APPASSIONATA – A TEARING OF SOULS
Disclaimers: I do not own.
Warnings/Ratings: M in general, though ranging from T – M, for mature scenes and ideas, sometimes explicit activity, use and abuse and castration of pretty boys, dark themes, superfluous remarks on Venice's beauty, and references to any and all decadent 18th century secrets and vices
A/N: This isn't an entirely historically accurate fic, as in this particular era the most famed conservatories were mostly in Naples. The Republic of Venice was still somewhat reclusive in the years before Napoleon's invasion, but for the fic I'm taking the creative liberty of using one of the most beautiful places in the world – 18th century Venice, the stunning Serenissima. If this is the first time you've been introduced to such a scenario – the singing schools for castrated boys – and it piques your curiosity, I highly, highly recommend Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice, the movie Farinelli, and/or listening to some Vivaldi, Scarlatti, and Greg Pritchard when the moment calls. c:
appassionata, part the first
la primavera
I. a departure
You're not Farinelli, boy!
The words had been spoken in a low hiss, hardly soft and yet somehow so loud in the big empty hall. He could still recall the coarse echo of them around the moldering dining room, the way the mustiness of water rotting the grand palazzo was still there even behind the smells of hot dinner, and their echo was sharp and icy like the rage and disgust crystalizing in his father's narrowed eyes. And the discomfort had been palpable on the air, hot between his brother and him, heads bowed and eyes cast away because contending with their father was like trying to mold cold hard marble that had already been set for tens of years.
Yes, it had been in this same dining room with the scents of dust and mold and extinguished candles and the ever-present familiarity of the Canal from outside the tall windows that Tokiya had felt the bleak weight of shame crushing him, suffocating him, like the stench of the water in the lower floors of the house, as his father had torn his dreams to shreds with those words—and then again it was in this same room that the devastation from that had suddenly and inexplicably been transformed into innocent rejoice when his father had put a warm hand on the back of his neck and said with wine on his breath, Is that truly what you want, my son? To sing?
And here he was again.
Tokiya reached up and ran his fingers over the gilded edge of a tall portrait he'd known his entire life, the portrait of his grandfather and his uncles and his father, the smell of turpentine barely perceptible beyond the perfume of mold that was growing stronger and stronger with every passing year.
"Your trunks are at the door, Signore," the old valet said, breaking the silence at the threshold of the dining room. He spoke carefully, voice thin enough already, as if there were some fragility in the air he was afraid he might destroy should he be too intrusive.
Tokiya nodded. "Thank you."
"Your father wishes to see you," the valet added quickly, and when Tokiya turned, he'd already bent into a sweeping bow. He was probably avoiding Tokiya's eyes. Tokiya didn't blame him.
There was a sense of death in the air as he moved up the cool marble stairs to his father's office. He paused at the doors to the loggia balcony, brow knotting. The way the light sparked off the windows of houses opposite, the gold and the Brunelleschi adornments like a city painted on fraying canvas, distracted him for a moment.
He smelled the tobacco before he even passed through the door into his father's office. The man didn't deign to meet his eyes directly. The French furniture looking out of place and the atlases and Renaissance frescoes dancing on the walls between packed bookshelves, there came the echo of shouting gondoliers and laughter in the narrow streets.
"You will not tell anyone."
How was it possible that his father's voice could rumble like thunder, so low and gravelly and yet with such clout? Tokiya felt himself lowering his eyes, cowed, but then he steeled himself and met his father's gaze over the thick Flemish desk. There was a lamp of Murano glass, unlit and crafted so perfectly.
"Tell anyone what, Father?" Tokiya murmured, and it startled him how he could wear a straight face as convincingly as if a mask.
"Don't test me." His father uttered a cold laugh, stemming perhaps from the ice in his eyes. Tokiya bristled. "You know very well. You will not tell anyone your blood is Ichinose. From here on out, you'll be known by your stage name only: Hayato."
"But Father—" And Tokiya saw the darkness snap in his father's eyes, but he could not stop himself from arguing. Part of him was so ashamed of his own voice, but he was too enraged. "—Father, I'm only going to the conservatorio for further lessons—to perfect my voice so that—"
"Tokiya, you have been nothing but a disgrace from the day you expressed that gross desire to sing! You could have anything, my son, and you want to sing?"
"If that's the case, Father, why did you permit it for so long? Was it the lure of money? And now that the money's at risk, you just can't stand to face your own accountability, can you? Father, I don't have regrets! I want this—"
"Don't raise your voice at me, boy! Go on, get your 'formal training' if that's what you call it, but know that when you're through, there will be no place for you here. You can pursue this petty dream of yours. Your brother, however, I can rely on. I can trust him with the family's responsibilities. Call yourself my son no longer, Tokiya! You've betrayed the Ichinose name and I simply cannot forgive you!"
His father was sending him off with all the feeling of banishment, and Tokiya was stricken.
It was unjust. It was completely twisted. Tokiya knew it, and that was the worst part: the inability to change what he knew was wrong.
His footsteps echoed down the marble hall, tapestries and rich portraits watching him as he moved. There, his trunks at the door, and the wizened valet waiting for him. And there, his brother, pulling him to his chest in a strong desperate embrace, trembling hands and the scent of clean linen, the crunch of brocade, the clasp of hands on his face and the whisper in his ear: "My brother, I'm so sorry, I'm so very sorry, know that this is not what I wanted for you at all—"
"It's not your fault." Tokiya pulled his brother's hands from his shoulders, shrugging. He could feel the darkness of his own expression, jaw tight and eyes sharp. He felt the terse smirk as it crossed his face, the ghost of a deadened smile. He met his brother's eyes as the servants opened the broad doors and started moving his trunks to the waiting coach below the house. "I'll prove him wrong, you'll see. I'll prove to him this isn't some fleeting wish of mine, just wait."
"I believe that."
"Take care of him for me."
"Write to me. Better yet, I'll write to you. I want you to visit if you can."
"I won't be far."
He was essentially orphaning himself. He was aware of it.
Years ago, wine had aided in his father's acceptance just as brandy in the warm milk had soothed the pain after the operation and his father had stood at the foot of his bed with his hands clasped behind his back, husking, If only your mother could see you now, you little bastard... You're as stubborn as she was, and you have her eyes...
And now he was no longer Tokiya Ichinose but Tokiya Hayato, the training singer, and leaving the Ichinose palazzo meant denying himself everything that had come to him in birth. This grand house, this protection, this bloodline, this respect, this money, this power... All, thrown away as if a letter into the fire, for a dream that burned in his chest like the most destructive of flames.
And the bravos sneered at him, the horses stomped and snorted, and when the coach finally jerked forward, rattling on the flagstones, Tokiya finally released the breath he'd been holding.
On to the Conservatorio di Saotome.
The curtain rises...