The Prince's Boy (9 page)

Oh, what madness, I thought happily, as I placed the enlarged and framed snapshot of my beloved on the bedside table. I could see him now as soon as I awoke and before I drifted into sleep. He was there beside me at all hours.

I had left the door of my room open. Amalia entered, apologizing for intruding on my privacy.

‘Who is that wild-looking creature, Dinu?’

‘He is a friend I made in Paris. He is Romanian. His name is R
ã
zvan Popescu.’

‘But he’s the prince’s boy.’

‘Yes, he is, or was. The prince died in England some time ago.’

‘Are you very close to him, my impossibly beautiful stepson?’

I considered my impossible beauty before answering. ‘Yes, I am. I am, Amalia.’

‘I should like, in the finest tradition of Romanian decadence, to seduce you, Dinu. To take a stepson in adultery is so exquisitely decadent. May I tempt you?’

‘In God’s name, no.’

‘You look terrified by my little joke. Has the ogress frightened you?’

‘No, of course not,’ I lied.

‘I promise you, in return for a kiss on the cheek, that I shall keep your secret safe from Cezar. You could make it easier for me by hiding the prince’s boy’s photograph somewhere – in a drawer, perhaps, to which only you have the key.’

‘But why?’

‘Cezar would recognize your close friend instantly. He was, and still is, the subject of gossip in Parisian society and here in Bucharest. The prince has made the simple peasant notorious, if not famous.’

‘R
ã
zvan is not simple. He is an intelligent man. He speaks flawless French.’

‘My dear Dinu, you must endeavour not to be too unhappy. Are you in contact with him?’

Was she, I wondered, my father’s spy, feigning concern for me?

‘No,’ I lied again. ‘I am still awaiting a reply to a letter I wrote him a month ago.’

‘I trust that he is being discreet, rather than cruel.’

‘You can trust in his discretion.’

She said: ‘I most sincerely hope so’ and, enfolding my hand in hers, she went on: ‘You are resentful of my place in Cezar’s affections. I understand your resentment. I am not cast in your mother’s mould, Dinu, my dear one. I am a slut by comparison. I cannot believe in her God. And yours.’

‘And mine, yes.’

‘He has not been kind to us. He seems, from my reading of the Bible, to be exceedingly bad-tempered and quick – all too quick – to take offence. But if He offers you consolation, then so be it.’

‘He does.’

‘I don’t think that He, even He, is capable of protecting you from Cezar’s anger and disappointment if your earthly father sees this photograph. Do be careful, Dinu.’

I thanked her for the warning.

‘I am very serious. You are such an innocent, for all your sophisticated cleverness. Can’t you understand, my sweet one, that your behaviour is – what is the precise word I am seeking? – perverse?’

‘I do understand, and I really don’t think I care.’

‘Then you should care – for your safety; for your dignity; for your future.’

‘What do
you
care?’ I asked her, unaware in that moment of my cruelty.

‘Oh, I should say, in my role as the wicked, or perhaps, downright evil stepmother, that I don’t give a damn about you. But I am not that figure of popular, vulgar imagination. How could I not be concerned for you, Dinu? Your very eyes crave affection. Yes, they are looking beyond me, even as I talk to you. They are looking at your R
ã
zvan Popescu.’

‘You are being fanciful, Amalia.’

‘Ah, you called me Amalia, and without that cynical edge to your voice I have become accustomed to. We are progressing. We are progressing faster than I had hoped.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that I know something important about you that Cezar will refuse to acknowledge. You are irretrievably – not to say, irresponsibly – in love with the prince’s boy. You are, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘I will keep your secret safe from Cezar for as long as I can. I will keep it safe from Bucharest society as well. You can put your trust in me, Dinu.’

In that moment I had no reason to doubt her. I feared that she was becoming my closest confidante, even – and this was a greater fear – my most intimate friend.

I wrote constantly to R
ã
zvan from the country whose king was eight years old. I received cryptic postcards in reply. It was rainy in Paris or it was sunny. R wished that D was there. He said nothing that would make my father suspicious, though Amalia and her already worldly daughter understood the precise nature of his wish. I was the prince’s boy’s pining lover, contenting himself with sepia views of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Tuileries.

Then, one day in the summer of 1929, Gheorghe brought me a substantial letter with a Parisian postmark. I gave him the eight or so stamps for his collection before I had the courage to read the contents of the envelope.

Honoured Sir
, it began:

My dear Silviu (perhaps) or Alexandru (perhaps) or Dinu (most certainly), I am writing to you in the capacity of a concerned friend – a term I seldom, if ever, employ. If you are planning, with or without your father’s money and permission, to return to Paris, I should alert you to the distressing fact that life here is unsettled. I fear I shall have to close the doors of my Temple of Immodesty sooner than I could have anticipated. You were a welcome guest there, Domnule Grigorescu, for a day or two, as I am certain you will remember. Business – to employ that distasteful bourgeois word – is not flourishing.

There are two persons responsible for my temporary fall from immoral grace. The first is that Russian scoundrel Safarov, who has forsworn his formidable sadistic talents in favour of a quiet life in the tender arms of a wealthy vintner’s widow in Bordeaux. The other offender is Safarov’s once-ecstatic victim, who threatened to withdraw his custom unless I provided him with a replacement brute. I scoured the docks for three wearisome nights before I chanced upon a beast from faraway Brazil with a scant command of the French language, although his brown eyes brightened as soon as I mentioned
L’ARGENT.
He was born with a
PECTUS EXCAVATUM
(a sunken chest) but he is otherwise statuesque. His torso is festooned with inexplicable tattoos, apart from the inevitable heart pierced by the mischievous Cupid. He also boasts a strange blue and red sign above his groin which resembles a feather (a macaw’s, perhaps) and a pair of crossed keys and a miniature crucifixion on his left arm. He is due to molest the industrialist this forthcoming Wednesday. I can but hope that Louis, as we have decided to call him, will be Safarov’s repellently worthy successor.

Allow me to turn to the subject of Honoré or
R
ã
zvan
– have I put the accent in its rightful place? – of whom, I feel certain, you wish to hear. Of course you do. Prince E’s boy is often excessively drunk on the coarsest red wine, if his breath is any indication. We meet rarely and accidentally and our conversations begin with social banalities and end with his lamenting the absence of the enticing Romanian who broke his heart. He informs me that he sends you postcards in code because he is terrified that your forbidding Papa will smell a rat, to resort to a cliché that cannot fail to summon up a haunting vision of my cherished friend M. Proust. I have ceased to offer him employment. His apartment was paid for years ago by the prince and he assures me that he earns enough as a barman to satisfy his daily needs, which do not include – he is adamant on this matter – sexual gratification. I believe him, alas.

I trust you are well, as I am not. The House of Impudence is taking its toll on my nerves and sanity.

Salutations,

Albert Le Cuziat

I hid the letter, along with R
ã
zvan’s snapshot and the cryptic postcards, in a volume of Eminescu’s poems the lawyer who owned Carmen Sylva 4 never consulted. They were in the melancholy company of distant horns and ominous alders and thoughts of death.

I was arguing with my mother now. She had become the Elena I no longer wept for, but rather a religious tyrant, constantly accusing me of being faithless. Whenever I spoke of my deep and abiding love for R
ã
zvan she did not hesitate to chastise me. Hell was my certain destination. If she had lived, she shouted, she would have protected me from such a dissolute specimen of humankind.

I almost replied that I was glad she hadn’t lived. I should not have known ecstasy otherwise. But the hateful words did not make the journey from my heart to my tongue.

‘You are not the son I left behind.’

I replied that I had glimpsed a fraction of the world, the world her church would have me ignore. I needed to function in that world, to explore its mysteries and contradictions. I wanted to be a man of my own making. I wanted, in the autumn of 1929, to be in R
ã
zvan’s arms. Nowhere else in the entire universe remotely appealed to me. It was my earthly idea of heaven.

My once-compassionate mother chuckled at this revelation. I pleaded with her to stop, but she carried away with her mocking laughter. I was abject now, where before I had been adoring and trusting.

‘Oh, Mam
ã
, Mam
ã
, I cannot help myself.’

‘Yes, you can. Take confession and cleanse the mind and the body you have sullied.’

That sullied body, in a lonely bed at four in the morning, was in a frenzied state, longing for the man who had sullied it to appear miraculously in his hirsute splendour and sully it further.

I wrote to R
ã
zvan telling him I was employed as Reader in French Literature at the university, having achieved my doctorate after more than two years of intense and dedicated study. I was earning a living of sorts. I was a man with a monthly salary, however meagre, and no longer entirely dependent on my absurdly wealthy father.

This was in 1930, almost three years to the day when we had last kissed, last embraced.

The predictable postcard, a sepia reproduction of the
Mona Lisa
, arrived in December.

My good friend D, I have heard that my mother is sick. She lives in Corcova in your country. I shall be leaving Paris soon to be with her. I expect I shall be with her and my family for some time. There must be a town or city other than Bucharest where we can renew our interesting friendship. R.

Our interesting friendship? My blood raced as I read those words. R
ã
zvan was getting nearer to me, I realized. He would soon be only a train journey away from the Reader in French Literature I knew, or hoped I knew, he still loved.

‘What is my son wearing today, Amalia?’

‘I believe it is called a suit, Cezar.’

‘I can see that it is a suit. What is the material?’

‘Velvet, my love.’

‘Should a man wear velvet?’

‘I think this man should, yes.’

‘He used to dress plainly and sensibly before you decided to make a dandy of him.’

‘What are you complaining about? Dinu was born to wear gorgeous clothes. Some men are.’

‘He is making himself too conspicuous.’

‘Why should he not be conspicuous?’

‘Because he is not on a stage cavorting before an audience. He is walking along the boulevards of Bucharest.’

This conversation, or versions of it, took place regularly in my rebellious years from 1929 to 1934. The word ‘depraved’ was applied to me by some of my staid colleagues, though a few of them were envious of my freedom from convention. Others despised me covertly, as seems to be the custom in our beleaguered country.

Yet I was pretending to be carefree. During those five years I saw R
ã
zvan twice, and on both occasions I forswore the fancy clothing Amalia and Elisabeta had chosen for me. I went to him unadorned, in the same kind of plain cotton shirts and light woollen trousers he remembered me wearing in Paris. I was his Dinule
þ
, he my R
ã
zv
ã
nel. We were reunited first in the smallest of small hotels in Eforie, on the Black Sea, not far from Constan
þ
a, where Ovid, banished from Rome, had lived in exile. My father was pleased that I had discarded velvet and silk and cashmere for my coastal holiday, since it meant that his son and heir would not bring disgrace on the honourable name of Grigorescu.

R
ã
zvan’s revered Angela had died, and there was to be no work for him on the estate. The prince’s brother found his presence embarrassing and suggested that he return to Paris, the most liberated and welcoming city in all of Europe. It was kindly said. Prince A understood that R
ã
zvan was no longer a boy in want of an education, but a sophisticated middle-aged man who was a stranger even to Bogdan, Mircea and Irina, despite their mutual loss. Corcova was no longer his home, as it had promised to be for ever when he was an inquisitive child. He had held Angela’s cold hands, kissed her cold cheeks, closed down the cold shutters that had been her eyelids while his brothers and sister wept in the shadows. He had no further cause to stay.