London, 1928
The rain hisses down, overspilling the gutters and plunging down in glassy sheets that burst into drops as they smash against the pavement. There are hurried footsteps, and the rattling of engines over on the main road, and the rueful laughter of people caught in the rain. Above this noise, there is the stop-start sound of a typewriter; the sound of keys tapping, rapid or sporadic, and then of silence. The silences are becoming longer and longer, it seems, as time goes by. Lukas hears the silence stretch tight, then snap with a frustrated tearing as the ruined sheet of paper is ripped out. He sighs. Any more rough treatment and the typewriter will surely break.
He stands up from where he has perched on the edge of the bed and bends to brush out the depression his weight has left on the creased whiteness of the counterpane, its folds dusted to grey in the dull light of morning. There is a sense, unbearably pervasive, of the end of the affair. He and Mathias have spent another night lying apart from each other, curled at opposite ends of the bed; for the last month or so, it has been the same. But then again, Lukas knows poets by now. He has endured countless hours in the sticky heat of parties where it is quite common to arrive with one person and leave with another, or simply to forget who one came in with. He has seen these manic, giggling, eternally childish Bright Young Things act out grand, melodramatic, obscenely public affairs, then drop their lovers on the slightest pretext and then take up with someone new as if nothing that went before means anything. But of course, nothing ever means anything to them at all, not in their glittering demi-monde of wealth and glamour. Lukas wonders why it is that he thought, or at least failed to stop thinking, that he and Mathias would be any different.
Mathias slots a new sheet of paper into his typewriter and hesitates, his fingers stayed by the blankness in his mind. The words, when they come, are stumbling and inelegant, but these days he counts himself lucky when they come at all. Where is the darling of the literary scene now, with his three collections within a year of publication, and each one praised higher than the last? He and Lukas were like newlyweds then, and they made love almost every night, so sweetly and tenderly that it would blur his vision with tears, and the words came so easily that it was as if someone had already crafted the lines for him, and that all he had to do was arrange them on the page. Now it has been weeks since he finished something, and nothing is quite right. Have I peaked too young, he wonders, or was there only ever a small bit of talent there to begin with? He hears Lukas moving around in the bedroom. A month, now, since they last made love; a month without slipping into each other's arms; a month without reaching out for the warmth in the darkness. He misses his own smile. He misses the joy of when the days shimmered with love and the words came easily.
The door opens halfway, and Lukas peers around it. Mathias looks up from his blank sheet of paper, embarrassed to be caught uninspired. So much more difficult to justify a lack of ideas, he supposes, than something strange or transgressive – that, at least, can be published. How, after all, can he call himself a poet when the poetry flees from him, and the words refuse to be put in order? He knows Lukas well – he can see the anxiety flickering beneath the blankness of his expression, and so he forces a smile.
"Not much to see here, I'm afraid," he says ruefully. "Though it's not for lack of trying."
Lukas steps fully into the room, pausing to slot a book back into its place on the shelf. "I know," he replies. "I've been hearing you at it all morning."
"I don't know what's wrong with me," Mathias says despairingly. "It used to come so easily and now… nothing!" His eyes stray to the noticeboard pinned up behind his desk. The best writers never read their reviews, he knows that, but he finds it impossible to deny himself the pleasure of praise. Now, though, mounted above the typewriter whose blank page speaks of the barrenness of his mind, they taunt him with their false predictions of promise. 'A poet whose talent may well shape our nation's literary history', says one; 'an exciting, promising debut collection from a young man from whom we shall see much more fine work', asserts another; 'a voice for the modern age', declares a third.
Lukas interrupts his thoughts. "It'll come." he reassures him, although the truth is that he too is becoming increasingly concerned by Mathias's creative infertility. He has a personal reason to be worried. Perhaps Mathias's inability to write is his own fault, now that the novelty of being in love has thoroughly worn off; perhaps it will take a new lover, a new life, a new source of inspiration, before his gift returns. He has seen such things happen before.
"Does this happen to other people?" Mathias asks plaintively.
"Does what happen?"
"This!" he says disconsolately, indicating the torn-up, half-written things; the handwritten drafts furiously scribbled out, sprays of ink marking where the nib has snagged the paper.
Lukas longs to cross the few feet of space that separate them, to kiss his cheek or simply lean comfortingly against his shoulder, but he is stayed by the vague sickness of nerves. Nerves, he thinks with irritation, after all you've done together! Three years and you can't even comfort him, the most natural thing in the world.
"I think it happens to everyone." he says at last.
Unacknowledged between them are the ghosts of young writers who flamed and died, all burnt out before thirty, who found nothing to move or inspire them in the predictable joys and sorrows of marriage and domesticity and spent their long, slow years roaming the mental wilderness that once bloomed with the fruit and flowers of poetry, crying out in the desert for the return of their lost muses. In his own career, Lukas has set young poets on their way by publishing their dazzling debut collections, only to never hear from them again, or to learn, a year or two later, from some acquaintance or another, that the latest prodigy has turned his back on his art, and now wears a bowler hat and works in a bank. Both he and Mathias know of such people, but neither will mention them.
"It used to be so much easier, that's all." Mathias says with an air of resignation. He can feel himself getting older, even if his thirtieth birthday is still reassuringly contained in the next decade. The youthful freshness of his features has disappeared, and staying up night after night makes now leaves him exhausted and short-tempered rather than exhilarated.
Lukas can say no more on the subject, not when Mathias looks so forlorn, so depleted, his endearingly silly collection of reviews glaring down at his useless typewriter and his inarticulate hands resting speechlessly on the keys.
"Are you sure you want to go to that party tonight, sweetheart?" he asks. "I hear there's going to be two hundred people there. I don't think they'll notice if we don't come."
Mathias looks over at Lukas, at his beauty, at his composed mask of an expression that so often hides his kindness and concern. It would be so easy to stand up and take his hand and say no, shall we go to bed instead? But he is too afraid. Lukas fell in love with Mathias the poet; it is surely inevitable that he will be disappointed with Mathias the mere man.
He sighs. "I'll show a face," he says. "Should be a bit of fun, I suppose."
"There'll be no staying out until sunrise, though," Lukas warns him. "I've got work tomorrow." Really, he'd rather not go at all, but there are always plenty of young muses flitting about at those parties, and the thought of Mathias going in search of fresh inspiration makes him nervous. He is terrified of losing his beauty, and yet he knows it can never last. Poetry thrives on innovation, and in this modern age it often thrills with the shock of the new. Surely, Lukas thinks, living with someone day in day out, with its familiar routines and comforting double bed, is the easiest way to kill an idea before it even takes root.
Mathias is taken aback, but the calendar confirms the truth. "Sunday already!" he exclaims with mounting horror. "Sunday, and I've gone another bloody week without writing a damn thing," He kicks the leg of his desk in frustration and winces at the pain. "I used to think I was the best in London."
"You're tired out," Lukas replies. "You can't go to parties every night and expect to maintain a decent career. You need dedication. You need…"
Lukas's voice is measured and patient, and comes from years of being the editorial calm to Mathias's artistic storm, but today Mathias cuts in with unusual fury.
"So you're saying I'm not the best?" he demands, standing up from his desk and shoving his typewriter halfway across it – a pointless gesture, as if it were the machine's fault that he has written nothing for over a month.
"I'm saying you haven't had anything published for a year." Lukas replies, a sharp coolness in his tone.
"And who's supposed to be my publisher?"
"For God's sake, Mathias, I can't publish what you haven't written!"
Mathias is suddenly gripped by a surge of the potent self-doubt that hovers, always, beneath his smiles and social prowess, and beneath every poem he writes. You Are Not Good Enough, it pronounces, and scrawls the message in blood across all his reviews, all his drafts and manuscripts.
"If I hadn't slept with you, would you even have published me at all?"
Lukas feels the plunging heat of mortified shock sinking into his stomach. "How can you even say that?" he demands, unable to keep an even voice when faced with such an accusation. "I fell in love with you, you know that."
"What about all those rejections?" Mathias challenges him. "You said I was talentless. You said it was all posturing. You said you'd be ashamed to publish me."
"Initially, yes," Lukas concedes, embarrassed by his former cruelty. "But I published you because your work got better, not because we… Well, at any rate, what we did clearly doesn't mean anything to you." All those nights spent in a state of perfect indivisibility, Lukas thinks, and all those early mornings when they blessed the amber-coloured dawn with their coupling, and all the times Mathias would speak words of poetry to him, and finish every line with a kiss – are they nothing now? Are they all gone? Have they loved each other for the last time?
"It means everything to me!" Mathias protests, his anger already ebbing away, and shame surging up the troubled shores of his mind.
"Then for God's sake, don't act like it's something to be bought and sold," Lukas retorts. He puts his hand on the doorknob, ready to end the argument. "And you can go to that damned party by yourself."
"Don't think I'll go at all." comes the surly reply.
"Well, I'm going to the Criterion," Lukas says stiffly. "I need a drink, and I need to be away from you."
The door slams shut, sending half-used bits of paper skittering across the floor, then there is the muffled sound of Lukas's footsteps and the sharp double click of the front door opening and closing as he leaves. Mathias buries his face in his hands. Everything is lost to him now. The curtain is coming down over his life, his young life that he thought he still had so much to live. It is the end: the end of his career, the end of the affair, the end of love.
…
Lukas wakes early, deliberately early, so that Mathias will still be asleep and the two of them will not have to talk to each other. He came home late last night to find the place in a state of mild disarray: two bottles left on their sides in the kitchen, mostly drunk, leaking their sticky remains onto the table; a jazz record played through and not put back in its sleeve. He even peered into the study to see if their argument had caused some sort of creative miracle, but the paper in the typewriter was blank, even as the review pinned above exalted the young poet's 'indefatigable talent' and 'master painter's eye for the new'. Such is life, he thinks as he goes into the bathroom and washes the salt of last night's tears off his cheeks. He reaches for his razor. Such is art.
As Lukas arrives in his office and begins to sift through the morning's submissions, Mathias is waking up. He turns to look at Lukas's side of the bed and sees that he has come and gone, and left no trace of his passing except for the removal of two proof copies from his bedside table. All around him, life and work are going on as usual, London alive and prosperous as he lies in misery, his mind a perfect wilderness of half-written lines and unwieldy stanzas whose rhythm will not slip into a natural beat no matter how many syllables he adds or subtracts. He closes his eyes and reaches into his imagination, but there is nothing for him there; only things he has already written, and the memory of what he said to Lukas last night.
Lukas is impatient this morning, his critical eye even sharper than usual. He dismisses three submissions within ten minutes of opening them, infuriated by the smugness of the writers, and by the fact that their dismantling of traditional structure has left their work a collection of scattered words and a meaning abstracted to death. He crosses out a pointlessly extended metaphor and writes a note that demands 'what is the purpose of this?' with the last word underlined three times. Mathias laughs at his attitude to the stranger aspects of Modernism, at his demands that a poem should at least have some sort of coherence, and calls him 'the last of the Victorians' just to tease him. He wonders if he could ever go back to living alone.
As the afternoon melts into the blue darkness of the evening, the rain begins to ease off, and Lukas throws his last submission of the day onto the 'no' pile. Mathias is sitting in his study poring over his second collection. Change 'he' to 'she', Lukas said of his love poems, or they'll never see the light of day. But he could never do it, and so they are now all addressed to 'you', the poet's 'you', the unnamed muse. He remembers writing every single poem, scribbling frantic drafts in his notebook as the invasion of mundane thoughts threatened to disturb the sacred words. Lukas would always read over them as soon as they were done, and tell him straightaway which of them should go to second drafts, and which should be quietly forgotten. He remembers the nights when they made love, and every touch of their lips was worth a thousand words to him. He is always striving for beauty, for the beauty that can never quite be expressed in words. Perhaps it is inexpressible; perhaps it is not, and he is just a mediocre writer. But where is the beauty in the words he said last night, cruel and ugly and untrue? His old work seems to mock him with its fruitful exuberance, reminding him of his quick-fire spending of his gift.
As Mathias flicks through the book, Lukas is climbing up the stairs from the Tube platform and emerging into the streetlit darkness of the evening. Just a bus ride away are Covent Garden and Piccadilly and Soho, and a few more hours away from the inevitable encounter with Mathias; just across the road, and a little further, and then a few paces to the left, is home. He hesitates, one foot stepping off the pavement, and a man collides with him.
"Watch yourself!" the stranger says, irritated, continuing on his way with renewed speed.
Lukas snaps himself out of his trance, feeling unaccountably fragile, and crosses the road. He has decided to go home.
Mathias finishes reading And the Daylight Crumbles to Ashes and turns to his next poem. Too distantly to hear, there is the rattle of the main door as Lukas enters the building and shakes out his dripping umbrella over the mat. Mathias remembers how easy writing used to be. Lukas reaches the second floor. Mathias closes the book and slides it away from him. Lukas put his key in the lock and turns it. Mathias is jolted out of his thoughts by the sound. Lukas enters. Neither one of them calls out to the other. Lukas opens the door of the study and slips inside.
Mathias looks up and sees Lukas standing at the edge of the room, his face inscrutable. He turns his disconsolate gaze towards his review board.
"It really is gone forever, isn't it?" he says simply. A calm has fallen over them; a leached-out, passionless quiet.
"What's gone?" asks Lukas, his voice a perfect straight line of expressionlessness.
"My gift." Mathias replies, feeling himself tumbling towards despair. What is left of him, he wonders, when his poetry is subtracted? Is he simply a vapid young man with too much money?
"I don't know." Lukas replies – at last, the truth.
Mathias stands up from the desk. He wants to approach Lukas, to take him in his arms and hold him for hours until his exhaustion disappears, and until the scattered words that tease him with vagueness form themselves into a poem. How could he ever have said such awful things to one he loves, the 'you' of all his love poems, and the other half of the 'we' that they form together? If he tries to embrace Lukas now, he will surely be rejected.
"I'm so sorry," is all he says, his hands held uselessly at his sides, his eyes flickering awkwardly around the room, unable to alight on anything. "I'm so sorry for what I said."
"When you say things like that," Lukas replies, a tremor in his voice. "It makes me think you don't love me anymore." It is his turn to reveal his insecurities – his own demons that have been nibbling at the corners of their relationship.
Mathias shakes his head. He takes a step towards Lukas; he sees the gleam in his eyes, the subtle swell of a tear about to form.
"I love you," he says. "I love you more than anything. Even if I never write another poem, I'll still love you."
"Let's hope it won't come to that," Lukas replies gently, noticing for the first time how exhausted Mathias looks, how worn down by the existential anxiety that follows the failure to write. His entire human value hangs on his poetry, and his poetry no longer comes easily. They have both been blinded, he thinks, by their own preoccupations. "I love you too," he reassures him. "But I prefer you when you think before you speak."
"Do you remember how easy it used to be?" Mathias says wistfully. "When we first knew each other. I used to write for hours and hours, remember that? I couldn't get it down quickly enough."
Lukas cups his cheek in a gesture of tenderness. That first year was like a honeymoon, he remembers, when everything was new. He would come home in the evening and there would be a new poem, sometimes two, freshly typed up, and most of them brilliant, and some of them far more than brilliant.
"I remember," he says. "I remember how you used to make me read through all your poems after I'd been at work reading poetry all day."
"It'll never be like that again, will it?" Mathias is like a child; the ravages of his self-doubt have left his old confidence a distant memory.
Lukas kisses him softly, just touching the corner of his mouth. "No," he concedes. "But I think you'll write again. People stop for years, you know, before they come back with a new collection," He smiles gently, then quotes from one of Mathias's cherished reviews. "I predict that this young man will be a powerful and enduring voice of our modern era. His future writing can only bring a greater maturity and depth of understanding to what is already a striking body of work."
"Where's that from?" Mathias asks.
"The Times Literary Supplement," Lukas replies. "So I'd say that critic knows what he's talking about."
Mathias takes Lukas's hand and presses his lips to the place where the palm joins the wrist, enraptured.
"You're too good to me, Lukas." he says.
"I know." Lukas replies with a smile.
"I love you, Lukas," Mathias says. "I think I'll go mad if I don't kiss you again very soon. Inspire me again, my love. Inspire me tonight."
…
Author's Note: Well, I finally managed to finish something for the first time in nearly two months. Mathias's writer's block is every author's writer's block, I think! This fic was brought to you courtesy of a never-ending playlist of sad 1950s love songs and three bloody attempts at writing a decent passage of dialogue (Achilles heels – we've all got one!)