The plane scored across the darkening sky like a misshapen crucifix tearing a wound in the heavens.
9
A Savage Freedom
Le Castebin was all candle-flicker, cream linen, and chiaroscuro. Their supper, though, was a little less solipsistic than usual. Partly because Nicholas allowed himself to become drunk more quickly than was customary and thus was prepared to give unusual voice to habitually concealed thoughts. And partly because Alessandro too was concentrating and responsive for once—eliciting information, seeking to draw Nicholas out, though for reasons of his own.
In truth, Alessandro’s sole and busy aim ever since Nicholas had disclosed the news of his wife’s death was to work out the new situation with regard to money. His most itchy hope: an allowance. Now, surely, given that Nicholas was no longing paying his wife’s fat rent or living expenses, there was a chance that the tetchy old tart might be prepared to rechannel at least a portion of this expenditure in Alessandro’s direction. Those funds that he wasn’t used to keeping for himself he would not miss—something like that. The question, therefore, was how much extra did Nicholas have with the hag out of the way? How much to pitch for? Certainly Alessandro deserved something regular. Because while this shitty little money thing with Nicholas continued, his inventory of the balance of pros and cons—the default loop of all Alessandro’s thoughts—kept coming up negative. Yes to Paris. Yes to the apartment and the parties therein. Yes to the restaurants and yes to the musical soirées and yes to opera and blah-de-blah-de-blah. All puttable-up with—as long as darling Nicky never got jealous of his trips to Greece. But having to ask for money all the time! No. Having to explain that he’d run out again. And oh the boring palaver with the fountain pen in the study—the silly old slut waving the check around for ten minutes, pretending to wait for the ink to dry. No. No. No. So if he could just get an allowance—even a small one for now—then everything would be as perfect as could be. Choose the moment, though. Be as charming as champagne. Actually (Alessandro was beginning to believe), it wasn’t going to be that difficult: Nicholas looked quite handsome tonight, with his short hair and those straight white eyebrows—the brutal but very fanciable father-general in the film about the sexy slacker of a son who hates the army but eventually rescues America just the same.
As was his habit, Alessandro made great play of his winsome desire for sweetness by reading out each of the possibilities—temptations narrowly resisted—until, at length, he declared that no, he couldn’t possibly have chocolate again and how about a coffee instead?
The waiter bowed—a man long ago departed from these shallows for distant oceans of indifference.
“How are you feeling, Nicholas? Are you tired? God, you’ve had the longest day. Thank you for this, by the way. I love eating with you.”
“You don’t have to say thank you. It’s not necessary.”
“Do you want to talk about your trip?”
“I’m not tired.”
This was true. Nicholas was not tired, or not locally so, at least. He returned his attention to his glass—the lazy bubbles drifting languidly to the surface. All that fizz and fuss seemed so long ago. Apart from Alessandro’s extraordinary physical beauty—and he really was Perugino-pretty—his great virtue was that he did not matter in the slightest. And occasionally Nicholas felt that he could say whatever the hell he wished to him, confident that he would neither understand nor reflect upon it.
Nicholas shifted his chair so he could pull his legs from under the table and stretch them out to one side.
“Life let her down, you know, Alessandro. Politics let her down. Russia let her down. London let her down. And I… well, I couldn’t give her what she wanted, what she needed. Poor woman. Poor bloody woman.” He shook his head.
“When did you two…” Alessandro swirled his remaining wine around his mouth, making it froth. “When did you two meet?”
“We met in Russia—in Moscow—at a party, actually. One of my father’s little get-togethers with his Soviet acquaintances. She had just started working in the Secretariat. She was a rising star and she was accompanying some idiot from the Party. She was… she was a very clever woman.” Nicholas looked directly at Alessandro. “She defected to marry me, you know. Abandoned it all six months later: family, job, and friends. Her home. Can you imagine anyone understanding that now? Defecting. The sheer risk. The absolute finality of the severance.” Nicholas set his glass down, two long fingers pressing at the base, and spoke softly. “Knowing you can never go back. Making a decision like that takes courage. Real courage.”
Like all small-time egotists, Alessandro was in the habit of believing every remark to pertain in some way to himself—oblique praise or oblique criticism. And so now he sought to assert his own courage. But could see no obvious opportunity and so chose the next best thing—an indirect attack on what he perceived to be Nicholas’s cowardice. “When did… when did she know?”
Nicholas ignored the question. “We had three or four good years—yes, it’s hard to believe now, but we did. Even when the children arrived. We were always friends. Or at least we always understood each other. Understood the exact nature of each other’s knots, even if we could not exactly undo them… You might find this hard to believe, Alessandro, but actually I think we were happy. Really.”
Alessandro widened his eyes and said breathily, “In love.”
But Nicholas was way past his usual irritation at his lover’s illimitable falsity. “For Christ’s sake, it was impossible not to be happy: young—young and in Paris, sharing a single room in Zola country with a Russian defectress who had left everything to be with me. My God, it seems like a different city…” He tailed off. The mention of those days had made him aware of how old he was, how old he suddenly felt. And the fact that Alessandro hadn’t been born when he had married. When he had married. How in Christ’s name did these things happen? Life passed faster and faster: whole decades racing by like rushing landscapes glimpsed from the window of a perpetually accelerating train. He finished his wine, the taste a welcome reminder of the present. He had never had money back then—or even the prospect, if he was to be honest.