The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [149]
When the young men went out in the morning, ready to get into the omnibus, covered with a striped awning and drawn by four horses, a figure appeared out of a side-alley and raised his hat to them. It was Joachim Susskind, who said he was surprised and delighted to see them there. He himself was attending a congress, but had already visited a great deal—by no means all, that would take months—of the Exposition. He was afraid they would find the German pavilion ostentatious. But there were things from his native Munich of which he was proud.
Julian thought immediately that Susskind was not there by chance. He was there by arrangement with Charles. Julian’s imaginings were sexual, not political. He considered Susskind’s hay-coloured moustache and did not think it would be pleasant to be kissed by him. He considered Charles’s sharp blond slimness, and decided that Susskind was probably in love with Charles, as teachers tended to be in love with self-assured, eager boys. His smile of greeting had been both self-effacing and hungry, Julian thought, pleased with his own perceptiveness. Because he had been watching Susskind he had not been able to notice whether Charles appeared to be abashed, or confused, or gleeful. When he did look at him, he saw he was blushing, with what was certainly the self-consciousness of having engaged in a subterfuge—but what else was there? Julian was intrigued. But he was more interested in the possibilities this opened for himself.
Julian asked casually, when they reached the exhibition space, what everyone wanted to see. Tom said he should like to go on the travelling pavement, and ride on the Great Wheel. Charles looked at Susskind and said he would like to see the Hall of Dynamos and the motor cars. Julian said he himself wanted to see the Bing Pavilion, with the decoration which his father had said he must not miss. They agreed to meet later in the day in the Viennese tea-shop and eat cakes.
When Charles and Joachim Susskind were out of earshot of Julian and Tom, Susskind said, with some excitement, that there was a young woman he wanted Charles to meet. She was lecturing on anarchy and the sex question. She was here, in Paris, as he was, to attend the Second International Anti-Parliamentary Congress. She was also a delegate to a secret gathering of Malthusians, who wished to discuss birth control, which was outlawed in France. Her name was Emma Goldman. She had come from America, where she was a great Anarchist leader, and she was earning her keep, by showing American tourists round the Exposition. “She will certainly know what we should most like to see and learn about,” said Susskind. “But you must be very discreet, and not repeat what I have told you. I said we would meet her outside the Palace of Woman.”
Julian was planning a campaign to come close to Tom, without being at all sure what he wanted, finally, to achieve. He was himself very strung up, his nerves full of electricity, a state he intensely enjoyed. He had looked at himself in the hotel bedroom mirror, before they set out, trying to see his body through Tom’s unimaginable eyes. He was slim, and looked agreeably wiry inside his cord jacket and egg-blue shirt. On the other hand he was—small, short—there was no good word for it. He had his Italian ancestors’ olive skin, and dark line of moustache. His eyes were deep-set. His hair was slick, that was how it liked to be. How did he look to Tom, who was red-gold and casual, and sculpted where Julian was drawn with pen and ink?
Julian was good at being in love. He had needed to know about sex. He had needed, precisely, to know what an emission felt like in contact with another body, as opposed to his own hand and sheet. But he was clever enough to know that what he really liked about being “in love” was the state of unconsummated tension. Public school made one a connoisseur of beautiful boys, boys in surplices with angel-faces, always deliciously veiled in sweat as they toiled after a football or swung