Feast of All Saints (76 page)

Marcel didn’t move. And yet the physical presence of Christophe overwhelmed him. He felt drawn to Christophe as he had always been, to Christophe’s quiet and compelling strength. And he knew that it had never been his fear which stood between them; rather it was Christophe’s fear, and this seemed quite suddenly absurd. But what amazed Marcel was not this final realization, not the quiet admission that he had always known the truth, but rather that he had struggled against it for so long. What had he felt? That the world would become chaos should he admit what he could never deny? What world, and what chaos, he mused. Who had mattered more to him than Chris, what had mattered more? And any fear he had once known was obliterated, gone with the remnants of his dreams and his patronage which had never been there at all.

But even as Marcel stood still at the mantel, Christophe underwent a slow but cataclysmic change. His eyes narrowed for an instant, and he rose, moving impulsively away from the desk and toward the window where, resting his shoulder on the frame, he gazed through the narrow slats into the street.

These thoughts were too much for Marcel. It was all beyond him, and mingled with his love it was more than he could comprehend. He never once took his eyes from Chris, and now as only a yard lay between them, he moved silently forward. There seemed no reason on earth not to do that, not to defy the entire world.

Christophe’s restraint yielded slowly. He put his arm around Marcel. But it was rough, warm, as any man’s embrace might have been.

“Now, are you going to stand on your own?” Christophe whispered. His hand was almost hurting Marcel’s shoulder with its urgent clasp. “Answer me, I want to hear you say it.”

Marcel nodded.

“I won’t fail you,” Marcel said. “But you must tell me. Have I ever failed you in some other way?”

There was a flicker in Christophe’s eyes. His arm didn’t release Marcel; rather it tightened. “Never,” he whispered, the eyes inquisitive, solicitous. “How could you think that you have?”

Marcel, wondering, gave a slight shake of the head. “Has there never been anything else you wanted of me, something perhaps for which you wouldn’t ask?” He thought he saw just the glimmer of pain in the shadowy face. “Take it,” Marcel whispered. “It’s already yours. It’s been yours all along.”

Christophe was incredulous, then slowly amazed. And then there
was the light of recognition. He raised his right hand, gently, tentatively. And it seemed he made some soft sound. Then suddenly he drew himself up, and shoved Marcel backward and away.

The gesture was brutal. Marcel was stunned. “Christophe,” he gasped. He had to reach for the mantel to prevent himself from falling. And he heard himself again say Christophe’s name. But Christophe was gone. And by the time Marcel reached the head of the stairs, the door to the street had slammed shut.

It was six o’clock. It seemed there were sounds from below of the early morning churchgoers, those steady daily attendants at Mass. And carters headed for the waterfront markets and slaves, starched and pressed and on their way to the restaurants and the big hotels. That old man would be passing, most likely, who opened his shoe shop down the block long before anyone else. He would be outside on the stool reading last night’s papers before the others unlocked their doors.

And Marcel who had been lying in Christophe’s bed was dimly aware that he had fallen to sleep, and that on awakening he was not alone. He sat up slowly, pleased that the pain in his head did not blind him, and lifting the napkin from the glass beside him drank the water down. Then he drank the pitcher, too.

And looking forward, and slightly to the right, he saw Christophe’s feet before the leather chair by the hearth. He stared vacantly at those boots, and felt a dull despair.

I’ve ruined it, he thought, ruined it all. He is going to tell me to go to the Lermontants, and that’s unbearable and I’ll have no choice. But more than that, greater than that, how can we go on being teacher and student, friends? Only silence made that possible, only pretending that I did not know what I knew.

He jerked the covers back and set his feet on the floor.

“I want you to know this,” he said in a low voice, his eyes down. “I’ve always thought…perhaps wrongly…that you and the Englishman were more than friends. I thought…I thought that you were lovers. And when I approached you last night, it was from the heart.” He rose and moved to the door.

“Wait,” Christophe said.

“I’ll never mention it again. I’ll never say a word.”

“Will you let me explain?” Christophe said softly. “Will you allow me that?”

Marcel sat listlessly on the bed. It was dawn all right, he could see the colors of the rug, the tiny flowers on the wall, and even as he sat there the light brightened around him almost magically. “Explain?” he asked. “Why in the hell should you explain anything to me? I am the one who presumed, not you.”

“You were right,” Christophe said. “Michael and I were lovers. But I never thought, never once, that I’d given you cause to believe I wanted that from you.”

“You didn’t give me cause!” Marcel looked up at Chris for the first time. “It was I who wanted it.
Mon Dieu
, isn’t that plain?” He turned away almost angrily.

“No, you don’t want it, that’s just the trouble,” Christophe said. “But I’ve always wanted you. From the first night I saw you, I wanted you. And it’s been nothing, nothing but a bloody struggle ever since. I’ve lived in terror that the slightest gesture might betray it, that I’d lose our friendship, which was all I’d ever have. And then, out of despair, Marcel, out of despair, you approached me. Not out of love, not out of desire, but out of despair.”

“That’s not true,” Marcel said bitterly. “I love you. And I’d do anything for you and if you don’t know that, it’s because you don’t want to know it.”

“Spare me the sacrifice!” Christophe’s voice was sharp.

“But I don’t know how to be your lover!” Marcel came back. “Sacrifice has nothing to do with it! You have to show me, you’re my teacher, you have to show me what you want!”

“You damnable little son-of-bitch,” Christophe bent forward. “Don’t you understand! It’s not me you want, it’s that man who’s eluded you all your life, the father that Ferronaire refused to be. That’s what you want, that’s what you were searching for the night I met you. Don’t shake your head and look away from me. By God, I’ve kept my hands off you long enough and I’ll turn your head around on your neck if you don’t listen.”

“And so we all want fathers and mothers,” Marcel said with disgust, “tumbling in the dark and lost. My mother wants some dead father she left dangling from a hook in Saint-Domingue so she lays her head on my father’s chest. It’s a father Marie wants when she looks up to Richard, so it’s a father I want when I look to you.”

Christophe stared at the barren fireplace, his boot thrust against the fender, his fist under his chin. And Marcel looked at the smooth brown skin of his face, his hands, the glittering and narrow eyes that were averted, shutting Marcel out and slightly maddening him. He had that same mounting feeling of the night before; if I touch you this ache in me, this misery, will be gone, and we’ll be together in some new dimension of love; you’ll be there with me if I’m afraid. He drew in his breath. But this had no immediate physical figment for him, which made it all the more alluring and strange.

“They may want a father, a mother, whatever you say,” Christophe said. “But the need is not the same. It’s the intensity that breaks the heart, the feeling of being lost in a world of fragmented dreams
and aspirations without guidance, without some strong hand that can lead you to a maturity where you will feel self-reliant at last. I don’t think you can really love anyone, Marcel, until you have that self-reliance, until the need is diminished. And I tell you right now that need in you is desperate. You laid your heart bare to that old cabinet-maker, Jean Jacques, and it was pure and unmingled with desire just as it was the first night I came home. You said to me from your soul, ‘be my teacher, be my father, help me to become someone who is valuable, someone who is good…’ ”

Marcel let out a small desperate sound and motioned for Christophe to stop.

“But you see,” Christophe continued, “now you are confusing that need with something else. You’re confusing it with a physical love with which it doesn’t belong. And that combination, Marcel, that need and that love, it would be the most appalling, the most dangerous mistake.”

“It was a mistake between you and the Englishman?” Marcel demanded.

“Oh, was it ever!” Christophe whispered. “But I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t gone off with Michael. I wasn’t as strong as you are, Marcel. All we had in common as boys was that terrible need.

“And Michael filled that need. He was father, lover, teacher, all blown into one magnificent figure that overpowered me and held me just like this in its hand. Oh, the world was born the day I left Paris with Michael, everything had meaning when Michael explained it, it was beautiful if Michael said it was beautiful, and as long as Michael was with me, anything, absolutely anything at all, could have been endured.

“But don’t you see, his hold became so tight I was strangling! That’s why I left Paris, surely you know that now. I was engulfed by him, I couldn’t breathe. So I crossed the sea to break the hold. I went back to the only other person who had a grip on me and thought, well, at least that’s a step towards freedom, and Maman for all the grubby power she’s got over my soul has never wielded it with any conviction or any purpose whatsoever.

“But you know what happened. He came after me before I could break his hold, and he died here because of me. And he took half of me with him to the grave. I’ll never be free of him, and the life I live now is an imitation of the life I dreamed of, nothing more.

“Now you must listen to me. You feel the same need that I felt. In your own way you are equally lost. You love your father, no, don’t say you don’t. I know you do, you’ve always been more or less in love with him and the whole idea of him, that powerful planter strewing your path with gold. But what you loathed was that he did not love you at
all. And when that need in you went unsatisfied, you turned to others, to old Jean Jacques and then to me. I knew in every word you ever told me about that old cabinetmaker what it was you wanted. People always tell us what they want. I understood when you finally confessed to me that you’d jumped the cemetery wall that night to visit his grave. I understood it much better than you did. Just as I know now I cannot do to you what Michael did to me.

“I am facing the same moment that Michael faced in Paris. And this decision will not be Michael’s decision. It will be my own.

“But what I’m going to tell you now is the hardest lesson of all. This need of which I’ve spoken all along, this need must never really be fulfilled. To be a man you are going to have to forget it, you are going to have to learn to live with the knowledge that the child in you has come to maturity without ever knowing that protective love.

“Someday, someday you may have a lover, someone you love above anyone else in the world, and that could be a man. It doesn’t much matter, not so much as people suppose. And there’s always been something exquisitely discerning in you, something quite apart from the prejudices of the world. I do believe you when you say you came to me last night with your heart. But whether it be a man or a woman, you can only love that person fully and trust that person fully when you no longer have that need.”

He paused, the pupils of his eyes dancing, his fist curled under his chin. “Men and men, women and women,” he said staring at the fireplace. “I’ve known the best brothels this world has to offer, and the best brothel boys from Istanbul to Tangier. I suppose I could make you overcome any antipathy with a skill the like of which you can’t conceive. But mix a child’s need and a man’s desire, I will not do it. I’ve made my decision and the answer is now and forever simply no.”

Marcel rose and walked slowly, silently, back and forth across the room. The sun was just coming through the slats. And he stood for a while at the blind letting the sun warm his face and his hands. A long interval passed, and finally he spoke.

“I love you, Chris,” he said.

“I know you do,” Christophe said. “And you know my answer…”

“But Chris,” he looked down at Christophe in the chair, “it can’t be as lonely as that. An imitation of the life you wanted, I can’t accept it. When I think of you in the classroom, when I think of the passion and the power you’ve always shown us…”

“We’re talking about my battle now, and frankly I’d rather not!” Christophe averred. But then his face softened, eyes still on the hearth. “Maybe I haven’t worked hard enough,” he murmured. “I don’t know.” And then he looked up at Marcel with an open, defenseless
expression as if they were men of the same age. “I’ve got to stop loving you so much. I’ve got to stop constructing a little world of dreams around your comings and goings, and imagining every time you darken my mother’s door you’re coming to me.”

Marcel’s face was drawn into a scowl. “Christophe,” he said. “You know you’re just hanging onto the Englishman, don’t you? You just don’t want to let him go!”

Anger rent Christophe’s face. His eyes became defiant at once. “And I asked you if you were going to stand on your own! Do you ever lie down!” he demanded. “Do you ever stop swinging? Well, don’t take advantage of what I feel for you!” and in a rage he rose to go.

“And what about what I feel for you, Chris!” Marcel asked. “I don’t mean the blundering gesture I made last night. I mean what I really feel! Doesn’t that give me some right to speak now? You’ve got to let the Englishman go. Of course you live in dreams of me because you know you’ll never let those dreams come true. And that way you can be faithful to Michael forever, can’t you? Well, how are you going to stop all of that if you don’t love someone else?”

Christophe had slumped against the frame of the door. His eyes were weary, reddened from lack of sleep, and he stared forward listlessly. “Come here to me,” he said softly with a gesture of his left hand.