Free Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice Page B

money he had from fetes and suppers where he’d sung, gold he hadn’t had time to waste, Guido disappeared with the clothes on his back without a word to anyone.
    *  *  *
    No one guided him. He had no map. He asked a question now and then, as for ten days he walked the steep and dusty roads that led him deeper and deeper into Calabria.
    Finally he came to the village of Caracena. And from there he went out at dawn, his coat matted with straw from the inn where he’d slept, and climbing the slope, found the house in which he’d been born on his father’s land, exactly as he’d left it twelve years ago.
    A woman stood by the fire, squat, heavy, the lines of her mouth sunken in her rounded face for want of teeth, her eyes milky. Her skin gleamed with the cooking fat. And for a moment, he was uncertain. Then he knew her perfectly. “Guido!” she whispered.
    Yet she was afraid to touch him. And bowing low, she wiped the place for him to sit.
    His brothers came in. Hours passed. Dirty children huddled together in the corner. And finally his father appeared, standing over him, the same hulk, to offer a crude cup of wine with both hands. And his mother placed a great supper before him.
    All stared at his fancy coat, his leather boots, the sword he wore at his side, with its silver scabbard.
    And he sat staring at the fire as if he were not surrounded by them.
    But now and then his eyes would move as if turned by a handle.
    And he would look at this dark assemblage of burly men, their hands black with hair and dirt, their clothes of sheepskin and rawhide.
    What am I doing here? Why did I come?
    He rose to leave them.
    “Guido!” his mother said again. Wiping her hands quickly, she came forward as if to touch his face. It was only the second time that anyone here had addressed him.
    And something struck him in her voice. It was the same tone of the young maestro in the darkened practice room, echoing back to the man who had held his head at the castration.
    He stared at her. And his hands commenced to move, searching all of his pockets. Out came the gifts he’d received for so many little concerts. A brooch, a gold watch, snuffboxes inlaid with pearl, and at last gold coins which he gave up to allof them. Their hands felt so dry, exactly like dried dirt on a rock. His mother was crying.
    He was back in the inn at Caracena by nightfall.
    As soon as he reached the bustling center of Naples, Guido sold his pistol for enough to rent a room over a tavern. And ordering a bottle of wine, he cut his veins with a knife, and sat drinking the wine as the blood flowed, until he lost consciousness.
    But he was found before he died. He was taken back to the conservatorio. And there, his wrists bound up, he awoke in his own bed with Maestro Cavalla, his teacher, weeping over him.

12
    W HAT WAS HAPPENING ? Was everything actually changing? Tonio had lived so long with the hideous notion that nothing ever would, he could not now get his bearings.
    His father had been in his mother’s room off and on for two days. A physician had come. And Angelo shut the doors of the library each morning and said, “Study.” They weren’t going out in the piazza anymore, and in the night he was certain he had heard his mother crying.
    Alessandro was in the house; Tonio had caught a glimpse of him. And he was certain that he’d heard the voice of his cousin Catrina Lisani. Comings, goings, yet his father did not send for him. His father required no explanations. And when he went to his mother’s door, he was shut out as once his father had been shut out. Then Angelo would take him back to the library.
    Then came the word that Andrea had stumbled on the dockwhile getting into the gondola. Never a day in his life had he missed the convening of the Senate or the Grand Council, but this morning he had fallen. And though it was only a sprain, he would not be going out behind the Doge on the Senza.
    But why do they talk of this, Tonio thought, when he is