In a way, this is pure depravity. Writing Hana-chan as a castrato is just too shameless a display of my rabid affection. But as I was reading Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven [I don’t really like Anne Rice, though I do acknowledge that she’s a brilliant writer, but Cry to Heaven is superb. Read it if you haven’t already.], I found out something about castrati, and their tendency to grow to enormous heights, with long limbs.

I mean, how could I resist?

I’ve done my research on castrati way before reading Cry to Heaven, but there’s just not much to be found. And I don’t have a access to a lot of resources that Ms. Rice had, and I can just see my parent’s faces if I told them I want to know more about castrati. *ha ha* Most of the technical information about castrati and their singing is thus based on Cry to Heaven, though it was still a pain to make sure I had my facts right and in all the right time periods, especially with the Asian addition I tossed in so that a Japanese castrato in Italy wouldn’t be too unbelievable.

When you come down to it all, Aria is really a work of fancy. I think the main reason I want to continue this fic in a time where I don’t have time is because I want to see if the style I’m trying to pull off is working. [No, I’m not trying to emulate Ms. Rice.] But it’s kinda shoddy, if only because the only times I get to write it is in various lectures. This part, which more or less sets the background, was written during a rather interesting series of lectures about the fall of Singapore. [Rest assured, I was pretty much listening to the talk.] In a way, it’s not so much a fanfic than a piece of creative writing [and believe me, to pull off the race, it has to get pretty creative. ^.^;;]

I’m getting this feeling that I’m stalling for time. Hmm. Oh well, my one last word of defense : Hanagata’s orginal Japanese voice is gorgeous. His seiyuu is superb. I mean, have you heard him cry? *sighs* Aagh, oh, just read it if you want to. >.< *all confused*

Technical Notes : Alternate universe, historical setting.

Aria
by Djinn

Chapter One

His Japanese mother had been the shining daughter of an esteemed operatic family. She was not allowed on stage of course, or in the very least, not allowed where word of it would travel to cruel ears. Nevertheless, she was taught to sing, and sing she often did, such that her voice was almost a legend in a world where women could not sing. His father was a dashing Florentine ambassador. It was not inconceivable that this distinguished Italian gentleman would take an interest in the ravishing young songstress while on a short diplomatic visit to that far and strange (barbaric!) country. It was very much inconceivable, to her family, if no one else, when she swelled with his child. Inconceivable, nevertheless, conceived. Japan had its prostitutes, their families had their dignity. This Italian ambassador and this theatre girl had scorned the one and destroyed the other. Of course, it was a great dishonour. Of course, she would have to die, and the child within her. Lissano Carlini, fortunately, was not a cold-hearted man. When he returned to Florence, he took the little songstress with him. But as a wife? No! No! Such a thing was unheard of in Florence. Not even as a mistress, no. In a foreign land she had been desirable, delectable, exotic. In Italy, she seemed to him a petite monster, with her almond eyes and her fine dark hair, falling like straight lines down her back, spilling thankfully over her Asiatic features like a shroud. And so this girl, big with child for him, became a mere servant in his house, as he turned back irrepressibly to his laughing Italian women with their bouncing curls.

The boy was born half a year later, a dark-eyed, dark-haired bundle with alabaster skin like his mother, and a thoughtful, solemn replica of her Japanese face. Much to Lissano Carlini’s relief, he was all of his mother and none of his father, this bastard son who could never be claimed. He even took his mother’s family name. Hanagata, flower form. The theatrical prima donna. For his first name, she called him Touru, transparent, penetrable. A reflection of the shattered glass shards of her life scattered on the floors she had to clean. That is, she named him Touru, but called him Hanagata all the same, or Hana, if it struck her fancy. It suited him well enough, this solemn-eyed infant who grew to be a graceful tangle of long white limbs, a gentle lily.

In truth, it hurt her to call him Touru. It had been the name of her favourite little brother, a quiet little scholar who loved to hear her sing.

To give him an Italian name had never been an option.

All at once a solace and a wound to her, Hanagata, a little older, was fast proving himself remarkably similar to his namesake. He was always polite, with a grave, thoughtful air dispelled only by the occasional quiet smile. He rarely spoke, he often read. Most of the stringent household grew warm to the little boy, though they shunned and spited his mother still. Even Lissano Carlini had been observed placing his great hand upon the silky head of his unclaimed bastard, gazing at him with such a tenderness in his eyes that the hurt was terrible to see as, in the next moment, he quickly took his hand away. The children, being children, were jealous, and consequently cruel to this bastard brother who was loved while he should have been loathed, pinching and smacking and striking him with harsh little blows and words. He bore all this silently. They hurt barely more than the increasing number of floors he had to mop on his knees, the buckets he had to carry, the fires he had to stoke, as little Hanagata Yuri gradually but surely withered away.

Little Hanagata Yuri was not ill, nor was she so tired as to die for it. She was fading away because she pined. She pined for a homeland she had lost, a family she would never see again. She pined with such a hunger that sometimes she seemed to rise above and beyond her minute frame like a great, grasping ghost. In her hunger, she loved her son, yet hated her son, seeing in him her brother, her country, but the blood of his Italian father, that ruined her - ruined her! She struck him often, but cried after that, cradling his trembling body in her stick-thin arms. He never complained. In fits of passion, she taught him of that faraway country, that strange and foreign language, that his Japanese was as good as - almost better than - his Italian. It was as if he was born to speak it. In truth, it was because he lived for her.

But amidst the nouns and verbs and particles and modifiers and so much more that made up Nihongo, as she always pronounced with pride, she taught him, with a wild and desperate fire, to sing. Not the Italian ditties nor their opera, none of those. She taught him to sing the great tragedies of Japan. There was Ohatsu, there was Okaru, there were the songs sung often by the sad and terrible white-faced geishas, there was everything she had ever learned to sing, as an innocent, cherished diva on her family’s stage [when no officials, or greedy little knaves were watching], so long now, so long gone. This withering woman, who had never really stopped being a lost little girl, in her longing had taught her son the sorrowful arias of the heroines in the great tragic Japanese opera. He learned them all; he sang them all, so that she would smile, though often she wept.

Of course, his voice was beautiful. In many ways, he was just like his mother.

Eventually, she died. It was inevitable. She had ceased living the day she set foot in Florence. For a full day, the boy cried. He stood by the modest pine coffin they provided for her body, head down, a steady stream of tears staining the dark pine darker still. When they buried her, he reached forward with a white grasping hand, mouth open as if some raw scream would rip itself from his throat. But the sound never came, and he dropped his hand back to his side a moment later, and it was as if it had never happened. Even the children looked away. Cruelty was difficult in the face of death. They buried one body that day, but two souls.

The servants reported that he cried till daybreak. They swore they thought he would cry forever, but as silently as they had come, the tears had stopped with the first ray of dawn, and he rose to attend to his chores.

From that day on, he did not cry. Instead, he carried the grief just inside him like a great, terrible bird. There was a person who lived without living. Anyone could see the shadow of death around his shoulders, like the shroud of his mother’s dark hair. He barely spoke anymore, but he sang. And while they had always been flawless before, his tragic Japanese arias now were divine. Even the coarse servants, who barely knew Italian, much less the delicate Japanese in his songs, wept to hear his strange and terrible sounds. It was as if the great bird of grief within him spread its wings to show its bloodstained breast. If he had been a geisha in Japan, men would gladly have sliced off their limbs to hear him.

As it was, he was a servant boy.

Lissano Carlini worried about his bastard son. Not that the boy was a nuisance in any way, or that he even showed himself often before his eyes. It was just that, despite his inclinations, despite his justifications, he felt a debt of duty towards the child. Particularly now, that the little songstress he had ravished from Japan had died. He had failed her, he accepted, in his infinite patience with the world, he repented. He hoped not to fail the boy as well, but what could he do? A foreign bastard in a strange land - he did not even look as though he had a drop of the Italian blood that ran in his veins. Lissano Carlini worried.

It was thus that, when Lissano Carlini first heard his bastard son sing, he thought that he had heard an angel from God.

Even as he reflected upon it several years later, he never thought nor felt that there was any shame in it. If the boy was lucky, he would have riches and fame. He would have Italy, even Rome, even the world. Even if not, a life in a church choir would be a life far superior to the servant work he did now, which would be all he could ever do if not. It was not as if he wanted this bastard son to procreate - he could not, the Carlini name could not afford it. That voice was astounding, a great, terrible, grief-stricken soprano. It would be a shame, even a sin, to destroy it.

Why not, then, a castrato?

The decision was made without much ceremony. The boy was sent for, the household duly informed. Clothes were packed - what little of them, arrangements were made. Letters were sent to the conservatorium in Naples, where letters graciously consenting were sent in return. There was a doctor in Florence itself who would do the deed. Some of the women cried, stroking his soft dark hair and clasping his thin frame to their ample bosoms. The boy himself did not fully understand. No one thought it necessary to explain further. All he knew was that something important was to happen, then he would be sent away to sing.

It did not truly bother him. There was nothing left for him but those great tragic arias, except now they would be in Italian.

He was brought to the surgeon by Lissano’s bravos. Two men held him down as the surgeon made his cut. They need not have bothered, he did not struggle.

They said it would not hurt, but it did, the first stroke of the knife bringing with it such fire, he was blinded momentarily by the pain. But he bit his tongue till it bled, reminding himself over and over that it hurt no more than unwashed floors, childish blows, the white dead corpse that was his mother, and those great tragic arias.

Hanagata Touru was eleven. He might as well have been a hundred and eleven for all it was worth.

to be continued...

Well, I dunno. ^.^;; There’s a lot of historical mish-mash mashed up in the fic. I’ll try to explain what I can.

Translations/Explanations :

Operatic family - I’ve probably covered this in Character Analysis before. Hanagata, more than meaning ‘flower form’, means the ‘star’ of the stage. Thus, it’s pretty safe to assume that our Touru’s ancestors were pretty important theatrical folks. The opera I’m referring to here would then probably be ‘kabuki’ [more on that later].

Women not allowed on stage - Something that nearly threw my fic into great disarray but is nevertheless true. The Edo era, I think, but am not sure. Women were not allowed to perform on stage, akin to the ancient church rule. It’s laws like this that lead to the rise of phenomenon such as ‘onna-gata’ and castrati.

Ambassador - It is unlikely that such a visit did occur, seeing as most of the European world thought the Asians barbarians and kept clear unless there was money to be made [don’t we all?]. But if so, an affair is very likely, as is the taboo of marrying an Asian woman. Discrimination is a worldwide bane.

Yuri - Lily. Hanagata’s fictional mother was given this rather blah name for a reason. ^.^

Japanese opera - After a lot of elusive and confusing research, I’ve figured out that I was probably talking about ‘kabuki’, a traditional Japanese performance art that incorporated much operatic music/singing to tell the tale. Ta-dah! Japanese opera! ^.^;;

Ohatsu/Okaru - Really heroines in traditional kabuki pieces. Tragic ones who died too.

Geisha - Traditional Japanese private performers, beautiful girls/women well versed in performing arts, and sometimes prostitutes. After yet more confusing research, I found that the geisha often performed to the shamisen, which was similarly used in kabuki - so it made sense that the geisha would sing the popular kabuki songs.

Castrato - If you’ve made it this far without knowing what castrati are, I’m very sorry. ^.^;; Castrati are male sopranos, boys castrated [i.e. having their testicles removed] between the ages 8-13 to preserve the purity of their voices. Castrati were created to fill the void in opera created after women were barred from performing on church stages, and became all the rage in the European world. Italy was noted for its castrati, and it was estimated that, at the peak of the fervour, 4000-5000 boys a year, mostly from poor families, were sacrified to the knife. Yet, only a few of these would ever become famous.

Bravos - As far as I can figure, bodyguards. ^.^;;