Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

‘Did he know that you had looked at his drawing?’ asked Maurice, and I turned to him, shivering a little as I dragged myself back from a lost Berlin to a living Rome.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think it would have disappointed him if he’d caught me and perhaps our incipient friendship would have ended at that moment. Anyway, we got very merry and by the end of the evening I was certain that I was in love with him, but every time my eyes fell to that sketchbook I felt the impossibility of a romance and then I would drink some more to numb the pain.’

I glanced at my watch, it was time for us to move on, and we stood up, talking of other things as we made our way back to the hotel. I sat alone in the bar later, lost in my thoughts, and when Maurice rejoined me he had taken a shower and smelled of soap, his hair a little damp on his head, and this was exhilarating to me. We spoke some more of Maurice’s own writing and he told me how much my stipend had meant to him for he had moved to a small flat closer to the Savoy where he found it easier to write.

Later, as we walked along the corridors towards our bedrooms, he paused outside my door and I reached for his hand, to wish him goodnight, but to my surprise he leaned forward and offered me a hug. Like an inexperienced performer on a stage, I was uncertain what to do with my arms, whether I should leave them hanging by my side or wrap them around him too. I breathed in the musk of his scent, and my lips, so close to his neck, longed to find a place to call their own. But before I could embarrass myself any further, he pulled away.

‘Your advice is so helpful to me, Erich,’ he said. ‘I’m lucky to be able to learn from you. I hope you know how grateful I am.’

And with that he was gone and I let myself into my room, knowing that I would lie awake for hours yet.

I didn’t see Maurice again for more than a month after this. He returned to Berlin and I to Cambridge. I longed for the trip to Madrid and, when it came, I waited for him in the foyer of the Hotel Atlántico, pretending to read while keeping a close eye on the door for his arrival. I did my best not to look in the direction of the receptionist, with whom I had engaged in an earlier altercation upon discovering that Maurice’s room would not be adjacent to mine but located on the floor below. I had pleaded with her to make the necessary changes but she had proved intractable and I may have disgraced myself with a childish tantrum. When he finally appeared, however, my spirits lifted and we embraced like old friends, before repairing to a local tapas bar, where he ate like a healthy young horse and I simply sat and watched him.

The following day, a lunch was held in my honour in a private room at the Museo del Prado and, although we arrived early to immerse ourselves in the Titians, I lost track of him at some point and was forced to make my way alone to the reception, where I found myself standing next to the American writer Dash Hardy, with whom I shared a Spanish publisher. As he was spending a semester in the city, teaching at the university, he had been invited to attend the gathering but, anxious about Maurice’s disappearance, I found it difficult to concentrate on his conversation. I remember, however, that he congratulated me on my recent success while informing me that, while he had not read my book – because he did not read non-American writers – he had been assured by our mutual editor that it was a work of some merit.

‘Please don’t be offended,’ he drawled, reaching his chubby fingers into his mouth, removing a morsel from one of the canapés that had lodged itself between his teeth and examining it for a moment with the intensity of a forensic scientist before flicking it to the carpet. ‘I don’t read women either and I make sure to say so in every interview as it always ensures that I receive the maximum amount of publicity. The politically correct brigade loses their collective mind and before I know it I’m on the front of all the literary pages.’

‘You’re a controversialist, then,’ I said.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m a fiction writer with an expensive apartment overlooking Central Park West. And I need to sell books in order to pay the co-op fees.’

We talked for ten minutes or more but I struggled to find common ground with him. I recalled a memoir of his that I had read some years earlier where he listed in graphic detail the many homosexual encounters of his youth and young adulthood, meetings that seemed almost sordid in his perfect recall. He was the type of writer I thought of as a professional queer, one whose nature defined both his public persona and his work, and that was something that had always made me uncomfortable.

‘And I see you have a handsome young friend travelling with you,’ Dash said finally, smiling lasciviously and winking at me. ‘I noticed him earlier staring by the El Grecos and I simply had to go over to introduce myself. He was too beautiful to ignore. He recognized me immediately, which of course made my day, and told me that he was your assistant. Lucky old you.’

Before I could reply, I caught sight of Maurice entering the room at last, locked deep in conversation with a lady novelist, a previous winner of The Prize, and as they stood there, she squeezing his hand tightly as they conversed with passionate intent, I felt a surge of jealousy. I longed to grab him by the arm and make a quick exit from the Prado but of course such a thing would have insulted my hosts.

‘There he is,’ said Dash, turning around now and following the direction of my eyes. ‘Where did you pick him up, anyway? He’s pretty as a peach but also very street , don’t you think?’

‘I didn’t pick him up anywhere,’ I replied, trying to control my irritation at his vulgarity. ‘He’s simply a young writer who helps me out from time to time, that’s all.’

He seemed to enjoy my discomfort. ‘You remind me of my Aunt Gloria,’ he said. ‘She’s long dead now, of course. The poor dear couldn’t bear any talk of sex. She had a stroke halfway through reading my first novel and ended up in hospital for the rest of her life. I don’t know if it was the book that brought it on but I’ve always rather hoped that it was. But tell me, Erich, is he submissive, this young assistant of yours, or dominant?’

I looked at him again, longing for the lunch to begin in order that it might sooner come to an end, and claimed not to understand what he meant.

‘Oh, don’t be disingenuous,’ he said. ‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. What’s his name?’

‘Maurice,’ I said, and he threw back his head and laughed.

‘Of course it is! You couldn’t make it up! What a shame your name isn’t Clive. And does he charge you by the day or is he one of those agreeable boys who’s happy to give you everything he has as long as you open enough doors for him? You’ve certainly brought him to the right place, that’s for sure,’ he added, looking around at a room that had by now filled with writers, editors and literary taste-makers. ‘I imagine he’ll be very grateful tonight.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ I told him. ‘For heaven’s sake, he’s just a boy. We’re friends, that’s all.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You’re at least forty years older than him. You can’t possibly be friends. If he’s not giving you what you want, then you should throw him back where you found him and find someone who will. Creative-writing courses are full of accommodating boys who have no scruples when it comes to such things. Believe me, I should know.’

A moment later, lunch was called and to my further annoyance I found myself seated at some distance from Maurice, sandwiched instead between the marketing director from my publishing house and the editor of a literary magazine. He, on the other hand, was placed next to a handsome young Spanish writer who had published three novels in three years, the most recent of which had been a major international success. They spent almost the entire meal locked in conversation, laughing fitfully from time to time, but he never turned in my direction once. And when he took his ever-present notebook from his bag and started to scribble something down that his companion had said, it was all I could do not to pick up the salt cellar and fling it in his direction.