The Prince's Boy (10 page)

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? Dinule
þ
?’

‘Is that R
ã
zv
ã
nel?’ 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 Constan
þ
a 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 Constan
þ
a 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. R
ã
zvan 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 R
ã
zvan?’

‘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 hours on end. I had only the R
ã
zvan 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 Dinule
þ
. 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 Constan
þ
a, 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 R
ã
zvan 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 R
ã
zvan 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 Tat
ã
’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.

‘R
ã
zv
ã
nel.’

‘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, Tat
ã
. 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, R
ã
zvan?’

‘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, Tat
ã
?’ 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 Tat
ã
. 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, R
ã
zv
ã
nel.’

‘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, R
ã
zvan 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 R
ã
zv
ã
nel. 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.’