They left the shower and dried themselves. Robbie went back to the easel and retrieved his shorts. Toni followed him. Adequately dressed, he turned to Toni and held him and kissed him gently. “I love you with all my life,” he said. “What’re you going to do?”

  “Let’s see what he says. I can’t talk to him. I don’t think he really believed anything I said. You’ve got to convince him that I was telling the truth. Don’t break down, whatever he says. I feel as if we were getting married finally. Everything depends on you. You’ve got to convince him that you’re in control of yourself and know what you’re doing.”

  “I do. I’ve given myself to you for always.”

  They kissed lightly again. Tears gathered in Toni’s eyes once more as he watched Robbie go. What were they getting into? He had betrayed himself and Stuart. He had committed the acts that were repugnant to both of them. He had betrayed Robbie, too, by letting him think it meant more than was possible. He went to the bedroom and pulled out his empty suitcase and began taking things out of drawers. He was so nearly in love with Robbie that it frightened him. It couldn’t last. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, realign all his sexual urges. No boy, not even Robbie, could offer him the satisfaction he found with girls. He might fall all the way in love with him for a day or two but then he would begin to resent him for getting such an unnatural hold on him. Why prolong it? He didn’t think Stuart would relent. He began to move more rapidly and with decision.

  Talking about going away together was childish nonsense. What would he do with Robbie in Paris? He couldn’t go around with a beautiful boy at his side. People would begin to laugh at him. It would be disastrous for his career. Aside from the small matter of money. He doubted if Stuart would subsidize Robbie for a life with a male lover.

  Better go. Go quickly. With luck, he might get away before Robbie came back. He had at least given his little brother what he had wanted most; for a moment, their bodies had belonged to each other. Robbie knew that he loved him more than either of them had expected. The boy would have the memory to comfort him until he found somebody else.

  He hurried into the bathroom and gathered up his toilet articles. He pulled out the bag full of city clothes that he’d never unpacked. He could manage the bags on foot; he didn’t want to alert Robbie to his departure by asking for help. He dressed and went out to Robbie’s worktable and picked up a pencil. It had been an extraordinary summer, full of promise and revelation. Later, perhaps, when there’d been time for adjustments, they’d all get together again. His tears spilled over as he scrawled a note on a sheet of drawing paper.…

  Robbie found his father sitting under the roof of the beach house with a bundle of money and a drink on the table beside him. He came to a halt in front of him. Stuart looked up at him, detecting an aura of exaltation about him, incendiary and defiant. He warned himself to cool the boy down before he said anything to provoke him.

  “Hello, youngster,” he said amiably. “It seems we have some things to talk about.”

  “You can’t send him away,” Robbie asserted, keeping his distance.

  “Come sit down and let me try to explain why he has to go.”

  “Before you say anything else, I want you to know that I love him more than anybody else in the world.”

  “I see.” Stuart nodded encouragingly. “That’s a pretty sweeping statement but I respect your feelings. The only trouble is, you haven’t had much time to find out what people are like. You must agree that somebody who’s lived a good deal more than twice as long as you have has had more chance to test his judgment. Would you accept that?”

  “I guess so.” Robbie was thrown off balance by his father’s conciliating manner. Toni had prepared him for an attack. He was carried back to his childhood when he had talked to a figure of final authority about everything. He wished it could be like that again. He approached slowly and sat in a chair near Stuart, facing him. “What do you have against Toni?”

  Stuart congratulated himself for having won the first point. He felt more relaxed. “I don’t deny that your perceptions may be much sharper than mine but there’s still the question of experience to test them. You know how much I’ve tried to like Toni, have liked him. I’ve pretended that he was my son. Unfortunately, there seems to be a serious flaw, a failure to recognize the clear line between right and wrong. Nobody can be allowed to molest minors of either sex. It’s against the law.”

  “Molest? Who’s molested anybody?”

  “I saw you together yesterday. We mustn’t forget that. I don’t see why people can’t talk about sex. It’s a pretty basic fact of life. Everybody knows about it. Of course, there’re certain things one wants to keep private, but in a general way I think it’s a reasonable subject of conversation. Do you feel like telling me what’s been going on with Toni?”

  “If you saw us yesterday, you know just about everything that’s happened so far. I like him to kiss me and he doesn’t mind every now and then. Usually just on the forehead. He’s been with girls all summer. You know that. When we’re in bed he lets me hold him. Things like that. He laughs at me. He says he used to do things like that with his brothers. He says I’ll get it out of my system and forget about it.”

  “Do you think you will?”

  “I don’t know.” He lowered his head and looked at his feet. He longed to tell all of it. Denying the glory of what had just happened risked diminishing it. If he told the truth, was there any hope that his father wouldn’t condemn him? He was being very gentle and reasonable. Studying the articulation of his feet, he wondered if he could explain it all away as part of being an artist. He looked up and added with conviction, “I’ll never forget anything that’s happened with him. I love him.”

  “Nobody wants you to forget a friend. Let’s find out more about this. He’s made a point with me about the things all boys do. I’ve been trying to remember what I was like at your age. I never did any of those things. I don’t remember anybody wanting to do them with me. Maybe I wasn’t attractive enough to inspire a romantic passion in my classmates. You’re a beauty so maybe you’ll have a problem. Have many boys been after you? At school, for instance?”

  “No. Nothing ever happened at school. I’ve never seen anything going on around me.”

  “Good. I thought Toni’s attitude might be a bit special. So as I understand it, you’ve lived up till now without being troubled by abnormal desires.”

  “Almost.” He couldn’t let him think that Toni had introduced him to sex.

  “Almost not abnormal?”

  “Almost till now.”

  “You mean, something’s happened since school that’s made you uncertain about yourself?”

  “Rico. You wanted me to make friends with him. I did. He wanted me to have sex with him. I was horrified. I didn’t know such things were possible. He made me do things that I never dreamed anybody would want to do but he was my friend and I wanted to please him. I found out how ignorant I was. He’d had lots of girls and didn’t think there was anything strange about what we were doing. After a while, it began to seem all right.”

  “But, Robbie, don’t you see the danger you’re facing? You said I know everything that’s happened so far. Maybe it was a slip of the tongue but I think it might be significant. One thing leads to another. You’ve seen the queer men here. Do you want to be like them?”

  “No.”

  “Thank heavens for that. I wouldn’t let you be even if we had to move somewhere else.”

  “They’re not always like that. Do you remember those three brothers who took me out that night in Poros? Two of them were married but they all wanted me. The Greeks don’t think it’s abnormal. They make it seem perfectly natural. There were others everywhere we stopped. It began to make a connection with things I’d dreamed about when I was little.”

  “Such as?”

  “I can’t say exactly. It’s very vague. Mum always made me feel that sex was beneath me, so I thought it was. I never let myself think about it consciously.”

  “I’m sure she couldn’t have meant that. She’d undoubtedly like to think of you as being sort of refined and fastidious about sex but she certainly doesn’t think it’s beneath you.”

  “It’s not. I know that now.”

  “I’m beginning to understand this a little better. Up till a couple of months ago, you’ve had a very solitary life. It worried me. I always hoped you’d bring friends home from school. Now all of a sudden people are paying attention to you, even wanting you physically. It’s enough to make you lose your head. I’m more than ever convinced that my first instinct was right. Toni isn’t good for you at this stage. There’s something ambivalent about him. Believe me, grown men don’t generally kiss boys on the mouth and have erections with them. He may like girls but he’s still capable of taking advantage of latent susceptibilities in you. He’s probably right about one thing—all boys probably are violently attracted to a friend at one time or another. I remember when I was very young I had a crush on an older boy. If he’d been like Toni, it might’ve led to something that could’ve scarred me for life. This is a very delicate and dangerous period in your development. You’ve got to be very conscious of anything that feeds whatever little ambiguities may be in you. Conscious of it and reject it. You should try to get your mind off sex. That may be difficult in a place like this where you can practically smell it in the air but, even here, the sort of girl you’d like probably wouldn’t be ready for a real affair. That’s a problem for most boys unless they’re ready and willing to settle for whores.”

  “Toni says it isn’t sex with us. It’s something different and special between us. We were with a girl last night. He’s wanted to arrange it ever since he’s been here.”

  “Yes, well, it was probably good for you but I don’t like his having to arrange it, as if it were a sort of extension to whatever he wants with you. Still, I can’t compare my experience with yours. I started having sex when I was very young. There was nothing fastidious about it. I fancied chambermaids when I was thirteen. You haven’t had a chance to know many chambermaids. When I was about your age, I fell madly in love with the girl I thought might be Toni’s mother. I wanted to marry her. It was ridiculous but it didn’t seem so at the time. My mother very sensibly put an end to it but she needn’t have bothered. The war came along that summer and it would’ve ended anyway.”

  “If something like that happened to me would you do what your mother did?”

  “I hope I wouldn’t use her high-handed methods. She went behind my back and paid people off. I wouldn’t do anything like that but I’d certainly oppose you in every way I could. It’s axiomatic that youth needs guidance. It takes time to know what you want in life.”

  Robbie scented victory. It was impossible, after the way he had spoken, that his father would do anything so high-handed as forbidding Toni to stay. He had remembered Toni’s warning and hadn’t said too much—just enough so that he could speak more openly if later other problems arose. It was wonderful having a man-to-man talk with his father. The dark cloud of homosexuality was dispelled for the moment. He felt accepted. He wanted to end the conversation so that he could get back to Toni but he was careful not to appear rushed. “Well, I doubt if I’ll want to get married for the next year or two, if ever. It would interfere with my work.”

  “Exactly. You have your work to keep your thoughts occupied, but I still think you need a bit of guidance about homosexuality. You mustn’t let yourself think of it as being normal or natural. It can be dangerous to be overtolerant. Unless you were living in Greece, what they think of it is a dead issue. It’s part of their heritage, but the ancient Greeks were in many ways a primitive people. Even so, when Plato talks about a man’s desire for a boy he makes a very strong case for sublimating it into something purely spiritual, so it wasn’t all that accepted even then. I’m shocked by what you say happened on the trip. If I understand correctly, you let yourself be defiled and degraded. Weren’t you disgusted with yourself?”

  “I was terrified at times. I wondered what was going to become of me. Then you brought Toni and it was all right. With him here, I don’t care if I never have sex again. I’ve promised him I won’t with anybody else.”

  Stuart shifted impatiently in his chair. “With anybody else? With anybody period, any male. That’s what you’ve got to promise yourself. Without him, it’ll be much easier to establish some sort of discipline for yourself.”

  Robbie felt that the outcome was still open. You don’t have to admit anything. He had to resist the luxury of being honest with his father and trying to win his approval. “All right. Toni told me earlier, before you came back, that from now on he expects me to stick to girls. He called it a new era. I told him I’d do anything he wanted me to do. Does that satisfy you?”

  “No, it doesn’t, Robbie. You’ve got to tear this tendency in yourself right out by the roots, before it gets a grip on you. Even if I let Toni move down to a guest room so that you wouldn’t be sharing the same bed, you’d be constantly reminded of what existed between you. No. A new era. It’s the only thing that makes sense for you. Why do you think I care whether or not you’re queer? Because I love you, that’s why. As long as I have some control over you, I’m not going to let you ruin your life. That’s final. Toni’s going today.”

  “You don’t think it’s high-handed to send away the one person in the world I care about?”

  “No, I don’t. I invited him here. I can withdraw the invitation. I’m simply exercising my right to have who I like in my house.”

  Robbie’s shoulders slowly rose. His head sank between them. His face was contorted with an effort at control as a sob was torn from him. “I love him so,” he gasped brokenly.

  “Stop it, Robbie,” Stuart rebuked him harshly. “You’re my son, not my daughter. You’re talking about a man.”

  Toni’s voice was in Robbie’s ears. Convince him that you’re in control of yourself and know what you’re doing. He made another supreme effort and lifted his head and threw it back defiantly and met his father’s eyes. He breathed deeply until he had conquered tears. “Yes, a man,” he said. “What about freedom and being in touch with nature and living a natural life—all the things you’ve always talked about? I’m a human being. There’s nothing unnatural about that. Whatever I am, I guess you and Mother had a lot to do with it. Why can’t I be free to love whoever I like?”

  “I may have talked a lot of nonsense, Robbie, but I’ve never claimed the freedom to defy the laws of basic human decency. Whatever we’ve made of you, you have a will of your own. I expect you to exert it to resist whatever streak of perversion you may have in you.”

  “That’s what you call it. Not everybody agrees with you.” If Toni was being turned out, why go on pretending? He had nothing more to lose. Maybe his father’s decision would be shaken if he could make him understand that it was too late to talk about resisting his most basic needs. “I’m not going to go on lying to you. I am queer,” he said quietly while a great surge of pride leaped up in him at daring to declare himself. His heart was beating rapidly but he was no longer afraid of his father. Words came out in a rush. “I wasn’t disgusted with myself. Only sometimes at first when it was so new to me. I’ve done things I wouldn’t do again but I’ve had beautiful moments with boys who wanted me and loved me and made me feel that I’d never be lonely again. Do you understand? I’ve done everything because I had to, like breathing. When we got back here, I found Edward waiting for me. I made love with Jeff Benjamin. It’s the only time I broke my promise to Toni but that was because I’d given up hope of anything with him. I’ve done everything I could to seduce him and, thanks to you, maybe I’ve succeeded. What he told you was true but it isn’t anymore. You made him realize that he wants me and loves me the way I love him. Decency for me is being faithful to the love that’s in me. I intend to be. You don’t know anything about love. You want everything to be nice and polite and pleasant. You’re afraid of feeling. It’s not even enough for Mother. Why do you think Carl is here? He understands. You don’t know what love is.”

  Stuart felt as if he were sinking under a succession of blows. The extent of his failure stretched out limitlessly before him. Helene. Robbie. The life he had planned for all of them. He rallied the force to speak. He had to save his son. He drained his glass and rose to replenish it and returned to his chair. “All right, Robbie. You’ve had your say. I’d think we’d both better calm down and think things over.”

  “Does Toni stay?” Robbie demanded.

  “There’s no question about that. If he has any decency in him, he’ll be gone by now.”

  “If he goes, I’ll go with him.”

  “You’re really asking me to be high-handed. You’ll do exactly as I tell you. You’re not of age. What about your mother? Do you have no regard for her feelings, either?”

  “She won’t let him go,” Robbie said.

  “Do you mean to say you’d be willing for her to know?”

  “She knows I’m in love with him. I don’t have to tell her.” There had been such a depth of understanding in her treatment of them both recently that he was sure it was true. He could count on her, just as he could count on Carl.

  “Very well. You force me to speak to her. But that won’t change anything as far as Toni is concerned.” Won’t it? Stuart wondered. He no longer knew what he could expect of Helene. He picked up the wad of bills and tossed them to Robbie. “I just wanted to make it clear exactly how matters stand. I could dictate to you but I won’t. I’ll let you choose. If you’re going, you’ll find that useful. It’s about five hundred dollars. Tell Toni it’s my contribution to your honeymoon. I won’t give you more. If you have the guts to go and he has the guts to take you, I might have to revise my opinion about everything you’ve said to me.” It was a gamble he didn’t expect to lose, but better to lose than resort to his mother’s methods.

  Looking at the money in his hand, Robbie couldn’t believe that this was happening. His father had tricked him somehow. All his thoughts had been directed toward keeping Toni here. Even though they’d mentioned it, would Toni really take him to Paris? His passionate declaration of love had been so recent and unexpected that Robbie hadn’t digested it yet. Toni was in love with him at last. That made anything possible. He looked at his father across the yawning chasm created by the revelations he had made about himself. His scalp crawled. He couldn’t go on sitting here with him. He would never be able to face him again.