The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia. Страница 24

"It's the impression she gave," I reply.

"Do you think she was sexually attracted to you?" Anna asks me.

I evaluate this clinically. Uncomfortable with the idea, I hold it away from me and study it like an organ I am dissecting. "That never entered my mind," I decide. "So it probably wasn't there or I would have picked up the signals." Anna doesn't answer me. "Possibly," I equivocate.

Anna isn't buying it. "Didn't you tell me she had tried to use Marino to get to know you?" she reminds me. "That she wanted to have lunch with you, socialize, get to know you, and tried to arrange this through him?"

"That's what Marino told me," I reply.

"Because she was sexually attracted to you, possibly? That would have been the ultimate overpowering of you, wouldn't it? If she not only ruined your career, but helped herself to your body in the process and therefore appropriated every aspect of your existence? Isn't that what Chandonne and others of his type do? They must feel attraction, too. It is simply that they act it out differently from the rest of us. And we know what you did to him when he tried to act out his attraction to you. His big mistake, no? He looked at you with lust and you blinded him. At least temporarily." She pauses, her chin resting on her finger, her eyes steady on me.

I am looking directly at her now. I have that feeling again. I would almost describe it as a warning. I just can't put a name toil.

"What might you have done had Diane Bray tried to act out her sexual attraction to you, saying it was there? If she had hit on you?"Anna keeps digging.

"I have ways of deflecting unwanted advances," I reply.

"From women, too?"

"From anyone."

"Then women have made advances."

"Now and then, over the years." It is an obvious question with an obvious answer. I don't live in a cave. "Yes, I've certainly been around women who show interest I can't reciprocate," I say.

"Can't or won't?"

"Either."

"And how does it make you feel when it is a woman who desires you? Any different than if it is a man?"

"Are you trying to find out if I'm homophobic, Anna?"

"Are you?"

I consider this. I reach as deep as I can to see if I am uncomfortable with homosexuality. I have always been quick to assure Lucy that I have no problem with same-sex relationships beyond the hardships they bring. "I'm okay with it," I answer Anna. "Really and truly. It simply isn't my preference. It's not my choice."

"People choose?"

"In a sense." Of this I am certain. "And I say so because I believe people feel many attractions that aren't what they would be most comfortable with, and so they don't act on them. I can understand Lucy. I have seen her with her lovers and in a way envy their closeness, because although they have the difficulty of going against the majority, they also have the advantage of the special friendships women are capable of having with each other. It's harder for men and women to be soul mates, deep friends. I'll admit that much. But I think the significant difference between Lucy and me is I don't expect to be a man's soul mate, and men make her feel overpowered. And true intimacy can't occur without a balance of power between the individuals. So because I don't feel overpowered by men, I choose them physically." Anna says nothing. "That's probably as much as I'll ever figure it out," I add. "Not everything can be explained. Lucy and her attractions and needs can't be completely explained. Nor can mine."

"You really don't think you can be a man's soul mate? Then maybe your expectations are too low? Possible?"

"Very possible." I almost laugh. "If anyone has low expectations, I deserve to after all of the relationships I've fucked up," I add.

"Have you ever felt attracted to a woman?" Anna finally gets to this. I figured she would.

"I have found some women very compelling," I admit. "I remember getting crushes on teachers when I was growing up."

"By crushes, you mean sexual feelings."

"Crushes include sexual feelings. Innocent and naive as they may be. A lot of girls get crushes on their female teachers, especially if you're in a parochial school and are taught exclusively by women."

"Nuns."

I smile. "Yes, imagine getting a crush on a nun."

"I imagine some of those nuns got crushes on each other, too," Anna remarks.

A spreading dark cloud of uncertainty and uneasiness encroaches on me and a warning taps at the back of my awareness. I don't know why Anna is so focused on sex, particularly homosexual sex, and I entertain the possibility that she is a lesbian and this is why she never married, or maybe she is testing me to see how I might react if she finally, after all these years, tells me the truth about herself. It hurts to think she might have, out of fear, withheld such an important detail from me.

"You told me you moved to Richmond for love." It is my turn to probe. "And the person proved a waste of time. Why didn't you go back to Germany? Why did you stay in Richmond, Anna?"

"I went to medical school in Vienna and am from Austria, not Germany," she tells me. "I grew up in a Schloss, a castle, that had been in the family for hundreds of years, near Linz on the Danube River, and during the war the Nazis lived in the house with us. My mother, my father, two older sisters and my younger brother. And from the windows I could see the smoke from the crematorium some ten miles away, at Mauthausen, a very notorious concentration camp, a huge quarry where prisoners were forced to mine the granite, carrying huge blocks of it up hundreds of steps, and if they faltered, they were beaten or pushed into the abyss. Jews, Spanish Republicans, Russians, homosexuals.

"Day in and day out, dark clouds of death stained the horizon, and I would catch my father staring off and sighing when he thought no one was looking. I could feel his deep pain and shame. Because we could do nothing about what was happening, it was easy to slip into denial. Most Austrians were into denial about what was happening in our beautiful little country. This was unforgivable to me but could not be helped. My father had much wealth and influence, but to go against the Nazis was to end up in a camp or to be shot on the spot. I can still hear laughter and the clink of glasses in my house, as if those monsters were our best friends. One of them started coming into my bedroom at night. I was seventeen. This went on for two years. I never said a word because I knew my father Could do nothing, and I suspect he was aware of what was going on. Oh yes, I am sure of it. I worried the same thing was happening to my sisters, and am quite certain it was. After the war, I finished my education and met an American music stu- dent in Vienna. He was a very fine violinist, very dashing and witty, and I came back to the States with him. Mainly, because I could not live in Austria anymore. I could not live with what my family had averted its conscience from, and even now, when I see the countryside of my homeland, the image is stained with that dark, ominous smoke. I see it in my mind always. Always."

Anna's living room is chilled, and fire-scattered embers look like dozens of irregular eyes glowing in the dark. "What happened with the American musician?" I ask her.

"I suppose reality introduced itself." Her voice is touched by sadness. "It was one thing for him to fall in love with a young female Austrian psychiatrist in one of the most beautiful, romantic cities in the world. Quite another to bring her back to Virginia, to the former capital of the Confederacy where people still have Confederate flags all over the place. I began my residency at MCV, and James played with the Richmond symphony for several years. Then he moved to Washington and we parted. I am grateful we never married. At least I did not have that complication, mat or children."