Free Unity by Michael Arditti Page A

is nonsense. If it’s anything, it’s a healthy fear of pain. Besides, as she knows better than anyone, it goes way beyond the physical. I’m not gay. The closest I’ve ever come was when I was playing Patroclus. And you may recall how slippery I found him. What you don’t know – but then this seems to be the moment for revelations – is how hard I worked at his sexuality. Stumped by his attraction to Achilles, Idecided to improvise. I locked the door, stood naked between the wardrobe mirrors, stared at my bottom and wanked. It didn’t help.
    My fears about having to face Wolfram turned out to be groundless , since he acted as though nothing untoward had occurred. I was determined to prevent any further misunderstanding so I told him what I’d told Fliss, namely that I was in love with her and could never contemplate sleeping with another woman, let alone a man. Neither of them responded in the way that I’d hoped. Fliss, ignoring my avowal, tempted me with Brigitte Bardot. I explained that it would make no difference if the woman on offer were Brigitte Bardot or Hermione Gingold; it still wouldn’t be her. Wolfram patted my cheek (a sure sign that I was back in favour) and called me his incurable romantic – ‘meiner unheilbarer Romantiker’ – which, needless to say, was not a compliment. In his view, believing in love in the age of Freud is as anachronistic as ironing a shirt in the age of nylon or reading a book in the age of film. ‘Romantic love is dead. Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina will be as obscure in the future as the bible stories that inspired our grandfathers are to us.’
    I have to stop now, which is probably just as well since I’m sure you have your fill of tortured sexuality at school. Fliss has come back from the Menachem Golem party. See what I give up for you! She wants me to tell you that she thinks you’re a star for ploughing through all this (Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence !) and that she promises to write you a letter soon. She also wants me to tell you … what …? I can’t quite make out above the water, but I think it’s that ‘just because I can’t be bothered doesn’t mean that I don’t care’.
    Must dash. The room is filling up with a delightful scent of lavender and I’m being summoned to scrub the most gorgeous back in Cannes.
    Ever your devoted pal,
    Luke.
     
    8 München 40,
    Giselastrasse 23,
    West Germany
     
    11th Sept 1977
    Wertester Freund,
    Thanks so much for the Oxo cubes. You’ve saved my life. I won’t pretend that they can ever replace Marmite, but they’re easily the next best thing. And, until the manufacturers (what a miserable word for the geniuses behind Marmite) come up with an airmail version, the jars would be ruinous to post. You’ve made an old Marmiteholic very happy. So, once again, many thanks.
    Now, please, please, please, can we drop the guilt-trip? So what if your letters are shorter than mine? In the immortal words of Fliss’s yoga teacher, ‘it’s not a competition’. Besides, an Oxo cube is worth a thousand words. No, but seriously, if anyone should apologise, it’s me for rambling on. I put it down to growing up in the Sudan. Every month, my grandmother used to send us one of those niggardly pre-paid air-letters, which felt as if every phrase had been carefully costed. She wasn’t going to pay for any excess verbiage! An analyst would probably say that was what drove me to the other extreme (‘It is quite clear, Herr Dent, that your hostility towards your grandmother springs from a repressed desire to sleep with her’). So, if you have a problem, blame it on my childhood. I always do.
    I also owe you an apology for having waited so long to reply, but Munich has been manic. At least now we’ve survived the first week of shooting, we can take the odd moment to relax. The schedule here is even tighter than in England. You must have grasped the pressures we were under when you visited us on location (Now that