Soon, life returned to normal and the media found someone else to persecute. I had saved my money well over the years and, coupled with the royalties I had made from the sales of Dread, not to mention the financial compensation that had come with The Prize, I knew that I could survive comfortably for the rest of my life, which, I guessed, would only be a year or two longer at most. I could feel it slipping away from me already. My spirit was gone. I would write no more. And without writing, without teaching, there was really nothing left for me.
And then, one evening, the wall came down.
It was November 1989 and I was at home when the reports began to filter through over the radio that the German Democratic Republic had finally reopened its borders after more than forty years of closure. Within the hour the streets below my apartment window were filled with people and I had a perfect view of the crowds as they marched along, calling up to the guards standing on the watch-towers. I watched with a mixture of dread and excitement and then, just as I was about to turn away and retire to bed, I noticed a young boy of about sixteen, beautiful and dark-haired, filled with the exhilaration of youth, rising up unsteadily on the shoulders of his friends, his hands reaching out to grip the top of the wall as he pulled himself up to stand on it, his arms raised in the air in triumph now as the people cheered him on. A moment later he turned around for his first view of the East and someone there must have caught his eye for he reached down in turn, holding out his hand to help a boy from the other side, the same age as him, who had also scaled the wall in an attempt to reach the summit.
I watched closely, my face pressed against the window, waiting for their fingers to touch.
Interlude
The Swallow’s Nest
Howard had gone into the village to buy peaches and Gore sat alone on the crescent terrace overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea wearing linen trousers, a white, open-necked shirt and a pair of scarlet slippers crafted for him by Gianni Versace and handed over with great ceremony when the designer had come to stay a few months earlier. There was something faintly papal about the footwear that appealed to Gore’s dual passions: history and power. He had only ever met two popes – Montini and Wojtyła – and they’d both appeared overwhelmed by a sense of their own destinies, although his grandfather had once told an amusing story about an evening he’d spent in the company of Pacelli, which had turned sour only when the burdensome subjects of Judaism and the Reich had been raised.
On the table before him was a cappuccino, a pair of binoculars, a Fabriano notebook, a Caran d’Ache pen, the galleys of his new novel and two books. The first was the latest work by Dash Hardy, which he’d read a few weeks earlier and despised for its insipid prose and the author’s reluctance to describe basic anatomy. The second had been sent to him a month earlier but he hadn’t got around to it yet. He supposed that he should at least have given it a cursory glance since its author, a young man whose features were not offensive to the eye, was due to arrive later that morning with Dash to spend the night at La Rondinaia.
But it was impossible to keep up with the multitude of books that arrived, unsolicited, day after day, week after week, month after month, an endless haul that had caused Ampelio, their mail carrier of many years, to write an outraged letter of complaint, citing back injuries from scaling the steps with so many packages. Fortunately, Ampelio had recently relocated north along the Amalfi Coast towards Salerno and been replaced by a lithe, brown-legged nineteen-year-old aptly named Egidio – young goat – whose hare-lip offered him an erotic appeal that otherwise would have left his face beautiful but unremarkable. Egidio, who revelled in the athleticism of his youth, fairly bounded up and down those brutal steps with what could only be described as gay abandon and no further complaints had been issued, but as much as Gore welcomed the boy’s daily appearances and cheerful greetings, he wished that the parcels would become a little less numerous. Over the last couple of years, he’d transported most of his own books, the ones he actually wanted to surround himself with, from Rome but they took up so much space in the villa that he sometimes felt a little claustrophobic, although Howard, peaceful Howard, never complained. Would there be no end to publishing? he wondered. Perhaps it would be a good idea if everyone just stopped writing for a couple of years and allowed readers to catch up.
Gore had known Dash for decades and although he liked him well enough he knew that he was essentially a hack with a modicum of talent who’d managed to sustain a career by taking care never to offend the middle-aged ladies and closeted homosexuals who made up the bulk of his readership. His books were efficiently written but so painfully innocuous that even President Reagan had taken one on holiday to California with him towards the end of his bewildering reign and declared it to be a masterful depiction of American steelworkers, unaware that the steelworkers in question were laying their pipes with each other in the gaps between the lines. Gore liked to think that Nancy – who had been such fun in the old days, before she sold her soul to the Republicans – knew what was really going on there but had declined to tell her beloved Ronnie for fear of destroying his innocence.
The two writers had first met at a queer club in the West Village in the 1950s. Gore had already published a few novels, pirouetting across the scandal caused by The City and the Pillar with the grace of a young Margot Fonteyn, and his reputation was more firmly established than those of most men of his age. He trotted around parties hand in hand with Kennedys, Astors and Rockefellers, with Tennessee and Jimmy Dean, and invariably left some remark in his wake for the guests to gossip over the following morning. It wasn’t uncommon for a boy to approach him at one of these gatherings, offering his cock or his ass in exchange for an entrée into the world of the privileged, but Gore preferred not to indulge in such base transactions. We can fuck, if you want, he would tell them if they were cute enough, but don’t expect anything more from me than an orgasm. Not that he liked fucking, or being fucked. He’d tried it a few times but it wasn’t really for him. He was a man of much simpler tastes. A hand-job was pleasure enough. A little frottage, perhaps. And as much as he admired the Roman emperors he’d never been interested in emulating any of their more lurid escapades.
On this particular evening, however, he’d noticed the young man staring at him from across the room but, as he resembled nothing more than the love-child of Charles Laughton and Margaret Rutherford, he’d done nothing to encourage his interest. Gore had been sitting with Elizabeth and Monty, but they’d left early when he said something that made poor Monty cry, and he’d been thinking of going home alone when the young man – Dash – came over and sat down at his table with a sailor, introducing himself as the author of a debut novel due to be published that fall.
‘How thrilling for you,’ he’d muttered, scarcely taking the writer in but enjoying his view of the sailor, who looked at him with the type of smile that made it clear he had only to say the word and they could run the Jolly Roger up the flagpole together. ‘But don’t tell me anything about it, dear boy. Otherwise it will spoil the joy of reading it.’