The Prince's Boy by Paul Bailey

Author:Paul Bailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

Rãzvan laughed when I told him that both my denigrators and my small number of admirers in Bucharest regarded me as a bonjouriste because of my predilection for speaking French whenever I had the opportunity.

‘That’s what the prince called me, too, but as a joke.’

It wasn’t a joke anymore, in 1932, and would become an insult of the worst kind as the decade progressed. To be a dandyish bonjouriste meant that you favoured Paris rather than Berlin, the unlikely Mecca that attracted a new breed of pilgrims.

‘“I have made the peasant boy a bonjouriste and I am very proud of my achievement” is what the prince said.’

My lover’s suitcase contained not only clothes and toiletries but tattered, much read, books as well. Creangã and Eminescu were there with Baudelaire and Maupassant and the final volumes of Proust, in which our mutual acquaintance, in the guise of Jupien, appears in all his mischievous splendour. Few Pandars have been immortalized while they were still living. It would be Albert Le Cuziat’s privilege to remain as constant a presence as Vautrin or Rastignac, those somewhat more beguiling literary villains. He would never now be completely anonymous, like the majority of the human race.

I began to understand, as the almost blissful days went by, that Rãzvan had no resting place. He had been expelled, or banished, from Corcova and he was lonely in Paris since few of the prince’s friends wanted to spend time in the company of somebody they considered glum. Was I to be his saviour, his refuge? I dared to hope so. I dared to hope beyond hope that his promise that we would be together for the rest of our lives might become reality.

I was determined to find out more about his past than he had granted me in our previous, quickly curtailed conversations. I needed to be subtle and tactful. I had to catch him in the relative calm before a drunken storm. I loathed to tell myself that I was beginning to be afraid of him.

It was in just such a state of calm that I asked him why he had chosen to work for Albert Le Cuziat.

‘I have been waiting for that question, ever since we gave ourselves to each other five years ago.’

‘And now I am waiting for your answer.’

‘You will be granted it, rest assured. I will give it to you slowly and carefully, for it demands unclouded thought.’

It was early in the day. He was drinking Turkish coffee. I saw him again in the doorway of his cubicle, smiling on the stumbling boy who would soon reveal his identity, as he would his. It had been, for me, the prologue to enchantment. I wondered, for the briefest of moments, if I was still enchanted by him, and just as briefly I decided I was.

‘Did I work for M. Albert?’ he asked himself. ‘I honoured his House of Mischief – oh, he has a hundred names for the place – with my baleful presence, but

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