Cry to Heaven (11 page)

But watching him, Tonio felt the old mystery of eunuchs return. He hadn’t thought of it in years. What did Alessandro feel? What was it like to be him? And even as he felt himself
magnetized by Alessandro’s languid hands and half-mast lids, that miraculous grace with which he managed the smallest gesture, he felt an involuntary shudder. Does he never hate it? Is he never consumed with bitterness?

The violins had started again. A great roar of laughter had broken out at the head table. Signore Lemo passed, nodding quickly.

The carnival was beginning. Everyone was rising to go into the piazza.

Magnificent paintings were mounted for all to see, the wares of the goldsmiths and glassblowers flashed and glittered in the light that flooded from the open cafés where people crowded to take chocolate, wine, ices. The shops were aglow with frothy chandeliers and splendid fabric exhibited for sale as the people themselves made up a gleaming mass of the most dazzling satin, silk, and damask.

The giant piazza stretched into infinity. The light glared as if it were high noon, and over all, the round arched mosaics of San Marco gave off a dim sparkle as if they were alive and bearing witness.

Alessandro kept his charges close and it was he who led Marianna and Tonio into the small shop where they were at once outfitted with their bautas and dominoes.

Tonio had never actually worn the bauta, the birdlike mask of chalk-white cloth that covered not only the face, but the head as well in its black mantle. It smelled strange to him, closing over his eyes and nose; he gave a little start to see himself a stranger in the mirror. But it was the domino, the long black garment that hung to the ground, that made them all truly anonymous. You could not tell who was man or woman now; nothing of Marianna’s dress showed beneath; she was a little gnome giving off a sweet, mercurial laughter.

Alessandro appeared a specter beside her.

And emerging into the blinding light again, they were but one trio now among hundreds of such nameless and faceless ones, lost in the press, holding tight to one another as music and shouts filled the air, and others appeared in wild and fantastical costumes.

The giant figures of the commedia dell’arte rose above the crowd. It was like seeing puppets overblown with monstrous
life; painted faces flashed grotesqely under torches. Tonio realized suddenly Marianna was all but doubled over with laughter. Alessandro had whispered something in her ear as he supported her on his arm. She clung to Tonio with the other hand.

Someone shouted to them: “Tonio, Marianna.”

“Shhh, how do you know who we are!” Marianna said. But Tonio had already recognized his cousin Catrina. She wore but a half mask and her mouth was a little crescent of red beneath, naked and delicious looking. He felt an embarrassing rush of passion. Bettina, the little serving girl, came to mind; was it possible for him to find Bettina? “My darling!” Catrina drew him close. “That is you, isn’t it?” She gave him such a kiss that he felt almost dizzy.

He stepped back. The sudden hardness between his legs was maddening him; he would rather die than have her know it, but when her hand slipped about his neck, finding the one place that was not draped, he felt himself on the verge of some humiliating shock he couldn’t conceal. She was pressed against him; the friction was defeating him.

“What’s come over your father that he let you out, both of you?” Catrina said. And now, thank God, she turned her rich affection on Marianna.

Tonio suddenly saw the house; the dark rooms, the shadowy passages; he saw his father standing alone in the center of that dimly lit study as the morning sun made solid objects of the candle flames, his skeletal frame bearing the weight of history.

He flung open the windows. The rain was coming in fragrant gusts, nothing strong enough to clear the piazza. It had been packed still when they finally slipped away, Alessandro guiding them through the tight little
calle
to the canal and signaling for a gondola. And now, as Tonio peeled off his moist and wrinkled clothes, he put his elbows on the sill and looked up above the close wall to the smoky sky to see no stars in it, but the thin silver rain silently falling.

“Where are my singers?” he whispered. He wished he could feel sad; he wished he could feel the loss of innocence, and the burden of life, but if he felt sad that emotion was a luxurious sweetness. And without thinking, he raised his voice and let out a long call to his singers. He felt his voice pierce the darkness.
He felt his throat open; he felt the notes like something palpable cutting free, and from somewhere in the dark and tangled world beneath came another voice, lighter, more tender, he thought, a woman’s voice calling to him.

He sang nonsense to her. He sang of springtime and love and flowers and the rain, his phrases full of florid images. He grew louder and louder and then he stopped, holding his breath, to the last bit of echo.

There were singers all around him in the dark. Tenors picked up the melody he had commenced; a voice came from the canal; and there was the tink of tambourines, and the strum of guitars, and dropping to his knees he put his hand on the sill and laughed softly even as sleep threatened to close over him.

A vagrant image passed before his mind’s eye. Carlo in his scarlet robe in the embrace of his father; and it seemed all of a sudden he was someplace else, lost in an endless commotion, his mother screaming.

“But why did she scream?” His father’s voice came rapid, intimate, yet the answer eluded him. In reality he had never dared to ask that question.

“But was she the bride Carlo refused? Is that it? Was she the one Carlo would not marry? And why? Why? Did she love him? And was she then married to a man so old….”

He awoke with a start. And in the warm damp felt a shudder. Ah, no, he thought, never, never again mention it to her. And sliding into dream again he saw his brother’s face rising slowly to the surface of that picture.

A
NGELO AND
B
EPPO
were confused; Lena was fussing with his mother’s dress though she said over and over, “Lena, I’m wearing a domino, no one will even see it!”

Alessandro, however, was coolly in charge. Why didn’t Angelo and Beppo go out and enjoy themselves? It took approximately five seconds for them to bow, to nod, and to vanish.

The piazza was now so crowded they could scarce move. Trestle stages had risen everywhere with jugglers, mimes, wild animals snarling in their cages as tamers cracked the whip. Acrobats somersaulted over the heads of the throng, the wind bringing warm rain that dampened no one.

It seemed to Tonio that over and over again they were caught in a living stream that forced them towards the jampacked cafés or thrust them out from under the porticoes; they gulped brandy and coffee here and there; sometimes they flopped at a table, just long enough to rest, their voices sounding strange to them piping up from their masks.

Meanwhile the extravagant maskers were cropping up everywhere. Spaniards, Gypsies, Indians from the wilds of North America, beggars in tatters of velvet, young men got up to be women with painted faces and lofty wigs, and women turned out as men, their lovely little bodies inexpressibly enticing in silk breeches and close-fitting stockings.

It seemed there was so much to do, they could make up their minds to none of it. Marianna wanted her fortune told but would not stand in line at the fortuneteller’s table where the
woman whispered secrets through a long tube right into the victim’s ear so no one need share the revelation of his destiny. More wild beasts; the roar of the lions was thrilling. A woman snatched Tonio by the waist, turned him twice, three times in a wild dance, and then let him go; it was impossible to tell if she was a scullery maid or a visiting princess. He fell back at one point against the pillars of the church, his mind swept clean of all thought as it had seldom been in his life, and let the crowd merge into a magnificent spectacle of color. The commedia was being enacted on a distant stage, the actors’ cries piercing the din, and quite suddenly he wanted to dissolve and rest in the quiet of the palazzo.

Then he felt Marianna’s hand slip out of his, and turning he could not find her.

He glanced back and forth. Where was Alessandro?

It seemed a tall figure straight ahead must surely be he, but the figure was moving away from him. He gave a loud shout, and couldn’t even hear it himself; and glancing back saw a little figure in bauta and domino in the arms of another masker. It seemed they kissed, or whispered to one another, the stranger’s mantle concealing both their faces. “Mamma.” He went towards the tiny one, and the crowd intervened before he could reach her.

Then he heard Alessandro behind him. “Tonio!” He had been saying the proper address, Excellency, over and over and getting no answer.

“Ah, she’s disappeared!” Tonio said desperately.

“She’s right there,” came Alessandro’s reply, and again there was a little figure, bird-faced, eerie, peering right at him.

He tore off his mask, wiping at the sweat of his face, and closed his eyes for a moment.

They did not go home until two hours before they were to be at the theater. Marianna let down her long black hair and stood with her glassy eyes to the side as if enchanted. Then seeing the serious expression on Tonio’s face, she stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

“But, Mamma…” He drew back suddenly. “When we were near the church door, did someone…did someone…?” He stopped, positively unable to continue.

“Did someone what? What’s the matter with you?” she
asked warmly. She shook out her hair. Her face was all angles, her mouth drawn back in a dazed smile. “I don’t remember anything by the church door. When were we at the church door? That was hours ago. Besides”—she let out a little laugh—“I have you and Alessandro to protect my honor.”

He was staring at her with something that was very near horror.

She seated herself before the glass as Lena undid the snaps of her gown. All of her movements were swift, yet uncertain. She lifted the glass stopper of her cologne and held it before her lips. “What shall I wear, what shall I wear, and you, look at you, you who all your life have begged to go to the opera. Don’t you know who is singing tonight?” She turned with her hands on the edge of the cushioned bench looking up at him. Her dress had fallen down and her breasts were almost bare, yet she didn’t seem to know it. She looked childlike.

“But Mamma, I thought I saw…”

“Will you stop it!” she screamed suddenly. Lena moved back, startled, but he did not move.

“Take that look off your face,” she said, the voice still high in pitch, and her hands on her own ears as if to blunt the sound of it. She started to gasp, and it seemed the taut flesh of her face was being cruelly twisted.

“No, don’t…don’t,” he whispered. He stroked her hair, patted her until she gave a deep breath and seemed to become limp. Then looking up at him, she made that smile again, glittering and beautiful and frightening him. But it lasted only a moment. Her eyes were wet.

“Tonio, I’ve done nothing wrong,” she pleaded as if she were only his younger sister. “Don’t you dare spoil it all for me, you can’t do it. All these years, only once in my life before have I ever been out in it. Don’t you, don’t you…”

“Mamma!” He held her face against his coat. “I’m sorry.”

As soon as they stepped into the box Tonio knew he would not be able to hear anything.

It was no surprise. He’d heard enough stories of what went on, and he knew that with three different performances tonight, there would be a constant shifting among the theaters. Catrina Lisani, in a white satin mask, was already seated with her back to the stage, at a hand of cards with her nephew Vincenzo. The
young Lisani were waving and hissing to those below, and the old senator, Catrina’s husband, dozed in his gilded chair, waking suddenly to grumble that he wanted his supper.

“Come here, Alessandro,” said Catrina, “and tell me if all this is true about Caffarelli.” She dissolved into laughter before Alessandro could kiss her hand. But she motioned for Marianna to sit beside her.

“And you, my dear, do you know what it means to me to see you here at last, having some fun, behaving as if you were human?”

“I am all too human,” Marianna whispered. There was something irresistibly girlish in the way she almost snuggled to Catrina. That anyone could be mean to her, that he could be mean to her, seemed impossible to Tonio. He felt like crying suddenly; he felt like singing.

“Play, play,” said Vincenzo.

“I don’t see why,” said the old senator, who was much younger than Andrea, “I must wait for all that music to start before I have my supper.”

Liveried servants moved in and out offering crystal glasses of wine. The old senator spilled a red stain on his lace ruff and stared down at it helplessly. He had been a handsome man and was impressive still, his gray hair growing in tight waves back from his temples. He had eyes of jet black and a hook of a nose of which he seemed proud when he lifted his head. But now he looked like a baby.

Tonio stepped to the front. The parterre was already jammed and so were the three tiers above him.

Masks everywhere from the gondoliers in the pit to the sober merchants high above with their wives in such proper black, the hum and tinkle of talk and drink seeming to rise in waves of no discernible rhythm.

“Tonio, you’re too young for this,” Catrina said over her shoulder. “But let me tell you about Caffarelli….” He did not look at her because he did not wish to see that deliciously animalian slit of her mouth, naked and red, beneath the white mask that made her eyes look so feline. Her arms in her burgundy satin appeared so soft he gritted his teeth with a little vision of himself squeezing them mercilessly.

But he listened intently to all this foolishness about the great castrato who was to sing tonight, that he had been discovered
by his mistress’ husband while in bed with her in Rome. In bed, Catrina said. His face smarted to think of his mother and Alessandro listening to this! And forced to flee, Caffarelli spent a damp night hiding in a cistern. For days after that, the man’s bravos pursued him everywhere, but the lady gave Caffarelli bravos of his own who followed him all around until he threw everything up and left the city.