Chapter Text
When I awoke there was a man sitting beside my bed, an elegant sculpture of worry, watching, and he said, "How are you feeling?"
"Strange." Soreness made it come out as a croak. Wool cushioned the insides of my head and strange things dug out – had my throat been mistaken for woodwork, rubbed down by sandpaper? I wasn't heavy as wood though. Without the weight of the chequered quilt, I might float away into the ether altogether.
The yellow glow of the bedside lamp the only light source, the man's handsome face, grave and severe, was cast in shadows as he said, "You have just awoken from a deep sleep."
At least the man's words made a little sense, even as my thoughts did not. A swallow swished the taste of a foul river along my tongue – had I been swimming too? "Wh– ?"
"Will," he preempted. "It is wonderful to see you awake, Will."
* * * *
I was weak for a long time, too weak to get up, too weak to do anything but stare at the room, a large room in what must be a larger mansion, an old mansion which smelled of mould as much as of old money.
A comfortable bed, the man's fine chair beside, a fine walnut bedside table, a single empire lamp on top and a walnut cabinet. To its side a large window showed the outside, framed by heavy curtains, the crowns of trees swinging in the autumn's wind. The old-fashioned damask wallpaper ran down from the high, dark wood ceiling to the swallowtail of the floor. On the rare times the man couldn't keep me company, a nightingale on the windowsill did. The room was otherwise nondescript – no carpets, no paintings, no pictures, no mirrors, missing pieces of a life, or the aftermath of pawning the valuables during a great depression.
Often at night, the man sat in the fine walnut chair and hunted for the life in my wrist with the precision of a snake's jaw – though the relief at finding the pulse was that of its spared prey. Distress returned fast to the man's handsome features. He seemed to be made of smooth marble at day, severe and unchanging composure, but at night the man's hand wasn't cold to the touch when he held his hand against my forehead in the search of the heat of life – the smooth pale hand not colder than the room's temperature as marble was. If he was made, then moulded by a sad sculptor's hands. "Not again," he said once, as I burned as hot as a furnace with a fever, buried beneath moist blankets, between sleep and delirium I heard, "Please, not again."
When I woke in the morning, after the embers in my insides were slowly dying to ash, I dared not to inquire what he meant nor the man's name. A charm was cast over this room, I was sure of it, and any ill-chosen words of mine might puff it out, where would I go then, where would he go?
At daytime the man wasn't troubled, he changed the dressings on my face and ribs with a doctor's carefulness and detachment. He insisted I eat three times a day and stay in bed to rest, composed and unwavering.
He stayed at a distance day after day, maybe he was a marble sculpture that came with the mansion's furniture, under a charm himself, the sole piece of art in an abandoned place. Why had the last inhabitant left the man behind to be alone? A cruel fate even for a once inanimate thing – he was beautiful after all.
He kept even more of a distance a fortnight later, that was, after a flinch of fear shook my body after the first casual touch of the man's hand upon mine – maroon eyes had closed off afterwards. Shame at the refusal of this man's touch tainted my moods for days, but I dared not to breach the distance, didn't dare to reach for the man myself.
Nothing else to do I made a study of the man. He hadn't been through a great depression, at least not recently, dressed as he was in iron-crisp shirts, rolled-up sleeves as casual as he got, his legs clad in fine trousers and his feet in fine foreign leather shoes. Or was I the foreigner here?
Continental European influence hardened the man's vowels and made the voice an exotic affair. Had he read a telephone book to me I would have paid rapt attention to the man's fine mouth dancing for hours and hours on numbers and words. Perhaps there were still such ancient, yellow tomes in this part of the world?
But I was already a bother, not to mention a burden, so I wished for nothing but the man's company, not that I dared to say so. He stayed by my side still, I awoke to watchful eyes every morning.
I worried about the man, wished that he rest as well. For he was hurt too, visibly but barely, a bulge of dressing beneath the man's wool pullover betrayed as much, stood out on his otherwise hard, immaculate frame. Superficial scratches marred the fine features of the man's face – little cracks in the stone. I wished to mend them.
After breakfast before lunch the man went away, every day he bereft me of the company for these few hours. Out into the wilderness he went, I thought, though I saw little I dreamed of the man stalking between oaks and pines and walking past a willow tree, no shotgun in hand but rabbits shot still. Was he even allowed to leave the mansion, to leave me? I wish he wouldn't. But every day, moments before these dreary thoughts threatened to bury me, he came back. Even with no idea what o'clock it was, I knew it was always the same time because the sun shone brightest when he did, a little while later a knock on the door – "may I come in?" always so polite the man's manners "come in" so mine were too – and then at the room's doorstep the man with a glass tupperware.
We sat and we ate. He spoke little and I less. That the man wanted me to live was an odd anchor to the world, the world that had abandoned me to stranger's care, though he wasn't a stranger, was he? Shapes of smoke filled my head still. Why the man wanted me to life, I had no idea. But he wasn't a man whose orders one denied. So I ate, at first, the clear soups and, then, I chewed on the pieces of meat in the stew. He was a fine cook, or there were another soul here? Now that thought soured my mood. Even the sweet tea wouldn't wash it out of my mouth as I swallowed a sip. I took the large white pills he gave me and the small yellow ones too. Not one day but another the litheness returned to my limbs and with every sunset more strength spread through me. My thoughts grew as the leaves on a willow tree. As my sense returned slowly to my mind, figments of hallucinations and memories fled across my mind as fleet as hunted rabbits on a field – tormenting my sleep often. Somehow I knew the man would shoot them for me.
After a while I found that the man was made of flesh and bone. I saw the maroon eyes turn to gold in the sun's light and the blood pumping in fine blue veins beneath aristocratic, pale skin, at his neck and wrist. Only the man's composed exterior that made me think of a sculpture now, eyes whose thoughts and truths were forgotten with its sculpture's death, left inscrutable. At dawn he was a heartless stone but at dusk I glimpsed the man beneath. He must be the sun's complement – as her light was out the man's was on. Maybe other stars' envy cast him on earth, to me.
As was our ritual we drank our evening's tea, camomile blossoms and herbs and sweetness, and then, under the single yellowish light of the bedside lamp, the man's face softened and his voice smoothed too, tenderness and worry, all too human. Sometimes the man would talk for hours reading and reciting though remembering I did little after waking. I wished I did.
Courtesy made the man's feet loud when he greeted me in the morning but habit made man's feet as silent as a feline's paws when he retired to his room across the hall's carpet at night. I slept alone in the dark but the man followed me into my dreams.
* * * *
Will was such a common name, wasn't it? But in the man's mouth it turned into a special thing indeed. I came to like the man, even intimidating and reserved as was, frightening too, at times. Nonetheless I liked him from the tips of his polished shoes to the silver-brown of his combed hair.
He wasn't a man easy to like. Maybe that was why he allowed me to stay. He'd found an ardent admirer in me.
In these weeks, I had counted twenty-eight sunrises, the man was my whole world from morning to evening and even into the dark of my dreams the man followed. And yet, study as I might, the man behind those eyes remained a mystery to me. A paradox too.
He wasn't a man with a bleeding heart, was he? Someone who took in a stranger in need out of the goodness of his heart. That fitted the man sitting by my bed as an ill-fitted suit made of polyester and if I knew one thing, then that the man didn't deign to wear those. His skin might burst out into a rush at the mere sight, thanks to noble ancestors alone.
Perhaps I was such a pathetic sight that even a man with maroon eyes as cold as he took pity, meagre as I was with dwindling muscles, my pallid skin sat on my bones as wrapping paper on a distant aunt's terrible gift. He didn't seem to mind, but then again, he hadn't yet unwrapped me. Had he clothed and washed me in the beginning? I hoped not.
Sometimes my sleep was broken. I awoke in the middle of the night in a pool of my own sweat, from nightmares I didn't remember, dreams that evaded my awakened mind. After those wakeful nights I carried turmoil in my bones for the rest of my day. If the man noticed, he didn't say. But each following night I fell asleep fast – the turmoil of the night before must have taken its toll.
One day, on a particularly dreadful night, with a tormented mind and a tired body, my nightingale came to me even at the dead of night, sat down at my windowsill with its auburn brown tail shiny, and sun to me a lullaby to aid my falling asleep. She sung a sweet song and I fell into a dreamless slumber.
During the days I felt more and more restless after my restful sleep. But before I was smothered in the confines of this room. I got better.
One day I let the man pull me to my feet, feeling the cold floor beneath bare feet for the first times in eons. Another day, when my knees weren't so weak anymore, I walked a few steps and a few surer ones the next day.
A brief triumph and a perfect smile appeared on the man's face, even in the day's light. I hoped the sun's envy wouldn't be too vengeful for it.
For now the man was terribly happy, in a delightfully human way, and so I was too.
* * * *
Day after day, in the mornings, pieces of furnitures sprang into existence which hadn't been there the evenings before. A desk and a chair and a bookshelf, and, this morning, beside the window a table with two chairs made of walnut wood too. So it came that we sat at the table, before a beautiful breakfast for two, tupperware containers on top of place settings, their blue flowers the same colour as the clear sky above the sea of trees. Having seen so little in the last days but the man I stared outside, lost somewhere between leaves and the crevices of my mind. Noise shook me out of my reverie. Freshly brewed coffee was poured into the two cups and the aroma permeated the air. I missed this. As we sat eating scrambled eggs and sausages, when my mouth was empty and my belly almost full, I said, "It's delicious. Thank you."
A spark lit up the man's face, short of a smile. "My pleasure."
After two other bites elegantly taken upon his fork, he inquired gently, "Ever have any problems sleeping, Will?"
"No, not anymore." I took another bite too, and looked at the now empty windowsill. "The nightingale's song is a sweet soporific."
Silence and a shift in temperature. Rarely my eyes dared to raise to the man's, absorbed as they were in the fine movements of his hands, and the gracious turns of his mouth. But I looked into maroon eyes then to find frost. "Did I say something wrong?"
The man's light had died as a candle's between two wet fingers. "Finish your breakfast, Will."
* * * *
If the man was angry he didn't show it, when he helped me down the stairs the next day. I didn't mind the man's gentle hands nor that he held me as naturally as if I were a lame limb of his, mindful of our stitches as if moving teared the same skin, dressed as I was in the same fine fabrics as he was, found and folded in the walnut cabinet at the wall beyond the foot of my bed, the crisp shirts and dress trousers he had to spare, perhaps sorted out of his wardrobe easily for having less patterns.
As distinguished as the clothes looked on the man's masculine shoulders they hung loose on mine – my trousers needing to be hold by a belt around my hips. Where he was muscular I was meagre, where he shone I was ashamed. Still I was allowed to sit in the dining hall, alongside the man even, as servants laid out breakfast and lunch and dinner, fine place settings and even finer porcelain, crystal glass and silver cutlery. I was but a mouse at a noble man's table. The servants were but mice too, well-groomed and well-trained, serving and then hurrying back into the holes they came from. He sat at the fine wood table's end and I beside. Why I was allowed this courtesy I had no idea.
He lay the serviette on his lap, and, with a moment's lag behind, I mirrored the man's elegant manner. At least it earned me a smile. We began to eat our breakfast. Between bites be spoke, "You may move about the house as freely as you wish. The study and the library should be of particular interest to pass the time. The servants are at your service. They are to fulfil your every wish as much as mine. Of course you can always come to me too, should the matter be more personal." Personal? "But do not bother the servants in the basement." Mice mumbling at the sacks of floor among the stocks of food didn't want to be interrupted. "In fact you shouldn't take the stairs by yourself at all. I shall help you down and up as often as you need. You are still rather weak. You may need to rest throughout the day. There is also a comfortable sofa in the study for your leisure."
"Thank you."
"Not for that, Will."
He ate the European way, fork in the left and knife in the right, facing down as he cut through the yellow and I mirrored that too. He spoke again, "I would advise you to stay inside for a few more days. We shall walk the garden together when you gathered more strength." Oh, I yearned to see the garden, where were we anyway? Pointedly he look at my plate then, the items more shoved about than eaten. "If you wish to explore you must eat. We must put the weight back on your bones. The rich broth for lunch will do wonders."
"Is that what you prescribe to all your patients, doctor?" I said, or rather it left my mouth unbeknownst to my mind. I worried my fork.
"It is common sense, is it not?" he said, not sounding upset at all. "And, as you know, Will, I studied medicine, so call it doctor's orders." The man's mouth smiled, the eyes didn't, and, as an afterthought, with a perfectly knitted brow, "You remember, don't you?"
Without wasting a beat, "Of course I do." And I did.
A man who preferred a surgeon's distance to a common physician's care, who turned from the matters of the body to the matters of the mind. A psychiatrist.
To prove my sanity, I felt the strong need to do that, I said, "I always meant to ask, isn't a surgeon's prestige fixing a body with a scalpel preferable to a psychiatrist's protracted therapy?"
"Is that so?"
"Surely you were a renowned surgeon?"
"Indeed," he answered easily.
"And now a renowned psychiatrist too?"
"That is harder to say, is it not? But yes, I was." Was?
"Well, that's nice. But why would you talk to tedious morons for a living?"
"Will, I am in a point in my life, and my profession too, where I do not have to do anything I do not wish to do."
The man's words were conversationally enough, but he seemed closed-off all of a sudden – his mood clouded over.
My eyes stared at my food, and I found a diversion, "Do you hunt the meat yourself?" I knew he did.
"I do."
"Do you have any moral objections?" He toyed with me then however half-heartedly – this was a game for two.
"When the fox hears the rabbit scream, he comes running," I said, slipped a piece of sausage past my lips and curved them up.
Having feared permafrost seconds before, I now saw a thaw of the man's features, an amused smile even, "Eat your breakfast, Will."
* * * *
Days went by where I didn't see the garden. I glanced at it through the French doors in the living room or lounge or parlour or however else fancy people called the countless rooms in their mansions. My houses only ever had so many rooms that I could remember their names.
Distress rose in my chest with each passing day.
Strange thoughts hung midair as the leaves on a willow tree, yellowed by the change of seasons and about to be upset by the mildest of autumn winds.
I had no idea where I was. I wished to know but I was strangely reluctant to upset him, to upset the peace that allowed a wretched thing such as myself inside the man's rooms, not thrown to the kerbstone. I hadn't even seen the kerbstone, for Christ's sake. I heard the smooth motor of a car outside sometimes, expensive by the sounds of it, sometimes when the man left during the day.
I wished to know where I was. I wished to know it now. Surely that wasn't asking too much, was it? My feet walked down the hall to his study before my head caught up with what I was doing. The pressure in my chest almost intolerable. My way was framed by paintings, faces and sights I didn't recognise, more things I didn't know or remember. My knees trembled and my stomach churned. Maybe he will be angry, but I hadn't seen him ever angry at me. Even when I had spilled my soup, or dropped my cup, or did anything else my clumsy self managed to mess up, he didn't even raise his voice to me. Why was he so kind to me? Once a servant walked the second floor before noon, a no-no in this house. The man, with a glance as stingy as a paper-cut, had reduced the servant, a grown man to tears. I hadn't seen the servant again. Maybe he stayed in the basement now.
Then I stood before the door wishing to be elsewhere. A knock, a "come in", a shuffling of feet and I found myself inside and before the sight of the man sitting at his walnut desk, a small paperback in his hands, the picture of ease and content. A glass of wine at hand for his thirst. Putting the book down, he tilted his head. I stood in the doorway awkwardly.
"Will," he said pleasantly.
"I didn't mean to disturb you." Perhaps his politeness had rubbed off on me.
"You never do disturb me, Will."
The creases of my palms gathered sweat nonetheless. For a moment a heavy silence hung in the room. Small talk took root. "What ... what book are you reading?"
At a lag Hannibal lifted the book from the desk, as if suddenly remembering its presence. "El Túnel by Ernesto Sábato. Have you heard of it?"
I shook my head.
The man's maroon eyes became a bit veiled as he spoke, "When we go to Argentina, you will," he said, and in his tone there was a hint of danger. "It is relatively well known there. Sábato was a wonderful modern novelist. I like this book of his in particular."
A cat's curiosity won over danger. "What is it about?"
"A painter named Juan Pablo Castel," he said. "He feels himself misunderstood. He meets a woman named María and becomes obsessed with her. Perhaps he is mad – given his behaviour he may have been bipolar or schizophrenic." He paused. "Though it is foolish indeed to try and diagnose the psychological illnesses of a fictional character."
Or a handsome stranger's, unless one probed for particulars. "Why do you like it?"
"I see some of myself in the protagonist," he admitted, flipping to the back of the book, and opened it as he found what he wanted, he looked up, "How is your Spanish, dear?"
Fear crept up my spine as swiftly as the endearment left his mouth. "Rusty."
He hummed. "Well then. Listen, it will be good for your Spanish." A fine actor was lost to the stage when he chose the profession of a psychiatrist, I thought, as his voice grew faint and harsh, the manner of a madman pondering his insane view of the world in a cheap art studio. I understood a few words – habìa – túnel – solitario – vida – but too little to make sense of the onslaught of foreign words. My eyes stayed on the woman in the green dress on the bookcover, a naked painter's back behind her – a frightening sight. The man's words rippled me out of my head as he said, "Did you understand that?"
Nervous on my feet, twitching fists by my side, I didn't want to disappoint him, but lying I didn't want to do either. Gazing about the room I caught a glimpse of the man's kindness.
"Too much? Perhaps it is," he said gently. "Your Spanish will improve in time. I'll do it for you – the passage is wonderful." He translated fluently while reading, fluently as he did everything else, "In any case, there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely, mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life. And in one of those transparent lengths of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had gullibly believed that she was traveling another tunnel parallel to mine, when in reality she belonged to the broad world, to the world without confines of those who do not live in tunnels; and perhaps she had peeped into one of my strange windows out of curiosity and had caught a glimpse of my doomed loneliness, or her fancy had been intrigued by the mute language, the clue of my painting."
Voice strong and eyes alight with that disconcerting light, I suddenly didn't dare to where I was – unsure whether I would even be able to open my mouth.
Smoothly he rose and walked to the damask-curtained window, watching the outside and, for once, not scrutinising me. I was thankful for it. He folded his hands elegantly behind the straight back, and said, "I too lived in a tunnel. Whether I walked the streets or was confined in a dark cellblock in an asylum. My cell there too had transparent walls." A stiffness to the spine came with the memory. "Wherever I was I found myself in a sort of tunnel, so it was there where I saw him first, and thought that perhaps he too came from a tunnel, another tunnel like my own." A twitch to the neatly folded fingers, barely there, but no pause betrayed unease. "But he belonged to the wide world as all the others. Perhaps he was only attracted to the spectacle of my loneliness, for he left. And then, while I was a captive in a prison of my own making, he lived a normal life outside, the common life of those people who live outside, that strange, absurd life in which there is a wife and a child and a dog. And at times when I walked by one of my windows I saw him waiting for me, silent and longing – why was he waiting for me? why silent and longing? – but other times he did not get there on time, or he forgot about this poor creature hemmed in, and then I, with my face pressed against the glass wall, could see him in the distance, living carefree, or, what was worse, I could not see him at all and I imagined him in inaccessible or vile places. And then I felt my destiny a far lonelier one than I had before, far lonelier than I could have ever imagined."
I wasn't going to ask who "he" was nor where I was, not now. Whoever it was, I was despised him, and was strangely envious of him too – to have captured the man's interest was a feat indeed. I swallowed nervously and tasted copper pennies on my tongue – had I bitten myself?
Night was beyond the windows as secrets spilled out of the man's mouth as sea water out of a cracked oyster. He turned then, composed himself as fast as a fine actor after a slip fit for the outtakes. He was himself again, back behind his pleasantly distinguished exterior, detached about the eyes. "Now then. Did you need to speak to me about something?"
I shook my head nervously and worked the muscles of my jaw. "Well ... it's nothing, really ... "
He rounded the desk, leaned against its edge, one fine-clad leg over the other, arms crossed, not even this made him look defensive, merely considering. I found myself trapped in the man's study, as a fly stuck in a spider's web, about as likely to manage to flee too. I was pinned by the man's eyes into place. As usual the man's gaze was knowing and wise. He could smell one part of blood in a million parts water, I was sure. Maybe read my thoughts too. And this craft hadn't departed the man now, as much as I wished for it. "You've been thinking about where we are, haven't you?" he asked.
A rill of fear ran through me then, and a drop of nervous sweat down my back. He might be able to smell the nervousness too. I must reek of it.
The only questions he deigned to ask he already knew the answers to, probing for a reaction to dissect. I was being silly. He wouldn't hurt me, not after nursing me back to health, would he? I wouldn't lie to him. "Kind of ... I mean ... how did you know?"
The man's chest deflated, resigned, as if I had disappointed him in a way he was expecting me to. "Your ears pricked up visibly when I mentioned going outside this week."
I wanted to move about then, it felt more natural to move about the room, but I stood stock-still; I eyed the poor woman in the green dress, but she couldn't help me. She couldn't even help herself. I stuttered, "Well ... I ... I just wanted to know ... "
He let out a sigh and uncrossed his arms. He despised incoherence I knew. Perhaps taking pity the man motioned to the floral-patterned sofa to my side. "Of course," he said. "Please, sit."
I moved slowly to comply, watching, the man's palms on the walnut wood and the pens on top neatly beside one another like sharp wood soldiers in a row.
"You must have many questions, doubtlessly," he conceded. His mouth was as beautiful as a snake's, as poisonous too. "But, Will, we cannot simply walk outside, or drive with the car into the city. Contact with the outside has to be careful ... at least for now. You must understand that." He noticed my tension and smiled disarmingly. "Please, relax, dear. I am not angry with you."
I continued to watch the man's every movement carefully, finding it hard to relax, hard to believe him too. He seemed comfortable, leaned as he was against desk, making himself unthreatening, a deliberate thing, I mused. Nonetheless when he pushed himself off the desk, a harmless, elegant push, really, a flinch of fear ran through me. But all he did was walk to the liquor cabinet, retrieving a wine glass. He poured a second glass of white wine and offered it to me. "Here," he said calmly. "Try that. I believe you'll like it."
A whiff of wind might unwind me. Knowing, as always, he held the crystal glass so that could grasp the glass without a touch of skin. I stared too long and then took the wine and stared into it. The man's motion made me sampling it. It was dry and tart on my tongue. I didn't like it.
"Have you ever learned to taste wine?" he asked as if he knew the answer already.
A nervous shrug. I thought I managed a short smile. "No ... not really," I admitted.
"Well then." A silver lighter appeared in his hand as if sprung into existence at the man's whim. A firm click resounded in the room and a blue flame lit from its tip, lighting a candle, which yellowed the study. For a moment he cupped his hands around it, nursing the small yellow flame into life as he had me these past weeks.
"There," he said. "Hold the glass up to the candle so that you can see the flame through the light."
Cautiously, I did as I was told, watching a slightly misshapen version of the flame dance across the glass.
"Very good. Now, swirl the glass a bit to release the bouquet. Then hold it under your nose and inhale deeply."
This I did too. Much like it tasted the wine smelled somewhat acrid and dry. It felt snobby to do this but I wished for the man's smile to return.
"Hold the wine on your tongue for a moment. Wine-tasting is an art and can be one of life's pleasures. First, take a moment to consider the aftertaste. There is no magic trick to it. Just think about what the aftertaste is like. Take one of those." He indicated a small pile of unsalted crackers on a silver dish. "It will clear your palate. There is also water over on the sideboard if you want to help yourself to it."
I shook my head. "It's all right."
He walked to the cabinet again and poured a glass out of another wine bottle, a clear one this time. The man's physique and posture would bring tears to a sculptor's eyes. Lost as I was in the man's backside I startled as he turned around and I found another glass of white wine before me. He invited me to repeat the ritual. A connoisseur at heart the man urged me to took his time – what was wine tasting but an idle pleasure for those whose palms had no calluses? But his hands had calluses, hadn't they? Though even hardened skin was elegant on the man – fine ones as artist's had at the tip of the forefinger, small scars on the wrists as hunter's had. Silently I drank, daring to be faster this time, rushing for the liquor's release, wanting it to chase away the pressure in my chest. This glass was less tart and sweeter than before. I liked it.
He made a study of me as I made of him, I found, as I felt the man's gaze on me. He said, "Now then. Do you feel more at ease than before?"
I was. Two glasses of wine and my head already swam in its own sauce; maybe I had less tolerance than I thought. I shouldn't have rushed. Ah, but I did feel more at ease, less tense. The pressure was gone and so was the wall between the man and me.
"Will, you know that I must stay in the shadows, do you not?"
I did as I knew how to bind my shoes this morning. So I nodded and then stopped, careful of my head's contents lest they splash over the edge.
"I realise that you have questions," he continued in a calm tone. "Such is your nature, Will. If you wish to return then you must say so. You are not my prisoner. But I cannot return with you. You must realise that."
I did and dread turned my stomach's contents at the mere mention. I looked at the man then and lost myself in those maroon eyes.
Gravely the man added, "Besides they won't be pleased with you, now will they? With your association with me. They'll question you relentlessly to find me. Even if you stay silent they may find me still. They'll take you away from me. Steal you away from me. So I must ask you, Will." A pause. "Do you want to be taken away from me?"
My eyes fell from the man's eyes to the wood of the floor and I trembled.
A sigh, a long-suffering one. "The answer isn't on your shoes, Will."
Fine Italian leather brogues mine were, the man's too, the same make but a darker brown. Or were his the same as mine?
As if stirred to life by my thoughts, the man's shoes walked to me. That alarmed me. The man knelt.
"Speak freely, Will. I won't be angry with you." A curled finger forced my chin upwards gently – my eyes, my very own, stayed down. "Look at me, would you, dear?"
I swallowed, and asked, "Is there anyone who misses me?"
He made an art of a poignant pause. "Not like I would miss you, no."
I did dare to look then, into the black depths of black pupils, which had all but swallowed the man's irises in the low light. I found nothing but the truth in there.
"Now do answer my question, please. Do you want to be taken away from me?" He hated to repeat himself but he did for me.
"No," I said, tone hushed and somehow defeated. "I want to stay with you." And suddenly, in a rush, "Can I stay with you?"
It would be audacious to assume he would want me, after I was healed. But instead of a date where I had to go I got the gift of the man's genuine smile, the one that fanned out the crow's feet about his eyes as neatly as a calligraph's quotation marks. "You may always stay with me ... if you wish."
That made something else bloom in my chest, something warm nestled there. But when the words were out of the man's mouth which kept its smile, his gaze wilted to wistfulness.
I didn't understand. My shoulders tensed seemingly of their own volition, why I didn't know. I didn't know what to say to make it better. But I was so tired anyway. My eyes closed and for a moment they were much too heavy to open them. Minutes passed and then seconds, the clock's hands stuttered and time ground to a halt as I felt the man's warm hand touch the top of my head, brushing my hair back, a gentle urge to raise my head. Below his hand, my hair, the same colour as my mother's, the turmoil beneath the same as my father's, and demons entirely my own. His voice was smooth and so were the clock's hands as he said, "Such a beautiful boy, such a troubled brain inside."
The man's palm was warm and the pressure reassuring, as if he cradled a thing he held dear, I wished it were so. Oh, how I wished to be a dear thing to him, the dearest of all. "Open your eyes, please."
I did. What I wished in this moment, something I might even accomplish, was to wipe away the wistfulness from the man's face. A dreary thing I couldn't put my finger on, not yet, so I put my fingers on his face instead.
His skin was as warm as my chest, a warm porcelain cup. What was he filled with, I wondered. I dared to dive into those warm eyes, and said, "I see you." An old sentiment, I thought, but the soft skin under my fingertips was new to my touch. "I've always seen you, Dr Lecter."
Now there flickered a new thing behind maroon eyes, something between doom and surprise. Our connection was cut as fast as an apple cut in two, try as I might to stare into him. What had blossomed in my chest wilted as good things were wont to do with me. The silence prickled my back.
His hands fell away then, not ungently but I was dismissed still. My head lolled down, a puppet as its master's affections fell away. If he he wished for me to keep myself upright he must be disappointed. I always did disappoint him. I wished for the warmth of his palm, the return of the touch. I shivered in the coldness made of myself.
"You needn't be upset," I heard him say, the kindness startled me as much as the press of warm palms against my shoulders steadied me. He was still there. I thought he had departed. I heard the man's soothing voice, "There is no need to be upset, Will. Matters will become clear to you in time, and, painful it may be, you will have a better understanding of yourself."
A rustling and then I heard, "Now do open your eyes again, please."
I composed myself and complied. He had moved a crystal sphere in front of the flame – the flame glowed through the facets and made it seem like another tiny sun. I watched it with idle interest.
"By now, you should be feeling quite relaxed." He sounded at ease himself. "Focus your attention on that, if you please."
The dancing light was fascinating, and I leaned forward to watch it – the weight fell from my shoulders more and more each moment. The candle flickered and its light reflected in the many facets. I heard shuffling, and felt a steady hand on my shoulder, glancing back, he gestured for me to lie down lengthwise on the sofa. It was soft as I laid on my side and stared at the glowing globe; my hands laced together just below my chin.
The man's baritone voice was soothing, and I found myself drifting into a very comfortable space. I was hard pressed to remember what he said and what I myself said too. There was some discomfort, but I was distanced from it all. It was much like when I was a little boy and, now and again, my father tucked me in at night.
* * * *
In my bed I awoke feeling refreshed and more at ease with myself than I ever remember being. If I was concerned again I will tell him and he will help me. If I wish to go I must merely tell him and he will arrange it.
In the next week I didn't think about what was passed and what lay ahead – what he wanted or where I was. It was a wonderful week. I missed him terribly when he was away for the weekend. He was a busy man, a businessman?
Dinner on that day was dreary, sitting by myself in the too large dining hall in a mansion I didn't belong in – after the servants had cleared the table silently as if the master's watchful eye still roamed about – I sipped the first sips of my evening's tea. Then I stood. I wished to go to bed, so that I awoke in a mansion where the man was there again. I balanced the half-full teacup atop the saucer, steady in my grip and on my feet as I walked over the vintage rug onto the walnut wood. I stopped and dropped the teacup just to see it shatter on the floor. Shards of bona china littered the wood and murky tea did too, more liquid than blood, it flowed about. The tea seeped into the rug in random places, blotching and darkening parts a deeper red than before until the colour was as maroon as Hannibal's eyes.