Read Online The Young Apollo and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss - Free Book Online

old or fat or otherwise repulsive, which makes them different from prostitutes in other climes. For weeks I lived in a feverish blaze of amorous activity, seeing Tonio every night. He was my John the Baptist in the realm of sin, and I gratefully bought him anything he wanted, including a Bugatti roadster, which made all the noise he loved and which infuriated Silly, who said I was ruining the market for others. I was happy, but it was the happiness of one living in a dream.
    What awakened me, like the jarring clang of a strident alarm clock, was the visit to Florence of my favorite sister, Cynthia, only two years my senior, with her husband, Ernest Fowler. Cynthia had always been a spoiled but very special darling; she was pretty, sweet-tempered, affable, and always ready to see the best in everybody, even in a kid brother who refused to settle down in a regular job and showed distressing signs of becoming an expatriate. To say that her husband was clean-cut would be an understatement. Ernie was the epitome of what some people consider the Groton-Harvard type: cheerful, breezy, clad in gorgeous tweeds, manly, handsome, and oh-so-determined to be fair about the many things he inwardly but obviously disdained, including a wayward brother-in-law.
    They both tried to be enthusiastic about my drab paintings of street scenes, dead fish, and bowls of fruit. Of course, I had put away the few sketches I had made of the nude Tonio—the only things I had done that actually showed even a scintilla of talent. Seeing my other things now through their eyes, I ruefully recognized that I would never be an artist of any note. They were not art critics, but still, it was enough.
    I had an even worse time that night at dinner in a restaurant with the Fowlers and Silly, even if it was the best, or certainly the most expensive, café in Florence—trust Ernie for that. He and Cynthia had known Silly for years and liked him, and the three of them chattered away about the feasances and misfeasances of New York friends, but I was little inclined to join in. Silly, of course, knew just how to deal with them and just what sort of gossip they wanted to hear, and he avoided any reference to subjects dear to his and now to my heart, though his occasional double-entendres, accompanied by a sly glance in my direction, made me squirm. When he left us later with the excuse of having to attend the reception of a certain principessa—Silly's double life did not for a minute keep him from cultivating fashionable Florence—the three of us stayed on for a nightcap. Ernie in talking to me now allowed himself a longer rein.
    "Silly's good company, even if he is a fag.
Chacun à son goût
, I suppose, even if it's not yours or mine. And I guess plenty of that sort of thing goes on here." He cast a dubious eye over the other tables in the room. "I daresay half the Yanks in town are given an allowance by their families on condition that they don't live at home. If you go to Silly's more private parties—the ones he doesn't ask principessas to—you'd better keep your back to the wall."
    And despite his wife's reproachful "Oh, Ernie," he indulged in a coarse chuckle.
    Something in me snapped. I mumbled a word about an early art lesson the next morning and took my leave. The moonless cloudy night perfectly fitted my state of mind as I walked slowly home. It seemed to me that I at last realized that the black gulf that yawned between my old life and my present one was going to be too wide for me to bridge. By every standard that I had learned from childhood, my Italian existence was a sordid failure. I had no real home, no real family, no job, not even a decent hobby, and my absorbing concern was what I was doing every night with a young man who could offer me nothing but that. If I would be a horror to my sisters if they knew, what would I have been to my mother? It was unthinkable!
    In the weeks that followed, I sank into deep and deeper