Choir Boy

Everyone has a memory which marks the beginning of their young lives: a point which marks the beginning of retained memory. Mine is fire.

People were screaming and flames licked the darkened sky as at the building collapsed nearby. I remember someone hushing me as I sobbed, and whisperings wondering what was to be done with the innkeepers’ son. This is all I have of my former home, family, and life.

My life began in a squalid city orphanage. Run by nuns, it was cold, dank and uninviting. As a child, I was always hungry, and to me there seemed to be only two seasons: sweat and ice. Hunger was aggravated by bullying, and our education was sorely neglected. Our lives consisted of waiting for one of two events: meals and church. In the church, we were warm or cool, the perfect relief to the unyielding conditions of our lives.

Sometimes, before church, the nuns would gather together the boys -- for we were all segregated from the girls -- and test us. Those of us who could sing were allowed to stay in the naeve longer than the others, and so the greatest joy was to be chosen for the boys’ choir: where food and warmth were guaranteed. I was taken younger than most. At the tender age of six, shortly after my arrival at the orphanage, I was taken aside by Father Paulo for private tutoring as one of four soloists.

Father Paulo was a kind man. He would tolerate no bullying amongst the choir, and he had great hopes for all of his boys when they were grown. Over the next 3 years, he taught all of us the theories of singing, teaching us not only the holy music of the service, but also the glorious Italian operas, and even pieces of his own devising, designed to challenge our voices. All the boys but one, Adiano, loved the Father. He cared for us, made sure we had what we needed and that these things were not lost to the larger, older boys, and in all ways was the father we no longer had.

Adiano disliked Father Paulo because he had heard the Father discussing us outside of class with another priest. He ran into the yard and called us over in a rage because the Father had refused, on our behalf, to do “what would assure us a place in any choir in Europa!” In his ranting and raving, Adiano let slip that he had not overheard what Father Paulo had refused to do, but that anything that would assure him an illustrious career could not be bad.

He was wrong.

Not a month later, Father Paulo was struck down by his own body, dying suddenly in the night. We four sang his own music at his funeral, but it was neigh impossible to staunch our grief. It was then when we were approached by Father Simone. He told us that there was a procedure we could undergo which would allow us to sing as we did now until we were too old to stand. In our grief, none of us thought to determine the catch. All four agreed to the procedure, and two days later were on our way to the doctor.

Father Paul had explained to me a few months prior to his death that there would be much pressure in the future for me to be castrated. My voice was rivalled in our city only by that of Adiano, and we two were also, even so young, highly trained. Despite assurances to the contrary, he said, the maintenence of the quality of my voice would not be guaranteed, nor was the surgery always completed without complications. He told me that his nephew had gone through the procedure voluntarily, to preserve his voice, but that when puberty hit, his voice changed drastically: not because his voice cracked or his larynx grew into manhood, but because his growth spurt came on so rapidly that his stretched throat could never reproduce the sounds it had once created so beautifully.

Father Simone hurried us into the doctor’s shop, and each boy, one by one, was ushered into a tiny room at the back. They never returned to the waiting room, so I never knew what was to occur until I too was brought in, the last. The doctor told me to remove my pants and had me sit in a chair. Then, more quickly then I could comprehend he had me strapped in, my legs separated with a tiny knife in his hand. I was terrified, but when I screamed for the Father, Father Simone clapped his hand over my mouth and told me to be quiet, and that it wouldn’t take long.

In a matter of minutes, these two men took from me something that I never thought I could lose: any chance of me becoming a man or a father. I fought back fiercely, but in good faith I had allowed them to strap me in and remove nearly everything that would have made me a man. The procedure was incredibly painful, and the surgeon seemed to take pleasure in mutilating me beyond recognition. Tears streamed down my face as I mourned what I had lost, and as I was pushed into the next room Father Simone berated me for my childishness. Ungrateful wretch that I was, I could not even be thankful that my future was now assured? I sobbed harder, knowing the truth. When we entered the room with the other boys, all of whom looked shell-shocked, we knew nothing would ever be the same.

It was weeks before I could bring myself to eat more than the little bit needed to keep me alive. Celio, my closest friend bore for me the brunt of Father Simone's wrath so that I could mourn. While I nearly starved, he stood strong in the face of his own mutilation to keep the Father from beating the rest of us into submission so that the church's moneies could be proven well spent. It was Celio who talked me through my depression. Celio who defended me, and Celio who reminded me the solace music could provide me.

Although Father Simone, had taken over the responsibility for the choir and we four, he did not apply himself to our training. Instead, he brought in an opera master from Roma, who tutored us and tortured us mercilessly. Gone were the comforts of our father-figure. Gone were the special treats snuck in under the noses of the nuns. Gone was the protection from bullies that we seemed to need even more now, knowing what I did about how we would grow. My only comfort, and one I shared with Adiano, Teo and Celio, was the knowledge Father Paulo had given me before he departed. We would grow tall and long-legged. We would develop less muscle than we country-born would naturally have had. Our hair would not come in thickly, and we would not need to shave. We would be known as Everett -- emasculated -- and would be easily recognised as such by our striking height, slender build and high voices.

Our training continued to be rigourous, but was supplemented by exercise now, because the opera master had known many Everett in Roma, and all had been lazy and become flabby. He would, as he shouted at us from his seat, have no more lazy musicos under his tutelage. As the years passed,Teo was the first to hit puberty, and a great disappointment to Father Simone. His voice stretched as Father Paulo’s nephew’s had, leaving him uselessly trained as a vocalist with no voice. With no other training, Father Simone claimed that he would be useful only as a drudge, and had been about to relegate Teo to the life of the poorest of the poor when the opera master chipped in,

“He may be worthless as a soprano, Father, but he now knows the music as few do. He might do well as a choirmaster in a small church.”

At thirteen, Teo was shipped off to a small country village, not far from our city, to pluck from its citizens a boy’s choir in order to inspire greater piety in the populace.

With each advancing year we three felt only terror of our futures. No longer so certain of his fate, Adiano now railed against Father Paulo for not living and protecting us from his nightmare. One night, frustrated beyond bearing, I snapped at him, saying some things I did mean, and many I didn’t. It was in that night that I lost Adiano as a friend, and gained him as a foe. Before that evening, he regarded me as friendly competition, but after, I was nothing more than another man trying to win his prize. Would that I had realised it a bit sooner.

As we went through our own transformations, Adiano distanced himself from us. He placed himself cunningly into the care of the man he cursed for his uncertain future. Encouraging Father Simone to promote him to the upper reaches of the church, Adiano hoped that, should his voice be retained, he would get a chance to entrance a bishop, or even the Pope and assure his future. Celio and I stuck together, despite evidence that his voice would not be as well preserved as mine. By the time we were all fifteen -- an age far more advanced than any other child of the orphanage -- we had come into most of our growth, and it was evident that only Adiano and I had reaped the full benefits of the castration. Celio’s purity had been maintained, but his voice had dropped to an alto/countertenor, leaving him much less in demand then our pure sopranos. Fifteen was the longest any of us could be held in the orphanage. Most were expelled at thirteen, as Teo had been, but we were accommodated through to our fifteenth years in case we would be of value to the church.

Father Simone saw great value in me, but my attachment to my friend Celio and Adiano’s pervading whispers eventually encouraged the Father to sell Celio and I to an opera company in Florencia, for whom we would work until we rembursed them for our cost. The trip to Florencia was extremely educational for me. This was the first time I had left the grounds of the church or orphanage since I was brought there at the age of four. All around me were the sounds of nature I had not been able to hear over the noise of the city, and there were trees and colours other than gray! My arrival in Florencia was greeted by even more colours. The murals, terra cotta roofs, and glorious bridges inspired me, and for the first time I dreamed of what life could be like outside the walls of the church.

I was not sure what kind of welcome to expect of this opera company who had paid to have Celio and I come to them. They had no assurances of our abilities, as their agent had not even left a review with the guard who accompanied us, and I was almost afraid what this could mean. Celio was optimistic that the conditions could be no worse than before, but I was not so certain. We arrived at the rear of a gigantic the guard grudgingly introduced as the Opera House, and were hustled inside. Through a series of brightly painted doors we were pushed until we came out in a series of seats facing a massive stage. On it stood a broad, colourfully dressed man pacing and muttering to himself. As Celio and I exchanged a glance, the man looked up and saw us. He waved us over to him, and energetically introduced himself as Fillipo, the director.