History of a Pleasure Seeker

by Richard Mason

  I hope it’s not a love letter you’re reading with such radiant concentration.” Stacey Meadows was standing beside him in a dress of peppermint-green satin. “I should be rather jealous if it were, though I’d forgive you if you’d let me join the line. I was late getting off and I’ve lost my parasol. I can’t stand in the sun with this mob.”

  “It would be an honor, Miss Meadows.” He offered her his arm.

  “You do look pleased with yourself.”

  “Only delighted to run into you.”

  “My invitations are not often ignored.”

  “I tried to come but was prevented. May I explain over luncheon?”

  They went together to get their luggage. Stacey had a great deal more than Piet. A Loire Lines porter took it for them to the customs hall where an official asked for their papers, taking them for man and wife. Piet handed over the passport his mother had given him long ago. Stacey Meadows presented hers. When both had been stamped she said: “I couldn’t possibly lunch with you. I don’t even know your name.”

  “Well, that is easily solved.” He took her hand and kissed it. “My name is Pierre Barol.”

  The consuls of France, Great Britain, the United States and Russia were waiting on the quayside to welcome the Eugénie’s first-class passengers, the Polish representative having been delayed on his train from Johannesburg. Verignan had hired every spare automobile in the city and had them repainted and stamped with the line’s shell and crossed Ls. The last was leaving the port when Piet and Stacey emerged from the customs shed into a jostling horde. Black porters were heaving trunks onto their backs. Indian boys in fezzes and gaiters asked for tips and picked pockets when they could. One or two dark-skinned gentlemen were examining the contents of the Eugénie’s hold in suits as smart as any Piet owned, and this sight shocked him most of all. He had expected to find the natives in appropriately exotic dress.

  The same impulse that made Piet Barol mistrustful of elevators and other novelties now expressed a strong preference for a driver who resembled the cabmen of Europe. Stacey waited in the shade while he obtained the only remaining vehicle driven by a white man, a barouche upholstered in burgundy velvet, slightly frayed, and drawn by a pair of high-stepping grays. Its driver was a helpful and dapper Cockney who took them for persons of the greatest quality. Once lifted in and comfortably ensconced, Miss Meadows said: “I did enjoy watching you get the best carriage, Mr. Barol.”

  Stacey Meadows did not intend to rot her life away in the chorus of the Opéra Comique and was well aware of the fate of girls in her position who made no plan before losing their looks. She refused, absolutely, to strike the Faustian pact of the courtesan. For some time she had been on the lookout for an alternative insurance against the indignities of middle age in the demimonde. She had rarely encountered a mate as suitable as the heroic figure at her side, his glance so smoldering she barely noticed the blazing yells, the street cries and gay colors of this city at the far end of the world. She decided to address his likely disadvantages immediately. “I see from your passport that you are French. I suppose that makes you as unreliable as you are diverting.”

  The carriage turned into Adderley Street, a thoroughfare lined with buildings as handsome and solid as any in Amsterdam. Piet had imagined roads of mud, but the avenue was well paved and dissected by tramlines. Among the seething crowds were people as elegantly dressed as Sunday strollers in the Vondelpark. Much was reassuringly familiar, but the diamond-sharp brightness, the smells of spices and salt water, the vast mountain guarded by a rock in the shape of a watchful lion, declared the newness of this world and its possibilities. His courage revived, and with it his conscience.

  “It is not my real passport, Miss Meadows.”

  “Indeed?”

  “You may rest easy. I am Dutch by birth and we are a most dependable race. My mother was French. I traveled on papers she once obtained for me.”

  “Are you a fugitive from the police?”

  “From myself, only.” The thrill of sitting beside a clever woman with a large check in his pocket did not override Piet’s distaste for the subterfuges of the life he had left behind. He decided not to begin with a lie. “I was not a first-class passenger on that ship. A friend of mine was a steward and let me in to see the opera because he knows I care for it so.”

  Stacey’s face fell. “Do you mean to say you have no money?”

  “This morning I had barely sixty guilders to my name. Now I have a thousand pounds.”

  “So you are a thief!”

  “Far from it.” Piet showed her Jay’s letter and told the story of his discovery, his flight from the stewards and his rescue by a passenger of means, who had invested the capital to start him off in business.

  “You must have been very persuasive with this American gentleman.” Stacey Meadows looked at him skeptically. The moral certainties of her Chicago upbringing had been thoroughly overthrown during two seasons at the Opéra Comique, which had taught her a great deal about the range of human inclination. She knew many men who preferred their own kind, more or less openly, and had long lost the habit of disapproval. But the animal part of her nature was disappointed and slightly surprised to learn that her companion might be one of them. His poverty allowed her to be direct. “I don’t mind the slightest bit—but tell me—what did you do to earn such a sum? I know very well why moneyed men take an interest in people like us.”

  Piet, who never did so, blushed deep scarlet.

  “I thought as much. Did you enjoy it?”

  He hesitated. “In a novel sort of way. The alternative was being put off the ship at St. Helena and spending my life there. I looked for you first, you may be sure.” He told her of his desperate hunt for her cabin. When he had finished she was smiling, despite herself, and he snatched her wrist and kissed it.

  The fervor with which he did so reassured Stacey Meadows, who decided to overlook a desperate act. Though she withdrew her wrist she was very pleased.

  The carriage trundled beneath an ornamental arch and entered the Company Gardens beside a palace of rose brick and blinding stucco. Ahead of them stretched a shaded avenue from which paths twisted seductively into lush vegetation. A Greek temple faced the mountain, brilliantly white against the sky. Wherever they looked were flowers they had never seen—explosions of purple on long, swaying stems, trees hung with fanfaring trumpets in pink and red. They were both silent at the wonder of it, and in that silence Stacey Meadows thought quickly.

  She had assumed that her companion’s income matched his beauty and was disconcerted to find this was not so. His candor, however, even on the most delicate topics, set him apart from the smooth-talking beaux who usually pursued her. She thought of the way Germaine Lorette had sabotaged her curtain call and a longing to escape the cutthroat competition of artistic Paris seized her. To do so with a worthy collaborator might be more diverting than marriage to a magnate who would doubtless have objectionable female relatives.

  She turned her subtle, strategic mind to the situation at hand. “It is wise to pretend to be French if you wish to make furniture and gain a rich clientele. You should exploit, as your friend suggests, your European glamour. What about Monsieur de Barol, monsieur le baron? A title would suit you admirably, and since you are starting afresh …”

  “If one does that one might as well be a vicomte.”

  “An excellent suggestion.” Stacey withdrew from her purse the little platinum band her first seducer had given her in New York and slipped it onto the wedding finger of her left hand. She felt that her embrace with this delicious young man had been delayed quite long enough, and that once it had taken place she would be clearer in her mind. They proceeded up Government Avenue in tingling silence, her invitation well understood by them both. They passed the prime minister’s house and a museum of natural history that resembled a French château, crossed the traffic on Orange Street and entered the fragrant grounds of an imposing hotel built on the foothills of the mountain.
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br />   The drive was thronged with the vacated motors of the Eugénie’s first-class passengers, and the sun struck their eyes so sharply that both of them emerged from the barouche with lids half shut. A doorman appeared immediately with a sun umbrella. In a lobby full of the sweet scents of luxury Stacey wrote The Vicomte and Vicomtesse Pierre de Barol in the visitors’ register. This, and the quality of the Louis Vuitton trunk the bellboy brought in, inspired the manager to issue instructions for a suite on the first floor to be prepared rather than the room with bath that Piet had engaged. He begged them to take a glass of champagne punch on the terrace while it was being made ready.

  The Mount Nelson’s garden was decked in the flags of France, Britain, Russia, Poland and the United States. Jay Gruneberger had been keeping watch at the fountain for an hour, wondering whether Piet Barol would follow his advice and come to the hotel. He half wished not, but had been unable to resist making the suggestion and providing the young man with the means to act on it. He saw Piet as soon as he appeared on the terrace with a young woman in a peppermint-green dress and knew at once that there would be no repeat of their shipboard revelry. He was more relieved than regretful. His hand stopped shaking and he turned to Albert Verignan, who had been attempting all morning to wheedle from him a repeatable pronouncement on the international situation.

  “There will be no European war,” he said, partly for the pleasure of annoying his host. “Anyone can see it would mean the end of the world.”

  Piet and Stacey were shown upstairs to a private parlor that opened onto the largest bedroom Piet had ever seen. It was wonderfully light and pretty, with a paper of pink and blue spring flowers and a bath in which it was possible to lie at full stretch without touching the ends. Beneath their windows the city beckoned like a temptation. “We will plan your assault on this colony after lunch,” said Stacey, removing her hat. “But first things first.”

  Three days of rapturous lovemaking followed, during which the Vicomte and Vicomtesse Pierre de Barol spent twenty-seven pounds of Jay Gruneberger’s money and drank an awful quantity of champagne. The girth and enduring solidity of Piet’s cock were attributes of which Stacey made full and inventive use. As he watched her lower herself onto him, squealing as she found the angle she wanted, he thought how infinitely preferable this was to the froideur with which Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts had treated him.

  He used the expertise he had gained from that lady to excellent effect, and the frankness of Stacey’s compliments redoubled his eagerness to please her. It was the first time either of them had had such opportunities for uninterrupted pleasure and as the days and nights slipped into one another their ecstasies became tender. In calmer interludes Piet learned the story of Stacey’s vicomte, her flight from her family and her hatred of Germaine Lorette. At her prompting he confided the circumstances of his childhood and his expulsion from Herengracht 605. This perilous honesty forged a bond that sex—in bed, in the bath, on the sofa of the sitting room, over the desk as its crystal inkwell rattled—cemented and confirmed.

  By the morning of the fourth day Piet’s cock was red and swollen, thoroughly chafed by its addictive exertions.

  “I’m bound to be pregnant,” remarked Stacey to the jasmine-scented breeze as they sat over breakfast on their balcony.

  “Then we must marry at once.”

  “I rather hoped you’d say that.” She reached for a silver pot of hot chocolate and turned to him with a serious expression. “To be practical for a moment. You must foreswear all other women. You may flirt as much as you like. Indeed it may be necessary for you to do so. But you are never to touch beyond the wrists.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And men too. St. Helena or no St. Helena.”

  “I promise.”

  “Certain people will dislike you on principle. It is the disadvantage of being charismatic and good-looking. Many more men will hate you than women. They will be my special responsibility. Instead of holding you back, they will be decisive in our success. I do not see how we can possibly fail.”

  “We will certainly do better together than apart.”

  “Of that,” she murmured, taking his hands in hers and kissing them, “I have no doubt at all.”

  To be continued

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am deeply grateful to all those who helped me to imagine and write History of a Pleasure Seeker. I first told the story to Pieter Swinkels and Jolanda van Dijk, of De Bezige Bij, and later to my wonderful Dutch editor Peter van der Zwag. The Fonds voor de Letteren and the NLPVF made possible an extended stay in Amsterdam, where Bert Vreeken and the staff of the Willet-Holthuysen Museum were extremely generous with their knowledge and time. My Dutch researcher Irene Lannoye worked tirelessly translating documents and advising on names and other details; without her this book would have taken ten years longer to write. I am grateful, too, to William H. Miller Jr. for his superb work on ocean liners, Brian Fernandes, Marianne Schonbach, Fleur van Koppen, the Van Loon Museum, the Goethe Institute Amsterdam, the Athenaeum Bookshop, Daniel Viehoff, Pieter Rouwendal, Harriet Sergeant, Anne-Catherine Gillet, Will Hartman, Nancy Herralda, Andrea Wulf, Michael Bawtree, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, Lyle Saunders, Annika Ebrahim, Anne-Marie Bodal, Fanny Adler, Peter Adler, Ian Ross, George Shilling, Victoria Wilson, Irène Némirovsky, Kirsty Dunseath, Kathleen Anderson, Patrick Walsh, Jane and Tony Mason, Benjamin Morse, the staff of the National Library of South Africa and the Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town—and, of course, to Fryderyk Chopin, J. S. Bach, Georges Bizet and Coco Chanel.

  To hear the music, learn the historical context, and look into the world of History of a Pleasure Seeker, e-mail Piet@Barol.com for exclusive bonus material.

  History of a Pleasure Seeker

  By Richard Mason

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE

  The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of History of a Pleasure Seeker, the elegant, beguiling, and erotic new novel by Richard Mason, acclaimed author of The Drowning People and Natural Elements.

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  “Sex is everywhere in History of a Pleasure Seeker, and it is both well described and very funny…. An enthralling, perfectly placed romp that breathes new life into the picaresque genre.” —The Observer (UK)

  An opulent, romantic novel, written in the grand manner, set at the height of Europe's belle époque, about a handsome young man in his mid-twenties—a golden boy who secures a position as a tutor in the household of one of the most prominent bourgeois families in Amsterdam—and his entry into a world of moneyed glamour and dangerous temptations.

  Piet Barol, blue-eyed, dark-haired, seductive, and seductively charged, enters this magnificent world and inexorably learns the hidden truths of this vastly rich, secretive family and, through the course of the novel, is profoundly transformed as his charm and sexual pull transform each of their lives. In the heady exhilaration of this new world, amid delights and temptations that Piet has only dreamed of, he discovers that some of the intimacies he has cultivated are dangerous liaisons indeed…. By the author of The Drowning People (“A literary sensation” —The New York Times Book Review) and Natural Elements (“A magnum opus” —The New Yorker).

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Who is the “pleasure seeker” of the title? Who else might that describe?

  How does Maarten’s repudiation of pleasure define his character?

  What is the metaphor of the tightrope?

  How do the characters’ different religious beliefs shape the events of the story?

  “Like his father, Egbert was deeply private about his interior afflictions” (this page). Are there other ways in which father and son are alike? How are they different?

  Throughout the novel, Mason calls our attention to shared character traits. What do Egbert and Piet share? Piet and Maarten?

  What role does guilt play in Piet’s actions? />
  The voices Egbert hears are guided by color: “toying with primary colors was an offense that merited prolonged punishment” (this page). Why do you think color affects Egbert this way? How does Mason use color with other characters?

  What is the significance of the horseback-riding scene on this page? Why does it prompt Piet to carry Egbert outside?

  How does having money—or not having it—affect the characters’ behavior? What about the other members of the household staff? In the terms of this novel, what is the difference between money and class?

  Why is Piet willing to risk everything to see Jacobina? Is he in love with her?

  When Louisa seeks her father’s help in opening a shop, he tells her: “You must marry a man with talent and ambition, whose interests you may serve as your mother has served mine. That is the way in which a woman may succeed” (this page). Is this true for all the women in the novel? How are things changing with the times?

  What finally gives Egbert the strength to go outside on his own? What role does music play in the decision (this page)?

  When Piet turns down Louisa’s proposal, what is the result? How does it influence the novel’s denouement?

  Why doesn’t the novel end when Piet leaves the Vermeulen-Sickerts household? How might you have imagined Piet’s next steps, if Mason hadn’t supplied them?

  How does Piet’s interlude with his father change your understanding of his character? How did his late mother shape his behavior?

  What role does Didier play in the novel’s ending? What impact might a different response from him have had on Piet’s future?

  What has changed within Piet, that he resolves to tell the truth to Stacey?

  SUGGESTED READING

  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann; Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller; The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton; Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.