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he realized – this simple peasant boy, who had yet to sit, enraptured, in a theatre – that the man with the slightly twisted mouth filled with insults was an actor , a pretend-person. He was like one of those men who impersonated angels or demons on feast days. He was putting on a show.
    They read the stories and memoirs of Ion Creang ã together and the poems of Mihail Eminescu in those early lessons. Under Alin D ã nescu’s tutelage, R ã zvan Popescu blossomed into literacy. Within six or seven months, the prince’s boy, as he was known now to peasants and servants alike at Corcova, had progressed to the Fables of La Fontaine. There came a day, an important one for the attentive student, when R ã zvan asked the momentarily startled Alin D ã nescu if he had instructed him sufficiently in the ‘eternal art of idiocy’. R ã zvan had phrased the question in his new-found French, to his own delight and his tutor’s surprise.
    ‘You rascal. You rogue. You devil.’
    They became friends at last, and would remain so for years.
    ‘Do you still see him?’
    ‘Only in my mind’s eye. He’s dead. My mind’s eye, when not clouded by drink, is constantly occupied. It sees into hundreds of dark places, my dearest.’
    I lay beside R ã zvan, beneath the icons, listening as he described his unusual schooling, of a kind the railway porter was denied, and marvelling, as I’d continue to marvel, at my absurd good fortune.
    ‘I am a leisurely storyteller, wouldn’t you say, Dinicu?’
    ‘You are.’
    ‘I enjoy keeping you in suspense.’
    ‘You appear to.’
    ‘But not for much longer. All will be revealed by the time you return to our homeland. How far into the future is that? Eight weeks? Seven?’
    ‘Eight, I hope. Eight, I sincerely hope, R ã zv ã nel.’
     
    I bought the remaining volumes of Proust’s novel, a book so complex and subtle that it dulled all my silly inspirational aspirations. I knew nothing, then, or very little, of life beyond the confines of Dinu Grigorescu, and yet Proust appeared to be aware of everything diversely and peculiarly human. My admiration for Marcel Proust coincided with my love for R ã zvan Popescu, the prince’s boy who had shaken the master’s limp hand. I encountered them both in the final days of May 1927, when I was eager and ready to be beguiled. I suppose I have lived in that state of beguilement ever since.
    ‘I have cast a spell on you,’ he said one morning, when I was too besotted to contradict him. ‘I have entrapped you with my magic powers.’
    ‘Yes, you have.’
    ‘You are silly if you believe that.’
    ‘Then I am silliness personified.’
    The days till September were running away from us. There was no time left for arguments, even pretend ones of the kind he was proposing. I made it clear to him with my body that I was in need of love.
    ‘You are a greedy young man, Dinicu.’
    ‘I can’t deny it.’
    Our mutual hunger once assuaged, I lay in his arms and begged him to go on with his story.
    ‘Where was I with it?’
    ‘You are still in Corcova, with your tutor, speaking French.’
    ‘Ah, yes. But not for long. That autumn I was removed – I think that is the appropriate word – to Paris. Alin accompanied me to this address.’
    He paused. He sighed.
    ‘And then Alin returned to Timi º oara and I was honoured with a smart new tutor – an assistant professor at the Sorbonne. And the prince sent me to a tailor who specialized in English – or should I say Scottish? – tweeds. Within a matter of weeks, my dearest Dinicu, I was a young man about town. I was dapper from head to toe. I would dine with the prince in the back rooms of discreet expensive restaurants and sometimes, but not often, in his apartment in the family’s grand house in Île de la Cité.’
    I held my breath before I asked if I could be sure that the prince and he had not made love.
    ‘I have been anticipating a repetition of that question for days. You must understand,