Episode 18-II | The lover had a lover

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nudity

Monsieur de Montbelle entered the office wearing a silk robe de chambre, indicating to Armand that he was not included in his father's official schedule for the day. The young man was more like a morning distraction, or a brief annoyance. But the perfectly combed silver white hair, and a sophisticated smell of musky eau de cologne about him discarded any notion that Monsieur might have just woken up, despite still having his pajamas pants on. 

 After a moment of hesitation,  Monsieur de Montbelle marched straight to his massive table, turning the exquisite art deco lamp on, to be himself in a pool of light like the works of art surrounding him. The charming secretary was immediately swept away by a storm of responsibilities and tasks, leaving father and son alone.

Wondering whether his father had, in a single glance, perceived the ongoing, secretive connection between his employee and son, Armand now feared for the secretary's position. But he found next the real reason of his father's discomfort, and why he hadn't approached to shake hands, simply motioning Armand to take a seat in front of his desk. Armand did notice the expensive damask before he sat, and knowing his father did not care about home decor, wondered if that was Celeste Mortinné's taste and influence. Armand was astonished to see a vase of fresh roses adorning his work table -- having always prohibited Madame de Montbelle to place them in whichever room he used, claiming to be allergic, Monsieur seemed to accept or at least stand them now, coming from his lover.

"What with that hair, now?" The elder man asked, in a tone that revealed ill disposition against his son's constant, ridiculous changes. No good morning, welcome, how are you son, nothing. "Lice?"

Armand had forgotten about his tresses, or lack of, until that moment when the secretary had first mentioned them. He should have at least then started expecting his father's reaction to be even stronger than the last time, when he had sported a ponytail. He should have braced himself, and thought in advance of a better answer.

"I'm becoming a monk." Armand mouthed, disastrously.

Monsieur de Montbelle fell silent, fixing his gaze on the old copy of  Machiavelli's 'The Prince', probably a most expensive rarity, that lay open on his desktop. More than any other room in the apartment, everything in that office -- from the endless rows of  leather cover books to the best liquor from most exclusive origins --, was carefully chosen to demonstrate wealth and boast power -- for it was where dignitaries, bankers, politicians and businessmen held private interviews, that could not ever make the newspapers, with Monsieur.

"In Thailand." Armand added shyly. Knowing no detail would repair the damage done by his first declaration, he now simply intended to take his father out of a stubborn mutism. "A buddhist monk. A forest monk."

"You are not joining any sect, I assure you." Monsieur hissed, raising a finger to advert and intimidate Armand, as if he was still a small boy. That finger used to signal Monsieur's explosions of anger, when he could use his belt to beat his son, well into Armand's adolescence. The silk band he used at that moment was not very intimidating, though, and Armand had to control himself not to laugh.

"Buddhism is not a sect, don't you worry." He replied, trying to placate his father.

"I am not worried." Monsieur tapped his fingers on the marble desktop. Not so much nervously, but as if rehearsing a tune on the piano. He was trying to control himself. "You are not joining. I forbid you." He sentenced, seriously.

Armand had already felt coffee in his father's breath, floating towards him across the table, but just now he identified another particular smell, that he had learned to attribute to Monsieur since childhood -- newspapers. Monsieur de Montbelle read newspapers in several languages, many of them along each day, from morning to evening, and his fingers were impregnated with that smell, that would spread when the man agitated his hands like now.

"Everything is set, already." Armand informed, most calmly. His decision to retreat from mundane life had nothing to do with his father, against whom, formerly, he had so strongly revolted. "I return to Asia in a couple of days. I know what I'm doing. I know this master."

As tiring as it usually felt, he was aware that everything between father and son essentially came down to a dispute of power. Each conversation was an intricate negotiation, and the son had to clearly mark his territory to leave his father's tyrannical rules at the borders.

"What do you mean by master? Someone you have to obey?"

"Oh yes. Not blindly, though." Monsieur must have been thinking of those mad religious leaders who led their credulous congregations into mass suicide; his incredulity heightened at the thought of his only son obeying another man, while disobeying his own father. "More like a teacher, a spiritual teacher. A guru.", he informed. Though the correct term was arahant, Armand sensed Monsieur de Montbelle might know the other word better.

But Monsieur had overheard everything.

"I shall disinherit you, Armand." He said sharply.

Armand's confusion at his father's unexpected remark was less just than his irritation. But as if he was before his spiritual master -- and he was, in fact! --, Armand observed his anger rise and manifest, and tried not to react or speak out of it. He answered rationally, in a language his father would certainly comprehend. 

"I believe the sum my mother left me is enough for..."

Monsieur de Montbelle cut him short. "Your sanity can be easily contested, in this case. I'll take you to court if you try to donate money for any sect..."

"Oh, so that's your concern, then!" Armand smiled condescendingly. "They don't ask for money. They don't need any money at all. It's not like a club where you pay a fee to join."

"How do they eat? Where do these people live? In a forest, you said?" Monsieur de Montbelle made everything sound exotic, improbable, or foolish, instead of simple and sensible as they really were.

"We do one alms round everyday, begging for food, and accepting whatever people give us. And believe me, a single meal suffices when..."

"You mean you'll beg for food?" The elder man sneered. "My son, you are out of your mind!" 

"Not yet. I need to meditate a lot, still, to go out of my mind..."

Falling silent again, Monsieur de Montbelle fixed his eyes on the Pre-Raphaelite preciosity across the room, a painting which he had contemplated more than a hundred times -- an ageing courtesan playing the mandolin, immersed in the shadows of a cavern or tavern, which did not quite disguise the woman's wrinkled neck and breasts. She had lost her beauty, but would not let go of her joys and pleasure, which she exercised in the form of music and a shameless smile. That melancholic painting had a soothing effect on Monsieur, making him ponder about his own fate in life,  a valuable aid in the negotiations he held in the office -- when behind him, and in full view to his visitors, he had placed another painting, from the same period, depicting a voluptuous nymph. Languidly reclined, a blue cloth so thin as to enhance more than hide her curves, letting her beautifully rigid breasts and nipples subtly show underneath, in one hand she held a purse, and the other rested between her soft thighs, where shadows both hid and let guess the tip of her fingers. More than one visitor had joked about the painting being an allegory to -- or an exertion to -- masturbation. Its observation usually troubled or excited his visitors -- and that was the reason why Monsieur had placed it behind him, facing them .

But he guessed the sensuous nymph would neither excite nor trouble his son, who was indifferent to her charms. 

"Is it a cure for your sickness you are seeking?" He asked Armand.

"Sickness?" Armand asked in return.

"Yes, your... personal sickness." reinforced Monsieur, stressing significantly the words he wanted his son to comprehend, without further explanations.

"I don't know what you are talking about, Gaston." Armand rarely called his father that. "I am not sick. Do I look sick?"

"You know, your... sick preferences." For a brief moment, Monsieur de Montbelle seemed embarrassed. 

"Oh..." Armand sighed. "That is no sickness."

"It most certainly is." His father insisted. "It's not simply a shameful sin. Homosexualism is a sickness. Just look it up on the dictionary." Monsieur de Montbelle couldn't hide his agitation. He was sweating, and particularly annoyed that he might have to take a bath before continuing with his schedule. "Have you considered the problems it will bring you? Professionally, socially. You'll be easily blackmailed, or passed over."

"As a monk?" Armand asked simply.

"Stay in France, Armand, I command you. They'll find a cure to it, sometime. I can offer you the best physicians, the best institutions, the best medicine..."

Like you did with my mother? Armand thought. Will you lock me in the castle, too?

"I don't need to be cured of anything, father." He retorted. "In fact, I'm not here to talk about myself."

"Well, I'm wondering." said Monsieur, momentarily abandoning the grounds of the battle against his son's sexuality, where he was soon venturing again, to try to win. "Why are you here, then, and not at that church already?"

There is no church in Buddhism, Armand wanted to explain. But he knew his father did not want to learn. "It's about my sister."

"Who?"

"My half-sister, Catherine."

"That inconsequential girl! The way she dropped the Sorbonne was outrageous! We still can't believe she went after you..."

"Weren't you aware of her trip?"

"No, we weren't."

"Well, I believe your..." How should he mention Celeste? Maybe in the meantime their status had changed. "...lover was."

"Celly?" Monsieur de Montbelle enjoyed calling her that, but just when Celeste was not listening. "No, she wasn't." He seemed to consider something, or make some sort of calculation. "But why that sudden interest in Catherine?"

"I tried to ignore my sister, but now I want to be just to her." Before I leave this world, Armand thought, but it sounded too melodramatic, threatening even, to be pronounced. "Can I beseech you to recognize her as your daughter?"

"She is not my daughter, Armand." Monsieur de Montbelle was taken aghast.

"Why do you deny it? Or am I not your son, as well?"

"Of course you are. But she isn't." Monsieur promptly dismissed it.

"I should probably have brought her along with me to this meeting. You have never had this conversation face to face with her, have you?" Armand insisted, feeling he owned it to the girl. "Do you know how she suffers with all this?"

"Brought her along?" Monsieur smiled somberly. "How?" 

Armand was very conscious of the way his father picked certain words, choosing elements of his son's sentences, to redirect the conversation towards grounds of his own preference.

"I believe she is in Paris." Armand proposed, carefully.

"No, Armand, she isn't." 

"I believe she is..." Armand had just decided to direct the conversation himself. "I saw Carlo today."

"Saw him as in met him?" Monsieur de Montbelle gasped. His eyes were fixed on his son, who unfortunately had chosen the chair farthest from the table lamp, to suspiciously remain partially in the shadows. Despite Celeste's exquisite taste for decoration, he had to order his secretary to buy a new and more functional lamp, or a brighter bulb, immediately, for Monsieur liked to observe his visitors, more than to be observed. "Are you doing drugs, Armand?"

"No, I did not meet him, but I saw him walking down a street today." Armand decided to sustain his lie, guessing his father actually knew and would reveal Carlo's true directions.

"Utterly impossible." Monsieur shook his head to vehemently discard such a possibility. "They are not in Paris. Not even in France."

"Where are they?" Armand pressed.

"Do you think I'd tell you where that doomed boy is, Armand?" Monsieur de Montbelle gave a half smile, to make his son understand he could not be so easily manipulated. He calculated farther ahead than most of his opponents.  And then he spoke softly, as if to himself. "I wonder what he has got to drive you both out of your minds..." Raising his voice again, loaded with contempt, he demanded, "Is he a dealer of some sort of ecstatic drug? Does he run a mad sect himself, who worship him? Please, tell me what sort of filthy pimp he is!"

The idea of Carlo dealing drugs made Armand smile. He had grown addicted indeed to his friends charms, to his honesty, his loyalty, his simplicity, to his naivety -- if those qualities could ever be called drugs, then mankind needed to be heavily addicted on a whole lot more of them. As to worship him, be it for his beauty, or for his kindness, that was perfectly understandable. Like a spring from the highest fields, Carlo used to be the purest, sweetest man Armand had ever known. But all that had collapsed, once Carlo chose Catherine over him. His ex-friend hadn't abruptly become a bad person, it was not that -- but now his loyalty belonged to Catherine. And they lived in each other's arms in some remote corner of the world that would remain unknown to Armand.

"Pimp? Do you believe I'd fall in love with a pimp, Gaston?" Armand laughed, and decided to tease his father. "No matter how endowed he is, I am sure..."

The bold mention of Carlo's physical attributes immediately disgusted and angered Monsieur. "This interview is over, Armand. We have wasted enough time, and I have a busy day ahead. Please excuse me." And the elder man started lifting himself off the chair.

"No, it is not over." Armand reclined against the back of  his chair, indicating he was going nowhere. "I came here to straighten things about Catherine, and I am not leaving until you commit to treating her fairly."

"But I do!" Monsieur cried. "I do! I always have! I've always treated her as if she were my own child -- though she isn't! I'm telling you, Catherine is not your half-sister, Armand." 

 "How can you be so positive about it?"

Monsieur fumbled in the lower drawer, taking out one of the compromising dossiers for which he was famous and feared. Threateningly accurate, Monsieur de Montbelle's dossiers were essential to the certainty with which he exuded authority, and to the extent of power he exerted on his peers -- men who might be socially, economically or politically more influential than him, even more wealthy, but not as well informed as Monsieur, who had in Celeste Mortinné a great ally.  

"Take a look at this." He said, handling it to Armand. "I give you five minutes, and if you still feel the need, you can pose your questions."

Grand Duke Felix Michael Pavlov Rostoff, Prince Albert Nikolai Stepan Rostoff, Prince Paul Sergei Boris Rostoff, Prince Vladimir Dmitri Rostoff, Prince Aleksander Nikolai Rostoff... The long list opening the dossier indicated that the Rostoffs were a persistent, fruitful lineage of male aristocrats. Originally from St. Petersburg, with branches in Riga and Moscow, informed the Almanacs. Armand flipped quickly through the boring newspapers cuts that followed, most of them in Russian, very few translated in French.  Gossip columns from a Cannes periodic covered the family members vacations on the French Riviera for the three decades preceding the First World War. Addresses, copies of birth certificates, letter and postcards, even telegrams composed the Rostoff dossier. Armand thought more fascinating and worth examining a series of yellowed black and white photographs, indicating sadness more than beauty was transmitted along with rather pure, heavy Slavic features in the Rostoff dynasty.  One boy, several young adults and older men -- but no women --, almost all of them clad in military attire, looking dull or stiff in their studio poses. Dumbfounded, Armand checked again the name on the cover of the dossier -- Prince Aleksander Nikolai Rostoff, the last name appearing in the long list, when the lineage seemed to have come to an end. Below his name was the date of his birth, in St. Petersburg -- but also of his passing, in Paris.

"I don't understand it. Who is he? Aleksander..."

"He was Catherine's father."

"A Russian prince?" Armand lowered his eyes to the dossier again, trying to find the one picture of the single man he had found truly attractive among the lot. Despite a dandiesque mustache, the youngster was the only Rostoff to spot a smile on his lips and eyes, and to sport a tuxedo instead of an uniform. Handsome indeed. For whatever reason, he hoped that was Prince Aleksander, but the name and date on the back of the photo had been erased. "Does she know it?"

"I believe she doesn't. And I am not the one supposed to tell her, when her mother denies the truth herself."

"I don't understand it."

"You blame me for having had a lover, don't you, Armand?" Monsieur smiled bitterly. "Well, my lover had a lover herself. This impoverished Russian prince."

"Can I make a copy of this dossier, Gaston?"

"No you can't. And why would you?"

"I want to read it with more attention."

"You have nothing to do with this story. Even less than I do. Simply forget it."

"But Catherine is entitled to know!" Armand protested. Would that new fact put an end to her vengeance, he wondered. If Armand would help Catherine so thoroughly as to find her a new aristocratic cradle -- she might, even, release Carlo?

Monsieur de Montbelle shook his head.

"This is not for us to decide." He shrugged.

*****

"A Russian prince... was Catherine's father?" I whistled.

"That's what my father believed in, though your grandmother denied it."

Blue blood ran in my veins! If not from the De Montbelle, from the Rostoff family. It felt like my ex-uncle Armand had momentarily taken one lollipop from my mouth to immediately present another, even tastier.

"I believe your mother is in Russia right now, isn't she? Probably researching her origins, don't you think?" Armand rejoined. 

Concomitantly to have been trying to fight her way into the De Montbelle family through French courts, Catherine had continually pursued her very personal obsession for Russia. From her early love for Russian writers, that had turned into that abandoned thesis of a Russian mystic, until her Masters studies that had enabled her to teach Russian literature, my mother must have been unconsciously following the thread of her origins, led by instincts running with her blood. 

She had mentioned something about researching our family origins indeed, in our last lengthy conversation over the phone, years ago, when I still dated Gabriel. But now the question was -- when had she shifted her interest from the De Montbelle to the Rostoff household, and why? Had she finally had access to that dossier Armand read in the 70s -- and why only now?

"Can I ask you a question, Armand?" I posed, carefully.

"Of course you can." Armand's eyes was again on my body, and after leaving my landscape of muscles, he closed them for a moment. They were full of sadness when he opened them again. "But I see you are cold, Laurent. Don't you want to change into something warmer?" His melancholy revealed to be a sort of nostalgia, when he next asked, "We could walk to the other side of the island to watch the sun set, how about that? It doesn't happen as an spectacle everyday, but today seems to be the case, we are lucky. And then we'll have dinner, while we talk."

And I felt I was finally on the Île du Blanchomme of my conception, where my father and Armand had done just that, every single day.

*****

next episode

The Rostoffs I refer to in this episode are supposedly a fictional dynasty from the short story "Love in the Night" by Scott Fitzgerald, that I have loved -- both the writer and the story -- from the first time I read it -- and ever since, always again upon re-reading it, like just before writing this episode of The Last Canvas.

You can read it online HERE.

For more background on the love triangle between Armand, Carlo and Catherine, and how he decided to become a monk and finally accept his half-sister, please see the links in the footnotes of the previous episode.

Thanks for reading!

Episode 16-II | Not what you think

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"Laurent, I am not what you think I am." Armand said to me, in a whisper. 

Despite his gentleness, I felt the blow of his words. My knees suddenly unable to sustain me, I had to drop immediately onto them, following my blood pressure, or risk falling towards the other side, again into the sea.

*****

But first I had to get into the sea, an hour or so before.

Having woken well after midday, I had looked for my uncle in his house. I did not dare enter it, when it was clearly empty. And though the island seemed small enough to find Armand on a short yelling expedition, I preferred going back to the cottage to eat everything he had stuffed in the mini fridge for me.

Risking a congestion, I then tried the beach before the cottage. Skies were blue, though clouds had already started gathering, and the sun shone like I had experienced only in California. The air was almost warm, when it stood still.

Advancing in short, reluctant steps into the cold water, I knew diving into the North Sea was not an option for the tropical boy I would always be. So I just walked about aimlessly, listening to the silence that included gushes of wind, the cry of sea gulls and the timid murmur of the tide. An unsettling silence, that excluded the whole human race. In that placid bay reminding me of the Punaouilo waters of my childhood, I took one step at a time, watching the dangerous approach of ripples, careful to keep my short trunks dry, afraid my balls would freeze if touched by the water, and fall to join the pebbles under my feet.

I wondered where Armand could be, and what was he thinking of me. Heavy sleeper? Lazy? Sick?

Watching the sun start to descend, I was thinking of Samsara Heights, too. How I had made that journey towards West myself. Where Angelo still was, where Fabrizio would also be. America, and the West Coast, had become home -- where I would return, soon -- to the past, to my future?

Unconsciously, much deeper within than the waters I was grazing, I must have been thinking of the final scene from that movie. Before my uncle even mentioned it, having seen the book that originated it in the small library of the cottage. Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann. But I was not clearly thinking of it when I halted, for the first time feeling I could trust the slippery ground below me. Lifting one arm, I pointed towards the sun. A deliberately slow, delicate gesture, not without theatricality, for I was emulating a gracious teenage actor. But I am sure that it was my other hand, brought to gently lie on my waist, that must have given Armand the hint. 

"I am not planning to die on the beach this afternoon!" Armand's voice came with the breeze, loud enough for me to hear it, yet soft like a murmur, and full of good humor. 

I looked around the broken ring of rocks encircling the bay, and slowly turned on my feet to face him, before answering, "You shouldn't. I'm far too old to play a convincing Tadzio." I cried back. "And you are not old enough to play Von Aschenbach." I said, immediately abandoning the pose, feeling embarrassed enough to even blush. 

"We are always younger today, than we shall be tomorrow, Laurent." 

We are also older today than we were yesterday, I wanted to tell uncle Armand, but he went on without having heard my thoughts.

"Anyway, I am impressed that someone your age has watched such a film. Paying enough attention to recreate it." He exclaimed, leaving the ridge where I could outline him against the sun. Taking mindful steps, he started descending towards the beach, not the least hurrying.

"Maybe you are miscalculating my age, Armand." I said, taking careful steps too, towards the beach to meet him.

He stopped, as if he couldn't walk and talk at the same time. Had my presence disrupted his walking meditation? If that was the case, he could have avoided the bay, or talking to me. "I know exactly the year you were born, Laurent." His voice, sounding brisk but not harsh, made me realize my mistake -- leading him back to the past, to think of my birth.

"I could have tried to strike a pose from Titanic." I was trying to divert his attention. "But I never watched it." I stopped walking, trying to calculate where Armand should reach the beach, so that I wouldn't leave the water too far from him. "And I don't know if I would take Leo or Kate's pose, for at least that scene of their embrace I have seen around the internet." I gave a short laugh. "Probably I'd take Kate's. To be in Leonardo de Caprio's arms" I laughed again.

Armand laughed too. "You seem to choose the poses of the young, the blonde and the beautiful, all of them." And a gesture he made had me thinking he was beckoning me. Maybe, like me, he was just using his hands to keep his balance. Nevertheless, I resumed walking in his direction. "Very appropriate for you, Laurent." He added.

I wondered if, with that, my uncle was complimenting me. Or simply being ironic? Even if he were, it would be a private joke between us, from now on. I was happy to have forged a connection to him through cinema, remembering how Carlo and him had been habitués of the Cinematéque Française, during their years as roommates in Paris. 

I wondered, too, whether Armand knew my name had been inspired by a character in a movie he quoted several to my father on the Île du Blanchomme. But I could simply not remember what movie it was, nor the quote, realizing it was best to leave that part of the past to the past. It was still hard for me to think the island of my conception no longer existed.

"It's good to find you so inspired this morning, Laurent. Seems like you had a lot of things to sleep off."

"I'm sorry, Armand." I wished, but I could not bring myself to call him uncle, not yet. "I had some trouble sleeping last night. The silence, you see. I'm not used to it." I lied. My house in Samsara Heights was pretty much isolated too, and not far from the ocean and its sounds either. 

"Sorry about that. I guess that cannot be changed." Armand halted again, staring in my direction. The reflections of the sun on the water illuminated my face, and I was afraid he could read the lie stamped on it. "Are you hungry?"

I had missed dinner with him. And breakfast. And lunch.

"Not really. I went looking for you." I waved my shoulder, indicating where his house lied. The building could not be seen behind the rocks, not even its bright red metallic roof. Now I was glad I did not succumb to idea of swimming naked, in the presumed privacy of the little bay. I might have, had it been summer, and then Armand would have seen a naked Tadzio. "But I did empty the fridge in the cottage, I'm sorry."

"It's OK. I left the food there for you." I saw him smile. "This is the time of the day I usually go for a walk."

Armand had finally reached the beach, and I started taking surer steps towards the point where he was. Our conversation was going well, I thought, but it was also going nowhere. 

"So, what are your plans for today, Laurent? What are your plans for the island?"

It sounded more like he wanted to know how long I was planning to stay, or my purpose to have come, and I wanted to chose my words carefully. Closer to the beach, the pebbles were slippery, and concentrating on not falling, I remained silent until I actually being before Armand. He were exactly the same clothes from the previous afternoon, but they looked fresh on him. Not the least wrinkled, as if he had just put them on. 

He might have missed my intention of approaching him to then speak, though, and sounding impatient he again asked, "Why did you come, Laurent? Why now?"

Because you haven't come for me, I thought. Knowing I couldn't say that, I took a deep breath. I had rehearsed many answers. In fact, during the couple of years I spent trying to reach Armand, I had rehearsed a thousand imaginary conversations I'd be having with my uncle.

"Because, not until two years ago, did I learn that I had an uncle." Feeling very emotional, I tried to smile, when it was easier to start crying. "Can I call you uncle?"

To adjust his canvas shoes, Armand had knelt on the beach. I did the same, even if just for hierarchy, just a few feet away from him. 

"Laurent, I am not what you think." He lowered his voice, but his astonishment was clear. "I am not your uncle! Who told you that?"

"What do you mean, Armand? Carlo told me everything. How the three of you... confronted. On the Île du Blanchomme. How Catherine went to check on the property... Entitled to half of it as she was, being your... sister." I gulped. "Is she not?"

"Did she tell you this? Did she send you here?"

"No she didn't. Nor did Carlo. Send me here, I mean."

"Did she tell you that or not? I can't believe your parents have sustained that... version of the story." He was being very careful with the words. I thought he was going to say "lie", for that was the word revolving in my mind.

"My parents are no longer together." It was my turn to surprise Armand, who suddenly tensed. "Carlo left home over twenty years ago..." I saw my ex-uncle knew nothing about that, and told him briefly how I hadn't spoken to my father for twenty years, until in 2008 he had told me the whole story. "Maybe Catherine didn't have the chance to tell him... the news..." I wanted to believe that. It was the only way to save my father from being a traitor and a liar. "... that she is not your sister? Half sister, even?"

I was trying to control myself, and to behave and be as polite as the man before me. But I was exploding within, not quite sure who the lies were coming from... Or was it Armand that was lying?

"I am sorry, Laurent. But why did Catherine hide it from you? She is in Russia right now, isn't she? You know about that, don't you? Or... don't you speak to your mother either?"

I noticed the look of concern on Armand's face. He must have been trying to figure out the situation of my broken family.

'I do, I do, but...' -- the truth was I hadn't spoken much to Catherine since our conversations over the telephone, when we had quarreled about Armand and almost everything else Carlo had told me. I hadn't completely stopped talking to her, but I had limited our communication to formal occasions only -- birthday, Christmas and New Year's Eve. It was rather unsatisfactory and tense, but I had finally wanted my distance from Catherine. I was sick of running after her approval and affection. In my own terms, I wanted to be a mother to myself, and a better mother than Catherine had ever been.

"Your mother is in Russia, isn't she? Certainly researching about the Rostoffs and... her father, who was Russian. A Russian aristocrat. Something like an exiled prince in Paris. I gave her all the information when I finally got hold of my father's dossiers... I thought we were settled. The judicial process was halted by your mother's own demand. Your mother knows we are not siblings... How could she..."

"She doesn't know I'm here." A Russian noble? Instead of De Montbelle blood, I descended from a Russian prince? My head spun. 

"I am sorry Laurent."

As I slowly rose to my feet, I was fighting against  the impulse of running away. But I was dizzy, an easy prey to my ex-uncle Armand's undesirable words.

"But then..." He gasped, standing up to face me. "Until this very moment, you still believed it! That I was you uncle!" He looked me straight into the eye, and must have realized I was trying no to cry. "You came here..."

All of a sudden, I understood what Armand was thinking. Like my mother almost 40 years ago, I had come to his island to check on him. Maybe to demand something from him, like my mother had... 40 years later, I was standing before him, mirroring my mother. What an awful feeling!

"That is not why I came here. I don't want anything from you. Not even to be recognized..."

"But you came here thinking we were family! You came here..."

I interrupted him. "Yes, I came here to visit my uncle." My voice broke.

"Laurent, do you really believe..." Armand shook his head, and searched another approach to the matter. "If I had known I had a nephew, do you think I would have avoided him? For more than three decades? Stay away from you?"

Lies. I was again being confronted with lies. Lies that made my family again shrink, just like the world had shrunk when the Île had been washed away. Suddenly, I recalled how Armand had avoided my mother, upon uncovering he had a sister. His reaction had been ignoring her. I closed my eyes. 

"I see." He continued. "I did that to your mother, and I am terribly sorry for having treated her that way. I have made that mistake once, Laurent. I ignored your mother. I am ashamed of what I have done when I thought she was my half-sister. I have apologized with her. But I would never do that again in my life. You are not my nephew, and that is why I never went after you, Laurent."

"How can you be so sure?" My voice trembled.

"I heard it from my father."

"Monsieur de Montbelle?" I had wished to call Gaston my grandfather, but that seemed no longer possible.

"Yes." Armand was trying to smile, but there was concern in his eyes. I probably knew more than he had thought I'd know. "I spoke to him. In Paris. In person, I mean."

"When was that?" As if following a lug trail, I was trying to confront all the versions I had heard. But sensing that, the more I asked, the deeper I would dwell in lies. Still, like some eager masochist, I couldn't stop myself from listening to yet another tale of the intangible past.

"Right after I left the Île. Why?"

Armand was being so straightforward, and calm, that it was hard not to believe him. "Carlo told me you left for Thailand, to become a monk... Son of a bitch of a liar!"

"Please calm down, Laurent. I am not lying to you..."

"Not you." I was surprised Armand should think I was swearing at him, and take it so lightly. Had his training as a Buddhist monk been that powerful? "My father... He is..."

"He did not lie to you." Armand seemed surprised with himself, for defending Carlo so promptly. He blushed as he said, "He probably doesn't know I went to Paris before I went back to Thailand... It doesn't seem logic, when I was in that corner of the world already, to return to Europe." Armand shook his head. Closing his eyes, he exhaled deeply. He was not happy to be again dealing with that part of the past. But what else could he do, when I stood before him? Dismiss me, and all that I represented? He seemed braver and calmer and wiser than that. "Do you want to go sit somewhere so we can talk?" He asked, gently.

"Let's stay right here." I said, allowing my knees to finally bend under the weight of a burden greater than I could ever handle -- that of losing my uncle, a mirage created by my father's lies, evaporating forever in a second. 

The sand was just a thin layer, and my butt hit the rock hard.

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** The wonderful novel 'Death in Venice' by Thomas Mann was adapted to cinema (not simply nowadays movies, and more like art) by the great Luchino Visconti, and this is the scene mentioned in this episode.

Episode 96 | Motherless mother

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Catherine felt her heart sink, when with one last beep her mobile shut off.

She knew exactly how oversensitive her child was – from a small boy, Laurent was feeling hurt and crying at the smallest things. When he was a three or four years old child, she had asked Carlo to kill a spider, and the boy had cried in desperation as the creature was chased and smashed in a corner of the chalet. And then, begged his father to promote a proper burial for the torn insect. Catherine had been dumbfounded. He would either avert his eyes or sob, when fishes were being brought onto the beach by the canoes that had been out fishing. He would have nightmares if he saw the fishes flouncing and struggling in the nets or baskets, helplessly gasping for air. Of course, he wouldn't eat them, nor anything that resembled an animal. He had been that kind of adolescent passing around petitions to save the whales and panda bears. Lately, Laurent's nonsense had found justification in Buddhist practices of equanimity, that proposed all beings were equal -- to Catherine's exasperation. But she couldn't do much, since mother and son hadn't cohabited for more than a decade. 

Just like Carlo, from early childhood she had realized Laurent had many artistic talents – but Catherine believed in artists being determined, disciplined and obsessive to achieve success, and those were the values she had wanted to instill in Laurent – while Carlo, soft by nature, had only encouraged Laurent’s sensitive and intuitive qualities. 

She believed that artists had to skilfully learn how to be strong and thick-skinned, more than just naturally develop their sensibility. She had been stupefied that, instead of hard work and dedication, a single shot of luck had finally launched Carlo’s career, a career he had almost given up along the years, simply because he had always lacked self-confidence and determination. Being a disciplined hard worker herself -- even in Russia, she was often being called 'workaholic', an awful word she despised --, she had not quite understood how nor why Carlo's weakness and cowardice should be rewarded. And she feared that his effortless success had had the wrong kind of impact on Laurent’s personality.

Observing her teenager son, she feared the damage had already happened. Despite the years away from Carlo, Laurent had consolidated his melancholy into an almost permanent depressive state, with that susceptibility she considered a flaw at his core. Catherine could imagine him bursting into angry tears (like too often, when he was a child and a teenager) at the sudden end of their call, melodramatically wandering around the hotel room in Vice City, with his shoulders bent, his whole body shaken by sobs, punching and throwing things, and with screams protesting against the injustice of life.

But Laurent -- feeling that the world conspired against him -- himself was so unjust with her. His oversensitivity had the downside of making him insecure – and all their common life, mother and son had struggled with Laurent’s inclination for emotional dependency, and Catherine’s intent to uproot it.

Catherine had herself endured and survived Celeste who, from an early age, taught her daughter to avoid calling her 'mother'. Celeste had disliked and at all occasions evaded being seen with Catherine when she was a little girl -- but as she grew up and became a lovely, attractive teenager, Celeste loved to be mistaken for Catherine’s sister. 

Catherine had often felt like a motherless child, being taken care either by nannies or the maids in the Parisian apartment, many of them immigrants who captivated and dumbfounded her with their foreign habits and their not the least accurate French.

Opposed to Celeste, who had never called Catherine 'daughter', she had always addressed Laurent with tenderness -- 'my son', 'my dear', 'darling'. But Laurent, of course, took it for granted, unable to recognize her love expressed in words, that were so meaningful to her. She had never heard any of them coming from her own mother. And he had always demanded, even begged for more from her. 

Realizing that, Catherine had permanently tried to motivate the opposite attitude in her son – often leaving Laurent to himself so that he could make his own decisions and grow out of his sick dependency, that Carlo had disastrously encouraged. Laurent’s training was short-lived, though, because only two years after Carlo had left, at fifteen years old Laurent had met Angelo and gladly handed the other boy power over him.

Catherine had preferred to risk being taken for a distant, careless mother – rather than play the role of the overprotective parent who would hinder her son’s emotional growth into a healthy maturity.

But at the thought that, probably, instead of abandoning himself to anger and despair, Laurent might have engaged in sex with the guy – or guys – he had mentioned that was – were – in his hotel room, a smile brightened Catherine’s face.

*****

The hungry termites had transformed the apartment into an eighteenth century precursor of the lofts, consisting of one long room that integrated the office and library, the tea and conversation rooms, the living room and the dining room, once the wooden panels between them had been removed. Only the bedroom and the bathroom had still kept some privacy. The windows giving to the Neva river conferred the rhythm and unity to the ambients. There was no kitchen, what suited Catherine perfectly -- she would have eaten out every day anyways, and she was generously paying and elder neighbor to bring her le petit déjeneur. 

"You smell delicious, Katerina..." Upon seeing his lover standing pensively by the dining table, quiet and immobile, looking distant, her head charmingly tilted as if she was trying to hear a faint song, Vlad had purposely put on his socks to silently sneak along the squeaking floor. He tiptoed on the antique rugs -- a single one of them worth more than all his possessions --, and when he was just a dozen steps away from Catherine, knowing the wood boards on the living room were tremendously noisy, he took impulse to glide swiftly and then jumped on her from behind, grabbing the startled woman by the waist. Catherine had an impossibly beautiful waistline that made the curves of her buttocks and breasts stand like the creations of a master sculptor -- that desirable when she was so old already, and Vlad could only imagine what wonders they would have been when she was young. Mistaking her inner smile for an approval of his assault, he squeezed her tight against his naked torso, in a haste starting to undress her, to the urgency of his hard-on.

"Not now, Vlad." She said coldly, but not moving apart an inch. Because her blasé reaction hadn't stopped him, Catherine had to slap his intrusive hand and push him away harder than she normally would like to, almost losing her balance -- and her elegance. Of all her recent lovers, Vladimir was distinctly the one to make her lose the temper the more often. "You don't smell so delicious, yourself." The scent of vodka that permanently tinged his outbreath and sweat often disgusted her, and until she had drank something herself, it was rather nauseating.

He sucked in a breath, unable to find the words to retort, so big was his surprise -- yet smaller than the rejection he immediately felt. "Your bad son spoiled your morning humor, Katerina?" He said, sarcastically and still breathless.

"There is nothing bad about Laurent, Vlad. Stop picking on my son!" She clapped her hands to drop the subject.

"Yes there is. He is a sinner. Next time I want to talk to him!"

"My son, a sinner? He is not even religious!" Catherine braced herself for yet another medieval duel with Vladimir. "How can he be a sinner?"

"You know very well, Catherine. Sleeping with other men is so wrong. That’s a sin."  

Her young lover was so fixated in Laurent that she sometimes wondered if, in some wicked and devious way, he hadn't already fallen in love for her son and was struggling with feelings he rejected himself. She had spotted his erection, that he almost proudly displayed under his old fashioned underwear, and instead of attributing the cause to herself, thought Vlad was clearly aroused at the subject of Laurent's sexuality.

"Are you aware that 'sin' is a word that cannot be translated into every language, since in several of them there is no equivalent for it? Sin is a concept that doesn't exist in several cultures, Vlad! Sin doesn't exist everywhere on this planet. Sin is not universal, Vlad!" She glanced at him, reproachfully. She thought men who wore underwear and socks always looked ridiculous -- and she knew Laurent loathed it, too. Especially Vlad, who was wearing black socks and white underwear. She could have laughed at him, but she had realized the young man was having a hard time dealing with his imperious morning lust, and with her dismissal of it.

"Only because these cultures must be a sin in themselves, altogether! Their core is sin, Catherine. Just like some people who are so sinful won't even realize how deep plunged into it they are..." Instead of an statement, it sounded to Catherine that Vlad had posed a question. But she knew it was due to his difficulties with the French language. She didn't feel confident herself to speak Russian, though she could read it perfectly, and was almost thankful that the young man at least bothered trying to speak to her in French. "You will never cure your son if you keep defending him from his… faults, if the word sin is the problem here!"

Cure? What reply was there to that? Deliberately, Catherine decided to lose her patience with her stubborn companion. At what age do young people grow up and leave the idiotic arrogance of adolescence behind?, she thought, and decided to give Vlad a push. 

"Don’t you think that your father beating you and your stepmother is much worse a fault, Vlad?" She had found out that hideous detail about Vlad’s household by chance, told as gossip by a colleague teacher, who wanted to see Vlad thrown out of her bed to get into it himself. She hadn't talked openly about that yet with Vlad, but she had learned it had been his main reason to leave the village of his birthplace. "And the fact that he cheats on her, too?"

Vladimir gulped and grew pale, or even more pale than his beautiful white marble complexion already was. He had been stroking his goatee with one hand and the tip of his hard-on with the other -- and he froze. 

"Leave my family out of this, Katerina!" He stomped a foot. "My father sleeping with other women is a natural weakness from men." He went on, hissing, his eyebrows arching towards the top of his forehead, his eyes burning like green coals. "And he only beats her when he is too drunk."

"But that’s gasthly!" Catherine moaned. "Natural weakness? And how 'weak' are you Vlad?" She did not wait for his answer. "He only beats her when he is 'too drunk'?! From the way that you keep drinking yourself... Am I being warned?" From the perplexed look on his face, Catherine knew he had lost the thread of her reasoning. "Your arguments are medieval, Vladimir! How can you accept that? You should be ashamed of yourself!" She then turned her back on him, since he had resumed stroking his chin and the erect organ, and she could no longer stand neither.

Vlad thought she was teasing him further, turning her buttocks to him, their deliciously soft curves outlined under her tar black dress -- since Edoardo's death Catherine had decided to wear only black, since it suited her best than all other colors -- gently swaying as she shifted from one high heel to the other. "Nobody is perfect, Katerina!" 

Upon seeing him retreating so defensively, just then did she ponder that Vlad's need to constantly reinforce his masculinity and his aggressiveness must have been side effects from his helplessness and frustration at his brutish father's abuses. She was disappointed with herself. Had her lover been a character in one of her books, she would have read him better, already. And how far would those maltreats have gone, she wondered, at what age had they started and how long would they have lasted, to have made Vlad so grossly homophobic?

"Still, I think you could – and should -- do better than that, Vlad. Especially if you want to emigrate." Catherine did appreciate his writings, so poetically elusive, and she was agitating what she considered his best novel to be properly translated and published in France. That could be a lengthy process, however, and she did not expect them to be still together as a couple by the end of it. Vlad would have the autograph’s night in Paris he dreamed of; she would have been responsible for making it happen, and that’s all that actually mattered -- not whether she would be there with him or not. Since her investigations about the Rostoff family had just begun, she wasn't planning to return to France any time soon, while Vlad was in a hurry to leave Russia.

"I certainly do better than other people I know. Or even than people you know, for that matter, Katerina." With a gesture towards the dead mobile phone lying over Catherine’s writing desk, he seemed to imply he was closing the circle and again talking about Laurent.

"If you think so, Vlad." That very moment, Catherine simply gave up debating with her lover, for the rest of the morning.

It was a pity that, despite being so lyrical in his writings, he could be such a moron in the everyday life. But at least he also enjoyed drinking, and had taken to himself the task of keeping the apartment she had rented in St. Petersburg stocked with liquor – that he would go out to buy with her money, of course.

Catherine poured herself some wine -- French, for sure, and yet not as good as she would have preferred. She had started wondering whether Vlad bought cheaper liquor to keep the rest of the money to himself, or if he really had no sophistication at all, deeply rooted still in his peasant origins that made him have quite coarse tastes. 

With her glass full, she sat to read what the translator had delivered on the documents she had found about the Rostoffs. And she smiled silently, like she had before the argument with Vlad had started. She had been defending Laurent, when her son had accused her their whole conversation through. She wondered if Laurent would have defended her against accusations coming from one of his lovers -- because she was certain that Celeste, her mother, would never have. 

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