The Beautiful Choirboy

“Have no fear. First, just get into the bathtub. That will calm you,” answered the barber-surgeon, seating the boy in the basin filled with warm water, lighting a few scented candles and sending his mother outside.

Francesco was an alert youngster. Immediately on his arrival at school, his teacher was enthusiastic about his beautiful voice.

“Something so angel-like is rarely heard. It must be developed...” he had said to Francesco’s parents. “Send him to a choir of boys that demands more than I can in my school, but not to this local third-class lay choir. I have connections with the conductor of the boys’ choir in the Vatican. Let me see what I can do for him.”

And, in fact, he was granted an audition. Thus, Francesco found himself accepted quite early on in one of the best choirs in Rome. His voice was trained. It ascended to unsuspected heights, clear, transparent, following the music harmoniously, always well intoned, and following even the most difficult passages playfully, with the result that hardly three years later his parents were invited to appear at a private consultation with the choir director.

“The voice of your son is a gift of God which one must not permit to go to waste. It would be such a shame, were this gem to be distorted when his voice broke.”

“You mean our son should be . . .”

He didn’t allow the concerned mother to finish her sentence. “Castrated, yes certainly, not to would be a crime. Francesco is so tender and pure, he should not be ruined by vice. I’m already seeing him as a soloist before the Pope.”

He paused briefly to let the meaning of his words have their desired effect.

“We know a barber-surgeon. He is very reliable. Francesco will be in good hands with him. He knows how to deal with children and his work has always been exceptional. As I said, I consider it very important and in the child’s interest for him to undergo this little operation. Do you hear him singing next door? This clear, pure tone? So lovely, so tender and yet so firm?”

“But the expense?” the mother objected.

“You needn’t be concerned. I’ve already arranged for you to be reimbursed. So, may I give the barber-surgeon his assignment, as I understand that you share my opinion?”

Francesco’s mother had never considered this eventuality. What the choir director was promising him was tempting. Her son, standing at the side of the Pope, delighting the lord, a second Firanelli, perhaps? Silently, and not so certain that it was the right decision any longer after leaving the conference room, she went home. Along the way a beggar on the roadside asked her in a high voice for a kind gift.

The conductor of the boys’ choir didn’t leave Francesco’s mother any time to consider the decision that had been pressed upon her. The very next day he sent her and the boy to an address near the Vatican. The man received them cordially. After he had spoken with her briefly, he turned to the boy and had him tell about school, the choir and his friends. The he asked him if he knew why he was here.

“You’re going to preserve my voice, so that it doesn’t break,” answered Francesco.

“And to do so, I have to perform a small operation on you. Please remove your clothing so I can show you what I mean.”

The boy undressed somewhat shyly, being less embarrassed before the man than his mother. The barber-surgeon knelt down, taking the boy’s scrotum gently in his hand and said “There’s where I will operate on you, but you don’t need to worry, it won’t hurt. Here, drink this, it will make you stronger.”

Francesco tasted cautiously at first and then emptied the cup in one swallow. It tasted sweet, a little bit like bitter root. And now, take a bath.

The cutter had, after seating the boy in the basin full of warm water and lighting the opium candles, left the room with the mother and shut the door.

“We’ll wait ten to fifteen minutes. The heat will make his skin pliable, the drink will put him to sleep and the opium will stop the pain.”

When the time was up, he took a deep breath to avoid being drugged himself, opened the door and fetched the boy from the tub. Gently he laid him on a heavy oak table. He dried him with a cloth. Francesco was not conscious. His mother, who had helped carry him, smiled delightedly in an opium fog. The surgeon spread the child’s legs apart and tied a cord tightly around his scrotum, as close as possible to his little penis. He washed his hands with alcohol and also the boy’s sexual parts. The pulled out the knife which he always used solely for this purpose, which he always kept so sharp that it would slice a piece of paper falling on it and which he immersed in boiling water for a few minutes before each operation. With his left hand he held both the cords in their pouch of skin tightly while cutting through the skin along the cord. The boy’s face distorted slightly as the blade burrowed through the spermatic cords. He groaned in his sleep. The surgeon passed a metal rod that had been heated in a bowl of hot coals over the remaining edges of skin and closed the wound. He was proud that for over five years, he had lost not one of the boys that he had castrated. The severed testicles lay to the side in a wooden bowl. This evening he would mix them into his dog’s food.