Histories.
Excerpts from a conversation in the Singing Mandrake. September 12th, 1888.
Ah, but there are so many ways to answer that question, Who are you? I find it fascinating, don't you?
Some will answer it with places: I was born along the coast of southern Italy, they'd say, where the sea was as blue as a sky, and the ruins of Greek houses and Byzantine churches were never far from the imagination.
Some will tell you what they do: a professional gambler, a sometime spy, and once a cellist for the opera, playing a part in an orchestra towards that inexpressible whole we called 'art.'
Some will speak of their family. My mother raised in poverty, her only luxury local flowers she dried and pressed and kept the names of, who was anxious her children never know want. My father an old agent of the crown, who had lost a leg but refused any help to his crutches or his chair, and preferred that his children never know disability. My sister Domitilla, who I called Dama, stern and imperious from the time she should speak -- from before she could speak, could straighten her back and stare at you until you were chastened into surrendering that doll that couldn't exist for anyone but her.
But geography, occupation, and lineage are surfaces. They're of the Surface, where we came from -- layers to be divested before we can dive down to the depths.
What happened? you might ask. What force took a man born between the sea and the sky and put him underground? But that would be too fast! I'd still be in my waistcoat, and you making to unbutton my shirt ...
I could tell you more of my father -- I could say he never smiled once at me while he lived, but smiled as soft as a whisper for my mother. And my mother, I could go on, adored him as the first rich thing she claimed and kept for her own. And between them were children to press and preserve like flowers, little jewels that might shine from her nightstand.
And I was happy. Happy to be a jewel, happy to shine. Your son is a master at Latin, a tutor would say. Or, When he plays violoncello it makes me weep. And my mother would exclaim il mio piccolo prodigio and kiss my cheeks. I have paid these men well, and expect you to excel for them, those were my father's words, and for them I would excel. If his love depended on my performance, I would treat him to such a performance!
What happens next happens in bursts and starts -- truly, it would be stopping to tug off my socks, to fumble with my gloves. I grew older. I gathered companions wherever I could, more people to impress and please. Once Cipriano, the gardener's boy, found me crying in a flowerbed, and when he asked why I was doing that, I told him I didn't know. What's the matter with the rich? he asked. Even their tears have no purpose. From that moment I determined to make him my closest friend.
And in another episode -- much, much later, when I went to university, what a fumble that was -- a schoolfellow took me to town to show me the music and gambling halls, the brothels, and I took up cards for the first time. I had been drinking so much and it had been so easy -- to lose all my money on a bad hand, to gain a generous stake from a sympathetic on-looker and end the evening blessing fortune. I was allowed to give myself over to fortune.
Fortune became my watchword. The child expected to excel became eager for a world where success and failure were not his alone. Where he could say I'd been given a bad hand -- and yet, I will not fold.
The gloves are off! Let's proceed.
I don't know how I decided to join the opera, nevertheless the traveling opera. Father disapproved -- it was not, he said, where I needed to be. But where was I meant to be? The family estate and hallowed halls of academia were behind me. I had not had enough of the road and the sky. So we lived from city to city and house and house, descending from nowhere and building from nothing a grand, romantic evening of pageantry and song. And then we'd go to town to celebrate until it was time to take to the road again. We'd drink. We'd dance. I'd dress en travesti. I'd fall in love, never wisely, but too well. Clasp by clasp, you come closer to the heart of me ...
... But then, a rip. A shirt coloring with blood. Enter Cipriano, the friend of my childhood, who might well have said I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring / Is heavy in my tongue. My father.
My father was murdered in his study. My sister vanished. My mother, my poor, sentimental mother, was mad like a Fury for vengeance, and she thought -- I can't say what she thought. And Cipriano had come to lead me back, back to an estate that had become a board for a Game beyond my imagining. Check and mate.
The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.
That's enough of the Surface, I think. That's enough for tonight. What we need is more wine, for the courage to dive deeper -- more wine, and more music! Vinum et musica laetificant cor -- wine and music gladden the heart. But the love of friends ...