It did not seem to Piet that there was anything to be gained from lying to his unexpected benefactor. “I broke into first class to see a friend who’s a steward,” he confessed. “We used to work at the same house in Amsterdam.”
“You both left to come on the ship?”
“He lost his place because of me. Then I lost mine. We ran into each other on deck.”
Jay Gruneberger suspected that this encounter had not been wholly coincidental, but he did not propose to direct the talk towards a potential rival. “What did you do to lose your position?”
“I’m too ashamed to say.”
“Then you must keep your counsel, Mr. van Sigelen. Though in my experience confiding a burden can ease it. I promise you discretion.”
“My name is Barol, not van Sigelen.”
“Glad to hear it. The van Sigelens I know are vile.”
The waiter came with the wine.
“Drink it quickly. A glass will calm you.”
Piet did as he was told and they shook hands. “At least tell me how you were exposed, Barol.” Jay spoke as if requesting the day’s gossip at his club. “Often the denouement is more interesting than the details of what led to it.”
“I tried to eat in the grill room. I didn’t know you had to give a cabin number.”
“I don’t mean on the ship. I mean in Amsterdam.”
Piet hesitated. “Someone said something that was true. No one had thought of it before she said it.”
“About you?”
“About me and someone else. A lady.”
“A relative of the speaker.”
Jay said it as casually as if he had heard the story days before. His precision was disconcerting and Piet drank another glass of Sancerre. When it was finished, he said: “Her mother.”
“And I presume that you and this lady’s mother …”
“Only once.”
“You were caught at the first attempt? How very unresourceful.” Gruneberger smiled. He never minded if a fellow did not like other fellows. In some ways he preferred it, since recollection made infinite embroideries possible. It was often better than an unsatisfactory half hour concluded in mutual embarrassment.
Piet did not wish to seem wholly incompetent. “We met often. It was the last time that gave us away.”
“I thought it only happened once.”
“We only once did everything one might do.”
“I see.” Jay had a calm, authoritative way of asking questions that elicited answers. At shareholder meetings, men who had spent years honing the art of subtle evasion found themselves lulled by his calm, courteous pursuit of knowledge. Piet Barol had not had a candid conversation for so long that the lure of one was strong. Under the influence of a stranger’s gentle prompting he found that there was much he longed to share. He did not mention the Vermeulen-Sickertses by name or give any details that might establish their identity, but he told Jay all that had happened on the Herengracht.
The experience was immensely relieving. When the Sancerre was finished they had a cognac and by now the room was noticeably emptier. The most worldly person Piet had ever met was Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts, who was as conservative as a medieval monk by comparison with his new confessor.
Like the rest of fashionable New York, Jay Gruneberger was never sincerely shocked. He took Piet carefully to the epicenter of his drama, guiding the narrative to the details of what exactly he had done with his employer’s wife. Being told this story by an engaged and passionate Piet Barol, leaning forward in his chair, the scent of sweat rising from him, a cognac balloon in his vast hands, was to Jay Gruneberger a form of pleasure so heightened, so rare and refined, that it far excelled the merely erotic. He had a mind capable of considering many perspectives, so while he absorbed every detail of Piet’s story he was also able to float into a vaguer place, where all he heard were the low notes of his voice and all he saw were his face, glowing and happy again, and his thick neck and his dark blue eyes.
At length a regretful steward told them that the salon had closed.
“You’d better take the sofa in my sitting room.” Jay made the suggestion in the tone he used when offering a colleague a ride home from the office. “There’s no way of getting you back before morning.”
“I don’t know how I’ll ever get back.”
“My cabin steward will be on duty at breakfast. I’ve known him fifteen years. He’ll take you to your own part of the ship and no one will be any the wiser.”
“They’ll do an inspection and find me.”
“That won’t happen now I’ve vouched for you. That’s the Loire Lines’ great thing. They never embarrass one.”
“Then I accept with gratitude.”
They left the room and went down a wide corridor. “I take this suite because it’s quiet. The disadvantage is it’s a damned slog when you’ve had a few and there’s no private deck.”
Jay had waited in his secluded corner of the salon as long as he could, hoping that his friends would have gone to bed by the time Piet Barol accepted his hospitality. He was relieved to encounter no one he knew—though he was ready to introduce his new assistant with aplomb, should he be required to. In the end he was not. They stopped outside a pair of double doors flanked by four pillars. Above them, beneath the line’s shell and crossed
L
s, were the words
CARDINAL RICHELIEU
.
T
he decorative centerpiece of the Richelieu Suite was a copy of the famous portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, from which the room’s predominant colors were also borrowed. Champaigne’s Richelieu was ruthless. The
Eugénie
’s copyist had caught his robes of rose and gray but softened his expression, the better to complement the atmosphere of the ship. He surveyed the room like a discreet and approving voyeur. It was wonderfully quiet, with dark mahogany paneling to chest height. Piet and Jay sat down on a sofa upholstered in pale blue velvet and their talk ran on. Having relieved himself of his story, Piet had developed a sincere interest in his rescuer.
Jay Gruneberger was not used to self-revelation, having had cause to master the habits of discretion. But their unusual introduction and the frank cordiality it led to allowed a spontaneous trust to arise between them. Piet’s questions were as perceptive as his own had been. He found himself describing his childhood in Cincinnati, his meeting with his wife when she was six and he eight. He had often told the story of how he and Rose had climbed trees together long before falling in love. What he did not often say was that his father and mother had despised each other and used their only child as a foot soldier in their strife. He confided this in Piet Barol and learned a great deal about Herman and Nina in return.
“You should have chosen New York!” he said with feeling, when their talk reached Piet’s plans for his new life.
“That was my first thought. I decided on Cape Town when I knew the boat was coming here. I wanted to sail on her.”
“If you’d seen New York once, you’d not have changed your mind. It’s worth a thousand times this tacky little ship.”
As he listened to Jay’s descriptions of a city he would never know, Piet Barol found himself thinking about Stacey Meadows and the challenges and advantages of being loved by her. “Where’s your wife?” he asked.
“Rose has been on St. Helena this past fortnight. She’s the chairwoman of the ball committee and doesn’t hold with delegation.”
“You must miss her.”
“Immensely. She’s coming on board tomorrow afternoon. I’ve had to bring her gown from New York.”
“What’s the theme?”
“
La gloire
. Choice of a man named Verignan.”
“Who are you going as?”
“I’ll show you.” Jay stood up and opened the door to the bedroom. After half a bottle of Sancerre and a cognac he was no longer as content as he had been merely to look at his new friend. Neither was he so moved by the alcohol, the lateness of the hour, the fullness of the moon, as to abandon all caution. If the boy doesn’t come in, he thought, I’ll leave it at that.
But Piet did come in.
Jay took his costume from a mahogany cupboard. Rose had had it made for him and every detail showed the attention and care he so valued in her. She had chosen the uniform of a union colonel in the Civil War and personally supervised six fittings. Jay had a sudden urge to show Piet Barol how good he looked in it. Very matter-of-factly, he took off his tailcoat and his collar and began unbuttoning his shirt. “One always eats too much on a ship. I’d better make sure it still fits.”
Piet did not know whether he should return to the sitting room or honor the sudden intimacy of the evening by staying where he was, as he would have done with a friend. He compromised by sitting on a chair at the foot of the bed, from which they could continue their conversation without facing one another directly. The first-class suites on the
Eugénie
had windows, not portholes, and the glass reflected the room. Piet tried not to watch as his savior took off his shirt. He had often been naked with fellows his own age but had never seen a much older man with his clothes off except his father; and Jay Gruneberger looked nothing like Herman Barol.
Jay boxed and ran and played tennis and every morning lifted forty-pound dumbbells until his arms ached. He was broad shouldered with a densely hairy chest. Though thickening in his midsection he looked superb in a room lit by soft lamps and an orange moon.
Jay knew that there are moments in life when risks must be taken or failure accepted. He was not ready to accept failure. He looked at Piet, wondering how to touch the boy without alarming him. Then he went to his chair, gripped his shoulders, and pressed his thumbs gently but firmly into the knots beneath them.
The effect on Piet Barol was paralyzing. Not three hours before he had contemplated hanging by one hand above the engines, and the tension of this untaken decision remained deep in his muscles.
“I see a wonderful Russian three times a week in New York. I’d happily share his expertise with you, Barol. Or I’ll call a steward and have the sofa made up next door. Absolutely as you wish.”
Since earliest adolescence, Piet’s body had demanded pleasure of him and rewarded his efforts to seek it. Now it answered on its own behalf with a long relieving sigh.
“I thought as much. You’ve had a trying day.”
Watched by the knowing cardinal, who was not at all deceived, Jay went to the bed, drew back the coverlet, and with four plump cushions made a resting place for Piet’s head. “It’s better if you’re lying down with your clothes off.” He was careful to sound indifferent. “That’s how I always have it done.”
Piet hesitated. Then he stood up and took off his tailcoat, his waistcoat, his tie and his collar. His shirt as he unbuttoned it smelled of sweat and fear, an olfactory reminder of the evening’s adventures. The room was the ideal temperature for nakedness. As he pulled off his shoes, a deep weariness crept over him.
“If you put your head between the pillows, you should be able to lie almost flat. It doesn’t do to twist your neck.”
Piet did so. The linen smelled of roses and was deliciously soft. Jay stood over him, remembering his first sight of his back and giving thanks for his freedom to touch it now without fear. Piet had kept his drawers and his socks on. These last Jay removed. He had a secret passion for feet, and the smell of Piet Barol’s caught in his nostrils and heightened his alertness. He surveyed the young man just as Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts had done, wondering where to touch him first. Though this was not at all his Russian masseur’s practice, he swung himself over Piet and planted his knees on either side of his body. Then he applied the knuckles of his index fingers to his uppermost vertebrae.
It was the first time Piet had encountered physical pain that held the possibility of pleasure. He gasped at the intensity of it. “Breathe out very slowly,” said a deep voice above him. Jay’s hands were strong, and his back had so often been the focus of an expert’s attention that he knew his way unerringly over Piet Barol’s. Piet breathed out as instructed. Tendrils of fire singed his skin. He had never yet been in the care of a connoisseur.
As Jay moved up and down Piet’s back, his hands never leaving his body, a wholly wordless and yet precise and attentive communication began to open between the two men. The ship had met a swell and was rising with it and falling, as if timing itself by Piet’s breaths. This motion, and the darkness, and the scent of roses, and the rich combination of pain and its relief sent Piet Barol into a state whose existence he had not imagined.
When Jay lifted his legs and pulled his drawers down them and over his ankles, Piet barely registered this boldness. Certainly it did not offend him. He was in a place far beyond all questions of propriety. Now Jay put his elbows to work, setting them over the warmed knots of muscle and by infinite gradations placing greater and greater weight on them, so that Piet was almost crushed but at the same time lifted far above the aches in his body. These began to flow down his arms to his fingers and his legs to his toes and then to leave him entirely, as if they had never been.
When Jay’s elbows reached his buttocks, they located precisely the store of a lifetime’s spinal tension. As they pressed down, implacable and relentless, so Piet’s cock was pressed into the firm mattress and an element of erotic pleasure began to twist through the tranquil darkness that enveloped him. Jay’s elbows retreated, were replaced by fingers that gripped his thick legs, his calves, his ankles, and then—it sent goose pimples all the way to his neck—a warm, scratchy tongue ran over the soles of his feet.
This did intrude on Piet’s formless blackness. But Jay acted with such confidence he did not resist, and his instinct to do so was dampened by the knowledge that the situation that now presented itself—in the middle of the sea, in the middle of the world, in the middle of the night—would never arise again. He said nothing when Jay kissed the back of his legs, his bearded chin sending shivers across his skin. And when Jay’s tongue reached his balls he let out a low ecstatic murmur.
Other boys had played with his prick or sometimes sucked it but had never touched him there; and the women he had seduced had been far too well bred to think of doing so.