Allan Stein (21 page)

     
This is what he said:

     
"Our heart's path is covered in shadow. We must listen to the voices that seem useless. Into brains full of long sewage pipes, of school walls, tarmac, and welfare papers, the buzzing of insects must enter. We must all fill our eyes and ears with things that are the beginning of a great dream. Someone must shout that we'll build the pyramids. It doesn't matter if we don't. We must fuel that dream. We must stretch the corners of the soul like an endless sheet. Where am I when I'm not in the real world or in my imagination? What kind of a world is this if a madman has to tell you to be ashamed?" And then he called for music. The "Ode to Joy" began to play through a broken speaker. It faltered, surged, then faltered again. He poured gasoline on himself and lit it. The music became overwhelming. Then it stopped and all we heard was his screaming.

W
hen the lights came up the theater filled with voices. I was silent for a while because the movie upset me, but Stéphane said he liked it, although he'd seen very little. We walked up the stairs, emerging from underground, and the crowd waiting for the next show parted to let us through. It was night and the street was busy. A bakery had just opened and people spilled out its doorway. Two men shouted in a Laundromat, which was ugly and too bright. I saw them shoving, and one threw wet clothes that thudded against the heavy glass window. In the cold wet air we walked toward the metro. I asked if he thought 
the woman was very beautiful, and he nodded but didn't speak. I said too bad she was insane, but he had missed the scene where she lost her mind and grew impatient when I recounted it.

     
His mouth when he frowned was Miriam's. The pouting lower lip turned down at the corners, with its firm ridged upper lip, elegant and clean as the wing of some early modernist duplex, all long lines and weightless, perfect in its geometry. He parted these lips, wet them with his pink tongue, which circled to taste the skin, to take the evening air, then closed them firmly and grunted his objections. The boy kept bumping his shoulder against mine so that oncoming walkers had to part like water as we passed. I worried the small ticket stub between thumb and fingers, hidden in my pocket, until it was lint. "You'll be sleepy tonight?" I tried. The boy frowned once more and squinched his brow. We made our way home, silent and verging. The evening air, public clock, metro station, then home again through the park.

     
I was relieved to hear Miriam's laughter rattling down from the top floor when we got home. It drew me to her like a stone to earth. I squeezed Stéphane's shoulder bye-bye and bounded up the stairs. Pink Floyd, top volume, burst from the boy's room a moment later. Per lay across the cushions in the alcove, reading out loud to Miriam and Denis.

     
" 'Completely enclosed by its seventeenth-century walls, this curious little fortified town makes an unusual holiday resort.' " Denis made room for me on the bench; the spy had come in from the cold. I was absent, fundamentally, still caught in the labyrinth of my own espionage, but it was nice to sit on these fat cushions with friends (Herbert's friends). " 'The name Colmars comes from a temple to the god Mars, on a hill. The Fort de Savoie, which lies to the north on the hillock of Saint-Martin, makes a pair with the Fort de France to the south and recalls the time when this market town guarded the 
Provençal
 frontier, the Duc de Savoie having 
annexed the Barcelonnette Valley and Allos at the end of the fourteenth century.' "

     
"Colmars," Miriam whispered to me. "Per has an uncle there."

     
"Yes, he told me."

     
"I mean that Per has an uncle who is buried there." The music from below diminished, becoming all dull thuds and rumbles, which blended nicely with the pot of boiling eggs on the stove. The boy was tired, that much was clear. He might have been asleep. I liked to think the day had been obliterated from his mind already. There were quite a few evenings he stayed in his room, studying, while we ate dinner without him. He had a refrigerator full of yogurt and snacks in a vestigial kitchen (mini-fridge, cold-water sink, a shelf of bowls and glasses) directly below the one where we sat talking.

     
" 'The visitor will enjoy strolling through the narrow little streets, which come out on minute squares bright with fountains, realizing that he has reached the south from the atmosphere all around.' "

     
The book had a map, which Per spread on the table between us. It was marked with pale red checks and arrows, the residue of a waxy pencil used a half century ago. "How did you get there?"

     
"Train. But then we rode the last ten kilometers in a cart along the river to Colmars." Denis strained a bundle of eggs from the pot on the stove and put a fresh dozen into the boiling water. "We scaled a cliff to get from the road into town. I remember climbing with our bags and feeling very weak."

     
"Are we having eggs for dinner?" Denis brought the cooked eggs to the table in a bowl of cold water and began peeling them. I took a pair from the water and rolled them under my palms.

     
"No," Denis answered simply. "I need them peeled." What a benign mystery. Denis was like a hot spring, an unending supply of warmth, of easy sensuality, with no apparent source or end in sight.

     
"Armand, my uncle, was lame, but he made a wooden cart the right size for a dog and his dog pulled it. At the top of this cliff we had scrambled up, at the Porte de Savoie, he met us, and the dog pulled our bags in the cart from there. He had a radio with a battery, in the cart, and kept it on very loud because he was deaf also, and this way we paraded across the Place Gireud to his house."

     
"You were teenagers."

     
"We were boys, so this was very exciting." Steam from the eggs fogged the windows, and Miriam opened one a crack to clear the air. "Armand had dozens of these radios with their Edison batteries stacked in the room of Serge and me, all packed in wood boxes, which he meant to sell to all the houses of Colmars. He was an evangelist of this battery radio. He wanted to broadcast to them."

     
"Serge said you went as far as Allos with Armand and these radios, trying to sell them."

     
"Or give them away. I was very small and the boxes were heavy. The dog cart never left Colmars. I stopped by the river on one trip to sit on my box and rest and I fell asleep there in the sun. Serge and Armand didn't notice I was gone until they stopped for lunch."

     
"You were how old?"

     
"Fourteen. Serge was much stronger than I. I called him the squirrel, because he was very slim and wiry, and you could see his heart racing and racing for many minutes when we'd get out of the river and lie on the rocks to dry. We were so brown from the sun. The altitude is very high, and everything we did was exhausting."

"I want to take Stéphane there," I announced, crushing an egg. "I want to take him to Agay."

     
"Agay?" Miriam asked. "Is it near Colmars?" Denis stared at me, smiling; he took the damaged egg and rescued what he could of it.

     
"I don't know. I think so."

     
"He'd like it," Per said. "It's a little early, but the valley leading to Colmars is stunning."

"Agay is on the coast."

     
"It's only a few hours," Per guessed. "The train goes to Nice, and from there it's very near."

     
"I want to go Friday." My resolve startled me, but it was a perfectly plain suggestion, like taking the boy to soccer, and they treated it this way.

     
"Not Friday," Denis objected. "George has arranged Friday dinner with the widow, Herbert. It will be very posh and it is already arranged. You cannot disappoint her."

     
"Saturday. We'll go in the morning."

     
"He'll miss school."

     
"Only a few days," Per said. "It's very generous of you to ask, Herbert, I think he would love it." Miriam left the table and went downstairs, and when she came back up she said yes the boy would like it very much, and yes she thought it would be fine, and I took it all as a kind of blanket permission. I was taking the boy.

     
Per retrieved a brown cylinder from the freezer, some kind of bottle that was icy and looked like it would be effective as a pipe bomb. On a white label in red, obscured by frost: OUDE  JENEVER. Four shot glasses came from the freezer with it and Per filled each of them to the lip.

     
"Prost," Miriam said, rolling the
r
and lifting her glass to me.

     
"Prost."

     
It got late. The others went to bed drunk. Alone in the darkened alcove, I phoned Herbert. He had the cell phone in Jimmy's garden, where he'd fallen asleep.

     
"What time is it?" he asked.

     
"God, two in the morning, three?"

     
"But it's still light out."

     
"I meant here."

     
"The sun is just gorgeous. You know those huge hills behind Jimmy's? They're absolutely golden right now."

     
"Mmm."

     
"You're not coming home, are you."

     
"Herbert."

     
"You're fucking that boy every morning, noon, and night."

     
"Don't be ridiculous."

     
"I don't care. Better that you do it in France than here."

     
"Herbert, I'm coming back. I'll just be a few days late."

     
"Monday at the museum should be interesting. Did Hank call you?"

     
"Why would Hank call?"

     
"I don't know. He left a message at work; he said he'd try calling me in Paris, which is fine since apparently I'm never leaving Paris."

     
"I'm leaving the Dupaignes' Saturday. You'll be gone on time, officially. I'll fly back home next Wednesday."

     
"It doesn't matter. How's your dear friend the widow?"

     
"Of course it matters. I'm trying to be decent about all this."

     
"Thank you very much."

     
"I'm seeing the widow Friday; with any luck she'll have the drawings."

     
"Where are you meeting her?"

     
"I don't know, someone's house."

     
"Is it her house? Find out what else she's got."

     
"I don't think it's her house."

     
"She must have a million little treasures. Don't say anything, just smile a lot and laugh at her bon mots."

     
"I'll be charming."

     
"Uh-huh. What is that boy's name, anyway?"
    

     
"Stéphane . Stéphane Dupaigne."

     
"Mmm."

     
"I'm not doing anything with him. It's all fantasy, you know how I am."

     
"Not really."

     
"I'm leaving in a few days, why would I want to get involved at all?"

     
"Mmm."

     
"There's no point in it. He'll be five thousand miles away."

     
"Mmm-hmm."

     
"I've got to get out of here, Herbert. I can't wait to get home. Save Wednesday for me. We'll go somewhere."

T
hings fell apart. It was Friday. My resolve either collapsed or it accelerated to the point where events overtook me. At a time when I should have been supremely relaxed, on the verge of leaving with the boy, the nearness of it made me panicked and impatient. I strained to look bored. We ate
caviar d'aubergine
at his favorite snack stand and I said to him, Why don't we go to the park? In the pinched margin of this last day my mind had got stuck on the Elysian court, with its glittering promise of sweat and spilled blood.

     
The rain kept all the players away, except for one small boy with his multicolored shoes. He dashed around the puddles and made inexpert layups as the late-afternoon sun broke through and the court steamed where it shone. I joined this little boy, which looked predatory and awkward, but the inequity of it forced Stéphane onto the court. Clearly he and I were a more proper match. The kid gladly yielded his ball to the tall boy with the catlike shoes and his American friend, and he was content watching. We had scored only a few baskets when I took Stéphane by the waist and dumped him into a large puddle. It was almost dusk now, and the sun illuminated the trees, casting long shadows across us. The boy was soaked, and mud stained his prized T-shirt and pants. He was 
livid. He swore in both languages and slammed the ball to the ground before storming away. I could barely keep up with him and was lucky to board the same train in the metro station. At the Parc Montsouris, where night had fallen, he kept his silence and his pace. He wouldn't look at me. At home, he slammed the front door shut and went straight to his room and the shower.

     
I could barely keep myself still. I listened to the water run for two or three minutes and then took off my clothes and went upstairs in the dark. Steam billowed from the white tile bathroom, and I reached in and shut the light off. The boy swore again. "Who is it?" he said, in English because he knew who it was. The steam tingled all over my bare skin. I felt my way past the sink, parted the plastic curtain, and stepped into the shower beside him. Water poured over us. He said nothing, and I ran my hand down the center of his slim chest to his navel and then to the wet tuft of hair below that. The boy stood still. I paused, then he pushed my hand down farther until I found his cock, like a slug under a rain spout, and I squeezed it in my hand so it fattened and moved against me. Stéphane had his hands on my shoulders now. Water splashed off his back and arms. I worked my fist over the shaft of his cock, which had become quite large, stroking it as he pushed me against the tiles. There was a certain mindless symmetry to the beautiful gap of his open mouth and the great fleshy head of his cock that kept emerging from my fist. I stumbled backwards and he didn't catch me but pushed me down farther so I was flat on my back in the tub. I held on to his erection, pulling it down as the boy stood straddling me. Water haloed around him, spraying the curtain and the tile wall, running to where I lay in his shadow. He wasn't smiling. The boy stuck his foot on my crotch and rubbed it up and down my cock and then he knelt, his knees in my armpits, and started fucking me in the mouth. He was still angry, and he fucked me that way. The boy grabbed my head 
and pushed it back and forth onto him, driving his body into me as hard as he could. He grunted and squealed like a pig or a dog rooting out bones and became more furious until he came in my mouth and collapsed in the water beside me.