by Paul Bailey
‘Thank you, Eduard. It will be a waste of his time and mine.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because I cannot be cured of whatever disease you think afflicts me – if afflict me it does.’
‘I made no mention of disease.’
‘Is he a Freudian analyst? Is he, by any chance, a Jew?’
I guessed, to judge by my cousin’s embarrassment, that he was.
‘I have no need of his help or assistance or guidance. I am happy as I am.’
For the first time in many years, my father pleaded with me to honour and respect Elena Grigorescu’s memory.
‘She would be shocked – no, more than shocked, horrified – to hear you say that you are happy to declare that you are a – I have no wish to pronounce the word—’
‘Pervert,’ Cousin Eduard suggested.
‘That will suffice.’
‘I am happy to be Dinu Grigorescu,’ I said. ‘The son of Cezar and Elena. That is the extent of my current happiness.’
I tried to look serene. I was determined not to be frightened or upset by their accusations. I had progressed beyond Orthodox guilt towards a state of mind that was attuned to my love – which from the start had intimated that it would transcend lust – for the Rãzvan I had left weeping at the station.
‘You are enamoured of this peasant, I fear.’
Oh, that choice of word: peasant. It implied subjugation, ignorance, centuries of servility.
‘The peasant to whom you are referring so unkindly is a cultivated man, as my cousin will testify.’
‘I can testify that he speaks with obvious refinement, Cezar. I can certainly say that in his defence.’
‘Defence? What defence?’
‘He has the manners of the salon, to be sure. He could pass for a gentleman were it not for his features.’
It was as if Albert Le Cuziat, the snob beyond pareil, was speaking.
‘His face proclaims his ancestry, which is that of the woods and fields. He looks like a son of the soil despite his patent sophistication.’
Listening to Cousin Eduard’s patent nonsense, I began to understand why Rãzvan, in the role of Honoré, insulted and humiliated his aristocratic clients. It was their turn to experience abasement, even if they were paying for it. By denying them his peasant’s body, the strong-boned and muscled body of his ancestors, he was exacting a sweet revenge on their complacent forefathers, who had been content to function in a restricted feudal system which guaranteed into eternity that the poor remained poor while the already and always rich flourished. They anticipated that my lover would be rough with them, but he plied them instead with polished insults. How they must have squirmed as he demonstrated, for their startled edification, not roughness, not brutishness, but a culture superior to their own. He knew, by heart, poems they had never read; could talk of paintings and church interiors they had only been afforded a cursory glance of, and of music by composers to whom he had been introduced – Saint-Saëns, for example, and the young Maurice Ravel. And all the while he was unattainable. The son of the soil refused to be contaminated and defiled by the pomaded and scented men who had heard that Honoré provided a unique service. It occurred to me as I reflected on Rãzvan’s assumption of Honoré that my father and my cousin had heard tell of his anarchic activities. I allowed myself a smile at the notion.
I was aware that I was making history, private history, when I declared, in the drawing-room of the house near Ciºmigiu, that I was deeply and irretrievably in love with Rãzvan Popescu. I could not imagine life with anyone else. If there were to be tragic consequences, I would face them. I would die for him, I said, aware even as I did so that I was being melodramatic. The confession was a large factor in the enjoyment I felt at being honest.
‘We will talk in the morning,’ said my father. ‘We must devise a plan to preserve, or restore, your reputation.’
My father’s plan for my restoration was not immediately forthcoming. He had been embarrassed by my passionate declaration. There was still the likelihood, he insisted on reminding me, that I might marry. Elisabeta was entranced by me before she met George Vãduva, but there were plenty of girls who considered Dinu Grigorescu a ‘catch’. A sham marriage was a marriage just the same. The world need not know it was a deception.
‘But I should know it was. I cannot picture myself as a contented deceiver.’
‘What has contentment to do with it, Dinu? You could provide me with a grandson and then conduct your affairs discreetly without your wife knowing anything about them.’
‘Are you speaking from experience, Tatã?’
‘Your mother was more devoted to her son and her God than she was to her husband. That is all I intend to say on the subject. Men have done worse things than enter into a marriage of convenience. I shall be blunt with you. It would be convenient for my reputation, and for yours, if you married an attractive woman.’
‘Why attractive?’
‘Because you are an attractive man, in appearance at least, and society here in Bucharest would find it perplexing if you attached yourself to a frump, however amiable her disposition.’
‘I promise that I shall never wed a frump. I can give you that assurance with heartfelt confidence.’
After a time, my father informed his colleagues and acquaintances that I had decided to remain a ‘confirmed bachelor’, a combination of words that signified I was a callous soul whose appreciation of women never progressed in the direction of the altar. I would continue to be a constant temptation to the fairer sex. I was not alone in my predilection.
I went on wearing the clothes Amalia chose and bought for me. I dressed plainly, though, whenever I had myself photographed for Rãzvan. I cared to look decadent in the company of men and women in Bucharest to whom I was either moderately affectionate or completely indifferent, but I knew beyond doubt that the beauty Rãzvan detected in me, and treasured, required no adornment or decoration. I was his in anything casual there was to hand.
Rãzvan abandoned the art of the cryptic postcard message and wrote me letters, varying in length and substance, instead. They came in monthly instalments. They were mostly professions of his undying love for Dinicu, but occasionally he told me of chance encounters with famous artists who were aware, after many years, of Prince E’s educative involvement with him. One such was the shy and strange Constantin Brâncuºi, who had been struck by the very features my cousin Eduard deplored or lamented – I wasn’t sure which. The retiring and modest sculptor had drawn his fellow peasant’s face from several angles, with the intention of sculpting an imposing figure of him, perhaps. He captured his eyes, his nose, his chin and his always unruly hair in the drawing I am looking at as I write. It is a work of spontaneous genius.
My lover assured me of his faithfulness and I believed him. Our right hands were either happily or regretfully employed: his in rue de Dunkerque, mine in the ostentatiously elegant Carmen Sylva 4. We were united, in our special way, before the anticipated reunion that would see us entwined for ever, as we envisaged hopefully.
What had I to report to Rãzvan? I began with my Cousin Eduard’s return to Bucharest and his new-found contempt for Jewish bankers, politicians and businessmen. I recorded my dismay on hearing him express these thoughtless, hitherto uncharacteristic opinions, with which my father appeared to concur. In that first letter to my beloved after our tearful separation, I commented also on Cezar Grigorescu’s proud description of his son as a ‘confirmed bachelor’ intent on breaking women’s hearts. I did not say, yet, that I had made a confession to Cezar and Eduard of my love for Rãzvan Popescu.
I retrieved the photograph of the prince’s boy from its hiding place and put it on my bedside table. There was no cause for secrecy now.
‘You should be grateful to your wicked stepmother, Dinu.’
‘Why is that, Amalia?’
‘Where must I begin? When you were foolish enough or courageous enough – let’s say foolishly courageous – to tell the
truth to Cezar and that oily man Eduard Vasiliu about your friendship with the notorious Popescu, your father was incensed. He was spitting his rage at me for an eternity-and-a-half before I contrived to calm him down.’
We were taking breakfast together, relishing the delicately bitter taste of Dundee marmalade which she had purchased at Dragomir, the city’s most fashionable grocery store. I was always reminded of Dragomir when I shopped, not too often, at Fauchon in Paris. In both culinary palaces you could buy smoked fish and caviar and teas from India and the Orient and game preserved in its own aspic. Dragomir disappeared when Romania displayed its talent for farcical brutality for a shameful decade or more, but Fauchon survives, in a liberated Paris.
‘It was your caring Amalia, my sweet, who chanced upon the “confirmed bachelor” cliché when Cezar’s anger was at its immoderate height. “Spread the news abroad,” I said to him, “that your beautiful son is intent on being a Don Juan, a philanderer – for the time being, anyway. Tell everyone that your precious only son is cast in the Byronic mould.” My darling boy, by rescuing you from Cezar’s wrath, I fear I have created greater havoc for you. You will be hunted and hounded by a thousand frustrated Dianas whose husbands bore them to near-extinction in the bedroom. Be warned, Dinu, of the sexual dangers ahead.’
Was it possible for me to love Elena, my devout mother, as well as this woman who was in every way her opposite? I was beginning to think it was. Even if I had hated Amalia, which I was tempted to when I was introduced to her with the terrible news that I was to be her stepson, I could still enjoy her worldly company. Unlike Elena, she did not expect goodness to be prevalent in human affairs. Amalia used the word ‘wicked’ almost as a term of endearment. Whenever she called me a ‘wicked boy’ I knew she was complimenting me on what she described as a ‘delicious misdemeanour’. My holiday in Eforie, the reason for which was at first a secret from my father, was a misdemeanour she found especially appetizing.
‘Break all the laws and commandments you can,’ she had advised me on the night before I set off for Constanþa. ‘May you and the prince’s boy have the naughtiest of naughty holidays.’
Eduard’s remarks at the dining table that summer evening in 1932 offered a relatively mild foretaste of the talk that could be heard in restaurants and bars and in certain departments at the university for the remainder of the decade and beyond. It began in a muted, even embarrassed, fashion, with whispers and innuendo, before it prospered into open, unapologetic virulence. Its subject was the Jew and the nature of his Jewishness, which meant the amassing of vast sums of money and the destruction of the Christian faith.
On the first of February 1934 I attended the belated Romanian premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. We sat in splendour in one of the larger boxes at the opera house – my father and stepmother, Elisabeta and the poet George Vãduva, with whom she was demonstrably infatuated, and Eduard Vasiliu and his new wife, Anca. The performance commenced at eight, I recall, and as I listened to the Prelude I realized that this was a work I might be enamoured of for ever. It was sung in Romanian, so there were occasions when the words and the music sounded almost estranged from each other. Tristan was sung by the divinely named Nicu Apostolescu and Isolde by Mimi Nestorescu, who shrieked on the highest notes. I was transported, even so.
We drank champagne throughout the evening, served by the sommelier from the restaurant Capºa. In the first interval, my father commented on the stupidity of the plot, while Amalia complained about the drabness of the costumes.
‘There really are no clothes to speak of in Wagner. Those shifts may conceal an excess of flesh but they are not, definitely not, a pleasure to look at for hours on end. And why should the men be dressed in grey?’
‘I cannot answer that question, Amalia. Perhaps it is a tradition.’
‘We never have this problem with Mozart and Puccini. They are both so colourful. And so is the enchanting Franz Lehár,’ she added, winking at me. ‘I have a soft spot for Lehár.’
I knew why. For three happy months in 1931, Amalia had been the mistress of Rudolf Peterson, who was born Rudi Petrescu, the great tenor who specialized in operetta. She would have left Cezar for him, but he was the confirmed bachelor I was merely pretending to be.
In the second interval, when Eduard and Anca had woken up, Amalia – studying the distinguished audience with the aid of her lorgnette – remarked suddenly that there were two strange men at the back of the dress circle.
‘They are not wearing black ties like everyone else. They have come in green shirts. Why were they allowed to enter the auditorium?’
Perhaps that was the first appearance in public of the green-shirted men who would blight our nation. In retrospect, their choice of music was prescient, since it was revealed some years later that Tristan und Isolde held a high place in Adolf Hitler’s musical pantheon.
It was while I was listening to Nestorescu struggling with the Liebestod that the thought came to me that Rãzvan and I, without the encouragement of a love potion, were in some way doomed. I shrugged it off as a romantic fantasy, this idea of our being united in fervent sex and even more fervent dying. Such extremes of feeling were unnatural, I reasoned, and morbid. It was as absurd as it was repellent, yet it stayed with me, like a mental leech, for days.
Those green shirts, so incongruous in that dinner-jacketed, black-tied throng, were to become familiar in our unhappy country a year later. They signalled membership of the Iron Guard, a political party led by a fanatic named Codreanu, who had been inspired by St Michael, no less, to protect and preserve the purity of the Romanian people. Purity? What purity? The Romans conquered and occupied Dacia, and then the Greeks, the Turks, the Slavs, the Hungarians and the Germans occupied our land, planting their semen wherever they desired. Such was, and is, our purity.
One evening, in April, I came home from the university to be greeted in the hallway by Denisa, who informed me that a French gentleman by the name of Honoré had telephoned.
‘Did he leave a message?’
‘Only that he would try calling you again.’
I lifted the receiver three times and heard the voices of the family doctor, saying that he would visit Doamna Grigorescu on Friday at noon when his surgery was closed; the poet Vãduva, who wished to speak to Elisabeta; and the apprentice lawyer who had witnessed my reluctant parting from Rãzvan. He had news for my father, in the form of fresh evidence, concerning the case they were involved in at present. I passed the cringing Judas on to his master.
The fourth, and last, call came at around midnight, when I began to wonder if Honoré had abandoned the idea of phoning me.
It was he. It was Honoré. He was coming to Bucharest. He had booked a room in a modest hotel on a quiet street where we would be safe from prying gossips. The pretend father was more desperate than ever to embrace his pretend son. We would be together very, very soon.
The Hotel Minerva was unprepossessing. You could walk past it, thinking it was just another house on a street where all the houses looked identical. The room Rãzvan had been allotted was so small as to be minute. The walls were thin. We conducted our loving navigations with a Trappist monk’s disdain for noise. Our every sigh had to be measured. We didn’t cry out in ecstasy. We didn’t even speak.
We ate, drank and talked in a nearby taverna. A trust fund Prince E had set up for him when he was still taking lessons from Alin Dãnescu had recently matured and he was now a little bit richer.
‘Come and live with me, Dinicu, before I have to walk with the aid of a stick.’
‘That day is in the distant future.’
‘Is it? I shall be fifty in 1939. The years are running away from us. I want to spend at least some of them with you. Come back with me, dearest.’
‘I wish I could,’ I said, feebly. ‘I will come to you, Rãzvãnel, I promise, as soon as I can.’
‘And when, precisely, is that?’
‘It is impossible to be precise. In a few months. Yes, in a few month
s. I have commitments at the university to honour. I will come to you. I will make sure that our bed linen smells again of lavender.’
He did not believe me and, at that exact moment, I did not believe myself either. I think I detected hatred in his eyes.
‘I have enough money for both of us to live well.’
‘I have to work, Rãzvãnel. It is a compulsion. My dream of being a poet or novelist was abandoned, cast aside, when I returned to Bucharest after our wonderful summer. I am a serious scholar, with students dependent upon my hard-earned knowledge. Oh, I am sounding so pompous.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘Then I apologize.’
‘So you should.’
Seeing him there, so overcome with what I knew to be sorrow, I was suddenly reckless.
‘I will come to Paris next year. I will clear my desk, as the Americans say. I promise you. I really and truly and most sincerely promise you.’
‘You had better.’
‘I should like to go back with you to your cell. I feel a strong need for silent communion.’
I left Bucharest, and Romania, for ever in October 1935. I have to thank history for reuniting me with Rãzvan – the principal irony in this narrative – because the city of my birth had become insufferable to me. I felt that I was being invited to perform in a deadly farce, in which decent citizens, the very pillars of society, were transformed into apologists for bigotry and mindless venom. My father was one such citizen, as was my devious, and deviously charming, Cousin Eduard. Cezar Grigorescu, I came to understand, was an astute practitioner of the art of grovelling to those in power, regardless of their ideals and beliefs. Their squalid views were his, too. It suddenly seemed as if the resolutely frivolous Amalia was one of the few sane people in Bucharest society.
I had been contributing articles and reviews to the moderately liberal magazine Cuvântul for three years. I was a respected name in literary circles because of the long essays I had written on Proust (which contained a glancing reference to Albert Le Cuziat) and Balzac and Dostoevsky (in French translation) and many Romanian writers, including the young George Vãduva, whose imagist poetry, uncontaminated by politics, excited and moved me.