The Japanese Lover (34 page)

July 18, 1984

I know how much you are suffering and it hurts me not to be able to help. Even as I write I know you are anxious, trying to cope with your husband's illness. You can't control it, Alma, you can only bravely keep him company.

Our separation is so painful. We have grown used to our sacred Thursdays, the private dinners, walks in the park, brief weekend escapes. Why does the world seem so colorless? Sounds reach me muffled as if from afar, food tastes of soap. So many months without seeing each other! I bought your cologne to smell your scent. I console myself by writing poetry, which I'll give you one day, since it is yours.

And you accuse me of not being romantic!

My years of spiritual practice have been of little use if I have been unable to free myself from desire. I wait for your letters and your voice on the telephone, I imagine you running to get here . . . Sometimes love hurts.

Ichi

Nathaniel and Alma lived in the two bedrooms that had once belonged to Lillian and Isaac, with the interconnecting door that had been propped open so long it could no longer be closed. They went back to sharing their insomnia, as in the days of being newlyweds, huddled up close together on a sofa or bed, with her reading, the book in one hand and stroking Nathaniel with the other, while he rested, eyes closed, breathing heavily, his chest rattling. On one of those long nights they caught each other crying silently, trying to avoid disturbing one another. First Alma felt her husband's wet cheeks, and he immediately noticed her tears, which were such a rare sight that he sat up to check they were real. He couldn't remember having seen her cry before, even at the bitterest moments.

“You're dying, aren't you?” she murmured.

“Yes, Alma, but don't cry for me.”

“I'm not crying for you, but for me. And for us, for everything I've never told you, the omissions and lies, the betrayals and the time I robbed you of.”

“For God's sake, what are you talking about? There's no betrayal of me in your love for Ichimei, Alma. There are always some necessary lies and omissions, just as there are truths it's better to keep quiet about.”

“You know about Ichimei? Since when?” said a startled Alma.

“I've always known. Hearts are big enough to contain love for more than one person.”

“Tell me about you, Nat. I've never pried into your secrets—and I assume there are lots of them—so as not to have to reveal my own to you.”

“We've loved each other so much, Alma! One should always marry one's best friend. I know you like no one else. What you haven't told me I can guess; but you don't know me. You have the right to know who I really am.”

And then he told her about Lenny Beal. All the rest of that sleepless night they told each other everything with the urgency of knowing how little time together was left for them.

Ever since he could remember, Nathaniel had experienced a mixture of fascination, fear, and desire for those of his own sex, starting with his schoolmates, then for other men, and finally for Lenny, who had been his partner for eight years. He had fought against those feelings, torn between his heart's desires and the implacable voice of reason. At school, when he was as yet unable to identify what it was he felt, the other boys knew instinctively that he was different, and punished him with beatings, jokes, and ostracism. Those years, constantly menaced by thugs, were the worst of his life.

When he left school, torn between his scruples and the uncontrollable passions of youth, he noticed that his predicament was not as unusual as he had assumed; everywhere he went he met men who looked directly into his eyes, offering either an invitation or a plea. He was initiated by a fellow student at Harvard. He discovered that homosexuality was a parallel world that existed alongside accepted reality. He came to know men from many different backgrounds. At the university they were professors, intellectuals, students, a rabbi, and a football player; out on the street they were sailors, workmen, bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, and criminals. It was an inclusive world, promiscuous yet still hidden as it came up against a categorical rejection by morality and the law. People who were openly gay were not allowed into hotels, clubs, or churches; often, they would not be served alcohol in bars and could be thrown out of public places, accused—rightly or wrongly—of unruly behavior; the gay clubs and bars belonged to the Mafia. Back in San Francisco, with his lawyer's diploma in his hand, Nathaniel encountered the first signs of a nascent gay culture, one that would not come out into the open until several years later. When the 1960s social movements came along, including the one for gay rights, Nathaniel was married to Alma and their son, Larry, was ten years old.

“I didn't marry you to disguise my homosexuality, but out of love and friendship,” he told Alma that night.

Those had been schizophrenic years: an irreproachable and successful public life, and another that was hidden and illicit. He met Lenny Beal in 1976 at a men's Turkish bath, the ideal place for casual sex, but completely unsuited to the start of a love like theirs.

Nathaniel was about to celebrate his fiftieth birthday and Lenny was six years his junior, as beautiful as a statue of a Roman god. Irreverent, hotheaded, and promiscuous, he was the complete opposite of Nathaniel. The physical attraction was instantaneous. They locked themselves in a cubicle and spent until dawn immersed in pleasure, going at one another like wrestlers and wallowing in the entwined delirium of their bodies. They arranged to meet the next day at a hotel, each arriving separately. Lenny brought marijuana and cocaine, but Nathaniel begged him not to use them; he wanted to be fully aware of the experience. A week later they already knew that the blinding flash of desire had simply been the beginning of an immense love, and they gave in completely to the imperative of living it to the limit. They rented a studio in the city center, where they installed a minimum of furniture and the best sound system, each promising no one else would set foot there.

Nathaniel ended a search begun thirty-five years before, although outwardly nothing altered in his life: he continued to be the model of bourgeois male respectability, without a soul guessing what had happened, or noticing that his office hours and addiction to sports were drastically reduced. On his side, Lenny was transformed by his lover's influence. For the first time in his turbulent life he paused, and dared substitute the contemplation of his newfound happiness for all the previous noise and insane activity. If he wasn't with Nathaniel, he was thinking about him. He never went back to the gay baths or clubs, and his friends rarely succeeded in tempting him to parties, since he had lost interest in getting to meet new people. Nathaniel was more than enough; he was the sun around which his days revolved. He basked in the calm of this love with a puritan's devotion. He adopted Nathaniel's taste in music, food, and drink, then his cashmere sweaters, camel-­hair coat, and aftershave lotion. Nathaniel had a private phone line installed in his office for Lenny's exclusive use, and they were constantly in touch; they went out sailing together, made trips, and met up in distant cities where no one knew them.

At first, Nathaniel's incomprehensible illness did not cloud his relationship with Lenny: the symptoms were so random and sporadic, they came and went apparently without cause or connection. But as Nathaniel began to fade, reduced to a specter of the man he once was, when he had to accept his limitations and ask for help, the fun came to an end. He lost his zest for life, felt that everything around him was pale and faint, and abandoned himself to nostalgia for the past like an old man, regretting some things he had done and the many more he had not managed to achieve. He knew his life would soon be over, and was scared. Lenny did not let him slump into depression; he kept him going with feigned good humor and the constancy of his love, which continued to grow even in such trying circumstances. They met in their little apartment to console one another. Nathaniel lacked the strength and desire to make love, and Lenny did not demand it; he was happy with the moments of intimacy when he could calm Nathaniel if he was shaking with fever, feed him teaspoonfuls of yogurt like a baby, lie by his side listening to music, rub his lesions with balm, hold him upright on the toilet. Toward the end, when Nathaniel could no longer leave home and Alma took over the role of nurse with the same tender persistence as Lenny, her role remained that of his friend and wife, while Lenny was the great love of his life. Or so Alma came to see it during their night of exchanged secrets.

At dawn, when at last Nathaniel fell asleep, she looked Lenny Beal's phone number up in the directory and called to beg him to come and help her. She told him they could better endure the agony of those days if they were shared. Lenny arrived in less than thirty minutes. Alma, still wearing pajamas and a dressing gown, opened the door. He found himself confronted by a woman exhausted from fatigue and suffering; she saw a handsome young man, hair still damp from the shower, with the bluest eyes in the world, now rimmed with red.

“I'm L-Lenny Beal,” he stammered, clearly moved.

“Please call me Alma. This is your home,” she responded.

He held out his hand but failed to complete the handshake before they fell into each other's arms.

Lenny began visiting the Sea Cliff mansion on a daily basis, after his working hours at the dental clinic. They told Larry and Doris and the household staff that Lenny was a nurse. Nobody asked anything further. Alma called a carpenter to fix the jammed door between the bedrooms and left the two men alone. She felt a huge sense of relief when her husband's face lit up at seeing Lenny come in. As dusk fell, the three of them took tea and English muffins and, if Nathaniel was up to it, played cards. By then they had a diagnosis, the worst possible: it was AIDS. The illness had only been given a name a couple of years earlier, but by now everyone knew it was a death sentence; sufferers died sooner or later, it was merely a matter of time. Alma did not want to know why Nathaniel and not Lenny was infected, but even if she had asked, no one could have given her a clear answer. Cases were multiplying at such a rate that there was already talk of a worldwide epidemic and of God's punishment on the infamy of homosexuality. AIDS was a word only mentioned in a whisper, not to be uttered in a family or community, as it was tantamount to declaring unforgivable perversions. The official explanation, even to the family, was that Nathaniel had cancer. As conventional medicine had nothing to offer, Lenny went to Mexico to look for mysterious drug treatments, which ended up having no effect, while Alma ran around seeking out whatever alternative therapies could offer, from oils, herbs, and acupuncture in Chinatown to mud baths with magical properties at Calistoga Spa. This led her to appreciate the crazy efforts Lillian had resorted to in her attempt to cure Isaac; she even regretted having thrown Baron Samedi's statuette into the garbage.