The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [80]
Rather than expound on this thought, he turned the question around. “So—do you think you’ve changed?”
“Yes, I hope so,” Eduard said after a few moments. “Before, I was miserable, and now I’m—”
“Slightly less miserable?”
“Exactly.” Eduard leaned back in his chair. “Today after my meeting, I was talking to August,” he said, referring to an associate in his office, “and telling him about our dinner, and how three years had passed since you moved here. And he said he was quite aware of the fact, given that I’ve not really yelled at anyone during the same period, or at least not the way I used to.”
“You used to yell?”
“Not every day, but I was a lot more likely to snap.” He smiled at Lucien. “You might say it was the wrong kind of emotion—or at least not the sort of thing you want to put on display.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” Lucien admitted, although he felt pleased by the idea that he had affected Eduard in this way.
“What’s strange to consider now—or perhaps not—is that I really had no idea what I was like, or how miserable I was. I thought it was normal to scream at someone about stupid things beyond anyone’s control—a delay in a delivery or a shortage of materials, inevitable problems that crop up in any project. Or even worse—if you can imagine—were the days when I’d find myself completely incapacitated by pressure, whether real or not—or probably some combination—so that August would have to come over and get Heinrich to drag me out of bed to finish our plans on time or whatever else to make some deadline.” For a second he stared through Lucien, lost in the memory. “It’s like I was possessed by demons, but didn’t know it.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Lucien woke up groggy; they had enjoyed more than a few glasses of absinthe before going to bed, which in combination with so many kisses and caresses never failed to leave him with the sense of having spent hours in a moonlit field of wild-flowers, pressed hard against the wet earth and staring up through the blossoms at the slowly spinning stars. He turned his head toward the clock; it was past nine, and Eduard—with his usual discipline—had already left for work; if a part of Lucien regretted his absence, he was also relieved that Eduard’s demons remained so far at bay.
At the breakfast table, Heinrich offered him a cup of coffee and a croissant with confiture et beurre, along with the morning newspaper. When a few minutes later he opened this last item, Lucien noticed a small headline that made him drop his butter knife on the table, where it landed with a clang. “Wagner Rescued by Ludwig,” he whispered, and then repeated it with more excitement to Heinrich, who was passing through the dining room on his way to water the orchids. Not believing it at first, Lucien three times read a short account of how Ludwig II, the recently ascended King of Bavaria, had in one of his first official acts summoned Richard Wagner to Munich to relieve him of his financial debts and to grant the composer an official position at the Munich Hoftheater, where his new operas would be produced. Tristan und Isolde was to be the first, with a world premiere scheduled to occur in March of the following year, assuming—and this, too, he read aloud, as if to confirm that he was not dreaming—suitable leads could be found.
23
Loveless
NEW YORK CITY, 2001. Martin stood up from a park bench at 110th and Riverside Drive, where he had been resting under the Medusa-like branches of an allée of American elms. The unusual silence of the surrounding neighborhood—the empty playgrounds, the lack of stereos and traffic—made him think of the suburbs, and as he resumed his walk north, he wondered if the attacks would result in large numbers of people moving out of the city. It was an impulse he could understand, given that he had left the more manic environment of the East Village