Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 08:05:50 +0100
From: Mike Arram <marram@wanadoo.co.uk>
Subject: Heart of Oskar Prinz - 4

The following story describes people and places wholly fictional, although
based on some element of reality.  How much is really up to you to decide.
There is a place called Ruthenia, but it is not the Rothenia depicted here.
It won't take long for the alert reader to realise that my Rothenia is
unapologetically borrowed from Anthony Hope's magnificent creation of
Ruritania, although updated for the twenty-first century.
  This is my third attempt at gay erotic fiction.  The earlier ones are
'The Decent Inn' and 'Terry and the Peachers' which can be found in the
Nifty archive under the College section.  Excuse the self-indulgence of the
crossover references, but they did amuse me.
  The story contains graphic depictions of sex between adult males.  If the
reading or possessing of such material as this is illegal in your place of
residence please leave this site immediately and do not proceed further.
If you are under the legal age to read this, please do not do so.
  And for those with an inclination to vomit, I have to warn you that this
is fundamentally a romantic story written by a hopeless romantic ... and,
er there's a lot of history in this one, so you may wish to skim it so as
to resist boredom.



IV


Harry and Will managed a fair amount of sex over the next fortnight, and
for Will at least, it got better and better.  His bum never hurt badly
again, and, as Harry promised, he got him to ejaculate with just anal and
prostate massage.  It was an amazing experience to watch his semi-erect
penis simply pulse cum on to his bed.  Time seemed to stand still when the
orgasm happened.  Harry was smug and pleased at his own anal artistry.  Not
that Will ever got a chance to reciprocate.  Without saying it outright,
Harry made it clear that his arse was out of bounds to Will.  But Will was
philosophical about it, considering how much he enjoyed being fucked by his
lover.  It just struck him as a bit unfair.  But he was charitable.  The
incident off Mykonos may have made Harry cautious about trusting partners.
  The Saturday before school ended, Harry came to his flat loaded with
papers and books.
  'OK lover, this is where we're going.  Oh, but first, you have a
passport?'
  'Naturally.'
  'Up to date?'
  'Yep.'
  'Good.  OK.  This is the plan. We fly Lufthansa from Heathrow to Munich
on Monday, and from there to Prague where we pick up a car.  You'll love
Prague: it's got the lot, culture, nightlife and history.  We spend two
nights there and then drive down into Rothenia, where we pick up the plane
from Strelzen to Frankfurt, and we're back after the weekend.
  I've done the Czech Republic, but everyone's talking about Strelzen
nowadays.  I've heard there's quite a scene going on there, a lot more
upfront than Prague, where the gays keep well under cover.  There's a
district called 'the Wejg' in Strelzen which gay businesses have taken
over.'
  'Wow.  I'm all for it.  What you got there?'
  'A few guide books I picked up.  You might see if there's some places you
want to look at, you being a historian and all.  Do you know much about
Czech and Rothenian history?'
  'The high and low points at least.  The problems after Versailles; the
betrayal by the Allies in 1938 and the Nazi occupations; the occupation by
the Soviets and then the second betrayal by the Allies in 1948. Then the
new democracy – the Velvet Revolution and the May Rising in 1989.  That's
it.'
  'You're good with dates.'
  'You have to be if you're a history teacher, I couldn't remember a single
date when I was a student, but when the GCSE devil drives, you have no
choice or the kids think you're useless.
  'Prague is gorgeous,' Harry reflected, 'I've never been to Strelzen, but
they say it's even prettier, if smaller.  They speak English a lot in both
countries, although I think German is the second language of choice in the
Czech republic.  You get both German and Rothenian in Strelzen.'
  'Oh yeah, Rothenia's an odd sort of hybrid nation isn't it.'  Something
was jogging his memory from his second year course on nineteenth-century
Europe.  'Let's get this right.  Sorry, Harry, this is just for my own
satisfaction and I'm not just showing off.  Tell me if I'm being boring and
remember I'm a teacher.  OK.  Rothenia was one of the electorates of the
old Holy Roman Empire, and a kingdom after the Thirty Years' War.  They
called it Ruritania then.  The cities were all German and the peasantry
were Rothenian Slavs: a potentially explosive combination, as my textbooks
said.'
  'But it didn't explode.'  Harry seemed mildly interested, although he may
have just been being polite.
  'No, that's why it's so interesting, and why so much is written about it.
It held together under the Elphberg monarchy, at least until the end of the
nineteenth century.  Then things suddenly got more tense, though even so,
there was no ethnic civil war.  There was industrialisation and the
Rothenian underclass swarmed into the cities.  There was a revolution
during the Great War – when Rothenia was neutral - and the proclamation and
recognition of the Rothenian republic after Versailles.  But unlike the
Czechs, the Rothenians didn't throw out the Germans, and there was quite a
lot of resistance by both Rothenian Germans and Rothenian Slavs to the Nazi
occupation.  Rothenia's unusual in Central Europe in that the language
groups seem to get on quite well.  The EU has just sponsored a big academic
programme on what they call the Rothenian Achievement.'
  'Impressive, Will.  You do know your stuff.'  But Harry was stifling a
yawn, and Will took the hint.  The trouble with teaching as a career was
that sometimes you could not shut down the mission to explain.  It made
people avoid you in parties.

  When Harry had left, Will began ransacking his bookshelf.  He had
invested more than was usual in books as a student, and blessed his own
extravagance every day as a teacher.  He was especially proud of his
historical reference collection.  He soon had books stacked on his work
table and his laptop booted up on the web.  He had a talent for intense and
organised research that at least one of his lecturers had recognised, and
he had been urged to go for a postgraduate degree.  But, inspired by the
memory of a charismatic teacher he had benefitted from in his private
school days in Plymouth, it was schoolteaching that Will had wanted to do
more than anything.
  Rothenia had always interested him, and now he was going to wrestle the
subject to the ground.  He took up again with deep interest the Rothenian
guide book Harry had brought.  It was full of gorgeous colour pictures of
châteaux, quaint towns, forests, mountains and dignified cities.  But there
was a lot of historical and architectural information, and he was soon
totally absorbed.  This was his passion, and as addictions went, it was
cheaper than some others he had sampled as a student.
  The Rothenians were western Slavs, like the Czechs.  But their language
and society was more Germanised, because they came under the overlordship
of the Franks early in the eighth century.  There was a Rothenian duke
called Tassilo in 845, and his native dynasty ruled all the way till the
fifteenth century, when the German Elphbergs inherited the duchy.  But the
towns had already been colonised by German burghers, and the aristocracy
too was heavily Germanised.  So the university (founded 1477 by Duke Rudolf
II) was exclusively Germanic and the monoglot Rothenians were squeezed into
a disadvantaged rural limbo.  And this was the big problem for the
country's later history.
  The crisis for the Rothenian Slavs came in the latter end of the
nineteenth century with the extinction of the Elphbergs, who had a talent
for holding their peoples together, partly due to a close alliance with the
Catholic church.  Before 1880 there had begun a literary revival of
Rothenian, and schools were opened up where teaching was in the native
Slavic language, not German.  The aristocracy rediscovered its native roots
and Rothenian costume became fashionable.  Unfortunately the new royal
family proved inept and tried to marginalise the national movement.  Then
in 1917 the king made an even stupider mistake by trying to persuade
Parliament to declare war on the Allies in favour of his Prussian cousins
and, when persuasion failed, attempted a coup.  So a Social Democrat
revolution under Marcus Tildemann overthrew the monarchy and a democratic
republic was proclaimed with Tildemann as first President.
  Will put down the books.  What an odd country, he thought.  But then he
reflected that it was a bit like the way Welsh and English coexisted in
modern Wales reasonably amicably.  He looked at the back of the book for
some Rothenian vocabulary.  It was a weird one.  Will was a little bit of a
linguist, and he could detect lots of Germanic and Latin words amongst the
list, as well as what he imagined was Slavic.  There was a long history of
bickering with the Czechs, since Rothenians were prominent in resisting the
Hussite reformation in the fifteenth century as well as the Calvinists in
the seventeenth century.  The pope had raised the duchy to a kingdom in
1644 as a reward for its loyalty to the faith.  The king of Ruritania had
been given the title 'His Most Faithful Majesty' by papal bull in 1663.
  The national flag was a black, red and white tricolour, and the national
flower was the red rose.  The currency was the Rothenian krona (fifty to
the pound sterling, thirty to the dollar) but the euro was now accepted in
all the main shops.  Rothenia joined the EU and NATO in 2000.  So there was
no need for a visa and if he wanted Will could stay for up to six months
before he needed a residential permit.
  Will scanned the pictures of Strelzen.  Pictures tended to lie, but even
if they were only telling half the truth, the city was amazing.  The
hilltop cathedral of St Andrew and St Vitalis was a vast Gothic pile with
three black spires towering over the city.  The people loved it.  There had
been a monolithic workers' palace built by Stalin as a gift to the
Rothenian people deliberately to obscure the cathedral from the city
centre.  The new democracy's first act in 1990 was to order it demolished
to restore the Church's dominant position in the city.  Rothenians were
still devout Catholics, and a cardinal continued to sit on the
archiepiscopal throne of Strelzen, as one had done since the seventeenth
century.
  The royal, now presidential, palace on the Rodolferplaz had been built by
the young King Henry the Lion (1707-1739) on the model of the Tuilleries.
King Henry's giant equestrian statue was set in front of the palace gates
and towered over the northern end of the Rodolferplaz.  It was, said the
book, a favourite place for young people to meet on warm evenings.

It was a warm July evening in Strelzen and Oskar Prinz was leaning up
against the lower plinth of King Henry's statue.  Behind him was the palace
and ahead of him the vast rectangle of the square, hundreds of windows
staring down from ranks of massive buildings.
  Oskar was indeed hoping to meet a young, or rather a youngish, person.  A
group of male conscripts in green uniforms and knee-boots chatting further
along were also hoping to meet someone.  They had their top buttons undone
and their peaked caps set far back on their heads.  They were smoking.  If
you knew Strelzen, you would know that they were advertising themselves as
open for sexual relations.
  Oskar had been there and done that when he too had been a teenage
conscript, but in the past year or two the practice had got more
commercial, as western gay tourists had cottoned on to the old practice and
the guides on the internet were happy to advise them that these young boy
soldiers were for rent.  In fact that had not been the case until recently.
They would have been happy to do it bareback for a few drinks and a smile
in Oskar's day if the pick up was nice.  But the city was getting a harder
place as the tourists poured in and the money increased.
  Oskar watched as a couple of moustachioed American men in shorts and
tight sleeveless vests furtively approached the boy soldiers and began
chatting.  Eventually a pair of boys detached themselves and wandered off
with them, one putting his peaked military cap on an American's head and
blowing kisses to his friends as he went.  Oskar hoped he knew about
condoms.  HIV was increasing in Rothenia, and boys here had archaic
prejudices about preventives.
  Oskar was getting looks from the conscripts, probably because he was
wearing an Italian leather jacket and designer jeans.  They were wondering
if he were a foreigner.  Eventually quite a pretty one wandered up.
  'American?'  he asked.
  'Sorry kid, no.'
  The boy smiled nicely, 'One of us then, sorry to bother you.'
  'It's no bother.'  He offered him a cigarette from the packet he kept for
social purposes.  He did not himself smoke.  It was gratefully accepted.
'Do you score a lot here?'
  'I've done OK for the past three weekends.'  He lit up, 'A British man
gave me two thousand krona just for a blow job last week.  You interested?
No charge.  It'd be a change to have some conversation with the guy who's
fucking me.  You're nice looking too.'
  'Thanks for the offer, friend.  But I'm supposed to be meeting someone.'
  'Odd place to choose.'
  'He's an odd man.'  They laughed and the boy wandered back to his
comrades.
  Oskar looked after the boy a little regretfully and jumped when someone
said in his ear, 'Evening, Oskar.'
  'Don't creep up on people like that, Hendrik!  Why on earth did you want
to meet here.'
  'It's close to the office.  You're not very romantic are you?  Isn't this
where we started?'
  'Hendrik, ours is and always has been a business arrangement.  Have you
forgotten why you were here, looking for people like me?'
  'Don't undersell yourself Oskar.  You're the only boy I ever took from
King Henry.  But there was no mistaking your talent even then.  I was just
passing, but I caught that body and those blue eyes of yours and I had to
try and sign you up.  I could hardly believe it when you were interested.'
  'Let's go get a drink.'
  'Do you still go to Liberation?'
  'Not now.  You've spoiled it for me.  The foreign gays have taken it
over, and I get fed up of requests for autographs and blowjobs.  An
unwanted fan tailed after me down Domstrasse last week shouting "Marc".  It
was embarrassing.  I'm thinking of moving to my sister's.  Strelzen is
getting uncomfortable.'
  'The Koningen Flavia then?'
  'Fine by me, and you're paying.'  They settled into a concealed booth in
the picturesque and ancient inn across the Rodolferplaz where
Modnehemenstrasse entered the great square.  The main room was beautifully
panelled in walnut and a great pottery stove occupied a corner in the blue
and white colours of Delft.  A portrait of the last of the Elphbergs smiled
enigmatically down on them from the far wall.  The waiters were efficient
and the food was good.
  'So,' smiled Oskar, 'Is it "Rothenian Boys 11"?'
  Hendrik laughed.  'No.  Though that's on the stocks when the team
recruits a few more new lads.  It's a special: a one off.  I'm thinking in
terms of "An American in Strelzen".  Straight American tourist comes to
Strelzen, meets wholesome Rothenian gay boy, eyes meet, world shifts, next
minute fucking like bunnies in various interesting locations and
positions.'
  '... and I'm the wholesome Rothenian boy.'
  'Oh yes.  A role you were born to play.'
  'They won't like it.  It looks like favouritism, Hendrik.  Felip will
feel snubbed; you know he envies me.'
  'Felip's a pretty boy and very sexy, but he can't act even up to our low
standards at Falkefilm, and unlike you he can't improvise.  Besides,
whatever you think, you're the only boy he won't feel jealous of.  He has
real feelings for you, you know that, that's why Rothenian Boys 7 was such
a big seller in the West.  It was obvious he was heart and soul into you,
even on DVD.  He didn't have to act that.  But don't worry.  I look after
my boys.  I can distract him with another project.  The other thing is that
you're getting a lot of attention out there.  I'm thinking of sending you
to San Francisco to represent the firm in the Pride festival.  You should
get out more.  You're a star, Oskar.'
  'So who's the American?  Do any of the boys speak good enough English?'
  'Ah well, that's the problem isn't it.'