Or maybe this was all lies too. Maybe he was just making everything romantic, as he always, always did (the true sign of a monster). At the end of each of the culs-de-sac down which his mind careered, there was, he knew, a gaudy theater wherein savage satires were ever being staged. And to whom was he talking anyway? There was nobody left to tell. His wife was dead. He could not trust himself one inch.
Vanished entirely now was Nicholas’s dapper manner, and though dressed the same, he appeared in the doorway of his own bedroom like a man who spent every day of his life fighting hand to hand through Hades and back.
“You’re home!” Alessandro came out of the bathroom, steam chasing him, a towel wrapped around his waist and a dressing gown draped over his shoulders—an unusual modesty, Nicholas registered, and a symptom of uncertainty. Truly the young these days were so very, very obvious. Like the puerile century, they lacked charisma. But here at least was relief: the old salve of younger skin.
“Did it take all afternoon?”
“Yes, it did.” Nicholas put his slim diplomatic case on the polished marble surface of his dresser. Life, the great distraction, was stirring sluggishly in his blood. And Alessandro’s black hair was still wet and water ran from the curls on his forehead, causing him now to wipe his forearm across his brow—a little too slowly, Nicholas noticed. Despite the robe and towel, there was still, as always with Alessandro, a flirtatious door ajar. Evidently, though, the poor man had no idea what mood to expect. Understandable. Nicholas knew well enough that people lived in constant trepidation of his moods. (Had his temperament always been so changeable, or had he made it so—in order that people would fear him? He couldn’t remember. So much was dark beyond eighteen. All was secret and suspicious and… and bloody Soviet.) In any case, it was obvious that Alessandro was waiting for his cue. So, disregarding the infantile whine of the abysmal music, Nicholas forced himself to smile his tight-lipped smile.
“But the good news is that I do not have to go to London. They can do everything through the Paris office.”
“That’s great, Nick.” Alessandro fastened the gown but let the towel drop.
“And so tonight we are going to celebrate. Forget cooking. Forget that bloody concert.” Nicholas hated to have his name shortened. Either Alessandro did it deliberately to annoy him, or he did it because he wanted to insist on some sort of parity. What a farce. Through forty years of impatience, Nicholas still could not make up his mind which was more annoying, the guile of straight women or the wiles of gay men. They were as bad as each other. A tragedy, really, when what one really wanted was a straight man. But let Alessandro have his junior satisfactions; Nicholas’s mood at least was recovering.
“Le Castebin, I think.” Nicholas forced another smile. “Shall we? You can have your langoustines façon. And their new house Champagne—from Troyes, Gaston tells me—is sublime. We’ll dispatch a bottle each—why not? It’s a while since we got ourselves well and truly tight. Brahms is such a terrible bore anyway.” Nicholas realized that he had better show some interest. “And anyway, you… you must tell me about Greece. I want to know all the details. Did you get to Delphi? Did the oracle have news for us?”
“I was in Santorini.” Alessandro picked up the shirt lying ready on the bed. The dressing gown came off.
Nicholas looked, unreservedly. “You have caught the sun again.”
“I topped up on the sun bed with Freddie at the gym while you were away.” Alessandro enjoyed flattery more than anything else in the world and could tease it out of quick-drying cement if he applied himself.
The phrase “topped up” annoyed Nicholas, though. The word lurking behind it, the word “tan,” annoyed him too. And the name Freddie somehow infuriated him. Campness. But the revealed body—ah, the naked body of this… this other… The naked body of this other human being entranced him, engrossed him, bewitched him like a river god rising in vapors of jasmine and myrrh with a different violin sonata for each of his senses.
6
The Disendowed