Waiting for Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page B

second session with Bensimon.
    ‘So – you’re naked in the stalls bar of the Majestic. Are you aroused?’
    ‘I’m enjoying being there, I suppose. I’m not ashamed of being naked in front of these people. Not embarrassed.’
    ‘There’s no laughing or sniggering, no pointing, no mockery.’
    ‘No. They seem to take it perfectly normally. Idle curiosity would be the strongest emotion. They just glance at me and carry on their conversation.’
    ‘Do they “glance” at your penis?’
    ‘Ah. Yes. Yes, they do.’
    There was a silence. Lysander closed his eyes, he could hear the Bensimon pen scratching away. To take his mind momentarily off their discussion he forced himself to recall the pleasures of the last weekend. He had caught the train to Puchberg and stayed the night at the station hotel there. Then he had taken the funicular to the Hochschneeberg and had walked (he had brought his hiking boots with him) all the way to the Alpengipfel peak and back. He had felt his mind clear and his spirits lift as they always did when he was hiking in the mountains or on one of his walking tours. Maybe, he thought, this was the best reason to have come to Austria – new walks, new landscapes. Every weekend he could take a train and walk in the mountains, empty his head, ignore his problems. The walking cure –
    ‘Is this a recurring dream?’ Bensimon asked.
    ‘Yes. With variations. Sometimes there are fewer people.’
    ‘But it’s essentially you – naked – amongst women, fully dressed.’
    ‘Yes. It’s not always in a theatre.’
    ‘Why do you think you dream this?’
    ‘I was rather hoping you might tell me.’
    ‘Let’s continue this conversation next time,’ Bensimon said, bringing the session to an end. Lysander stood and stretched – he felt strangely tired, all that concentration. He slipped his notebook into his pocket.
    ‘Keep writing everything down,’ Bensimon said, showing him the door. ‘We’re making progress.’ They shook hands.
    ‘See you on Wednesday,’ Lysander said.
    ‘Halifax Rief’s son, how incredible.’
     
    Lysander sat in the Café Central drinking a Kapuziner and thinking about his father. As usual he tried to bring him to mind but failed. All he had was an image of a big burly man and a square fleshy face under thick greying hair. He could hear the famous voice, of course, the resonant bass rumble, but what lingered most fixedly in his memory of his father was his smell – the aroma of the brilliantine he used in his hair, his own mix, prepared by his barbers. A sharp initial astringent whiff of lavender underlayed by the richer scent of bay rum. A very perfumed man, my father, Lysander thought. And then he died.
    Lysander looked around the big café with its high ceilings and glass dome. The place was quiet. A few people reading newspapers, a mother and two little girls inspecting the pastry trolley. Sun slanting through the tall windows, setting the ruby and amber lozenges of coloured glass in the panes aglow. Lysander signalled a waiter and ordered a brandy, feeling like sustaining the tranquil mood. When it arrived he tipped it in his Kapuziner and took out Blanche’s letter. The first he’d had from her since arriving in Vienna – he had written to her four times . . . He flattened the sheets. Royal blue ink, her strong jaggy handwriting filling the page, going right up to the edge.
     
Darling Lysander,
You will be cross with me I know but I do miss you, my lovely man, honestly, and I keep meaning to write but you know me and how ‘frantic’ everything is. We had the copyright read-through of ‘Flaming June’ but something was wrong, apparently, and we all had to re-foregather two days later. It’s a lovely part for me and I was thinking there’s a young Guards officer that you’d be ‘perfect’ for. Shall I tell dear old Manley that you might be interested? He’ll do anything I ask him, silly besotted dear. But you’d need to come home soon, my