Lasher (18 page)

Yuri was ten before he managed to reclaim those old treasures.

The gypsies had had him stealing in Paris for months, and then in Venice, and in Florence, and only as winter came on had they gone to Rome.

When he beheld the Eternal City, the city he had known with his mother, Yuri seized his opportunity. He knew where to go. In the middle of a Sunday morning, while the gypsy thieves worked the crowds of Vatican Square, he made his bid for freedom, diving right into a taxi with a wallet of newly stolen money, and soon was making his way through the crowded tourist cafés of the Via Veneto, looking for rich company as his mother had always so gracefully done.

It was no mystery to Yuri that there were men who preferred little boys to women. And he had learnt much from example, having watched his mother often through the keyhole or the crack in the door. It was quite obvious to him that to be an initiator can be easier than to be passive; and that if intimacy with strangers occurs in an atmosphere of graciousness, it is not so hard to bear.

Another advantage perhaps was that he was by nature as affectionate as his mother, and now he would call upon that, for he needed it, and it had always worked so well for her.

He was lean from the miserable diet allowed him by his captors, but his teeth were very straight and he had managed to keep them very white. That his voice was beautiful he had no doubt. Practicing his smile before the mirror of a public lavatory, he then struck out to try it upon the companions of his choice.

He proved an excellent judge of character.

Except for a couple of little mistakes, he was soon back in his mother’s element, among the familiar accoutrements of fine hotel rooms, quietly grateful for the delicious hot showers, and the scrumptious room service suppers, rattling off with convincing ease—and a little bitter laughter—whatever story was necessary to satisfy the questions of his bed partners and release from the constraints of conscience their obvious and predictable and entirely manageable desires.

To one he said he was Hindu, to another Portuguese, and even once that he was American. His parents were tourists on vacation, he said, who left him to shop and to wander. Yes, if the nice gentleman wanted to buy him clothes in the lobby shops, he was delighted to accept this. His parents would never notice, don’t even think about it. As for books and magazines, yes, indeed, and chocolate, he loved it. His smiles and expressions of thanks were a mixture of art and truth.

He translated for his customers when they required it. He carried their bundles for them. He took them by taxi to the
Villa Borghese—one of his favorite places—and showed them all the murals and statues, and special things he liked. He did not even count the money they paid him, slipping it into his pocket with a bright smile and a little knowing wink.

But he lived in terror that the gypsies would spot him and reclaim him. He was so afraid of it that it took the breath out of him. He stayed indoors as much as he could. Sometimes he stood shivering with fear in alleyways, smoking a cigarette, and cursing to himself, and wondering if he dared leave Rome. The gypsies had been headed to Naples. Maybe they were gone.

Sometimes he hung about the hotel corridors, eating what he could from the leftovers on the room service trays set outside the doors.

But things became easier and easier. He learnt to ask about sleeping the night through in a clean bed before he made his little deals.

One sweet gray-haired American man bought him a camera simply because he inquired about such things, and a Frenchman gave him a portable radio, saying he was tired of carrying it around. Two young Arabs bought him a heavy sweater in an English import shop.

By the tenth day of his new freedom, his paper wealth was becoming too cumbersome for him. His pockets were bulging. He had even worked up his nerve to go into a fine restaurant at noon and order a meal for himself alone. “Mamma says I’m to eat my spinach,” he said to the waiter in his best Italian. “You have spinach?”—knowing full well that the spinach is one of the nicest things in a Roman restaurant, barely cooked as it is so that it is not bitter. The tender veal piccata was excellent! He left a large tip near his plate as he went out.

But how long could this go on?

On the fifteenth day of his adventure—perhaps—it might have been slightly later—he came upon the man who was to change the course of his life.

It was November now and just getting cold. Yuri was in the Via Condotti, where he had bought himself a new cashmere scarf in one of the fashionable shops not too far from the Spanish Steps. His camera was hanging from his shoulder; his radio was in his shirt pocket under his sweater. He was loaded with cash, smoking a cigarette and munching on popcorn from a small cellophane bag, as he strolled along, enjoying the early evening with the cafés full of lights and noisy Americans, not
thinking too much about the gypsies now, as he had not seen them since his flight.

The narrow street was for pedestrians only, and the pretty young girls were going home from work, walking arm in arm as was their custom in Rome, or guiding their brightly painted Vespa scooters through the crowds to reach the nearby thoroughfares. Yuri was getting hungry. Popcorn wasn’t enough. Maybe he would go into one of these restaurants. He’d ask for a table for him and his mother, wait an appropriate amount of time, and then order, being careful to display his money so that the waiter would think he was rich.

As he tried to make up his mind on this matter, licking the salt from the popcorn off his lips and crushing out his cigarette, he saw a man at a café table, hunched over a half-empty glass and a carafe of wine. A man in his twenties, it was, with shoulder-length shaggy hair, but fine tailored clothes. This indicated a young American, not a penniless hippie, and yes, there was a very expensive Japanese camera on the table beside the man, and a notebook and a valise. Indeed, the man was apparently trying to write in the leather-covered notebook, but each time he would take pen in hand and jot a few words, he would begin to cough painfully, just the way that Yuri’s mother had coughed on that last journey, each shudder sending a flash of pain through his features, so that his eyes squinched shut and then opened as if in disbelief that something so simple could hurt so much.

Yuri watched him. Not only was this person sick, he was cold. He was shivering. He was also drunk. This repelled Yuri slightly because it made him think of his gypsy masters who were always drunk; and Yuri by nature hated to be muddled, and so had his mother, whose only addiction was coffee as far as he could ever recall.

But in spite of this drunkenness, everything else about the man drew Yuri. His helplessness, his obvious youth, his clear despair. The man tried to write a little more; then he looked about as if he knew he must seek some warm place now that the evening had come down full upon him, and then he lifted his glass of dark red wine and drained it slowly and sat back, giving another one of those agonizing coughs which shook his narrow shoulders and left him sagging against the back of the iron chair.

About twenty-five perhaps was this man; his shaggy hair was clean. He wore a wool vest under his blue jacket and over
his white shirt and silk tie. And surely if he had not been so drunk and so sick, this man would have been fair game. Good game.

Only he was sick. And it ripped at Yuri’s heart the way he sat there, so obviously miserable, and seemingly incapable of moving, though he wanted to move. Yuri cast an eye around. He saw no gypsies, nor anyone who might be a gypsy. He saw no police. It would be no problem at all to help this poor man get off the streets and into someplace warm.

He went up to the table. He said in English, “You’re cold. Let me help you to a taxi. You can get a taxi up there by the Piazza di Spagna. You can go to your hotel.”

The man gazed at him as if he could not understand the English. Yuri bent down and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. The man was feverish. The man’s eyes were bloodshot. But what an interesting face he had. The bones of his face were very large, especially the cheekbones, and the high lobes of the forehead. And how very fair was this man. Perhaps Yuri had been wrong, and this was a Swede or a Norwegian who did not understand English.

But then the man said, “Little man,” softly and smiled. “My little man.”

“I
am
a little man,” said Yuri, squaring his shoulders. He gave a smile and a wink with his right eye. But in fact, a thrill of pain passed through him, because this was exactly the phrase his mother had always used to him. And this stranger had said it in the very same way. “Let me help you,” said Yuri. He took the man’s right hand, which lay lifeless and wet on the table. “You’re so cold.”

The man tried to speak again but he began to cough. Yuri stiffened. He feared suddenly that the man would cough blood. The man took out a handkerchief, awkwardly as if he could scarce manage the gesture, and covered his face with it. He shuddered in perfect silence as if swallowing everything—blood, noise, pain. Then in a curiously awkward and lopsided fashion, he tried to get to his feet.

Yuri took command. He slung his arm around the man’s narrow waist and pulled him gently up and off through the crowd of iron tables with the chattering tourists, and then he helped him slowly and patiently along the beautiful clean Via Condotti, past the bright flower stands, and the open shops.

It was now dark.

When they reached the traffic rushing before the Spanish
Steps, the man whispered that there was a hotel just at the top. He did not know if he could make that climb. Yuri debated. A taxi ride round and about would take a long time. But that was best for this man, for the climb might really hurt him. Yuri flagged a taxi, he gave quick directions.

“Yes, the Hassler,” said the man with great relief, sinking down against the seat, his eyes rolling up in his head suddenly as if he were going to die then and there.

But when they reached the familiar lobby, where Yuri had played often as a child, but not enough to be remembered by the aloof and critical-looking employees, it seemed the man had no room there—only a great wad of Italian money, and an impressive packet of international credit cards. In smooth and easy Italian—broken only by a few coughs—the man explained that he wanted a suite, his right arm all the while heavily draped over Yuri’s shoulder, no explanation for Yuri’s presence as he leaned upon Yuri, as if, if it weren’t for Yuri, he would fall.

On the bed, he collapsed and lay silent for a long time. A faint warm stagnant odor rose from him, and his eyes slowly opened and closed.

Yuri ordered soup from room service, bread and butter, wine. He didn’t know what else to do for this man. The man lay there smiling at him, as if he found something in Yuri’s manner endearing. Yuri knew that expression. His mother had often looked at him in that way.

Yuri went into the bathroom to smoke a cigarette, so the smoke would not bother the man.

When the soup came he fed the man spoon by spoon. The room was nice and warm. And he did not mind lifting the wineglass to the man’s lips. It made him feel good to see the man eat. His own hunger in recent months among the gypsies had been a terrible, terrible thing to him, something he’d never known as a little child.

Only when some of the wine trickled down the man’s badly shaven chin did Yuri realize that part of this man’s body was paralyzed. The man tried to move his right arm and hand but couldn’t. Indeed, it had been with his left hand that he’d been trying to write in the café, Yuri realized, and with his left hand that he had taken his money from his pocket downstairs; and that was why he had dropped it. The arm placed around Yuri had been useless, almost impossible to control. Half the man’s face was paralyzed as well.

“What can I do for you?” Yuri asked in Italian. “Shall I call a doctor? You must have a doctor. What about your family? Can you tell me how to call them?”

“Talk to me,” said the man in Italian. “Stay with me. Don’t go away.”

“Talk? But why? What should I say?”

“Tell me stories,” said the man softly in Italian. “Tell me who you are and where you come from. Tell me your name.”

Yuri made up a story. This time he was from India, the son of a maharaja. His mother had run away with him. They had been kidnapped by murderous men in Paris. Yuri had only just escaped. He said all these things rapidly and lightly, with little or no feeling, and he realized the man was smiling at him; the man knew he was making it up; and as the man smiled, and even laughed a little, Yuri began to embellish, making the tale all the more fantastic and slightly silly and as surprising as possible, loving to see the flash of good humor in the man’s eyes.

Yuri’s make-believe mother had had a fabulous jewel in her possession. A giant ruby which the maharaja must have back. But his mother had hid it in a safe-deposit box in Rome, and when the murderers strangled her and threw her body in the Tiber, she shouted with her last gasp of breath to Yuri that he must never tell where it was. He had then hopped into a little Fiat automobile and made a spectacular escape from his captors. And when he got the jewel, he had discovered the most amazing thing. It was no jewel at all but a tiny box, with a spring lock and little hinges, and inside lay a vial of fluid which gave one eternal health and youth.

Yuri stopped suddenly. A great sinking feeling came over him. Indeed he thought he was going to be sick. In a panic, he continued, speaking in the same voice. “Of course it was too late for my mother; she was dead and gone into the Tiber. But the fluid can save the whole world.”

He looked down. The man was smiling at him from the pillow, his hair matted and damp on his forehead and on his neck, his shirt soiled around the collar from this dampness, his tie loose.

“Could it save me?” asked the man.

“Oh, yes!” said Yuri. “Yes, but…”

“Your captors took it,” said the man.

“Yes, they crept up behind me right in the lobby of the bank! They snatched it from my fingers. I ran to the bank
guard. I seized his pistol. I shot two of them dead on the floor. But the other ran with the jewel. And the tragedy, the horror, yes, the horror is that he does not know what is in it. He will probably sell it to some peddler. He does not know! The maharaja never told the evil men why he wanted my mother brought back.”