Read Online The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel by David Leavitt - Free Book Online

anyone, and as much when what is at stake is something to be lost as something to be gained. And perhaps this capacity is a good thing, a necessary thing, a talent we must cultivate to survive—until the moment arrives when it kills us. In any case I knew my wife well, and so I knew that her silence during our conversation with the Fischbeins was a silence of attention and dread, and that merely to sit through that conversation without bolting orscreaming she had had to muster all the reserves of good manners that her governess had drilled into her in her youth, and that this effort had cost her.
    And then Edward stretched his arms into the air, and said we should be going, and asked for the bill. In that manner typical of American men, we jousted over it. He won, which is indicative of how much he took me off guard, for in bill battles I am usually no slouch. “I’m taking you to a wonderful little restaurant I’ve discovered,” he said as we headed out across the Rossio. “It’s called Farta Brutos. Really, that’s what it’s called.”
    “Does it mean what it sounds like it means?” I asked.
    “A literal translation would be something like ‘well-satisfied brute,’” he said. “Think Bluto from
Popeye
.”
    “The food isn’t exactly refined,” Iris said. “But oh, is it authentic!”
    “That sounds lovely,” Julia said, in a voice that betrayed her distress. Gambrinus, the restaurant favored by the wealthiest refugees, was more to her taste. When we had gone there a few nights earlier, Cartier was at the next table.
    “I’m glad you feel that way,” Edward said. “Myself, I have no patience for tourist traps.” Then he put his arm around Julia’s shoulders. She flinched. Their pace quickened, until they were about ten feet ahead of Iris and me. Nor could I race to catch up with them without abandoning Iris, who had charge of Daisy and was obliged to stop every few seconds while she sniffed at moist spots on the pavement.
    “Your wife is so pretty,” Iris said. “So … petite. When I was a girl, I would have given anything to be that size. I shot up early, you see. By the time I was fifteen I was already five foot eleven. The girls at my school—souls of kindness, they were—called me Storky. To compensate, I developed a stoop, and now I have a permanent curvature of the spine to thank them for.”
    “But that’s terrible.”
    “Oh, there are worse things than a stoop. Besides, when I’m with Edward I don’t feel it so much. With other men—perhaps it’s that my self-consciousness makes them feel self-conscious. Emasculated. You, for instance.”
    “Me? I don’t feel emasculated.”
    “Then why haven’t you put your arm around me the way Edward has around Julia? Admit it. It’s because you find me daunting. Well, don’t worry. I don’t really want you to put your arm around me.”
    “All right.”
    “This whole business of couples switching partners when they walk—I find it tiresome. Look how he towers over her! I imagine he’s charming her. He has a way with women. Why, do you know what he said to me the first night we spent together? He said, ‘I’d like to paint you in the posture of Parmigianino’s
Madonna with the Long Neck
.’”
    “Really.”
    “I ask you, how could I resist him after that? No one had ever compared me to a painting before. So I married him.”
    The gulf between Iris and me and Edward and Julia had now widened. Across the divide, Edward’s laughter tumbled. Julia was walking stiffly. What was he saying to her?
    We were on our way to the Santa Justa Elevator, which, though it was located within spitting distance of our hotel and was considered one of Lisbon’s great attractions, neither Julia nor I had yet ridden—yet another of the many things we hadn’t done in our week in the city that the Frelengs, in their seventy-two hours, had. The first time I saw the Elevator, I thought it was a medieval tower. It had a crenellated roof. It even