The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [157]
"I'm just looking up Lebanon," she said, after a minute.
"Oh yes . . ." said Nick.
"It sounds marvellous. Mediterranean climate, well we knew that, and it says homosexuality is a delight."
"Really," said Nick.
"It does. 'L'homosexualite est un delit,' " she read, sounding like General de Gaulle.
"Yes, delit is a crime, unfortunately."
"Oh, is it?"
"Delight is delice, delit is a misdemeanour."
"Well, it's bloody close . . ."
"Well, they often are," said Nick, and felt rather pleased with himself. Catherine was bored with the book. She held Nick's eye, and said, "So what's he into, old Ouradi?"
"He's into me."
"Well, yes," said Catherine, as if she could see round this.
"OK, he likes to get fucked," said Nick briskly, and got up as if that was really all she was going to get out of him.
"I always thought he must be into some pretty weird sort of gay stuff."
"You didn't even know he was gay till ten minutes ago."
"I knew deep down."
Nick smiled reproachfully. Telling the story for the first time he saw its news value, already wearing off on Catherine, the quick fade of a shock, and felt the old requirement not to disappoint her. It was their original game of talking about men, boasting and mocking, and he knew its compulsion, the quickened pulse of rivalry and the risk of trust. There were phrases about Wani that he'd carried and polished for some occasion like this and he imagined saying them now, and the effect on himself as much as on her, mere reluctant admission melting into the relief of confession. There was nothing, exactly, to confess. The secrecy of the past six months was not to be mistaken for the squeeze of guilt. He thought, I won't tell her about the hotel pom. He sat down again, to mark a wary transition to frankness.
"Well, he's quite into threesomes," he said.
"Mm, not my cup of tea," said Catherine.
"OK, we won't ask you."
She gave a tart smile. "So who do you have threesomes with?"
"Oh, just with strangers. He gets me to pick people up for him. Or we get a rent boy in, you know. A Strieker."
"A what?"
"That's what they call them in Munich."
"I see," said Catherine. "Isn't that a bit risky, if he's so into secrecy?"
"Oh, I think the risk's quite the thing," said Nick. "He likes the danger. And he likes to submit. I don't quite understand it myself, but he likes having a witness. He likes everything that's the opposite of what he seems."
"It all sounds rather pathetic, somehow," said Catherine.
Nick went on, not knowing if it was evidence for the defence or the prosecution, "He's quite a screamer, actually."
"A screaming queen, you mean?"
"I mean he makes a lot of noise." It would probably be better not to tell her about that morning in Munich. "It was hilarious one morning in Munich," he said. "He made so much noise in the room, I don't think he noticed, but the chambermaids were all laughing about us in the corridor outside."
Catherine snuffled. "Russell always liked me to shout a lot," she said.
Again Nick allowed the allusion; he smiled thinly through it, and thought and said with a wince, "He's got this rather awful thing for porn, actually." "Oh ?"
"I mean, nothing wrong with porn, but you sometimes feel it's the real deep template for his life."
Catherine raised her eyebrows and gave a deep sigh. "Oh dear . . ." she said.
Nick looked away, at the open window, and the closed door. "It just got a bit out of hand, actually, in Germany. You know, there's endless porn on the hotel TV."
"Oh . . ." said Catherine, to whom porn was a blankly masculine mystery.
"He lay there all evening watching it—straight stuff, of course, which he likes just as much, if not more. One night, I'm afraid, I had to go off to dinner by myself. He just wouldn't turn it off."
Catherine laughed, and so did Nick, though the image was a sad one, was