Caracole by Edmund White

Author:Edmund White [White, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76451-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1985-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

GABRIEL saved Mateo from Edwige. When the boy was brought back to the capital late that spring and moved in with his uncle, he was so pitiful, so stunned by suffering, that Mateo devoted all his energies to him. Mateo never had a moment to think, “How much love will I give this boy?” The boy’s demand absorbed all his uncle’s supply. If the simple phrase, “We live together,” had given Edwige complete power over Mateo, Gabriel’s moving in had conferred on him the same authority—the absolutism of domesticity.

With this difference: Edwige didn’t really want Mateo’s devotion, or she wanted only part of it part of the time, whereas the boy greedily took everything offered him. Whereas Edwige had to keep Mateo at some distance lest he expect too much from her, and even banned him from her wing of the palace for days on end, the boy, being Mateo’s nephew and ward, never questioned his claims or his uncle’s bounty. Mateo had felt for so long that the terms under which he was offering his love to Edwige were suspect. What a relief to have the boy doubt neither his motives nor his right to love him. All along Mateo had known how disposable he was to Edwige. She was surrounded by admirers of her beauty, just as Mathilda never lacked for admirers of her intellect. Whether Edwige spent a week or a month with one man or another, whether she wept bitter tears over a third, could be seen as moves in a game as absorbing as it was inconsequential. For Edwige the options of romance were dimensions of frustration; they were unavailing distractions from the failure of fame to visit her. No wonder her very restlessness would cause her from time to time to sweep every last chessman off the board.

But for Gabriel, at least during the first few months of his stay in the capital, Mateo had brought him forth from the dark and lured him back into the light. A delicate operation, the ascent out of the underworld, and especially delicate for the one who was dead but now must live again. Just as a deep-sea diver must not be hauled up too quickly, lest his lungs burst, in the same way Mateo had slowly to raise a half-reluctant, half-eager, all-fearing Gabriel into the world. The solemnity of this task outweighed the interest Mateo took in Edwige’s sex sprees and restless romances. Mateo’s limited time, energy, money, wit, food, had to go to this bedraggled child who would starve otherwise, whereas the imperious, irritable Edwige would scarcely notice if one more costly bouquet was flung at her feet or not. Mateo traded in one obsession for another, his jealousy over Edwige for his resolve to save the boy.

Although she often spoke of friendship, Edwige had few friends. Her only confidant was a fey girl who’d be be fat when Mateo saw her one time and thin the next. Her natural appearance seemed to be fat,

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