“Did you always live in Russia?” Indulge the old bitch, Alessandro thought, lull him deeper into this softness of spirit.
“I was at boarding school in England, Alessandro. I lived in a dormitory full of boys.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Sounds perfect.”
“But yes, Russia was home. In the holidays, anyway. From the age of eleven until Cambridge.”
“St. Petersburg?”
“No. Moscow, when my father was at the embassy officially, and then Leningrad afterward, when he was sent there to do whatever the bloody hell he was doing.”
Alessandro tilted his head. “You never talk about your family.”
“You know that I was married, you know—”
“No, I mean your—you know—your dad and all that. Your old family. The Glovers.” Alessandro had glimpsed a path through the trees ahead. By way of family… to money. Family money. There was plenty of that, he was certain. He allowed himself a blink. “Your dad—the spy.”
“My father wasn’t a spy.” Nicholas returned his lover’s gaze directly. “My father was a shit.”
“Oh.” Alessandro withered beneath the sudden flare of disdain. “I thought he was at Cambridge with all those others…”
Wearily, Nicholas suspected he was hearing the story that Alessandro liked to spin to his sun-bed friends at the gym. And suddenly he wanted to exterminate the myth once and for all, even where its peddling did not matter.
“My father was a bloody fool. He liked to pretend that he was friends with the big men, but he wasn’t. I doubt they even knew who he was. He was peripheral, small-time, and he never got the top job.”
“The ambassador?”
“He liked to believe he could have been the top dog if not for his greater use elsewhere. But it’s bloody rubbish. He was like a randy little rat—and he got caught inseminating half of Moscow. Both sides can smell a man like that straightaway. Totally compromised from early on… And the others, as you call them—well, perhaps they were in it for principles, so one is asked to believe. But my father—my father, it turns out, was in it for nothing more than cheap Russian skirt. And bribes. Took it from anyone and everyone like a rent boy.” Nicholas made a conscious effort to relax his jaw. “He was a cheat and probably a thief too. All those paintings we have are the rewards of his conniving, bribing, smuggling. He lined his pockets by lining the pockets of the people who let him line his pockets. The clash of ideologies could have been a game of bloody brag for all he cared. It only mattered insofar as he could bet on it.”
Alessandro sucked his coffee spoon. “But he was still a sort of… mystery man?”
Nicholas shut his eyes a moment, determined not to allow the Italian’s insistent banality to exasperate him. “I suppose… I suppose-pose he must have been up to something, because the British let him go to Leningrad as the unofficial consul instead of recalling him. Which also means the Soviets must have let him go to Leningrad. Which means something was going on. Because—yes, you’re right—ordinarily our Red friends didn’t want Englishmen snooping around the naval yards. I doubt, though, that he was of much actual use to anyone. Probably only got away with it because he was so easily blackmailed by all sides and… Christ, you have no idea how very sick the whole world was then.” He paused. “And my father was the sickest person in it.”
“God, it must have been so weird.”
Nicholas looked at the ceiling. That the great dark leviathans’ struggle of the cold war should now be reduced to “weird”… His mind turned away. And suddenly he had an image of himself as a boy, playing backgammon with his nanny in the courtyard of the embassy, every single summer holiday afternoon of his adolescence wasted—not allowed to leave the house, not allowed to do anything but wait. That was Russia. Waiting for it to end.
“It was lonely,” he said after a moment.
“Hmmm… I bet your father wasn’t very good at expressing his emotions.” Alessandro’s face betrayed thought. “And you know, probably that’s why you don’t like expressing emotions. No, seriously. You were not allowed to feel, so you learned to touch. These things”—he rested his chin on his cupped hands—“they so get passed on.”
Nicholas smiled tightly. Perhaps he had Alessandro wrong after all. Perhaps there was an intelligence in there, lurking beneath all the crème caramel.
“I have no idea,” he said. “We hardly spoke to each other for the last thirty years of his life.”
“Anyway,” Alessandro continued, as if it were all part of the same thought, “I still think being an art dealer is pretty glamorous and enigmatic, and your father made a lot of money in his business, didn’t he?”
“Business.” Nicholas finished his wine. “What exactly is business?”
“You told me he even conned the president into swapping a picture. Buy them as bargains, sell them as treasures.” Alessandro tilted his head first one way, then the other. “Equals make a tidy profit.”
“The general secretary, not the president. And not the general secretary himself, but his dealer.” Nicholas sighed. “Yes, he did, Alessandro. He made a lot of money shafting everyone. He understood corruption intimately and it was the one thing he was very good at. Probably because he believed in absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Not even art. A curious sort of freedom. But he must have surprised even the Russians with his venality.” Nicholas looked directly at his lover again. “Let’s go to Berthillons and get an ice cream. I want to walk. I’m tired of sitting. And you are not really listening.”
But Nicholas was wrong. Alessandro had been listening as never before. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, this was the most interesting conversation they had ever had—the first emotional confidences that Nicholas had shared. And the first real hint, therefore, that he, Alessandro, might have acquired some purchase on what was going on inside. (The display of feelings: very important.) The only problem being, Alessandro reckoned, as he now stood up and squeezed the side of his tongue hard between his perfect teeth, that the moment to ask for an allowance had gone. Maybe later, though—maybe on the walk down the quay. Or maybe tonight was a bad time altogether. Hard to judge. Maybe all of this was because Nicholas was—would you believe it?—upset. Now that was a new one.
The two men, thinking very different thoughts about their very different lives, walked side by side until they came to the Quai de Bourbon, where they turned left, homeward, once more along the river’s edge. And now, oblivious of the covert impatience in Alessandro’s self-conscious step, Nicholas began to linger a little, looking out across the river toward the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville and the lights of the city rising red beyond. He had started feeling old again. His knees hurt with pain he dared not have confirmed or named, and sixty-two—sixty-two—sixty-two felt… plain elderly. Neither wiser nor mellowed nor yet magnanimous, but merely elderly. Infirm, unwise, uncertain—as though he personally had seen the world repeat the same mistakes too often, leaving him with no intelligent choice but faithlessness and nothing to do about it but await the onset of failing faculties.
They were approaching their entrance when he stopped and exhaled slowly. “You go on in, Alessandro. I’m going to wait out here. I want to… I think I want to watch the river or go for a walk or something.”
“Are you okay?”