I, Cherubino

I.

MADAMA

-Why buy the candle when you can steal the sun?-

-Almaviva-

How she captured me in that instant, I cannot explain. I was a boy of eight, and should not have been vulnerable to gifts such as hers. It was summer, and the gypsy caravans that passed through were a common part of life in and around the village. Those who escorted me that day hurried the group along in hopes that I would elude the caravan’s call, knowing how easily rapt I could become. The woman took my hand by force in the moment that Gran Tio Bartolo turned his back, and began to read my fortune, whether or not I was willing.

It was all charming to me, so no offense was taken. She spoke so beautifully, and having one’s features praised is never tiresome, at any age. At last, she invited me to choose a card from a soiled deck, but in a sudden change of heart, put out a hand to cover my own as I reached for one of my liking. Staring deeply into me, she withdrew the cards, reached behind her and produced a white and pink blossom, more elegant than I had ever seen or have seen since, and laid it gently into my hand. “Learn the ways of the great women, page boy lord…for that is what I see for you. Your station is unimportant, if you will learn the ways of the great women. Your greatness is to be found there. Take your knowledge to the church, the palace, the magistrate – it makes no difference, page boy. The elite will fall before you if you will only learn…learn!”

At last, she withdrew, and a most wondrous aroma overtook me. I could not tell whether it was the blossom, some elixir lingering on her breath, or whether it was the true scent of her skin. I smelled it again as she leaned over me once more and whispered…“learn.” Capturing the nature of a woman’s true scent would continue to perplex me, apart from peripheral aromas, but I departed the caravan with her essence planted in my deepest memories – my first lesson.

It has always been true that whatever catches my fancy, I learn, and learn indelibly. If it does not, no amount of repetition will affect the outcome, and I will remain, despite my best efforts, thick as an oak. I cannot remember where I placed my snuff box moments ago, but I do remember all of the most momentous days of my life, even those of my distant youth. They came and went as ever-new astonishment, until I began to assume that nothing else would come at all, and dedicated myself solely to the discovery of Nature’s bliss.

My life, up to the day in which bliss failed me, was ruled by discovery, by one sweet awakening after another. The woman in the village had spoken the truth. My low social rank was an aery thing, and I have never deemed it an obstacle. In spite of my station, I knew that the world would come to me in time, and I would be loved. Nature had whispered it to me many years past, long before the fortune-teller, and that is how I knew it to be true. Colors, scents, landscapes, movement, music and innuendo were with and within me through every breath of my youth. Nothing that I beheld or fashioned ever died, not in my perfumed, ruffled and invincible existence at court. Until the unthinkable occurrences to come, I was convinced of what I sensed to be an irrefutable truth.

It was the third day after my El Conde, my Pàtron, was thrown from his horse that I most keenly remember. I was close enough to see the mishap, but too far away to prevent it. The village knew how I could run, but I pray that all believed I did my best, and would never shirk at such a moment. I alone was there, but it is the angels’ truth that I’ve never run faster than on that day.

Despite our sport in bygone times, I loved him desperately, as we all did, even the maids. Between the sun, the moon and El Conde, life was held steady, a promise on which we could rely in daily self-assurance.

My Pátron was a superb horseman, and the well-bred Fresian had never given the master reason for concern. I was terrified of the enormous animal, but El Conde wasn’t afraid of horses or men…only women, and I forgave him that long ago. When I reached him, his eyes were open, and he spoke in a hurried whisper, issuing frantic orders for me to fetch my Tio Figaro. Within the hour, Pátron rested in his chambers with La Condesa at his side. El Sol was restored to his seat in the heavens, and all was well at court and in the village. Tia Susana was there attending my lady as she always had. Both silently prayed that the incident would rekindle his passion for the only beautiful woman he seemed unable recognize, his good and brave Santa, his Rosina.

After all this time, to speak her Christian name still makes me tremble, but I have taken to calling her this blessed word in my private hours since the scandal in the garden. I prefer to speak of it as the masquerade in the garden, an incident barely a year gone. Even the gossips of the court had long tired of it. Lamentably, the experience also lost its power to bring El Conde’s affections home for long, and we labored under old familiar tensions.

La Condesa’s mind was purer than mine. She rejoiced that his heart was again under her care, but I wondered where his ride was to have taken him, and to whom. I believe that I was the more practical between us. To speak of El Conde in less than reverential terms would be a sin, but in truth, that night and following morning brought a strange, forced serenity down upon us all. For one, we knew where he was sleeping, and considering present difficulties, that could only be considered a blessing. Further, our attentions were distracted from judging his exploits, and returned to a genuine worry over his health. This is how Divine Nature intended El Conde’s house to be, and we felt its rightness.

Nonetheless, one should never attach a quest for joy to Divine Nature’s train. For boys, child-men, she is a cornucopia of possibility, and like all unschooled fools we lived stubbornly in that belief. Her darker thoughts were known to us in youth, but those sad fates only befell those without charm, the half-believing cowards who take what they are given and thank God for it, grateful that it isn’t worse. Oblivious, we blissfully played as novices underneath her bright gown, such as one might wear to the theater, Nature, being fully a woman, paid us no heed. As we groped in the dark for unknown pleasures, of which we possessed no understanding but spent dearly in the fear of anticipation, she expressed herself only when the time was right. Possessing her time and ours, she acted apart, not a moment before or after our need, regardless of whom it might injure.

And so, without glancing right or left, Empress Nature walked past the stables and the cooks, up the stairs past the servants with candles to illuminate the hallways, past Grande Tia Marcelina and Gran Tio Bartolo in the library, past Tio Figaro and into El Conde’s chambers. She strode proudly up to my master's bedside – and without a word to my lady took him away. As she approached, Pátron opened his eyes and smiled. Rosina took his hand, and he seemed like a new child. She understood what was happening. Whatever words he might have said to her in such a dire hour, his chance was lost as he bade her summon me instead. “Bring in my monkey. Bring me my tiny, lost officer,” as he was so fond of saying. “Bring me my parrot, my Papageno. He sang for you, Madama. Now, let him sing for me.”

No one came to fetch me. He fled the world with his dark eyes and wry smile rightfully attended by his reina, his Rosina. Tia Susana swears that it was his final declaration of love, but that’s Tia Susana, who is practical in the house, but not so much in the heart. I was not present, and this was not the day that I remember so well. What I most vividly recall…was the third day.

Pátron was not of everyday aristocracy. Not only was he admired for his lands and possessions, but for speaking courageously on behalf of the barons’ most honored traditions. Despite having taken one of those traditions too much to heart, in which a feudal Lord is granted first night privileges with any bride of the Casa, he was hailed throughout Spain as a champion of the former age. Silently, though, they admired him even more for winning the hand of Rosina, despite her meager heraldry. All who met her succumbed, not only to her beauty, but to the way she soothed every crisis by merely existing with her inexplicable goodness. El Conde was the iron hand of the aristocrats, but Rosina was the corona of the Casa, the patroness of its art and the glow of its vibrant life.

El Conde, as a cavalier’s cavalier, was hailed by all men and many women of importance in the region. He could not be brought to the Catedrál in Sevilla, but every dignitary of the cloth, every baron and every noble family came to the private chapel of our villa, a good ride from the city.

He lay in state for the better part of two days, but Rosina did not appear until the second evening, before the sun’s setting. For her arrival, the lid of Pátron’s casket was closed. Many people wondered at this, but I did not. The tradition is intended to provide a final physical remembrance for the grieving, but what loved one really wants to remember another in this way – vacant, silent, and without charm? Even for the most despicable of our number, we can all do better than that. After all, where would any of us be…without our charm?

When all had gone, Madama entered more quietly than a cloud. Only I remained, and prayed to remain invisible, sitting there like an uninvited guest a few paces away. For a moment, my wish was borne out. Processing like a diplomat visiting a head of state, she showed little interest in the elaborate coffin, but fought a valiant exchange with the idea of his demise down an aisle of no more than twenty of her tiny steps. Scarcely had she reached him when she brushed her hand along the elaborate box, and turned to go without having truly arrived. Her only hesitation came upon seeing me, absorbed in my effort to appear blank and empty, a drab ghost to ignore. My eyes were forced to the floor. It was then that a tiny trace of her resolve crumbled, but she regained her composure in time to prevent any meaning or message to escape.

The musty air of the chapel floated in crusty stillness, as though unchanged for hundreds of years. La Condesa departed, less quietly than before. The ornate white and gold of the finely filigreed altar dedicated to my lady swam in the half light, and perhaps it was through the prism of some unanticipated tear that the room flowed slowly about in the celestial liquid. The outer doors slammed as the betrayed wife answered the abuse God had so blithely added to El Conde’s unkindness, past and present. Neither God nor man, it seems, had any gesture to offer her in consolation. She endured life then endured this – her husband. I had only endured the latter.

Naturally, this memory is painted far past the point to which I am able to do it justice. It is nothing more than the portrait of an unnamed sensation. I could not speak for my lady then, and should never have attempted it now. However, this moment was one of few in my life spent alone with my Pátron. Somewhere in the odd contraption that lay beneath my finest wig, I fancied that we could at last have a conversation on equal terms, and that he could hear me and answer, but only when I bade him. What an unfulfilled wish that must have been. In the ebbing candle light, though, I thought it to be true, and venture now that it was.

Death was no more than a dream for me, because I had never experienced him in life. Death was not to be found in the world of gaily-colored tunics or sashes, powdered finery or artful women. He had no place in the amorous dialogues held behind garden lattices, or in the manner of movement prescribed for every social convention of importance. Now, the taking of life would be placed forever in my mind next to dark oiled wood, the musty air of windowless shrines and devotees chanting in old cheerless dialects. Even simple candles, the stalwart of our lives after dusk, and essential for stealing a kiss at village fêtes, accompanied our strange new guest named Death. Such an awkward arrangement – one could not dance with him, make playful repartee or share stories from past romps. He delighted in nothing, and I having been promised a vibrant and triumphant career by the fortune-teller, was the least equipped in court to make any sense of him.

Nevertheless, I would not shrink from my one opportunity, and crept forward, sitting within half an arm’s reach of the casket. Lowering my ear onto it, I must have looked as if I were trying to hear the ocean in a seashell. It must have all seemed most comical.

“Señor…my dear Señor…what an awful day this has been. To think that you of all people would be thrown from a horse. What do you think happened, Pátron? A scorpion, perhaps? I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking, silly as it may sound. I’ve often heard you speak of the day in which the servant classes would rise up in rebellion, and that all true gentlemen would be required to stand ready when they did. You don’t suppose that the horse was the first sign of it, do you? No, you’re right, it’s a silly thought. Corsario would never…but still.

“Ah, but before I forget, I should tell you that he is safe. Tio Figaro ordered him killed, but Madama wouldn’t allow it. He’s been sent to Sevilla, to the army. You know, as it strikes me even on a day such as this, that is amusing, don’t you think? The day you found me under the bed-clothes at Tia Susana’s, your first thought was to kill me, but you banished me to the army in Sevilla, too. Just think, Corsario and I might have been bunk-mates, or perhaps he might have been my superior officer.

“Forgive me, Pátron. I understand that I should act as the priests and old villagers do, but I don’t know how. Would you want a tribute like that from your lost officer? All I have is our gaiety and remembrances of sport together. Oho! You do remember the time in your chambers when I was locked in the wardrobe, don’t you? That’s the second time you tried to kill me. You treated La Condesa shamefully that day, you know. I’m sure that you’ve been properly scolded for that by now. You’ll have to grow accustomed to living in a place where people speak to aristocracy in any way they please. Oh, but Pátron, you should have seen Tia Susana when she released me and watched me leap from the window into the garden. I tell you in truth, Pátron, if I’d been six months older, I would have been too decrepit to manage it. Wasn’t I lucky? As I recall it now, you must have thought that I, not Corsario, was the first sign of the rebellion. Oh no, Sénor. I loved you too much for that. Before you fall into suspicion, Sénor, I would like to hear it from your own lips. You do understand, don’t you, that you were never, ever defamed in those times? It really was all innocent merrymaking, just as Madama said. Perhaps that wasn’t fair after all. You were a Spanish Lord, and she had more Italian humors. Perhaps something in the meaning was lost, and what was comical to her didn’t amuse you.”

In the silence of the chapel, I was faced with the truth. This sort of talk was accomplishing nothing, and try as I might I had no skill for talking with the dead. As it is with talking to God, no one speaks to us in return, and I have come to wonder if that is their secret, the dead and God. We want so badly for them to speak that we bare our souls to them and tell the truth in ways we could not possibly tell otherwise…and perhaps that is what they want from us. I met a man once who trained horses in this way, by ignoring them. He remained silent until, out of a maddening need to be recognized, the horse offered his undying allegiance, if only the man would speak to him. Only after surrendering his entire will would the conquistador converse with the suffering animal.

“So, Pátron, here is my truth. You simply cannot go. Madama will be left to swim in a sea of pirates, and I will lose my only opportunity to have a father. Who will ever tell me of the great women, and their scents? Who will guide me through the realm of gentlemen? And the villa! The villagers will founder without a sail. Speak to me, Pátron, or this fellow Death, who is only strange and charmless now, will become a horror. Tell me, Pátron, tell me. Charm has died in you, but not in me. You know the answer, so tell me while you can still remember – what am I to do?”

In that instant, in the fall of a single tear, Death broke through my flimsy fortress and became a horror after all. My breath left me, which, as I know, is his preference. “Voi…che sapete…”

“Nephew, please. It’s time.” The voice of Tio Figaro and his hand upon my shoulder only partially dispelled the dread. More importantly, it pulled me back from the precipice of my futile conversation, and stole my attention from the cavalier Death, who as I imagined strode silently about the town clad as Scaramouche. There, he flaunted his vanity with a fiery red plume on display, his head covered with an ostentatious and colorless hat.

The hand taking hold of my other shoulder was not so compassionate. I looked up to see my Tio Antonio and two burly men from the village looking down on me with a contempt devoid of manners between one living creature and another. I knew at once that the villa’s master gardener had been assigned other duties today, and though he was dressed in his best, the moist dirt from his grave-digging was already spread across my shoulder. “Get up, peacock! Get up! This isn’t seemly, and you’re wanted at the manor. Who would want you, I can’t think. And get your grieving done quick, boy. It’s a luxury that’s not for you. Get up!” I was not allowed the time to stand, yanked to my feet by the much bigger man. Still, the kinder Tio Figaro saved me, and his embrace could have been more tender only had he been the Pátron himself. How I wished that I were someone’s son.

The four men carried El Conde away as if he were a log or a forger’s anvil, to have his charm buried and silenced forever. I watched their silhouettes in the last of the light as they departed the chapel, and numbly followed without thinking. Once through the outer doors, I could see that everyone from the Casa and surrounding village was gathered outside under torchlight, though it was not yet needed. There must have been a hundred or more, but Madama was not among them, nor were one or two distant family members present. It was my first look at the great procession of Sevilla’s legendary noblemen. Some had, as it turned out, come from a much greater distance. Barely had I begun to consider such a scene when my arm was gently taken, and I was processing with the multitude, falling in behind. To my side walked the gentle Barbarina, lighter than air.

All at once, she cooed in my ear like a dove...“Pobracillo. Pobre Cherubino.” I accepted the insult poorl. “Poor creature? Poor me? Why poor me? Everyone else is going through this. Why have you singled me out? Go and be someone else’s ministering angel…no wait, you’re right. Stay…poor me, indeed.” As I have always believed, I am the least equipped of the entire court to endure any dearth of charm. So, I spoke not a word to her in return, and took the petting without shame.

Barbarina lowered her head onto my shoulder and nestled up into what hair she could find. I complied and nuzzled her while we walked. It was a wonder that we could navigate with the procession at all. She was, of course, giving her full measure of consolation in my hour of grief. I, in turn, was doing no such thing. I was doing everything within my earthly power, since I could find none elsewhere, to detect her true scent. She asked me about it later, those Italian words I mumbled on the long walk to bury El Conde and his charm. She swears to have heard them clearly, but could not decipher their purpose…“Voi che sapete.”