Authors: Paul Bailey
‘Of course I am.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘Who is, or was, Mme Proust, M. Albert?’
‘Oh, such innocence. Mme Proust is the mother of the novelist –’
‘Marcel?’
‘There is no other. Yes, yes. M. Marcel Proust considered it an honour to have gained my friendship. When I opened my first indecent establishment, he presented me with some unwanted items of furniture that had once belonged to his parents – such as the chaise longue on which your cherished bottom is currently resting. It was extraordinarily kind of him. He has been dead five years, but I often imagine that he is here with me, particularly on Wednesday afternoons, when the monstrous Russian Safarov reduces a ludicrously wealthy, and unashamedly common, industrialist to a bleeding, gibbering wreck. Oh, the screams, the excitement. I have dukes, princes, counts among my clients, but it is only that vulgar man and his need for the brutal Safarov who keeps me in business. It pains me that this should be so, M. Golescu, but it is nevertheless the truth. Allow me to show you what I call the Vatican Library.’
The Vatican Library, which was housed in an upstairs room above the reception desk, contained volumes of the
Almanach de Gotha
and
Burke’s Peerage
and several books on heraldry, and nothing more.
‘The aristocracy is my passion, Silviu Golescu,’ he explained. ‘And their foibles, their peccadilloes. For me, they are like manna from Heaven. I seek them out and make them my own.’
The doorbell rang. M. Albert advised me to stay where I was, among the crowned and titled heads of Europe.
He reappeared with the news that another, richer, titled gentleman was demanding an hour, at least with – he was embarrassed to inform me – Honoré.
‘I shall go then,’ I said. ‘I cannot compete for his favours.’
‘No, no, M. Silviu, I insist on your staying. There is no competition, I do assure you. Nothing so coarse. You are Honoré’s preferred one, anyway.’
‘Am I?’
‘That is what he confided in me. You are favoured.’
I parted with a hundred francs, which M. Albert had the courtesy not to count. He poured me a glass of fine sherry, from the estate – he hastened to inform me – of a Spanish marquis who was a devout connoisseur of the pleasures M. Albert’s unholy Temple provided.
I sat in the Vatican Library and listened to its bald and pudgy librarian as he regaled me with stories of his former beauty. ‘My hair was golden. Nothing as common as blond. Prince Radziwill was not alone in remarking that I looked like an angel with my flowing locks and azure eyes. Alas, I am a fallen angel now, I fear, for ever excluded from the paradise the young and beautiful inhabit. I function on the periphery of paradise, you might say, where I am able to bring Honoré and Jean-Pierre together in happy union, as I trust I shall be doing within the hour.’
He consulted his pocket watch and clicked his tongue in annoyance.
‘Within the hour, yes.’
Another, louder bell sounded from below.
‘Ah, the clarion call of duty. That will be him. He is prepared to see you at last.’
He was standing in the doorway of his elected cubicle, smoking a Turkish cigarette as before and smiling on me as I stumbled into his presence.
He greeted me, softly, in Romanian. In an instant, he had ceased to be Honoré. I cast Jean-Pierre aside for ever when I replied to him in the language we shared by birth.
‘I have missed you, my pale one.’
‘And I you,’ I heard myself admitting. ‘And I you.’
He pulled me into the tiny room and held me to him, kissing my hair, my ears, my eyes, my nose, my lips in what I understood to be a frenzy of passion.
‘My name is R
ã
zvan.’
‘I am Dinu.’
‘Truly?’
‘Truly. And you are truly R
ã
zvan?’
‘I am. Believe me.’
I said I believed him. I was glad we were no longer impostors. I was happy beyond all words to be with him again, to be his Dinu. I said all this as his arms encompassed me.
It was an afternoon of mutual, tender exploration. I was a navigator, too, with every spot, every blemish on his body subjected to my determined, microscopic investigation. His pimples and warts and blackheads were mine to worship. They were among my treasured possessions now.
I shared a cigarette with him, the first of many shared cigarettes, afterwards. Oh, that word ‘afterwards’, suggestive as it is of both satisfaction and desolation. ‘Afterwards’ came to mean something final to me, a last parting of the ways, long before R
ã
zvan and I became estranged. I hated the very idea of ‘afterwards’, wanting our love-making to happen in a perpetual present.
It is love I am writing about here, in this memoir of a life half-lived. I have mentioned the railway porter and my inexplicable longing for him and his re-emergence as Honoré and then R
ã
zvan. I have documented as a fact that I was drawn in my youth to men who were hairy and muscular, who represented a manliness denied me by nature. That fact, which alarmed and mystified me in the summer of 1927, causes me wry amusement now, for the brute I met in squalid circumstances on May 26 of that fateful year was none other than a prince’s boy, the adopted child of a man of exquisite refinement, who had shaken the limp hand of Marcel Proust and mingled with artists I could only dream of meeting. R
ã
zvan, at the age of thirty-eight, had entrancing stories to tell the pale beauty whose heart he was happy to possess. My explorer became my teacher in those habits and ways of the world I was unable to imagine or conjure up at the writing table in my pristine attic.
‘I have much to share with you, my sweet,’ he said softly. ‘This will be the last time we meet in M. Albert’s house of sin. From tomorrow, you will be my guest at the apartment the prince purchased for me.’
‘Prince? What prince?’
‘You will discover who he was soon enough.’
‘Why can’t you tell me now?’
‘Not now. Not here. It is a long story and I need to stay calm to make sense of it. If I ever can, Dinu. If I ever can.’
I yielded to him again, at his encouraging insistence, and was soon in the timeless space that only lovers inhabit. And then, satisfied, we slept in each other’s arms until M. Albert woke us with the message that someone very distinguished was requiring Honoré’s services.
‘I have finished work for today. I am going home. Inform the gentleman that Honoré is tired and unable to cope with his demands, whatever they may be.’
‘You are breaking my rules. You are not showing me the respect you should.’
‘I shall be leaving with Jean-Pierre as soon as we have washed ourselves.’
‘You are acting irresponsibly.’
‘I am not a machine, M. Le Cuziat. May I remind you that I am not a machine? Even you cannot make me do what you want me to do by order.’
The speechless M. Albert glared at the naked R
ã
zvan, who kissed me and said:
‘You may not believe it, you snobbish pimp, but I have fallen in love.’
We stopped at a bar where the waiters knew R
ã
zvan. They greeted M. Popescu as an honoured customer.
‘This is Dinu, my new friend from Romania. He has come to Paris to write a book. He is a very romantic young man.’
R
ã
zvan ordered a large bowl of mussels and some bread to soak up the juices.
‘And the Sauvignon de Sainte Brie.’
He found subtle ways of touching me across the table, convincing the other drinkers and diners that he was like a father to me, if not my father himself. I revelled in the deception. I was even tempted to call him Tat
ã
, whenever his fingers stroked my arm or ruffled my hair.
‘What I said to Satan is nothing but truth, Dinicu. I am in love with you. Hopelessly, I think.’
Dinicu
– that old diminutive from a bygone age was the name my mother gave me. I last heard it on her lips as she lay dying on the fifteenth of September 1920.
(‘Oh, my dearest Dinicu. I have to go away from you, my son. You must trust in the Lord. We shall be together again one day.’)
‘I seem to have upset you with Dinicu. Will you be my Dinule
þ
instead?’
‘That is so childish, R
ã
zv
ã
nel.’
‘This is baby talk, Dinule
þ
.’
‘But aren’t I your baby, as the Americans say, R
ã
zv
ã
nel?’
‘You are Dinule
þ
, you are.’
R
ã
zvan walked me home to the house on rue des Trois-Frères which boasted my ivory tower. It was a balmy evening, I remember. Mlle Simone, wine glass in hand, was in the street, talking and laughing with another concierge. She saw her lodger and his companion approaching and ran towards us.
‘My dear M. Dinu, you must introduce me to the very handsome friend you have been hiding from us.’
‘I haven’t been hiding him. I did not even know he was in Paris until I met him by accident a few days ago. We lived close to each other in Bucharest,’ I lied convincingly.
‘Let us celebrate your reunion then.’
And that is what we did, in a nearby bistro, with Simone and Françoise, for another hour or so. R
ã
zvan, drinking more wine than all of us, suddenly became incapable of coherent speech, in either French or Romanian. He muttered that I was his sweetest Dinicu, which I hoped and prayed they didn’t understand.
‘Where does he live?’ Mlle Simone asked me.
‘On the other side of Paris,’ I answered. ‘Would it be possible–?’ I began the question but was too embarrassed and shy to continue.
‘Go on.’
‘Would it be possible for him to pass the night in my room?’
There was a silence, during which I think I froze with the terror of immediate castigation and rejection.
‘Of course it is possible. You will be uncomfortable, I predict, but it is certainly possible. Oh, just look at him – he’s already asleep.’
Mlle Simone held his left arm, I his right, as we laboured to guide him up the Everest of stairs that led to my attic. I loved her in those precious, awkward moments as surely as I had ever loved my mother.
‘I shall leave you to undress him, my dear. I shall bring you coffee – a great deal of coffee for him – and croissants in the morning.’
I managed to undress him, though he tried to fight me off, thinking perhaps that I was someone else, and hauled him into my bed, and nestled in the arms I dexterously contrived to wrap around me, for the entire blissful night. I couldn’t sleep as I lay beside my snoring and farting and occasionally garrulous R
ã
zvan, out of sheer wondrous happiness. I kissed all the blemishes that now belonged to me, every blessed one of them.
‘What’s that smell, Dinicu?’
‘It’s lavender.’
‘Where am I?’
‘In my room, R
ã
zvan. In my bed, to be precise.’
‘How did I get here?’
‘Heaven knows.’
‘That’s no answer.’
‘You were very drunk and very tired. You walked with me to Montmartre from M. Albert’s Temple of Immodesty. We stopped for moules marinières on the way. You told me many times that you love me. You met Mlle Simone and Mlle Françoise and drank glass after glass after glass of your favourite claret. Mlle Simone and your beloved – I hope, I hope – Dinicu or Dinule
þ
dragged you upstairs. And here you are, beside me. Is that a satisfactory answer?’
‘It will do.’
‘It’s the gospel truth, R
ã
zvan.’
‘I need to piss, sweet one. I have a tremendous need to piss.’
I showed him where the nearest tiny room was, on the landing one floor down from my ivory tower.
He returned to my arms. We savoured each other’s garlicky breath. There were parts of our bodies we hadn’t previously explored, but we did so now. We were quiet in our endeavours, out of respect for Simone, who was waiting below with coffee and croissants, we hoped.
We talked about our mothers to begin with. His was called Angela, as befitted her angelic nature. R
ã
zvan was the youngest of her four children, born a month and a day after his father’s death.
‘My brothers and sister were old enough to work on the estate. That is how our family survived.’
‘Which estate? Where?’
‘You are very curious. You want to know everything, don’t you?’
‘Everything, yes. And more.’
‘It’s in a place you will not have heard of. It’s in a remote part of our great country.’