XXIII. Quod He
«Move closer, I cannot see your face properly.»
His smoke-engulfed companion seemed nervous, and he imagined the little man squinting through the dense layer of smoke. He laughed. And as he laughed, he knew his laugh would seem to be muted by the ever-prevalent mist, and that to his little companion, it would sound like a light chuckle. After deliberating for a while, sucking on the end of his pipe, he answered. «You aren't supposed to, mister. And always call me 'sir', did I not tell you?» People with no manners irritated him. Not that he respected manners himself. He snorted to himself in the dark.
«You...you have no right...sir...»
«But I do...» he chuckled again, sucking on his pipe. The smoke swirled upwards, in haunting spirals, like effervescent snakes charmed by the low hum of conversation. Giving up, his companion slouched back in his armchair: he followed the motion of his small, thin body as it eased backwards. Thin like a rat's tail.
«What price are you prepared to pay? There is a lot here, and of good quality.» Once again, he laughed to himself. His companion's voice had a note of false confidence, of pretentious calm. He could hear the nerves beneath the quiet words.
«Well, my friend, 'a lot' is a subjective description. Don't you agree?» He did not allow him to respond, but continued. It was a rhetorical question. He usually valued no opinion but his own. "I have a lot of money, as you know, but even so it doesn't mean it is easier for me to part with it…I wonder what you need the money for. A woman?"
The little man snorted at this statement, with something that sounded like a mixture of derision and fear. He thought he knew what kind of comment to expect from the likes of him.
"Women? What does…"
"A sodomite like me know about women?" he finished. He could almost imagine the slack jaw, the wide eyes, the surprise on that little man's bony face when he had spoken. He, once again, did not wait for the response. "People like me, contrary to popular belief, my friend…" – he sucked on his pipe a little, stretching the silence, feeling it spiral around the little table they sat at – "know quite a lot about women, which is the reason we stay away from them."
"But…"
"If you do have a lot of spare time to waste, my friend, I could tell you about my…" the smoke blew out of his mouth in little puffs, and when he rounded his lips into a perfect 'o', little rings rose into the misty air. "Lorelei…" Did it matter? Talking about it, about her, would help him lie to himself. Lie that it did not pertrube him.
«An unusual name,» remarked his bony companion. He could hear him shifting in his seat. He was interested.
«I only called her such, and she did not object. She never revealed her real name to me.» He could hear the thin man draw closer to the edge of his seat, pricking up his ears, listening to his every word.
He sighed deeply, inhaling, savouring the smoke on his tongue, and began to speak. "As you probably have found out, through those people you call your friends, I am of German blood...on my dear mother's side. She was the daughter of a German count and some rich Bavarian landowner. Well, I had often traveled there, and once, two years ago, when I was in Bavaria, I thought I found the love of my life...» Beautiful words, they were. Love, eternity...All lies were beautiful. «Her hair was red as her eyes: well, one could call them a 'light cherry brown', but they were red. Crimson almost. She wore a vernal green gown, with a long trail, fit for a bride, and my first ambition was that she would be mine – that I would replace the red rubies encircling her ring finger with my own diamonds and gold. I unceasingly strove to please her, covered her with all the jewels my money could buy, from head to toe…I sincerely intended to marry her, though she did not show me her affections – she laughed and sang, she showered me with thanks, uttering mysterious phrases, the meaning of which I could not understand – and thus she beguiled me, forcing me to believe in the lie I lived - yes, she was cleverer than me, she understood the rules of the game she played far better than I. So, the young fool I once was bought her a diamond engagement ring, and I positioned myself at the door of her house. I don't remember how long I stayed there – my feet felt numb from sitting on my knee all that time. More than one person passing the house laughed at me and my ridiculous position. And then, she slipped out of the house, clad in a burgundy velvet dress I had bought for her, with a young gentleman – a German – she laughed with him, kissed him, just as she had done with me. I returned to her residence at sunset, and confronted her – if she were prepared to use me as a tool for her entertainment, I would not stand for it – neither would I tolerate her little excuses and explanations, hysterics and pleading – I was inexorable as death. She didn't continue her pathetic spectacle, in which she even threw herself down at my feet... She stood up, composed, conceited, and began to laugh:
'Do you think I ever took any man seriously? Did you think you would, with your English pride and superficial airs, bind me to you for life? Ha! Can you order the sea to obey your every behest? Can you make time stop, tide await your passing? No, so do not hope to tame me, to bind me to your heart, for you shall never bind a wild soul, you can never rid it of its liberty! I am freedom itself, fraulein freiheit! I have used you, you had your use, you were my pivot of amusement!' He had not noticed himself, that his voice had risen far above the quite level of murmuring in the room; he had not noticed how a few heads had turned his way. He had not noticed that he was speaking so passionately about a woman. Speaking about a woman, when he was in love with a man.
«I could have struck her, I could have, but I couldn't move a muscle, twitch an eyelid. All I could say, was, 'Stay away from me.' I could still hear her silvery laugh as I turned on my heel and left – and little did I know this was her suicide note to me, her final word, pronounced with such audacity that one would scarcely think she were doomed. The following morning I read, in the newspaper, that Lorelei was dead – she was found, drowned, in the Donau River. She left a young child, a blond little boy, whom she termed to be my son…It is possible that he was...I had to leave for a significant amount of time, during which she could have...But no, I refused to take him on, in a bout of fury. The child did resemble me very much..." He paused for a while, smoking, smoking. "When I returned to England, I met him. He took away everything, every worry, every fear, every regret, from my mind. It is an unrequited love, my friend...he, sadly, is the type that loves only women, but nevertheless it is a requited friendship. It was enough every day for me to simply meet the man I loved.»
«Who is he?» His companion's voice sounded slightly choked up.
«A highly esteemed man. A lawyer. Auburn hair, stately features, blue eyes...you know how many esteemed individuals wish to do business with me, my friend. It was easy to enter his society. But I did not meet him while seeing to my...ahem...official obligations...» it was rather ironic, he thought, to call what he did 'official'. Chuckling softly, he squinted through the mist at his companion. His hand was inside his pocket. «He has a countryside residence. A pretty place just outside London. A house with an enormous window on the lowest floor; so enormous, in fact, it seems like a door. I passed by, and saw him there...he was reading in latin.» He had never heard anything more beautiful. He still remembered the words of the prayer he had been reciting.
"Deus, Deus salutis meae: et exsultabit lingua mea justitiam tuam...And anything said in Latin, as you know, sounds so elevated, so...aristocratic. I have often said that if something is not beautiful, it is worthless. What more could I want? He is beautiful, impeccably dressed, of high status and he speaks that beautiful language...and am I not, myself, beautiful, educated, aristocratic...as for Latin, he could teach me, could he not...»
«Ah, those prayers...It's what they all say,» said his companion. The wariness in his voice was only an echo of the fear it had been before.
«He's a paragon of virtue. Of justice. They'll appoint him as the Honourable judge any day now...you have no right to contradict me,» he said simply. «Do you not read Shakespeare? Do you not remember Juliet's line – ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.»
«Lips. Exactly. Those words come from the mouth, not the heart.»
«My friend, you are wiser than I thought, but I'm afraid your wisdom is not applicable here. That man...he..."
"Is surely no...no...»
«Sodomite?»
His companion, despite his newfound bravado, did not respond to that, as he had not initially. Yet, he discerned a faint stirring behind the veil of smoke that obscured his thin figure.
The thin figure that was on him in a matter of seconds, pressing him down into the chair, the bony hands around his neck. He could hear erratic coughing, and as he struggled, stars, white stars, erupted, and shimmered, before his eyes. The coughing was his own. Something sharp, sharp, cold, and deadly, was pressed against the flesh of his stomach, that had someone become exposed. The man's shallow, quick breath brushed against his cheek in a whisper. Primal fear overtook his body – his limbs shook, cold sweat seeped through his shirt. Reason calmed his mind. He had not planned to leave this smoky den. He saw no point in living a lie any longer. A beautiful, sweet, and yet bitter, lie. Such was the irony, the paradox, of life. Such was the fate of one like him. A Sodomite.
«Now I know who sent you. That man, with the goatee. Mitchell.»
The blade dug deeper into his flesh. The sharp point was about to pierce it. And yet, the blade shook. Sweat, beads of it, large as hailstones, cascaded off the man's bony forehead, tears of fear he had thought gone fell from his eyes. Disjointed words fell from his mouth.
«My family...I must...You...mean nothing...I must...I must...I thought...another way...»
«Do what you must do, my friend.» He himself was surprised at the calmness of his words. He realised that man had had no deal for him in the first place. Perhaps the reason that little man had not stabbed him immediately was for the same reason why he had not drowned himself after Lorelei. After he realised he did not love him, but only saw in him a friend, and perhaps a work companion, a financial asset. Hope. Hope that perhaps, he would get out of that smoke-filled room without blood on his hands.
A tremendous scream came with the burst of pain in his gut, a scream shrill like a woman's, shrill as he imagined Lorelei's, muted by water as his was now muted by the dense clouds of smoke and lull of quiet conversation.
He felt thick, hot liquid, liquid that would be red against his white skin, pour along his stomach. The burning threatened to overwhelm him, but he could not scream – the breath caught in his chest, as he lay, clutching his stomach, panting.
Snow.
The last image in his mind was that of snow. Smooth, untrodden, chaste snow. Cupped within the white plateau was a silver mirror of ice, sugar-encrusted trees as palatable and tempting as Bavarian sweets, surrounding it. The sun was a blue orb suspended on a string of gossamer, a string of a spider's web. The clouds, thin, whispy, like feathers, moved together, right under the sun, to form a cross.
He heard his own voice. His young voice."What could I give you? What can I give you, but my heart?"
His words could have been part of the crunch of frost beneath their unmoving feet, his and hers; part of the flapping of the wings of the tiny red robin, a crimson spot against the transparent sky, who had risen, with a cry of determination, into the blue air, towards the light.
Lorelei, he whispered.