by E. J. Levy
“You say you owe me your life,” I continued. “You hold mine equally in your hands.”
“I had no idea that I held such power.”
“You may be the most powerful man in Africa,” I said. “And you are the only man living who knows my secret.”
“Then you have nothing to fear,” he said.
“A secret can be very hard to bear alone,” I replied.
“Which is why you shouldn’t have to,” he said. He walked over to the wicker basket set beside the green-silk settee and unfastened the latch. When he drew it back, a small white tuft of fur was visible inside it, like a tiny cloud or a miniature lamb. For a moment I feared he’d bought me an ermine wrap, some horrible feminine fetish.
“I’ve brought you a present,” he said.
“What in God’s name—”
“It has a god’s name, in fact,” he said, “or rather a goddess’s. Meet Psyche.”
He bent and lifted a small fluffy ball of white fur out of the basket. I could see it shivering in his arms, but it did not make a sound. Somerton crossed the room in three long strides until he stood close enough to embrace me; he set it in my arms. For a moment we cradled the creature together; I could feel his breath warm against my hair.
“Psyche?” I could not bring myself to look up into his face, so I looked at the dog.
“Surely a man of your learning knows the story.” His voice was quiet.
“Of Cupid’s wife?” My uncle had painted the image.
“The most beautiful woman in the world,” he said.
“The world is full of beautiful women, in my experience.” I was thinking of the balls at Government House. “There is a superfluity.”
“This woman,” he said, relinquishing the dog to my arms. “Was exceptional.”
Psyche’s story was as familiar to me as my own: Cupid had been sent by his mother, Venus, to poison Psyche, whose mortal beauty rivaled the goddess’s own. But Cupid was so taken by Psyche’s loveliness that he wished to marry her instead. The gods granted his request on one condition: Psyche must never know his true identity. Psyche agreed, and they were wed, and soon after she was pregnant. But her sisters encouraged her to learn her husband’s identity before she bore a monstrous child, so one night as he lay beside her she lit a lamp, raised it to his face as he slept, saw he was no monster but a god, and lost him. Their love could survive only as long as his identity remained a secret.
I’d not had a dog since I was a child in Cork. My eyes filled. “She’s beautiful,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “She is.”
An hour later we sat down to luncheon, what for years would seem in memory the best luncheon I had ever eaten. Knowing I would not eat animal flesh, he had seen to it that the feast was of the freshest available from the sea and Company’s Garden. There were crayfish broiled in fresh butter, thick white hake seared to the golden crispness of flan, plump pink grilled tiger shrimp big as a Malay woman’s bracelet, wine-poached scallops bigger than the buttons on my coat, and all manner of vegetables from the garden, roasted in salty butter. We finished off two bottles of cold crisp champagne; the breeze off the sea was deliciously cool in the heat of the day, like a cool cloth held to a feverish head. The sun warm as butter.
When I agreed to stay the night rather than ride back to Simon’s Bay, I found rooms had already been prepared for me, anticipating what I had not: when he came to me that night, it was by darkness; we did not speak; we lit no lamps.
Chapter Seven
Constantia at Dawn
I have often considered that—with the notable exception of humanity—the male of a species has the showier plumage on account of its lesser appeal; the female is naturally appealing and requires no ornamentation to attract a mate. So it is with certain women and men.
After my death, some will speculate that my reputation for extravagant flirtation had been born of an effort to disguise my true nature, but in truth I simply had an eye for the ladies. But after that first evening together at Roundhouse, it was absurd how Somerton absorbed me.
The next morning we rode out together, down to the sea at Camps Bay, and bathed there, in the frigid salty waters and waves, hidden from view among the stone monoliths that crowded the water’s edge like giant prehistoric eggs, or sentinels.
At night, dining quietly together without servants in attendance, he held my hand as we sat beside each other at table, drinking wine, the sound of the surf coming in the window.
He told me of how, after Elizabeth’s death, he had considered taking his own life, but had not for the sake of the children. He told me, as we lay in the darkness at night, how in my arms he felt he had “come home.” Embarrassed by the declaration (Why is it women are always compared to things they are not?), I nonetheless understood what he meant, for I felt it as well. At home. He said there was nothing I could not say to him, that we could not say to each other. In darkness, in light.
As if Roundhouse were like Prospero’s island, where another logic governed, another air, a different gravity, we lived for those few days without thought of the larger world beyond.
He spoke easily, but I could not. It was not reticence, exactly. I wanted to confide, but I could not. The habit of silence is hard to break, had become a way of life; the words and stories stuck in my throat as I sought to form them. It seemed a lie, that life, a phantom, a ghost story. As if my life were a spell that I might undo by speaking, saying the words. How I came to be who I was, all the lonely years during which I’d tried to forge myself into a useful instrument, a blade without feeling. Like Psyche with Cupid, I could love only as long as I did not examine too closely the body, the past.
I told him what I could: of my training in Edinburgh, of Dryburgh Abbey and Lord Basken’s interventions on my behalf, of my training with Sir Astley Cooper, and of General Mirandus, whom he knew by reputation but had not met. I could not say more.
Save for with my sister and mother, I had never known such pleasure and comfort in the company of another person, company that did not seem to rob me of my solitude but confirmed and enhanced it. I seemed with him more myself, as if he were a mirror in which I appeared more clearly, in both fault and virtue; amplified, as our voices had been in the canyons near Knysna—which returned to us larger, bolder, yet still our own.
I was loath to resume life in Cape Town, afraid of what trouble we might encounter there in the course of our official duties. As Governor Somerton and Doctor Perry. But he assured me nothing would change.
What do I remember of that time? Moments. Our first morning together at Roundhouse, when he pulled back the sheet and looked at me and said, “How beautiful you are,” and laughed when I grabbed at the blanket to cover myself. Later, as I was stepping from the bath, he held a towel open for me, but out of my hands. “No, wait,” he said. “Let me look at you.” I felt a shiver pass through me to be washed in admiration, revealed, released, as I had felt when we rode down through the morning heat to the cold salt waters of Camps Bay or rode out together in the heat rising off the Cape Flats, and I felt it loosening my muscles, lending me a suppleness I had not known before, an ease and confidence and pleasure in my body undisguised. Everyone wants to be seen.
I was surprised by the delight I took in my new role of lover and the power that attended it, one that girls are said to have even when young, but which I hadn’t, although I had faintly sensed the possibility when I saw how General Mirandus watched Sarah Andrews or very occasionally when we sat conversing in his library, a whiff of sensuality faintly discernible between us, as foreign and intriguing as the unexpected flavors of his homeland prepared for dinner in the room below—meat roasted with salt, not boiled; garlic and onions and limes and tomatoes and a frilly green plant called cilantro that he had cultivated from seed.
I had been unsettled by Mirandus’s appreciative glance when he watched me, smiling, as I reported on what I had read or studied or discovered in his library that day or week or month. He smiled at me a
s he might over a particularly delicious champagne, a connoisseur’s admiration. It was a look that I would later observe in Lord Somerton, when he considered a particularly promising horse—a calculating and appreciative gaze, half pride, half delight, an admixture of pleasure and cold assessment about what might be made of this, how far the beast might go with training and encouragement.
Somerton’s regard for me was different than the general’s, which had often made me feel curiously diminished, less than I was, slighter. This was the opposite: I felt multiplied.
Still, it was ambivalent pleasure to be thought beautiful, an appreciation I’d never known nor sought. Women’s admiration of me had always been solicitous, self-regarding. It was not my looks they noticed when they flirted with me, but their own they wished to have admired, and I did—how could I not? They were lovely. Desiring women—and their desire to be desired—made me feel powerful, expanded, like heated gas. But to be the object of a man’s fierce desire felt intoxicating, bracing and wounding all at once. A power most women know from girlhood, but which I never had, having become a boy before I ever became a woman.
But such pleasure had another face, like Janus. Which I discovered quickly on our return to Cape Town. For a time, all was as it had been between us at Roundhouse, save that we met far less frequently, barred from intimacy by the presence of family and servants and my landlady. But longing has its own savor, and our intimacy together, while rare, was more intense for our having been parted.
Gradually I came to notice a change, like a shift in the direction of the wind. When I strode into his office at Government House after having been away overseeing vaccines at Caledon or attending private patients near Newlands—ignoring Cloete, the officious aide-de-camp who wished to announce me—I increasingly found him distracted by papers (“Oh, it’s you; I was expecting someone else,” he might say) and I felt ashamed, as if my measure were his to take, and I had been found wanting.
At such times I felt humiliated and said curtly, “I won’t detain you, then,” turned on my heel and walked out, hoping to wound, but he did not appear to notice. Stepping out into the Company’s Garden after one such encounter, some six months after our first night at Camps Bay, the heat raking the trees, the scent of frangipani and lemons, I thought better of my pique and turned back again. We had been apart for some weeks, as I’d had medical matters to attend to and he colonial affairs, and I had missed him. As I entered the cool marble foyer, I heard a rustle of fabric and saw on the landing above a blue silk skirt slip past the wooden door of His Lordship’s office. I assumed it must be Miss Georgiana or her sister, although the perfume—heavy scent of cape jasmine and musk—should have told me otherwise. I knew it well.
When I reached his office door, I found it barred by Cloete.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” the Dutchman said, stretching out an arm to prevent me.
“Don’t be absurd.” I reached for the door.
“His Lordship is not alone.”
The man’s tone irritated me.
“He is with…” he hesitated, then smiled. “A lady.”
I remembered the woman I’d seen on the landing, her figure as out of place as a field of sea pink or violets would be in the Company’s Garden, an unseasonable bloom.
I let my hand fall from the doorknob; crossed my arms over the chest of my red coat.
“Well,” I said, returning the man’s smirk. “That’s a fine Dutch filly he’s got hold of.”
The man straightened. “That’s a bloody ugly thing to say,” said Cloete.
“Truth is often ugly,” I replied. I knew the kind of man Josias de Cloete was—wellborn, narrowly educated, insecure about his position, sensitive to insult, easily provoked; I was not surprised when he insisted on satisfaction. I’d hoped he would. I agreed to a duel at Constantia the next day at dawn.
I felt in that moment that I wanted to die; I wanted to kill the ache in my chest, this humiliating longing; I knew, as I descended the stairs and stepped out into the Company’s Garden, that I might not survive the encounter. I was a terrible shot, but I wanted to strike something; I wanted to hurt a man, even if this wasn’t the man I had in mind.
The ride to Constantia the next morning was dark and cold; Dantzen accompanied me to bear Psyche and my pistols, and—though we didn’t speak of it—to report news of my death, if necessary. Dantzen had tried to dissuade me, even gallantly proposed to serve as my second; I had declined. The fight was mine, not his.
The cold morning air caught in my throat, burning like smoke as we rode. I could hear the blood pound in my ears as the horse moved beneath me, my mouth dry, the sky a heartbreaking violet blue, as it had been on our journey to the Xhosa king almost two years earlier; above the hulking dark of Table Mountain, the Southern Cross; a scent of grass and horse sweat; somewhere far off the cry of a rooster tolled the morning’s first hour.
When we stopped and dismounted, Psyche barked once, then fell silent. Cloete was already there, waiting.
As the sun began to rise over Alphen estate, we chose our weapons, paced off our positions, then turned at our marker stones to face each other across the field. Cloete and I lowered our pistols to the height of one another’s chests; I felt a curious detachment. For an instant my death became palpable, possible, as it had not been before; time slowed, grew thick as honey, before the signal handkerchief fell.
The barrel of my gun trembled as I started to pull back on the trigger, when I heard the shot and felt something hot—like an ember—across my left arm and saw the Dutchman’s hat fly off like a startled gull.
“By God!” the Dutchman shouted, though the distance between us was not great. “You’re a marksman after all! I’d heard you were a miserable shot.”
“Opinion must always be confirmed by observation,” I shouted back. “Next time I’ll aim for a less-vulnerable part of your anatomy—your heart.” But I knew that I had not aimed at all. I had not even pulled the trigger.
Cloete laughed. “Fair enough.” He stooped to retrieve his injured hat.
“Are you all right, sir?” Dantzen said, appearing at my side. I smelled the faint but unmistakable odor of sulphur on him. “You’re bleeding.” He touched my arm.
“Thank you,” I said with feeling. I reached up and felt the burn at my left shoulder, the sticky warmth that I recognized as blood. “I’m wounded,” I said, “but I’ll recover.”
When news of the duel reached Lord Somerton later that morning, his concern was gratifying. He insisted that I present myself at his office immediately and shouted in rage for some minutes before forbidding me all duels in future, though we both knew he had no power to prevent them. Duels were illegal already—a law that soldiers and gentlemen routinely ignored. I was challenged often by local men, enraged by the attention their women paid me.
“You could have been killed,” Lord Somerton said.
“I was not,” I said.
“Evidently,” he said. He took a seat behind his desk. “It would be difficult to replace the governor’s physician.”
“You need not seek a replacement,” I said.
“I’m glad of it.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“It is.”
I left his offices, satisfied.
I did change certain of my habits in the months that followed. I was careful not to travel far from Cape Town or stay away too long, so as to be sure Lord Somerton and I had opportunity to meet most evenings. The curtains pulled against the night, the house asleep, no one to disturb us in his library or office, we resumed our happy privacy.
We maintained an unspoken agreement to reveal ourselves only in darkness, like Psyche and Cupid, in case a servant should pass by.
We continued to address one another by our formal titles—Lord Somerton, Doctor Perry—a poignant practice that delighted us, given that we were often naked as we spoke. But we could not afford pet names; we could not afford to forget ourselves.
There wer
e rumors nonetheless. Occasionally a soldier would comment on my womanly figure as I rode (and would find himself summarily reassigned to a regiment at the remote eastern border), but I was unconcerned. I ignored them.
There are always rumors. I felt above them now. As if Lord Somerton’s family crest shielded me as well: Mutare vel timere sperno. I scorn to change or fear. Their armorial motto.
For the first time in years, I let myself feel safe. That was my mistake.
We got away to Roundhouse and Newlands as often as we could, a retreat from town that I prescribed and justified as necessary for his health. It was. He was markedly improved there, hunting, fucking, even bathing in the sea, which I persuaded him to do eventually.
When I’d first proposed the bathing machine, he’d been appalled. Actually shocked. No one bathed in the sea who could afford a bath, he insisted. I extolled the healthful benefits of swimming and of salt water. But he refused, adamant. I suspected he was too vain to don a bathing costume. I told him a bathing machine would allow him to swim nude, if he’d prefer, unseen. Lord Charles was resistant to the idea, said it was unseemly for a governor to be seen frolicking naked as a babe, romping in the bay.
Only the prospect of including a team of his horses in the scheme—they would be necessary to haul the bathing machine into the surf and then out again—won him over. Like everything else, it became an occasion for our intimate meetings, while the horses stood hock deep in the surf.
As we entwined ourselves and fucked in the afternoons at Newlands or at night late in his office at Tunhuys, the poem of the body moved through my mind: scapula, clavicle, coracobrachialis, gluteus maximus, etc. I knew better than to say so, but my thoughts wandered. I thought of the names of the body’s parts as ours were joined. Men must be adored, I’d learned, or it is unbearable. The love of men demands admiration and indulgence both. I was ill-suited to it. Still I loved him.
