One for the Gods (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (49 page)

Even after his unexpected decision about not leaving word for Peter, he had more or less assumed that he would go back to Athens in a few days but now he was committed to staying. Something was happening to him. He was getting through to the core of himself; he had to stay until the uncomfortable process had run its course. He missed Peter agonizingly, his nerves were raw with worry about his safety, but this was the price he had to pay to find out what had gone so disastrously wrong.

The day of his arrival and the second day spent settling-in passed quickly enough so that he was almost able to believe that he could cope with solitude, even though he couldn’t stop referring everything to Peter in his mind. Would Peter want the bed here or over against that wall where there was a view of the sea? He wouldn’t like not having any place to hang their clothes. Would he want a real stove or would he be glad not to bother with cooking here? Being with him was a condition of living.

On the third day, he realized that, counting the day he had spent in Athens, it would be four days that evening since Peter had been due to leave Crete; with luck,
Cassandra
might be nearing Piraeus. Immediately after breakfast, he went down to the town and learned that a boat was scheduled the next day at noon. The possibility that Peter might be on it filled him with hope and panic. He longed to see him and to know that he was safe, the balm of his presence would relieve him of much of his torment, but it was too soon. What could they say to each other? He feared being forced somehow into making the break final.

The sense of not being whole, of being less than a man, that had grown out of his rejection of Martha and her child, still filled him with shame and self-loathing. He was a faggot, playing at being a man, yet the summer had rid him of every vestige of his reticence about his sexual nature. If he had lived with Peter right from the start as openly as he had for the last month, as openly as Peter had always wanted to, he might not have fooled himself into thinking that parenthood was possible for him. In the unlikely event that somebody organized a campaign to erase the stigma from homosexuality, he would gladly lend a hand. He was what he was; he wasn’t breaking any laws. He felt sure of so few things that it was a comfort to have got this much straight in his mind.

Will What’s-his-name had shown them before where the foreigners swam, so, after finding out about the boat, he took swimming trunks and towel in the opposite direction and found rocks that offered access to the sea and where he hoped he would be undisturbed. He found that lying out languidly, voluptuously under the sun was an added torture: when he rolled over expecting to brush against a familiar body, when he opened his eyes expecting to find Peter’s eyes on him, the shock of solitude was even greater than when he woke up alone in bed.

The surge of the sea around him reminded him of his brief flirtations with death. Even that escape was closed to him; Peter had made him realize that he had somehow forfeited his right to such a simple solution. He had to live if only to demonstrate to Peter that they couldn’t live together.

He lay just long enough to dry off after his swim and then fled the enormous vacant eye of the sky. The crumbling house was a little part of Peter, his choice, perhaps his destination.

The next day, he was waiting at the landing stage when the boat came in. His eyes swept over the disembarking passengers as they were rowed ashore. It took only an instant to see that Peter wasn’t among them. There was a strong element of relief in his stabbing disappointment. It was still too soon. Besides, four days was barely enough time for
Cassandra
’s voyage. They would more likely be getting in this evening. He didn’t know if there was a boat tomorrow, but he resolved not to inquire. Counting hours, meeting boats was an indulgence, distracting him from the confrontation with himself that was the purpose of his being here.

As he came to this decision, he found himself searching for another face as the new arrivals began to climb out of the small boats onto the quai. Dimitri had surely heard his repeated shouts of “Hydra.” The boy’s wild gestures had probably been intended to urge him to stop at Poros on the way back, but they may have indicated that Dimitri might follow him to Hydra. The boy’s ardor suggested he would be capable of it, especially if he had mistaken him for Peter.

He lingered until he was sure he knew no one among the travelers and then dragged himself back up the hill, moving stiffly. His muscles were still knotted with the desire that had swept through him at the thought of seeing the boy.

He stopped abruptly halfway up the stepped road and stood stock-still under the blazing sun. A devastating knowledge crashed through all the barriers of his mind; he was nearly insane with jealousy of Peter. That was his sickness. He had been ridden by jealousy, not love, all these years. It was suddenly, blindingly obvious; he couldn’t understand why he felt the need to formulate it in coherent thought. It was basic, something he must have known about himself all along. Jealousy was the monster that possessed him. It was suffocating him from within. He had pretended, even to himself, never to have been attracted to boys with the hope that Peter would adopt a similar indifference. Jeannot, the plots and plans involving Martha, his giving her to Peter (safe, since she wasn’t a boy) had all been sops to appease the monster, all offered in the name of perfect love. He wanted Dimitri only because the boy had flung himself at Peter.

He stood for a stunned moment and then forced his feet up the remaining steps and sank into one of the rickety straight-backed chairs.

Now what? Somewhere in the wreckage of the monument to self-love he now seemed to inhabit, the mind went on searching relentlessly. Perhaps they could save their deep, loving friendship by attempting to achieve the Socratic ideal. Sexless love. Physical satisfaction in casual encounters, the Jeannots, the Dimitris, the Tonys. It would probably kill him if Peter took happily to such a life, but he would kill them both if he didn’t curb the demon that was in him. He had known that much in Crete. He had learned it could drive him to murder.

How did you conquer jealousy? It was lodged in the ego, perhaps in his goddamn cock. Was it simply that he couldn’t bear anything to challenge its supremacy?

He wasn’t prepared to put himself through intensive psychoanalysis. He had to come to grips with an immediate problem: now that infidelity was an issue between them and could become increasingly so, how could he love Peter, how could he live with him without destroying them? He had found the source of his despair. Could he transform himself, or was there more about himself he had yet to learn?

His waking hours lost whatever shape they had had, given significance only by the hoot of a boat in the harbor, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night. The days when there was none simply dropped out of time. Because he had refused to learn their schedule, he was in a state of constant alert and expectation while he continued to search within himself for a clue to the future. Everywhere he looked in the past he was confronted with self-love.

His altered attitude toward the public acknowledgment of their relationship might help, but it carried with it the danger of greater exposure to all the things he feared. The party at Capri, the evening at Poros had been a defiance of all his instincts.

Renounce the physical in their lives. His mind kept coming back to it. They had so much together that went beyond sex. He thought he could train himself to bear the thought of Peter with others if it were no longer a question of infidelity but an understanding they had reached together. With time, the hunger of his own body must ease.

He had progressed no closer than that to a resolution of the conflicts that seemed to be threatening his sanity when he realized that he had been there a week. Panic immediately paralyzed thought. Had he pushed tolerance too far? Had Peter finally rebelled and left him to his fate? Even worse was the possibility that something had happened to him. He was sure that Peter could handle
Cassandra
and he had confidence in the boat, but there were always dangers at sea. How could he find out if he was safe? Even if they weren’t together, he couldn’t live in a world without Peter in it somewhere. He wanted to rush down and find out when there was a boat for Piraeus. Frantically, he counted the days once more. Something might have delayed the departure from Crete. Peter’s mention of four days had been whistling in the dark. Five or six days was much more realistic. They might have got in last night. If they had had engine trouble, seven or eight days would be good time. There had been no storms or big winds recently.

Slowly, he calmed himself. No matter how he tried Peter’s patience, he knew he wouldn’t go off without him. He might not come look for him if he were angry, but he would wait for him, at least until they were due to go home. Give it a few more days. Something might yet come clear in his mind. He had promised Peter to make it easy for them. If he had just arrived, or was about to, letting him wait a few days was not too much to ask of him.

He was reading by the light of the kerosene lamp the next night after dinner when a boat hooted in the harbor. As usual, he tried to pay no attention. As usual, he couldn’t resist the urge to go out to the perilous terrace overlooking the port just in case he might catch a glimpse of the golden head. As usual, he went back inside and began to go through the movements in his head that anybody looking for him would have to go through: finding an interpreter, asking for a blond American, learning how to get to the house. After enough time had passed so that he could reasonably expect to hear someone coming, he steeled himself as usual against disappointment.

When he heard Peter’s unmistakable hurrying footsteps, he leaped up and his heart felt as if it would burst his chest with joy. They were getting near. For a terrible moment, he thought they might have taken a wrong turning. He couldn’t hear them. Was that the sound of voices? One brief feminine note. Martha? Oh, no, his mind protested. He forgot it as the footsteps came clear again, louder, almost here.

At the knock, he rushed to the door and flung it open. Peter stood in front of him. They looked at each other without moving. Charlie longed to seize him and hold him in his arms, but as soon as the first rapturous shock of his presence passed he knew he mustn’t get them off to a false start. He was aware immediately that Peter was holding back, too.

“I’m in a blazing rage,” Peter said sharply, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t stand not knowing where you are.”

“I’m glad you found me. Don’t you have a bag?”

“I left it below. I wasn’t sure I’d be invited to stay.”

“You’re invited, with qualifications maybe. I still don’t know what they are.”

“I see. Well, my acceptance is apt to be pretty damn qualified, too. Did the goddamn hotel lose your message or didn’t you really leave one?”

“I didn’t leave one. Well, I told them to tell you I was still in Greece.”

Peter swept past him into the house, lighting it up with a blaze of vitality. “What’s it supposed to be, a treasure hunt?” he demanded. “Usually they give you clues.”

Charlie closed the door, realizing that he was thrilled by him in a way he had never been before, thrilled in some unfamiliar feminine part of himself that was quickened by the virility that had been growing more pronounced in Peter and now made him a commanding presence. “I knew you’d guess,” he said, almost apologetically. “I left my bag.”

“What was that supposed to tell me? God, what a trip. I’d have gone out of my mind if you hadn’t been here.”

“I’m sorry. But you must’ve been pretty sure I would be. This is the only place we talked about buying a house. Where else could I have gone?”

“How do I know? I don’t know what to expect any more. Did you buy it?”

“In both our names. There’re some papers you’re supposed to sign.”

Peter looked around him at the big bare room and a glimmer of a smile twisted his lips. “I’m glad you haven’t over furnished it. All right. Tell me. What’s it all about this time?”

“What? Coming here without leaving word? I had to do it that way. I had to make a complete break. I had to find out what it felt like. It was the only way to discover what’s been wrong with me.”

“Wrong with
you?”
Peter sat in one of the chairs at the table and looked up at him, a challenge in his lively eyes. Even when he was angry, there was too much love and interest in his face for his anger to seem hostile. “I thought I was the one who was always wrong. I was once, God knows.”

Charlie sat across the table from him and nodded briefly. “That’s part of it. The essential part, I guess. There are more important things than sex, but it certainly causes most of the trouble. I’ve been wondering if you
were
wrong. I’ve been trying to look at myself and us and everything. I’ve been going around in circles. I don’t know if you should stay, but seeing you has certainly lifted one load off my mind.” He put his hand out to him on the table.

Peter looked at it but didn’t move. “What if I’d just given up and gone home?”

“I knew you wouldn’t.”

“You’re pretty sure of me, aren’t you? I’m proud of that.”

“You have the right to be. I wish I had as much to be proud of. Did all go well with
Cassandra?”

“Sure. It was unmitigated hell. Thanks for asking. We got back day before yesterday. There wasn’t a boat till today. It’s been nice in Athens, wondering about you.”