one who might do anything to you. It was the passion in his eyes, the squashed nose, the lush mouth—all of it put together.
And so without his realizing it, a protective shield enveloped him. People didn’t try to bully him.
Yet all who knew Guido liked him. The regular boys liked him as much as did his fellow eunuchs. The violinists loved him because he became fascinated with them individually and wrote music for them that was exquisite. And Guido came to be known as quiet, no-nonsense, the gentle bear cub, not one to be afraid of once you came to know him.
Reaching his fifteenth year, Guido woke one morning to be told that he must come downstairs to the office of the Maestro. He was not anxious. He was never in any trouble.
“Sit down,” said his favorite teacher, Maestro Cavalla. All the others were assembled around him. And never had they been so informal with him before, and something about this ring of faces was unpleasant to him. He knew at once what it was. It reminded him of that room in which he had been cut, and he shrugged it off as meaning nothing.
The Maestro behind the carved table dipped his pen, scratched large figures in ink, and handed the parchment to Guido.
December 1727. What could it mean? A slight tremor ran through Guido.
“That is the date,” said the Maestro, drawing himself up, “upon which you will appear in your first opera in Rome as primo uomo.”
So Guido had done it.
It would not be the church choir for him, not the backcountry parishes, nor even the great city cathedrals. No, not even the Sistine Choir. He had soared past all that, right into the dream which inspired them all, year after year, no matter how poor they were, no matter how rich, no matter from where they came: the opera.
“Rome,” he whispered as he stepped out, quite alone, into the corridor. Two students stood near, as if waiting for him. But he walked past them into the open courtyard as if he did not see them. “Rome,” he whispered again, and he let it roll off his tongue, that thick explosion of breath that men have said with awe and terror for two thousand years: Rome.
Yes, Rome and Florence, and Venice, and Bologna, on to Vienna, and Dresden and Prague, to all the front lines where the castrati conquered. London, Moscow, back again to Palermo. He almost laughed aloud.
But someone had touched his arm. It was unpleasant to him. He couldn’t shake loose the vision of the tiers of boxes, and audiences roaring.
And when his vision cleared he saw it was a tall eunuch, Gino, who had always been ahead of him, a blond and willowy northern Italian with slate eyes. And beside him stood Alfredo, the rich one, who had money always in his pockets.
They were telling him to come into town; they were telling him the Maestro had given him the day for celebrating.
And he realized why they were here. They were the conservatorio’s rising stars.
And he was now one of them.
2
WHEN TONIO TRESCHI was five years old, his mother pushed him down the stairs. She hadn’t meant to do it. She had only meant to slap him. But he had slipped backwards on the marble tile, and fallen down and down, a panic engulfing him before he reached the bottom.
Yet he might have forgotten that. Her day-to-day love for him was full of unpredictable cruelty. She could be full of desperate warmth one minute, and savage to him the next. In fact, he lived torn between appalling need on the one hand, and on the other, pure terror.