History of a Pleasure Seeker (28 page)

“But what if they come to their table?”

“Dinner’s served before the music starts. If they’re not there for that, they won’t be coming at all. I’ll open the grille for you at ten.”

P
ercy Shabrill was in their cabin when Piet returned to it. “Nineteen orders so far and still five days to go. I must say, there’s a good crowd on this ship.” He was entering details into a ledger, self-consciously. Piet’s extended absences had begun to disconcert Percy, who suspected his cabinmate of having an entrée not available to him. It made him louder and more boastful, and his thundering conviction tugged on Piet’s spirits.

As Percy told him that he had already done enough business to pay for half his passage, Piet could only admit that he had employed his time much less profitably. It was amusing to sit all day in a sumptuous room, talking to a friend and eating and drinking more lavishly than he could ever afford to do again, but Percy’s vigor made him ashamed of retreating from his responsibilities.

“And what will you be doing in South Africa?”

It was the first personal question Percy had asked him, and Piet had no answer. “I’ll see what’s needed when I get there.”

“Confident devil. You mean to say you’ve no concrete plans? No connections?” Percy chuckled, secretly unnerved. “You’re a braver fool than I.” He went back to his ledger, but the word “fool” hung in the humid air of their cabin and seemed to Piet to be precisely what he was. He lay down on his bunk and pretended to read. Percy’s purposeful bustling depressed him further. He watched Percy dress in silence and said he was seasick and could not eat. The dinner bell rang. At last he was alone—but at Percy’s departure his inner furies turned on him and made the hot, expensive, rattling room a little hell.

At nine o’clock he took out the tailcoat he had worn to Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts’ birthday party and the box of studs Egbert had given him hours before the final catastrophe. He washed and put them on without joy. When he was dressed, the discrepancy between his inner and outer selves troubled him. Confronting him in the mirror was a young man in glorious good health, apparently favored by nature and fortune. His glowing face gave no hint of the self-disgust within; neither did his clothes suggest the alarming truth that he had no funds to keep them. They would have to be pawned as soon as he reached Cape Town.

He went to the reading room. It was empty; so was the service corridor behind it. As he went through the baize door into first class, he was struck by the total
silence
. The rattling of his cabin had seeped into his bones; its sudden lifting was a miracle. He was standing in a corridor hung in pale blue brocade embroidered with waves and shells. He went down the passage, his leather soles sliding over the thick carpets, and as he passed the reading room a steward emerged and bowed. “The singing’s just starting, sir, if you were hoping to catch it.” He opened the door into the staircase hall. “Lift or stairs?”

Piet did not trust the notion of an elevator. “I’ll walk, thank you.”

The staircase was flanked by pillars of painted marble. Across the ceiling nymphs with very little on were being pursued by muscular Tritons. At intervals in the balustrade the line’s shell and crossed
L
s were pricked out in gold. The ship was empty, and the absence of chatter and clattering heels heightened the impact of its magnificence. Piet paused on the second landing under the great gilt clock. As it struck the hour, he climbed the last flight to find Didier waiting for him, flushed but grave. He nodded and led Piet beneath a dome of turquoise and gilt to a table set for one by the stage.

T
he
Eugénie
’s director of music believed in taking his audience by surprise. The instant the last dessert plate was cleared, while the room was still full of talk and laughter, he lifted his baton and plunged it into darkness. Piet had never seen
Carmen
, but knew it from the first high-spirited leap of the overture. A surge of gaiety swept the room. Accustomed to provincial orchestras heard from the cheapest seats, Piet had no notion that a group of musicians might make a sound as rich and subtle as that achieved by the
Eugénie
’s band.

The stage filled with handsome men in uniform. Albert Verignan employed well-known singers for the solo roles, but stewards with musical training doubled as members of the ship’s chorus. Piet recognized some of them from Didier’s tours of duty. A young woman appeared in a blue dress with dark plaits over her shoulders. He could not see her face as the soldiers surged round her, lustful and impudent. They were touching her and pulling at her dress; for a moment there was danger beneath the music’s catchy jollity. “Who are you looking for, my beauty?” sang their leader.

“Me?” She had an exceptional voice. When the crowd parted Piet saw that she was about his age, with a finely wrought face and devilish eyes. She announced that she was looking for a brigadier named Don José.

It was Stacey Meadows’ habit to address this line directly to one of the gentlemen sitting closest to the stage. She offered no intimate favors but was not above accepting devotion and pawnable trinkets from the men who occupied the
Eugénie
’s grandest suites. To be met by the bold, delighted stare of Piet Barol separated this night from the many others on which she had reprised the role of Micäela, a country girl too innocent to interest her, sent by an officer’s mother to give him a message and some money and a kiss. As the soldiers begged her to stay with them, she resisted with dazzling indignation. They threatened. One singer pressed his body against her, in contravention of the limits imposed at her insistence during rehearsals, and she freed herself emphatically while delivering a blazing B flat.

Piet Barol was transfixed. He watched her flee the stage, and the vague desire that had been mounting for days flared explosively. To touch a
young
woman! To use all he had learned from Jacobina on someone his own age! The possibility ignited his senses. He was suddenly aware, more deeply than he had been before, of the marvelous room; of the enthralled, well-dressed crowd, as it slipped beneath the music’s sorcery. How splendid to be where he was!

He knew the opera’s piano reduction intimately. To hear it played by musicians of distinction was a revelation. A crowd of children appeared, to general applause—so extravagant, so typical of Verignan, to bring fifteen adorable infants halfway around the world for a few scenes in an opera. Then the girls from the cigarette factory sauntered on, barely dressed, limbs and necks glistening with oil. A crowd of young bucks pursued them as a number of male passengers intended to do directly after the curtain call. Carmen’s entrance unleashed a roar of recognition and welcome. Germaine Lorette was in her late forties, squat and thickset, with a large nose and a voice of astonishing, undulating power. She moved with such arrogance there was nothing ridiculous in the handsome youths begging her to love them.

Piet had accompanied many amateur mezzo-sopranos as they tried their hands at “L’Amour Est un Oiseau Rebelle.” Lorette’s insolence was riveting. She picked a flower from her corsage and tossed it at Pierre Lauriac, the tenor playing Don José. He was twenty years younger than she and as in awe of her as the crowd was. The promise of sex filled the room; radiating from Carmen’s scorching glance, reviving the audience’s recollections of the cigarette girls’ smooth, oiled limbs, and their exquisitely made-up mouths singing of sweet cigar smoke and the transports of lovers.

An unspoken “when at sea” rule was taken for granted by all but the strictest watching moralists, and a glorious lasciviousness took hold of them, preserved from vulgarity by the music’s sophistication. Across the darkened room knees pressed against neighboring knees, hands clasped beneath tables. Even couples who had been married twenty years smiled at each other and were charmed by one another’s faces, lit by the soft red light of the shaded lamps.

Sitting at the captain’s table, bored by his fashionable companions and glad to be silent at last, Jay Gruneberger saw with pleasure that the strapping young man who never came to meals had made an exception tonight. He shifted his chair to get a clear view of him. Piet’s lips were slightly parted and the rosy light made his cheeks shine like a farm boy’s. Jay looked for the blond one and found him staring at his dark friend. Didier’s face had forgotten its professional neutrality. Oh to be young and in love, Jay thought.

Didier hardly heard the music and took no interest in the figures on the stage. He was in a state of quiet ecstasy. To have followed Piet on his adventure and rescued him from tourist class, to have brought him here and given him the gift of an opera, made him immensely proud. His gaze flickered occasionally over the tables, but no one had the temerity to interrupt Germaine Lorette’s first aria. Otherwise he looked only at Piet.

Stacey Meadows returned. During her brief absence from the stage she had artfully heightened her makeup, and when she reached for Don José, she was standing several feet to the left of where she was meant to be, right before Piet’s table. “Your mother sent me,” she said.

“Tell me of my mother!”

The duet began, tenor and soprano standing alone on the empty stage. Unlike Germaine Lorette, Stacey Meadows did not overpower her partner. As she told him she was his mother’s faithful messenger, Piet had to look away. Nina had sung him to sleep with these words as a child. “Tell him his mother dreams of him night and day, that she misses him and hopes for him,” Stacey sang. “She forgives him and is waiting for him.” Her voice soared over the shimmering violins as she promised to give Don José the kiss his mother had sent him.

But Piet did not see her deliver it.

He was in tears.

Pierre Lauriac took a deep breath. “I see my mother!” Sharing the stage with Germaine Lorette had unnerved him. He was trying too hard and the tightness in his throat made every leap perilous.

Piet’s shoulders began to shake. He had chirruped the part as a little boy, but only as a man had he come close to achieving its true beauty. “Even from afar my mother protects me.” Lauriac was close to Piet’s age and standing not five feet away. The words summoned Nina, pale but frivolous in the hours before her death, making light of the pains in her chest. Piet’s eyes met Stacey Meadows’, who was pleased to see that the power of her performance had made this handsome stranger weep. It added sensitivity to his outward advantages. She turned to Don José, annoyed to have an imperfect partner at such a moment, and smiled so reassuringly that his singing dramatically improved.

“Tell her her son loves her and venerates her.” Piet’s lips followed Lauriac’s as they sang. “He repents today.”

The bright figures on the stage sparkled and lost their distinctness. Stacey Meadows turned from Don José, her eyes on Piet’s—and deep within his mourning was the exhilarating knowledge that the woman on the stage was not his mother. Indeed, she was just the sort of messenger Nina would have chosen. He looked back unflinchingly, and it was as though they sang of cherished memories to each other, and for each other alone.

D
idier watched this exchange and found it highly arousing. That the man he loved could seduce a pretty opera singer simply by staring at her made him proud. Perhaps they might share her, as Piet had refused to do with the Amsterdam whores. He did not require Piet to abjure women; merely to accord him the rights and status of First Friend.

Didier was better able to understand Piet’s tears than Stacey Meadows. Piet was alone in the world, his mother dead, his father indifferent. And yet he was
not
alone! As Didier watched him struggle to master himself, he knew that the moment had come to tell him so. He had dreamed of it and feared it; now he felt confident in the face of it. In his pocket were the keys to the first-class swimming pool, purloined from the board in the purser’s office. Beneath one of its loungers was a bottle of green Chartreuse and a cashmere blanket, taken from a stateroom. It would not be missed now that they were in the tropics. They would have the pool all to themselves until five a.m. They could plan what to do in South Africa and fall asleep side by side. (He had taken care to provide only one blanket.) Perhaps they might honor the possibilities of their stroll home from the Karseboom. In the right circumstances Didier had persuaded many men to kiss him. He waited impatiently for the interval, relieved that the minx in the blue dress did not return. There would be time for her later.

Tonight belonged to him and Piet.

T
he second act ended with an explosive finale in which Germaine Lorette made the crystal shake with her advocacy of the wandering life and the intoxications of
la liberté
. Piet took it as a resounding affirmation of his decision to leave all he knew behind. He was not superstitious, but only the coldest, least imaginative rationalism could fail to be moved by the message of maternal forgiveness he had received. He felt radiant with well-being. In his dreams Nina had cursed him; now she had blessed and absolved him.

When Didier appeared, bearing a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket stamped with the line’s shell and crossed
L
s, he wanted to rise and embrace him. Instead he looked away and lowered his voice when he said: “You’re the best friend a fellow could have.”

Didier uncorked the bottle. “I saw you and the girl with the plaits making eyes at each other. Promise not to keep her all for yourself.”

“I never make promises about women.”

Didier poured. “I get off duty at one, and I’ve got the swimming pool keys. There’s more drink there. I hid it this afternoon with foie gras sandwiches and iced cakes.” He set his shoulders back.
Do it now
. “We can spend the rest of the night together. No one will find us.” As he spoke, he held the bottle very close to Piet’s glass, and their knuckles touched.

This contact gave the words their full meaning. Piet had sensed its possibility as they stood in the changing room together, felt an animal answer in himself and chosen not to confuse it with love. Now he understood that his friend had done the opposite. It took the edge off his joy. He had a slight, pulsing erection, but it was not Didier’s presence that had caused it but the thought of removing Micaëla’s tight blue dress and unplaiting her braids. For a moment Piet could think of nothing to say. He did not wish to injure his friend, but it seemed the time for euphemisms was past. “We know each other too well for that,” he said gently.