I sang new words in unison with Riccardo. The great state of Venice was called the 
Serenissima. The black boats of the canals were gondolas. The winds that would come soon 
to make us all crazy were called the Sirocco. The most high ruler of this magical city 
was the Doge, our book tonight with the teacher was Cicero, the musical instrument which 
Riccardo gathered up and played with his plucking fingers was the lute. The great canopy 
of the Master's regal bed was a baldaquin trimmed each fortnight with new gold fringe.
  
  I was ecstatic.
  
  I had not merely a sword but a dagger.
  
  Such trust. Of course I was lamblike to these others, and pretty much a lamb to myself. 
But never had anyone entrusted to me such bronze and steel weapons. Again, memory played 
its tricks. I knew how to throw a wooden spear, how to ... Alas, it became a wisp of 
smoke, and there lay in the air around it that I'd been committed not to weapons, but to 
something else, something immense which exacted all I could give it. Weapons were 
forbidden for me.
  
  Well, no more. No more, no more, no more. Death had swallowed me whole and thrown me 
forth here. In the palazzo of my Master, in a salon of brilliantly painted battle scenes, 
with maps upon the ceiling, with windows of thick molded glass, I drew my sword with a 
great singing sound and pointed it at the future. With my dagger, after examining the 
emeralds and rubies of its handle, I sliced an apple in two with a gasp.
  
  The other boys laughed at me. But it was all friendly, kind.
  
  Soon the Master would come. Look. From room to room the youngest fellows among us, 
little boys who had not come out with us, now moved quickly, lifting their tapers to 
torches and candelabra. I stood in the door, looking to yet another and another and 
another. Light burst forth soundlessly in each of these rooms.
  
  A tall man, very shadowy and plain, came in with a tattered book in his hand. His long 
thin hair and plain wool robe were black. His small eyes were cheerful, but his thin 
mouth was colorless and belligerently set.
  
  The boys all groaned.
  
  High narrow windows were closed against the cooler night air.
  
  In the canal below, men sang as they drove their long narrow gondolas, voices seeming 
to ring, to splash up the walls, delicate, sparkling, then dying away.
  
  I ate the apple to the last juicy speck of it. I had eaten more in this day of fruit, 
meat, bread, sweets and candy than a human being could possibly eat. I wasn't human. I 
was a hungry boy.
  
  The teacher snapped his fingers, then took from his belt a long switch and cracked it 
against his own leg. "Come now," he said to the boys.
  
  I looked up as the Master appeared.
  
  All the boys, big and tall, babyfied and manly, ran to him and embraced him and clung 
to his arms as he made his inspection of the painting they had done by the long day.
  
  The teacher waited in silence, giving the Master a humble bow.
  
  Through the galleries we walked, the entire company, the teacher trailing behind.
  
  The Master held out his hands, and it was a privilege to feel the touch of his cold 
white fingers, a privilege to catch a part of his long thick trailing red sleeves.
  
  "Come, Amadeo, come with us."
  
  I wanted one thing only, and it came soon enough.
  
  They were sent off with the man who was to read Cicero. The Master's firm hands with 
their flashing fingernails turned me and directed me to his private rooms.
  
  It was private here, the painted wooden doors at once bolted, the burning braziers 
scented with incense, perfumed smoke rising from the brass lamps. It was the soft pillows 
of the bed, a flower garden of stenciled and embroidered silk, floral satin, rich 
chenille, intricately patterned brocade. He pulled the scarlet bed curtains. The light 
made them transparent. Red and red and red. It was his color, he told me, as blue was to 
be mine.
  
  In a universal tongue he wooed me, feeding me the images:
  
  "Your brown eyes are amber when the fire catches them," he whispered. "Oh, but they are 
lustrous and dark, two glossy mirrors in which I see myself even as they keep their 
secrets, these dark portals of a rich soul."
  
  I was too lost in the frigid blue of his own eyes, and the smooth gleaming coral of his 
lips.
  
  He lay with me, kissed me, pushing his fingers carefully and smoothly through my hair, 
never pulling a curl of it, and brought the shivers from my scalp and from between my 
legs. His thumbs, so hard and cold, stroked my cheeks, my lips, my jaw so as to make the 
flesh quicken. Turning my head from right to left, he pressed his half-formed kisses with 
a dainty hunger to the inner shells of my ears.
  
  I was too young for a wet pleasure.
  
  I wonder if it was more what women feel. I thought it couldn't end. It became an agony 
of rapture, being caught in his hands, unable to escape, convulsing and twisting and 
feeling this ecstasy again and again and again.
  
  He taught me words in the new language afterwards, the word for the cold hard tile on 
the floor which was Carrara marble, the word for the curtains which was spun silk, the 
names of the "fishes" and "turtles" and the "elephants" embroidered onto the pillows, the 
word for the lion sewn in tapestry on the heavy coverlet itself.