Free Pravda by Edward Docx Page B

annoy him, or he did it because he wanted to insist on some sort of parity. What a farce. Through forty years of impatience, Nicholas still could not make up his mind which was more annoying, the guile of straight women or the wiles of gay men. They were as bad as each other. A tragedy, really, when what one really wanted was a straight man. But let Alessandro have his junior satisfactions; Nicholas's mood at least was recovering.
    "Le Castebin, I think." Nicholas forced another smile. "Shall we? You can have your
langoustines façon.
And their new house Champagne—from Troyes, Gaston tells me—is sublime. We'll dispatch a bottle each—why not? It's a while since we got ourselves well and truly tight. Brahms is such a terrible bore anyway." Nicholas realized that he had better show some interest. "And anyway, you ... you must tell me about Greece. I want to know all the details. Did you get to Delphi? Did the oracle have news for us?"
    "I was in Santorini." Alessandro picked up the shirt lying ready on the bed. The dressing gown came off.
    Nicholas looked, unreservedly. "You have caught the sun again."
    "I topped up on the sun bed with Freddie at the gym while you were away." Alessandro enjoyed flattery more than anything else in the world and could tease it out of quick-drying cement if he applied himself.
    The phrase "topped up" annoyed Nicholas, though. The word lurking behind it, the word "tan," annoyed him too. And the name Freddie somehow infuriated him. Campness. But the revealed body—ah, the naked body of this ... this other ... The naked body of this other human being entranced him, engrossed him, bewitched him like a river god rising in vapors of jasmine and myrrh with a different violin sonata for each of his senses.

6 The Disendowed
    Arkady and Henry emerged into the deepening twilight of the northern sky and set off along the potholed street that ran between the six dilapidated tower blocks similar to their own. With the exception of three old women dragging home their heavy handcart full of cheap fizzy drinks and expensive fake mineral water, weaving oddly on their invisible route through the worst of the ruts, everybody was drunk: the half-dozen old men sitting on the weedy verge around their upturned crate on legless chairs, seating ripped from abandoned cars; the heavily made-up girl now leaving block two with her infant in an improvised sling, her three-year-old and her five-year-old—cigarette cocked and burning—all in sullen attendance and ready for the ride into town and another night working together with the tourist bar spill; the gang of boys, nine- or ten-year-olds, standing around an old metal drum that they had somehow managed to ignite on the corner and every now and then reaching in with tar-caked hands to chuck fume-spewing firebombs at each other or any passerby they did not recognize, then swapping their vodka-spiked drink tins from hand to hand so they could blow cool air on their blackened fingers.
    The two turned right, away from the few feeble street-lamps that would have taken them in the direction of Primorskaya metro station. Instead they walked toward the Smolensky cemetery, a woodland, half wild, half kempt, with winding paths, dense thickets, and sudden glades that sat square in the center of Vasilevsky Island—a shortcut on their way into town.
    Still in silence, they came to the gap in the railings and the unofficial path, which led off the road and into the cemetery. Despite the sudden showers throughout the day, the ground underfoot was damp rather than muddy and they were able to walk with relative ease between the trees. Arkady carried his concert shoes around his neck, dangling by the laces; he was still wearing his cap; and he had rolled up his jeans a little to accommodate his boots. Henry, meanwhile, looked as incongruous as ever, his hooded top inside his arm-patched corduroy sports jacket, his black jeans cut too narrow.
    At length they