Chapter 5 #2
Micha could not bear the hope in Thomas’s eyes.
“I liked Venice. It was”—he paused—“very beautiful. It was as though the light itself was made by some magician. Whatever it touched, it made lovely, even the slimy marble steps and faded brocade furnishing of the palazzo we took that overlooked the Grand Canal.” He fell silent for a moment.
“The sunlight, there, in the mornings, gleaming on the lagoon, was the brightest I’d ever seen. ”
“How much beauty in your world.”
Micha suddenly tasted bile. “Beauty is only a commodity.” And, before Thomas could reply, unravel him, and expose him further, he snapped, “I wish you’d leave me the fuck alone.”
Thomas nodded and climbed to his feet. He was not graceful, but his movements had a carefulness about them that gave him a certain fluidity. “I have imposed upon you more than enough.”
“What does that mean?” asked Micha sharply, convinced he had finally pushed Thomas too far, and that he was going to be thrown out into the street, as he deserved.
He hardly knew why he persisted in these childish, self-defeating games.
It would have been far better for him to play the perfect, grateful guest. He had taken far more demeaning roles.
But Micha, a man who displayed himself for strangers as a matter of course, simply could not bring himself to do it.
He was half-consumed by the need to make Thomas hate him before Thomas found his own reasons to do so and, at the same time, terrified to think he might succeed.
“It means”—Thomas smiled—“that I shall leave you to rest.”
“But you’re coming back?”
The smile grew faintly bewildered. “Of course, Micha, if you wish it.”
“What do my wishes have to do with it? You show up anyway.”
Thomas gave him a long, steady look. “You know you may stay here as long as you need.”
“And then what?”
“That’s up to you.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“What would be good enough?” Thomas spread his hands in a gesture of invitation. “What do you want from me, Micha? You refuse my help when I offer it, but I can see you’re worried about your future. You need not fear I would abandon you.”
“But you don’t know who I am.”
“Perhaps one day you will tell me. Perhaps not. I fail to see its relevance.”
“What if I am not worthy of your help? I could be a criminal.”
“And are you?”
Micha flinched from Thomas’s eyes. “I . . .”
“It’s not my place to judge you.”
“No, but you will.”
Thomas only shook his head, leaving Micha to a tangle of unformed thoughts and restless slumber.
104
His wife stares into my eyes as he readies himself. Between them, I shiver in my nakedness. And when I turn my head away she puts a cold, gloved finger beneath my chin and holds me there. Her gaze slips past me to her husband. Her lips form a red crescent.
I feel something sour and unfamiliar. I think it might be envy. For I know this twisted, ugly thing is love, as true as any I once believed in.
Use him, she murmurs. Use him as a woman. Make him bleed. I wish to hear him scream.
The laudanum was done. Micha had knocked back the last of it two days ago.
Which meant he was completely and utterly fucked.
He tossed the empty glass aside and stared blankly at the far wall of the bedchamber.
While he was not particularly enjoying his lengthy sojourn in one room, it was infinitely preferable to the alternative, which, as far as he could tell, was dying in a gutter.
Though it had now reached the point that dying in a gutter might be his only remaining option.
He ran through his extensive repertoire of obscenity but it brought him only scant relief.
Regret, he knew, was a fool’s game. Still, his feelings were awkward and conflicted.
It did not please him to admit it, but this had been the closest thing to peace he had known for quite some time.
He lived what was left of his life at the extremes of experience: the utter, sordid misery of selling his body and the wild, artificial ecstasies of opium.
And, before that, he had known only the banality of his middle-class existence and then the dizzying joy of Isidore’s love.
Here, life was simply quiet. Micha had been bored, resentful of his dependence, tormented by his reactions to Thomas and the driving need to keep his kindness at bay but, somehow, he had not been unhappy.
It had taken him a long time to recognise it. The strange, calm state of being not unhappy. Like a man expecting to drown, discovering he could float.
And now it was over.
It was time to move on before his truths caught up with him.
He pushed back the bedcovers, horrified at how much effort it took just to move the sheets around. Then he got out of bed. Then he fell over. Then he swore for a while.
Sweating and panting, he wrapped an arm about one of the bedposts and dragged himself first to his knees and finally back to his feet.
He stood there, swaying, while the room lurched around him as moorless as a drunkard looking for somewhere to vomit.
Micha closed his eyes and dug his fingernails into the wood until the world stopped spinning and he could breathe again.
On the other side of the room, out of sight of the bed, was a freestanding mirror in a wrought iron frame. Doggedly, step by step, pausing frequently to rest and even more frequently to curse, Micha pulled himself towards it.
The stranger who watched his halting progress with dull black eyes was not a pretty sight.
Micha touched disbelieving fingertips to the glass.
And the figure within did likewise. He put a hand on his hip, took a swaggering pose.
Fuck, there were cadavers with more game.
He shrugged the nightshirt off his shoulders and let it slip slowly down his body.
His chest was a grotesque patchwork of bony ridges and sallow skin, and he hastily covered himself up.
He was not vain, for vanity required some shadow of pride, but he was accustomed to having—or rather being—something other people wanted.
Right now, he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting him. Even if he was the one who paid.
He turned away from the mirror. He didn’t enjoy looking at himself at the best of times.
It was like staring into a well, at his own corpse, blurry through deep water.
He sometimes imagined he didn’t have skin at all.
That he was just a paper man, hollow and heartless, upon whom other men left a muddle of rough handprints.
What was he going to do? He stumbled back towards the bed, gave up and crumpled to his knees, too tired and too full of hate even to weep.
Nothing ever changed. It was just another form of dependency, another form of powerlessness.
If nothing else, he had chosen his own downfall.
Twice. How many men could say that? It was a freedom of a kind, when all else was trammelled.
His two lovers, equally treacherous. Isidore and opium.
A painful shiver ran through his body. He really wanted—make that needed, although, at this stage, there was no distinction—some laudanum.
He dragged himself across the floor to the bottle on the bedside table and chased the dregs with his tongue.
How was he to get more? Even if he found the strength to dress and leave with some trace of dignity, he had no money, no possessions, nothing he could sell, not even himself.
He looked around for something to steal, but there was nothing either small or valuable enough to make it worthwhile.
His room (no, not his room, the room), though far grander than anything he had experienced since his time with Isidore, was clearly neglected.
Not in the sense of uncared for, so much as unlived in, unwanted.
This was a house of silent days and cold nights.
But surely it had silverware? Trinkets. Anything. Somewhere.
He pushed himself to his hands and knees and, from there, back to his feet.
He was drenched in sweat—from effort, exhaustion, or lack of laudanum he could not tell.
And the memory of the monster in the mirror haunted him, as though he had finally become the thing he truly was, as wasted, ugly, and corrupt on the outside as he was in his heart.
His conscience, however, he did not let trouble him.
If it was wrong to repay kindness with selfishness, kindness was itself little more than a whim, changeable and ephemeral, whereas basic human selfishness was very dependable indeed.
There seemed little point in allocating behaviour to moral categories.
There was simply folly and common sense, and Micha had indulged in enough folly to last him a lifetime. For which he had surely paid his dues.
His course resolved, he was about halfway towards the door when fatigue and weakness overcame him, and he passed out.
2
I’m so hungry, so utterly weary, that when the gentleman offers to take me to dinner, I agree.
I am about ready to agree to anything. He calls me his panther.
And later his kitten. He smiles indulgently as I eat, and eat, and eat, though the richness of the food almost sickens me.
I’m not innocent in this. I know what is to come.
The truth is, I simply lack the courage to die.
The hours drag. The man eats and talks and drinks and talks and talks and talks.
My mouth tastes of sickness. Eventually, he takes me to a hotel.
They know him there. It’s a copper and sawdust place, I can still remember the faded sunflowers on the quilt blurring with the tears I make sure he doesn’t see.
There is nothing of Isidore in him, even that part all men share, swaying between his white thighs like some bulbous, sap-dripping flower. He is a squalid devil, a vile toad of a man, but I let him have me anyway. His soft hands touch me everywhere.
I wake to find him leaving.