V. FROM JOHN TO THE CONGO
In my intimate relationships no two men stood as far apart as John Maxwell and Giorgios. The distance could not only be measured in space and time.
John belonged to the burgeoning period of my young adulthood. He made me conscious of what I was, gracing with a touch of poetry whatever we undertook to do. John was somebody very pure and altruistic. His vocation as a future missionary would at times be sullied by petty rumors concerning his private life. These, hurtful as they proved to be, came from peers whose hearts reeked with malice. His superiors, fortunately, were perceptive enough to recognize his true qualities.
John had a somewhat personal view on religion and sin. He didn’t believe God disapproved of acts of the flesh, however unnatural they may appear, so long as the act stemmed from a quest for love.
And we loved each other deeply. He committed himself to me with all the passion of his faith, trying to restore the image of the unwanted son my father had all too frequently besmirched during my tenderer years. John opened my horizons and asked nothing in return.
Embarrassed by his generosity, I would ask him, “How can I pay you back? Life is not a one-way street.”
To which he would respond, “By finding happiness. I need you more than you think, Harry. Call it destiny, call it luck; I’ve discovered in you that part of me that I believed had gone stale. No money can replace that.”
With the fortune he inherited from both sides of his family, John could have led a far more colorful life. He had the good looks of a brash young playboy who might elect the great capitals of the world as his home.
I remember a picture of him, a child wearing knickerbockers and standing in front of a Duesenberg. In the background a single-engine aircraft awaited departure. His initials were J.H.M. — John Hendrick Maxwell III.
By the time we met, he had given up all those “futile and ostentatious privileges.” Some of his fellow seminarists remarked that he could well afford to look down on worldly goods. They didn’t know of the tragedies his attitude had triggered at home. It inescapably revolved around Money.
John, who had reached legal age, bequeathed much of his inheritance to charities. He was accused of squandering his family’s hard-earned money. He came to the point of wanting to do away with himself. It was under those circumstances that I made his acquaintance.
It is strange how people react toward a big name or what they see in a person they can only value in millions of dollars.
From his family’s point of view, John had suffered a nervous breakdown, typical of the wealthy. Even his melancholy was weighed in hard currency. But John refused to stay in the posh sanitariums his parents sent him to. As a consequence, he now had his own people against him.
***
It happened so unwittingly one evening. We were both sitting in my room. John laid his head in the crook of my arm and began to sob, the dam of pent-up emotions cracking. I felt the warm moisture of his tears through my sleeve. The sensation was bewildering. I tried to contain my impulses. His breath was dangerously close to mine. I bent over him, letting my fingers follow their own course. They brushed his cheek, drew a circle round his mouth, and then climbed the bridge of his nose to finally settle on the half-moons of his eyes. There was turmoil inside my chest. My sight became blurred and I was soon engulfed in a whirlpool. I closed my eyes, savoring the sweet confusion of my senses, the numbness of my limbs, relinquishing the last reins of resistance until our lips met. The softness, the acrid taste of tears, the intimacy of our tongues, the other becoming you, a primeval sensation, the miracle of oneness through body chemistry. The subsequent awakening into a reality so new and brittle that you ask yourself whether you have ceased to be the same person. The will to preserve and protect what now appeared as the incarnation of happiness, be it reduced to a fractional instant of time. Every gesture that so far seemed to have been derived from some remote power now assumed a significance at once novel and soothing.
John took my hand in his. Hair disheveled, eyes sparkling as if they had just emerged from a lagoon, he locked his gaze with mine for a moment I would have wished eternal. During that miraculous space of time, the film of my past unrolled in slow motion. The violent images of yesteryear were gradually fading into pale grays and pastel blues.
Father’s despising grins lost their impact. He seemed to be yelling at his own diluted reflection. He looked dazzled, searching for something or someone. But I was nowhere to be found. I then caught him appealing to Clara. She nodded her head, lifting the palms of her hands in a sign of impotence. He pointed at mother’s photograph with anger.
He was telling Clara for the umpteenth time who was to blame for his wife’s death. But Clara stared back at him, abstractedly, pretending she didn’t understand his allusions. Dear Clara, she wouldn’t sell me out. Wherever mother was, she too would have countered her husband’s harshness.
How oddly impressions work on John’s face — it lasted a fluttering of eyelids — I perceived the ghost of a smile superimposed upon my sister’s reassuring smile. Clara somehow was aware of this new bond and gave us her blessings.
It was my turn to cry. For joy. This wasn’t merely the catalysis operating between two heretofore unhappy human beings. My whole destiny would be molded by our encounter.
John must have felt something similar, in intensity at least. His gaze grew more peaceful, his eyes smiled serenely. We were both exhausted, emptied of the venom he and I had had to swallow for the more somber part of our youth. We had, in other words, exorcised each other.
“Thank you,” murmured John, proffering his wrist. I brought it to my lips, holding it there for an instant, then letting it rest on my knee. His fingers stretched and during that short moment a quiver of delight ran to the center of my plexus. The pleasure became almost unbearable and to check it I gritted my teeth.
I was the pianist but he had the hands of a musician, oblong, pale, with a sprinkling of golden down between the knuckles. The odor of his perspiration mingled with the Ice Blue perfume he wore and made him all the more desirable. Yet I didn’t want to break the spell. It was too new and, as before anything that is delicate and beautiful, you are a bit awed, not quite trusting your impulses.
No one, no entity had taken on so much importance in my life until John. And it was now in this room that this was being revealed to me. Fighting my instincts — a trial of endurance — was worth the sacrifice. Our future was at stake and it didn’t seem to matter how undefined it still loomed.
We kissed again and in our long embrace sleep came over us.
***
Things evolved rather swiftly. There remained no doubt but that John and I would pursue a common goal.
Though she knew of my relationship with John, Clara took a genuine liking to him. But when I mentioned our plans and told her I was going to settle in the Belgian Congo, she panicked and questioned the wisdom of such a drastic move.
“You won’t have me near you if anything should happen,” she argued.
These were sad moments between us and I hadn’t the courage to tell her that the presence of John by my side would more than compensate for our separation.
Eventually, having discussed our prospects with John, she became resigned to my departure. She was so tactful, she kept everything secret from father till the very end. Knowing I would have to go ahead of John and make the journey alone, she handed me the precious leather-bound agenda book mother had put away for her. In it she had written her blessings followed by a list of recommendations. Clara even included a list of tropical diseases she had copied from a medical book, with their appropriate treatments.
We corresponded regularly, and she often spoke about her visits with John, avoiding any reference to father, which she knew might hurt me.
Fate chose her to announce John’s death to me. He was killed in the battle of Normandy.
- Hidden Essentials - August 30, 2023
- A New World - August 23, 2022
- Harry Wilson’s Congo Diary - February 13, 2022
