All characters are over 18.
*****
"I've never looked out on the Tyrrhenian Sea before. All in all the beaches of Viareggio surpass those we have visited in Venice. Perhaps we should just stay here longer."
"I couldn't help but overhear you, sir," a well-dressed young gentleman, complete with white suit, vest, and white bowler hat and shoes called over from under a nearby beach umbrella. "You said Tyrrhenian Sea. That, I am afraid is a common misconception of the tourist to Italy. That's actually the Ligurian Sea out there. But it's just a natural mistake. I would agree that the beaches here are better than those in Venice, though."
Hugo Von Stoben had been talking to a different, younger man sitting with him under a beach umbrella, who stood as Von Stoben's attention went to the nattily dressed—and quite incongruently attired for the beach, he thought—young man who had just corrected him on the body of water they were facing. The younger man stretched and sauntered down to the sea.
He was dressed for the seaside as any well-formed young man of the 1920s would be—in a one-piece, form-fitting, short-legged woolen costume topped by an athletic shirt adhering to the young man's muscular chest and with deep arm slits and neckline. Such bathing suits apparently had been meant for modesty but had neglected to provide anything that hid the obvious line of the young man's left-dressed cock and the curve of his balls. To most young women and a certain kind of man, the young man was breathtaking in his innocent beauty.
Both Von Stoben and the formally attired young man watched him walk down to the surf—the view from behind of the pert, but bulbous buttocks being as interesting as the frontal view—and start stretching his body. Within minutes he walked into the surf up to his knees, executed a beautifully arced surface dive, and started swimming out to sea in strong, sure strokes.
"You have a handsome son, sir. You should be proud of him."
"I am quite proud of Eric, yes."
"He's a strong, elegant swimmer."
The young man had swum out some distance from the beach and was swimming laps parallel to the beach between the wave-breaking rock walls at either end of the beach. He kept his curly mop of platinum blond hair above the water, as he did the pert bulbs of his buttocks, and his arm strokes were regular and pulled him a long distance with each stroke. In the water, he looked much taller than he did on land.
On the beach, Von Stoben and the young man he was talking with weren't the only ones watching Eric swim. On the other side of Von Stoben, a canvas chair under an umbrella was just now being occupied by a German doctor, Gerhard Mueller, from Hamburg, who was large-boned, a bit on the heavy side, and had a florid, redheaded complexion. He was perhaps in his forties. He, and the man sitting on the other side of him, an older French Catholic priest, fully clothed in black clerical garb and a high, white collar, Father Jacques, had met the Von Stobens here on the beach the previous day.
"Not the Von Stobens of Munich?" Mueller had asked when they were introduced, and when they allowed as how they were, indeed, those Von Stobens, Mueller had attached himself to them like glue.
To that point he had been staying close to the fifth man in the little bunch in canvas chairs under five beach umbrellas. The Englishman, Sir Reginald Chamberlain, a man appearing to be in his fifties, was tall and rugged looking, almost cadaverous in appearance, but with piercing black eyes. There had been a hint at the introductions that he was in Tuscany convalescing from some wasting disease, but the discussion had not yet delved deeper into that topic. Nor had it explored the depths of what the French priest, a professor at the Faculté Notre-Dame Catholic seminary, in Paris, was doing on the western coast of Italy in March of 1924 beyond that his order had determined he needed to take a sabbatical.
All four men sitting with Von Stoben, even Dr. Mueller, as he arrived on the beach, being the only one of the group who said he came to the beaches on Tuscany's Riviera della Versilia every spring, were scrutinizing the young man swimming in the sea. Only Von Stoben was looking at the men he was talking to during their disjointed chatting.
The only one of the group who wasn't watching the swimmer, and the only woman present, was Ingrid, who sat immediately to Hugo Von Stoben's left, but set back behind him under a separate umbrella. Like the young gentleman in the white suit, she was fully dressed in a somber, long-sleeved dress that ran up to a choke collar, pinned with a large cameo broach, and down to the ground, with the points of black leather boots peeking out from under her multiple petticoats. She paid little attention to the men, keeping her nose in a series of Victorian Romance novels. The impression given was that vacationing at a Mediterranean beach hadn't been her idea, and that she didn't wish for Hugo to forget that.
"We've been in Viareggio for three days now, and the architecture hasn't ceased to amaze me," Hugo said to the young man sitting to his right. "I was led to believe it was an ancient town, but I don't think I've ever seen a larger collection of Art Noveau-style buildings."
"Ah, that would be explained by the fire we had seven years ago that leveled much of this area of the city. Only the Grand Hotel Principé di Piemonte survived. Perhaps you've seen the hotel?"
"We are staying there."
"A good choice." The young man raised his eyebrows. Only the very rich stayed there. "I have one of the Art Noveau buildings myself."
"You? You live here? I took you for a fellow tourist," Hugo said. "Your accent. I thought—"
"That I was an American, right?"
"Yes, I confess I did think that."
"I am, as a matter of fact. But a displaced one. I am Martin Biddle, and I have an antique store here on the Piazza Puccini, not far from the Grand Hotel." He briefly looked away from Eric swimming in the sea to shake Hugo's hand and then looked back. "My family thought it safer for their reputation for me to live abroad," he added.
Hugo didn't pursue this point, but he did register it in his mind. He turned his head and took another look at the young man. He was quite handsome. Trim, but with good musculature. And obviously sophisticated and refined—and well to do, as he was expensively dressed, if overdressed for the seaside. And perhaps knowing now that he lived in Viareggio explained why he was fully dressed. It was unusually warm for the beginning of March in Tuscany, but that was all relative. It was warm enough for bathing wear for the likes of Hugo and Dr. Mueller and the English nobleman at this time of year—and even for the sixty-year-old, gaunt French priest, who was, to use a pun, sticking to his habit—but it likely would still be too cold for the beach for a local inhabitant.
Eric came out of the water but remained on the hard sand at the water's edge. He was, indeed, a beautiful young man. Short, but trim with a boyish body that, nonetheless, had good torso definition and strong looking arms and legs, as he would have to have to have been swimming as strongly and expertly as he had been. He was Germanic, light blond, with striking blue eyes, and a dazzling smile when he wasn't looking shy and withdrawn into himself—or aloof to the scrutiny he obviously knew he was being given from the line of umbrellas.
A sigh went up from the cluster of men sitting around the Von Stobens as Eric unbuttoned the straps on the shoulder of his form-fitting one-piece swim suit and let the top of the suit drop to reveal his smooth, both boyish and well-muscled torso. Seemingly entirely blind to the multiple sets of eyes capturing and mentally caressing his form from the line of umbrellas, he started doing stretch exercises again to step down from the vigorous swim in the sea—and then a few mild calisthenics.
"Did I overhear right, that this is your first visit to the Riviera della Versilia?" Biddle asked Hugo—although his eyes were glued to Eric.
"Yes, we are doing the rounds of beach resorts this year. January was the Turkish beaches, the island of Cyprus in February. Italy was reserved for March and April. We will go to Venice, where we have gone before, after our visit here. And later in the spring we'll take in the French Riviera. Eric wants to swim in the sea, and I love to spoil Eric."
"I can well see why," Biddle murmured. In fact he could only wonder at the effort Von Stoben must have to make to keep men's hands off the young man. His own hands were twitching at the prospect, which he hoped to be able to pursue. The young man must know the effect he was having here on the beach. In a louder voice, though, he said, "But how can your young son be out of school for such a long time?"
"He's not as young as he looks," Hugo said, with a small laugh. "He finished his basic schooling last year. He wanted to take this year off to perfect his swimming skills. He enters the Universitat at Heidelberg in the fall—a year older than most entering students—but the difference certainly won't be seen in his visage; he still look years younger than the others. He wants to swim competitively for the Universitat, but he believes, because of his size, that he will have to convince the coaches with his skill. They invariably will say he is too small just from looking at him."
"Ah, I see," Biddle said, giving a little smile and slitting his eyes as he peered at the young man. His interest was diminished in one respect, but the lessening of the risk involved compensated—almost. And the young man did look quite young. "He does swim like a fish, and so elegantly."
Eric returned to the chairs, with the eyes of at least four men following him, but only long enough to gather a towel, which he took out to the sand between the watchers and the sea, and then reclined, his torso raised a bit by the set of his elbows in the sand—his beautiful small body pointed at the line of umbrellas—and flopped his curly haired blond head back so that his face and torso and legs were exposed to the best advantage to the rays of the sun.
"Do you and your family plan to join with the Carnival of Viareggio festivities tomorrow, Herr Von Stoben?" Biddle asked in a low, gravelly voice.
"The carnival? They have a carnival here?"
"Yes, of course. Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday—we also have a Mardi Gras parade. It's been celebrated for nearly fifty years here every year and rivals the one in Venice in enthusiasm if not in expense. It's a time for our people to let loose and show their true selves. There's a parade and dancing in the streets and partying in the wine shops. Partying in the streets too, for that matter, before the celebration is finished."
"Show their true selves?" Hugo asked. "That's an interesting way to put it."
"Yes, it's a time that they can wear real masks but act as themselves, rather than showing their faces and masking their needs, desires, and deepest sins."
Hugo looked at Biddle with interest, but Biddle was looking at Eric.
