The Prince's Boy

by Paul Bailey

  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 Rãzvan 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 Rãzvan’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, Mamã, Mamã, 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 Rãzvan 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. Rãzvan 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 Rãzvan 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 Dinuleþ, he my Rãzvãnel. We were reunited first in the smallest of small hotels in Eforie, on the Black Sea, not far from Constanþa, 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.

  Rãzvan’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 Rãzvan 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.

  He was reluctant to leave Romania immediately. There were so many towns and cities and villages he had never visited. He telephoned the Grigorescu household one evening in June 1932. He told Gheorghe that he wished to speak to the teacher of French, whose name he had temporarily forgotten. Was he, by chance, at home?

  He was. He wanted to shed tears of joy on hearing the captivating voice, made the more wondrous because of the hissing and crackling sounds that were its heaven-sent accompaniment.

  ‘Dinicu? Dinuleþ?’

  ‘Is that Rãzvãnel?’ I whispered, out of Gheorghe’s earshot.

  ‘It is. I have come back to claim you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I am. You are not my Dinicu if you think otherwise.’

  ‘I have to see you. I must see you.’

  ‘You will, my sweet. You will, very soon. Do you think you could persuade your forbidding father to let you take a vacation by the Black Sea? You must be alone, if that is possible.’

  ‘I shall try.’

  ‘Try hard. I shall be in Constanþa in two weeks. I have much to tell you. I will telephone you again, I promise.’

  It was a promise he kept, as I prayed he would. Elena interrupted my prayers with the caution that I was praying to the devil, not the God she had taught me to worship. The devil in the flesh had me in his grasp. If I wasn’t careful, I would be beyond forgiveness.

  My father was quite content for me to have a seaside holiday. There was but one proviso, once I had assured him I would dress normally, and that was that I should spend more time in the sun. I was still, in his opinion, unnaturally pale.

  I told him I would persevere in my efforts to come back to Bucharest as brown as a berry.

  Amalia and Elisabeta were suspicious on the instant when I observed, sheepishly, that I was going to Constanþa by myself.

  ‘Does my naughty stepson have an assignation?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t.’

  ‘You will need special clothes for the beach. I shall arrange a fitting with my dear Leon Becker.’

  ‘There is no need, Amalia, Elisabeta. I intend to dress plainly, for once, as I did when I was in Paris.’

  They looked at each other and smiled. No more was said, since they were already party to the conspiracy. Rãzvan wasn’t mentioned, because there was no reason to mention him. The light in my eyes was evidence enough.

  He telephoned again on the nineteenth of June. It was Denisa who picked up the receiver.

  ‘Domnule Dinu, there is a man with a very hoarse voice wishing to speak to you.’

  That hoarse voice lost its hoarseness when I asked, cautiously, ‘Is that Rãzvan?’

  ‘It is, it is, it is. Will I be seeing my precious Dinicu soon?’

  ‘Tomorrow? The day after? The day after that?’

  ‘The day after, my sweet. I will be waiting for you on the station. I shall expect you late in the evening.’

  Oh, it was a cumbersome journey, because the train stopped at every country station. I had no eye for the passing scenery or ears for my fellow travellers, who came and went with their packages and briefcases and luggage. I ceased to be observant for hour
s on end. I had only the Rãzvan captured in the precious photograph in mind. I could not sleep and I could not read the novel by Raymond Radiguet which I opened and closed a dozen or more times. I was elated at the prospect of being reunited with him and downcast at the thought that he might not recognize the boy he had loved so intensely five years earlier in Paris. I was twenty-four now, he forty-three. I feared his disappointment, his tactful rejection of the Dinu he called Dinicu and Dinuleþ. I could not bear the idea of going back to Bucharest without his warming presence in my future.

  There was a moment, a chilling moment, on the platform in Constanþa, when I wondered if he had really phoned me, really invited me to join him by the Black Sea. Perhaps I had imagined the phone calls, the postcards, in my demented longing for him. Where, where on God’s earth, was he?

  He was standing by the barrier, his arms outstretched as I approached him. He was there before me. It was the shape of him I saw first, then his dark beard, then his slightly receding hair. I was suddenly in a haze of happiness. I had nothing to say to him, yet, for the words I had been saying to him for five years – the terms of endearment I had been whispering to him in my bedroom; in my study at the university; in bars and restaurants – had vanished from my tongue. I was silent and so was he. The barrier no longer between us, we embraced. The smell of him was in my nostrils again, that comforting and consoling odour that was peculiar to him and him alone. I basked in it. I breathed it in – deeply, contentedly.

  ‘We must go, Dinicu. It is late. There is a horse and carriage waiting for us. I am taking you to Eforie. It is a quiet spot. We will be happy there.’

  I heard Rãzvan tell the driver that the son he had not seen for five years, thanks to his estranged wife’s possessiveness, was here beside him. They would be taking a short holiday together.

  He was my father when we checked into the hotel, with its view of the beach. There were other guests on the terrace, already drunk, whom we joined for a celebratory glass or two of sparkling wine. I was introduced as Dinu Popescu, a name I was strangely happy to possess.

  We retired – that was the word Rãzvan used – to our room. The drunks, who seemed determined to get drunker, bade Domnule Popescu and his son goodnight.

  Our Popescu suite was Spartan, with little decoration to delight the eye. We were pretenders once more, as Honoré and Jean-Pierre had been, with me deprived of my rightful name. My pretend father kissed me and ruffled my hair and slowly and carefully undressed me, folding my shirt and vest and trousers neatly and placing them with untypical tidiness on a chair. He appeared to be beyond passion in his sweet attentiveness. His elaborate carefulness excited me to near-distraction, as he intended it should, and I shivered as he removed my underpants and socks.

  ‘You have not lost your beauty for me.’

  ‘Please may I take my Tatã’s clothes off?’

  ‘You may, my incestuous son.’

  I showed no care, no slow consideration, in my longing to have him naked before me. I was desperate to be explored and as desperate to travel around the man whose body I worshipped. I let his clothes, his protective armour, fall in a heap to the floor.

  ‘This is a hotel, Dinicu. We must be very discreet. I will strangle you, I promise, if you scream or moan.’

  I neither screamed nor moaned, though I think I made a noise much like purring as our love-making progressed.

  ‘Rãzvãnel.’

  ‘I am older and plumper, aren’t I?’

  ‘If you are, it does not matter. It does not matter at all.’

  ‘You may think differently in the cold light of morning.’

  ‘Be silent, Tatã. Mon père. My daddy.’

  We slept, entwined. Then we separated, before dawn, and resumed our geographical studies, in silence. Long absence had made my heart grow fonder. It was overflowing with affection now.

  ‘We cannot stay in bed all day, my dearest. The human race is composed of suspicious people. We must be innocents while we are here. I am your proud father and you are my doting offspring. We have to be actors in Eforie.’

  I vowed that I would learn my lines and never stray from them. I intended to be word-perfect. The role of Dinu Popescu was one I wished to play to absolute perfection.

  We strolled along the shore after breakfast, stopping to embrace when there was no one else in sight. We spoke, when the need was on us, in French.

  ‘If I had not been the prince’s boy, his adopted son, I would never have met you, Dinu,’ he said as we sat down to dinner that evening. ‘It might have been better for the two of us if he hadn’t educated me.’

  ‘If, if, if – what are you saying to me, Rãzvan?’

  ‘I hardly know. I am drowning in confusion. I have no family now that my mother is dead. Bogdan, Irina and Mircea are like strangers to me, although I still love them. I might have lived in Corcova all my days. There are worse things than being a simple peasant, toiling in the fields from sunrise to sunset. Oh, far, far worse.’

  ‘What shall we have to eat, Tatã?’ I asked loudly as a waiter approached our table.

  ‘Fish, mon fils. You do not come to the Black Sea to eat anything else.’

  So we ate grilled carp, and summer fruits, and ice cream, accompanied by more wine than I had drunk in ages. It was cheap stuff that the prince and Cezar Grigorescu would have scorned to offer their guests. I drank it because he was drinking it. I smiled at the notion of its being our love potion, or perhaps my poisoned chalice.

  ‘You are teaching your son bad habits,’ said a woman who had been looking appreciatively at my father – yes, he had to be that – for most of the evening. ‘I am being facetious, dear sir. You make a handsome pair.’

  He rose and kissed her hand, as Romanian gentlemen do. She simpered and wished us the sleep of the just, if not the wicked. She waved to us from the door of the dining room.

  ‘Silly cow.’

  ‘She desires you, my lovely Tatã. You could be hers without even asking.’

  ‘I suppose I still possess a certain allure.’

  ‘You do. I want you now.’

  ‘Not here in the restaurant?’

  ‘Anywhere will please me, but may I suggest that room number 9 is more appropriate?’

  And so, in room 9, we clung to one another, and that was all we did until daybreak. He slept and snored and farted with his arms around me while I lay awake. I kissed his fingertips and nestled into him and tried not to imagine the immediate future, when we would again be separated. I was to be his, completely his, in the morning, and for the moment nothing else concerned, or mattered to, me.

  I was asleep, in fact, when he claimed me. I was dreaming of him before the dream became an event in the real world.

  Yes, he was right to say he looked older and that he was plumper. He had flesh to clutch that had not been clutchable in Paris. His face was rounder and redder too. These changes to his body were of no consequence to his adoring Dinicu, as I had to reassure him on more occasions than I can remember.

  ‘You are vain, Rãzvãnel.’

  ‘Am I? I suppose I am. But not as vain as the prince.’

  ‘You showed me photographs of him. He was handsome.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘You never told me that he killed himself.’

  ‘Are you sure? In that case, how do you know?’

  ‘I heard about it from M. Le Cuziat, over an expensive luncheon at the Ritz.’

  ‘Which you paid for, I recollect.’

  ‘Your recollection is completely accurate,’ I remarked with deliberate and, I hoped, diverting pomposity.

  ‘And what did the monster reveal?’

  ‘That his suicide took place in an English hotel and that he considered the prince a coward.’

  Several minutes, what seemed like an hour of several minutes, passed before he responded.

  ‘The prince, my benefactor, had suffered a stroke. Was that one of the gossipy Albert’s revelations?’

  ‘I don’t recall that
it was.’

  The prince, Rãzvan said, had travelled, in the company of friends, to Japan, the land of the chrysanthemum, the flower most favoured by all sophisticated Parisians. Somewhere between Tokyo and Paris, the left side of his face had frozen stiff. It had become totally immobile. What was the cause? There was speculation that the prince had contracted syphilis, but no one knew where, or from whom.

  ‘My benefactor was always elegant. His preferred colour was blue. In the remaining months of his life, he covered up his shame – for that is what he called it – with a blue scarf. I still have it, Dinicu. He wanted me to have it. I do not understand why.’

  I did not understand either.

  ‘Perhaps it will be my turn to cover my face with it one day.’

  ‘Why should you do that?’

  ‘When I no longer want the world to look at me.’

  ‘Why should you want that?’

  ‘Oh, Dinu,’ he suddenly exploded. ‘I am wretched beyond words.’

  ‘You are drunk,’ I observed calmly, with no hint of accusation. ‘You are drunk, my sweetheart. It’s the grape talking, not Rãzvãnel. I am here with you. You should be happy that I am here with you.’

  ‘Should I be? Who says I should?’

  ‘I do. I say it emphatically,’ I said without emphasis. ‘I say you should.’

  He glared at me for a few terrifying minutes. I held his stare with the nearest thing to a smile that I could manage. I waited, with feigned patience, for my lover to be returned to me. When he came back, it was with a long sigh. He begged my forgiveness, which I granted him on the instant.

  Rãzvan laughed when I told him that both my denigrators and my small number of admirers in Bucharest regarded me as a bonjouriste because of my predilection for speaking French whenever I had the opportunity.

  ‘That’s what the prince called me, too, but as a joke.’

  It wasn’t a joke anymore, in 1932, and would become an insult of the worst kind as the decade progressed. To be a dandyish bonjouriste meant that you favoured Paris rather than Berlin, the unlikely Mecca that attracted a new breed of pilgrims.