Fiend, page 3
part #3 of Voice of Blood Series
Oh, Lorenzo.
I learned from you.
Not every day, as much as I wanted to increase my knowledge, to please him more and more, every day. Some days he was a dry, imperious instructor who rapped my palms with a ruler when my handwriting was sloppy or I yawned, and he seemed hardly the same person as the young rake who, drunk on the season’s first wine, climbed trees and flashed his bare buttocks at the shepherdesses driving the Merino flocks back from the fields. I never knew which Lorenzo would present himself, and I prayed on bent knees every night that it could be my friend, my partner in crime, my playmate.
Yet our couplings were never playful. When he wanted me, Lorenzo was more the stern tutor than the rascal. He would slide his rigid member slowly—excruciatingly slowly—inside me, while I recited from the Dialogues (in Greek), Byron (in English), Tacitus (in Latin). He would not thrust, but remain as still as he could, sometimes gently coaching me if I forgot a word, softly nibbling the back of my neck and my shoulders. When I arched my back, begging him with my body, he would hold me still. He would force himself into me until I screamed from the pressure, the erotic agony; and my scream, always, would trigger his own climax.
After a season, we merely clutched each other close, nearly immobile, as joined as we could be, whispering the Dialogues to each other, pressed tight on a heap of coats in a small corner of the pressing barn, out of sight. There was no way we were out of hearing, though; although I no longer screamed, for I was no longer in any painful discomfort, our combined moans, though muted, must have been plainly audible to anyone in the vicinity. Yet we were never bothered. This is the advantage of privilege, the advantage of Italy, the advantage of the teacher-pupil relationship, with its very roots in the material of our studies.
I was not Lorenzo’s “skinny little jackrabbit.” I was his Phaedrus, his Ganymede, his wide-eyed boy. And he was my hero, my teacher, my lost brother, my lover, less impossible than Elena, more tangible than Christ.
I confessed it. I confessed it every single week to a heavy sigh and a giant litany of penance. I must have lit ten thousand candles in three years, and though I prayed sincerely for the reformation of souls, I found that I simply could not find the Lord’s disapproval of what I had with Lorenzo.
If I did not scream, he would not climax, and I kept the cries bottled in my throat for ages to keep him from ending it. Because when he was done, it was done, no matter what my state.
It was not as though I learned only the carnal arts from him (and those “arts,” in hindsight, were minimal). By the time I was seventeen, I was fluent in English, Latin, and Greek, had committed to memory the complete published works of Byron, most of the Iliad, and several plays of Aristophanes; I had at last become a good horseman, and I had gained enough skill with a light sword to best my own father. But the passion was what I lived for. As the lover of his pupil, Lorenzo Mercetti had become a brilliant instructor. But I also know that our moments of carnality gave him a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction; I do not think he could have deceived me on that account.
On others . . .
I should have killed him.
No, I will no longer think that way.
Litany
In the unusually cold spring, the early months of 1816, Mamma had fallen gravely ill. First doctors were sent for, then priests.
Tensions ran high. I fought constantly with Father, both on my own behalf and that of Elena. Still unmarried, and the only daughter still at home, she desired my father’s consent to manage the business while he better spent his time and energy maintaining his financial contacts in Naples and ensuring adequate care for my dying mother. Father refused to yield; the Fattorio would go to me, as the eldest surviving son, as much as he saw that I was unworthy. I wanted nothing to do with any business of any kind; I did not want to buy, or sell, or produce anything. I wanted only to think, read, paint, dream, make love. Father found this intolerable.
Lorenzo found Father’s perspective intolerable. “Let Signorella Elena have the farm and free your son to have his heart’s desire,” he scoffed. “You’ll only ruin him if you imprison him here.”
Father swiftly found Lorenzo’s presence intolerable. “When you have a son, you’ll understand,” he replied. “But I do not imagine that you will have an heir to carry on the legacy of D’Aragón, will you? That is the problem with all overeducated men; their selfishness knows no bounds. But Orfeo is mine, and he will do as I wish him to; and the sooner you assist me, as you have been handsomely paid to do, in ridding him of these useless notions, the sooner you can move along and further your own career.”
On a Thursday, I waited in the garret room for Lorenzo all morning, and when the clock struck noon, I went down to Mamma’s bedroom to bring her a bowl of broth and a piece of bread. She lay supine on the great bed, her eyes focused on the ceiling, a ghastly grayish cast to her olive skin. Cancer of the womb had swiftly consumed her flesh and her strength. The parish priest, a sallow old man, did not look up from the translucent pages of his catechism when I came in. I knelt down and kissed her, holding my breath against the smell of her dying mouth.
“Dearest Mamma, did Father speak to you about Lorenzo? He did not arrive for our lesson today.”
The priest glanced at me, then back at the Scripture. Doubtless my confessions regarding Lorenzo had amused him.
“He has been dismissed,” Mamma said, looking at me with tear-filled, laudanum-glazed eyes. She was up to two hundred drops a day, which was clearly inadequate to relieve her pain. Her grip on my hand was like an iron manacle. “I am sorry, Feo; I know that you are very fond of your tutor, but your father has decided that you have learned enough from him.” She paused to take a weak, painful cough, which dried the angry protests on my lips. “Your father has ridden to Naples to consult with Bishop Giambalvo; please do not tax his temper overmuch when he comes back. He would like for you to begin on the accounting tomorrow, before shearing time arrives.”
I was filled with a rage I could not display. I kissed Mamma once more, raced downstairs, and found that Lorenzo had, after receiving my father’s dismissal at the break of day, ridden to the village with all of his belongings. I saddled Prego and pursed.
I found Lorenzo in the southern of the two taverns, half through a jug of wine and a meal of anchovies, mutton, olives, and flatbread. I had anticipated that he would have a gloomy countenance, having just lost his employment; but rather the converse was true. He held court with several appealing, if slatternly, young women and a handful of soldiers, proudly bearing scars and tatters of skirmishes with Napoleon’s forces. “Master Ricari!” he greeted me. “Join us in a drink to the Two Sicilies!”
“I will do no such thing,” I responded. “That was artificially imposed; Naples is not part of Sicily and never will be.” Everyone guffawed at my refusal to take a joke, and Lorenzo scooped his arms around my shoulders and made me sit next to him.
He had not been infuriated or saddened by his dismissal; he spoke frankly of his feelings toward my father, whom he saw as inflexible and backward-thinking, “unenlightened” as it were. “Besides, I am through with country living. I am returning to the beautiful city of Geneva,” he declared. “I still have friends there who can offer me lodgings and entertainment. Do you want to come?”
It was as simple as that. He asked me, and I accepted without a second thought. I was eager to see the world, and even more eager to leave behind my mother’s sickbed, my father’s disapproval, and the only woman I had ever loved, who was forbidden by natural law to return my love. Here was an opportunity to escape. And I imagined that Lorenzo would never request my company if he did not love me as I did him.
Following Lorenzo’s detailed instructions, I rode home, entered the house without undue notice, and packed a bundle of necessities—mostly money, some linens, and food. I also took one of Father’s ornamental swords that I had always jealously longed for as a child, and which he would only rarely let me touch. The dirty excitement of my crime overwhelmed my senses, and I fled from the house without kissing my mother good-bye.
I do not think I really thought I was leaving for good. I was running away the way a petulant child runs away; nineteen years old, and sneaking out of the house with a vagrant’s knapsack full of sweets, cheese, and a Ricari wine of Lorenzo’s favorite vintage.
But as I prepared to mount Prego again, Elena appeared down the hill coming from the grape presses, a vision of amber and ivory with her coiffure frizzing undone, and a ledger book clutched under one arm. She saw me leaning against Prego’s saddle with my bundle and my criminal’s guilty slouch, and she froze and stared at me with an expression of alarm.
We did not speak. I all but heard her voice in my head: How could you desert our mother? Our father? This place? I almost broke then—almost dropped the bag and crawled under her skirt and cried—but I did not. Instead, I lifted my chin and set my face into what I felt a man’s should look like. She offered half a smile but shook her head a little, her eyes limpid with tears.
I swung onto the gelding and kicked his flanks with all the viciousness of my guilt. I was oddly consumed with a desire to drink a cup of milk.
How I loved milk.
And how I longed for it after that day. Milk and honey, pouring down my throat and pooling in my belly, spilling over my warm, sticky fingers.
After that day, I would never taste it again.
My lioness, I would never now leave you. My sunlight, I would give anything to blind myself with your glory. My mamma—
Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our—
I should be so lucky.
At the beginning, my travels with Lorenzo were a delightful adventure; dashing by horseback through the waters of the Volturno, singing bawdy songs, eating and drinking heartily in an inn until I lost my senses. By the second night, when nausea sharply curbed my intake of wine and pipe tobacco, I found that Lorenzo did not bed with me, but instead disappeared at dinner with a serving girl. I lay awake and alone in a strange room full of the scent of old straw and tallow, awaiting his return, longing for his touch, for his gaze, for the laughing purr of his voice. I even prayed to St. Valentine, but Lorenzo did not return until dawn. I pretended to be asleep.
At Naples, I sold Prego (poor old lad; he was too old for decent work and probably became dog meat), and with the money paid our passage to Genoa. On the ship, Lorenzo played at dice and amused the sailors with tales of Odysseus at sea. When we disembarked, I refused to cover Lorenzo’s gambling debts to the ship’s captain, standing up boldly and defending my honor with long, Latinate words, until that excellent seafaring gentleman knocked me senseless and recovered his money by force.
Lorenzo had not lost heart, however, and soon soothed me with caresses and poetry. “We still have Geneva,” he said. “And we shall arrive, and bathe our feet where the Arve and the Rhône come together. Wait until you witness this beautiful sight—the green river and the blue, becoming one! And we still have Metafora. Don’t spoil her; it will be tempting because she’s so pretty, but don’t do it.” I nursed my bruised temple and leaned into his back, embracing him, rocking loosely behind him in Metafora’s saddle. My mouth formed the words I love you but I could not give them breath.
Between Torino and Geneva lie some of the highest and starkest of the Alpine mountains, and the climate this early summer was brutal. We made very slow going, particularly because the delicate Metafora could not carry us both all the time, and so one of us (usually me) would walk. My feet were a mass of blood blisters, and there was no alternative but to walk on them until my boots were swamps of blood and leather. I did not complain; I did not feel I had the right to raise my voice. It was my decision to come along. I would be a man, and suffer in the name of love and the quest.
It was that wretched, exhausted night at the inn between Torino and the French border that my nightmares began. I saw my mother’s death and burial; I heard the terrible wails of my sisters and the thud of earth falling onto her coffin. I woke choking on a scream, my swollen bloody feet in agony, shaking in terror and loathing, wanting nothing more than a warm shoulder to cling to. But, of course, I was alone: Lorenzo had once again found warmer, plumper, feminine company.
The next morning, my father’s sword was gone, stolen in the night by that same feminine company. I gave voice to every complaint I’d repressed over the previous month, including sleeping alone. Lorenzo did not meet my eyes, instead staring impatiently at the ceiling. “Are you finished talking about the Passion?” he snapped. “We mustn’t waste time. I have it on good faith that the Lord Byron himself is in Geneva as we speak.”
He could not have found a more effective way of silencing me, or of driving my list of woes from my mind. “Byron himself!” His very name was a prayer to me!
Lorenzo smirked and tousled my hair. “While you sleep, my boy, I gather intelligence. Let us away; I don’t know how long he will remain. And you may ride, since your tender feet are so bruised. Here—have a drink. It will ease the pain.”
I see the mountains now: crag after brutal crag, peak after frigid peak, cresting and falling like waves of stone. Summer does not reach that part of the earth; snow falls on ice and becomes ice, embalming all things unlucky enough to be trapped and helpless in the cold. Once I saw a wild rabbit, its innards shredded by a long-departed eagle, preserved six inches deep in red-stained translucent ice.
Delirious with fatigue, I saw taunting faces everywhere in the rocks, and I was never warm or free of pain. My only dreams were nightmares. I lay frozen alongside Mamma in her coffin, sucking a spadeful of dirt that my mouth could never moisten, the weight of six feet of earth breaking my back. At first I was afraid to tell Lorenzo of my nightmares, but after some months, I clung to my memories jealously; he did not deserve to know more of my inner mind, when he refused to kiss me upon the mouth and mocked nearly everything I said. Still, I did not refuse him when he wanted me, grateful for any intimacy, with the cold faces of the mountains casting their silent judgment on every step.
Metafora brought her silent, exhausted burden to the edges of Geneva on October first. The city was beautiful on that autumn day, the sun glowing warm, the sky achingly clear, doubly so as reflected on the surface of the lake. Fecund roses burst into bloom, the tidy handiwork of their roots and branches belied by the sloppy fullness of their blossoms. I breathed deeply of this ambrosial air, and said aloud, “Geneva, held in the arms of France!”
Lorenzo chuckled. “How thoroughly you have renounced your father!”
“Let us find an Englishman and make it complete,” I said.
We hailed a carriage passing on the road, and Lorenzo asked the coachman in French, “Pardon me, sir. Where does the Lord Byron reside?”
That coachman’s mustache twisted into a smile as he looked at us. We were a ragged twosome, and had obviously been traveling roughly for quite some time. “Lord Byron?” he repeated. His Swiss-French accent could not be more different than my companion’s, and I had to struggle to understand him. “The Lord Byron has departed Geneva, my good fellow.”
Or perhaps I did not wish to understand him.
“What?” shouted Lorenzo, his face growing even redder than his Alpine sunburn.
“His Lordship departed for Italy not three days past,” said the coachman, plainly amused.
Lorenzo stood paralyzed with shock, so I quavered out a “thank you” and led Metafora away from the road. I shook Lorenzo by his lapels. “What are we going to do?” I begged.
“Italy,” said Lorenzo, as if speaking to a dream. “He left for Italy.”
Je veux aller à Paris.
This refrain of my nightmares, this phrase whose rhythms I internalized so completely that I set it to music and sang it to myself. I want to go to Paris. A thousand, ten thousand times, my prayer, my plea, my madness.
Je veux aller à Paris.
The friends and lodgings that Lorenzo had assumed would still be in place were no longer in existence; his old schoolmasters had been victims of the civil unrest caused by Napoleon’s defeat, and their whereabouts unknown. The new masters of the school shooed us away with obvious distaste, caring for neither our education nor our indigence. As an Italian, this callousness struck me to the quick, and I hurled a few choice words behind me. I had barely enough money left to acquire a room for the night in an overpriced hostel outside Cologny, where, a week previous, Lord Byron himself had trodden the very same soil. After a brief, rushed, joyless meal, Lorenzo and I collapsed immediately onto the bed and fell unconscious, our first night spent in a bed in over a month.
When I awoke to the bright beam of a lantern in my eyes and the Swiss shouts of our country host, Lorenzo was gone. I had slept (dreamlessly, for once) for almost twenty-four hours straight, and the host wanted money for an extra night. I searched through my bundle for my purse and found only my notebook and pencil, the tattered copy of The Thousand Nights and a Night that I had used to entertain us by the fire, and a small twist of poor-quality pipe tobacco. He had not even deigned to leave me a note. I knew he would not be back and was likely already halfway to Lausanne.
I wanted to explain, to use my hard-learned powers of oratorical persuasion, but I was too agitated to remember any French except a single phrase, which I babbled over and over again like an idiot. The hosteler retorted in a strange dialect that I did not well understand, but I did gather that he did not care where I wanted to go, as I was a thief and my companion was a thief. I was thrown, with my books and empty bundle, out onto the road.
October nights in Geneva can get very cold, but I could not return home in disgrace; death was preferable. And I thought: Keep going. Keep going. Do not let this stop you; do not let him win.
I did what I had to do.
