The Emperor's Children

by Claire Messud

  Julius considered sulking at this, but instead batted his eyes, stroked his lover’s forearm, and cooed, in a Southern accent, “Miss Julia Clarke, baby, at your service,” before allowing his butterfly fingers to rove into David’s khaki lap.

  “Watch it—the trucks have eyes.” David squirmed a little, visibly pleased, while indicating with his head the ogling passenger of the battered fruiterer’s van at a standstill beside them.

  Julius wouldn’t have said that he was working hard on his relationship with David—although Danielle and Marina might have put it that way—but he would have acknowledged that he was being careful. Aware of his tendency to ask too much too quickly—had this not been his downfall more than once?—and aware, too, of his propensity to brood, too visibly to succumb to his interior demons and to freight each conversation, each outing, each sexual interaction, with greater import than could rationally be found in it—aware of all these failings, if failings they were, he was consciously striving, in this instance, to be Natasha rather than Pierre, to remain a sparkling, light-handed companion behind whose mercurial liveliness he had to trust David could discern, when he was ready, the makings of a devoted partner. It was vital not to seem to care too much, and yet to seem ready to care; vital to seem to give rather than to take; and vital to be amusing and amused in the face of adversity.

  Julius hoped that it was working. He had made already countless accommodations, although again, he wouldn’t have termed them thus; nor did he even feel, necessarily, that this is what they were. But with David, for the first time, the lure of domesticity seemed not just a fantasy. David was a man in every way normal—preppy, popular, handsome, successful—and yet—so sexy—with a twist. He seemed to want Julius with a straightforward, almost overwhelming, certainty. He wanted them to travel together, to eat dinner together, to go shopping together. He went out of his way to charm Julius, showering him with little gifts—shirts, CDs, an electric massager, almost all sweetly just off the mark (the shirt collars too wide, the CDs too mainstream, the massager ordered from The Sharper Image catalogue), but charming just for that reason, and David the more attractive for his calm assertion, so adult in his conviction. And he responded just as Julius would have fantasized—had fantasized—to Julius’s own overtures, to his suggestion that David skip work and stay in bed, or his offer to take David to a particularly louche East Village art opening where no Wall Street Journal reader would be caught dead. David was like an imaginary lover made flesh: in every obvious way nice, but keenly naughty, too.

  Suddenly, Julius’s power to seduce brought him not just desire, in return, but a whole life, the promise that he could be embraced, taken care of, fully and properly adored. David was everything he had always known he wanted, with, to boot, an alluring edge of temper. He liked to drink; he liked, in an almost naïve way, the excitement of cocaine, the mechanics of it and the illicit aura. Julius, less naturally inclined to drugs, was interested, rather, in David’s interest. And David thrilled to the notion that he was “keeping” Julius, that Julius was his “geisha”—it was a word used by David, vaguely offensive to Julius, Eurasian after all, in its random Orientalism, but he let it pass without comment—a subjugation enticing to David precisely because he had realized Julius’s worth in a wider world, or another world, at least. The boyfriend apparently idle at home was, in some circles, an esteemed, even renowned figure: it was as if, then, David had purchased for his own private enjoyment a painting that had hung, to some acclaim, in a moderately famous gallery. He had said as much to Julius, or almost, and this without showing the slightest interest in Julius’s supposedly artsy friends; and while the implication was clearly that Julius was some class of trophy wife, he had chosen to take the status, at least most of the time, as a compliment.

  And as a means to an end, to—he would have insisted—his own ends. In some complex web that he, Julius, could not for all his verbal facility quite have articulated, the two were united for their mutual worldly benefit. David had large, plush towels and heavy silverware, as well as a daunting square footage (was it 1,400?); but Julius had in mind more than these crass material comforts. He could not have said, at that early stage of what he envisaged as a lifelong partnership (but was this not precisely the Pierre in him, the stolid, brooding monogamist?) what more it was he could expect from his lover.

  When, in the wake of his geisha maneuver in the Neon, Julius heard David suggesting, blithely, almost as if without thinking, that Julius should probably sublet his studio as he was never there anyway, and frankly move his things into David’s apartment—there was, after all, an entire empty closet in the second bedroom—he could hide his delight only with as strenuous an effort as earlier he had hidden his irritation.

  “Do you really think it’s a good idea?” he asked, eyeing David sidelong: the slightly arched nose, the soulful dark eye.

  “Don’t you?” David turned, suddenly. Julius could tell, or thought he could, that David was nervous, afraid he had betrayed too much. Although perhaps this was merely Julius, projecting.

  “Keep watching the road, sugar. I just want to be sure.”

  “Sure of what?” David sounded mildly petulant. “You live there already anyway.”

  “Sure it’s what you want, that’s all. Sure we’re not rushing.”

  To which David said, eyes all the while on the traffic, “What’s wrong with a little rush?”

  And in this way, several days later, Julius found himself in his studio, packing all that seemed most personal to him: his clothes, a selection of his books—did he need his college edition of Swann’s Way in French? He wavered; decided instead to take the highlights of his postcard collection, long attached to his walls with Blu-Tack and now gingerly removed. He left behind not only Proust but the untouched two-volume Musil filched, years before, from the books department at the Voice; and he left, too, the long-abandoned manuscript of his novel, begun at about the time Marina had signed her famous book contract. He took a couple of photographs from the collage on his fridge, ones of his family; the rest he stacked in a shoebox and stuffed on top of the fridge, at the back. He packed his favorite blanket—a green woolen one he’d brought from Michigan, and had had with him since college—but he did so hesitantly, aware that it was ratty, and originally from Sears, and not an item whose arrival David would applaud.

  When he was done, the apartment looked like what it was: a cheap, near-student rental, with its unevenly whitewashed walls and pocked floors, its grayed futon shrouded in a faded Indian print upon the linoleum. The red curtains he had hung to hide the toilet (no door) and the cupboard (ditto) shone lurid and ghastly in the early afternoon light, an oblique but penetrating illumination that revealed a faint layer of dust along the countertops and a smattering of black spiderweb tendrils dangling from the popcorn ceiling. He had never once let David come to this apartment, and David had shown no inclination to do so.

  Julius had no sublettor, for the time being, though he had put out the word. It had to be a friend, or a friend of a friend, someone prepared to lie to the landlord, to keep the answering machine message unchanged, to receive mail elsewhere. That tenant had yet to be found. In the meantime, in his trammeled jubilation—Don’t let it show! Don’t let it show!—Julius focused on the realization of one of his fantasies: moving in with his boyfriend. He repeated to himself: “I’m moving in with my boyfriend. My boyfriend. My boyfriend. Mine.”

  Which of course was more complicated than it might have been. Julius’s apartment lay deeply embedded in the Lower East Side, so far from fashion, on a narrow stretch named Pitt Street lined upon its other side by housing projects, big brick towers arranged around concrete courtyards, behind chain-link fences, and upon his own by crumbling tenements such as that which housed him, upon which no gleaming profiteer’s eye had yet alighted, and no taxis ever jounced along the potholed pavement. Julius had to line up his boxes and bags—a paltry few, for a near-midlife accumulation—inside his building’s front door, a
nd pay the super’s wife, a large and slow-moving woman in a dirty smock, with shiny olive skin and a disconcerting wandering eye, to watch over them, and then he had to walk several blocks to hail a cab, and direct the driver back to his place, to wait while he loaded his stuff (the driver, a hairy Russian, popped the trunk without moving from his seat and chomped imperiously upon a sandwich while Julius, slight and sweating, hauled out his belongings; the super’s wife, too, sat upon a stool outside the building and, while occasionally admonishing him to “be careful, now,” attended largely to the fanning of her fleshy cheeks with a tattered magazine), and then drive him uptown, across town, to the comparative social Everest that was Chelsea.

  Unpacking, Julius was beset by strange fears: Did his books, or his blanket, smell? Did they carry must and deprivation, or a hint of mildew, in their folds? Were his clothes too threadbare to have brought? More than once David had fussed about his collars, or the shine of his trousers, had proposed a trip to Barneys, which Julius, divided—he wanted to look smart, and David had the cash; but still, but still—had coyly deflected; and yet, in order to play the role of David’s partner—and this was the role apparently on offer: a visit to the senior Cohens in Scarsdale had been proposed—a whole new wardrobe was perhaps necessary.

  As David had told him he must, he claimed the second bedroom’s closet, and found that it held his belongings with considerable space to spare. The few books he’d brought he kept out of the cupboard, along with the pictures. He would wait until David came home, and ask him where he might put these things, if not frankly on display then at least accessible. He didn’t allow himself to reflect on the strangeness of this, of having to ask where he might position his family snapshots or his encyclopedia of film so as not to disrupt the decor; and he knew, instinctively, that asking was, in this case, appropriate. He could anticipate the dozy indulgence with which David, having loosened his tie and shed his jacket, would ruffle Julius’s hair and say, “You are too cute, Jules. Too cute. You didn’t need to ask.” But if he didn’t ask, and merely made a space for Frank and Thu Clarke between David’s sister’s wedding pictures and the posed Cohen family portrait, taken when fourteen-year-old David sported glasses and braces both—if he took the liberty supposedly his, Julius could not imagine David’s reaction. By which one so adept, indeed, often too adept, at imagining, knew he ought to refrain.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Do You, Napoleon?

  So you’re glad you came?”

  “Wouldn’t have missed it.” Ludovic Seeley’s smile revealed the hint of a vulpine incisor. “A chance to take on New York?” He shrugged his narrow shoulders.

  Danielle toyed with her fork and smiled at the window beside them, at her reflection and beyond, at the pedestrians passing on the other side of the glass, a million miles away, at a homeless man, dread-headed, tattered, teetering across the avenue from the park opposite. “If that’s how you see it. You said ‘revolution,’ back in Sydney. Does it still seem that way?”

  “We’ll see, hey? Mustn’t give the game away before it’s started.”

  “That’s rather cryptic of you.”

  “Mystery breeds interest.” Seeley made a temple beneath his chin of his elegant fingers. “As a producer, you know that. I assume.”

  “I’ve certainly been told.” Danielle turned her gaze to the gleaming empty plate before her, in which her shadowed reflection was again visible. She had decided that she would not let him play her, that she would present a forceful and direct front. She didn’t want him ever to suspect that his movements had an almost physical hold over her, as if she were unwillingly his marionette. “But it seems to me it’s sometimes stronger still, and more exciting, to shove everything out in the open from the outset. Blow everyone away, you know?”

  Seeley curled his lip. He didn’t look Australian to her; he looked English, or possibly French.

  “By which I suppose I mean that you might have still more success—”

  “If I told everyone, and in particular you, I’m guessing, exactly what The Monitor will be and how it will differ from the rest.”

  “Well, yes.” She paused. “After all, Ludovic—”

  “Ludo, please.”

  She nodded, vaguely. “After all, the economy isn’t what it was six months ago, and a far cry from what it was a year ago, and the signs, as they say, aren’t good. I mean, I know a lot of people in dot-coms who’ve lost their jobs, and it’s still going on—and I guess my point is simply that in a market like this, you know, people actually do want something to believe in, something to look forward to. I can see that it’s not the easiest time to start a new publication, but if you get the word out, and pitch it right, then you’ve got a whole new population of the disenchanted to draw upon—I mean, if revolution is what you’re selling.”

  “Do you not suppose,” Seeley spoke slowly, “that this might have occurred to me?”

  “Of course, sure, I didn’t mean to suggest—It’s just that the way you talk, or don’t, I suppose—” Danielle, sensing the heat in her cheeks, put a hand up to cool and cover one. She wanted to feel annoyed, but found that she did not, could not.

  “You thought, quite rightly, that I might welcome your opinion. Which I do, please don’t misunderstand me. But I can’t fail to suspect—” Seeley was interrupted by the arrival of their hors d’oeuvres, a diverse pair of glistening, wispy constructions adrift on oceans of white porcelain, hers a supposed chèvre–and–bell pepper mille-feuille (or Napoleon) and his recognizable as a salad only by the three emerging spears of well-oiled endive that stood guard over their huddled, intestinal beetroot and marinated onion core. When the near-invisible waiters had retreated, leaving not so much as a fingerprint on the giant plates, he resumed exactly where he had left off, a suspension at which Danielle, privately of course, marveled. “That your motives for speaking to me, indeed, your motives for inviting me to lunch—a delight, I must say, too long postponed, and one about which I’m thrilled, but nevertheless—these motives, surely, are not purely altruistic?”

  “I suppose—”

  “Forgive me the circumlocutions, please. What I’m saying, all I’m saying, is that we might speak more clearly and understand each other better if you were to tell me what it is you’re hoping I can do for you.”

  “What makes you think I would want you to do something?” Danielle was truly taken aback, unsure of whether to take offense. And yet: to be direct had been her goal. Directness above all.

  “Your repeated return, my dear Danielle, to the word ‘revolution.’ That’s what makes me sure you want something more than the pleasure of my company.”

  “Well, yes.” Part of her wanted to explain, although surely he knew it (was he not all but winking, after all?), that the professional chatter was only the mask to hide her desire, precisely, for the pleasure of his company; but she was not so askew in her grasp of reality as to do so: while in her imagination she had conducted conversations both intellectual and personal with this man, she held no illusions, knew this was their first sustained exchange; and knew, too, the importance of seeing it not through the rosy filter of their already long, imaginary friendship, but by the true light of day. She looked again at the window, strove to see through herself to the outside, where the beggar had taken up a station on the sidewalk and was shaking his scaly outstretched hand at the crowds. “You’re quite right, absolutely. It’s so important to be frank. I’m glad you asked. Let me explain.”

  As they each gingerly dismantled and consumed their fanciful dishes—in her case at least, a fancy that, Danielle thought but did not say, was less original and extraordinary than the restaurant’s reputation and price had led her to expect, and therefore disappointing, as she had chosen the venue to impress—Danielle proceeded to explain that she had been taken with his use of the term, that she had, perhaps wrongly, heard in it a certain echo, the suggestion of an ethos that she thought might be found, to greater or lesser degrees, in certain other publicati
ons or presentations, and that she, in her producer’s role, had thought to articulate into, well, a movement.

  Seeing his eyebrow arch, and the wrinkles form on his high forehead, she continued, “Or not necessarily a movement, if it’s not really one. But to compare your project to the others, and see how much or how little they actually correspond. It’s not as though I’m trying to rig the answers. It really is about asking the questions. And for me, well, the germ for me was your use, that evening in Sydney, of the word ‘revolution.’ And I suppose from there, by looking at what you’ve done so far, I’ve tried to figure out what it is you meant by that word; and I have some ideas. But I’d really like, I suppose what I’d really like, is to hear it from you.” She smiled at him broadly, with her lips shut, in a way she hoped inspired confidence. “But not now—I mean, not that ideally I wouldn’t hear it now, but I find people rarely speak as well as they do the first time, so what I’d really like is to hear it from you on camera.”

  “So you’d like to be surprised?”

  Danielle laughed. She hoped her laugh seemed spontaneous. “If that’s what it comes down to, yes, sure. I’d like to—I’d be interested in making the film as much about you as you were willing to let me. I see you as the linchpin, really.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Not at all. But the one thing is the timing: I do think it could be invaluable to your magazine if the program—if we do it of course—if it coincides with your launch, or certainly by the end of the year. Which is a really short turnaround in terms of our series, but I think I can convince them, if we get some footage, if you’ll talk a bit to the camera, maybe? I mean, what are the stories right now, aside from all the layoffs? The biggest thing is Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!”