The Bay of Foxes by Sheila Kohler

perhaps. Do you drive?” she asks him.
    “That I
can
do. I love to drive,” he says with a smile.
    “Then you will drive my Jaguar,” she says and adds, laughing, “A white one, a convertible.”
    “I don’t have a proper visa, papers,” he says, looking down at his hands, which he presses together.
    “We’ll get you the papers you need. I know the right people. Sometimes fame is useful. And in the winter you’ll come with me to my chalet in Gstaad, will you?” she asks and reaches out again to touch his hands with both of hers.
    “I will do anything I can to help,” he says and looks at her directly.
    “Just rest now here on me,” she says and lies down on the bed. She parts her legs. He lays his head in the chink, his face against her sex. He lies there meekly. He can hear the sounds of the concierge coming into the courtyard to drag out the dustbins at dawn. She asks him to do it to her with his mouth, and he does, he does what she wishes him to do with his hands, his mouth.

VIII

    S HE LEAVES THE DOOR OPEN NOW SO THAT HE CAN ENTER THE kitchen in the morning early, make his coffee, grill toast, boil eggs, if he wishes. She gives him work to do for her.
    He spends long hours every day at her Louis XVI desk, which faces the gardens. From time to time he lifts his gaze to the light in the leaves of the chestnut trees. It is hard to believe he is here. For so long he stared at concrete walls. He feels he has been in a series of barely concealed coffins: the cement walls in the prison, the back of the truck with the tarpaulin hiding him, and the dark hold of the boat; the crowded bedroom in Clichy-sous-Bois. On the desk is a pretty blue glass flute filled with a bouquet of black Montblanc pens, a small African Venus with a big belly, a roll of stamps, and a black telephone. He moves his hands over these things as he reads.
    She asks him to read books for her that people send her to review, to blurb, or just to read. “Say something kind that sounds generous but not stupid,” she tells him with a smile. He is happy to oblige. He is a fast reader and can turn a phrase to advantage. About a book he does not understand at all, he says, “The author expresses all our bewilderment before the world.”
    “I see you are the perfect diplomat,” M. says, standing over him, putting her hand on his shoulder, smiling down at him.
    “I was brought up by diplomats. They trained me well. I learned the tricks of the trade,” he says, grinning. He tells her how important it was to have access to the Emperor’s ear in order to advance. The Emperor, with his excellent memory as well as his paranoia, played one faction against another. He held all the strands of the state in his hands. One had to learn to appear perfectly sincere in one’s admiration. Dawit’s father had indeed admired the Emperor’s skill at creating a myth around himself, but he had used that admiration to advance his own career. He was a skilled courtier, a bon vivant, and a Francophile who liked women and wine.
    Dawit answers her many fan letters, too. “Just say a few words, thank them for their kind thoughts, and sign my name,” she tells him. He writes the kind of letters he would have liked to receive from her. He tells her fans how much their opinion matters, how much it is appreciated, how much it pleases her that someone far away has understood what she has tried to say. She reads a few of his letters. “Beautiful! You do this much better than I do!” she says. “You are an excellent scribe!” He practices the famous signature over and over, signing her name with a flourish.
    She reads to him in the cool evenings before dinner as he lies on the black leather daybed with the doors open onto the terraces, staring out at the emerging stars. She reads what she has written during the night before, sometimes just a paragraph, sometimes several pages. He listens carefully. He knows how to concentrate. He responds without flattery. Inthe morning