Politely diguised shock, stiffening faces, and Mani smiles at me, the rosy carnival lights reflecting against his dark skin. Indignant voices arise; what kind of self-respecting Frenchman would mix with animals? Many kinds, I would remind them, but they wouldn't understand; a man is somehow changed when he goes to the New World. Perhaps it is the wide open spaces and eternal land that belongs to no one but the creator. What kind of man would mix with savages? Myself, for one. It would be amusing to see their reactions, but there is no need for burning bridges just yet.
Mani is relishing the joke; he always does. He stands upright and proud, stoic in the midst of decadence, and ascetic even while enveloped in the finest velvet and lace I could persuade him to wear. The effect is, as always, sensual and jarring. He is an alien in an ocean of powdered curls and silk, a warrior amongst the weak. This backwater province has never seen anything like Mani before
When we are alone later that night, I push off those foreign clothes and apologize with my wordless mouth against his dark skin for having taken him from his lands, having brought him here to a cold land and false people who see him as no more than a trained animal fit for their amusement. He gasps and threads his hands through my hair and clenches, skin sheening like newly polished bronze now with his sweat as I pull curses out of him and then a final utterance of my name like a prayer.
As we sleep, later, he murmurs to me in his native tongue. I made this choice, he says. I chose to come with you to strange lands, because I was curious and you needed me. Do not grieve yourself over the choices we have made.
And so, comforted, I sleep.