William Boyd - The New Confessions

“I’m sailing to New York next week,” Aram said. “They’ve gone mad for Julie . They want every new Realismus film.” He paused meaningfully. “They’re throwing money at me for Frederick the Great. ”

“I’m busy,” I said.

“What are you doing in that cottage, for God’s sake?”

“I’ll tell you soon. Very soon.”

“But when are you going to make Frederick ? We’ve got to start this summer.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Let Leo do it.”

They both looked at me in open amazement.

“You can do it, Leo,” I said. “Of course you can.”

“But it’s your film — earmarked — Karl-Heinz and—”

“It’s my wedding present to you.” I put my arms round them both. I am not normally given to these sort of gestures, but I was a little drunk. “Go on, Aram. Give it to Leo. He can do it.”

Aram looked shrewd: one eye closed slightly, bottom lip held between his teeth.

“Let’s talk when you get back from the honeymoon.”

“Listen, John, are you sure you—”

I gave him another impulsive hug. “Course I am. Anyway, I’ve got something else on.”

There were more surprises to come. I took my punch glass to be refilled, and as this was being done I heard myself greeted and looked round to see a small, perfectly bald young man with an idiot grin of pleasure on his face.

“Almyr Nelson,” he said. “ ‘Baby.’ Remember?”

“Of course. How are you, Baby?”

He smoothed imaginary hair on his gleaming pink pate. “Bit thin on top, otherwise fine.” He smiled again. “Well, you’re certainly doing all right for yourself.… Listen, Harold’s here. Come over and meet him.”

“Delighted.”

Faithfull, fatter than ever, was standing too close to someone I knew, Monika Alt, who was fanning herself vigorously with a menu. She greeted me as if I were an old friend, though we were no more than acquaintances.

“Thank God,” she whispered as she kissed me. “Terrible halitosis.”

“Look who I’ve dug up, Harry,” Nelson said, drawing me forward. “Old Todd, the intrepid balloonist. Can you credit it?”

Faithfull managed a weak smile.

“Todd … congratulations.” His face was moist with sweat. I smelled his rotting teeth as he spoke.

I accepted his good wishes. “What are you doing over here?” I asked.

“Just started a film.”

“Called The Tip-top Twins Go Sailing, ” Baby Nelson said cheerfully. “Part of a series.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said. “By the way, Faithfull, I should do something with your teeth. Your breath smells repulsive.”

I took Monika’s arm and we turned away and strode off through the crowd, Monika’s shoulders heaving with shocked silent laughter. It was childish of me, I know, but these opportunities are rare in life and must not be ignored. Cherish them, savor them; they provide some comfort in the dog days.

Monika and I had another drink and I told her about my past encounters with Harold Faithfull. We laughed some more. Monika Alt was in her mid-thirties, I think, maybe ten years older than me. She was a thin, blond, sinewy woman who had been a celebrated theatrical actress but whose career had never fully restarted after the hiatus caused by the war. She had been married three or four times and drank rather too much. As we talked she leaned against me occasionally, a breast flattening against my upper arm. It could have been accidental, but it is my opinion that a woman knows exactly when her breasts come into contact with anyone or anything, animate or inanimate. The warmth, the alcohol, my crude besting of Faithfull, and the new sense of confidence that irradiated me made me find her suddenly attractive. I felt a prickling and easing in my groin. However, I doubt very much if I would have gone to bed with her that afternoon if I had not just at that moment seen Doon and Mavrocordato across the room.

“Ouf! It’s so hot in here,” Monika said, blowing discreetly down the front of her dress. “Oh, look. There’s your star.”

“Why don’t we get out of here?” I said. “Come and have a picnic at my villa.”

Monika visited me at my villa once or twice a week during the rest of that summer. We would make love and have lunch. After lunch she liked to sunbathe naked in the back garden, a policy I encouraged as this was the view overlooked by my study window. She returned to Berlin in the afternoon as the air cooled. That was as much as we ever did. Her thin, hot, oily brown body with small, oddly deflated-looking breasts are inescapably associated with the genesis of my Confessions films. I grew to like her and I think she liked me, though we never spoke of our feelings. Perhaps that was why she came back. She had half a dozen scars, old and new, on her belly. I counted an appendectomy and a cesarean section, but I could not work out what the others were. I asked her how she got them.

“Too many men, darling,” she said. “Too many men.”

One day Aram came round unexpectedly while she was there. He had returned from the U.S.A. and Frederick the Great was about to start. He did not seem particularly surprised to see Monika. We stood at my study window looking at her spread body, glossy with sun oil.

“I’ve got nothing against Monika,” he said thoughtfully. “But for a man in your position I think it’s a big mistake to get involved with an actress.”

“I’m not involved with her,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

I looked at him. He was wearing a powder-blue seersucker suit — bought in America, I assumed — a red shirt and a big fat canvas golfing cap. He looked ridiculous.

“Anyway,” I said, “what are you doing here? You know this is my secret refuge.”

“My father’s dying. He wants to see you.”

The heat, that summer of ’26 in Berlin, was immense. It slammed down out of a hazy sky the color of Aram’s suit, heavy as glass. One was glad of the city’s clean wide streets then. At least in the broad avenues and boulevards the air could stir. It must have been some kind of public holiday that afternoon as I motored back with Aram, because the pavements seemed strangely deserted and the big shops in Leipziger Strasse were closed and dark. I remember hearing the sounds of half a dozen bands as we drove through the Tiergarten. I never learned what was going on.

I was cast down by Aram’s news of his father. I had grown fond of old Duric, who had forgiven me my defection from the Realismus style once the money from Julie started to flow. He had said he planned to use the funds to make a series of films about vermin in our cities. “You mean child molesters, perverts, that sort of thing?” I had asked. “No, no!” he had shouted. “Rats and fleas! Rats and fleas!” I had only known him ill, and foolishly had come to think of his gasps and wheezes, his snail’s pace and omnipresent oxygen cylinder, as being as much part of him as his liver spots and gray hair. Suddenly these features revealed themselves as afflictions, and that shocked and subdued me.

The Lodokians, father and son, lived in a thin grand house on Kronenstrasse. Inside it was dark, curtains drawn, and one was forcibly reminded of the summer heat once more. A butler let us in and a male nurse led me upstairs.

Duric Lodokian was sitting up — rather, lying up — on a soft ramp of pillows, his oxygen mask in one hand and a Russian cigarette in the other. He talked in breathless bursts of a few seconds, pausing to guzzle oxygen from the mask, or to drag weakly on his cigarette. His brown skin was damp and a grayish mud color. His liver spots were more noticeable. He was the color of a certain type of speckled egg. (Some kind of gull or game bird, I forget which now, but they used to be fashionable hors d’oeuvres at parties in the thirties. I could never touch them — they reminded me of Duric, dying.)