Эдвард Докс - Pravda ['Self Help' in the UK]

And actually, she was not lying.

But not there.

Not quite there.

What a woman. He couldn’t paint her. And he couldn’t make her come. Someone to hang on to, for certain.

“Let’s drink more.” Irritation vanquished, mind at ease, he reached across and plucked the wine from the bucket of thinning ice.

“What are we listening to today?” she asked, stretching lazily for her glass.

“Mozart, Marriage of Figaro.”

He poured—the angles awkward, since neither of them could be bothered to sit up straight. “And this bit?”

“This is the duet between the Count and Susanna. Crudel! Perche finora farmi languir cosi?” “It’s beautiful.”

He replaced the bottle and settled himself. He liked to look at her every way—and sometimes, as now, her body changed back again into that of artist’s model: laid out beside him, propped on her elbow, face close and glowing, freckled shoulders and that hip jutting heavenward. Pure artistic provocation.

“Yes, it is beautiful.” He took a refreshing draft. “But it’s also a lie.”

“What do you mean? Why is it a lie?”

“Because despite all the glory of that angelic voice, I’m afraid that Susanna—she’s the one singing—has absolutely no intention of meeting the poor Count—that’s him—even though she is right now promising repeatedly that she will. The plan is for the Countess to disguise herself as Susanna and take her place at the rendezvous. So all Susanna is doing is luring the Count into their trap—and making sure that he pays off Figaro’s debts along the way. I’m afraid her part in the whole exquisite duet is a lie—from start to finish.”

Chloe shook her head. “The most beautiful music we have—a lie.”

“Yes. And all the honest toil in the world not worth a single bar.”

He noticed that Chloe sipped her wine like a fish—lips pursed in an unselfconscious pout. And he realized that in twenty minutes he would have to make love to her again as a direct result of this observation.

She narrowed her eyes, but playfully. “Have you always been a liar, Nicholas?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it is the only way to get myself into situations like this.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Honest men have very little fun in life. It’s a well-known fact.” His lips parted in a rare smile.

“And women like lies?”

“Men, women. Everyone wants to be seduced. Even the coldest blood will warm to a little solicitation.”

“And seduction is always lies?”

“Of course… it takes us away from the real world into something fantastical and compelling.”

“Maybe. But still, lies are not the only way.” She sucked her lips. “You could, for example, pay someone far too much to be your model.”

“True. But then she must believe, at least in part, that she is being paid genuinely to model. Or else she might lose her self-respect. Or demand much higher wages. So even here, lies come into it.”

She wrinkled her nose so that her freckles took up new lines of defense.

“And what’s it like being such a liar?”

“Interesting. Exhilarating. Amusing. Transcendent.”

“Like Mozart.”

“Yes, that little bastard told millions of them, you just know that he did.” He sat up in the bed, holding his glass high above his stomach as he rearranged the pillows. “Once you cross the line, you can’t go back. And why would you ever want to? Everything else seems gray, leaden, unimaginative, plodding, bound in. Did you not lie to your husbands?”

“No. I tortured them with the truth.”

“The worst form of torture there is.”

“But in those days I was acting all the time, so I suppose the rest of my life was a lie. Lies to get the parts, I mean. Lies to play the parts.” She held a sip in her mouth a moment and met his eye as she tasted. “And yet… and yet you are an honest man, M. Glover.”

He too allowed the wine to linger on his tongue, but said nothing.

She spoke cautiously into his silence. “You mean it—whatever you are doing, you mean it. You’re here because you mean to be here. You do not do things you do not mean. Every sip of your wine, you mean it. Or… or this.” She pointed with her little finger, glass now raised, indicating her nakedness, his nakedness, the bed itself. “You fuck me like you mean it. Always.”

“I do.”

“And then there is the fact that you know your painting is terrible.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

“I feel a lot better now than I did a few hours ago,” he said. “My painting doesn’t matter.”

“Then I am a success. A top-up, please.” She propped her chin on his chest, holding her glass out in the direction of the bottle.

For the first time, and with all the attendant surprise of a new idea, it occurred to him that he could remarry. There was a novel thought. Move Alessandro out, move Chloe Martin in. He could get by on a single piece of tight male arse a month, say. Or even pay Alessandro a fixed fee to visit. (The idea of turning that deluded little Roman into a whore certainly appealed.) Though would Chloe Martin actually say yes? He thought not. Except, perhaps, for the money.

“Did you lie to your wife when you were together?”

“Every day. Every hour. Every minute.”

“You have never said anything about her.”

“Ask—if you wish to know.”

“Where does she live?”

“My wife died a few weeks ago.” Nicholas drank more deeply. “I am sorry.”

“We were separated for the last ten years or so. We didn’t speak for most of that time. But—to answer your next question—I loved her dearly. I never said it, of course. But then you must hold something in reserve against the final reckoning, wouldn’t you say?”

“No.”

“Ah, but in reality you do… you hold many things back.” He scratched her back with gentle fingers.

“You never saw her again after you left?”

“Actually, I did—just before. I was lucky—I was able to spend a few good days with her. She lived in Russia. You can still buy the necessary pills there. They ease the pain. She had cancer. I bought her a whole stack. She was going into hospital. I had arranged for the best doctors.”

“She lived in Moscow?”

“St. Petersburg.”

“But you didn’t tell her that you loved her then—when you saw her, I mean.”

“No. I… I assumed I would see her again. We hardly said a word to each other while I was there, in fact. I regret that very much now. There was a great deal that I would have liked to talk to her about. I suppose I thought it was the start of… of our reconciliation. I tried to persuade her to come back to our old home in London—to be treated there. But she said she would not leave Russia again. She was the most stubborn woman I ever knew. Would die to prove her point. In a way, she did die to prove her point.” (Why? What perverse gene had made it thus all his life: so much easier to speak to friends than to family, to his lovers than to his wife?) “Anyway I booked my flight back two weeks later. I was going to surprise her—visit her in the hospital. She died a few days after I left.”

“What did you do while you were there?”

He found himself admiring the lack of melodrama in Chloe’s voice: that she did not become stagy or overcareful or otherwise false-toned around the subject of death. Odd, especially for an actress. Perhaps she had lost someone. Odd too how close to Masha he felt, just talking like this. He realized with some shock that he hadn’t spoken properly to anyone since. Since.

“We went to the Hermitage once, when she felt she could make the trip. She was in a lot of pain. Though the pills helped—helped enormously. The other days we just played these six-hour games of chess and listened to music. Sat together. Nothing much. I went to see the doctors to arrange things with the hospital.” He raised his glass but paused to speak before he drank. “They feel as if they were the best three days of my life. Just to be near her. She might have been going slowly mad all her life but, my God, that woman had so much raw courage.”