"Prince Rupert," I said, rising from my seat at the outdoor patio of the American Bagel and Coffee Company Café. I hadn't seen him approach with his coffee in one hand and a bagel on a plate in the other. I'd been watching a young man enter Vaduz's Kunstmuseum square, look around, and then indirectly move toward where I was sitting. I wasn't at the café by accident.
"It's just Rupert to you, Mark. I can call you Mark, can't I? We're in the club together now and 'Mr. Matkins' seems a bit formal for what we share."
"Yes, yes, it does," I answered. "Please, join me, if you will."
Prince Rupert was something not fully clear to me in the Liechtenstein royal family. I just knew he wasn't in the direct line of succession anymore, although he once was, and that he lived in a giant mansion on Haldenweg, the road winding up the mountain to Vaduz Castle from the financial center of the sixty-two-square mile, filthy rich princedom wedged between Switzerland and Austria. The castle at the top of the mountain was the seat of the Liechtenstein royals.
I understood that Rupert was someone important with the princedom's finances and thus wielded great power here, but that he was isolated a bit from the social mainstream and spoken of in hushed tones. He also funded a hefty scholarship fund that was bringing young men into the forty-year-old University of Liechtenstein from all over the world. The college had just been limping along, nearly unnoticed, before he started his program.
I had lived here in an enclave, owned by the prince, of like-minded men for six months and had only recently come into Prince Rupert's direct purview, although he surely knew about me and what I did or I would not have been accepted at his enclave. I was an artist, with a lucrative clientele in the underground arts, and my special collection of specialized old-themed art had come to the prince's attention.
"I can pause here, if only for a moment," Prince Rupert said, with an indulgent smile. "I have an appointment at the Kunstmuseum." That was the small country's cultural museum. I knew that the prince was on the board there. He seemed to be on the board of most everything in Liechtenstein, which had been one reason I'd gravitated to this remote alpine paradise to live and pursue my work and interests in some semblance of privacy, tolerance, and comradery.
As the prince was settling, my gaze went back to the square, where the young man wandering around on the cobblestones had drawn close. I was happy to see that he was the same young man, claiming to be eighteen years old, who I'd seen in the photo on the Internet site. It was interesting how many of the young men on the site were first- or second-year students at the local university. He looked at me and nodded. I nodded back, and the young man walked past our table toward the other side of the square. He stopped near the opening to the street leading to the church square and stared into a shop window.
"I hope you are settling in well, Mark," Prince Rupert said. "You will make a good addition to our club, I am sure. Lord Hindsley had told me about your art and your collection—before he was taken up in the unpleasantness. Quite interesting and stimulating—your art. I had urged Hindsley to stay here among us rather than return to England. If he had, he could have avoided scrutiny and punishment. Was it he who told you about our little group in Liechtenstein?"
"Yes, it was. I felt I shouldn't try to stay on in London," I answered. "He told me this would be a compatible environment."
"And the house on Hintergass
ist gut, ist bequem
?—sorry, is good? It's comfortable?"
"Yes, thank you," I answered. "Those of us who have been able to rent from you in that compound are quite simpatico. I don't know how you say that in German."
"We say nearly the same—
sympatico
. I'm happy you found such a place after the unpleasantness in London. You'll be an excellent addition here—our chronicler, perhaps—in charcoal and paint. You are a fine figure of a man and you are younger than most of us. Some of our members will want to see you at . . . um . . . work, I think. And I've seen your art. Very impressive. You certainly know how to capture the mood and the emotion. And I'm interested in the collection of older-formatted versions of the art I understand you have."
He paused there to chew on his bagel and then take a drink of his coffee, and I looked out onto the plaza. The young man was making another pass, sauntering down the line of shops on one side of the square. He was looking at me. I smiled and signaled with my hand to go into a waiting pattern by patting the air beside the table, out of the prince's sight, my palm down. I was hoping the prince would say something, and he did, at my prompt.
"I would be pleased to show you the collection anytime you wish, Prince Rupert."
"Perhaps we could set a date—I don't have my social calendar with me," he answered. "We could set one tomorrow evening, if you are available. I am having a gathering at my house on Haldenweg. Do you know where that is?"
"Yes, I know the house," I said. I almost said "palace," because that was what it was, a small palace, at elevation on the mountainside overshadowing the town.
". . . and I would like you to attend. Formal dress. We wear masks, but I provide them . . . and everything else that's needed. Some of what we use isn't what you would want to be found carrying around on the street. A little recreation as a group activity."
"Yes, I would be happy to attend," I answered. "I've heard about the gatherings from some of the others I have talked with in the enclave . . . which reminds me, the house next to mine, the one with the grass tennis court. It seems to be occupied now."
"Ah, yes, that would be Gunter Altmeir. He's a member of the club. He travels most of the time. Tennis tournaments. He often comes here before Wimbledon—with one or the other of the tennis players he coaches. They prepare for Wimbledon here. The grass court. This year he has one of the young men just out of the juniors, Brad Brinkley. Have you seen him practicing on the court—the young man, Brad Brinkley?"
"Yes, I have."
"A beautiful young man, isn't he? Just eighteen. I understand he has to play in the qualifying round at Wimbledon but that he's very good."
"Yes, when he's practicing, I haven't been able to take my eyes off him," I said.
"Because of how well he plays tennis?" The prince gave me an amused look.
"That too," I said, assuring him of my real meaning.
"I suppose you would like to sketch him."
"Of course."
"We might be able to arrange something," the prince said. "He and Gunter will be at the gathering tomorrow evening."
"But do you think he—?"
"Yes, Gunter fucks him. He fucks all of his young male tennis players. He says it is part of their discipline. And he applies discipline with them."
"You mentioned supplying masks at your party," I asked. "I wonder if . . . protection . . ."
"Condoms are supplied for those who think they need them," he said. "But look at the time," he continued. "I'm afraid I must be off for my appointment. No, don't bother to rise. Stay where you are. I'm glad I ran across you. I wanted to invite you to the gathering."
And, with that, the prince was standing from the table. He was an imposing man, tall and broad at the shoulders but slender down through the hips. He was a handsome man, of royal bearing, probably in his fifties and graying, but every inch the prince.
I watched him walk across the plaza, happy that we'd met and I'd been invited to a gathering at last. There was a flash of someone else walking between me and the prince's withdrawing figure, though, and my attention went back to the young man who had been circling around the square. He looked at me. I smiled and motioned him over.
"Are you M?" he asked as he reached the rail between the café area and the cobblestones of the square.
"Yes. Franz?" They were all named Franz in this country—all of the young male prostitutes—and, by custom, I made my assignations only with an initial. It made for privacy and convenience. But if a young man here answered to the name of Franz, you could be sure he was a prostitute who would take your money in exchange for a tumble. I didn't know how any young man got along here whose unwitting parents actually named him Franz. I would assume he found another name to go by quickly when he came of age—or that he gave in to the inevitable fate of a Franz. I'm sure some did on the basis, as the pay was very good.
"Yes," he answered me. "You said you wanted a young man to paint. You'd pay 150 Swiss francs."
"Yes, I did e-mail that. But you know that for 150 francs—"
"Yes,
Ich verstehe
—I understand," he said. "I saw you here with Prince Rupert. I understand. You have a car and we'll go someplace?"
"Yes. You are a beautiful young man, Franz." And he was a beautiful young man—slender and lithe. Under five and a half feet. He'd moved like a dancer as he'd wandered around the square. Curly blond hair in a mop of a halo around his angelic face. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that clung to his divinely proportioned body. He'd be the perfect artists' model for what I sketched and painted. "You did say you were eighteen, didn't you?"
"
Ja, Ich bin achtzehn
