adoration of the earth

Monte Carlo is a terribly charming place but utterly incompatible with work of any kind. No doubt its chambermaids and busboys are kept busy, but Craster has endeavored to all but shut the place out. One can write music as easily in one place as another, but he can’t afford distractions and there’s something uneasy about the heavy antique glamour of the place, as if no one here has ever heard of deprivation or war. It could be any year at all, within these bounds, and the pleasure is uncanny

You can see why men used to shoot themselves here — when they’d made some catastrophic loss at the tables or been jilted by some glittering tart. Nothing seems to have any consequences until the moment you’re reminded. The atmosphere in Monte Carlo lends itself to erratic decision-making, to stratospheric losses and flirtations; no doubt Miss Page is enjoying her new-won laurels and her evening in the company of some lucky gambler or yacht owner, enjoying the attentions of other men of her class. To her all the glittering Mediterranean charms are well-worn already; these things are just girlhood amusements to an all-knowing Mayfair matron of twenty-one. Julian’s been too busy to absorb much of the location’s beauty, subsisting as he does on a diet of Gauloises and black coffee, and this night is an occasion for gentler pleasures.

A man may reside at one hotel and dine at another without slighting the chefs— in fact, Lermontov insists on it, plucking him from his place at the Hotel Méditerranée and carrying him off to the Place du Casino with the promise of supper at the grand hotel there. The gambling tables stay open until the small hours of the morning, and the lights shine as brightly at midnight as at noon. Julian makes a tidy profit over several hours and knows well enough when it’s time to leave off. This he fancies is his reward.

Lermontov watches him closely at the tables, though he himself does not gamble — that, he says, is never a pastime he indulges during the season. He can hardly say he scoffs at games of chance, not in his line of work — calculating risks and promises and percentages with far more involved than even the most profligate gambler stands to lose. Artists are odd sorts and it takes an odd sort of person to manage them.

This is the reward for three weeks of unrelieved effort — Craster passes his hands over the ivory tokens and wonders to himself when it’s time to throw the towel in for the night. At the gaming tables, it’s all champagne, but supper in the hotel restaurant brings a very old brandy that leaves his face flushed and a succession of dishes better suited to a prince’s table than a scribbler’s. They are presented with filet of sole shining with butter, terrines of foie gras, truffled partridges and Scottish salmon — Lermontov eats little but by that time Julian is starving, and he is more than ready to take whatever he’s offered. Still, he behaves himself, like you’d do if you were taking tea with your old headmaster. Mr. Lermontov may be terribly rude but he doesn’t tolerate rudeness in those who haven’t earned the right.

After the dishes have all been carried away, Lermontov lights for himself a cigarette taken from a heavy silver case. No doubt the artifact is some gift from a bygone era, engraved with best wishes from a bygone patron.

“You have completed The Red Shoes for us in admirable time. I’d be interested to see if you can repeat the achievement.”

“It’d be a grand thing if we could keep the pace up. Since Miss Boronskaya has left us, I expect we’ll make better time in rehearsals.”

“Right, yes.” Something unnameable passes over the man’s face, just for an instant as though he’s been caught off balance — the kind of look a fellow gives when he’s been reminded of bad luck, or when he catches sight of a former lover.

Craster adjusts his tone to be more apologetic. “That must have been a shock.”

Though God only knew how — it would be difficult to mistake the woman for a nun, either in looks or demeanor. It’s unthinkable that a figure like Boris Lermontov who has kept his eagle’s eye on the company’s smallest expenditures would be truly ignorant of a love affair between his star performer and an outsider.

“One cannot serve two masters,” Lermontov says staunchly. “Miss Boronskaya knows this and has made her choice.”

Julian laughs. “Lucky for Miss Page. And for Irina’s husband, of course.”

The response is stony. “I have nothing but contempt for any man who would turn a gifted artist into a housewife.”

“Well, of course, it’s only natural that you feel that way — you’re employing them. For you, it’s a loss.“

“Victoria Page knows what she wants. If she wanted mere admirers she would still be dancing at the Mercury Theatre. She would not be dancing for me.”

“No, no, only the loftiest of motives for us.”

Julian gestures at their surroundings, at the shining glass and gilt and silver, but Lermontov’s eyes are fixed only on him. He might be amused, for all Craster can tell, or repressing a Continental sneer.

“What higher motive can exist than art, in your opinion? Tell me, Mr. Craster, I would be most interested to know your thoughts.”

“I really didn’t mean it, sir,” Julian says, “I was only making a joke.” For a moment he doubts himself — his head is swimming, and he finds his voice caught on the edge of a stammer.

“I’d prefer that you didn’t,” Lermontov says bluntly. “To interfere in a woman’s career for such low motives is ungallant.”

Lermontov is distracted by the opportunity to skewer a passing waiter, and Julian is left sweating in his seat, wondering if he shouldn’t order another black coffee. A sort of haze has descended over him this far into the night, the kind of gentle misleading drunkenness that will prove brutal the moment he stands up from his chair or endeavors to walk from one room to another, and he is at the risk of doing something foolish.

Lermontov has bought him off from the beginning — shamelessly, but never gracelessly. He’s paid for him just like one of these men with their mistresses. Ballet is an enterprise that runs on money — ordinary lucre in exchange for beauty, and not so long ago a woman of the ballet was indistinguishable from a tart. Even now from what Craster has glimpsed the dancers carry on their love affairs with the kind of transience of affection he’d once believed only took place between university students. It’s not clear to him even now who’s sleeping with who, but only that everyone seems to be sleeping with someone, and that no one is sleeping with Lermontov.

Vicky, of course, is a promising newcomer and therefore exempt from this cycle. Our Miss Page comes from the finest of families and she certainly has no need of either money or admiration — though money doesn’t hurt, of course.

Julian clears his throat. “I had something for Vicky, actually, but I didn’t know where to find her. I could have sent someone over from the hotel, of course, but I thought it would be better to give it to her myself.”

The girl’s only flesh and blood. The life that is so rapidly unfolding in front of her strikes Julian as rather grim — nerves and exhaustion, brutal discipline, ruined kneecaps and bruised toenails. The Ballet Lermontov is accompanied by a whole phalanx of sharp and harried old women with their hair up in scarves and their handbags stuffed full of knitting and mending — perhaps that’s what happens to old worn-out dancers who perform their part faithfully and never marry.

Craster had meant to mark up a half-dozen pages of their newest project for Miss Page, to highlight some passages she might find interesting — it’s foolish of him, he can see that now, here under Lermontov’s eye. She’s a dancer, not an opera singer, and for her, a piece like The Red Shoes is not a collection of grubby black marks on the page but something that is felt throughout the whole body.

Lermontov taps the ash from his cigarette. The man has marvelous hands; if he’d been a pianist and not an employer of pianists, he’d have been a marvel. “Have it sent to Livingstone. Whatever it is, it can go through proper channels.”

What he means is, through me. Julian realizes this with a queer pang of clarity — the thought of his employer leafing through annotations written for the expectation of Vicky’s eyes alone to read them, little notes like you’d show to a school friend, fills him with something sour.

“Oh, it’s nothing serious — nothing substantial, that is, nothing you’d be ashamed of. It’s only some notes on the new ballet.”

“And when will you share these observations with the rest of us?”

“Oh, it’s nothing that interesting. It’s sort of a joke between her and me. She’s a grand old girl, really.”

“The two of you are paid to work, not to joke.”

“I didn’t know I was under a morals clause.”

“It’s expected that all performers will behave themselves with an understanding of the seriousness of their situation.” His voice is curiously flat now. Lermontov turns away in his chair to smoke.

The silence that follows is like a bruise. Once Julian had been a composer, an artist even, but now he is only a performer— drilling well-heeled young dancers on their entrances and exits. He does not write for the orchestra, though they seem like a pleasant enough bunch, but for the use of dancers.

The great man wants someone he can dazzle with train tickets and ply with suppers. All things considered, he has bought him out for remarkably cheap. That cold-blooded old reptile — like an invalid child, sulking jealously whenever his playthings aren’t to be found exactly where he left them. Preening over talent he doesn’t possess, stalking his way through the beautiful and graceful like a shabby old lion at the London Zoo. What would it take to disturb that false glacial calm, and to raise a patch of color to those cadaverous cheeks?

Julian finds himself raising his voice. “It’s all right, old chap, it’s only ballet. If you aren’t happy with my work I expect you’ll tell me, though whoever else you’ll find won’t do the job half as well for twice as much. We’re practicing thrift. Is that why you put on poor old Palmer’s work, I wonder, or did he have a patron somewhere?”

If he meant to cause offense he might as well have stopped himself at only ballet. Lermontov’s face is quietly incensed.

“That’s enough on that topic, I think.”

“Or did you think the student might be more biddable than the master? I assure you, I’m biddable enough.“ Julian stands up from his chair, letting it scrape noisily against the stone floor.

Lermontov lays a hand against the table. “Sit down, Mr. Craster.

“If this sort of thing is supposed to be my reward for a job well done, next time I’ll skip it if it’s all the same to you.” Julian is speaking too freely now, but it’s as if he can’t stop himself — the words tumble out with an unfamiliar payload of nastiness, and his volume is sufficient to attract the notice of a cluster of glittering females at the next table. Upright, he is suddenly aware of how much he’s had to drink

“You presume there will be a next time.”

Julian suppresses an unattractive snort of laughter. “Let’s see if I can help it.”

He’ll still have a career once he’s worn out his welcome here — he’ll have a body of work to show for himself and he’ll never have to play another lunchtime interlude again. The pieces he has written for the Ballet Lermontov are not so insipid that he’d be ashamed of them, even if he won’t be boasting about his employment there in front of the leading lights of the Royal Academy — more dignity in it than writing for films, anyway. Christ, what has he gotten himself into?

Lermontov pierces him with a glacial look. “Mr. Craster, you are drunk. In the morning you will have recovered your manners.”

“I think I’d better go.”

“On that much, we agree.”

*

His employer all but throws him into the car that brought him there, a black Rolls-Royce that is at once beautiful and coffinlike. Monte Carlo by night — one of these days the place will crumble into the sea and all of Europe’s wealthiest will have to take up philanthropy. The two of them are too close, in this back seat designed for confidential conversations and luxurious solitude, and now the energy between them is unmistakably rotten. Julian grips the padded leather armrest like a sulkish child.

The drive itself is uneasy, with too many crooked turns and subtle inclines — they have passed from cobbled streets to more rough and ready terrain. As time rolls by, the absurd dread of it seizes Julian, gripping him like a fever. The car isn’t headed back to the hotel after all, but to the villa — the hotel at which Julian is staying is fine enough that he certainly hasn’t complained, but the stone edifice of Lermontov’s villa crouches high in the hills like a monster. Lermontov is to make a grand gesture of dismissing him, then, and tear up his contract.

Lermontov calls out to his man Dmitri, and the car stops. Craster thinks, now we’re in for it. It’s as if he’s thought better of something, stopping them here on a mountain road with only screened moonlight for illumination. Monte Carlo by night — he intends to take him in hand, Julian thinks, like a delinquent schoolboy. He had a music master just like this once, an exacting little Pole with an ear that could hear a muttered curse or a sour note from the far side of a football pitch. He has known his share of tyrants in his time, and getting older it was too easy now to see where they were right and when they weren’t.

Julian presses his lips together. “Why have we stopped?”

“We haven’t stopped. We’re only turning. If you look out your window, Mr. Craster, you may see a most interesting view of Monte Carlo.”

All the cities of the world, Julian thinks, with the mental equivalent of a delirious schoolboy snigger. Satan takes Christ up to the highest mountaintop and bids the Son of God to cast His body down. Below them is only a silvery collection of light and shadow, a tableau from an Impressionist’s backdrop.

If Julian severs his employment with the Ballet Lermontov, or has it severed for him, this may be the last time he sees this sort of view. If for no other reason than that he’d be mortified to come back — to turn up again in twenty years and tell some docile wife of his that this was where he lost his first paying job out of school because of too much champagne and faro.

“Can’t say I care much for the place,” Julian begins to say. Lermontov fetches him a hard slap across the face.

The sound of impact is unreal — no one has struck Craster like that in his entire life, with the stiff immediacy of a snapped wire, and the impact of it has jolted his teeth and knocked him into confusion. The insult of it follows fast on the heels of the initial smarting pain, but he’s left blinking in surprise, too muzzy-headed from drink to feel anything but a child’s offended dignity. He has done something very wrong, and he’s going to pay the price for it.

After that, Lermontov barks an order to his driver, and they lurch forward — they are in motion again, as if it never happened. Craster presses his hand to his cheek where the ring on Lermontov’s finger has snagged his lip and finds the split place there with his tongue.

Who is this man? What sort of person is he? What has Craster done to himself?

Lermontov’s face is fixed in a frosty mask, but he rubs at the palm of his hand as if he’s hurt himself too in the bargain. “When you embarrass yourself, you embarrass the company. You’re a young man, and you are inexperienced, but this will not happen again. There will be grave consequences. Do you understand me?”

The lusterless leather seats are too smooth to give much purchase. Julian gropes for the door handle but cannot find it. Christ, he’s really done it now — some night out, where the best possible outcome is stumbling back to the hotel in the dark drunk as David’s sow and finding himself unemployed in the morning.

Julian utters a resounding curse, then another. He’d like to knock the old man on the jaw if it didn’t seem like his hand would wither away on the spot for it — he’d like to ruin him and scratch that sulky pride to let whatever’s underneath shine through, whatever sort of man there really is beneath the phony pomp. He’s never known anything so hateful as this.

Lermontov seizes Julian’s arm and wrenches it back against the seat, just for a moment. His grip against the skin of Craster’s naked wrist, beneath the cuff of his shirt, is queerly thrilling; more than the blow itself, that flash of unguarded contact raises a flush of blood to his cheeks.

Lermontov looks him squarely in the face. “From now on you will behave yourself. Do you understand me, Mr. Craster?”

The man’s voice is like old velvet, low and close. By moonlight, there is no color in his face, only the hard gray cast of steeliness in his eyes. Julian understands him perfectly now, with the taste of blood or gold in his mouth. It is almost frightening how clearly he understands.

Julian rises up to press against him, and his nose and mouth are crushed with the scent of carnation and glove leather. He presses his hips into him, and his employer’s hand gropes between his legs with unselfconscious imperial ease. The man must have his pick of the company — my God, he must have whoever he wants if this is how he goes about it. First blows, now promises and threats. Craster’s body is answering.

Lermontov tugs open the collar of his shirt and sucks a bite from the side of Julian’s throat. The backs of his fingers graze the underside of his jaw, and the warmth of his skin is like a phantom. His hand finds the shape of Julian’s erection through his clothes, and he gives an amused huff of breath.

Julian grinds against him out of ardent spite. “You wouldn’t try that with old Professor Palmer, I bet.”

Lermontov actually laughs at that, not a polite little cough but a black chuckle that sends thrilling little jolts of electricity rattling up and down Julian’s spine. “We’re better off without Palmer, I think.”

“Right, you brute,” Julian says. “I’m afraid I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, so I hope you intend to show me.”

He is spared from embarrassing himself by a punishing kiss.

When they come apart, Julian’s breath has grown ragged and his throat has grown tight with stifled anticipation. The blood is rushing in his ears but his aching cheek still sounds out like a bell. Lermontov has lost a little of his immaculate gloss; he too looks surprised at himself, though sleek with pleasure as if their exertions have restored the blood to his face.

Julian is half-delirious, and his hair sticks to his forehead with sweat — Lermontov hauls him over and strips the jacket from his back, with the deliberate efficiency of a valet or an old whore. He has a terrible strength in his hands — pressing him against the fragrant leather upholstery with an inexorable sureness to draw the necktie from around his neck.

Julian laughs despairingly. What can he do but yield?

His employer is a tall man, trimly solid; the shape of him blots out the light, and there is only the iron purpose of his limbs, the pressure of his hard and sure leg thrust between Julian’s thighs. He strips through the buttons of Julian’s waistcoat, laying the shape of him bare — Julian manages a sort of muddled apology, for sweating in the summer heat or for getting handprints on the window glass, but all of a sudden he is terribly weak and he wants nothing more than to begin an inward retreat, to settle down in the theater of his mind and watch himself be ruined.

His body is burning, and his mouth aches; his pulse is hurrying at double-time. Julian’s limbs are all unstrung by drink, so that he can scarcely mount a resistance even when it occurs to him to do so. He finds the shape of Lermontov’s body with his hands, but touching the man’s clothes feels like blasphemy.

No one could lay a hand on this man without his express permission, and perhaps not even then. Lermontov is a figure only witnessed from afar, like God. He tumbles him down against the seats, gripping his thigh to press him where he wants him — here they are defiling some sacrosanct space, spoiling some holy place of art and business, and it is as unthinkable as putting his feet up on Lermontov’s desk. This is a terrible place. This place is worse than the grave.

Julian grabs at Lermontov’s pristine jacket, tugging with urgent and unsteady greed. “Oh, hurry up and fuck me, whatever you do—“

Lermontov puts a hand over Julian’s mouth and reaches between their bodies to liberate his erection. Julian squirms back against the leather seats to admit him — he is suddenly absurdly afraid to ruin his dinner clothes. Lermontov fixes him with those terrible eyes and holds him there with a look, like an insect skewered on a steel pin.

“I want you here with me. I want you to write beautiful music. And I want no distractions.” His pale eyes are opaque as stone. Lermontov leans down over his lap and spits.

Whatever happens between men has never been any of Craster’s business — all that exists in the realm of the impolite, and so what transpires between them is a thing without proper words for it. Lermontov draws him off in his slickened hand, crushing Julian close against him so that Craster can do nothing but feel — the two of them prick to prick like ruthless schoolboys, the perfume of another body and the uncertain rasp of his own heavy breathing in the close space of the backseat. Surprise has heightened everything, and the drink has left a pounding in his head that threatens to obscure everything else.

Lermontov’s hand is gripping the back of his neck, demanding attention and obedience — Julian shuts his eyes and lets his legs sprawl gracelessly. The steady pain holds through it all like a sustained note — it thrills and repulses him. His own hand follows at Lermontov’s pace — he is nearing his crisis, and he can feel his own slickness running and the friction of another prick against his own, length to length. Julian is frightened at himself but just the same he can’t stop himself from spilling — he means to answer him, to say something brave and meaningful, but instead, a filthy whimper tears itself from his throat.

Lermontov continues, steady and coaxing. “The Red Shoes, and the next one, and the next—“ The murmur of that voice continues even when Julian closes his eyes, like a spell that is being cast, finding a gentle insistent rhythm. “These things are only the beginning. You will be a great composer, and I will be your patron. You’ll do only what I tell you, and I’ll give you more than you ever knew to ask.” Lermontov is nearly growling, with his face pressed to Julian’s shoulder — his hand moving in Julian’s lap. Craster can feel his warm breath against his skin and feel the creasing of his shirtfront against the crush of his own body; he can smell his hair tonic, spiced and herbaceous.

As powerful as God, as wicked as the devil — there’s something between them now that can’t be retrieved. He’s done something terribly wrong, and he’s lost something as well. There is nothing else. Julian is bereft, he is shipwrecked and alone here, he is ruined.

When he comes back to himself, Lermontov sits opposite him, cleaning his hands with a handkerchief.

Craster collapses back against the seats, feverish and spent. He feels in the dim light for the closures of his shirt collar; the starched tips are creased and bent, and the front of his shirt must be irretrievably rumpled, creased by the pressure of another body. “Now that you’ve taken my virtue, what do you propose to do with me?” His voice is broken and lowered — the man’s driver must be the very soul of discretion, but there are things no one ought to hear.

He’s taken much more than that. Lermontov is smoking now in shirtsleeves with his jacket over his knee; his hair is tossed and askew as if he’s abandoned the effort to rake it back from his forehead.

“There’s been a mistake in the arrangements here in Monte Carlo. You’ve been put up at the Hotel Méditerranée with members of the orchestra, but you have no piano. This error will be corrected soon enough. Pack up your things. I’ll have a car sent for you at noon.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Julian says, knowing he won’t be heeded. All he dreams of right now is his own bed, of a dark unimpeachably clean room with cold water to drink and dark curtains to hide behind. His room at the Méditerranée has a single window and that is enough.