Charming Young Man, page 7
Then there were footfalls on the stairs, more boisterous laughter. Léon leaped to his feet, like he’d nearly been caught in something terrible. Robert stayed where he was, amusement on his face.
A trio of young men appeared at the entrance to the room, in beautiful suits and with waxed mustaches, their hair carefully parted and pomaded. “Robert, come and wander with us—oh, are we interrupting?” the one in front said.
“Not at all,” Robert said, not bothering to get to his feet. “Gentlemen, this is my guest, Léon. He spent the night after my party. Perhaps he would care to join us on our stroll.”
The men stared at Léon and Robert with gaping and admiring smiles. They were clearly coming up with their own explanations for the situation. Shame flooded Léon. Unnatural. Abomination. What would happen if word got back to the conservatory, to his mother? “I need to go,” Léon said. “I’m sorry. I need to go practice.”
“No, you should stay,” one of the young men said laughingly. “You and the Comte de Montesquiou are having too grand a time for us to interrupt.”
But Léon was already out of the room, tripping up the stairs to the dressing room, kicking the door closed with the heel of his bare foot, tugging on his damp, cold clothes from the night before, whipping a hand through his mussed hair, and then barreling down the stairs, taking them two at a time to make it go all the quicker.
As he passed Robert’s breakfast room, he let himself glance in. Robert looked at him, wounded and angry, and then pointedly returned his attention to his three guests, poking one in the ruffled frills on his chest to make some point that Léon didn’t catch. The other young men ignored Léon.
He continued down to the hallway at the bottom, where Céleste was kneeling with a gleaming silver tray and brush, going after the bits of dirt the men had tracked into the house. She paused, finding something in Léon’s expression.
“Leaving already?” she asked softly.
Léon nodded, tears in his eyes.
Céleste sighed in a way that made Léon think situations like this occurred often at Robert’s home. She laid a hand on Léon’s forearm. “Our Robert has a good heart. He might play at being mean sometimes, but he has a good heart. He likes you. I hope you come back.”
“I really have to go,” Léon said, brushing past her and out into the street. He was instantly anonymous amid the clatter of carriages on cobblestone, the clip of hard-soled feet along packed dirt, the shouts of newspaper criers and men at carts selling roasted almonds. No one paid any mind to the hastily dressed boy tumbling out of the Montesquiou household. No doubt many hastily dressed boys had previously tumbled out of the Montesquiou household.
He started along the street, toward home. He’d come so close to having a solution. To getting someone to sponsor him. To maybe be something more. But then that trio of boys had come in, with those looks in their eyes—those looks that said he was the count’s plaything. If Léon accepted Robert as his patron, that’s how everyone would look at him. No, he couldn’t do it. What would his mother say? After sacrificing so much, working those long days for scraps of money that went straight to his tuition, so her two children could get married and start their lives right . . . only for him to become a sexual pervert?
All the same, that might not be something he could become. Not if it was something he already was. Despite his doing nothing to become it. The cruelty of it all felt crushing—all his thoughts said what he was doing was wrong, but the feelings were pure and real, and felt only like desire, the heart-opening sort of desire that could someday become love.
A window creaked open above him. Léon looked up to see Robert, still in his robe, leaning out. “Here, catch,” he cried, hurling something small and heavy Léon’s way.
It was a leather pouch. The tie loosened when it hit the street, and coins rolled out. The young men, out of view behind Robert, burst into laughter.
Léon did not pick the coins up. He glared at Robert. What was this supposed to be, a tip? Payment for services rendered, like he was some demimondaine? Léon might not have known all the subtleties of patronage, but he knew it didn’t work like this. “How dare you?”
“Those are not for you, silly,” Robert said. “If it were a present, I would have thrown you the blueberry jam. Though I suppose the crock would have shattered. I want you to please buy the flower woman’s stock, so she can go home and put those tired old feet up.”
Robert returned to the conversation inside, closing the window behind him. Léon was alone on the street. An urchin looked at the purse on the ground and then at Léon, as if to ask are you going to take that?
Léon picked up the coins and the purse. He’d been paid. But it wasn’t for him. Robert was kind within his strange callousness. It was all so confusing.
Léon headed to the end of the block. He’d buy the old woman’s stock of flowers, and then he’d drop the flowers off inside Robert’s entrance for Céleste to arrange. Then he’d never see Robert again.
The old woman burst into tears, the dingy lace carnations on her hat trembling as she placed her hands over her heart. Thank you.
6.
A lesson with Marmontel, focusing on phrasing. Normally this was one of Léon’s favorite subjects. But today the only way he could play was tensely, his notes all staccato, like he was avoiding a fight by saying as little as possible. There was a letter in Léon’s pocket, handed to him by the front desk attendant as he’d walked in that morning. He’d read it and put it in his jacket pocket right away, in shame. Faked his way through his lesson.
As they finished up, Léon realized he could ask Marmontel what to do about the letter. But the bearded old man shared a dusty apartment with his wife and four cats, living off her inheritance, and so had never had to play high society. He might tell Léon to do the wrong thing about the letter, and then Léon would have to contradict his mentor.
No, he knew whom he should ask for advice, even though the idea of the conversation filled him with dread.
Marmontel’s disappointment at Léon’s phrasing showed only in the small sighs he gave as he packed his teaching books up in his leather case, little gusts of bad breath that Léon had come to associate with care and love and gentle disappointment.
Reynaldo wasn’t scheduled to see Marmontel until an hour later, so Léon knew where to find him. Sure enough, he was lounging in the stairwell that the students had made into their lounge. He was laid out flat, somehow picturesque even as he reclined on a dusty floor of broken stone tiles. His shiny, black hair, cresting in two waves along a sharp middle part, gleamed while he lectured an adoring semicircle of younger students.
Léon coughed. “Reynaldo, could I talk to you for a minute?”
Reynaldo propped himself up onto an elbow. “Shy Léon Delafosse speaks to me first! This is a big moment in my life. Scram, kids.”
The younger students scattered as Reynaldo sat up, leaning his back against the wall. He was Venezuelan, only a year older than Léon but with a man’s fullness to his face. He was handsome enough to fluster Léon, handsome enough to make him so impossible to attain that he didn’t quite fire up any desire. Unlike Marcel, who was so amazingly . . . available.
Léon crouched beside him, then felt too awkward and let himself sit fully on the floor. “I could use some advice.”
“The Beethoven cadenza again?” Reynaldo asked with a laugh. They both knew Léon didn’t need any musical advice.
“I received this,” Léon said as he withdrew the letter from his inside breast pocket. A wrinkle had been pressed into the paper by his own body heat.
Reynaldo unfolded the paper with his long, pale fingers, dusted with black hair on the backs. He read it aloud:
Cher Léon Delafosse,
I wish to let you know how ravished we were by your performance at our home last week. Even Brigitte, the little one’s severe nanny, praised it based on what she heard from the upstairs rooms. A Brigitte compliment is hard to come by; our children have never managed it. Artistically speaking, we do hope that you find a name under which you would fit, a house with whom you could travel to St. Moritz or even America, finding higher and higher audiences for your performances and your compositions. Let us who live baser lives of financial concerns help you stay aloft. We wish you the best of luck in that search. If you ever care to join us at home for a dinner so we can get to know one another better, do let me know.
Ferdinande de Saussine
Reynaldo looked up, clearly confused by Léon’s worry. “They followed up. This is good news.”
“It is? They didn’t offer to be my patrons. They wished me luck finding one. That doesn’t sound like good news.”
Reynaldo squeezed Léon’s shoulder. “They’re not going to bow themselves down while you just stand there, giving them nothing. Even if you’re the best pianist France has ever known, they’re not going to make an offer that they don’t already know you’ll accept.”
“Oh,” Léon said. He thought for a moment. “How will they know I’ll accept if they haven’t offered yet?”
“The conservatory should really give a course just on how to navigate patronage for awkward country boys like you. It works a lot like Caracas society does, though, so I’m happy to provide my services. As long as you acknowledge me when you’re accepting the Legion of Honor someday. Can I give you a course now?”
Léon nodded. “Yes, please do.”
“Rule number one is the most important. Society is a little like playing a piano. You can try too hard. Above all, don’t show effort. In conversation that means to be humble, be content to be wherever you are, compliment everything, and don’t try to be funny if you’re not funny. Don’t tell them you really need a patron, even if that’s the first thing on your mind. If you’re ambitious, you’re suspicious. Be yourself with me or with Marmontel, but don’t be yourself there. That’s not what gets rewarded.”
Léon fished a scrap of sheet music out of his bag, began to pencil notes on the back. “Don’t try too hard, got it.”
Reynaldo laughed. “Taking notes on trying too hard is trying too hard.”
Léon put his pencil down.
“I’m teasing,” Reynaldo said. “Take everything a little more lightly, that’s another note for you.” His eyes narrowed shrewdly as he looked Léon up and down. “Whatever you have to do to get it, invest in a nice shirt from DiMauro’s. Just one. You can wash it by hand and hang it in your apartment whenever it needs another wash. These rough muslin things you wear over and over are just not going to cut it chez Saussine.”
“They’re not muslin,” Léon said. But he knew perfectly well what Reynaldo meant. Léon did the mental calculation. If his mother went back to teaching on Saturdays, and they held the milkman off again, he might just be able to manage a shirt from DiMauro. He trusted Reynaldo to know what it took. He’d linked up with the Racine house and suddenly was wearing imported shoes and talking about his plans to tour Germany. If he said Léon should get a particular shirt, Léon would find a way to get it.
Reynaldo took up Léon’s scrap of sheet music and pencil and wrote a list on the back. “This is the most extreme option, but you’re my most extreme case. Here are five phrases to memorize, that you can say when you’re socializing at their home. That’s part of this, Léon. You have to learn how to talk to people.”
Léon looked over the list. I believe that the Dreyfus Affair is less about the man than about the needs of national security. Have you heard of this new term, “homosexual”? They call this the Age of Invention, but that’s really going too far.
“They’re interesting things to say, ways to get people engaged,” Reynaldo explained. “If you memorize these, you won’t just do that ‘mrm-hrm’ thing you do while nodding your head.”
“I understand,” Léon said. He did do that “mrm-hrm” thing.
“The Saussines have invited you to dine in their home. If you had charmed at the salon you played, yes, you might be fielding an official offer right now and figuring out what to do with your knighthood and hundreds of francs. But don’t despair. It’s not over yet, Léon. Just write to them, angle your way into a dinner, put yourself out there a little more, and be interesting. You don’t have to be fascinating, just interesting. And wear that shirt from DiMauro’s. Do all that, and you’ll get to a debut recital at the Érard, and from there you are made. The recital is the key, and if that goes well, you are set for life. The rental costs a thousand francs, though, so find whatever person will get you that. Understand?”
Léon nodded. It would have been nicer to hear that he should just be himself and it would all work out, but that had evidently been too much to hope for.
As Léon was leaving, the front desk clerk flagged him down and handed him a weathered envelope. “You had a new one arrive in the late morning post. You are popular today, Delafosse.”
Léon accepted the letter, pressed it to his chest as he stepped out of the gloom of the heavy stone conservatory and into the sunlight. He couldn’t make himself look at who it was from. It was white cotton paper, so it probably wasn’t from the Saussines. But what if it was? Dear Léon, you are boring. Please send us Reynaldo Hahn instead.
A horse carriage clopped by, nearly spraying Léon with offal. He opened the envelope. It wasn’t from the Saussines. The letters were rough and unpracticed, a handwriting he knew as well as his own.
Dear Léon,
How are you? I am fine here. Clémentine lost a shoe somewhere between that pond she likes to drink from and the barn, and I have looked for it but I cannot find it. My father is still drinking too much and becoming sick from it, and my mother is forgetting more things. She stacked her undergarments in the kitchen cupboard. I continue to go on walks with Cécile. I think she is very nice and does good impressions. I don’t think you ever liked Cécile much did you?
I look forward to your letters, always. Father still thinks novels ruin the mind so your letters are my only thing to read except for the Bible. I guess I play cards with Maman too. We are too tired with the planting season to play more than one or two hands before it’s time to go to bed.
When might you visit Vernon again?
Your friend,
Félix
Léon read it twice. It was all very Félix. He loved that horse so much.
He composed a letter in his mind as he walked home, then worried he’d forget it all before he got home and so stopped in the Jardin des Tuileries to write down his response on the backside of Félix’s own letter.
Dear Félix,
I am sorry to hear about Clémentine’s missing shoe. Though I do remember that pile of horseshoes you kept in advance, so I’m sure she is back to four shoes by now.
Everything is absolutely amazing here. I feel so lucky. It is better than I could have imagined. Marmontel continues to teach me piano techniques I won’t bore you by trying to explain. I have started to make it in high society! Can you imagine? You would think I were an actual gentleman if you saw me going into these homes. They have to be about ten stories high, and everyone coming in and out looks like that picture of Marie Antoinette from the history book in school.
You might not recognize me if you saw me, Félix! It’s just so wonderful here. Paris is everything they say.
Please say hello to Cécile for me. I’m sure she is lovely to walk and talk with.
Your friend,
Léon
Whistling happily, Léon folded the paper in two, giving it a nice sharp crease. He didn’t have an envelope in his bag, so he would have to take it home first. But then he’d get it right off to Félix.
As he slotted the folded letter neatly into his music theory book, Léon felt a chill flood of something he realized was loneliness. He wanted Félix to be proud of him, and not to worry, but who could he be honest with? Charlotte and his mother were depending on him to keep them from poverty. Marmontel didn’t have an interior life, as far as he could tell. Reynaldo was Reynaldo. Robert de Montesquiou might have become a friend, but that adventure had ended terribly. Could he be honest with Félix? Everything he was going through felt foreign to their life of woodland walks and feeding ducks. How could Félix understand?
Marcel, though. A young man interested in Léon for who he was. Maybe. We’re both weird outsider fairy creatures, you and me.
Marcel, who’d collapsed at Robert’s home. Léon knew the Proust address, from when Marcel had first invited him to his family’s at-home. It was almost on his way home. If he rushed, Léon would have time to stop by before he headed home without needing to explain a thing to his mother and sister.
7.
Léon knew enough about how society functioned to know he wasn’t supposed to knock on a door unannounced. Even if Tuesday was the Proust at-home, he ought to have a card to leave, so he could wait outside while they decided whether to admit him. But Léon didn’t have cards. So when a servant opened the front door, Léon handed a folded sheet of music paper of a composition he’d attempted, his name scrawled across the top.
“What am I to do with this?” asked the servant, a knife-faced woman with hair in a tight bun.
“What is it, Lisette?” said a voice behind. “Oh, hello there.” A woman appeared, masses of dark hair, eyeglasses on a chain, soft and matronly clothes. “Who’s this?”
Léon held his dark hat in his hands, peered nervously at the woman. “I’m Léon Delafosse. I’m a new friend of Marcel’s. I wanted to see if he’s okay?”
“Are you? He hasn’t mentioned you.”
“We were at a party together the other night. He had to go home early, on account . . .”
“Of his asthma, yes. Come in.” She held open the door and beckoned Léon through.
“Thank you,” he said as he stepped in. “I’ve been worried about him.”
