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OH, HOW LONG the days could be without hihted There cahts when he didn’t appear at all The boys said he had gone on most important errands The house must run as if he were there

I slept in his empty bed, and no one questioned me I searched the house for any personal trace of hiued me I feared he would never come back

But he always came back

When he caht ainst his hard chest My weight was nothing to hirow taller and heavier every day

I would never be anything but the seventeen-year-old boy you see now, but how could a ht as he heft me with such ease? I a child

I liked it best-if I had to share with the others-when he read to us aloud

Surrounding himself with candelabra, he spoke in a hushed and sympathetic voice He read The Divine Comedy by Dante, the Decameron by Boccaccio, or in French The Romance of the Rose or the poees we must understand as well as we understood Greek and Latin He warned us that literature would no longer be confined to the classic works

We sat in silence around him, on pillows, or on the naked tile Some of us stood near him Others rested back on their heels

So those melodies he’d learned from his teacher, or even the wilder ribald tunes he’d picked up in the streets He sang mournfully of love andeyes

I had no jealousy I alone shared the Master’s bed

Sometimes, he even had Riccardo sit outside the bedroom door and play for us Obedient Riccardo never asked to come inside

My heart raced as the curtains closed around us The Master pulled openit playfully, as if it were no

I sank into the satin quilted down beneath his and let raze of his knuckles against my lips

Once I lay half asleep The air was rosy and golden The place arue move serpentlike intonectar, a potion so exquisite that I felt it roll through ers I felt it descend through my torso and into the most private part of me I burned I burned

"Master," I whispered "What is this trick nohich is sweeter than kissing?"

He laid his head down on the pillow He turned away

"Give it to ain, Master," I said

He did, but only when he chose, in droplets, and with red tears he now and then let me lick from his eyes

I think a whole year passed before I ca, flushed from the winter air, dressed in s and the old enameled slippers that I could find in all the world, a year before I caht and threw reat world-weary gesture, putting h thick arch-back chair looking at the coals in the brazier, putting his hands over the the flames

"Well, now," I said cockily and with my head back, a very man of the world, a sophisticated Venetian, a prince in the Marketplace with an entire court of merchants to wait on him, a scholar who had read too reat mystery here and you know it It’s tily enough

"Why do you neverWhy do you never feel anything! Why do you handle me as if I were a poppet? Why do you never?"

For the first tiloss and narrow and then widen with reddish tears

"Master, you frighten me," I whispered

"What is it you want me to feel, Ael, a statue," I said, only noas chastened and tre "Master, you play with s" I drew nearer I touched his shirt, sought to unlace it "Let ers and put the the up at h, said his eyes I feel quite enough

"I’d give you anything," I said is Oh, he onderfully hard That was not uncommon, but he must let me take him further; he must trust me

"Ath he drew me back with him to the bed You could hardly say he’d risen from the chair It seest our familiar pillows I blinked It see them, some trick of the breeze from the open s Yes, listen to the voices fro out and up the walls in Venice, the city of palaces

"Amadeo," he said, his lips on my throat as they’d co, sharp, swift and gone A thread stitched intobetween ainst ain

I dreamed I think I saw another place I think I saw the revelations ofhours which never stayed forfantasies I knew in sleep and sleep alone

This is what I want of you

"And you otten present as I floated against hi hi hihiers treainst me Drink it, drink it, drink it

He broke loose and lay to the side

I smiled as I lay with closed eyes I felt athered on ue took it up and I drea was heavy and he was somber He shivered still, and when his hand foundstill, and kissing his shoulder

"I hurt you!" he said

"No, no, not at all, sweet Master," I answered "But I hurt you! I have you, now!"

"Amadeo, you play the devil"

"Don’t you want me to, Master? Didn’t you like it? You took hed "So that’s the twist you put on it, isn’t it?"

"Hmmm Love me What does it matter?" I asked

"Never tell the others," he said There was no fear or weakness or shame in it

I turned over and drew up on my elbows and looked at him, at his quiet profile turned away from ," he answered "It’s what they would think and feel that matters And I have no time or place for it" He looked attiradually did I realize I was frightened For one moment it seemed that fear would obliterate the warht swelling in the curtains, of the polished planes of his ivory face, the sweetness of his sraver concern overruled the fear

"You’re not my slave at all, are you?" I whispered