William Boyd - The Destiny of Nathalie X

We decided to go along, to make our way to Villefranche. Mild Bent has a car — a VW — but he says he has to detour to pick up his girlfriend. Ulricke announces that she and I will hitchhike. Steve and Anneliese can go with Bent, she says. I want to protest, but say nothing.

Ulricke and Anneliese live in a large converted villa, prewar, up by the Fac de Lettres at Magnan. They rent a large room in a ground-floor flat that belongs to an Uruguayan poet (he teaches Spanish literature at the university) called César.

One night — not long after our first meetings — I’m walking Ulricke home. It’s quite late. I promise myself that if we get to the villa after midnight I’ll ask if I can stay, as it’s a long walk back to my room in the rue Dante down in the city. Dependable Ulricke invites me in for a cup of coffee. At the back of the flat the windows are at ground level and overlook a garden. Ulricke and Anneliese use them as doors to avoid passing through the communal hall. We clamber through the window and into the room. It is big, bare and clean. There are two beds, a bright divan and some wooden chairs that have recently been painted a shiny new red. A few cute drawings have been pinned on the wall and there is a single houseplant, flourishing almost indecently from all the attention it receives — the leaves always dark green and glossy, the earth in the pot moist and leveled. The rest of the flat is composed of César’s bedroom, his study, a kitchen and bathroom.

We drink our coffee, we talk — idly, amicably. Anneliese is late, out at the cinema with friends. I look at my watch: it is after midnight. I make my request and Ulricke offers me the divan. There is a moment, after we have stripped off the coverlet and tucked in an extra blanket, when we both stand quite close to each other. I lean in her direction, a hand weakly touches her shoulder, we kiss. We sit down on the bed. It is all pleasantly uncomplicated and straightforward.

When Anneliese returns she seems pleased to see me. After more coffee and conversation, the girls change discreetly into their pajamas in the bathroom. While they’re gone I undress to my underpants and socks and slide into bed. The girls come back, the lights go out and we exchange cheery bonsoirs .

On the hard small divan I lie awake in the dark, Ulricke and Anneliese sleeping in their beds a few feet away. I feel warm, content, secure — like a member of a close and happy family, as if Ulricke and Anneliese were my sisters and beyond the door in the quiet house lay our tender parents …

In the morning I meet César. He is thin and febrile, with tousled dry hair. He speaks fast but badly flawed English. We talk about London, where he lived for two years before coming to Nice. Ulricke tells me that as a poet he is really quite famous in Uruguay. Also she tells me that he had an affair with Anneliese when the girls first moved in — but now they’re just friends. Unfortunately, this forces a change in my attitude toward César: I like him, but resentment will always distance us now. Whenever he and Anneliese talk I find myself searching for vestiges of their former intimacy — but there seems nothing there anymore.

We all possess, like it or not, the people we know, and are possessed by them in turn. We all own and forge an image of others in our minds which is inviolable and private. We make those private images public at our peril. Revelation is an audacious move to be long pondered. Unfortunately, this impulse occurs when we are least able to control it, when we’re distracted by love — or hate …

But we can possess others without their ever being truly aware of it. For example, I possess Steve and Anneliese in ways they could never imagine.

I often wonder what Anneliese thinks about while Ulricke and I are fucking across the room from her. Is she irritated? Curious? Happy? The intimacy of our domestic setup causes me some embarrassment at first, but the girls seem quite unperturbed. I affect a similar insouciance. But although we live in such proximity we maintain a bizarrely prim decorum. We don’t wander around naked. Ulricke and I undress while Anneliese is in the bathroom, or else with the lights out. I have yet to see Anneliese naked. And she’s always with us too — Ulricke and I have never spent a night alone. Since her affair with César she has had no boyfriend. My vague embarrassment swiftly departs and I begin to enjoy Anneliese’s presence during the night — like some mute and unbelievably lax chaperone. One day, to my regret, she tells me how happy she is that Ulricke “has” me; how pleased she is that we are together. The twin sisters are typically close; Anneliese is the more self-composed and confident and she feels protective toward Ulricke, who’s more vulnerable and easily hurt. I reassure her of my sincerity and try not to let the strain show on my face.

With some dismay I watch Steve — an exotic figure in his Afghan coat and flowing hair — join Anneliese in the back of Bent’s VW. Ulricke and I wave them on their way, then we walk down the road from the apartment block toward the Promenade des Anglais. Although it is after nine o’clock the night air is not unpleasantly cool. For the first time the spring chill has left the air — a presage of the bright summer to come. We walk down rue de la Buffa and cut over to the rue de France. The whores in the boutique doorways seem pleased at the clemency of the weather. They call across the street to each other in clear voices; some of them even wear hot pants.

It’s not that warm. Ulricke wears a white PVC raincoat and a scarf. I put my arm around her shoulders and hear the crackle of the plastic material. The glow from the streetlamps sets highlights in the shine on her nose and cheeks … I worry about Steve and Anneliese in the back of Bent’s car.

I begin to spend more and more nights at Ulricke’s. Madame d’Amico, my landlady, makes no comment on my prolonged absences. I visit my small room in her flat regularly to change my clothes but I find myself increasingly loath to spend nights alone there. Its fusty smell, its dismal view of the interior courtyard, the dull conversations with my fellow lodgers, depress me. I am happy to have exchanged lonely independence for the hugger-mugger intimacy of the villa. Indeed, for a week or so life there becomes even more cramped. The twins are joined by a girlfriend from Bremen, called Clara — twenty-two, sharp-faced, candid — in disgrace with her parents and spending a month or two visiting friends while waiting for tempers back home to cool. I ask her what she has done. She says she had an affair with her father’s business partner and oldest friend. This was discovered, and the ramifications of the scandal spread to the boardroom: suits are being filed, resignations demanded, takeover bids plotted. Clara seems quite calm about it all, her only regret being that her lover’s daughter — who hitherto had been her constant companion since childhood — now refuses to see or speak to her. Whole lives are irreparably askew.

Clara occupies the divan. She sleeps naked and is less concerned with privacy than the other girls. I find I relish the dormitory-like aspect of our living arrangements even more. At night I lie docilely beside Ulricke, listening to the three girls talking in German. I can’t understand a word — they could be talking about me, for all I know. Clara smokes French cigarettes and their pleasant sour smell lingers in the air after the lights are switched out. Ulricke and I wait for a diplomatic five minutes or so before making love. That fragrance of Gauloises or Gitanes is forever associated with those tense palpitating moments of darkness: Ulricke’s warm strong body, the carnal anticipation, the sounds of Clara and Anneliese settling themselves in their beds, their fake yawns.