Mozart’s Blood (7 page)

Teresa's cheeks burned as she settled herself on the opposite seat and tucked her bag beneath her feet. She took off her hat and laid it on the seat beside her with a pang of shame. It did indeed look forlorn when contrasted with the lady's confection of lace and satin. She did the best she could to smooth the long pale coils of her hair, her only wealth, then rested her head against the plush of the coach seat.

Her eyelids grew heavy the moment the coach rumbled out into the road. She had had no breakfast. The coach was poorly sprung, and the seats smelled of mildew. Still, compared to the fishmonger's cart and the bed of burlap, it felt like luxury. She folded her arms and let her chin drop to her chest. It had been a hard two days, full of uncertainty and discomfort. Teresa missed her father, and she missed the comforting splash of the waters of Lake Garda. Yet, despite her rumbling stomach and her loneliness, she fell asleep, and she dreamed.

Teresa's dreams had always, since her earliest childhood, been intense. Often she had difficulty knowing which was dream and which was real. The night her mother died, Teresa had been in the middle of a dream of being lost in a crowd of people when her father's wails woke her. She struggled up from sleep to realize that her little house was full of people—her uncles, their wives, the physician, and the priest. When she staggered through the dark into the light of the kitchen, she felt as if she were still in a nightmare.

For days afterward she couldn't shake the feeling that if she could only wake up, all of these people would go away and her mother would be alive again. She was eleven, and though she knew her mother had been ill, she had not expected this. She wandered through the house, expecting her mother's voice, her mother's willowy form, a glimpse of her unbound blond hair falling to her apron strings.

When she had been younger, dreaming strange and sometimes wonderful things, she tried to convince her mother they were real. Nuncia Saporiti laughed and tweaked her little daughter's braids. “Dreams!” she would say. “Trust your
mamma,
I learned the hard way. Dreams are never real. They have no meaning!”

The young Teresa frowned and wandered away. Surely Mamma could never be wrong—but perhaps Mamma didn't have the same dreams Teresa did. Perhaps because Mamma came from the Casentino, and not from Limone, and she didn't have the waters of Lake Garda in her blood….

And now, drowsing in the coach from Brescia to Milano, with an unfriendly lady and a hungry-eyed man for companions, with the shocks of ruts and rocks jarring her spine, Teresa dreamed. She saw again her father's stricken face as she left, and in her dream she reached for him, but he turned away. She found herself on a wide stage, in a strange gown, a garment even more elegant than that of the veiled lady sitting across from her. Her hair felt heavy, piled on her head in loops and curls. There were other people, singers, wearing gowns and frock coats. Lights glared on their rouged cheeks and reddened lips.

The dream changed, and she heard her mother singing as she swept the stone floor of the house beside Lake Garda. Teresa, outside the house, leaned across the balustrade to take a peach from laden branches that hung low over the water. The fruit was soft and ripe, fragrant with sugar and sunshine. She parted her lips and sank her teeth into its flesh.

But it was not a peach she tasted. It was hot, and salty, with a bitter iron tint. She put her fingers to her lips, and they came away red with blood.

With a shudder, she woke. The lady opposite her snored gently, her veils lifting and falling with her breath. Her companion, however, was wide awake. He had lifted Teresa's skirts with the toe of his smooth leather boot and was gazing at her exposed leg. His parted lips gleamed with saliva.

Teresa jerked her leg away.
“Basta!”
she exclaimed. She bent to smooth her skirt back down over her ankles.

The lady awoke with a start and glared at both of them. “What's happening?” she demanded.

Her husband, for such he must be, Teresa thought, soothed her with quiet words, avoiding Teresa's eyes. But the lady sat stiffly, wakeful now, staring at Teresa through her swathes of silk.

Teresa turned her head away and gazed out the carriage window at passing fields of wheat. The ripe seed heads nodded in the hot sun as if bowing to the girl watching them. She put her fingers to her lips, remembering her dream. It was always good when Mamma came to visit her in her sleep. It was good to dream of singing, of what might be. But a peach full of blood…what did that mean? What was real?

 

Teresa Saporiti's first sight of Milano was of the lacework spires of the Duomo rising above the city center. The coach stopped in Via Mengoni, short of the Duomo's wide stone plaza. The driver opened the door. Teresa could hardly wait to be out, to drink in the sights and sounds of the fabled city, but she waited politely for the older couple to alight first.

The man stepped down. The lady stood up to adjust her ample skirts before leaving the carriage. While her husband was turned away, speaking with the driver, she faced Teresa.

“A word of advice, signorina,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

Teresa got up from her seat, but she couldn't straighten in the cramped coach. She stood awkwardly, her shoulders hunched, her head against the roof. “Yes, signora?”

“Stay away from married men,” the woman said. “People will think you're a tart.”

Teresa, hot and hungry and tired, lost her temper. “A word of advice for you, then, signora,” she said. She didn't whisper. She let her clear, strong voice carry outside the carriage.

The woman already had her gloved hand out the door for assistance down the step. “I hardly think I need advice from someone like you,” she began.

Teresa interrupted. “Your husband wants watching, signora. He has a wandering foot.”

The lady froze, and her veils rippled as her head swiveled back toward Teresa. Teresa said icily, “Could you step down? I'm weary of standing here, bent over like an old woman.”

With a hiss of fury, the woman whirled, nearly stumbling over the high step. Her feet landed heavily on the ground, and she grunted at the shock of it.

Teresa gathered her things and followed. The last she saw of the couple was the lady marching into a nearby hotel with her husband scurrying after her. The driver followed with their bags, leaving Teresa to retrieve her own. She pulled it down from the luggage carrier and stood with her hat in one hand, her valise in the other, looking about at the bustle of the great city.

The Duomo's majestic spires pierced the blue sky, huge beyond anything she could have imagined. Workmen, looking no larger than birds, crawled over the cathedral's enormous roof. After three centuries, the huge church dedicated to Maria Nascente was still not finished, but still its glories were more than the girl from Limone could take in. She couldn't count the buttresses, the spires, the statues that adorned every surface. The structure dwarfed every other building she could see.

She turned in a circle, tasting the city's shape and flavor.
Palazzi
stood with churches at either shoulder. Most streets were wide enough for carriages to pass, with room on either side for pedestrians. Here and there were shops, fruit stands, a
trattoria
or two.

In the distance, the two stone towers of the old fortress, the Castello Sforzesco, loomed over the surrounding countryside. And much closer, just a brief walk north in Via Mengoni, she could see the square roof of the new theater, La Scala, completed just two years before. The old theater had burned to nothing, but the wealthy patrons of Milano had seen to it that the new one went up as quickly as possible.

She stood gazing at it, trying to absorb the fact that she was actually here. She had reached Milano, and La Scala was only a few steps away. Her goal was within her grasp.

When Octavia's dinner arrived she ate everything. Sometimes during the rehearsal period she had little appetite, but she knew she would need her strength. She drank a half-bottle of Tuscan wine, finishing her second glass as she soaked in the tub, bubbles frothing beneath her chin. She welcomed the wave of fatigue that swept over her as she climbed out, and she tumbled into bed with a sigh of complete exhaustion. Surely Ugo would be waiting for her when she woke.

Tired as she was, sleep still did not come quickly. The melodies of the opera ran through her head, maddeningly. As usual they were not her own, but those of the other rôles, Zerlina's and Donna Elvira's and even Leporello's “Catalogo.” When her eyes closed at last, the music was still playing in her brain, like a radio with no off button. She dreamed, and it was, again, of Teresa Saporiti.

Teresa and Mozart, panting, tumbled together onto a pile of cushions in the salon of the Countess Milosch. Teresa's head spun as much with giddiness over the success of the opera as with the wine she had drunk. She had laughed until she could hardly stand, had danced while Mozart played the Countess's excellent harpsichord, had dined on roast pigeon with new potatoes and sweet dumplings. She had stayed close to Mozart, longing to be near him, to possess this plump little genius of a man. She would not have dared to go further. But the Countess, with her burnished black hair and hard, knowing eyes, had managed to seduce them both together.

Zdenka was on Mozart's other side, pressing her lips to his throat. Teresa would not be outdone, but slid forward until her body covered Mozart's. Emboldened, she found his mouth with hers, tasting wine and tobacco and an oddly pungent flavor that was all his. She reveled in the kiss, in the movement of his lips against hers, in the thrill that ran from her toes to her throat. She was thoroughly drunk on success and excitement, and she felt at that moment she could have anything she desired.

Distantly, she suspected that it was the Countess's hand, not Mozart's, that crept beneath her skirts, that tore away her smallclothes to find her hot, yearning center. In a remote way, she understood this was a shared moment, that it was not only she, but Countess Milosch, joined with Mozart, possessing him, taking him in this moment of passion.

She didn't care. Her body flared, melted against Mozart, against the Countess's hand. When she cried out, she didn't know whose laugh it was that throbbed in her ear. She didn't know whose breath warmed her cheek, whose groan vibrated against her breastbone. But she knew, a moment later, that it was the Countess's teeth she felt breaking her skin.

The bite flooded her with feeling, a second orgasm of heat and pain and surrender. She felt faint, and at the same time exquisitely aware of every smallest part of her flesh, lips swollen with lust, eyes blind with it, skin tingling with shock even as her bones ached for more.

The Countess's teeth released her, and Teresa fell back against the pile of cushions, spent and shuddering. She turned her head to Mozart. His eyes were closed, his mouth open in a sated smile. His neck was bleeding, but there was so little blood that it hardly seemed significant. Teresa put a shaking hand to her own throat. Her fingers came away smeared with red, but there wasn't enough even to trickle down into the fall of lace over her low-cut bodice.

The Countess chuckled. Teresa realized it was her voice she had heard. “Lucky little signorina,” Countess Milosch murmured, her hand caressing Teresa's hip. Her voice throbbed with spent passion. “Lucky to have shared the tooth with Mozart.”

Teresa sighed, and her eyes, like Mozart's, fluttered closed. She fumbled to find his hand, and clutched it. The Countess rose, shook her skirts back into place, and left them. Teresa pillowed her cheek on Mozart's shoulder.

It was Constanze's voice that woke her. Teresa struggled to open her eyes. The lids were gluey and resistant. Pale dawn light through damask curtains striped the rugs and polished floors of the salon. Constanze was shaking Mozart's shoulder, saying, “Wolfgang! Wake up! You're due at the theater!”

Teresa rubbed her eyes with her fingers, and Constanze glared at her, her small face rigid with anger. Teresa shrank back against the pillows.

“How could you let him fall asleep here?” Constanze demanded. She shook Mozart again. “He's supposed to conduct a rehearsal! And there's another commission that came in last night, the moment the opera was over, and he doesn't even know yet….”

Mozart stirred at last, groaning, and Constanze tugged at him until he sat up, one leg still propped on a silk cushion, the other stretched out, toes caught beneath the legs of a French love seat. He pried his eyelids open with his fingers, and when he saw his wife, his infectious laugh bubbled out into the quiet salon. “Stanzie!” he cried. “Oh, Stanzie, wasn't it marvelous? The best yet. I could compose a dozen more
Giovannis!
”

“Oh, Wolfgang, I could just kill you!” his little wife shrieked.

Octavia Voss startled awake with the remembered sound of Constanze Mozart's furious voice in her ears.

She sat up, confused for an instant. No. She was not in Prague, but in Milan. Milan of the twenty-first century, with the wintry sun spilling through the drapes. Il Principe.
Don Giovanni
. She was Octavia, not Teresa.

Ugo!

She threw back the covers and snatched up the thick robe from the foot of the bed. She hurried out into the suite and across to Ugo's door.

It stood open, as she had left it the night before. He had not returned.

Ughetto woke naked and shivering, curled beneath an orange tree's drooping branches. He didn't know how he had gotten there. He remembered only Nonna's sour wine, and Luigi's strong arms carrying him toward the tub. Now the smell of oranges filled his nostrils, and the ground scratched his bare buttocks as he struggled to sit up. His thighs felt sticky, and when he looked down, there was something dark drying on his skin. It flaked off when he rubbed at it. Dark crescents had appeared beneath his fingernails. The perfume of orange blossoms mixed with some earthier scent he could not identify, though it seemed to come from his own body. He hugged himself against the chill. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know where he was.

He grasped one of the branches to pull himself to his feet. When he pushed out of his shelter, a little drift of white flowers showered his bare shoulders.

The rising sun had not yet burned away the morning mist. His feet brushed dew from the patchy grass. He looked about for some sort of habitation. The grove stretched into the fog, the ghostly shapes of the trees fading into the gray. Birds he couldn't see twittered among the trees.

His head ached ferociously, and the sour aftertaste of wine, bitter with opium, clung to his tongue. Not knowing what else to do, Ughetto turned toward the morning sun and crept forward.

When he heard the footsteps crashing toward him, his shaking legs collapsed, and he huddled, whimpering, on the wet grass.

It was Luigi's hard hand that plucked him from the ground, yanking on his thin arm and shaking him as a dog shakes a rat.
“Ecco!”
he grunted. “Found you at last.”

Ughetto squealed and struggled against Luigi's grasp, but Luigi hauled him up and threw him over his shoulder as if he were no more than a sack of flour.

“Paid good money for you, lad, and you're going whether you like it or not,” Luigi said.

Ughetto kicked his feet, once, but Luigi slapped the back of his thigh, a hard blow on his cold flesh. With a sob, Ughetto went limp.

Fifteen minutes' walk brought them back to the
villa.
Nonna had been waiting in the atrium, watching for them. She wore bandages on both her scrawny forearms, and she had a folded blanket in her hands. When Luigi set Ughetto on his feet, Nonna held the blanket out at arm's length. The boy stood, swaying, as Luigi draped the rough wool around his shoulders. Nonna, keeping her distance, shooed Ughetto into an inner room of the
villa.

The room was small and bare, with a shutterless window that gave a view of the bay. One of the other boys was there, too, dressed and clean. His eyes seemed a little hollow, but his cheeks were pink and his short black hair neatly combed.

When Nonna shut the door, he came close to Ughetto's chair and bent to look into his face.
“Che successa?”
he asked softly. “Where did you go?”

Ughetto shook his head. “I don't know.” He sniffled. “I woke up in an orange grove.” He scrubbed at his tears with the heel of one hand and looked about him at the simple blackened wood furniture and whitewashed walls. A little fire burned in a grate. There were three cots, but only one had been slept in. “Where's the other one? The other boy?”

The boy straightened. “They won't tell me. He didn't come back, after.” He backed away and sat on one of the black chairs. “I thought you were gone, too. I thought you died.”

Ughetto's heart thudded suddenly as it all came back to him. He recalled the tub, the warm water, the surgeon's knife. He remembered screams, but he was sure they weren't his. His nose twitched at the memory of the scents of blood and poppies and fear.

He shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He didn't want to look down at his body, to see what had been done to him. No one had told him whether he would look different, or simply be different. Forever.

“Do you hurt?” the other boy asked. He was older, perhaps nine or ten.

“N-no,” Ughetto said, a little shakily. “I'm cold, and—” His tears threatened again, and he swallowed a sob. “I wish my
mamma
were here.”

There was a little pause, and then the older boy asked quietly, “Do you sing?”

Ughetto stared at him, not understanding.

“Sing,” the boy repeated. “Do you have a good voice? Is that why they chose you?”

Ughetto said miserably, “I don't know.”

The other boy sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I don't know, either.”

 

The other boy's name was Maurizio, but he said everyone called him Mauro. He and Ughetto stayed in the
villa
for three more days, sleeping on the cots in the small room. Mauro said Luigi and Nonna would keep them until they were certain they weren't going to sicken and die. Ughetto asked how Mauro knew so much, and he answered that there had been a
castrato
in his town, one who had suffered the knife, but never developed a voice. Mauro said the other men laughed at him, and the women sniffed when he passed them, and made jokes behind his back. He spent his life doing tasks no one else wanted to do, cleaning privies and hauling garbage, simply for the privilege of being allowed to stay in the town.

“That's what will happen,” Mauro said glumly, “if we can't sing. There's nothing else for us to do.”

“Why did your family sell you, then, Mauro?” Ughetto asked in a small voice.

“Same reason as yours. Money.”

Ughetto wanted to protest this, to say that his
mamma
would never have sold him, but even as he opened his mouth to say the words, he understood that it wasn't true. The tavern brought in very little money, especially since his
babbo
had died. His
mamma
might have known no other way to support her family but to sell her little son. And for months now, his mother and his grandmother had behaved differently toward him. It seemed to him it had begun the night they had waited on the docks for the squid fishermen, but maybe it began when they knew they were going to send him away.

How could they do that, he wondered? Surely his
nonna,
at least, loved him. It had seemed so, before. But perhaps she had stopped. And if a grandmother's love could stop, Ughetto thought bleakly, then anything could happen.

The thought pierced his heart like the twist of a knife beneath his breastbone, a pain much worse than that between his legs. That hurt had already dulled to a distant aching. Mauro seemed to suffer much more from it. He winced when he sat down, and he moved carefully when he was on his feet.

Luigi and Nonna left them alone for the most part. They never examined them, never checked to see if their wounds were healing. They fed them well, bringing trays to the room, giving them clean clothes and warm bedding. On their last day at the
villa,
Luigi carried their dinner into the room and set it down, then went back to stand in the doorway. “Pack your things,” he said. “We're leaving in the morning.” He was gone, the door closed and locked, before they could ask him where they were going.

Mauro took his plate from the tray. “They're afraid of you,” he said to Ughetto.

“What? Who's afraid?”

“Luigi and Nonna. They watch you as if they expect something strange to happen. As if they don't know what you might do.”

Ughetto stared, dry-mouthed, at Mauro.

Mauro persisted. “Why do they do that? What happened?”

“I don't know,” Ughetto said.

“You did something, didn't you? Before you ran out into the orange grove?”

Ughetto's voice rose and thinned, a child's plaintive tone. “I don't know,” he said again.

“You must know!” Mauro said. “What do you remember?”

Ughetto gave a sigh from deep in his own small soul. “I remember the knife, and the water…and then nothing.” He didn't want to talk about slashing at Luigi, and at Nonna. He didn't want to tell Mauro how the surgeon had fled, in case Mauro, too, would be afraid of him. He turned his head to hide his omissions. Mauro, though he barely knew him, was all he had.

Ughetto was glad, when morning came, to leave the
villa
behind. He and Mauro settled on a pile of straw in the back of an oxcart. Luigi and Nonna saw them off with smiles and waves, but Ughetto caught the weighted looks that passed between them as the cart driver whipped up his oxen.

As the cart pulled away, heading north on the road that wound from Napoli to Roma, Nonna picked at her bandages with her fingers and blew out her lips. She turned back to the
villa
before the cart had rounded the first bend in the road.

 

Ughetto, at eight, was the youngest of the twelve boys at the
scuola.
The oldest was seventeen, tall and slender, smooth of cheek and sweet of voice. He was called Leonino, the young lion, and he would soon be off to San Marco to sing in its choir. He strode proudly about the music rooms and the
salotto
with his nose tilted up to remind everyone of his importance.

The
scuola
sat on a pine-topped hill east of the city. It was an airy structure of stucco and stone, with a lavish view of the immense dome of St. Peter's below its sun-washed courtyard. For months Ughetto felt reasonably happy there. His longing for his home and his family subsided to a dull if persistent ache, felt mostly in the lonely hours of darkness. He slept on a cot next to Mauro's in the dormitory. There was plenty of fish and bread and olives to eat at long tables beneath the arbor of grapevines in the courtyard. He had no chores except his music lessons, which surprised him.

He was the smallest of all the students. There were boys already coming into their height, of course, the older ones, but even the younger ones were bigger, stouter, taller than Ughetto. He fell into the habit of hiding himself when the rest of the boys bathed. They all washed their hair and scrubbed their bodies in an enormous sink of marble, laughing, teasing, splashing each other. Ughetto waited so that he could bathe alone, even though the water was not so clean when everyone else was done. He didn't even bathe with Mauro.

Once Leonino, leaving the bath, caught Ughetto just coming for his turn. “What's this, little one?” he cried. “Afraid to take off your clothes with the rest of us?”

Ughetto shrank away from him, gripping the bath sheet around his middle. “I just—I don't like—” he stammered.

Mauro appeared as if from nowhere, stepping between Leonino and Ughetto. He wore a bath sheet as well. His chest was dark and smooth, and his arms already showed curves of muscle. “Leave him alone,” he said to Leonino. “He's shy.”

The older boy laughed. “Better get over that, little baby. None of us has much left to be shy about!” He stripped off his own towel and danced naked in a circle around Ughetto, cupping what was left of his genitalia in one hand and waving the towel in the other like a flag.

Ughetto averted his eyes from the sight of Leonino's mutilated testicles.

Each of the boys looked different. Some had little empty sacks hanging between their legs. Others had irregular flaps of flaccid skin that stopped at the very top of their thighs. Some, like Mauro, had nothing left at all, their surgery as smooth and effective as if the entire apparatus had been snipped off. Ughetto's fingers had told him that his own testicles were small and flat. He found them shameful.

Mauro said, “Go away, Leonino. Ughetto can bathe when he wants to.”

Leonino danced away, wearing his bath sheet like a cape, snorting with laughter. Mauro folded his arms. His hair was still wet, dripping down his neck. “Ughetto. Do you want me to stay with you?”

Ughetto shook his head. “No, thank you, Mauro.”

Mauro gave him a curious look.

“I'm sorry,” Ughetto mumbled. “We just never—even in the sea, we were never naked.”

Mauro grinned at him. “That's it, then,” he said cheerfully. “It's because you were raised by women. We were all boys, and we swam naked in the river all the time. It was the only bath I ever had at home.”

“But would you do it now, Mauro?” Ughetto asked, staring at his bare toes. “Now that—I mean, now that they—”

The smile left Mauro's voice. “Maybe not,” he said sadly. “It was different when we all looked the same.”

“I don't want people looking at me,” Ughetto said.

“I know.” Mauro turned to the door, saying over his shoulder, “I'll bet you get used to it, in time. I'll watch the door for you till then.”

Grateful and relieved, Ughetto waited until the door shut behind his friend before he laid the towel aside and went down the steps into the water.

 

An old castrato called Brescha taught the boys scales and intervals. He would often point to the dome of the Basilica and say, “There! See that,
ragazzi?
Work hard, and one day perhaps you can sing in the Cappella Sistina, as I did. You can follow in the footsteps of the great Brescha.” He stroked his enormous belly, and his eyes grew distant. “They say they still speak of me at St. Peter's. They talk of my voice and my art.”

When they were alone in the dormitory, some of the boys jeered at Brescha. They laughed at his spidery legs, the swell of his stomach, his quavering soprano.

Mauro never joined in the jesting. His eyes were shadowed when he listened to the old man, and his lips paled with anxiety. One day when they were alone, Ughetto touched his arm, and said, “Mauro. Are you so sure you won't be able to sing?”

Mauro gave him a bleak look. “I can't hear the scales,” he said.

“Yes, you can,” Ughetto asked, tightening his fingers. “I'll help you. They're easy.”

“Easy for you,” the older boy said. He shook off Ughetto's hand. “I hear you sing them, and your voice is true.”

He was right. Ughetto's voice, a sweet, clear soprano, surprised everyone with its reach and its flexibility. The masters were pleased with him, and he was already beginning to learn turns and roulades, to study the patterns of recitatives and the simplest of arias. The more he learned, the more confident he felt. But Mauro…